Liberals are... (lotsa jpgs) - Page 5

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I know who y'all are. I've read the blog on multiple occasions. And I doubt the politics are much different from the standard fare I used to hear when I lived in Oklahoma.

I'm just asking whether or not you guys ever find that being that angry and full of invective wears you out. I mean, good lord, it must be incredibly tiring to look around you and see all those people just wandering around, hating America. Or even worse, to look around and see, on every streetcorner, in every newspaper, on every TV, on every radio, on every website, so many people outside the mainstreamand all of them deserving of the wrath of the oppressed mainstream. It must be mighty tiring, you know, to be on the attack all the time. I'll admit it, jingoism ain't easy to sustain. That's why I'm wondering whether y'all every get tired or if you find that being that angry that often somehow fuels you.

Obviously you've never studied Stalin. If you had you would understand the point I made. Obviously the party that wishes to practice eliminationism finds a fault serious enough to act on. It is the line that makes a political disagreement move from policy differences to area where "they don't share our values and thus are dangerous" and lastly can end up with "thus they should be purged."

The fact that one side would argue that the purging is for the good of God and the other argue that it is for the good of the country, planet or progressive agenda does not mean that a purge is not a purge.

Nick

Carter argues for a "Stalin"-style "purging?"

Nick:

Well, since you linked to it, let me just quote the blurb for Carter's book:


I suspect that virtually every person on these boards, besides you, would read that and say "Eliminationist? WTF? Is he even trying to make sense?"

As far as I can make out, you've just locked yourself into some kind of "I know you are but what am I" cul de sac and since that's pretty much all you've got you're going to grimly play it out, sense be damned.

Still, I'm curious. Since you regard speaking out against preemptive wars, torture and blurring the line between church and state to be "eliminationist", would you therefore hold that preemptive war, torture, and blurring the lines between church and state are so deeply intrinsic to American conservatism that to criticize the former is to call for the utter destruction of the latter? I'm having trouble getting any other read off your remarks, and yet that would be, you know, completely nonsensical and all.

Unless you suspect that Carter is suggesting that rank and file conservatives, i.e. "conservatives" as a class of people (which after all is what this whole thread is about) are in the habit of launching preemptive wars and using torture to extract confessions from their neighbors?

Or is it just that anytime anyone remarks that efforts by a powerful, dominant evangelical Christian/Republican alliance to remake the country as overtly Christian run counter to the express intent of the founders it strikes your ear as "genocidal"? Like the real agenda is to close down the churches and burn the bibles and ban prayer everywhere and forbid the wearing of crosses?

Because, you, that would be completely nonsensical and all.

I'm really confused.

Well, addabox just argued for the complete destruction of conservatives, you see.

Apparently.

People seldom argue for a negative. They just take a good "cause" and keep pressing it until they are willing to hurt people.

Nick

What scares me most...that anyone (right or left) actually takes Rush Limbaugh seriously at all. Never heard or read Anne Coulter myself so don't know enough to comment on her. I have heard about...let's see maybe...15 minutes of old Rushie in my entire life...and that was enough for me to conclude he was/is a clown...and probably a caricature who has found a great money-making racket for himself.

Nick is right about this.

Well, that's the problem, innit? Coulter is mainstream. She's a regular pundit on FOX news. And Rush is the most successful political talk radio guy on the air. These aren't clowns. These are the voice of conservatism's populism.

I'll be happy to deal with that. First I'll deal with the nonsense.


I could really care less about what percentage of the people on this board come to the same conclusions as me.


Actually that is the nature of the question of this thread. The question was that certain books from authors on the right appear to have an eliminationist tone. Are there "mainstream" books on the left that have this tone as well?


I really don't care to address all the nonsense you ascribe to me. My view simply put is that when you declare a group to be dangerous and thus they need to be excluded from political discourse, then that is eliminationist. I don't think any of the books pointed to on the right are calling for interment camps or mass exterminations, so I consider that to be the "eliminationist" bar we are attempting to measure.


Carter is arguing that a class or group of people are a threat or danger to our values and country. He doesn't suggest they be killed, put in camps, etc. However I do not see any of the rightist books mentioned here doing that either.

I'll quote BRussell as to what he thought about the tone and nature of the books he mentioned...

I don't think you'll see mirror-image mainstream rhetoric from liberals defining conservatives as treasonous and with the same kind of "eliminationist" tone, as addabox so aptly phrased it. But it's clearly the game plan from conservatives. I'd even bet there's some handbook from 1992 written by Frank Luntz and Newt Gingrich on exactly how conservatives should define liberals.

In that manner of reasoning, I do believe Carter's book does indeed attempt to take an entire group of people and define them as dangerous and treasonous.


You know.. the whole sarcastic "this must be your inner-monologue and how this works against it" thing just doesn't fly well because in my case it isn't even close. All it does is show your own knee-jerk thinking because you would rather argue against a caricature of what you think I would think or say instead of dealing with my own words and thoughts. It actually shows more of a closing of your own mind and that to me is a very unpersuasive argument.

Now on to the actual Carter words...


Obviously radical changes call for radical solutions. Carter can leave them to the reader but very few intelligent people ponder meeting radicalism with incrementalism.


The peace/war bit is not a direct quote, but rather a conclusion of the reviewer which you seem to support. So I will address it in that context. When you claim an absolute for yourself and declare the others an enemy working against it, then that is a very eliminationist tone in my view. It is no different than "you are either with us or against us." Carter is claiming that if you don't meet his criteria for going to war, then you are against "peace."


These votes have had the support of both Republicans and Democrats. So since it is "inconceivable" that the majority would support such a view, some evil group must be distorting the values and process of the majority. Who are these evildoers?


Nick

Exactly. The fundamentalist of any religion are taking a good cause and pursuing it until the hurt people.

These two things are not mutually exclusive.

I disagree. I have argued that Maher, Coulter, Franken, Stewart and others are basically the entertainment for the political wonk types. This is why when someone on either side makes these sort of statements that seem designed to several things at one, part comedy, part shock, part an affirmation that you know some bit of political wonkery, etc. I never take them fully serious.

Here is the one of the lastest of the Maher "new rules" which I love to death by the way.


Now if I treat that as a fully serious policy statement, it would be totally offensive. If I treat it as it really is though, it is funny as hell. All these folks in the "edutainment" current day news industry walk various lines with this stuff and are successful or unsuccessful in various degrees. The right probably does a bit better on the wonkery stuff because their folks aren't fully afraid to touch certain topics and even play a bit of smashmouth with those topics. However the folks on the left who are willing to do this are just as effective and popular in my view.

Here is another new rule great example of this that also has that sort of eliminationist tone.


Nick

You just need to be willing to widen that to the fundimentalist of any political cause and we will be in agreement.

Nick

Jimmy Carter is willing to hurt people?

I don't think you're answering my questions. I asked how his book, which argues *against* exclusion, could be considered "eliminationist." Then I asked whether Jimmy Carter is arguing for a "Stalin"-style "purge," as you seemingly suggest. Now the book is about hurting people?

SUPER MEGA-DITTOS Nick! Long-time reader; first-time responder. I just wanted post a reply and say that I've been reading your posts for years now and that I agree with everything you post 100%, especially when you say that people like Rush aren't the voice of the populist mainstream! That'd mean that regular joes like me would call in and say something like "ditto," you know, in a reference to a copy!

Now, here's my question: I wander around every day and I see that I'm surroundedSURROUNDEDby people who are so far outside the mainstream American beliefs that it drives me insane. They're everywhere. There must be 50 million of them, and that's just likely voters! So I was wondering if you could answer me this: can we just kill them all?

Now, I know what you're gonna say. You're gonna say "don't kill them all. Leave two on each college campus" or something like that. I wanna know. Can we just kill them?

Major right wing pundits say liberals should be killed? Carter thinks Iraq was a bad idea!

See how it's the same? Because when you say that preemptive war is wrong, you're saying that everyone who supported the war have no right to live in America any more! Oh sure, he didn't come right out and say it, but you know he wanted to!

Major cable gasbag says San Francisco ought to be bombed by al Qaeda for discouraging military recruiting in public schools?

Some liberal wag made a joke about Bush, so you see there is plenty of excess to go around! It all evens out!

Major right wing pundits say liberalism is a disease and a cancer that is eating away at the soul of America?

Liberals are snarky about Intelligent Design! Again, pretty much the same thing, since supporting ID in the public schools is synonymous with "being religious", which means being against same smacks of wanting to see religion abolished!

See? Eliminationist! I learned a new word and now I can use it indiscriminately!

Being right wing teaches us that it's important to suppress actual meaning, because what words actually mean can lead to uncomfortable encounters with partisan reality.

The important thing is to reduce every possible distinction to another "he said/she said" different but equal equivalency.

Then, reality safely at bay, it's just a matter of who does the better job of stage managing appearances, who has the better message discipline, and who has the most widely disseminated blow hards.

I don't think it matters a great deal what the Right publishes, Nick.

Although I think people like Coulter are very clever, they make the mistake of being meanspirited -- Hannity wouldn't know philosophical epiphany on three hits of Acid at a Pink Floyd planetarium show -- and even if he did, his editor wouldn't let him print it. And then there are people like Limbaugh/Gulliani/Gingrich, who, to listen to, require turning a blind eye to half a dozen divorces/affairs and a trip to rehab; they are unprincipled in the end analysis -- except when it comes to preserving power.

But it doesn't matter -- they could be publishing cookbooks and get raked over the coals, you have to realized that they are a response to the "Bush lied"/"Bush is Hitler" animus. We are told that Moveon.org and the DailyKaos are the "reasonable" positions. The leftish connections to the 20th centutry's humanatarian cataclysms go begging, NATO/UN parked outside Iraq for ten years, is ignored. A couple of weeks ago I brought a well reasoned, egg-headed journal into a discussion here at PO only to have it branded a "straw man".

Cat-calls brook no intellectual rivals.

I love all you lovely lefties out there, but I don't think this is really any place for a dialogue. It's a place for venting, and not much more.

I do believe Jimmy Carter would be willing to exclude certain parties from political discourse. I think he is taking an absolute position and arguing that parties unwilling to endorse his position makes those groups of people and their ideals dangerous enough to need to take action against them.

Now I don't really care about your questions because they don't relate to the context of the thread and the discussions that are occuring within it. I mentioned what I thought about Carter and his eliminationist tone. Hardeeharhar said that he thought that Christian fundimentalists are indeed the "evildoers." I mentioned that Stalin would be proud of Hardee.

So note to you and your many questions. I didn't say Stalin would be proud of Carter. I didn't Carter endorsed Stalin. I didn't say anything about Carter and Stalin. I said Stalin would be proud of Hardee.

Nick

Am I supposed to know what the hell this is about?

Nick

You might want to familiarize yourself with a timeline of Limbaugh vs one of DailyKos.

If you don't, one has to wonder why you're trying to make the points you are.

There are several threads in this forum where I have posted liberal quotes that were just as bad. I haven't tried to justify the people who say these things on either side nor even argue that they occur in equal amounts.

As for the rest, again enjoy your inner-monologue/rant.

Nick

It's entirely irrelevant who you may think Stalin may be proud of. It doesn't fucking matter. I think raging atheists who do their own evangelizing that there is no god need to shut the hell up. Jerry Fallwell would be proud of me. WHO GIVES A SHIT? That doesn't mean I share the same value system as Jerry Fallwell. It just means that one opinion happens to overlap and FOR VERY DIFFERENT REASONS.

Trumpet, such comments have NO PLACE here.

What would that point be? That I can read some liberal blogs that find a couple quotes and use them to draw sweeping conclusions? That anyone can say something stupid when given enough air time? That you can imitate what I will guess is some fawning phone caller to a radio show and rant a bit about something?

I'm starting to think that you've lost it or something. You prefer to rant at the rightest idiot that drawls "Murika can't put up with no colored in towels" that you have created in your head instead of dealing with the actual words posted here. You and adda both seem to be suffering from this problem. You both prefer to type what you want to respond to with regard to arguments. It is a conversation with yourself. It must a type of mental masterbation.

I hope you brought some lotion.

Nick

Refresh my memory...who is it that's always complaining that people don't address the issues, and that they just argue motive or mental status?

I made two little points in there. First, that you're making declarations about Limbaugh and his place in the conservative ethos while at the same time admitting that you don't listen to his show and you are unable to recognize a parody of one of his callers.

Second, you claim that the Coulters and Savages and Limbaughs and whatnot are part of a kind of political WWF. To an extent, I agree with you. For folks like me and you, they are. But my point was that they have been "mainstreamed" and are now the voice of the populist segment of the conservative movement.

I would contend, Nick, that you ain't in it.

And as for what I've created in my head...I live in Utah. I don't even have to bother imagining. I just walk outside.

Nick-- I was talking about a series of statements you (apparently hastily) made about Carter's book. If it's eliminationist, as you say, then how do you reconcile that with its argument against being exclusionary. And as midwinter pointed out, how can he be eliminationist concerning himself, an evangelical Christian?

Things aren't adding up here...

There isn't a Nickel's worth of difference between them, Midwinter.

Scott Adams gives a parable of this phenomenon here. ...and some of what gives the Limbaughs and Coulters their fuel is illustrated here.


venting, meet dialogue -- dialogue, meet venting.

The issue is does this exist on the right and left in a mainstream fashion. I have addressed that. I've not addressed whether one quote or rant of Limbaugh or O'Reilly reveals a fully eliminationist ideology. The people using those quotes are indeed arguing about motive/intent and are indeed ignoring the issue.


I understood the ditto part. I just didn't understand how you were relating it to what I was typing. As I've stated you and Adda really have moved to a place where you prefer arguing against a caricature. Perhaps the sources you read have been doing it for so long that they no longer resemble that which they are trying to parody.


And on the left there is talk of Franken running for Senate and plenty who would prefer to get their news from the Daily Show instead of CNN but big deal to both sides. Sure Maher eludes to drug use in every show and perhaps does so in a tone that is too harsh for mainstream political discourse. But people obviously prefer his kernal of truth in the comedy to a truck of bullshit with a proper tone.

Limbaugh in that quote about liberals likely was eluding to the fact that we prefer our predators in zoos instead of in our backyard. Obviously human growth has resulted in a diminished population for say, lions. So even if conservatives grow the point to where natural selection would "kill off" liberals, we should still keep a few around to remember what they can do.

I can take each of those for what they are in terms of political discourse and entertainment value.


That is why your little "caller" confused me. It would seem to imply that I am "in it."

Nick

How could Mao have slain his Chinese brothers? How could Stalin have purged his own party?

How can you seriously be dense enough to ask how someone can claim to be a member of a group but declare the ideologically unpure members of their group to be dangerous and in need of purging? In fact this has been pretty much the modus operandi of the extreme left.

Nick

There's about 20 years of difference between them if you're arguing that


Rush, Coulter, Savage, and Hannity aren't responding to liberal hatred of Bush. They emerged, largely, in response to Clinton. Daily Kos, Atrios, et al are a response to them, not the other way around.

Yes on Savage and Coulter, although Coulter has been 'in the works' for some time. At the same time, Limbaugh emerged in large part as a response to the way Reagan was handled, and was in place well before Clinton was elected. Don't forget how hated Reagan was -- remember the Not Necessarily the News send-ups/Robin Williams treatment, and beyond? It was contemptible.

Regardless -- DialyKaos, or Limbuagh -- are incredibly hurtful to the dialogue that could be. But then as that Texas Politics books so succinctly stated, this isn't about dialogue, it's about preserving power.

Coulter has been at it since she was at Columbia, yes. Or was it Cornell?


Well, I'd actually argue that the framework for Limbaughwho I would generally excuse from much of this debate here about rhetoric, since the problem children are really Savage, Coulter, Hannity and O'Reillybegan to be put into place in the mid-1970s. Direct mail, followed by a massive infrastructure of talk radio on AM stations. Followed by Fox Sports, which was used to advertise Fox News. Followed by, followed by. It's a staggeringly efficient machinery the conservatives have, and the Dems have deserved to get spanked by it for the last 30 years.


Yeah! HBO programs in the mid-80s and a stand up comedian who was coked up, um, on HBO! Mainstream! Remember how in the 1980s Liberals were commies? Cuts both ways, dunnit?


Those two examples, Kos and Rush, I would suggest CAN be hurtful, but generally aren't. Savage? Coulter? Hannity? Tony Snow? Hurtful. Period.

Here's something I wrote in September of 2002:

Come on, now -- remember the Carter/Reagan debates? ..the subtext that Reagan was going "to push the button" on a whim -- it just got way, way, out of hand.



I don't know, what's worse: 52% of the ignorant public led around by cheap-O 'family value' types, or the 48% led by the 'let's just raise the miniumum wage to solve all our eqaulity issues" crowd? Maybe I've worked on too many college textbooks, but real life is about a 1000 times more complicated than what is coming out of the mouths of Snow, Limbaugh, or the potty mouths over at DailyKaos.

Terence, this is stupid stuff.

I've mentioned it before, but the only people to ever make this "they are equally divisive" argument are right wing apologists, for obvious reasons.

Although I must say, the idea that right wing hate radio arose as a response to people making fun to Reagan is fairly novel, as is the idea that mocking a sitting president, something of an American tradition, is "beyond contemptible". Oh yeah, I forgot, right wing icons are figures of such dazzling radiance that to belittle them is to belittle the very Fabric Of Our Christian Decency. No joking matter.

Still, if beyond contemptible Robin Williams mocking Reagan equals Rush Limbaugh, I would have thought the Clinton years would have led to liberals with guns randomly executing Republicans. One way street, I guess.

And what is the deal with these surreal pair-ups ya'll keep reaching for? KOS and Limbaugh? Is your capacity for evaluation so coarsely deployed that all you are registering is that are both "partisan"? By that criteria white supremacists have nothing to apologize for in David Duke because black folk have Bill Cosby.

See, pretending that simple partisan polarity provides cover for the Coulters and Limbaughs and Savages requires you to strenuosity ignore differences of tone, intent, strategy and technique-- you know, the stuff thinking people use to distinguish between cheap hustlers and a genuinely political stance.

To visit Limbaugh's website, with it's carnival tent atmosphere and cult of personality, its bombast and media mogul marketing tie-ins, and fail to understand the difference between that and the wonkish Daily KOS, with its multiple contributors, long lists of poll tracking and speculation on what the numbers portend, discursive analysis of congressional actions and "open threads" is to either be utterly tone deaf or willfully blind.

Waitaminute. You mean people were worried that Reagan would act like a hothead cowboy? And then, you know, when he got into office, he, um, acted like a hothead cowboy? Imagine!


Heh. Agreed. As an aside, I just gave my freshmen an alternate assignment for their final (research) essay: choose a letter to the editor about a local issue that might seem trivial or bizarre (we had a series of exchanges about ferrets a while back) and make an argument that they are much more complicated than they might seem.