Posted on 11/22/2012 6:33:44 AM PST by skinkinthegrass
If you actually want to engage your right-wing relatives — and let me be clear, you really should not do this, you are going to ruin Thanksgiving — it’s best to come prepared. Below, you’ll find a series of talking points designed to address some of the most popular current trending topics in the alternate conservative media world.
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
Politeness will no longer avail us if we are to save what remains. Meet nerve with nerve and passion with passion. And give nothing more away.
I had a horde of rampaging liberals break into my hoard of chocolate a while back.
I’ve thought about what you’ve said a lot since the election lately. How did the baby boomer generation with it’s strong rebellious attitude and live and let live credo become naany stating little fiends who want to control every aspect of your life cept who you sleep with?
And young, non-white "Americans" spend a lot of their time being lied to everywhere else ...
Dear Alex,
Thoughtful writing does not include the phrase ‘stingy asshole’.
Sincerely
My conservative facebook friends have all posted nothing but wishes of Thanksgiving. My liberal friends have only posted this Salon article and MSNBC’s version (collaboration much?).
Can definitely see the difference in mindsets.
They are not really your friend.
What excellent news on this Thanksgiving! I look forward to see you posting from 'somewhere else' in 2013. What a blessing to be liberated from New England...
I went through this at Thanksgiving a few years ago with our oldest male relative, when I mentioned Communists in our unions. He sneered at the top of his voice that we defeated communism long ago! Oh. Kaaaay. I quietly stated that we defeated the Soviets, but not communism, and got up and left the room. It just wasn't worth a prolonged argument in front of the rest of the family.
They Will Drag You Down To Their Level, Then Beat You With Experience!)
Luckily my family has more important things to argue about than politics..
Good question.
Here’s my gut reaction: we all know that each successive generation instinctively rebels against their parents. It’s a natural part of establishing their own identities. Do you recall the stories in the ‘80’s about all the former hippies that had renounced the love generation and became “filthy capitalists”? I do.
So sometimes kids do the rebellion thing just to make a statement of independence and not as a well-reasoned, sober life-choice. Essentially they’re saying, “You’re not the boss of me”....before adopting the same yoke that we carried, and our folks carried. The yoke of responsibility, of work, and of achievement.
There has been an acceleration of this trend however, and that troubles me. When we were kids we grew our hair long and wore goofy clothes that we got from Goodwill. Guys who got tattoos were either servicemen (and their tattoos were innocuous) or 1%’rs who were outcasts from society.
Nowadays huge garish tattoos are the norm. Body piercing - often transfiguring - is rampant. It is no longer merely a protest - it is an open declaration that they don’t give a damn about you, about me, and especially about themselves. They are precluding their participation in society. What they do to themselves guarantees that, irrespective of what talents or skills they possess, they will qualify for only the bottom of the barrel of jobs.
And they don’t care.
The creeping malaise of entitlement has ensnared another generation - and to a degree even greater than the one that came before. I believe that it was taught in our Government Indoctrination centers. Kids were drilled with a constant mantra of insipid feel-good slogans like that idiot franken’s “I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!”
They were taught that it was more important to feel good about themselves than to seek higher achievement. Boys were taught to be passive and compliant, and girls were taught to be assertive and brash - actions that served only to bring out the worst attributes in both. They were inculcated with passivity and indolence. If you just quietly wait in line you’ll get whatever you need.
They were fed a steady diet of dreck like The Simpsons where one learns such pearls of wisdom as, “If something is to hard to do, then it’s not worth doing.”
More than any previous generation they were handed everything on a silver platter and not even asked to take out the trash. In terms of recipes for disaster I think that we managed to concoct the perfect one. How could it not crash?
Margaret Thatcher once warned, “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” It was true then and the principle still rings true now. I believe that we are now poised to find out exactly what Maggie was warning us about. And I wonder how (if?!) the current generation will deal with the End Of Life As We Know It?
Pardon the ramble ;-)
That is so true; and it comes true over time even if people don't recognize it at the start. I think of one of my dear relatives who went off the deep end as a young man and would have emotional tantrums over our eating a turkey at holidays.
He remained vegetarian the rest of his life, which was shortened immensely by complications from the unbalanced, soy-heavy diet he was eating, which interacted fatally with his hereditary thyroid problems.
He died too young and completely alone, so unhappy with life. His mother had been a rabid FDR, JFK and LBJ supporter. Many of us in the family tried to help him out of his misery, but progressivism is misery and hatred and "extremism in defense of narcissim."
Here is a brilliant Daniel Greenfield article on that subject:
Obama’s Post-Family America--Fracturing social structures are leading to a fractured nation
Life imitates art. What is happening all around us in this ObamaNation - is EXACTLY what this scene depicts.
When an individual becomes progressive he places himself outside of the bonds of family. No one throws him out, he goes of his own free will.
My family is “progressive.” That’s why I left home at 18 and eventually settled over 1000 miles away.
I wouldn’t argue with my right-wing relatives...I’d go to the range with them instead!
I'd add that one quick-n-easy for them to feel good about themselves is to earn the praise of other liberals by being "for the underdog." Therefore, all they have to do to feel superior is state sympathy for the poor and downtrodden. Of course, the poor and downtrodden they choose to sympathize with are usually living how they are for reasons having to do with their own choices, but one must use judgment to point that out, and they eschew judgment. They simply identify the losing side of every battle and loudly proclaim their sympathy to that side. It's why they love Palestinians, for example.
One of two things went wrong (or both). Embassy staff was more determined and better armed than anticipated, and killed some of the attackers. That pissed them off and they killed the ambassador, and the rest were rescued by the Americans, or the attackers double crossed Obama.
Two Navy Seals showed up. If they’d been granted the proper support, things would have ended much differently.
Funny. When I saw the article, the first thing that occurred to me was that the only thing missing was a reporting requirement to turn your relatives in afterwards.
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