Posted on 10/26/2008 9:05:33 AM PDT by jazusamo
There's battle lines being drawn Nobody's right if everybody's wrong -- Buffalo Springfield
What is happening to us? What explains the boorishness, hate and even violence that increasingly mark our politics?
No, this isn't another prissy commentary on "negative" ads -- another high-sounding homily on how we ought to focus on "the issues," by which the writer means "the issues that I think voters should focus on." Nor is this a screed against demonstrations, however boisterous, or some young fools' lawn-sign stealing. There's no interest here in trampling on free-speech rights or spitting into the wind of what must be a rite of passage.
What troubles me -- what should trouble us all -- is the outbreak of largely liberal intolerance we've seen over the last few elections, and especially this one.
Something's happening here, and it's getting scary.
We've had two 23-year-old males here tossing Molotov cocktails to burn down Gene Scrutton's John McCain sign in the Sellwood neighborhood.
In Minnesota, graffiti messages ("u r a criminal resign or else") were spray-painted on the garage of U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's St. Paul home.
A 23-year-old Michigan man, a Democrat, has admitted to plotting to detonate a homemade bomb in the tunnels near the Republican convention.
In the Washington, D.C., suburbs, a motel with a McCain sign on its lawn received threatening calls and a McCain-signed pumpkin patch was vandalized.
In central Florida, the Republican headquarters manager told police he believed that his home with two McCain signs was shot up because of his support for McCain.
It doesn't involve physical violence, threatened or real, but "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart's "[expletive] you" to Sarah Palin in a recent comedy (?) act suggests how far we've gone in the age of the unhinged.
Yes, I know this stuff runs both ways. Here in Oregon, we had the hanging of an Obama cut-out at Newberg's George Fox University. The Washington Post reports that Obama signs in Alexandria, Va., were painted with racist epithets. We learned Friday that a McCain campaign worker's claim that she was beaten up and had the letter "B" cut into her face because her car had a McCain sticker was a hoax. Such deranged doings are just as appalling when it comes from the right, though my sense is that this hate-filled intolerance more often comes out of left field.
I also know we're a big country, and a few goof-balls do not a national trend make. But I don't think I'm committing sociology based on a few incidents. We're talking about more than a few beer-addled goofballs here.
A young friend of mine was working for the Bush campaign in 2004. One weekend he left his car outside a friend's Eugene house for safekeeping while he was out of town. Upon returning, he noticed the "W" sticker had been removed from his car. Hey, buddy, you were supposed to take care of my car, he said to his friend. Oh, yeah, his friend said, my father did that when he was here this weekend. He couldn't stand a student having a Bush sticker on his car.
Now, mind you, this wasn't a practical joke. The father was dead serious, and he wasn't some ne'er-do-well with a six-pack of beer aboard. He was an immaculately credentialed Portland professional who also headed a major community organization.
I love politics and public policy, but the ugliness, the anger, the coarseness and even the threats of violence I've experienced as a conservative opinion-writer in achingly "tolerant" Portland have contributed to my decision to leave the business after this election. My heart was starting to harden -- do we conservatives not have hearts, do we not bleed? -- and I didn't want that to happen.
I joked at first about some of it. When a reader sent me my column covered with dried feces, I looked on the bright side. He could have said he wouldn't .... on my column. I took comfort in the fact law officers visited the Iraq War foe (a peace advocate!) and the liberal critic (a Portland public school teacher!) who threatened my family. But the constant expletive-laced rants, the nifty Nazi-Hitler-German references, the holier-than-thou hate for any opposing view from the half-informed -- well, it's not what our public discourse should be about. It wasn't in a better age. If I sometimes responded in kind (and I did), forgive me.
What accounts for this rage? Maybe it's that so many feel the White House was stolen from them eight years ago. Maybe they just feel entitled to rule. (Dude, where's my country?) Maybe it's the Iraq War. Or George Bush, though many lefties have worked themselves into the same derangement syndrome over Palin. Maybe the cause is deeper. I don't know. I only know it's not a good thing for civil society.
Obama's not my candidate -- McCain is -- but, if he's elected on Nov. 4, Obama will be my president and I'll be happy to cheer two things. One, the fact that the United States has, at long last, elected an African-American president. Two, the possibility that Obama's election might deliver us from this nastiness. I think it's called the audacity of hope.
Liberals ARE NOT TOLERANT except to themselves and their pet victim groups.
It would be as if we bragged about how tolerant we were - and to prove it we said we were "tolerant" of gun owners, conservatives, right to lifers, small government groups etc.
HAVE YOU EVER MET A LIBERAL WHO WAS TOLERANT OF ANY GROUP THAT WASN'T 'DEMOCRAT"?
NEVER.
We lost the voice of a good man... I understand. When I look at our natural freeper leaders over the years and realize how many have died of highly aggressive cancers, I get scared some times too.
Baghdad Bob had an excuse - there was a boot on his neck. What's MSM's excuse?
Ironically, it is this kind of statism that people on this very forum cheered when it was pushed by Bush & Company as part of the "war on terror". We are close to seeing that same statism in the hands of our own mortal enemies if Obama steals this election.
Those that give up freedom for security will soon have neither. And deserve neither.
Sounds as though for some odd reason the liberals you’ve interacted with have been gentlemanly, or something else.
Talk shop only? never discussed “divisive” topics? Or maybe you’re a “fiscal conservative but socially liberal” kind of guy?
Dunno.
Government schools.
You're right on this.
Liberals ARE NOT TOLERANT
You're dead on the mark. And the more concentrated an area is of liberals the less tolerant and more radical they are.
Maybe it’s the nature of what I have done in my life throwing my in with a lot of diverse people. Maybe it’s the lawyer mentality of being able to argue a position with which you personally don’t agree. I dunno. Maybe my perception is unique because of that. *shrug* Maybe it’s being older and being from the South where things were slower. And as a former attorney/judge god knows I and my friends don’t shy from controversial subjects. But, I have just found that when people are taken out or a “group think” mentality we really aren’t all that different.
They don't have to represent one side. They don't have to be narrow minded bigots.
They could treat the news process fairly.
TheMSM chose voluntarily to do what Baghdad Bob was forced to do.
They chose to give up the dignity of covering the news - no matter who it helped or who it hurt - and became "company men".
"Yes men" to the dems.
Butt boys.
Baghdad Bob.
yep
and those WPA Socialist 30s looking artwork posters and stickers
with hope and change and whatnot
they don’t even try to hide their aims
They don't have to represent one side. They don't have to be narrow minded bigots.
They could treat the news process fairly.
TheMSM chose voluntarily to do what Baghdad Bob was forced to do.
They chose to give up the dignity of covering the news. The dignity that comes when news is covered no matter who it helped or who it hurts.
The MSM became "company men".
"Yes men" (to the dems).
Butt boys.
Baghdad Bob.
I agree. One can hope that the Heller decision stops Kalifornia from proceeding down the slippery slope to civilian disarmament. But nobody should doubt that that is the goal of the liberals here and that an Obama Supreme Court can put this issue on the fast track.
What a shame that David Reinhard has been hounded out of publishing because of the left wing nut-roots in Portland.
The Oregonian and the entire region it serves is diminished by this and the people who are responsible for the kind of reprehensible treatment that has been leveled against this man and his family ought to be ashamed, but I know they are rejoicing instead.
Hell no. I intend to treat “the one” with the same repsect the left has treated Bush. That is I’ll be putting “Barack jacked the election” stickers on my car. I will rant endlessly about the state of the economy, the ongoing war, the loss of rights, inflation, etc.
I couldn’t agree more, BC.
We have seen this hatred and violence for more than twenty years from the leftist environmental community. Portland http://portland.indymedia.org/ and San Francisco http://www.ruckus.org/ are among the worst. Once they have inroads into the Democrat party and gain power, they do everything to “rule” conservatives by destroying traditional economies with regulation and forcing their ideology on conservative areas. Welcome to the world of the rural west.
I guess I am a fool to believe that United We Stand. So be it.
I looked for evidence of your "rational attitude" in your posts, but what I found instead can better be described as "wishful thinking".
Follow the evidence where it leads, rather than dismissing it out of hand as the irrelevant actions of a loud and delusional yet essentially powerless 'fringe'.
On a purely rational level, haven't you seen overwhelming and undeniable evidence that this election is not 'just like any other election'? For example, is there any possible reasonable doubt that media bias this time around is unprecedented in modern history in its blatant and pervasive tilt in favor of Obama, with the clear goal of hiding the truth about Obama rather than discovering and revealing the truth about Obama, at least long enough to install him in office, after which the discovery and publicization of any and all heretofore-damaging revelations will be moot?
Isn't the evidence undeniable that massive, coordinated, and unprecedented violation of election laws is going on to ensure an Obama 'win', whether it be the money laundering and outright fraud that the Obama campaign has engaged in to accept cash while disguising its foreign and criminal sources, or the organized effort to subvert the voter registration process, or the chilling handiwork of all those "public servants" misusing their offices through threats and coercion and outright contempt for the law in order to ensure one and only one permissible outcome?
These are not illusions, nor are they the work of a fringe. The fringe has neither the power nor the money to effect these things on this scale. Clearly something else is going on.
You don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to state the evidence and then inexorably conclude that such things are being deliberately orchestrated by an unholy alliance between Democrat party leaders and the institutional Left that has been building its power and influence for decades for precisely this purpose, in concert with other (foreign and domestic) enemies of the Nation as a whole, propelled by purposeful subversion, wholesale intimidation, and mind-boggling supplies of dirty money to grease the skids. Such corrpution may have been in evidence in the past in some big cities or even in some statehouses, but never has it been seen on the nationwide scale and with the chilling effectiveness that is evident this time around. Can you point to any other national election that has seen anything close to what has gone on this time around? I didn't think so...
How can any analysis be described as 'rational' when it studiously avoids dealing with the evidence that is in plain sight, and instead relies on calm assurances that it's only an impotent fringe that is dealing in such calumny?
Liberals just love to hate. It’s what they do. They’re moral relativists and can justify anything they want to do.
Scratch a Liberal, find a Fascist.
So in actual fact the sword IS mightier than the pen.
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