Comments on: The Politics of Resentment

By: Middento

Middento — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:16:24 +0000

She’s a “Heather”?

Hee, you’re right — but, my goodness, you just referenced a movie! *cheers* I’m so proud…

By: MarkH

MarkH — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 05:16:53 +0000

So I said to the girls in each case: “Go ahead, beat the crap out of me. I’ll go down, you can punch the hell out of me, break my face, scar me up good. I don’t care. I will not fight you. I don’t fear you. If you need to beat me up get it over with.”

As a nation we’re in a situation something like that. With Bush planning to destroy Fannie & Freddy there can be no doubt they’re threatening to destroy the economy to get us to back down and leave them in control. It’s a bully’s tactic.

We simply have to say that our sovereignty and Freedom is more important than the economy. It’s somewhat like that line from V for Vendetta where they decide Freedom is more important than a building. But, in our case we don’t need to use that kind of violence to make our point. We just need to continue the political fight where ever it takes us and never relent. We’ll achieve more than making the bullies go away.

By: MarkH

MarkH — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 05:02:21 +0000

McCain was brow beaten by this mob and he’ll forever cede his decisions to them.

From the Dem perspective it looks like Mondale picking Ferraro, but from the Repub historical perspective it looks more like Reagan allowing people around him to push him into picking Bush (whom he didn’t like). That fateful pick let the Bush mafia into the tent and we’re still paying for it today. All to satisfy Reagan’s ego.

Investigating Palin isn’t just to ‘get her’. It’s to know the Truth, so we can make a good decision. Seek the Truth and then let the chips fall where they may.

I supported John Edwards for president. Someone looked into his affairs and discovered something untoward. I’m disappointed that my hopes were dashed, but he’d already dropped out of the race so I wasn’t hurt terribly. But, mostly I’m pleased to know the Truth. In the future it might be easier to suss out candidates during the primary. I only wish, as Hillary Clinton said, these things could be discovered in a timely fashion.

That’s what we need with Palin — a timely discovery of the Truth.

Wouldn’t many people be really shaken up if they elected McCain and discovered something awful about Palin in the days afterward? Truth is important.

Off in another direction, since Palin appears, by my account, to be a neocon in the making, it makes me worry that if McCain wins he might be treated to a gunshot just the way Reagan was. Now, isn’t that something to worry about?

Truth now or forever bear the consequences.

By: Hmmm

Hmmm — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 23:12:07 +0000

A thought condensed in the sayings “Waterloo was won on the playing fields at Eton,” and “England was lost on the playing fields at Eton.”

By: Hmmm

Hmmm — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:57:10 +0000

Your antiviolence technique is brilliant. Bullies use violence only to create fear. By moving past your fear, you disarmed them. Bravo.

By: Hmmm

Hmmm — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:53:22 +0000

Thankyou thankyou, “brat” is exactly the right idea. Promote the notion “Sarah Palin is a brat.” That should have legs.

By: Hmmm

Hmmm — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:44:05 +0000

If you mean to launch a ‘rank-and-file vs. management’ paradigm, with the R’s clearly drawn as the management, then 1) that might work, and 2) that would be a lovely refresh of the traditional D brand, at a time when the R’s are running away from their own brand as fast as they can.

By: Hmmm

Hmmm — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:39:06 +0000

In elementary school, I got into exactly two fights. In the first one, in second grade, I got picked on by a bully and wound up winning the fight. According to my memory, the bully’s exact quote was “You chipped my tooth!” The next day I was called into the office of the Principal and thanked. In the second fight, in fifth grade, a classmate had been mercilessly bullying the one Asian in our whole school, a guy named Tuan, and I stood up for him so Jeff challenged me to fight after school. That one was a draw, actually I think we had to stop on account of a passing adult.

I’ve never ever had another physical fight in my life, and treasure that nonviolence, but man, I still hate bullies with a hot hating passion. Thank you, Principal Nick Barbieri, for the positive reinforcement.

By: KenMuldrew

KenMuldrew — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:12:09 +0000

In 2002, Karen Hughes famously remarked, “we don’t see there being any penalty from the voters for ignoring the mainstream press.” By taking that course the Republicans basically eliminated the ordinary citizen’s interaction with the Federal Government save for elections.

Now, with the tack of hermetically sealing off the VP candidate and distributing the message on their terms (and only on their terms!), the Republicans are going to see of there is any penalty for doing the same thing to elections.

Good for Biden for not taking this kind of crap without a fight. Because, really, if the US loses citizen involvement in elections as well, what’s left?

By: JThomason

JThomason — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 21:52:20 +0000

What a great post and comments. The observation was made several months ago highlighting the underlying social elitism of the Republican party. The story of the social counteracting of the methods of social dominance is the story of progressive political evolution. There is high irony in the fact that the cultural foundation of Constitutionalism, the political foundation of this “Country,” arose of a reaction to religious oppression through the methods of reason and science and Palin’s politics surely play to the baser instinct toward dominance discounting science, shaming human rights and mocking efforts to limit the power of an executive in a Constitutional system. Sound familiar? Not so really far from Bush after all is it? Do you suppose we can be tricked into thinking that it is?

Its all part and parcel of the movement toward a more and more coercive stratified society–not so far off from the adolescent social instinct now is it? Instructively the Economist reported earlier this Summer that 80% of Russian enlisted personnel had been abusively hazed by superiors in the Russian military. This kind of social organization is logical fruition of the politics of a mocking elitism. Note the the police action in New York and Minneapolis at Republican conventions the last two cycles. Consider this rhetorical proposition: would not the anti-Christ attempt to play this identity upon the other?

I have not had the luxury of being able to tolerate the cynical scapegoating of Republican politics, always pointing at the other, always projecting the shadow of their own weaknesses cast upon the other. How is McCain in fact a war hero, captured and beaten in a war where American forces fled a foreign country in a conflict maintained by an oligarchy? Where is his strategic brilliance? The surge in a war based on false pretexts? This glory is not the glory of an enlightened Constitutional society. We are only left with the politics of legitimizing our own irrational brutality. The best McCain can do is attempt to control perception ignoring facts unable to distinguish a Hollywood prep school from a military hospital. He is not who he would have you believe he is. I do not begrudge him his dignity but exacting personal triumph in the face of our underlying flawed natures as humans and our attempts at reasonable lives is a high price to pay.

Others of you understand the nuances of the issues better than I but the Republican trick bag is becoming tediously familiar. Or are we moving deeper into a cultural demonstration of a kind of Stockholm syndrome?