The Immaturity Of Conservatism
You know, the one big thing that I fault John Kerry for was that he wanted to take the high road. It is so unfortunate, but it is true that it is no longer possible for a candidate (in American politics) to take the high road. The conservatives are so immature in this day in age that it has become totally impossible to have a rational discussion anymore. Proof? Well, just look to the campaign season last year. Look at the flyer that they sent out to voters "Liberals are going to ban the bible. *picture of gay men kissing*. Ridiculous. In that kind of climate, how is it at possible to even have a discussion at all? They've already defined the rules - and that's what the Democrats must be committed to rail against. They cannot allow the GOP to set the agenda - their agenda of war, imperialism, bigotry and hatred. Besides, look at what other inappropriate comments they've set out. "If we don't make the right choice, then we have a danger of being hit." -- Dick Cheney, August 12th, 2004. So then we've got the *Vice President* of the United States publicly saying that the Democratic party is incapable of protecting the nation. Quite the contrary - it is the Republican party that is promoting and practicing an agenda that is only setting us backwards in the war on terror.
Well, to see this - look at their immaturity again: on the world stage. The world is simply fed up with this conservative, narrow-minded, and most of all, militant imperialism agenda of ours. Conservatives, in their ignorant stupor, of course cannot at all see this - but it wouldn't matter if they did, because they wouldn't care. There's another big thing about conservatism in America that I don't like - the fact that neocons and paleocons alike do not seem to care about the plight of others when they simultaneously pledge that they do. Example? Oh, all you have to do is turn on your TV every day to hear the words "compassion, freedom, and democracy" coming from the Idiot-in-Chief. But in the grand scope of things, those words have absolutely no meaning behind them. In other words, you don't achieve democracy by killing 150,000 Iraqis and needlessly sacrificing at least 1550 American lives. There is absolutely no consistency within the conservatives' ideology, and the fact that is so *obvious* is offensive. Plus, add the fact that this right-wing corporate media does not report these inconsistencies at *all*, then you can get me going.
Since the Republicans are so damn irresponsible - and can never admit *any* wrongdoing - they have to demonize someone else. And this is the one tactic that bothers me the most. The fact that the neoconservatives *always* have to change the topic to "those liberals" when they know, deep down, that they are the ones truly at fault! Well, let's just take a few examples. We have Bill O'Reilly, famously now a right-wing pundit, demonizing Michael Moore as an "anti-American, anti-democratic" person, but this is all untrue (proof of this will be found in another post). We've got Sean Hannity or some other rightist preacher going on TV and asking THE most BIASED questions so that the interviewee is manipulated into answering such that the conservative side benefits. Remember the whole Terri Schiavo case? I remember seeing him ask Schiavo's sister about a "possibly to a very likely recovery". I also recall that whenever Sean Hannity is confronted with an issue about his own party, he can never answer it - don't look to me, look to his show. He immediately jumps to the liberals who are the "anti-Americans" or who are "ruining the country." But it is he who has no facts to back up his rhetoric; instead, he is an immature conservative who can't even answer for himself.
The other tactic they use is repetition. Repetition, repetition, repetition. 2004 proved that even with the country in a not-so-good state, with the country's populace paralyzed in fear of another terrorist attack, a flawed candidate (like George W. Bush) could still win - and win big. Of course, the way this is accomplished is via the right-wing media + all the corporate connections to the GOP. And add in the fear. To understand the election of 2004, you must talk about fear. It really was the central component in this election, and it provided George W. Bush with the opportunity to capitalize on it. Wrongfully. Shamefully. Now, yes, I personally do fault John Kerry for not responding to this, but the shame rests with the President. The shame should rest with him! Because it is asinine - it is wrong, morally and ethically - to first put a nation into a state of fear and shock, thus crazily twisting the national conscience into a state of dissaray, and then to capitalize on it. THAT is the extent to which the conservatives will go to win. They put this nation into a state of shock and fear in the aftermath of 9/11 by convincing everyone that *no* one was truly safe, and then they capitalized on it by painting the opposition political party to be "weak" and "inept" to defend the country. Absolutely ridiculous, 'cause they didn't even give people the opportunity to examine the truth behind the issues - they knew it would hurt their current power hold on the entire government.
And this is all proof of how conservatives take the low road, their immaturity, etc. I didn't even mention how they love to throw it in people's faces. My main point here is that their immaturity is manifested in their militant attitude - towards non-Americans *and* Americans alike. The person that puts 5 "Support Our Troops" ribbons on their cars, and the person that is the head of your local church, the person that is a "family man", the "community leader", is in reality an arrogant person who is hostile to anyone outside his/her narrow agenda. I *hate* it when I can't discuss things with conservatives because of their arrogance and immaturity, but I've learned to deal with it, over the years.
However, the time for that is over, to stop *trying* to consider their agenda. It is time for us to start setting our own.
Well, to see this - look at their immaturity again: on the world stage. The world is simply fed up with this conservative, narrow-minded, and most of all, militant imperialism agenda of ours. Conservatives, in their ignorant stupor, of course cannot at all see this - but it wouldn't matter if they did, because they wouldn't care. There's another big thing about conservatism in America that I don't like - the fact that neocons and paleocons alike do not seem to care about the plight of others when they simultaneously pledge that they do. Example? Oh, all you have to do is turn on your TV every day to hear the words "compassion, freedom, and democracy" coming from the Idiot-in-Chief. But in the grand scope of things, those words have absolutely no meaning behind them. In other words, you don't achieve democracy by killing 150,000 Iraqis and needlessly sacrificing at least 1550 American lives. There is absolutely no consistency within the conservatives' ideology, and the fact that is so *obvious* is offensive. Plus, add the fact that this right-wing corporate media does not report these inconsistencies at *all*, then you can get me going.
Since the Republicans are so damn irresponsible - and can never admit *any* wrongdoing - they have to demonize someone else. And this is the one tactic that bothers me the most. The fact that the neoconservatives *always* have to change the topic to "those liberals" when they know, deep down, that they are the ones truly at fault! Well, let's just take a few examples. We have Bill O'Reilly, famously now a right-wing pundit, demonizing Michael Moore as an "anti-American, anti-democratic" person, but this is all untrue (proof of this will be found in another post). We've got Sean Hannity or some other rightist preacher going on TV and asking THE most BIASED questions so that the interviewee is manipulated into answering such that the conservative side benefits. Remember the whole Terri Schiavo case? I remember seeing him ask Schiavo's sister about a "possibly to a very likely recovery". I also recall that whenever Sean Hannity is confronted with an issue about his own party, he can never answer it - don't look to me, look to his show. He immediately jumps to the liberals who are the "anti-Americans" or who are "ruining the country." But it is he who has no facts to back up his rhetoric; instead, he is an immature conservative who can't even answer for himself.
The other tactic they use is repetition. Repetition, repetition, repetition. 2004 proved that even with the country in a not-so-good state, with the country's populace paralyzed in fear of another terrorist attack, a flawed candidate (like George W. Bush) could still win - and win big. Of course, the way this is accomplished is via the right-wing media + all the corporate connections to the GOP. And add in the fear. To understand the election of 2004, you must talk about fear. It really was the central component in this election, and it provided George W. Bush with the opportunity to capitalize on it. Wrongfully. Shamefully. Now, yes, I personally do fault John Kerry for not responding to this, but the shame rests with the President. The shame should rest with him! Because it is asinine - it is wrong, morally and ethically - to first put a nation into a state of fear and shock, thus crazily twisting the national conscience into a state of dissaray, and then to capitalize on it. THAT is the extent to which the conservatives will go to win. They put this nation into a state of shock and fear in the aftermath of 9/11 by convincing everyone that *no* one was truly safe, and then they capitalized on it by painting the opposition political party to be "weak" and "inept" to defend the country. Absolutely ridiculous, 'cause they didn't even give people the opportunity to examine the truth behind the issues - they knew it would hurt their current power hold on the entire government.
And this is all proof of how conservatives take the low road, their immaturity, etc. I didn't even mention how they love to throw it in people's faces. My main point here is that their immaturity is manifested in their militant attitude - towards non-Americans *and* Americans alike. The person that puts 5 "Support Our Troops" ribbons on their cars, and the person that is the head of your local church, the person that is a "family man", the "community leader", is in reality an arrogant person who is hostile to anyone outside his/her narrow agenda. I *hate* it when I can't discuss things with conservatives because of their arrogance and immaturity, but I've learned to deal with it, over the years.
However, the time for that is over, to stop *trying* to consider their agenda. It is time for us to start setting our own.
posted by Terramax721 at 11:12 PM
2 Comments:
This is a terrific post and not one I plan to completely tear apart, as I've been wont to do in the past. ;-) PLEASE RESPOND TO THIS COMMENT.
"Quite the contrary - it is the Republican party that is promoting and practicing an agenda that is only setting us backwards in the war on terror."
The War on Terror is a fiction in the first place—it's nothing but the manipulation of the populace and the government (i.e., Congress) into thinking that terrorist threats (which *could* have been prevented if Bush had bothered to look at the "Al-Qaeda Determined to Strike Within the United States" memo and met with the Clinton administration about a possible terrorist attack) are so omnipresent and dangerous that they must be averted at whatever cost, including invading, destroying, and painfully ruining the lives of thousands of citizens of a country thousands of kilometers away from the ones that actually sponsored any anti-American terrorism. The U.S. should be focusing on defending its airspace if it really wants to ward off future 9/11's, and I'm not talking about an asinine Reaganesque Star Wars program that would only serve to brutally kill the thousands upon thousands of Americans in extreme poverty and intellectually destructive environments, who don't need the federal government wasting whatever tax money they manage to pay on a massive military scheme that they'll never get any return on. I'm talking about techniques that I admit I haven't researched in detail that would be aimed at safely bringing down a hijacked plane without damage to the civilians on board. However, military defense is only a short-term solution to an enormous problem: the U.S. foreign policy has been an uninterrupted string of support for whatever murderous dictators are willing to go along with plans for strategic economic domination for the oil-rich upper class, whether it's Uzbekistan against Afghanistan (*massive oil-pipeline-building opportunity!*) or Saudi Arabia against Iraq (*petrolapalooza ... kaching!*). [Side rant: The Bush administration's rationale for invading Iraq has completely mutated ... from avenging 9/11 to ousting a dangerous dictator (I'd turn my eye to Saudi Arabia first, you know, the country the has fewer legal political parties than North Korea--UHP! Nope! They keep Bush's and Cheney's pockets full of oil in exchange for government secrets, so they get let off the hook!) to spreading liberty and democracy. For the U.S. to think that, especially with its track record from the Korean War onwards, it has the duty or the right to spread its (painfully primitive, but that's another rant) version of democracy to other countries is shameful, especially when millions of its own citizens don't have a roof over their heads. Considering the facts in the last two or so sentences, it's amazing that any American at all honestly believes the pathetic excuses for the invasion the administration regularly coughs up. I mean, the fact that the country whose tinpot dictator needed to be ousted just happened to be full of oil is already so much of a coincidence that it's PROOF enough for me of an economic agenda; the million is never enough for corporate plutocrats, nor is the two million--they need more, more, more, more, MORE, whether it comes out of the pockets of the exploited blue-collar workers and machine operators or whether it's paid for by the blood of children whose parents were orphaned because, trying to defend themselves from brutal strafing, they resisted the invasion. To read the REAL rationales for the crimes Bush has committed in Iraq, refer to the Ago list.] But getting back to the foreign-policy problem, if the U.S. would extend a friendly hand to the Arab bloc and lift all measures harming and exploiting their people, jihad recruitment would fall because Bush would no longer seem like such a Satan to the OBL disciples who are considering taking flying lessons. The payoff would be enormous, but it would require neocons to swallow their pride and open up their pocketbooks, and THAT we know they will never do.
--Logôn Anax
P.S. Again, please respond!
Sorry I was late in responding.
"The War on Terror is a fiction in the first place—it's nothing but the manipulation of the populace and the government (i.e., Congress) into thinking that terrorist threats (which *could* have been prevented if Bush had bothered to look at the "Al-Qaeda Determined to Strike Within the United States" memo and met with the Clinton administration about a possible terrorist attack) are so omnipresent and dangerous blah blah blah blah..."
YES I KNOW O_O Exactly correct. In every aspect. So so true. (and such a nice virgo precise analysis! *virgohi5!*
^^ I was gonna say that too for everything, the YES I KNOW O_O because all of your comment is ridiculously CORRECT. Everything from the US promoting the corpocratic dictators to the demise of the proletariat, its all true.
Talk about a right-wing conspiracy, eh?
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