Car wrecks
Even though they make my blood boil, I keep reading right-wing weblogs. Which reminds me of the “Doctor, my arm hurts when I do *this*!” story. These sites are like a horrifying car wreck I can’t tear my eyes away from.
A sample from the inimitable Mrs. du Toit:
“We?re at war. Support the Commander in Chief. Punch a reporter from CNN, MSNBC, or any other alphabet soup traitorous prick in the nose, or as my husband would say, kick him in the balls, really hard. Kick a peace protestor, too, or spit on one. I don’t care which.”
Here’s one from a practically salivating Dean Esmay, the neocon’s neocon:
“Indeed, I’d say one or two more September 11 size attacks, or a suitcase nuke detonated within the U.S., might well prompt an immediate return to the draft, a likely clampdown on the 1st amendment, a mass ejection of Arabs from U.S. soil, and a nationwide roundup of Muslims, that would make the ACLU pine for the good old days of the Patriot Act–and would quite possibly result in millions of dead people in the Middle East.”
These people sicken me. But I know in my heart that these people are not America. Americans are smarter, fairer, and much less angry and xenophobic than these people.
What the Democratic presidential candidates (and anyone else who cares about this country) need to do is appeal to the best in us, not the worst. Because at our best, we’re pretty damn good.
which is why it’s so disturbing and disappointing to have Dean looking for the confederate flag on the pickup truck vote. The Democrats need to stop casting such an indiscriminate net. The two most pernicious kinds of conservatives are 1. the ones who get rich on the backs of others and want to keep it that way, and 2. the ones who are too stupid to know that they’re getting screwed because they they’re so blinded by their xenophobic, courtesy of the red white and blue satisfaction over the war on Iraq.
for dean to confuse the latter with potential Democratic voters should automatically disqualify him from presidential eligibility.
Did I miss something that Howard Dean said? What’s this about him going for the confederate flag on the pickup truck vote?
Mark: Yes, Dean said this on Saturday:
“I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks,” the former Vermont governor said in an interview published Saturday in the Des Moines Register. “We can’t beat George Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross-section of Democrats.”
This comment was unfortunate at best.
“But I know in my heart that these people are not America. Americans are smarter, fairer, and much less angry and xenophobic than these people.”
There’s a big difference between “know” and “hope”.
The more we link to them, the more people get to hear them. My strategy is to amplify the voices of sanity and boycott/ignore the ramblings of the insane. We lose if we are reactive. The way to gain allies is to stick to our message.
Message? Sticking to our message reeks of the same political cynicism that taints Karl Rove and the rest of BushCo. “Message” isn’t nearly as important as actually being good people and acting on those good values.
I think the value in exposing sites like Dean Esmay and Mrs. du Toit is that we can show, objectively, what high-level conservative thought is comprised of on the Web. These people aren’t “fringe elements”. They’re widely-read and widely considered to be moderate, thoughtful voices. We aren’t attacking them to try to bring them down or change their minds. We’re pointing them out to our allies, saying, “This is what they think. This is what they believe. And this is how we arm ourselves against such thoughtless, blindered, xenophobic, tribal poo-flinging.”
Where we falter is when we become mere reactionaries, providing the response to their call. That’s where I think we can do better.
re: Dean’s desire to appeal to guys with the conferderate flag on their trucks:
Eww. Then again, since Confederate symphatisers are used to protesting Wars of Northern Agression anyway, they might just be sympathetic to Dean’s message after all.