US Political Madness Explained

I ran across the following article just before bed last night and it really got me thinking. Pardon my two cents first.

Our nation is currently experiencing a division greater than any I have seen in my brief 38 years of life. It is left vs right and right vs left at every turn. ATS is certainly no exception. In fact, it was my free expression of disagreement with Obama's policies that resulted in someone calling me a racist for the first time in my life right here int ATS Land.

After 8 long years of the Bush administration the nation wanted change. Eight years of dissenters calling Bush every name in the book. Dissenters called for and are still calling for his death. Books were written about his demise. Michael Moore's 9/11 creation let it all fly etc etc. ATS was full of all of it back then.

Now we have Obama and a mind numbing double standard coming full bore from the very same groups that wanted Bush DEAD. The new boss is continuing with the old bosses initiatives with one hand and is advancing his own radical and progressive agenda with the other.

Are war, back room deals, handouts and ridiculous spending only bad things at the hands of a Republican??

Now, the article by Victor Davis Hanson:

Why are charges of racism and political extremism suddenly in the air?

Party politics is always the norm, but what is unusual this time around is the juxtaposition between the once-soaring Obama unity rhetoric of the past and the hardball Chicago politics of the present, amid a landscape of feigned outrage that somehow politics are not "fair." A bit of history is in order.

Like it or not, throughout much of the Bush administration, the public was conditioned to believe the following:

• Filibusters were a key traditional Senate protection designed to thwart the tyranny of the majority as embodied by the Bush-Cheney steamroller (Republicans, to be fair, often damned them as obstructionist).

• Recess appointments were the desperate acts of an executive without confidence in either popular or legislative support. Popular protests were grass-roots democracy at its finest.

• Occasional fringe groups that frequented anti-war, anti-Bush rallies, and called their president horrific epithets or threatened violence, were either irrelevant or forced into such understandable extremism by their own government's excesses.

• The once-abhorrent expression of hatred in popular culture for the president (cf. e.g., Knopf's Nicholson Baker novel Checkpoint, about killing Bush, or the Toronto Film Festival award winning a docudrama about assassinating George Bush, or Jonathan Chait's New Republic essay "The Case for Bush Hatred," or Michael Moore's abhorrent talk after 9/11 about blue/red state deaths and his empathy for terrorists in Iraq ("Minutemen" . . . "and they will win")) were not merely not abhorrent, but often creative expressions that captured the mood of popular dislike, and certainly no grounds for ostracism (cf. Moore's attendance at film openings and conventions with top Democratic politicians).

In other words, apparently few on the Left realized that in their dislike for Bush, and in their tolerance for those who hated Bush, they more or less changed attitudes toward acceptable and unacceptable public expressions of dissent. So now the public sees their sudden call for polite discourse as abject hypocrisy. Even the toxic and increasingly desperate charge of racism has little currency now, and soon will boomerang back on the accusers.

What does all this mean? A largely center-right country that polls consistently conservative apparently is beginning to think it was had in the election of 2008. A weak McCain campaign, weariness after eight years of Bush, fascination with a charismatic African-American landmark candidate, fright after the September 2008 meltdown, and Obama's centrist "purple" rhetoric all provided the margin of victory, but apparently not the margin for an intended remake of America in which the daily conditions under which we live and see the world (buying a Chevy, going to the mailbox on Saturday, attending the doctor, viewing Israel, making claims on Medicare, paying taxes, trying terrorists, etc.) would be radically altered in just a year.

For the once-giddy Left, which misinterpreted the causes of the Obama landmark victory, the current pushback is seen as somehow terribly unfair, and thus arise both their own furor and their amnesia about their own past attitudes during the Bush years. I think ultimately many "progressives," adherents to relativism, feel that the past furor over Bush in all its creepy manifestations was justified because of who Bush was; but that a similar methodology (or, in fact, far softer manifestations) of dissent toward Obama is unacceptable because of who Obama is (i.e. one can act rudely toward clearly bad people, but not rudely toward unquestionably "good" people). It is that simple.

corner.nationalreview.com...

[edit on 1-4-2010 by jibeho]

[edit on 1-4-2010 by jibeho]

[edit on 1-4-2010 by jibeho]

[edit on 1-4-2010 by jibeho]

Originally posted by jibeho
In fact, it was my free expression of disagreement with Obama's policies that resulted in someone calling me a racist for the first time in my life right here int ATS Land.

This has proven to be an extremely effective tactic from the left since Obama's election. Although it's entirely intellectually dishonest, it serves as a method of dismissing and ignoring legitimate political discussion by discounting the opposition as unworthy of response. Quite sad and disgusting that such methods are being resorted to in modern America. The good thing is that once people employ this tactic you realize who is and isn't worthy of intelligent discussion.

reply to post by traditionaldrummer


I have quite a few Black friends and I am Latino, so I really don't pay any attention when the snivelling left calls me a racist. I see their mouths moving, but no sound seems to coming out. Well, no intelligent sound anyway.

Here's an even more perfect explanation from Frank Zappa:
"American politics is the entertainment wing of the military-industrial complex"

It's the WWF but with less colorful clothes.

And people still buy into this nonsensical left/right paradigm. Even here on ATS

Originally posted by traditionaldrummer

Originally posted by jibeho
In fact, it was my free expression of disagreement with Obama's policies that resulted in someone calling me a racist for the first time in my life right here int ATS Land.

This has proven to be an extremely effective tactic from the left since Obama's election. Although it's entirely intellectually dishonest, it serves as a method of dismissing and ignoring legitimate political discussion by discounting the opposition as unworthy of response. Quite sad and disgusting that such methods are being resorted to in modern America. The good thing is that once people employ this tactic you realize who is and isn't worthy of intelligent discussion.

I think you frame it wrong bud and not for the sake of blame or any of that

It is an extremely difficult task for the right because they have designed Obama's public persona as being a SOCIALIST MARXIST. I.E if this is the case and Obama is much like BUSH, would that not make Bush a Socialist Marxist? Yet the right DID NOT go on about Bush's insidious socialistic tendencies.

This is where the rights disconnect
occurs... If the right wants to regain political dominance it needs to refrain from
patriotic platitudes because they do not match up with policy of the great satan socialist. In fact Obama's actions seem to favor corporations, which is the very enemy of marxists. The rights red meat does not allow for a much stronger, all inclusive
platform of dissent to come to the fore because it is based upon false diagnosis of
the man and the plan.

you think about that -

Obama = Bush

Bush = Obama

Obama/Bush = Marxism???

Reframe and you shall steer America on the good course like it was on this last decade
until Obama came in... see?

[edit on 1-4-2010 by Janky Red]

[edit on 1-4-2010 by Janky Red]