False Equvilancies abound!
I've been thinking about the shooting in Arizona a bit. From what I saw, the shooter gave the left little real ammo to use, although that didn't stop a lot of people. If anything, I actually agreed with James Carville who said "this isn't an issue about talk show hosts, it should be about gun control" more or less. Naturally the NRA has been
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You used a caricature based in ignorance and prejudice to justify your own righteous posturing. You didn't even pause, pass Go or take a breather. It's such a default-reaction that you probably didn't pause to consider what you were saying.
You ARE the very epitomy of what you claim doesn't exist "on the left". I've never been to a LJ where by implicit association I've been compared more times than to a racist, mysogonist, homophobe, than your livejournal. YOU are the one who's behavior typifies the double standard.
Remember your tirade on November 3rd? http://speaks.livejournal.com/118383.html
I couldn't stand in the same room with the amount of mysogyny, racism, religious intolerance and homophobia that the Republican Party attracts.
Since, for policy reasons, the Republican party attracted me in 2008 (to vote for divided government) and in 2010 (to check overreach), I'm all the sudden a mysognist, racist, religious intolerant. Nevermind I'm the only one I know of who has been married by a gay minister and was advocating marriage rights before it was "teh cool" with the cool kids.
When I pointed out the fact that 1/3rd of self-identified gays voted Republicans, you admitted that you considered "They are voting against their self interest and hurting themselves by voting GOP." and even said you'd offer (helpfully I'm sure) "I don't understand why you work to elect people who would brand you a criminal for your lifestyle."
Do you realize how arrogant and intolerant that comes across as sounding? They don't agree with your way of viewing the world, so obviously they're too stupid to realize why they're doing what they're doing. Good thing John's here to educate them.
As someone who opposed Bush for 8 years, and am pretty opposed to Obama and the Democrats as epitomized by the 111th Congress, and even more so am a confessed newswhore - I did not notice a significant differnece in the level of vitriol between the two terms. For every O'Rielly I could match you with an Olbermann, for Coulter a Berhardt, Mahrer, Whoopie Goldberg. For every Michelle Malkin an a Markos Moulitos. For every NY Times a WSJ, for every Washington Post a Washington Times. MSNBC v. Fox News. MoveOn vs. Brietbart.
In all my (very heated) arguments with Dorsai over the Iraq War and other policy difference, he's never once accused me of being a racist, homophobe or mysognist. (I'm not even sure he's accused me of being an idiot, though I'm sure he though it). He mustered that enlightenment principal of the dialectic, that through vigorous debate we can arrive at a better conclusion, rather than immediately jumping to the ad hominum.
Tim C.
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The same type of thing can be said of Democrats and abortion. The party is largely characterized as being supportive of Reproductive Rights, and tends to attract people who are. But that doesn't mean there aren't people who oppose it (such as the Blue Dogs).
IMHO, Tim, you're not in anyway the typical anything.
Also... I find it amusing that as a registered Democrat (since being old enough to vote), I recognize all of Republican names, but maybe half of one one the Left you mentioned.
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To carry that example in homophobia: why do we need to assign a personality condition (homophobe) as being "more attracted" to one party or another, despite all evidence to the contrary that homophobes seem to be well distributed amongst BOTH parties. Did Prop 8 in California pass in 2008 because of great Republican turnout? Analysis indicates it was actually an increase in the Democratic turnout, fueled by Obama's topline run for President, that led to a down-ballot success of Prop 8.
Why do we assume one party is more or less racist than the other? A common meme is that the Tea Party is racist, and yet in 2010 more blacks ran for the GOP than at any other time since Reconstruction; including two significant african-american wins in districts that weren't traditionally majority-minority. If the outcomes do not match our perceptions of the inputs, maybe it's time to realize our perceptions of the "inputs" may be based on personal prejudice or superstition.
Also... I find it amusing that as a registered Democrat (since being old enough to vote), I recognize all of Republican names, but maybe half of one one the Left you mentioned.
Perhaps because we tend to recognize more easily those who have an opposing context? And not to come across as insanely rude, but perhaps then the more appropriate path would be to spend some time *educating* ourselves before making broad insulting statements. Ask the people who obviously frequent this LJ who have differing viewpoints, ask them questions, engage in dialogue. It's not like the internet is hard to search these days?
When I want to learn about something I don't understand, I try and ask a lot of questions. Over the last 15 years I've been learning about Buhhdism from various folks I know who practice it. And I learn by asking questions. I don't tell them what Buhhdism is, although I may offer this is what I think, am I wrong, am I right where do I learn more? Asking questions is a far better path to understanding I've found than trading in stereotypes.
IMHO, Tim, you're not in anyway the typical anything.
All I would challenge, is that few people are. The "typical" is the caricature here, and the negative stereotyping of the "typical", based on personal ignorance, is the foundation of the prejudice, which when carried out in broad inclusive statements is the manifestation of prejudice. The targets of the prejudice vary, but the mental process that reaches that negative caricature is the same. That's what I fight against.
Again, it's the faux-intellectualism of the left. The belief that since they have it all "figgered out", there's no longer any need to critically examine their own superstitions or prejudices against empirical data.
And then there's the final point. That John (and the other pundits on both the right and left) has taken this whole exercise and dumped it on the back of the corpses in Tucson. Just so they can make another, in a long line, of political points. What exactly does then the victims of Tucson have anything to do with this? Except it gives a slightly larger soapbox (propped up by bodies) than normal on which to preach one's political agenda.
I've been through this before, when a family of four was killed by two thugs up in Seattle. The problem is that they had played in one of my LARP games, so here comes the punditry elite, and they propped their soapboxes up on the dead family, and used it to attack gaming. For about two weeks, until it was confirmed (pretty much like Laughner and politics) that gaming had nothing to do with it. But during that time all the air in the room that could've been paid to the victims was sucked out by the pundits. Same thing again with Laughner. And at the end of the day, Laughner will always be remembered, he'll be immortalized. But the victims won't. What will be remembered of the Tucson shooting will be Giffords, Laughner, and the debate over tone and rhetoric. And that's a shame.
Tim C.
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You are yourself falling into plenty of the same traps you're accusing Speaks of. ie Tea Party and Republican being completely interchangeable, distribution of beliefs within a given political party based on the outcome of one election but not any data (that you've linked, or shared) showing a link.
Faux-intellectualism. You're doing it too. You may not see it from your view all the way up on your high horse, but that was partly why I was replying in the first place. My comments weren't in any way an endorsement or otherwise of Speaks' position, but more a reaction to how uncharacteristically defensive your comments seemed.
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ie Tea Party and Republican being completely interchangeable, distribution of beliefs within a given political party based on the outcome of one election but not any data (that you've linked, or shared) showing a link.
The links were on the previous posts I provided earlier to give a counterpoint to what Speaks was saying. The common meme is that Tea Party is racist, so one would assume that blacks and other minorities would not run for them. The counterpoint I provided is that more blacks ran for the GOP (which the Tea Party ended up aligning too). We could also talk about Nikki Haley (Indian-American female in heavily conservative South Carolina) or other groups that aren't "supposed" to be Republican, but came on big and strong in 2010.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/05/05/More-blacks-run-for-Congress-on-GOP-ticket/UPI-85171273081967/
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Why-Are-More-Gay-People-Voting-Republican-5673/
And of course there's more complexity to GOP and Tea Party than soundbites. But once we throw out racist and homophobe, that's all we're doing is arguing soundbites. Look at this entire thread. John just can't understand why people get upset when all he can do is offer insults on them, but is incapable of discussing any further than providing the insult itself? There are a dozen ways he could've written this differently, he has some very introspective posts which is pretty much why I'm still linked to him. But when it comes to politics - his introspection appears to stop at whatever level of effort he put into wording the latest insult.
My comments weren't in any way an endorsement or otherwise of Speaks' position, but more a reaction to how uncharacteristically defensive your comments seemed.
How many times would you stand around someone making insults that directly affected people you respected or indirectly included you, even if they paused every time to look over and nod "I'm not trying to include you here, you're different" before you spoke up? How many times would you patiently provide contrary points, try to be the polite one, not try to drag insults in on the other side before your heat got up? Am I sensitive? Damn right I am. John's not the first, nor the last person to directly state, or imply, that my opposition to Democrats in 2010 was based on racist grounds (even though before Obama or McCain even came on the scene I was clear that when given the opporutnity I'll vote for divided governments).
Do I require everyone to troll politics blogs, of course not. But if someone's going to come at me (or others) for being racist on a political issue, yes, I am going to expect them to have done a basic level of political research on the issue. Or I'm going to call them out on it.
You could (although I think your time is probably better spent) go back on that November 3rd post, and see if at any point where John offers an apology, or clarification - says perhaps it was misunderstood? On this thread? Of the five or so people who have used the racist tag on me, only one had the common courtesy, when I brought up that I took offense at it, to offer some sort of clarification.
Tim C.
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And my suspicions given how you spoke up here and called me on it, would be "not to many times."
Tim C.
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You don't have a history of those kind of comments, so it stood out as strange and not right. Speaks, on the other hand, has a tendency to have the occasional big blowup rant, so this wasn't that new and often seems to just be venting and not a true testament of his feelings or opinions.
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