All Posts Tagged With: "divided"

Based on his posts on his own blog and comments on various other blogs about the Obama-Limbaugh “feud,” Red Stater condemns Obama’s attack on a “private citizen” (who is a quite public figure by all other standards) for saying, “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.” At the same time, he sees nothing wrong with Limbaugh’s rhetoric.

Here’s an example of the “insanity” that Oklahoma Lefty was referring to. On his radio show, Rush Limbaugh decided to take a cheap shot at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…

“If  she wants fewer births, I have the way to do this and it won’t require any contraception: You simply put pictures of Nancy Pelosi … in every cheap motel room. … That will keep birthrates down because that picture will keep a lot of things down”

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Is this civil discourse? Does Obama’s comment really compare to Limbaugh’s very personal, juvenile attacks? Imagine for a moment if the same thing had been said about Sarah Palin.

That’s the insanity that must stop.

Dave, a.k.a. Oklahoma Lefty, laments the “vicious cycle” of polarizing and demonizing in our nation’s political discourse. He was reacting to a Red Stater post about Rush Limbaugh responding to an Obama “attack” against the right-wing crusader, in which Limbaugh declared, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

Says Dave:

Now I know that Rush Limbaugh did not create this concept, it has been alive and well throughout our history, but the fact that he made it a rule for his own discourse is disturbing and frankly disgusting. Limbaugh holds lots of sway with millions of Americans and the fact that he has chosen the low road, deciding to follow a very un-Christ-like way of behaving, shows his partisan hypocrisy and shortsightedness. Instead of being the better man and standing above the fray of those who just throw insults, he has decided to lead the fray.

To those who find this type of behavior disturbing and disgusting, the way to beat it is not by joining it. Every time a liberal reacts to this type of attack discourse, they are only making the problem worse. Those who make their living off the fray, like Limbaugh, just use it as example claiming that they are the righteous and the liberals are the evil ones (and thus the liberals with the same type of mindset respond by calling Limbaugh and company evil and on and on and on). We must stop the insanity!!!

I am not saying that we shouldn’t disagree, debate, and/or have dialogues. Our country is built on the concept of debate drive compromise and that is a good and healthy thing that we must never lose. What we do need to lose though is this ridiculous way of behaving. Our civil discourse looks more like a bunch of kindergarteners fighting on the playground over the tire-swing than the workings of the greatest country in the world. Grow up people. We are better than this.

I agree, except for his very last sentence. I’m not convinced that our nation or our politics “are better than this.” There’s certainly not much evidence in recent history that would support this specific notion. We certainly should be better than this.

That point aside, Dave is spot on.

Whether it’s the illiterate, irrational ramblings of local bloggers or the perfidious, phantasmic rantings of national commentators, the far right has declared all out jihad against the new president, pulling out all the stops — like truth, reality, facts, evidence, logic, reason, rationality — and spreading fear, distortions, misrepresentations and all out lies. I may address some of the local blogger silliness another time, but here’s an example of some of the ridiculous commentary on the national stage.

Marc Thiessen, former chief speechwriter for former President Bush, has been stirring the pot in the last couple of days. Yesterday, I posted about his “twisted op-ed” in Thursday’s Washington Post in which he proffered a very distorted view of the Bush legacy. In a post at National Review Online yesterday, Thiessen ratchets up the rhetoric to unabashed fear-mongering and hysterics:

The CIA program he is effectively shutting down is the reason why America has not been attacked again after 9/11. He has removed the tool that is singularly responsible for stopping al-Qaeda from flying planes into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, Heathrow Airport, and London’s Canary Warf, and blowing up apartment buildings in Chicago, among other plots. It’s not even the end of inauguration week, and Obama is already proving to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office.

Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent responds:

Obama is already “the most dangerous” President ever?

Here’s the thing about this. You have here an assertion that crosses over from mere opinion into verifiable or disprovable assertion. If you’re going to say that someone has already proven himself to be dangerous, as opposed to merely being potentially dangerous, you need to point to empirical evidence of this, such as lives lost to foreign threats on your watch. There haven’t been any such lives lost under President Obama yet, unlike other past Presidents.

This type of hysteria is not only foolish, it’s absurd. From Rush Limbaugh to countless, unflinchingly-loyal-no-matter-how-often-proven-wrong, diehard right-wing bloggers, there is a cacophonous chorus of toxic rhetoric desperately wishing and unabashedly rooting for this new president to fail. It astounds me. I’m not sure why exactly; I’m not sure why I expect more from this crowd.

No matter how strongly I disagreed with President Bush’s policies and actions, I never wanted him to fail as president. I would fight his agenda, but I never rooted for him to fail. Why would I? His failures negatively impacted me and my country. It’s like despising my boss so much that I rooted for him/her to fail, even though his/her failure could very well negatively impact me and my job!

It’s this type of irrational fear-mongering and hateful rhetoric that makes me worry more for this country than anything George Bush has done or Barack Obama may do. The cancer of “us vs. them” selfishness and refusal to find common ground is dividing this country in ever more irreparable ways. We are doing more harm to our own country than any terrorist could ever do. “United we stand, divided we fall.” We are a nation divided. If we do not find a way to come together, we will fall.

Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times, wrote an article earlier this week about world government, which was picked up by the Drudge Report. He woke up the next morning to find more than 200 “vituperative” emails in his inbox by Drudge readers who unleashed on the apparently unsuspecting writer.

… the whole experience has given me an insight into the mindset of the gun-toting, bible-[thumping], nationalistic bit of the United States. Here are my conclusions.

1) There is an unbelievable amount of anger and hatred out there - directed at everything from the UN to big business to Barack Obama. These people can read, but they cannot think.

2) The “End of Days” crowd is very strong. I would say that about a third of the e-mails I got referred me to the Book of Revelations - in which, apparently, it is all foretold. In an idle moment, I e-mailed one of my correspondents back and said that I have never read Revelations, since I am an athiest. Big mistake.

3) There are a lot of people who believe not only that global warming is a hoax - but that it is actually a conspiracy. The fact that the most influential reports on climate change have been produced by an intergovernmental panel (IPCC) - sponsored by the UN - fuels this theory. The idea is that the UN is perpetuating a climate-change hoax, to provide an excuse to impose a world government on America. I’m all part of it apparently.

4) I can see what Obama means by referring to “bitter” people clinging to guns and religion. And clinging is the word. Several people informed me that I would only remove their guns “from my cold, dead hands.”

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And the comments on his blog post simply go to prove his point.

As much as it might be fun to have the exposure that Drudge brings, I’m actually glad I’ve never been “Drudged.” I’ve read the comment sections of some blog posts and articles that have been featured on the Drudge Report. It simply boggles the mind at the staggering animus and empty-headed, lowbrow invective displayed.

At least the “bitter” comments are more manageable here because I have a much smaller audience, which proportionally adds up to far fewer idiots to ignore.

It’s not the opposing viewpoint that is objectionable but the way in which it’s conveyed in such intensely vile, yet stunningly illiterate ways. It certainly was on full display for all to see during this most recent presidential campaign. “Bitter” has morphed into seething hatred that is insidious, poisonness and contagious. It’s a dangerous place for anyone to find themselves in the middle of — whether as the person infected or the person affected by this growing cancer.

United we stand, divided we fall. There is room for honest and even passionate disagreement and dissent in a healthy democracy. But bitter partisanship that prejudically despises and condemns ideological “enemies” — perceived or otherwise — creates an increasingly unbridgeable chasm that can destroy a society and a nation. Unless we learn to lay aside the prejudices and animosity toward our partisan foes, the enemy that will destroy our nation is not from outside, but within; we are our own worst enemy.

I sincerely hope that in this period of economic crisis and continuing political strife around the world that we as a nation can once again come together and work together to address and hopefully solve this nation’s challenges. United we stand, divided we fall.