Don't Read This If You Don't Want To Go Absolutely Insane

From the Daily Kos blog regarding undecided voters in this past election. Gives you an insight into why we all might just be wasting our time here talking about the future of the country when in reality, its in the hands of absolute FUCKING IDIOTS:

Most undecided voters...seem to view politics the way I view laundry. While I understand that to be a functioning member of society I have to do my laundry, and I always eventually get it done, I'll never do it before every last piece of clean clothing is dirty, as I find the entire business to be a chore. A significant number of undecided voters, I think, view politics in exactly this way: as a chore, a duty, something that must be done but is altogether unpleasant, and therefore something best put off for as long as possible...

...Undecided voters, as everyone knows, have a deep skepticism about the ability of politicians to keep their promises and solve problems. So the staggering incompetence and irresponsibility of the Bush administration and the demonstrably poor state of world affairs seemed to serve not as indictments of Bush in particular, but rather of politicians in general. Kerry, by mere dint of being on the ballot, was somehow tainted by Bush's failures as badly as Bush was.

As a result, undecideds seemed oddly unwilling to hold the president accountable for his previous actions, focusing instead on the practical issue of who would have a better chance of success in the future. Because undecideds seemed uninterested in assessing responsibility for the past, Bush suffered no penalty for having made things so bad; and because undecideds were focused on, but cynical about, the future, the worse things appeared, the less inclined they were to believe that problems could be fixed--thereby nullifying the backbone of Kerry's case. Needless to say, I found this logic maddening...

www.dailykos.com

I think it's fate, karma, whatever you want to call it. I do not believe disaster (most likely economic and another terrorist attack thrown in) can be averted.

It's time for the U.S. to head straight down the sewer and we have just the sewermeister to head us there: george w. bush, idiot extraordinaire.

Unfortunately it appears we have a surplus of, as you say, "FUCKING IDIOTS" who cannot mentally abstract the implications of his policies. Therefore they will have to engage in a little "experiential learning," as we say in the education biz.


Cher

I thought we were already there!!!

Yes, when you do not condemn the criminality, you are cmplicit in it.
Kerry fought limply, and too late. The lumpen voters saw him as a 'librul politician' who was just gonna raise their taxes agin.

This is why not starting on the attack against a rove candidate is a fatal flaw in strategy. You gotta bury them right out of the gate.

Better the Devil You to the one you don't

In fact, those are the exact words spoken by one, after seeing the Kerry pins on my shirt. Both of these women have draft-age children. Both voted for Bush, even though I tried to explain to both of them Bush's economic and military mistakes, and the likely scenarios already beginning to play out now that Bush has been re sElected. But, "Better the Devil you know than the one you don't." :evilgrin: :evilfrown: :shrug:

I must admit that I did not know much, nor did I care to, about politics while I was in college. It should be a required course for all colleges. Then think about all the kids who don't finish high school and there might be your problem. I remember we had an exchange student from Finland stay with us while I was in high school and she was at least two years ahead of all of us in terms of knowledge. They STUDY over there. I do remember learning about mass human behavior and brain washing in Sociology - maybe that should be taught in high school also.



And while I have the space since I can't start threads yet, (how many DO you need?????), I posted several photos of the children in Iraq with their legs and arms blown off at "The Republican Forum" and they were taken down! The explanation was, "copyright laws" I personally think they are full of shit and just want to continue the denial and censorship of the realities of WAR. But if anyone feels inclined and has those photos, (there were posted here under "Warning graphic photos", (or I can put them up in this thread again), please go over to here:

http://community.compuserve.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?webtag=ws-republicans&nav=messages&msg=35619.93

AND POST THEM!


This was the message I got after I complained about them removing the photos.


You posted a link, but no copyright notice, and the amount used by you was not "fair use" and therefore failed to meet the forum rules.

If you feel copyrights are meaningless, contact a local attorney. Meanwhile, it is the position of AOL, CompuServe and this Forum that we shall endeavor to protect copyrights.

Dave Cunningham , SysOp.

Further communication should be sent to one of the Executive Sysops by email.

... unfortunately too few Americans actually care enough to take advantage of it.

In Jr. High (1980), we ran a mock election with campaign committees and the whole she-bang. The kids who were interested in learning something did. We researched issues, records and foreign policy situations in progress. We crafted speeches and campaign platforms, based on the real candidates'/parties' positions and even debated. At the end, we all voted. Still, through that, there were plenty of kids who learned absolutely nothing even though it was required; they simply didn't want to.

Just because it's required doesn't mean it will help; English is required yet the vast majority of Americans brutalize the language in verbal & written form.

In High School (1982), our school had a Model United Nations team. Any who were interested could participate, though few actually did. The school transported us to the UCLA law library at least 2 times a month, more often if a tournament was coming up. We would represent our nation in committee, draft resolutions and debate based on our countries' actual positions. Those of us who chose to take advantage of this opportunity learned more about history and geopolitics in a semester than most would learn in their entire K-12 schooling. The difference? We WANTED to learn.

The problem is not the Education, per se. It is the lack of importance too many parents place on LEARNING vs. grades. So long as Little Johnny isn't failing the basic curriculum, most parents are satisfied he's getting an education. The schools can only do so much when the parents don't lay the groundwork.

There is education available in every school for the kids who choose to work for it.

Read the whole article. It makes you want to kill yourself:

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=hayes111704

Members of the political class may disparage undecided voters, but we at least tend to impute to them a basic rationality. We're giving them too much credit. I met voters who told me they were voting for Bush, but who named their most important issue as the environment. One man told me he voted for Bush in 2000 because he thought that with Cheney, an oilman, on the ticket, the administration would finally be able to make us independent from foreign oil. A colleague spoke to a voter who had been a big Howard Dean fan, but had switched to supporting Bush after Dean lost the nomination. After half an hour in the man's house, she still couldn't make sense of his decision. Then there was the woman who called our office a few weeks before the election to tell us that though she had signed up to volunteer for Kerry she had now decided to back Bush. Why? Because the president supported stem cell research. The office became quiet as we all stopped what we were doing to listen to one of our fellow organizers try, nobly, to disabuse her of this notion. Despite having the facts on her side, the organizer didn't have much luck.

AND...

Undecided voters don't think in terms of issues. Perhaps the greatest myth about undecided voters is that they are undecided because of the "issues." That is, while they might favor Kerry on the economy, they favor Bush on terrorism; or while they are anti-gay marriage, they also support social welfare programs. Occasionally I did encounter undecided voters who were genuinely cross-pressured--a couple who was fiercely pro-life, antiwar, and pro-environment for example--but such cases were exceedingly rare. More often than not, when I asked undecided voters what issues they would pay attention to as they made up their minds I was met with a blank stare, as if I'd just asked them to name their favorite prime number.

The majority of undecided voters I spoke to couldn't name a single issue that was important to them. This was shocking to me. Think about it: The "issue" is the basic unit of political analysis for campaigns, candidates, journalists, and other members of the chattering classes. It's what makes up the subheadings on a candidate's website, it's what sober, serious people wish election outcomes hinged on, it's what every candidate pledges to run his campaign on, and it's what we always complain we don't see enough coverage of.

<snip>

As far as I could tell, the problem wasn't the word "issue"; it was a fundamental lack of understanding of what constituted the broad category of the "political." The undecideds I spoke to didn't seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief--not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.

:crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy:

Watching some of those Peter Hart focus groups on C-SPAN revealed a lot. The people were unable to articulate even a grain of reasoning. The more I find out the more I conclude that American lack the capacity for self-government. I'm afraid this is the most painful lesson from our recent electoral experience...

:crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy:

but I finally do.

I have about 5 family members that shocked me with similar pretzel logic. America has gone insane.

completely unable to articulate the reason that he voted for Bush, just kept throwing rhetoric around with no logical thought whatsoever.

Which brings me back to my belief that we lost the election (assuming we did, which I question) not because of 'moral' issues - or any principled issues - but because of our failure to communicate our platform coherently and repeatedly. Regardless of the fact that Bush's stock invective was inane and hollow, he and the media kept hammering it till everyone could repeat it in their sleep. Kerry's camp, in contrast, acted as if they were campaigning to thinking people rather than to a dazed electorate in need of spoonfeeding. And I don't mean to demean folks by this -- people are just too overstimulated and overworked to carefully consider both sides of the issues if they do not clearly see what is at stake.

This is one of the best articles I've seen on the topic, with a bit of a different twist based on the power of fear: "Our Lizard Brains" http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/20168/

message out. they had to push bush's stupid ways and make them sound coherent. Kerry was banging his head against a stone wall. One month before the election he should have been buying 1/2 hour slots just to get his ideas out there.the commercials were too ineffective unless your in a battleground state. The whole country should have viewed his ideas and his message and he relied on the media and they screwed him.

Clarity is the "nice" word for dumbed down.

When bush says he is clear, it means he has been told to issue a dumbed down message.

So by my logic, I would interpret your post as saying we have to make it simple for the simpletons.


Cher

deeper.

Discarding our brains or our hearts.

We have to appeal across the whole spectrum of Americans in sufficient numbers that we can gain and then take advantage of majority power.

Some populations are closed to use: fuckwads, fundies, most wumpers. Some populations are unreachable by us because they're, well, unreachable -- the term "moron-Americans" floated around this summer and then sank, but it's a useful concept when you're figuring out how to win elections.

But there's a vast number of people (well above 49%) who can be reached by a clearly and muscularly articulated message. Kerry, much as I love the guy, is wifty. If he had hammered away on core dem values (tolerance, prudence, partnership between people and government, multilateralism, large-heartedness) rather on "plans" to fix an Iraq disaster that no one really thinks can be fixed, he'd be headed to inauguration today.

Our ideas can sell because they're better ideas. We need to get them out to the people better. That's why the meme of "marketing" that's been running through the site of late is so intriguing.

I had people tell me their concerns and they would be things on Kerry's platform but somehow they thought Bush would fix it. Why, I would ask, when he hasn't done a single thing about it in the last four years but they couldn't answer me. It's all screwed up.

its completely insane.

"Bush is incompetent and a fuckup, I know. But I don't think Kerry could do any better. So I'm just (gonna vote for Bush)/(not vote). It's not like it would make a difference."

:wtf:

right or wrong, they are satisfied with what our form of government has given them and expect it will function without their own personal participation, so they don't care.

without any real data on his record or what he stood for. That's why it was essential for the GOP to get him on his Achille's heel--women. Adultery was the only thing that this constituency was able to grab on to and comprehend.

I hope I'm never accused of a crime, because some of these people may serve on the jury and be unable to follow the trial.