Deprogramming Deminazis and Crafting the Crux

When Rush Limbaugh started in a local market in the mid-Eighties, young people who might have known better listened to him and said he was "funny." To this day, he pulls the "it's entertainment" handle when he needs to, when he gets cornered by truth.

Somewhere along the line, between Sacramento (same market that spawned Don Imus and John Gibson) and syndication, a legion of Dittoheads and Limbaugh himself began taking Rush seriously.

Generations have grown up post-Rush and post-"Feminazi." Somehow, lots of young people who might have known better don't realize how Rush's fabricated constructs have impacted and infiltrated their own worldviews.

Some of them are Democrats and Progressives and DUers. Let's help them toward a better understanding of history and reality regarding women/human rights issues.

How does someone end up with this sort of attitude regarding abortion?:

"Bingo! It's purely a wedge issue. Just like same-sex marriage
It affects very few people."

And where I would say that all the "legal and rare" rhetoric would be energy better directed to addressing economic injustice and preventing poverty, this poster continues:

"It's time to focus on what's important for America:
Healthcare, Education, Poverty, Deficit reduction"

...AS IF women's reproductive health rights are incidental and irrelevant.

IT "AFFECTS VERY FEW PEOPLE"? Clearly, this person grew up in a mall, in a post-Limbot world, after the Reaganesque destruction of our sense of ourselves as a NATION with a social contract. He needs help from wise and informed DUers who can provide some context and guidance.

THE WHOLE GAME OF REPUBLICAN WEDGE ISSUES IS ABOUT RIGID GENDER ROLES AND KEEPING THE STATUS QUO-- INCLUDING TURNING THE CLOCK BACK ON RECENT DECADES' SOCIAL PROGRESS.

Motivation of The Powers That Be for attacks on:

Gay Marriage: (keep status quo gender power roles intact and rigid)

Women's Rights: (keep status quo gender power roles intact and rigid)

Reproductive Privacy Rights: (keep status quo gender power roles intact and rigid)

All of the Above: divide and conquer-- disrupt and distract the opposition

:smoke:

We need to cut to the chase. Divergent groups need to unify the message and the efforts. We need Democratic leaders to quit acting as apologists for our right to our human rights. The Democratic Party needs to get a clue and EMBRACE human rights issues, including women's rights issues, and recognize that this is the only way for the Party to remain politically viable. If Democrats want to woo Republicans, why don't they JOIN THEM?

The Independent and Undecided and reasonable Republicans WILL support human rights and women's rights. All this blustering about "framing" and pandering to the religious busy-body bigot brigades is a WASTE OF VALUABLE TIME.

:bounce:

Too many discussions here are with folks who have grown up without any sense of Context or of History. Will we find a way to clarify the issues, craft the crux and deprogram Deminazis, so that Progressives can quit wasting time and energy; so the work can be done to reinvigorate a viable and relevant Democratic Party?

I KNOW you have offerings for this cooperative effort!

(The competitive stuff gets :boring:)

It is time to form an ASSHOLE FREE party.

An anti bully party.

Our culture is sick because of the sociopaths and the bullies who have manipulated their way into powerful positions and have hoarded too much wealth and skewed the meaning of the social contract to favor themselves because they do not care..I say why not go after the con men(Halliburton ,En ron) who do what they do because they can get away with it and do not have to care..We need to stop the abusers of trust,the exploiters of goodwill,the parasite wealthy,the corrupt,the arrogant control freaks,the self righteous fundamentalist snipes who would take our human rights away,while preserving freedom for only themselves.I will never convert to their way of being. So,if the bullies of America will not live and let live and let me live my life as they live theirs and they refuse to SHARE this nation,than..well..they are calling for their own destruction than, and they definitely will not win because I am no bystander,no helpless victim and I am no perpetrator who lets my wrath out on non-bully,non-manipulating people.Hitler lost.He died by killing himself because he was NOTHING.Every authority is EMPTY a fake prop to make a man look bigger than he is so he can dominate by intimidation.Don't fall for it.. Every empire with a bully asshole despot on top destroys itself by it's greed for power and more.

Wanna save this country?

Stop the bullies sociopaths who cannot feel empathy, from controlling us until America comes to ruin.

LOL "Asshole Free"

Remember when Bush first campaigned, and folks said,

"Not sure about what he thinks, but you can tell he REALLY BELIEVES it"?

Now, what have we got? An ignorant, boorish bully boy who is spoiled and stubborn and out of touch with reality. Anyone surprised?

We need more cooperation and less competitive stubborness, including on DU. Frequently, in open discussions on gender issues (including Choice) the obtuse attitudes render the whole discussion pointless. It seems if we want to get somewhere, we need to listen better. TO EACH OTHER. Why are so many MEN so invested in selling out Dem/Progressive WOMEN to pander to IMAGINARY, THEORETICAL TARGET VOTERS? And why are so many men so FIXATED on reproductive rights as the PROBLEM that needs to be fixed for their version of Democratic success?

:bounce: :bounce:

During the election, people were always saying that they weren't sure what Kerry stands for, but they could always see what Bush believed. As a veteran schoolteacher, I believe this is a revealing statement, since I have seen that many people have real problems comprehending their own spoken language. Bush has been very successful in creating his "simple and sincere" persona, in the face of much evidence that he is neither of these things, but rather a narcissistic crook of considerable guile.

The abortion issue is a case in point. The Republicans have been getting the votes of a lot of "pro-life" former democrats, pretty much on the strength of simple-minded rhetoric alone. I have talked to some of these people, and when they leave the fold, they buy the whole package, war, activist judges and all, at least for a while.

The republicans have done nothing for this crowd, and they never will for two reasons: Their wealthiest consituents do not want to see abortion made illegal, and now they have all of the antiabortion votes anyway. If abortion were illegal, that issue would disappear, and at least some of those voters with it.

Conversely, no one who identifies as pro-life will vote Democratic no matter what we do. We should publically and unequivocally identify as pro-choice, and put the reasons for this in a simple bullet list.

:kick: Thanks Swamp Rat
Vivisection is never pretty

I agree. I would never have predicted how social conservatives have been able to define the terms of the political debate. Democrats shouldn't waste time trying to please a lot of unappeasable, narrow-minded freedom-haters. We should stand for personal freedom: separation of church and state, and the autonomy of the individual's conscience.

Everyone should get a voice in the Democratic party, with no one getting a veto. I think that if build a party on the ideas we love and treasure, most Americans will agree with us.

"unappeasable, narrow-minded freedom-haters"?

Who says that?

How many times in public discourse do we see progressives defending themselves from the implication that they are not Christian or otherwise not religious, or that they are not patriotic, or that they have no sense of morality? How many "prayerfully pro-life" bumper stickers must we see before our brains turn to mush? This is the extent to which the terms of political argument have been contaminated by the idea that our behavior and attitudes need to be controlled.

I believe that it's OK to not be religious or patriotic, that it was just fine for Clinton to get that (those) BJs, and that it's OK to be gay even if you weren't born that way.

I also don't believe that anyone is doing me a favor by offering to be my conscience.