If you are on Social Security Disability, and voting Republican, you are an Idiot.



If you are a Veteran, and voting Republican, you are an Idiot.



If you have children who need educating, or plan on using the services of any professional who utilized public education, and you are voting Republican, you are an Idiot.



If you support (or supported!) your family thanks to the auto, computer, customer service, or manufacturing/retail industry, and you are voting Republican, you are an Idiot.



If you aren't immortal, and you are voting Republican, you are an Idiot.



If you have a family member who has experienced cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, or sickle cell anemia, and you are voting Republican, you are an Idiot.



If you have ever eaten at a fast food restaurant, shopped from a grocery store, or drank water from a tap, and you are voting Republican, you are an Idiot.



Let me be blunt:

I HATE IDIOTS!!!

:rant:

You are extremely wealthy and don't care what happens to anyone else OR you are a total idiot.

" What do you call a poor republican?
SUCKER"

Contempt toward the people is counterproductive, as is reducing everything to partisanship.

The Republicans are doing what they always do - advancing the needs and desires of the wealthy and powerful few. How many Democrats are telling the truth about that to the people? Nothing has change about the Republican program, and they relentlessly pursue it.

What has changed, what has allowed the right wingers to get so much power over the last few decades, has been the failure by a weak and compromised Democratic party to fight back, or to even get a comprehensible narrative out to the people.

Blaming the Republicans is like blaming the rain when your roof leaks, rather than the roofer who refuses to do the job of repairing the roof.

To the degree that the Democratic party takes the side of the working people, the working people will support the Democratic party. Ti the degree that the party is merely another gentrified and aristocratic faction of "smarter" people, which your post reflects, the people will be suspicious and vulnerable to appeals from the right wingers.


...

bought into the Republican brand of 'less government is good' while ignoring the way the wealth was pouring into the hands of very few people. My opinion of how and why is different than yours -- popular liars like Limbaugh and Faux News made opinions take the place of information, with the focus on entertaining, and bedamned to reality. How quickly did your eyes glaze over when presented with the 'facts' in my posting? Personally, even having written the post, the information overload by the end of it was just too depressing. I'd rather have turned on Jon Stewart, and been able to laugh / cry at the whole situation; instead, I actually had to THINK ABOUT IT, and if I have to do it, so does the rest of the herd.

Baa, baa! :)

Some relatively upscale professional working women are contemptuous of the people and blame them. That is contrary to every principle and ideal of the political Left, and is tactically ineffective and counter-productive.

My eyes didn't glaze over, my head spun because intellectual liberals so complicate issues, make everything so esoteric that there is no power or comprehensibility in what they write.

I believe that the reason for concocting these convoluted arguments is because of the need to serve two masters at the same time, the upper class and the people - to maintain and protect the "winners" gentrified and aristocratic ethic, while still posing as defenders of the downtrodden and persecuted. People need to think they are on the side of the little people, while identifying with the "winners" - the most successful and powerful. This is more a matter of a personal identity and emotional needs then it is about any political thinking.

This is a chronic and pervasive problem, and an odd feature of modern liberalism. While claiming to stand with the downtrodden, persecuted and oppressed, people are simultaneously cultivating an arrogant and condescending attitude, holding people in contempt as inferiors on various pretexts, and admiring and praising an aristocratic and gentrified class of the "good activists." The two are completely incompatible.

This is a problem throughout the Democratic party and the liberal organizations, at all levels, and is the biggest obstacle to progress in the fight against bigotry and the right wing.

The Democratic party, and the activist organizations, hang out a sign - "we welcome the downtrodden, oppressed and persecuted" - and then complain bitterly when the rabble shows up and tracks mud on their elegant imported carpet.

They need to get rid of that carpet, or take down that damned sign.


...

etc.

:dunce:

Today, in fact, I heard some coal industry responding to the EPA's stopping of that strip mining where they just dump it all in the river (like that's not gonna hurt the economic balance!).

Anyway, they ACTUALLY trodded out that old "it's going to cost jobs" meme.

The brainwashing goes deep and it's sick, but I think it's important that we understand HOW it works...

Many here argue strenuously that we need to help the financial industry, because "capital creates jobs." How is that different from the Republican ideas about that?

Many here argue against organized labor. Many here defend and promote "free trade" and various trickle down economic ideas.

Who is brainwashed? I see just as much effect from brainwashing right here as I do anywhere else. Many, if not most, blue collar workers know that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" and that the country's foreign policy is a matter of a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight." That represents political wisdom that many upscale liberals do not have. what do many liberal activists say? They say that the government has merely been mismanaged by "Chimpy" and that "our guy" is smarter and will run things better - of only the stupid people would get in line. There is no call for fundamental and radical change, and any who do call for fundamental and radical change are mercilessly attacked for "hurting the cause."

So long as the narrative of the Democratic party is dominated by those who promote the same imperialistic and "free market" ideas that the Republicans do, with a little liberal and progressive window dressing, the public will be suspicious and see the party as hypocritical, as well they should. The Democrats are on probation with the public right now. If they move to the right, they will be tossed out of office and the historic opportunity will have been squandered.

The people have now placed Democrats in office as an expression of their complete and utter rejection of Reaganomics and the religious right. But you would never know that listening to the moist dominant voices in the activists community. who are fighting a desperate rear guard action to prevent things from going "too far Left" and are trotting out liberal and progressive versions of the failed right wing agenda.


...

One of the main reasons that people are driven toward the Republicans, and are suspicious of the Democrats, is because too often all they see of liberalism is arrogant people calling them "idiots." Who would see people as allies when they call them idiots?

just the ones those other cheats get.