Bill,
If you want to believe that Clinton is a saint and Bush is the devil, I'm sure that no one will convince you otherwise. That's just the nature of the True Believer. My point is that no one is all good, or all bad as you want the world to be. I haven't called you evil, or insinuated as much, but you seem very quick to apply the term to others.
Seems to me that I'm being more reasonable and civil here than some others.
Your strawmen - stay with them and argue all you want to - alone!!!!!!!!!!
If it is only civil and reasonable if I agree with you - then that is your straw man also and is never a requirement for a debate!!!!!!!
But Bill, you use "debate" as a soapbox for hate speech. IMO.
People, people, you know this stuff. Ad hominem -- nuh-uh. Issues -- sure.
Asherman
You said that Nixon was a bad man but a good president. Lets take the next step Bush is supposedly a good man but a bad president. By which do you think the country is better served.
As for the crime that Bush has committed. I would say his entire presidency has been a crime against good government. The nation is ill served by his presidency. correction, the world is ill served by his presidency.
Au,
I don't know what kind of a man the Shrub is. He's not very bright, but that describes a lot of people. There is no intelligence, or even good character requirement for being President. Many people don't agree with you that Bush is a "bad" President, though that's just their considered opinion. Because the man is pursuing policies that you disagree with doesn't make them, or him wrong. Of course, it doesn't make them, or him right either. We'll just have to wait and see whose opinion best deals with the situation the world is in at the moment.
In your opinion the entire Bush administration is a "crime". If all it takes to make something a crime is your opinion, then why have laws and courts to try cases in? It seems that the "crime" is that Bush is performing his sacred obligations as President in a way that you don't agree with. Why is your opinion superior to that of the President of the United States, and a host of other professional government policy makers? Do you really believe that you are more patriotic than the President? If so, how do you reach that conclusion?
PDiddie<
Thank you so much for the comic relief in the form of This Modern World. It is the most cogent and thought-provoking post on this thread.
Asherman
When I said the entire administration is a crime I was speaking figuratively not literally. What he has done to this country is IMO criminal. Every move he makes gets the US in deeper trouble. His diplomatic moves, if one has the audacity to mention diplomacy in the same breath as Bush, have all been failures, his attempts at repairing the economic climate consist of giving tax breaks to the wealthy and the concept of trickle down economics. He has taken us from surplus to deficit. And is about to embark on an adventure that will result in body bags for Americas most precious commodity. It's youth. I call that criminal.
Quadriceps, Asherman, are those long thigh muscles necessary to jerk knees!
"Nixon may have lied to protect the Watergate conspirators but he did not hurt the nation."
Au1929 -- I generally agree with you in spirit, but have to take strong issue with thought that the Nixon debacle didn't hurt the nation. I think the nation is suffering from the blowback of Watergate right now. That's the point at which right/left divisions began to get really nasty. The embarrassment Nixon caused the Republican Party and the cheering and jeering from the left (justified, but provocative) hardened the right wing of the Rep party and fed the dirty side of the Reagan presidency and subsequently the Bush1 presidency. When Bush1 lost to Clinton, that DID it! The Republicans hated Clinton with such a fury that they would have done anything to humiliate him in return for the humiliation which began with the Nixon impeachment (virtual). Bush2 is the spawn of all this evil and hate which the Republican party finds itself in the grip of.
Yesterday's Times has a piece by Nicholas Kristof about the evangelicals, a terrific and very scary piece in which I think he misses precisely this point: the humiliation the reactionaries have felt for thirty years or more.
Very very good point, Tartarin.
Though I've also posted this in another thread, I think it's apt here, being part of the explanation of the liberal sneer and the rightwing excesses:
God, Satan and the Media
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NYT 3/4
Claims that the news media form a vast liberal conspiracy strike me as utterly unconvincing, but there's one area where accusations of institutional bias have merit: nearly all of us in the news business are completely out of touch with a group that includes 46 percent of Americans.
That's the proportion who described themselves in a Gallup poll in December as evangelical or born-again Christians.. Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago argues that America is now experiencing a fourth Great Awakening, like the religious revivals that have periodically swept America in the last 300 years. Yet offhand, I can't think of a single evangelical working for a major news organization...President Bush has said that he doesn't believe in evolution (he thinks the jury is still out). President Ronald Reagan felt the same way, and such views are typically American. A new Gallup poll shows that 48 percent of Americans believe in creationism, and only 28 percent in evolution (most of the rest aren't sure or lean toward creationism). According to recent Gallup Tuesday briefings, Americans are more than twice as likely to believe in the devil (68 percent) as in evolution...
I tend to disagree with evangelicals on almost everything, and I see no problem with aggressively pointing out the dismal consequences of this increasing religious influence... But liberal critiques sometimes seem not just filled with outrage at evangelical-backed policies, which is fair, but also to have a sneering tone about conservative Christianity itself. Such mockery of religious faith is inexcusable.
[I'm afraid I'm deeply into the inexcusable...T]
Quote:Bush2 is the spawn of all this evil and hate which the Republican party finds itself in the grip of.
I don't deny that plenty of Republicans hated Clinton, often to the detriment of reason and rational consideration of facts, but I see no less irrational, unbridled hate from an equivalent set of Democrats for Bush. Neither is useful, and the existence of the latter doesn't justify the former. My point is that if you are going to claim that the Republican party is "gripped with hatred", you'd better be willing to say the same of the Democrats.
Of course, I don't see conservatives here expressing irrational hatred for Clinton. I do see lots of it expressed by Democrats towards Bush. So perhaps the problem we have is that some in this country need to hate those with whom they differ.
I did it find it interesting, the degree to which the conservative media vilified the Clintons. It was especially strange, given the centrist nature of most of their policies. You'd think Noam Chomsky or Susan Sontag were in office, the way the right went after Clinton. 'Twas passing strange...
Whereas Bush, as many now perceive, is anything but centrist. "Hard right" are the words being spoken. So, yes, there's plenty of vitriol directed against Bush right now, but there's some substance to what people are reacting to!
Gingrich said from the get go he was out to get Clinton - look who got outed!
I think many are mistaken about the degree to which political ideology plays a role in the media. They'll take any story that gets them attention and advertising revenues. The administration has shown its skill in manipulating that tendency in the media. Size matters. Rah rah partisanship stirs up the uneducated (see Fox).
Tres, I think liberals fear and recoil from Bush because of his aggression and sheer nuttiness -- that's true. But that doesn't counter the thirty years of hard-driving hatred of the Republicans since Watergate, nor my belief that Bush is a result of that hatred. The issue of anger has interested me for a long time now. On the left I see bewilderment, frustration, and some outrage; but on the right on see tremendous hell's-a-poppin' stop-at-nothing rage. I've seen it in the evangelicals I've met here in the Bible Belt -- along with a divisiveness which borders on the comic now and then: "We will survive endtimes, you won't. Neener neener."
I wish the Democratic party had the energy and cohesiveness which the cold haters have. But no, I don't think the Dems are gripped by hatred. Anyone else?
I keep going back to this level of education thing because I think has to take a huge chunk of responsibility for an apathetic, self-centered populace. I don't think it should be dismissed because it has undertones of elitism or snobbism. On the contrary, I think the narrowness and low level of education k-12, at least in the non-technical areas, shows a real lack of respect we show for our country and its future -- and what we could be doing with our tremendous prosperity. Again, I blame Republican administrations who are encouraged to narrow and stifle wide-ranging educational opportunities by their know-nothing "religious" supporters.
Tartarin, evertime the Dems create some kind of action to rebuff the Repubs then inner fighting starts and kills everything. The only thing I dislike more that the Dems is the Repubs. Gee, can't there be something better?
