blatham wrote:There's no damage done, or very little damage done, to a real democratic process or to principles of speech liberty where we are re-directed away from discussion of hair styles, how a voice lands on someone's ears, or on three-thousand-mile distant intutions on the deepmost parts of someone's character.
Yeah, on that I think we all agree; it's close to a 'duh' point.
It's also a rather disingenuous point however, because you've gone a lot further than that in your posts here, which is why you've met so much disagreement from fellow liberals.
You've repeatedly exhorted us to not say things that could provide ammunition to the 'other side', including, for example, discussions about our impressions of how trustworthy Hillary is, or discussions of what we perceived to be dirty tactics from the Hillary camp. Here in this very instance, the thing you urged us all to "shut the phuck up" about was hardly just about someone's hair style, so to fall back on that line seems less than honest.
My take on this is that first of all, I think that anyone who seriously believes that what we pen here in posts on a2k can 'provide the enemy with ammunition' takes himself way too seriously. It's a2k, guys. Whatever any one of us rants on about here has pretty much zero impact on the outcome of the elections or the way the candidates conduct their campaign. Get over yourselves already.
But secondly, something a little more substantive really bothers me about this line. I was joking with my parody, of course, but it does come from a real place.
On the one hand, for one, you have insisted that the enemy is so despicable that you can freely dismiss any notion of civility, respect or politeness when talking to its footsoldiers - not just its leaders and politicians, but random partisan conservatives who post here on the forum as well. See the whole discussion in the Bush Supporters thread a couple of years back. On the other hand you repeatedly exhort everyone in 'our' party to be careful in what criticisms we utter about 'our own' and how we frame them - because we should always be aware of our responsibility to not add in any targeting of our candidates in attacks. The enemy, basically, is much worse, and we should always keep this greater struggle against them and the lengths to which they will go to destroy us in mind, when discussing amongst ourselves - and self-censor accordingly.
You have a mindset here that dismisses the enemy as not deserving of basic conventions of civility; that exhorts unity, a disciplined message, and avoidance of any 'unnecessary' criticisms within our party, and does so in the name of an ever invoked context of the greater struggle against this truly evil enemy and the lengths to which it will go to exploit our internal differences; that dismisses much of the internal criticism of the personality and strategies of our party's leaders as mere manifestations of how strong the enemy's propaganda is, and how weak we can all be to this, or as mere reminders of the need to always be aware of and steel ourselves against the enemy's talking points; that calls on us to put aside all criticisms you deem too trivial or too much informed by that 'enemy propaganda' as long as the greater struggle against the enemy calls for it -- all of this -- it does evoke some clear, unpleasant connotations to me.
