This, however, raises the next issue. Larry (LJREAD), I don't quite get your post. Usually you are very even handed, even in disagreement. In this post you use disparaging remarks such as "warped desire" and " 'dumb' pack mentality".
I do agree with most of your position. Some people do take things out of context and use this in mindless attacks. I get this. And yes, too many people mindlessly follow vocal demagogues without thinking. But the wrongs you cited were not solved by calm rational discourse. Somebody whipped the rabble up to a frenzy to effect change.
From what I can see you have described humanity. There will always be discord. There will always be disagreement and misunderstanding. There will be leaders and followers. Some of both will be good, some not.
I think that if we can understand this to some level these discussions will not get so contentious. We should not take these discussions so seriously. I was sorry to see Geoff go. The people that bothered him most were the very people he should have ignored.
I don't agree with a lot of his positions, but he has his right to them. I would never disparage that. I don't always agree with you either, but you seem very pragmatic. That's why I didn't quite get your post. I hope things are OK with you. You seem a little tense in the same way I was with Clamp.
Well I think now I am just rambling, so I'll sign off. What do you guys think?
Well, Vince, guess when one has lived as long as I have, a few opinions are garnered along the way. Back in the early sixties I used to crew on a yacht owned by three very right winged university students, and each race I would listen carefully to their diatribes against this and that. I think it was my first real exposure to the right-winged clan, and what I think I learned from them and all the others I came across later, is that they tend to be far more rigid in their beliefs than more liberal minded folks, who, often, are able to cross over the border and actually support right -winged views. They took me to one political rally of a conservative Congressional candidate, and as I shook his hand and we looked each other in the eye, there was a moment of understanding and he looked away, knowing he was the phony I had seen. Later he was involved in a corruption scandal.
Then in the seventies, I was approached by a group of evangelical missionaries to write a magazine article about their august leader, a man who I greatly admired as leader of, I think, the second largest such organization in the world. I was a locally known newspaper correspondent at the time. So I wrote the article, emphasizing the Christ-like aspects of the leader's life, his humility and willingness to behave like an ordinary human being. I got called on the carpet by his wife with complaints about my work. She went on an on about how frequently he appeared on the 700 Club, how friendly he was with people like the Baker couple and so forth. The judgment then, as now, was that if a person were out there in the public, they must somehow have acquired angel feathers. Total bullshit, of course, but part of the mindless 'dumbness' of the evangelical type. It seems that I didn't include the fact that he was a friend of all the other big-shot evangelicals, many of whom soon folded and were in disgrace or sent to jail. I got to know quite a few and was astonished by how bigoted a lot they were in their general human outlook, much of which I see in some of the posts by members here.
The thing is, the two have gotten mashed together somehow, so that bigots like Dave and Rush are able to create a following along with Huckabee and other right-winged politicians, taking advantage of a prepackaged evangelical group to form a sort of pseudo-moral majority which is neither moral nor a majority. No doubt they are in their comfort zone - like patting each others backs, with as it happens, a very narrow frame of reference.
Not only that, they persist in rigging elections, in using the internet to create false ideas such as the 'swift-boat' one, even assuring victory through putting the fix in to the Supreme Court. We now read where a Presidential aide was made to cook the books to make it look like the country was in worse shape than it was due to foreign terrorists. This so his President could win reelection. Starting way back, with Watergate and before, they are seemingly untouched in their ability to warp the mentality of the masses through very questionable means.
And this is the big difference - the rigidity of position. People, for another example, have recently held Sarah Palin up as a high proponent of right-winged values, but now we see her reputation coming into serious dispute. Many liberal types saw flaws in her character, which were definitely there to see, soon after McCain so unwisely chose her. Palin took on all the armor of her 'dumb' class, touting her skill with a rifle, her membership in the ARA, her support of her unwed daughter and a lot of the rest of it. Nothing more than a phony facade. Her family values, hockey mom front were likely as phony as they appeared to many of us to be. We had little proof, and still don't have, just a very uneasy intellectual feeling.You see, she put on the self-righteous right-winged garb, the extreme nationalism, the unthinking identification with right-winged values. The evangelical right-wing loved her and could see no fault.
So if you are like Goeff and try to go up against such a walled fortress that holders of right-wing doctrine have become, you feel as though you are pissing in the wind. He probably should have known better.
"Oh, you think liberals are any different", you might ask. Most assuredly they are. They take a much deeper and more intellectual look at the facts. Right-wingers often ridicule the fact that many of us are of the intellectual class, members of university faculties, writers, thinkers. We tend to be more universal in our outlook, less willing to toe a nationalistic, chauvinistic line. We clearly see that warfare brings loss and defeat to both sides, that in war their are no victors. We may look askance at some unthinking, bottom-line, capitalistic thinking and actions by many leaders of industry. And we will often tend to think more as individuals than holding to any group-maintained dogma. We will tend to put more emphasis on the rights of the individual to go against entrenched generalized views such as abortion. We may actually look at that unwed mother, raped by members of a gang, pregnant and in a hopeless state, and wanting to abort her misbegotten fetus. We may see that she has rights too, rights that aren't part of a dogmatic view.
You won't find as unified an identity among liberals that you have with the extreme right-winged, evangelical-type cadre.
This, Vince, is related to the even-handedness you seem to see in my posts. I tend to be even-handed to a fault, but that doesn't mean I like to argue against those who aren't so even-handed to the point of tossing out reason. I can clearly see when someone has taken up an untenable position based on some faulty preconceived notions, and usually I'll just let it all pass by. Such will never be able to see reason.
There are, of course, conservative thinkers as well, but they will tend to be more moderate in their approach. McCain seems to have been one of those at the start until he got sucked in by a desire to win at any cost. But even then, when Obama was misguidedly attacked, he was right there with a rebuttal, an intellectual-type conservative when it came to hard facts.
You know, the idea of the ends justifying the means use to be associated with communism. Now it is part and parcel of the right-winged ideology. Forget fairness, forget deep thought and thoughtfully held views, just win and win at any cost. Stamp on the President's reputation and background if you wish, kill the chances of a contender like Senator Kerry and don't bother to apologize later if you find yourself found out. The stakes are high- money, power, position- and they must be gained at any cost. The whole right-winged ideology depends on winning in order to be maintained. To them, not to be in control is unthinkable- it goes against God's perfect plan, doesn't it? It becomes OK to use terrorists tactics against abortion clinics or even shoot dead their doctors. It is OK to use torture to gain results.
Water boarding becomes a means justified by the end. On the other hand, the more liberal position will continue to be there regardless. It will maintain that if we throw out rights in the interest of expediency, we have won a battle only to lose a war - the war against human rights.
It is undoubtedly the mindlessness of much of this that irks Goeff and I. As a liberal it is easy for me to be even handed in the face of factual knowledge. It is less easy to face the diatribe of misunderstanding ideology, garnered from the idiots, who, as you perceive, stir up the rabble.
The question here is why we no longer have Goeff's ideas on the forum. A big loss to be sure. And this is what stirs me up a bit, as you say, Vince. I can take anything directed at me personally, but when others get hurt I feel very badly indeed.
There are many in this forum who take right-winged views based on reason, but, like you say, there are a few who are following a misplaced ideology and it gets tiring to argue with such. Best at times to just take a break.