Brendan, there are several posts a day on this site alone that demonstrate emotional hatred for the man, his VP, and his cabinet. Can you not see that? Are you honestly able to read what is here (and on dKos for that matter) and say that it is not "criticism motivated by personal dislike"? The stuff some of our more lurid posters write is only "legitimate complaints about the actions" and not "hatred of an individual and his programs"? Really?
You should apply for the job of Executioner
... for the Bush administration. Dick is making it a vabinet level post, apparently. Hell, you may even get a chance to go hunting with Cheney.
A postcard showing the burned lynched body of Jesse Washington, Waco, Texas, 1916. Washington was a 17-year-old retarded farmhand" Here's a little reminiscing from the good old days for you Ender. Do you really want to go back to these times of vigile ante days?
Tell me how these examples are not emotional and instead simply represent legitimate complaints?
Maybe both sides are so blinded by their chosen paradigms that it is impossible for partisans to see anything clearly any more.
of instances where someone expressed personal dislike for Bush or Cheney (although I'm not convinced you've picked particularly strong examples here -- not defending the tone of those posts, just pointing out their context). However, I question whether you can support the hypothesis that "the left" actually "hates" Bush, or similarly hyperbolic claims made routinely on conservative sites.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
hanging as the death penalty. That guy, and we've all seen his videos, deserves to be hanged in public.
by: Ender @ Wed Oct 11, 2006 at 11:48:50 AM MDT
Does the above quote qualify as an emotional response? A call for a public hanging?
Both responses you cite in your example are in response to a call for a public hanging, so let's remember to include both sides in your fair study.
It is easy to take things out of context and overreact to them. No one was talking about the President or the VP So now who is overreacting. It helps to get the facts straight before you create false accusations.
If you are going to busy yourself calling everyone out on partisanship and emotionalism, don't forget to include both sides and what the poster is responding to. It never helps to just make stuff up.
And further reading shows the tone lightened up considerably.
Are you purposefully looking for excuses to be partisan and attack liberals as hysterical by cruising the lefty blogs. Perhaps that is the preconceived bias with which you took the two comments out of context with in the first place.
It is the tone that is giving the right that impression. It is all about the tone.
It is not a question of proving whether the left actually hates the president. Who knows what anyone feels in their hearts? How could one prove something like that anyway? People respond to how the left expresses their opinions. And when the left chooses to use hateful expressions, then they are perceived as hateful. Ditto for the right.
What I think you are expecting from the right is that they give the left the benefit of the doubt and overlook tone and focus only on context. I don't know that that is a reasonable expectation of anyone who is willfully partisan. One cannot choose to use emotional language and expect the opposition to understand that you only meant to constructively criticize the policy.
Oh you mean like the tone that gives the left the impression that they absolutely abhor Bill Clinton, and are still trying to blame him for everything that is wrong six years after he left office?
Is that the tone you mean?
So what is the proper tone in regard to a call for a return to public hanging?
What benefit of the doubt should we give to the tone of republican talking heads implying that the Democrats are to blame for the timing of the Foley scandal, while completely ignoring the fact that it is not cool to hit on young teens when you are in a position of trust and authority? That tone?
It has little to do with tone, while shrillness is unbecoming, I agree...... perhaps it has something to do with the fact that those of us who spoke out against the Iraq war at its inception and after the '04 were deemed unpatriotic...... in a tone that was quite uncivil and lived in a secret fear of being discovered as opponents of the war in public!
Perhaps it is a reflection of the tone with which you chose to mock John Kerry a war hero and war bandaids at a National convention to slander his service to his country....... is that the tone you are referring to.
I find it interesting that whenever it seems like republicans might be held accountable for their actions they suddently start crying let's work together, and please watch your ......... tone tone tone.
but even then I doubt you can demonstrate that the left uses "hateful expressions" when discussion Bush, Cheney, and administration policy with any sort of consistency.
Sorry, I just don't see it. I'm liberal, my family is liberal, some of my friends are liberal, I post on and read liberal blogs, and in my opinion this "hate" is mostly right-wing make-belief. Sure there are isolated instances, like the one I wrote the post about, but I don't think you can honestly and objectively call it a pattern. It's a lazy way to avoid confronting the very real failings of this administration, and it's going to catch up with conservatives this election.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
that you do not see it. For the same reason that partisan Republicans do not see their own tendencies. When one strongly identifies with a group, especially in opposition to another group, things tend to get overlooked.
But if you believe this is important
it's tremendously important to understand the distinction between blind hatred of an individual (and consequently his programs) and a (well-founded) distrust of the policies of that same individual.
then you should try looking at what is written through other's eyes. If it is important to make the distinction, is it not also important to use the words and tone that make that distinction more clear to people who do not share your worldview? The right gets the silly concept of the left stewing in Bush hatred from what the left says (and vice versa). If the two sides really want to communicate, they need to try a bit harder.
(If you don't really care about communicating effectively with the right, then why bother complaining that they misread you? Maybe I misunderstood the intent of your post. I am certainly doing a poor job explaining my point.)
I had two points: (1) Liberals don't (usually) hate Bush, they are upset at his policies and (2) A few liberals (like the professor) really hate Bush, and I wish they would shut up.
The part in your blockquote meant that I think it's important for Republicans to understand the motivation of their critics if they want to win elections. I suppose it's important for Democrats too, but it's a little less relevant for the party out of power. I would agree that it's good to make the distinction between criticizing policy and hating an individual as clear as possible.
I do care about communicating with the right, and I think part of that means calling them on what I perceive as silly hyperbole -- and if another part of that entails condemning the nuts in my own party, well the post covered that too.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
I consider quite a few of his policies illegal, antithetical to a democracy and worthy of impeachment if not incarceration. In my judgement the country would be better off if he were removed.
I feel that very strongly and will, when describing his policies, compare them to autocracies. Is that hate? I'm not blind to reason and feel I can back up my comparisons with facts and logic but I do feel strongly about it.
Hate destroys the person who does the hating. It's a very counter-productive state. We will express passion about how we feel, but that isn't hate either.
Some on the Phaux News side seem to think uttering any negative statements or disillusions about the Administration equals hateing it. That's so simplistic as to be completely false.
Now, I do believe that some on the right seem to love hate. They use it as a motivating force. It's a Badge of Honor to some it seems. Doesn't matter. still hurts the hatee more than the one hated.
I get confused when people hate someone for the abstracts i.e. Those eeeeevil democrats are "undermining marriage" or "attacking Christmas" but can't explain how it harms them in a measurable way.
I have more sympathy for people who are demonized and have their rights diminished as a means to gain more power. I wouldn't find it at all odd that someone who was gay took such attacks as the no-marriage-for-dudes amendment as such an act and began to hate the people willing to keep them marginalized for a few extra percentage points in an election. Personally, I just view the people pushing those policies as evil con-men who need to be kicked out of power rather than hating them, but then again, it only affects my friends rather than me personally.
I wonder if a police officer lied in order to arrest you or give you a hefty fine if you wouldn't hate them just a little.
Considering that congress just stripped my girlfriend of her habeas rights, I'm certainly ashamed of my government even if I don't hate them per se.
It's very easy to believe what the talking heads say. I don't know why that is, but it is.
Have you heard a person, a normal person you meet in the street, say "those evil democrats are undermining marriage"? I never have, even from folks who believe in their hearts that marriage is only a man/woman thing. People can be for something without being radically against its opposite. It's the polarizing talking heads who spin it in the negative, demonizing way. And they do it for exactly the reason you say -- so their party will gain or keep power. They are con men. We make a mistake when we allow their views to color our perception of what our neighbor really thinks.
I'm not implying that bigots don't exist. Sure they do. And people do react emotionally to situations they find themselves in, whether its a real situation like an unlawful arrest, or a created situation like your concern that your girlfriend's rights have been altered. But she's still here, isn't she? Is the risk of her being incarcerated under the new law any greater than her (or anyone's) original risk of being unlawfully detained by an unethical cop?
Brendan was positing that the hate the right sees does not really exist. It sounds like maybe you think it might, in some situations. My original point was that as long as the words sound hateful, people will assume the hate exists whether or not it really does exist in an objective sense.
it's a political turnoff. It inhibits your ability to recruit undecided voters to your cause by obscuring your legitimate complaints behind personal vitriol.
On another level, it's bad for your blood pressure, happiness, and general well-being =)
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Is the risk of her being incarcerated under the new law any greater than her (or anyone's) original risk of being unlawfully detained by an unethical cop?
I don't know yet. Making it legal is a serious change. I see too much demonization of foreigners as a way to avoid responsibility for our own problems. First it was how illegals were the big problem, now legal residents are under a subtle attack where people are arguing that legal residents somehow deserve fewer rights than citizens, based on what I don't know.
Does the 'hate' exist? I'm sure it does from individual to individual. But my big concern is people who DON'T hate who are inciting hatred in others in order to gain power and I don't put those who hate and fear that attitude and manipulation that has made them targtets in the same category of those who use it for personal gain.
I hate Bush. The man, the politician, the policies, everything.
Have we not all had an instinctive negative reaction to someone's behavior? Well-portrayed villans in movies, blowhards at cocktail parties, even people who block the escalator or cut you off in traffic.
Well, Bush does that to me. Practically every time I see him on TV I want to throw my shoe at it. The platitudes, the bromides, the repititions, the self-righteousness, the apparent absence of original thought and the constant mischaracterisations of Democrats drive me up the wall. I find his jokes infantile, his treatment of the press contemptuous and his treatment of the public insulting.
In polite discourse, we shy away from the term "hatred" because it implies a negative emotional reaction that might offend people. I don't care. I do't mean that if Bush did something noble I wouldn't grudgingly applaud him for it. But I do NOT believe in his good character, his sincerity or his good intentions for the country. I see him suborning everthing to his lust for power such as:
- Becoming a born-again Christian but not remembering anything from his first Bible study course
- Marketing an incoherent "compassionate conservative" platform
- letting his campaings run vicious and deceptive ads
- holding fundraisers constantly instead of serious policy events
- rewarding loyalty over competence
- pandering on steel tarriffs
and well, you know the usual complaints about him. If one is convinced this descriptions of him are accurate, how can one not hate such a man?
I think if you create enough hatred...... gays, leftists, castro lovers, the party of baby killers, if you get my drift, people go out and vote. Hate energizes the republicans to vote.
The hate Clinton campaign has been very successful. R's still hate the man with a passion that is beyond reason.
Comments :
Republicans Don't Care About You
I'm only half stupid
*smacks forehead
I'd love to sit the guy down and just say, "You know... you're not helping."
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Umm
Brendan, there are several posts a day on this site alone that demonstrate emotional hatred for the man, his VP, and his cabinet. Can you not see that? Are you honestly able to read what is here (and on dKos for that matter) and say that it is not "criticism motivated by personal dislike"? The stuff some of our more lurid posters write is only "legitimate complaints about the actions" and not "hatred of an individual and his programs"? Really?
Tell me how these examples are not emotional and instead simply represent legitimate complaints?
Maybe both sides are so blinded by their chosen paradigms that it is impossible for partisans to see anything clearly any more.
I'm sure you can find examples
of instances where someone expressed personal dislike for Bush or Cheney (although I'm not convinced you've picked particularly strong examples here -- not defending the tone of those posts, just pointing out their context). However, I question whether you can support the hypothesis that "the left" actually "hates" Bush, or similarly hyperbolic claims made routinely on conservative sites.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Context
Does the above quote qualify as an emotional response? A call for a public hanging?
Both responses you cite in your example are in response to a call for a public hanging, so let's remember to include both sides in your fair study.
It is easy to take things out of context and overreact to them. No one was talking about the President or the VP So now who is overreacting. It helps to get the facts straight before you create false accusations.
If you are going to busy yourself calling everyone out on partisanship and emotionalism, don't forget to include both sides and what the poster is responding to. It never helps to just make stuff up.
And further reading shows the tone lightened up considerably.
Are you purposefully looking for excuses to be partisan and attack liberals as hysterical by cruising the lefty blogs. Perhaps that is the preconceived bias with which you took the two comments out of context with in the first place.
I'm only half stupid
Your inability to recognize sarcasm...
.. is only matched by your constant and deeply cynical moral relativism.
Well, that and your steady dose of "mother scold" finger-waving.
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
Purpleface lacks a certain, shall we say...
... ability to recognize sarcasm?
Jeez...
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
He is responding to.....
"there are several posts a day on this site alone that demonstrate emotional hatred for the man, his VP, and his cabinet."
We weren't even talking about the the man, his VP, or his cabinet.
That is where blind partisanship comes into play. Making stuff up. Or just reading too fast.
I'm only half stupid
Sorry.
Purpleface is the voice of moreal relativism. As long as one can say, "Both side do it" on any issue, problems will never be solved.
I asked Purpleface yesterday if there wwaws a single politician he or she admired.
Got nothing back.
Why bother voting?
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
You're missing the point
It is the tone that is giving the right that impression. It is all about the tone.
It is not a question of proving whether the left actually hates the president. Who knows what anyone feels in their hearts? How could one prove something like that anyway? People respond to how the left expresses their opinions. And when the left chooses to use hateful expressions, then they are perceived as hateful. Ditto for the right.
What I think you are expecting from the right is that they give the left the benefit of the doubt and overlook tone and focus only on context. I don't know that that is a reasonable expectation of anyone who is willfully partisan. One cannot choose to use emotional language and expect the opposition to understand that you only meant to constructively criticize the policy.
You are ignorant
Perhaps you should read up on what "moral relativism" means. Your continual misuse of the term is irritating.
I don't respond to you because you have no interest in discussing anything. Go pick a fight elsewhere.
Strawman
It is the tone??????
Oh you mean like the tone that gives the left the impression that they absolutely abhor Bill Clinton, and are still trying to blame him for everything that is wrong six years after he left office?
Is that the tone you mean?
So what is the proper tone in regard to a call for a return to public hanging?
What benefit of the doubt should we give to the tone of republican talking heads implying that the Democrats are to blame for the timing of the Foley scandal, while completely ignoring the fact that it is not cool to hit on young teens when you are in a position of trust and authority? That tone?
It has little to do with tone, while shrillness is unbecoming, I agree...... perhaps it has something to do with the fact that those of us who spoke out against the Iraq war at its inception and after the '04 were deemed unpatriotic...... in a tone that was quite uncivil and lived in a secret fear of being discovered as opponents of the war in public!
Perhaps it is a reflection of the tone with which you chose to mock John Kerry a war hero and war bandaids at a National convention to slander his service to his country....... is that the tone you are referring to.
I find it interesting that whenever it seems like republicans might be held accountable for their actions they suddently start crying let's work together, and please watch your ......... tone tone tone.
I'm only half stupid
Tone......!
I'm only half stupid
Na-na-na-na-na...
Everybody does everything so why does it matter who's in charge?
Is there a single, living national American politician you admire?
If you really believe this is the "fight of our lives," how come you're not in Iraq?
You're moving the goalposts
but even then I doubt you can demonstrate that the left uses "hateful expressions" when discussion Bush, Cheney, and administration policy with any sort of consistency.
Sorry, I just don't see it. I'm liberal, my family is liberal, some of my friends are liberal, I post on and read liberal blogs, and in my opinion this "hate" is mostly right-wing make-belief. Sure there are isolated instances, like the one I wrote the post about, but I don't think you can honestly and objectively call it a pattern. It's a lazy way to avoid confronting the very real failings of this administration, and it's going to catch up with conservatives this election.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
It's understandable
that you do not see it. For the same reason that partisan Republicans do not see their own tendencies. When one strongly identifies with a group, especially in opposition to another group, things tend to get overlooked.
But if you believe this is important
then you should try looking at what is written through other's eyes. If it is important to make the distinction, is it not also important to use the words and tone that make that distinction more clear to people who do not share your worldview? The right gets the silly concept of the left stewing in Bush hatred from what the left says (and vice versa). If the two sides really want to communicate, they need to try a bit harder.
(If you don't really care about communicating effectively with the right, then why bother complaining that they misread you? Maybe I misunderstood the intent of your post. I am certainly doing a poor job explaining my point.)
Well, I wrote my post quickly
and probably sacrified clarity for speed.
I had two points: (1) Liberals don't (usually) hate Bush, they are upset at his policies and (2) A few liberals (like the professor) really hate Bush, and I wish they would shut up.
The part in your blockquote meant that I think it's important for Republicans to understand the motivation of their critics if they want to win elections. I suppose it's important for Democrats too, but it's a little less relevant for the party out of power. I would agree that it's good to make the distinction between criticizing policy and hating an individual as clear as possible.
I do care about communicating with the right, and I think part of that means calling them on what I perceive as silly hyperbole -- and if another part of that entails condemning the nuts in my own party, well the post covered that too.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
What is hate?
I consider quite a few of his policies illegal, antithetical to a democracy and worthy of impeachment if not incarceration. In my judgement the country would be better off if he were removed.
I feel that very strongly and will, when describing his policies, compare them to autocracies. Is that hate? I'm not blind to reason and feel I can back up my comparisons with facts and logic but I do feel strongly about it.
Loathing his policies, appointees and priorities
isn't hate. World of difference you know.
Hate destroys the person who does the hating. It's a very counter-productive state. We will express passion about how we feel, but that isn't hate either.
Some on the Phaux News side seem to think uttering any negative statements or disillusions about the Administration equals hateing it. That's so simplistic as to be completely false.
Now, I do believe that some on the right seem to love hate. They use it as a motivating force. It's a Badge of Honor to some it seems. Doesn't matter. still hurts the hatee more than the one hated.
Fidel Castro likes baseball too
And I hear Kim Jong Il is great to party with.
qui tacet consentire
Sympathy for those directly affected
I get confused when people hate someone for the abstracts i.e. Those eeeeevil democrats are "undermining marriage" or "attacking Christmas" but can't explain how it harms them in a measurable way.
I have more sympathy for people who are demonized and have their rights diminished as a means to gain more power. I wouldn't find it at all odd that someone who was gay took such attacks as the no-marriage-for-dudes amendment as such an act and began to hate the people willing to keep them marginalized for a few extra percentage points in an election. Personally, I just view the people pushing those policies as evil con-men who need to be kicked out of power rather than hating them, but then again, it only affects my friends rather than me personally.
I wonder if a police officer lied in order to arrest you or give you a hefty fine if you wouldn't hate them just a little.
Considering that congress just stripped my girlfriend of her habeas rights, I'm certainly ashamed of my government even if I don't hate them per se.
He must be,
given that he broke the world record for kegstands. Twice.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Slogans
It's very easy to believe what the talking heads say. I don't know why that is, but it is.
Have you heard a person, a normal person you meet in the street, say "those evil democrats are undermining marriage"? I never have, even from folks who believe in their hearts that marriage is only a man/woman thing. People can be for something without being radically against its opposite. It's the polarizing talking heads who spin it in the negative, demonizing way. And they do it for exactly the reason you say -- so their party will gain or keep power. They are con men. We make a mistake when we allow their views to color our perception of what our neighbor really thinks.
I'm not implying that bigots don't exist. Sure they do. And people do react emotionally to situations they find themselves in, whether its a real situation like an unlawful arrest, or a created situation like your concern that your girlfriend's rights have been altered. But she's still here, isn't she? Is the risk of her being incarcerated under the new law any greater than her (or anyone's) original risk of being unlawfully detained by an unethical cop?
Brendan was positing that the hate the right sees does not really exist. It sounds like maybe you think it might, in some situations. My original point was that as long as the words sound hateful, people will assume the hate exists whether or not it really does exist in an objective sense.
Why is hatred bad?
If someone does something to deserve being hated, who are we to deny him our hatred?
qui tacet consentire
On a strictly practical level
it's a political turnoff. It inhibits your ability to recruit undecided voters to your cause by obscuring your legitimate complaints behind personal vitriol.
On another level, it's bad for your blood pressure, happiness, and general well-being =)
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
It is, of course, a cover
Is the risk of her being incarcerated under the new law any greater than her (or anyone's) original risk of being unlawfully detained by an unethical cop?
I don't know yet. Making it legal is a serious change. I see too much demonization of foreigners as a way to avoid responsibility for our own problems. First it was how illegals were the big problem, now legal residents are under a subtle attack where people are arguing that legal residents somehow deserve fewer rights than citizens, based on what I don't know.
Does the 'hate' exist? I'm sure it does from individual to individual. But my big concern is people who DON'T hate who are inciting hatred in others in order to gain power and I don't put those who hate and fear that attitude and manipulation that has made them targtets in the same category of those who use it for personal gain.
I admit it!
I hate Bush. The man, the politician, the policies, everything.
Have we not all had an instinctive negative reaction to someone's behavior? Well-portrayed villans in movies, blowhards at cocktail parties, even people who block the escalator or cut you off in traffic.
Well, Bush does that to me. Practically every time I see him on TV I want to throw my shoe at it. The platitudes, the bromides, the repititions, the self-righteousness, the apparent absence of original thought and the constant mischaracterisations of Democrats drive me up the wall. I find his jokes infantile, his treatment of the press contemptuous and his treatment of the public insulting.
In polite discourse, we shy away from the term "hatred" because it implies a negative emotional reaction that might offend people. I don't care. I do't mean that if Bush did something noble I wouldn't grudgingly applaud him for it. But I do NOT believe in his good character, his sincerity or his good intentions for the country. I see him suborning everthing to his lust for power such as:
- Becoming a born-again Christian but not remembering anything from his first Bible study course
- Marketing an incoherent "compassionate conservative" platform
- letting his campaings run vicious and deceptive ads
- holding fundraisers constantly instead of serious policy events
- rewarding loyalty over competence
- pandering on steel tarriffs
and well, you know the usual complaints about him. If one is convinced this descriptions of him are accurate, how can one not hate such a man?
Honesty
Is so refreshing. My spouse feels the same way. I have installed shielding on my television.
I disagree.
I think if you create enough hatred...... gays, leftists, castro lovers, the party of baby killers, if you get my drift, people go out and vote. Hate energizes the republicans to vote.
The hate Clinton campaign has been very successful. R's still hate the man with a passion that is beyond reason.
I'm only half stupid
what's there not to hate n/t
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Consistency requires
that if you can ask that of Clinton, then I can certainly ask that about Bush.
Or does a double standard apply?
I'm only half stupid
I never suggested
that others couldn't hate Bush.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR