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If I've learned anything from the 2000 election, when Al Gore was robbed of the presidency, and again from the 2004 election, when electronic voting machine manipulation most likely led to irregularities and put George W. Bush back into the White House - during the same year the right wing got away with swiftboating John Kerry - and yet again in the 2008 Presidential elections when the right wing got away (via media collusion) with slander, truth twisting, double standards and patriot baiting of Barack Obama and the Democrats....If I've learned anything, it is that there is NO dealing rationally with the right wing in America.
So frankly I'm a little sick of hearing once again from progressives preaching about civil discourse and about "looking for solutions." I call it the Rodney King approach to political power: "can't we all get along and just do good and hope it all works out?"
As they used to say a long time ago in those commercials with Charlie the Tuna: "Sorry Charlie." I'm not biting this time. Discourse hasn't worked. And the analogy of one blogger on Op-Ed News of it like being at a construction site where we don't need people cursing, but instead, getting the job done....that is not really an apt analogy. Getting constructive reform or work done for the good of America is not in the right wing game plan. So this analogy is not really relevant to our national situation. Using the Construction site analogy, the right-wingers are the ones who stand around cursing, planting dynamite, murdering construction workers, and blocking any work getting done at the construction site at all (this is also a metaphor for the state of America's national economy and infrastructure.)
So really I'm sick of being told by fellow progressives that I can't respond with an angry tone to the angry rhetoric of the right-wingers and to their constant outrages because "that is part of the problem." Baloney!
What I've seen from my own experience is that the constant unjustified anger from the right is best answered with anger from the left...anger buttressed with facts and statistics and debunking of the right's falsehoods. That is when they lose in the court of public opinion, even with the news media pushing their side of the story. Anger and shoving their arguments back down their crooked throats is all they understand.
Being "nice" hasn't worked. What part of the last eight plus years don't progressives understand regarding right wing stomping and strong arm tactics having the country endure the reign of George W. Bush?
Barack Obama tried to 'be civil' and 'nice' and 'reach across the aisle' and look where it has gotten him! The right doesn't understand civility and discourse. NO MATTER WHAT THE LEFT DOES, the right will continue its drumbeat of hate and now, it seems, rising violence. Lest you think I exaggerate, watch it keep coming and get worse (the rampage of the right). These people take 'discourse' and 'civility' as an invitation to keep stepping on and attacking those in the Democratic party and in the general public and especially our new president, who is trying to get something done and who is constantly shouted at, talked down, called horrible names like "communist" and pinned with all other manner of labels and subjected to a barrage of media sniping about him and his agenda.
We on the progressive side have had WAR DECLARED ON US: Unconditional war. No matter WHAT we do to be constructive in response to the toxic atmosphere, being "nice" has not and will not work.
And when I hear those fellow lefties just constantly attacking Obama, who, for all his imperfections, is the BEST HOPE we progressives have right now of getting ANY reforms (so they're not perfect in our eyes) passed and something done that will begin the rebuilding of America to put us on a more solid footing....When I hear my fellow 'lefties' excoriating this innovative and miraculous new President, wringing their hands at every one of his supposed betrayals of the liberal agenda, and griping about everything he does, from 'failing to prosecute Bush' to 'being just like Bush' in whatever regard (their parlance, not mine), for example, the banking cleanup, or the war in Afghanistan, etc etc...when I see a lot of "progressive" bloggers and even Rob Kall pile more onto Barack Obama;s back than they do Newt Gingrich or any of the horrible leadership of the right, and when I hear them have temper tantrums because Obama doesn't instantly put out every tiny nuance of the progressive agenda or else he is to be harshly attacked by the same perfectionists who let two elections be stolen by the right wing and who cowed down during the rein of terror of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney...when I hear the left attack Obama and then turn around and empower the right by telling fellow lefties to commit the same mistakes Democrats have committed since 2000 at least (i.e., attempting to be civil and work together with the right for the good of the country)....I get mad!
I get mad because the right wing took Democrat civility and our attempts at 'solutions' and used them AGAINST us, seeing reason and civilty as WEAKNESS. Then the right proceeded to get even more brazen and hateful and unfair and forcefully hypocritical in its rhetoric in the face of Democratic passivity AND redoubled its dirty tricks and scurrilous public calumny.
So don't tell me what sort of tone I am to adopt in dealing with the right when their tone toward the middle and the left is nothing short of vicious. Whether it helps or not, they need a taste of their own medicine.
And don't tell me that my anger in the face of their evil is equivalent to me doing what they do. I don't lie and twist facts and slander people. I say what I see. Don't tell me I am doing something wrong. We've all been there, done that. We've already been down the road of 'civility' and 'inclusive solutions'. AND WE ALL KNOW IT DOESN'T WORK!
So, if I am considered by anyone on this or any other website to be too 'angry' or 'extreme' in my tone, then I'll cease contributing or belonging to this website and let it become an echo chamber for those among the pablum-recommending lefties who have failed at every turn to return fire with the same vehemenc toward the right wing and in failing to do so we HAVE (as one of the other commenters to an Op-Ed article rightly said) ENABLED the right to just do more of their outrages.
Those who don't draw battle lines in the face of attack become members of an elite club: 'the defeated'. A little hot rhetoric and fighting fire with fire is what the right needs. They need to have their dishonesty, their hate and their evil shoved back up their craw. They won't be nice no matter what we do on the left. So why continue to 'Al Gore' and 'John Kerry' the progressives and tell us we must be 'civil' and 'nice'. That is an invitation for the right to go further in their sedition against our president and our country in the service of their corporate mentors and underwriters.
You can be 'civil' if you want, but you won't tell me to go quietly into another defeat by the right wing in the interests of 'being nice'. I will NOT! And if I am to be muzzled and thought controlled and told what I must do to be 'constructive', then I will not post on this website anymore or contribute to it. I will consider it to be yet another ineffectual progressive, 'politically correct' site and vote with my feet to go elsewhere where I can still say what I think without being told I'm being 'hateful' and 'playing the same game as the right' when I dare to get angry over their abuses and seek to express it when it needs to be expressed. You say it does no good to be angry? Tell that to Martin Luther King. Tell that to Rosa Parks. Tell that to all sorts of people who have stood up in anger against unfairness and evil. You tell me to 'be nice'? I say, "I'm outta here." Horsefeathers!
