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January 16, 2008

How to Love Right Wingers

By Rob Kall

There are a plethora of toxic books by right wingers, excoriating liberals. So I came up with an idea. Do the opposite. Write a fun, funny book about how to love right wingers. This is the first in a series of articles I'll be doing, and I invite others to get involved. How can you not love someone whose brain is so confused, so mushy, that he actualy prefers Dubya over... almost anyone? You have to have loving compassion.

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There are a plethora of toxic books, by right wingers, excoriating liberals. So I came up with an idea. Do the opposite. Write a fun, funny book about how to love right wingers.

This is the first in a series of articles I'll be doing, and I invite others to get involved. How can you not love someone whose brain is so confused, so mushy, that he actualy prefers Dubya over... almost anyone? You have to have loving compassion.

The bible teaches to love thine enemy. Well, I want to work on loving right wingers. It's not like I haven't been working on it. I have close family who are right wingers, who think liberals are idiots, morons and fools.

I figure, this effort could do some good. I'm hoping to make it an extended project, so I invite other opednews.com writers and readers to take a shot at it, especially, if, for example, you are married to one, have an adult child or a parent or sibling or, horrors, an in-law.

I'd love to know how you do it. How do you love the right wingers in your life? My hope is to turn this into a book. Ann Coulter and other loveable neanderthal right wingers (see, I'm trying) talk toxically about liberals. But liberals are warmhearted (as opposed to reptilian... but sweet... we must be nice, remember, Ann Coulter. Oh. Did I spell her name wrong? Oops.)

Let's lay some ground rules for this project. First, don't be cruel... unless you say up front that this is not really about love. Funny is good. Al Franken and Michael Moore have dissected right wingers with wonderful humor.

I'll start off by making it clear that it is possible to love someone who is impaired. Matter of fact, it's hard to find someone who isn't impaired in some way. And if he or she isn't then, he or she is too damned perfect and that becomes, in itself an impairment.

There are all kinds of impairment. And it's pretty easy to start listing the kinds of impairments right wingers suffer... and cause others to suffer along with.

Actually, I can envision going through the DSM4 manual of Psychiatric Diagnosis published by the American Psychiatric Association, hunt and pecking for potential diagnoses that apply. Of course, we also have some mental health professionals who have already written about this, sometimes focusing on a particular right winger, like Dubya, or certain demographics. I figure, for this project, they're all fair game.

Speaking of demographics, there are some subgroups within which I expect to find some rich material-- and some where I've already found it. Then again, some of my prior writings have not been guided by the intention of love. I'll have to take another look at some of them, particularly those focusing on the diagnostic category first described by Michael Moore-- "Stupid White Men." Hell, millions of women have their own personal "stupid white men" they love. It'll be fun to interview and hear from some of these gals.

Here's one good reason to love right wingers. They wake up. Okay, let me back up. The DSM III-R, a probably out of date edition of the psychiatric diagnostic manual, though good enough for my non-clinical purposes, refers to diagnosis 307.46-- Sleepwalking Disorder.
One of the descriptions or criteria for this diagnosis includes:

" While sleepwalking, the person has a blank, staring face, is relatively unresponsive to the eforts of others to influence the sleepwalking or to communicate with him or her, and can be awakened only with great difficulty."


Hell, at least metaphorically, this sure sounds like a lot of right wingers to me. I've thought a lot about waking up right wingers. And since I started talking about waking up right wingers, a few years ago, guess what? A lot of them have woken up. Just look at the polls in the recent primaries-- 50% of NH Republicans and 46% of Michigan Republicans were just not happy with Bush. That's a lot of people waking up.

We don't not love someone because they are sleep walking, because they have not woken up. Matter of fact, one of the most touching, heartwarming experiences parents report is watching their children sleep.

Of course, when they're awake, they could be spoiled brats who terrorize the house, hyperactive destruction and chaos machines-- but when they're asleep, they're lovable.

Of course, there are those spouses who snore in their sleep. Voting right wing in one's sleep, or sleepwalking-- going through the world enjoying right wingnut radio pukes... I mean, lovable, radio talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh... well, that's worse than snoring, isn't it?

A note about Limbaugh, Hannity and Savage. The process of learning to love right wingers is a long road. We're just starting on the journey. Being able to actually love Rush, Sean and Mr. Savage is really a challenge that should be saved for the end of the journey-- it's almost a holy grail search. Of course, when the holy grail is found, the kingdom is healed. So even the idea of loving Rushbo... has some merit. Just don't be too hard on yourself, if, at the start of the road you have difficulty thinking of him as something other than a toxic blowhard, spewing mental farts. Or add your own thoughts on him.

So... this is a first step on the Love Right Wingers road. I hope you'll join me. Are you married to one? Work with one? add a comment, write an article or diary reporting how you do it, special anecdotes and stories that illustrate and help us move along the road towards loving right wingers. Or if you've already written something, and want it to be considered for the book, add a link to it in the comments section.

There's a special tag-- love right wingers-- that I hope you'll use when you submit your articles or diaries.

This is going to be fun.

So this is a start. Tell me about your redneck husband or aunt Mary.



Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.


Check out his platform at RobKall.com


He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity


He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com


more detailed bio:


Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.


Rob Kall Wikipedia Page


Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel


Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel


Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.


Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.


To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.


For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.


Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..


To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.


Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.


His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.


Join the conversation:


On facebook at Rob Kall's Bottom-up The Connection Revolution


and at Google Groups listserve Bottom-up Top-down conversation





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