I guess I'm about to get my illusions rudely shattered:
And as long as we’re talking about McCain’s associations, Ben Smith has an interesting item today, Paulie Abeles, a woman helping organize Clinton supporters for McCain, who has a provocative background.A key organizer of John McCain’s meeting Saturday with former supporters of Hillary Clinton is best known for her role in another bitter American fight: The effort by some white descendants of Thomas Jefferson to keep his possible African-American descendants out of family gatherings.
Paula Abeles emailed Politico yesterday to complain that her group had gotten short shrift in a blog item, writing, “I initiated the teleconference with McCain on Saturday and was
solely responsible for the guest list.” Another Clinton backer at the event, Will Bower, confirmed that she was “integral” to assembling the group.
Abeles is best known for having masqueraded as a 67-year-old black woman online in order to argue against Sally Hemings’ African-American descendants being welcome at family gatherings. Abeles said her deception was necessary to make sure family reunions were “calm and
civilized.”
Yeah, because everybody knows those black folk don't know how to behave decently. Just ask Bill O'Reilly.
Holy fucking shit, this woman's a fucktard. And now the stupid, silly, racist bitch is so incensed over her pet candidate losing that she's actively trying to organize crossover voters for McCain? This is behavior seriously unbecoming to a Democrat.
Carpetbagger's report was bad enough, but here comes Ames with the salt:
One of my regular commenters recently noted the upswing in pro-Hillary, anti-Obama rhetoric among WordPress’ politics blogs (thanks for the tip!). That’s a disappointing trend, but the actual sites he pointed to are even more disappointing, ranging from the racist to the delusional. I’ve noted before - just click that little “previous post” button above you - that it’s partly worrying, but mostly confusing, to see so many people turn from the Democrats upon Obama’s nomination. It suggests to me that the Clinton supporters who cling to her candidacy were never really about the issues in the first place.
You're not kidding.
And these fuckwits are the ones whining about misogyny. Apparently, in their world, it's better to be a racist dipshit than a misogynist.
Here's what I don't get. Their meme is, "The evil Democratic party hates on women! Look what they did to Hillary!" It doesn't matter to them that their precious candidate fucked her own chances right up the ass by being a lying, mud-slinging, ruthless politics-as-usual pol: she lost, even if by a whisker, ergo Dems hate women. Fine. Be as pissy as you want. But if you're pissed off at people who, in your view, obviously hate women, then why the fuck are you now supporting a candidate whose party despises women?
Is this either-or? If we can't have a woman as President, we'd prefer to give up our rights to birth control, abortion, and equal opportunity by voting for another fucking Republicon? How fucking stupid can you possibly be?
Are you just that racist? You'd take a white man over a black one any day of the week, no matter how noxious the white boy's politics?
Are you just that infantile, that you'll destroy everybody's happiness (including your own) just because you didn't get your way?
Are you that batshit insane?
I often joke about being a misogynist - yes, I'm a woman and a liberal and so that shouldn't technically be possible, but for fuck's sake, women can act like rampaging idiots sometimes. The women who'd rather vote for McCain than Obama just because Obama beat their precious in a fair fight are going to tip me right over the edge. It won't be a joke anymore. They make me ashamed of my gender.
And as for the men who used to support Hillary and are now engaging in this petulant, destructive bullshit: they're making me ashamed to be a human being. As if the right wing hadn't made me ashamed enough.
It's just this sort of thing that keeps leading me back to the idea that we need a Coalition of the Sane, if it isn't already too late.
ReplyDeleteThe short answer is 'Yes'. They are that insane.
ReplyDeleteMcCain will be the next president, not because the Republicans want him, but because the Democrats don't want Obama. That way Clinton can ride to the rescue in four years and save us from evil.
Suggestion #1 for would-be CotS (Coalition of the Sane) members, until I get InstaGov written or some other method of coalitioning comes along:
ReplyDeletePost a personal position statement somewhere.
Issuepedia is available for this purpose - no cost, no spam, no ads, no fund drives - but anywhere on the web will do, preferably some format where others can comment and you can respond. You can use mine as a model, or even just as a list of issues to riff off of, or you can do it however you want.
Post a link to your statement here and I'll add it to the (very short) list on Issuepedia. (Or you can add it yourself, if you're comfortable editing wiki pages.)
Then encourage others to do likewise.
There are some other things that would be good, but that's probably the most coalition-building thing to be doing at this point, it seems to me: we need to know what we agree on.
Expanding on what Howard said, assuming we're talking about the same thing:
ReplyDeleteIt's not so much that they don't care as it is that what they care about is their own immediate interests, and nothing else.
This is the reason why we seem to have a plague of the stupids lately. It's not because humanity has actually gotten any more stupid (evidence is we're getting smarter, actually), it's because these particular people have figured out how to manipulate our built-in stupidity as a species (which science is carefully designed to work around and cancel out) to their own advantage.
To them, religion (by which I mean primarily centralized, dogma-based belief, aka "faith", where "reason" has to use the servants' entrance) and ignorance (ID/creationism, abstinence-based sex "education", guilt-based moral systems, etc.) are just tools for controlling people -- which explains the sudden resurgence of the most awful, ugly, and ignorant flavors of religion.
They are the people who start wars -- those who actively encouraged 9/11 to happen, then used it as an excuse to invade a country that wasn't involved, then employed the very best in threat-nurturance techniques to keep the more fearful elements of American society stirred up and distracting the grownups. They don't want the wars to end. They know the "terrorists" are hopelessly outnumbered and can't ever "win", but "terror" makes a convenient excuse for putting your rational thinking on hold, and constant fear makes people more controllable.
They're ready to do it again in Iran not in spite of our miserable failure in Iraq, but because of their tremendous success there, from their point of view -- to the point where they're hoping to produce a string of blockbuster sequels throughout the rest of the "Axis of Evil". If it takes "another 9/11" to keep the sheep circled up around the wolves, that's what we'll get.
They are the people who don't want progress, who don't want society to become too happy, prosperous, or (God forbid) rational -- because they would have no special role in such a society, and (worse) might be recognized for the termites they are. (Never mind that a truly benevolent society would treat such people far more humanely than their idea of morality treats everyone else.)
Apparently Obama represents a huge threat to them -- which is about the best endorsement I can think of (that and the fact that they haven't been able to pull any substantial skeletons out of his closet... or, rather, skeletons that any sane, reasonable person would take seriously).
(Reality check: Are we all on the same page here, or do I need to get into the evidence?)
I think some of this anti-Obama stuff coming from Dems might be generational. This doesn't apply to all boomers of course, but if you think about it, people like the Clinton's have been leading the boomer generation for decades now. They've been fighting the "culture wars" against the conservatives for most of their lives, been involved in politics either as activists or legislators since the 70's. After all of that they get a single president (I doubt any boomers would be willing to claim Shrub as one of theirs, and I don't blame them). The WWII generation ran country from the 50's to Bush Senior. And who trounces their second chance for a pres, but a post-boomer who argues for an end to our constant social bickering.
ReplyDeleteI think some Clinton supporters don't want to support Obama because he personally represents to them, not only an end to their social reality, but an end to their political ascendancy.