I agree, but you really can't blame him. The typical purveyors of his political viewpoint prefer that people know as little as possible. They throw around buzzwords that are sure to get their people fired up, but none of it is meant to actually inform people. I think this thread has been an excellent demonstration of that...Originally Posted by raviy
And before I continue, I must ask the obvious. Was this entire thread really based on a mind-numbingly misinformed editorial in a right-wing rag? Ugh...
Agreed. Bush is in the authoritarian camp, and Palin is just plain crazy... Unfortunately, she and a few others have managed to bring together previously scattered elements of our society that we should probably have kept in hiding, or at least we'll find that out in retrospect. I'm fairly confident we will never see a president Palin, though. As much as the teabaggers want to think otherwise, the rest of the country is just not as crazy as them. What's giving them high hopes right now is that teabagger candidates for office are having success in Republican primaries. Since their constituencies pull the extreme elements from the right, if they can convince enough well-meaning but misinformed registered Republicans to join their side, they can win a primary.
What they will find in the general election, however, is that political independents, registered Democrats and non-crazy Republicans outnumber teabaggers by a large margin, and those groups will not vote for an unhinged teabagger... We already have seen evidence of this in a few special elections where a teabagger has gone up against a Democrat. For example, teabagger Doug Hoffman ran off the Republican candidate in the NY-23 election after endorsements from Palin and the like, yet instead of winning an easily winnable district for Republicans, Bill Owens is now the first Democrat to represent NY-23 in over 100 years. You keep talking about November, but I think you will be surprised when America actually goes to the polls. Teabaggers aren't electable, the more they talk, the more that's obvious...
Yay, someone who gets it! Of course that must mean you're not American... :p Anyway, your depiction of our left and right is spot on, and the situation doesn't make any damn sense to me. I would think that libertarians would have more in common with us progressives, yet those guys usually vote with the Republicans. I think they're brought in by all the small government talk and don't actually realize that Republican presidents, especially the last few, have grown government more than any Democrat could ever get away with.
But all that just goes right back to the first point, keep them as uninformed as possible, and it's right here on display. Obama created $12 trillion in debt, Reagan ended the cold war, Obama is a radical progressive, Obama has a socialist agenda, Bush's wars somehow are "military aid," Europe (the battleground for 2 world wars, among many others) doesn't understand the concept of fighting for its freedom, America has a strong (and by inference, superior) 'moral foundation,' socialism = government control by elites, (that's oligarchy, btw..) Obama is a wimp, (assuming the usual, that he's weak on foreign policy and national security) the media is a leftist/liberal/progressive propaganda machine, everything good since Bush left office is because of Bush, everything bad since Obama took over is Obama's fault, even making the leap that socialism is collapsing Europe as opposed to our parasitic "too big to fail" investment banks meddling in their (ahem, Greece) finances. And that's just in one thread!
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