Daily Kos Week in Review: On That Day
Politics didn't change on 9/11. It paused, then, little by little, resumed as before: increasingly polarized and venomous, a trend well underway even at the time of the first, failed attack on the World Trade Center in early 1993. These days, the sort of invective on display below (especially from agnostic, Hunter, and joelgp) is, sad to say, common.
As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym.
Bill in Portland Maine: 9/11 united America, then divided it
...Sunday is the tenth anniversary of the attacks of 9/11. I don't feel the need, really, to go into how I reacted on that day---the feelings, as they say, were pretty mutual among us all, so you can probably make a good guess. But eventually Americans seemed to diverge---as we so often do---on two paths. The right-wing path led toward fear and loathing of Muslims generally. The left-wing path, as usual, led to a fact-based, clear-eyed, and compassionate view of the situation...
Agnostic: 9/11 TV specials will drive right-wingers to murder
...Instead of being patriotic, instead of reminding us of our loss (as if we forgot or can ignore it), this kind of overdone, faux Patriotic display makes us weaker and more vulnerable. It teaches future terrorists that we are easily deluded and confused, that we can be easily scared with the slightest of threats, and that we are weak, ineffective, and impotent as a nation.
Even worse, it will drive the idiots among us, the racists, the anti-Muslim Christian cultists and functionally illiterate, gun toting TeaBaggers into acts of domestic violence, simply because their targets have darker skin, speak with a mid eastern accent, and cherish their god with a different name. Too many brews, too little brains, and an IHOP in Atlanta can soon be the site of death, even against loyal, patriotic Arab-Americans. It has happened before. It will happen again...
Hunter: Perry's like Dubya, only dumber and meaner
...Rick Perry is the spitting image of George W. Bush, but with all remaining nuance stripped out. He is the Bush id, with any pretenses at compassion or sincerity stripped away, leaving just the dumb, mean-spirited parts.
I suspect that will have more appeal to conservative die-hards than pundits are currently willing to admit. There is a hunger for mean, among the conservative base, and a hunger for punishing the nebulous other, whether that means the unemployed, the poor, the sick, the old, union workers, public sector workers, immigrants, disaster victims, Muslims, or anyone else. Rick Perry may suit them in a way that a Bachmann, Santorum, or Cain could not. He is just as fringe as any of those tea party favorites, but he has something each of them lacks: He looks like a Republican president. Specifically, he looks like their most recent Republican president...
MinistryOfTruth: The GOP's 2,000-year-old role model
...[A]s far as healing the sick or feeding the poor or loving thy neighbor, you know, the kind of stuff Jesus talked about all the time, well, Republicans aren't having any of that. No, the real question Republicans seem to ask themselves in their quest to find the cruelest policies and the cruelest candidate for President possible is "What would Pontius Pilate do?"...
MinistryOfTruth: The right hates the free market
...Conservatives hate democracy...because rich people hate the idea that the vast majority of citizens who "surround them" might be able to govern their reckless actions or force them to not rob us or contribute anything to society, Conservatives prefer a system where only the rich have power and choice comes down to which one you prefer, crumbs or nothing, and if the rich could get rid of water and replace it with Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator they would, because water is cutting into Brawndo's profits...
joelgp: The Tea Party are successors to the Confederacy
...The fact that a black man is actually in the white house is driving them nearly insane. So they celebrate when a Joe Wilson says ”you lie.” They feel empowered when Rush Limbaugh sings “Barack the magic negro.” They celebrate Boehner for his pettiness in making the president wait a day to give a speech...
...[T]his is not about “conservative” policy -- never has been, never will be—this is about hate...
...[T]hey’ve always been willing to destroy America to have their way. They literally burned America over slavery and assassinated Abe Lincoln, JFK, Robert Kennedy and MLK to maintain the old southern way...
- Tom Johnson's blog
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Comments
Escaped mental patients.
Submitted by rbosque on Mon, 09/12/2011 - 2:20am.
Escaped mental patients.
kOS
Submitted by Andrew H. on Mon, 09/12/2011 - 4:02am.
One would think that living hateful with a distorted view of reality would become overly tiring, that eventually most would come to see their fictional state as being immensely wasteful for their thought processes, but no. People who post such inane nonsense live in a squalor of mind and are too lazy to escape.
To invest in the lie, to work on their own lies, is a full time challenge going nowhere.
The so-called mainstream media is the propaganda arm of the criminal DNC.
Little Olbermanns
Submitted by Fenwick on Mon, 09/12/2011 - 6:41am.
They are all ranting "Little Olbermanns" who have become poisoned by the vitriol of their own echo chambers. I work with a generally nice guy who, when the issue turns to politics, morphs into a frothing, bulging-eyed monster who cannot carry on a calm debate. It reminds me of the scene in the Lord of the Rings (Fellowship) when Bilbo Baggins briefly morphs into a demon-like version of himself.
You can tell joelgp learned
Submitted by LAM SON 719 on Mon, 09/12/2011 - 5:54am.
You can tell joelgp learned history in a public school, what a retard.
they get to live and speak that way
Submitted by dmacleo on Mon, 09/12/2011 - 7:15am.
only because many of us vets made sure they can.
petulant little children.
Hah!
Submitted by ant on Mon, 09/12/2011 - 11:42am.
.
Who are "they"?
Submitted by Schofield Kid on Mon, 09/12/2011 - 12:47pm.
...[T]hey’ve always been willing to destroy America to have their way. They literally burned America over slavery and assassinated Abe Lincoln, JFK, Robert Kennedy and MLK to maintain the old southern way...
You mean the party specifically established to stop the spread of slavery? Lincoln was killed by a fervent democrat supporter of the south and slavery, JFK was killed by a communist, RFK by a muslim. As for MLK, a republican killed by a racist ahole. Not sure who the perceived "they" who support these acts but it certainly isn't republicans or conservatives. This is absolutely delusional rewriting of history.
You're missing the big picture, Kid!
Submitted by LinTaylor on Mon, 09/12/2011 - 1:48pm.
Obviously you just don't understand reality the way our KOStipated friends do. Conservatism is a disease of the mind like rabies that makes people abandon such rational ideas as distribution of wealth and white guilt and pursue crazy ideas like individual merit and self-sufficiency. Just like how all us kooky Conservatives are trying to find a cure for homosexuality and scientists, the brave and daring Kosmonauts are working day and night to find a cure for this horrible disease and get everyone back to normal, so they can start hating America like any good American should.
Seriously Kid, get with the program. :P
LOL on the joelgp
Submitted by Quasi-socialist on Mon, 09/12/2011 - 1:51pm.
For him association becomes identity, apparently. He's working off this summary of Thomas Hayden's The Dixiecrats and Changing Southern Power, and for all that I can see, he doesn't reference the paper any wider than this summary at the "San Fransisco Freedom School".
It's amazing how much faith libs put into their sources! The first note begins thusly:
How were the Republicans involved in opposing Roosevelt from affecting the Democratic "party and its policies"??!!
Were they running planks through the Senate??!! Either Hayden botched this or the note-taker did. It's clear that Dixiecrats opposed Roosevelt's efforts within the party , but the Republicans got involved in opposing not just changes in the party planks--which are easily the prerogative of the party leadership--but changing the Democratic plank that "There ought to be a law..." into actual law.
This gall to hold political opposition is what joelpg calls "Their assault on Franklin Roosevelt". Now, the Dixiecrats aren't historically right, but they are within their rights to vie for control of the party direction. The Dixiecrats were created by the Southern assent to the New Deal and other economic intervention, especially since their was no direct contest to Jim Crow laws.
However, regardless of how bad the source is, Joel is even worse by ignoring key distinctions that even it made. The notes indicate that it was a coalition of separate entities--by citing that after the 1948 elections, the Dixiecrats and North Democrats "re-united against the possibility of Republican control of Congress".
However, understanding that the conservatism of the Tea Party is incontestable and how it relates to tax-and-spend Dixiecrats less clear the transition is seamless when Joel says "The tea party, (formerly known as the Dixiecrats)". After all the creator the "Great Society" programs comes straight out of the ranks of the Dixiecrats! But apparently not a "strong liberal president"
The one similarity that I find between FDR's opposition in a coalition of the Dixiecrats and Republicans is that both could have been a response to overreach . FDR threatened to stack the Supreme court, by amending the Constitution to the point where he, as sitting president, could appoint a judge to counterbalance the each judge who had the temerity to find his social programs "Unconstitutional".
It's funny how when liberalism is the goal, their champion is not the Supreme Court's opposition to overreach, and not the review process possibly held up by an opposing coalition in the legislature, but the guy that wants to ram it all through because "it's a good idea".