Killer of Sacred Cows
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Call to Action
This November 7, vote EVERY Republican out of office.
Anti-Republican soundbites.
Remember and remind, constantly:
National Security:
- Torture of prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
- Government-sponsored refusal to abide by the Geneva Conventions - creating dangers for our servicemen and -women overseas.
- Withdrawal of federal funds for terrorism preparation and defense of New York City.
- Osama still on the loose.
- The Valerie Plame scandal. Remember that? Rove leaking her name because her husband had pissed off the Bushies?
Military:
- An estimated 3,000 American military deaths and 650,000 Iraqi civilian deaths since the start of Bush's war.
- Inadequate armor, troop mustering, and weaponry for a successful Iraqi campaign.
- Afghanistan. Remember Afghanistan?
Legal/Constitutional:
- Continued erosion of our freedoms, to wit:
* The Patriot Act.
* The Real ID Act.
* The Military Commissions Act.
* Elimination of the rights of habeas corpus, the right to a fair trial, and privacy.
* Internet data trawling of regular citizens to find supposed terrorists.
* The suborning of the press to corporate and governmental interests.
* The nominations and confirmations of two of the worst right-wing reactionaries to sit on the Supreme Court since Scalia was put there.
* Illegal wiretapping.
* Refusal by the Bush Adminstration to abide by court rulings which ruled its actions unconstitutional and illegal.
Fiscal:
- A bigger deficit than we've ever had in our nation's history.
- More pork-barreling than even the Democrats at their worst achieved.
- No-bid contracts for Halliburton and other major defense and energy contractors.
- Tax cuts for the filthy rich and for corporations while the American middle class and working poor have to pay more in taxes every month.
Ethical:
- Suspected and in some cases proven vote fraud and disenfranchising of minority voters.
- Republicans baldly lying to their constitutencies about:
* GOP tolerance of gays when the gays toe the GOP line.
* GOP adherence to so-called Christian values.
* GOP adherence to traditional conservative fiscal values.
- Tom DeLay.
- Mark Foley.
- Robert Ney.
- Abramhoff.
- Karl Rove - Valerie Plame.
You should be sickened, if you're an American citizen. You should be reminding your fellow citizens of these talking points and scandals every chance you get. Remind them that the GOP are the party of the elites, for the elites, by the elites, and they don't really give a ripe fuck about anyone who isn't an elite.
Drag everyone in your neighborhood to the ballot box on November 7th. Print this out and put it in their hand and make them read it as they walk or ride with you. Get the damn vote out, folks. This is not America anymore, but we can take it back - if we work hard enough and push hard enough and throw the bastards out. ¶ 10/19/2006 01:26:00 AM 0 comments
Anti-Republican soundbites.
Remember and remind, constantly:
National Security:
- Torture of prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
- Government-sponsored refusal to abide by the Geneva Conventions - creating dangers for our servicemen and -women overseas.
- Withdrawal of federal funds for terrorism preparation and defense of New York City.
- Osama still on the loose.
- The Valerie Plame scandal. Remember that? Rove leaking her name because her husband had pissed off the Bushies?
Military:
- An estimated 3,000 American military deaths and 650,000 Iraqi civilian deaths since the start of Bush's war.
- Inadequate armor, troop mustering, and weaponry for a successful Iraqi campaign.
- Afghanistan. Remember Afghanistan?
Legal/Constitutional:
- Continued erosion of our freedoms, to wit:
* The Patriot Act.
* The Real ID Act.
* The Military Commissions Act.
* Elimination of the rights of habeas corpus, the right to a fair trial, and privacy.
* Internet data trawling of regular citizens to find supposed terrorists.
* The suborning of the press to corporate and governmental interests.
* The nominations and confirmations of two of the worst right-wing reactionaries to sit on the Supreme Court since Scalia was put there.
* Illegal wiretapping.
* Refusal by the Bush Adminstration to abide by court rulings which ruled its actions unconstitutional and illegal.
Fiscal:
- A bigger deficit than we've ever had in our nation's history.
- More pork-barreling than even the Democrats at their worst achieved.
- No-bid contracts for Halliburton and other major defense and energy contractors.
- Tax cuts for the filthy rich and for corporations while the American middle class and working poor have to pay more in taxes every month.
Ethical:
- Suspected and in some cases proven vote fraud and disenfranchising of minority voters.
- Republicans baldly lying to their constitutencies about:
* GOP tolerance of gays when the gays toe the GOP line.
* GOP adherence to so-called Christian values.
* GOP adherence to traditional conservative fiscal values.
- Tom DeLay.
- Mark Foley.
- Robert Ney.
- Abramhoff.
- Karl Rove - Valerie Plame.
You should be sickened, if you're an American citizen. You should be reminding your fellow citizens of these talking points and scandals every chance you get. Remind them that the GOP are the party of the elites, for the elites, by the elites, and they don't really give a ripe fuck about anyone who isn't an elite.
Drag everyone in your neighborhood to the ballot box on November 7th. Print this out and put it in their hand and make them read it as they walk or ride with you. Get the damn vote out, folks. This is not America anymore, but we can take it back - if we work hard enough and push hard enough and throw the bastards out. ¶ 10/19/2006 01:26:00 AM 0 comments
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Is Reason a Lost Cause?
(Crossposted to My Left Wing and - tomorrow - to Daily Kos.)
One of the recurring themes I find throughout the liberal blogosphere is the ongoing difficulty concerning attempts to reason with the common or garden neoconservative. Things that seem so clear-cut and obvious to those of us on the left are met with reactions ranging from curt dismissal, to snide mockery, to impassioned yet circular reasoning, to outright fury, when presented to neoconservatives. In discussions with neocons, logic and reason continually go by the boards, to be replaced with ideological ranting and religious self-righteousness. It leaves us liberal folks scratching our heads in puzzlement and trying to figure out why their reaction is so strong and so negative to the reasonable, factual statements we make.
Why is reasoning and discussion with neoconservatives so impossible? Why does it continually devolve into the leaps of logic and ad hominem attacks that we're all far too familiar with? The problem is, unfortunately, endemic to neoconservatism. Sadly, the very elements which make up a reasoned and honest debate are not just lacking in neoconservative thought, they are outright demonized and actively rejected by neocons. Things that liberals take for granted, such as openness, honesty, fact-based thinking, the ability to talk about abstract concepts, to stay with one topic until agreement or compromise has been reached, and - perhaps most importantly - to see the connections and similarities and patterns in events and actions: these are central necessities to debate and reason, and they are actively rejected by most, if not all, neoconservatives.
Honesty and Openness
As thereisnospoon has pointed out here:
That's the cornerstone of the issue. Without openness and honesty, real debate and actual reasoning are impossible. As long as the idea is to keep up appearances, honesty has no place in the discussion.
Fact-Based Thinking
Here's a great divide between the reality-based community and the ideology/faith-based one: If it doesn't fit into your belief system, discard it - the mantra of those who think that a book or a set of economic ideals (neither of which stand up to reasoned scrutiny) is the best guide to living one's life. Challenging the basis of the faith (or ideology) causes neoconservatives such intense cognitive dissonance that they attack the person or situation who provoked it, the same way that a dog will attack a veterinarian who is trying to take a foreign object out of a wound in its leg. They literally can't admit that their ideas might be wrong or flawed (appearances, appearances!); doing that would be akin to a child having to admit that his father, while a very loving man, also had multiple affairs and hurt his wife a lot by doing so. It's too hard to deal with and too scary for them to handle.
Abstractions
Those of us in the reality-based community have no choice but to understand and use abstractions; they're part of real life. Things are never wholly good or wholly bad, and most of us reality-based folks can admit to flaws in our leaders and beliefs while still finding those leaders and beliefs functional and essentially good. Those in the faith-based community can't deal with the cognitive dissonance that such abstractions present to them; their minds are so limited - from years of repetitive, nonreasoning belief or ideology - that they can't deal with a world whose situations come in many shades of grey, instead of black-and-white, clearly cut, easily discernible, concrete, dichotomous choices. Plainly put, logic and reasoning don't work with people who can't think in abstract concepts. I have never yet known a neoconservative who can think in anything but concrete concepts. Implications and long-term consequences are so far off their radar that they might as well be nonexistent.
Sticking With The Topic
For a liberal, the point of debate and reason is to come to an agreement or a compromise - to find the win-win situation. For a neoconservative, the point of argument is to win. As a result, the two groups are coming at this with opposing goals.
This is why neoconservatives, by and large, refuse to stick to the topic at hand. In fact, they appear incapable of it. To them, adding in more and more ammunition/evidence/"evidence," and jumping from point to point in a verbal (and often self-contradictory) blitzkrieg, is perfectly okay, because it puts their opponent off-balance, which to them means that they've won. Winning is the important thing - it doesn't matter if they're right as long as they can shut you up!
Connections
In the rare event that you can get a neoconservative to stick to one topic and actually argue it out with you, they will invariably insist that whatever you're talking about is simply an isolated case. No matter how many "isolated cases" you can present them with, they will insist that there's no connection - because to them, there isn't. If the "isolated cases" are not identical down to the smallest detail particular, then there's nothing to say. "Mark Foley's pedophilia is minor! Clinton having an affair is major! There's no similarity there! Foley was just misguided!"
Seeing connections you point out is something they can't or won't do. There are no connections between one event and another for neoconservatives, unless they're connections that they themselves have come up with, which goes back to their goal of "winning." They refuse to acknowledge their opponent's points, because anything which weakens their argument causes them too much cognitive dissonance.
This is how neoconservatives operate in such comfortable oblivion, by refusing to see connections and patterns that are obvious to the rest of us.
Is There A Solution?
Obviously, education is key. Education beyond high school invariably forces students to look at abstractions and deal with them. It's why I'm such a firm advocate of it. Get 'em while they're young, while they can still handle the transition. It's one of the a major reasons why neoconservative parents are afraid of sending their kids to university; being at university almost invariably makes the kids start questioning the faith-based community and opting (after some difficulty) for the reality-based one.
In a conversation with AaronBa on DailyKos (where much of this diary sprang from), he said:
That is both the heart of, and a possible key to solving, the problem. Yes, they may know it. but they actively refuse to pay attention to that knowledge. To do so would destroy them utterly, and they have no concept of how to rebuild from that kind of destruction. The fact that rebuilding is not only possible but damn near inevitable escapes them. In their ossified minds, change is The Worst Thing In The World - which is why the people currently in office have so little trouble manipulating them.
These fears of change include the fear of what it means for them to be wrong. Nobody likes having made mistakes, but neoconservatives are pathologically afraid of it, and will go to great lengths to avoid either admitting they made a mistake or having it noticed by others. The anger and despair of Naniboujou's "An Open Letter To My Father underscores this particular point. The loyalty of a neoconservative follower is hard to derail, and the fallout often is not pretty or easy to cope with - because fear is pernicious and hard to shake. And when their fear-based loyalty causes them to make the serious mistake of supporting someone like Bush 43 and the neoconservatives who occupy the halls of Congress, the fallout increases by several orders of magnitude.
So what's the key, then? I think it's fairly obvious.
In order to reason with neoconservatives, we will first have to find ways to reduce their fears and help them realize what they already know - and help them cope with it, as they come to realize that what they already know is not a threat but a promise, a promise of a happier, more fulfilling, calmer life for them, infinitely preferable to the constant fear that currently has them imprisoned. Until we can do that, our efforts at reason may be a pointless throwing of our good seeds upon hardened clay, instead of fertile soil. ¶ 10/01/2006 07:56:00 PM 0 comments
One of the recurring themes I find throughout the liberal blogosphere is the ongoing difficulty concerning attempts to reason with the common or garden neoconservative. Things that seem so clear-cut and obvious to those of us on the left are met with reactions ranging from curt dismissal, to snide mockery, to impassioned yet circular reasoning, to outright fury, when presented to neoconservatives. In discussions with neocons, logic and reason continually go by the boards, to be replaced with ideological ranting and religious self-righteousness. It leaves us liberal folks scratching our heads in puzzlement and trying to figure out why their reaction is so strong and so negative to the reasonable, factual statements we make.
Why is reasoning and discussion with neoconservatives so impossible? Why does it continually devolve into the leaps of logic and ad hominem attacks that we're all far too familiar with? The problem is, unfortunately, endemic to neoconservatism. Sadly, the very elements which make up a reasoned and honest debate are not just lacking in neoconservative thought, they are outright demonized and actively rejected by neocons. Things that liberals take for granted, such as openness, honesty, fact-based thinking, the ability to talk about abstract concepts, to stay with one topic until agreement or compromise has been reached, and - perhaps most importantly - to see the connections and similarities and patterns in events and actions: these are central necessities to debate and reason, and they are actively rejected by most, if not all, neoconservatives.
Honesty and Openness
As thereisnospoon has pointed out here:
To a Conservative, APPEARANCES are everything--SUBSTANCE is nothing.
Clinton's great crime, therefore, was NOT having an affair with an intern. To err is human. His crime was getting CAUGHT.
Men having sex with men isn't the problem--being OPEN about having sex with men is the problem. "Do it in your bedroom," they say, "but don't rub it in my face."
That's the cornerstone of the issue. Without openness and honesty, real debate and actual reasoning are impossible. As long as the idea is to keep up appearances, honesty has no place in the discussion.
Fact-Based Thinking
Here's a great divide between the reality-based community and the ideology/faith-based one: If it doesn't fit into your belief system, discard it - the mantra of those who think that a book or a set of economic ideals (neither of which stand up to reasoned scrutiny) is the best guide to living one's life. Challenging the basis of the faith (or ideology) causes neoconservatives such intense cognitive dissonance that they attack the person or situation who provoked it, the same way that a dog will attack a veterinarian who is trying to take a foreign object out of a wound in its leg. They literally can't admit that their ideas might be wrong or flawed (appearances, appearances!); doing that would be akin to a child having to admit that his father, while a very loving man, also had multiple affairs and hurt his wife a lot by doing so. It's too hard to deal with and too scary for them to handle.
Abstractions
Those of us in the reality-based community have no choice but to understand and use abstractions; they're part of real life. Things are never wholly good or wholly bad, and most of us reality-based folks can admit to flaws in our leaders and beliefs while still finding those leaders and beliefs functional and essentially good. Those in the faith-based community can't deal with the cognitive dissonance that such abstractions present to them; their minds are so limited - from years of repetitive, nonreasoning belief or ideology - that they can't deal with a world whose situations come in many shades of grey, instead of black-and-white, clearly cut, easily discernible, concrete, dichotomous choices. Plainly put, logic and reasoning don't work with people who can't think in abstract concepts. I have never yet known a neoconservative who can think in anything but concrete concepts. Implications and long-term consequences are so far off their radar that they might as well be nonexistent.
Sticking With The Topic
For a liberal, the point of debate and reason is to come to an agreement or a compromise - to find the win-win situation. For a neoconservative, the point of argument is to win. As a result, the two groups are coming at this with opposing goals.
This is why neoconservatives, by and large, refuse to stick to the topic at hand. In fact, they appear incapable of it. To them, adding in more and more ammunition/evidence/"evidence," and jumping from point to point in a verbal (and often self-contradictory) blitzkrieg, is perfectly okay, because it puts their opponent off-balance, which to them means that they've won. Winning is the important thing - it doesn't matter if they're right as long as they can shut you up!
Connections
In the rare event that you can get a neoconservative to stick to one topic and actually argue it out with you, they will invariably insist that whatever you're talking about is simply an isolated case. No matter how many "isolated cases" you can present them with, they will insist that there's no connection - because to them, there isn't. If the "isolated cases" are not identical down to the smallest detail particular, then there's nothing to say. "Mark Foley's pedophilia is minor! Clinton having an affair is major! There's no similarity there! Foley was just misguided!"
Seeing connections you point out is something they can't or won't do. There are no connections between one event and another for neoconservatives, unless they're connections that they themselves have come up with, which goes back to their goal of "winning." They refuse to acknowledge their opponent's points, because anything which weakens their argument causes them too much cognitive dissonance.
This is how neoconservatives operate in such comfortable oblivion, by refusing to see connections and patterns that are obvious to the rest of us.
Is There A Solution?
Obviously, education is key. Education beyond high school invariably forces students to look at abstractions and deal with them. It's why I'm such a firm advocate of it. Get 'em while they're young, while they can still handle the transition. It's one of the a major reasons why neoconservative parents are afraid of sending their kids to university; being at university almost invariably makes the kids start questioning the faith-based community and opting (after some difficulty) for the reality-based one.
In a conversation with AaronBa on DailyKos (where much of this diary sprang from), he said:
[E]ven the neocons scramble to send their kids to Harvard, Haverford, and all the other "name" schools[...]
In their hearts of hearts, they know that the education at those places is better than at, say, Bob Jones University.
In their hearts of hearts, they know that what they spout each day is nonsense.
That is both the heart of, and a possible key to solving, the problem. Yes, they may know it. but they actively refuse to pay attention to that knowledge. To do so would destroy them utterly, and they have no concept of how to rebuild from that kind of destruction. The fact that rebuilding is not only possible but damn near inevitable escapes them. In their ossified minds, change is The Worst Thing In The World - which is why the people currently in office have so little trouble manipulating them.
These fears of change include the fear of what it means for them to be wrong. Nobody likes having made mistakes, but neoconservatives are pathologically afraid of it, and will go to great lengths to avoid either admitting they made a mistake or having it noticed by others. The anger and despair of Naniboujou's "An Open Letter To My Father underscores this particular point. The loyalty of a neoconservative follower is hard to derail, and the fallout often is not pretty or easy to cope with - because fear is pernicious and hard to shake. And when their fear-based loyalty causes them to make the serious mistake of supporting someone like Bush 43 and the neoconservatives who occupy the halls of Congress, the fallout increases by several orders of magnitude.
So what's the key, then? I think it's fairly obvious.
In order to reason with neoconservatives, we will first have to find ways to reduce their fears and help them realize what they already know - and help them cope with it, as they come to realize that what they already know is not a threat but a promise, a promise of a happier, more fulfilling, calmer life for them, infinitely preferable to the constant fear that currently has them imprisoned. Until we can do that, our efforts at reason may be a pointless throwing of our good seeds upon hardened clay, instead of fertile soil. ¶ 10/01/2006 07:56:00 PM 0 comments
Found elsewhere. Pass it on.
GOP in 1950: "Fear! There are Communists in the US and they will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
GOP in 1960: "Fear! Blacks want equal rights and they will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
GOP in 1970: "Fear! Hippies want to stop the war and they will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
GOP in 1982: "Fear! Gay People are coming out of the closet and have disease and they will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
GOP in 1990: "Fear! Democrats are spending too much money and they will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
GOP in 1998: "Fear! Democrats are trying to wag the dog with some Terrorism macguffin and they will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
GOP in 2002: "Fear! Terrorists have been coddled by Democrats and they will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
GOP in 2004: "Fear! Gay People want equal rights and they will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
GOP in 2006: "Fear! If we don't get rid of everybody's rights, Democrats and Terrorists will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Republican Party: scaring you shitless since 1950. So Vote Republican, because fear and wrong predictions should run your life. ¶ 10/01/2006 10:41:00 AM 0 comments
GOP in 1960: "Fear! Blacks want equal rights and they will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
GOP in 1970: "Fear! Hippies want to stop the war and they will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
GOP in 1982: "Fear! Gay People are coming out of the closet and have disease and they will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
GOP in 1990: "Fear! Democrats are spending too much money and they will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
GOP in 1998: "Fear! Democrats are trying to wag the dog with some Terrorism macguffin and they will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
GOP in 2002: "Fear! Terrorists have been coddled by Democrats and they will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
GOP in 2004: "Fear! Gay People want equal rights and they will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
GOP in 2006: "Fear! If we don't get rid of everybody's rights, Democrats and Terrorists will Wreck Our Way Of Life!"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Republican Party: scaring you shitless since 1950. So Vote Republican, because fear and wrong predictions should run your life. ¶ 10/01/2006 10:41:00 AM 0 comments
