I’m using Jeff Lieber’s name in the title, or calling him out as some would call it, because one, he basically called out everyone on the site, and two, as a big famous TV producer/writer, he easily meets the site’s definition of a public persona.
First of all, let me say I’ve often liked Jeff Lieber’s diaries. He’s a funny guy. But not yesterday. Yesterday he lashed out at a lot of people who are passionate about changing this country and the world before the Idiot class destroys it. And by Idiot Class I mean people like Hillary Clinton and Obama, most of the people on Wall Street and anyone else who thinks it’s a good idea to inject literally TRILLIONS of gallons of highly toxic water mixture into the ground below our farms, our schools, our communities and our whole fucking country.
Maybe I should call them the Insane Class, because fracking is so utterly and complete moronic that it really crosses over into the insane.
Now, I want to agree with one of the main arguments in Jeff’s diary: You are not going to change the mind of someone who “loves” a political candidate, by attacking that candidate or otherwise. It’s almost certainly not going to happen.
What Jeff didn’t mention, however, is that, if you really love a politician that you’ve never met, and has been incontrovertibly, indisputably caught lying to you on several occasions, then there’s something wrong with you.
Seriously.
A bunch of people fought and died, and worse, actually had to kill people, so that we could be done with monarchs and dictators and blind loyalty to Dear Leaders so that you, the citizen, could rule yourselves.
This isn’t fucking Downton Abbey. Under our system, we’re supposed to expect, even demand that our public servants work for us. And when they fail, no matter how likable their brand is, we’re supposed to call them out on it. We’re supposed to hold them accountable.
Love of a politician is dangerous and, frankly, creepy. Because that kind of devotion transcends rational thought. The whole foundation of our democracy is that we the people are rational beings who can make rational, informed judgments about how we want to live who we want to lead.
And I’m sorry. But love and devotion don’t come into that. In fact, they are in direct contravention to it. And it’s really creepy how much said love and devotion can compel people to do creepy things, like completely reverse themselves on beliefs and positions they’ve held for their entire adult lives, or lie and defend things we don’t even believe. In fact, some of the greatest horrors in human history have resulted from nothing more than the unchecked, undying devotion of a bunch of people to a single political leader.
So it’s true. Nobody’s going to convert the devoted. But is that all who reads this site? I don’t know and neither does Jeff Lieber. (A lot do, of course. At least a few hundred actually recommended a diary yesterday that called them clowns. Go figure.)
But most important, who gives a shit. As I said, if someone “loves” a politician so much that learning that that politician lied to them, or somehow did something really bad, like supported the injection of TRILLIONS of gallons of poisonous water into the ground below our schools and farms, just to get more of a climate changing substance out, then fuck them. We’ll just have to try harder to reach people who still use their brains and have a fucking conscience.
So, as I said, I like Jeff Lieber alright, but, at least outside of this little orange bubble, it was he who was the clown yesterday. Aside from assuming that he knows who reads Daily Kos, and forgetting that there are still people who are rational and actually do give a shit about votes for insane wars and fracking and banksters, but are just uninformed about Hillary Clinton’s real record, it was a silly display for him to try and position himself above the fray, as though his diary was neutral, when he was clearly just regurgitating some of the same old talking points we’ve been hearing for months from Clinton defenders.
#3: Your blog ALREADY EXISTS, in a slightly less verbose form… over at Restate or FreeRepublic.
Go, look… you’ll see it there. The exact same diary has been written by people who don’t believe in global warming and want to elect Ted J. Rubio Trump of Christytown.
This argument tries to say that criticism from progressives is somehow equivalent to criticism from the Right. What an idiotic thing to say.
I have made this request before, and I’m making it again: cite one single instance of someone at Redstate or wherever criticizing Hillary for her ties to Wall Street, her neoliberal trade agenda, or her militant foreign policy positions.
You can’t.
Now, I agree with the general idea that hateful attacks are counter-productive. Calling Hillary names, pretending you have an inside track on her innermost desires and motives, or saying she’s an evil person. All bad. Except when they’re true.
Does Hillary Clinton lie frequently? Yes. And that makes her a liar.
But let’s not kid ourselves here. Lieber was attacking Sanders supporters. Bernie isn’t a liar, he didn’t vote to let a frighteningly stupid bunch of men invade a foreign country, he doesn’t have a record to run from on many different fronts.
So the only attacks I’ve seen on him were lies. There’ve been a lot of arguments that he’s unelectable, won’t get things done, etc etc. But no serious attacks on his record except the gun issue, which I believe is perfectly fair.
There have been many attacks on Hillary though. Attacks on her record, her character, and her very anti-progressive positions on many issues.
And with few exceptions, these have been fair too.
Also, every time I’ve seen a Sanders supporter (or at least someone pretending to be) get really nasty toward Hillary, they’ve been called on it, from Sanders supporters.
My point is that there is an asymmetry here. Like it or not, but Hillary has done a bunch of bad shit. Sanders, quite simply, has not.
Do both sides have a nasty contingent? Yes. I’m pretty nasty myself. I’m 79 years old, I’ve had two strokes, and I’m extremely pissed about the way my Democratic party has turned out. And I’m even more pissed about the way so many have been granted this amazing tool, and you waste it constantly with cat pictures and nonsense when the world is literally in a state of emergency.
Yesterday I got into a spat with a little crowd of people who couldn’t rationally distinguish between a real crisis, the Flint water crisis, and congressional hearing about the crisis.
I said I didn’t much care about congresspeople putting on a show trial for the TV cameras, and over a dozen people either literally equated that with not caring about the actual crisis, or at least pretended to so they could do the whole “shame on you” routine.
I really think though, for most, they literally equated a real emergency, with real people being poisoned, with the TV show about it. And the congressional hearing was another TV show.
How can we reclaim our government, make it work for the people again, hold our leaders accountable, and solve so many critical problems, when people are becoming so irrational? When political choices are made based on emotion and not reason?
I actually read recently, from an old diary about fracking causing earthquakes, a comment where the diarist was accused of promoting conspiracy theories.
Of course, we now know that fracking does cause earthquakes, but even if they didn’t, think about the idiocy of calling it a conspiracy theory to say so. Was this commenter alleging the diarist believed that the frackers were conspiring to cause earthquakes? No,
The commenter just thought that the claim that earthquakes cause fracking sounded CT-ish. No logic. No reason. Just an irrational impression. Ishiness.
This is called thinking with your emotions. And it’s dangerously unintelligent. And it’s what drives most of the political discussion in this country. Appeals to emotion is a form of manipulation. It’s used to get people to not think, but to feel.
Once people stop thinking and rely only on their emotions, they can be persuaded to do a lot of bad things.
The reason why the Dear Leader meme is so controversial is because it hits so dangerously close to home. We will not survive a political system where emotion and irrational impressions reign above reason and evidence.
You want to know what will really make you a clown? Following people without condition, skepticism, or doubt. Only sheep do that. In fact, it’s unfair to clowns. It’s unfair to sheep.
Now, also in my spat yesterday with the usual suspects, I was asked if Elija Cummings was a clown and I said I didn’t know who that was. But the truth is, I’ve actually met the congressman several times.
I literally sat there and stared at his name and didn’t recognize it. I’m getting fucking senile, and it sucks. For that reason, and my almost insufferable disdain for most of what calls itself the Democratic party anymore, I feel I’m not a productive advocate for what I believe in. Honestly, I simply can’t stand most of you little assholes. I’ve never seen a more conniving, manipulative, loathsome nest of vipers in my life. You are not Democrats. You are haters.
In fact, it occurs to me, Jeff Lieber….has he ever written a diary that wasn’t some kind of attack on the people here? SYFPH and all that? Where are all his diaries about poor people or any fucking issue other than what a bunch of whiners people around here are for not kissing the Democratic leaderships ass.
Anyway, this isn’t a so-called GBCW diary. But I’ve made it easy enough for whoever wants to to ban me now. You’d probably be doing me a favor.
And if not, here’s thias:
