General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsUGH! my Iraq vet cousin is turning into a Teabagger.
I posted this toon on Facebook:
and my cousin responded by saying:
He's also become a birther. And he voted for Obama in 2008.
MADem
(135,425 posts)He likely sees himself as a liberator and someone bringing democracy to the Middle East.
No good will come from continuing to confront him.
Gently remind him that the VA is so much better than it was a scant five years ago because Obama put Rick Shinseki in charge of it, and then leave it at that.
You'll get nowhere trying to beat him down with a "babykiller" type of argument, and that cartoon is two steps from that. He sees representations of soldiers in that cartoon, and he's not taking the "instrument of foreign policy" point--he thinks you are accusing him of murdering that guy on the ground and threatening that guy with the muzzle of the weapon in his face.
coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)Middle East." But certainly not as a racist ('savages').
ProudToBeBlueInRhody
(16,399 posts)His bigoted comments aside, you don't kind of see why he might have taken offense?
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)I thought that the soldiers in the toon where metaphorical for the US government would be understood.
Rittermeister
(170 posts)"When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I dont care if they are shot themselves."
Mc Mike
(9,114 posts)Last edited Tue Apr 24, 2012, 09:02 AM - Edit history (1)
with your sentiment.
The pro-war draft-dodging repugs are 1%ers, and use the poorest people in our country for cannon fodder, to make obscene profits for Halliburton, Dyncorp, Carlyle, Exxon, Blackwater, Custer Battles. A ton of our military personnel used enlistment to escape dead-end extreme poverty, urban and rural. They didn't sign up to kill other human beings in our first preemptive war (of the 20th century).
L'il bush pushed the 'anti war means anti troop' lie, when he started this, the flip side of that for pro-peace people like us to say 'pro troop means pro war'.
redgreenandblue
(2,088 posts)he'll eventually have to come to terms with the fact that the war he participated in was a load of horseshit. The sooner he grows out of the "rah rah" stage the better. There are plenty of mature veterans who have a similar opinion of the war as is expressed in the cartoon.
The cartoon may have just as well been created by someone from Iraq. Would you deny someone who was an actual target of American aggression the right to express themselves in such a way, lest it offend the sensitivities of someone who willingly or unwillingly participated in this aggression? That would be classic "American exceptionalism".
dkf
(37,305 posts)Think of how it looks from your cousin's perspective. He paid a great price no doubt.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)he was a reasonable guy before he was sent to Iraq, he came back a conspiracy nut.
ProudToBeBlueInRhody
(16,399 posts).....but even a "reasonable" vet has a right to tell you to pound fucking sand after he's been called a murderer and an extortionist.
dkf
(37,305 posts)I hate that stupid war. Hate it hate it hate it.
redgreenandblue
(2,088 posts)In fact, I was called a anti-American traitor by people like him when the war started and I dared to suggest that it probably wasn't such a good idea.
dkf
(37,305 posts)Centrifuges.
He looked at me like I had two heads.
southernyankeebelle
(11,304 posts)Brainwashing.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)second, the evidence that Exxon and Shell and the rest did take the oil is not that easy to prove. But I know people who saw it happen. That said WE DID NOT TAKE IT... EXXON AND SHELL DID. This is an important but critical distinction.
But that toon, in very bad taste.
And I say it as somebody who knows folks who know who took that oil.
Oh and to the price being lower, MOST americans really do not understand the GOVERNMENT can do buckus unless we start hitting on the damn speculators. Yes, by PURE law of supply and demand it SHOULD be lower.
zappaman
(20,606 posts)...But I know people who saw it happen."
Really?
You know people who saw it happen?
Uh huh.
I'm sure you do.
Why have you not written an article about this for your paper.
Could win the Pulitzer.
Be careful with them assertions, they may trip you over.
ellisonz
(27,711 posts)Needless to to say, the dedication should probably be:
[sucking sound]
Plainview: I drink it up!
Eli Sunday: Don't bully me, Daniel!
[Daniel roars and throws Eli across the room]
Plainview: Did you think your song and dance and your superstition would help you, Eli? I am the Third Revelation! I am who the Lord has chosen!
Speck Tater
(10,618 posts)We liberals offer them nothing comparable. When people feel like they are adrift in a sea of confusion they need a simple, unambiguous, easy to understand story that makes them feel like they understand the world again. We could be offering that to the masses, but we don't. Liberals are just incredibly stupid that way. We let the conservative idiots define the terms, frame the debate, create the myths and stories, and dictate what the world thinks that liberals believe.
markpkessinger
(8,395 posts)... how you think we liberals can provide "a simple, unambiguous, easy to understand story that makes them feel like they understand the world again." I mean, I agree that we need to be much more aggressive in defining terms and framing the debate, but I just don't really see how we can present our message -- which is, almost by definition, one that deals in complexities -- in the same kind of sound-byte sized morsels that have the kind of visceral appeal that the right's talking points typically have and still be honest about what we are proposing.
Here's an example of what I mean...
Try explaining to one of these fearful, confused types, who has probably never even had a college level economics course, why austerity is the wrong course of action to take in the current downturn. These folks experience is with household budgeting or in some instances, business budgeting, both of which are fairly easy to understand. Intuitively for them, based on their experience, when money is tight, one tightens the belt and cuts back on spending. Indeed, that homespun economic "sense" approaches the status of being almost a law in the economic universe they know. They know it on a really basic, gut level (notwithstanding the fact that, as has been said, "the gut is a moron" . They understand there is a major economic downturn, and they understand that tax revenues have fallen as a result. They hear about deficits and the only basis for comparison they have (and which the right drives home every chance it gets) is to their credit card. The problem you run into is that before you can even begin to get them to understand how a government stimulus might help, you first have to get them to understand why a national economy is not at all the same thing as a household or business budget. Then, of course, they'll hear the right wing using Greece as an object lesson, and you have to try to explain the difference between a country that borrows in its own currency versus a country that borrows in an international currency not its own. There's nothing simple about all this, yet it is critical to the kind of preliminary understanding macro-economics necessary to overcome the moronic gut. I just don't see how you get around that.
The GOP can do it because they are willing to reduce every issue to a kind of moralistic dualism, regardless of (and in order to further) the intellectual violence on whatever the issue may be. My point is that understanding the liberal/progressive position on much of anything absolutely demands a sophisticated, complex understanding of whatever that issue happens to be.
But again, maybe you're seeing something I'm not.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)1.0 From the data we know about the Tea Party they are older, better educated, as in actual college degree and stuff... even college economics.
So you may ask why can't they get that?
Are you familiar with the Chicago School of Economics? If you are you will certainly understand why austerity IS part of the Chicago School and what Milton Friedman pushed for decades. Here is the problem. At one time that college level course of Economics you took, it was John Maynard Keynes. these days it is Milton Friedman.
So until we get rid of Chicago Boys in Economics classes, well there you have it.
Be careful with them assumptions, they may trip you over. And yes, I have heard Chicago School Trained Ph.Ds make arguments for austerity.
markpkessinger
(8,395 posts)Excellent points all!
(Damn! I'm showing my age!)
saras
(6,670 posts)It's not any less true, and we're not going to fix the illegal war problem until everyone who signs up admits that they're signing up to be a hired killer to steal oil, and not to "defend" America, and that their BELIEFS about what they're doing simply DON'T MATTER.
AmazingSchnitzel
(55 posts)... just to respond to this post and now I find I don't know what to say.
"and that their BELIEFS about what they're doing simply DON'T MATTER."
In end end I settled on the fact that this would not be an effective means of communicating with a service member/family member/ human being.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)I do not understand how someone would regress so quickly.
ieoeja
(9,748 posts)We can and do censor material provided to our troops. Propaganda is accepted as a good thing where the troops are concerned. Nobody knows less about underlying causes, strategies, etc about a war than the enlisted men who do the actual fighting. They are kept in complete darkness.
Which makes the, "I know, I was there," argument used by so many vets maddening. How does fighting a battle impart knowledge of why you are fighting the war? It does not. And if the reasons aren't all that great, they sure as fuck aren't going to tell you the truth now, are they?
If this guy just spent the intervening years in the military which provides nothing but Rightist news sources to their troops, it should not be too difficult to understand the regression.
banned from Kos
(4,017 posts)via the Iraq Hydrocarbon Law they never signed.
Any Exxon contract Iraq signed they did on their own volition.
ellisonz
(27,711 posts)Exxon of course being a major US/International corporation...and of course we have no interest in increasing the international supply of oil - the cheaper the better!
snooper2
(30,151 posts)I thought it was one of those things that just a happened late at night. Before you know it you are....