"Spite the Vote" - a Must Read

[Taverner]

Hoping4Change originally posted this in another thread, but I wanted to widen the audience on this EXCELLENT article:

"SPITE THE VOTE

By Mark Ames

IT CAME ON suddenly and without warning. Fuck the Democrats. Fuck the liberals. I hope Bush wins. I hope Bush steals another election and urinates into everyone's wounds…

This interior rant lasted for a good five minutes before I snapped out of it. The realization that some pro-Republican sentiment lurks inside of me was enough to make me want to stick my head in the oven. Or throw myself out the window like the possessed priest at the end of The Exorcist.

What inspired this crazed outburst wasn't any love for Bush. It was an instinctual reaction to a tonal shift I've detected among the American left. They're losing that brave, cornered, hysterical tone that I've identified with, a tone that came from years of increasing marginalization combined with a sense that the whole country had gone completely insane.

For the first time in almost 30 years, the left has a chance to occupy the reality vacuum that opened up after the big barbecue in Fallujah. The left can sense that their time may have finally arrived, and they're prematurely settling into their new role as saviors of the national soul, with their former hysteria already reverting to a smug, nurturing tone. The once-vicious humor, born of desperation and hatred, is again becoming nauseatingly didactic and responsible. This is a disaster. The left seems to be buying into the high school civics teacher's idiotic lie that "you can't just be de-structive, you have to be con-structive as well." Yeah, and did you know that girls prefer shy, sensitive boys?"

<SNIP>

http://www.nypress.com/17/23/news&columns/MarkAmes.cfm?page=1&last=3

My favorite line:

"If there were one perfect spite president, it was Richard Nixon. He looked mean, spoke mean and stomped on the hippies who were having too many orgasms, the last real orgasms this country ever witnessed."

[jpgray]

1. The media are working full time to produce that very reaction

Their coverage of Democratic criticism is nonexistent, while their coverage of Democratic vacillations and equivocation is fearfully energetic.

You watch C-SPAN (or, sadly, even the fake news on the Daily Show) and you will regularly see old bears like Kennedy, Byrd or even Joe Biden(!) take the hard, humorous line this editorial seems to miss so much. But you have to look for it--it will not be brought to you on a silver platter. People have too great an interest in splitting the left and reelecting Bush to act any other way--leftist editorials want someone closer to their agenda than Kerry, and mainstream editorials want Bush to win, and this tack seems to be the one they can and often do come together on.

[wyldwolf]

2. all I can say is...

... the "left" has a nice knack of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

[juajen]

3. Let it roll off your back

Yeah, I'm missing the vitriolic rhetoric, too.

[Zorra]

6. Did you ever vote for Reagan?

Just curious. I often wonder if the anti-liberal posters here are former "Reagan Democrats".

I consider myself extremely liberal, and am a lifetime yellowdog Dem. Honestly, I was offended by your post.

Some liberals vote Green/Nader, but I believe the majority of them vote for Democrats. One of the best things about liberals is that they never vote for republicans. Any republican is too conservative for their political palate.

So who are the Democrats that defected and voted for Reagan in 1980 and 1984, and Bu$h I in 1988? What are their political leanings? Their judgement has proven to be very poor, and their voting for Reagan has had grave, long lasting consequences for our nation.

I always thought,

Democrats,liberals=Left--Republicans,conservatives=Right.

Anyway, we all need to unite against Bu$h. Kerry was not my first choice for a candidate. But he has a great overall voting record, I love his votes on the environment, and I am going to vote for him.

I am certainly not going to vote for Bu$h because Kerry is not my ideal candidate, like so many more conservative Democrats that voted for Reagan because Carter or Mondale were not their ideal candidates.

I suspect that if these Reagan Democrats were more willing to compromise their relatively more conservative ideals at the time, Reagan would not have been elected.

I can guarantee that it was not liberals that elected Reagan by voting for him.

[wyldwolf]

7. Here is what the problem with your post is

You appear to have a simplistic limited view of what a "liberal" is. Or maybe that is just how I'm reading it.

You said it yourself: consider myself extremely liberal... I always thought Democrats,liberals=Left--Republicans,conservatives=Right.

No, it is not that simple. Black and white thinking is a fringe trait - either the fringe right or the fringe left.

Seeing shades of color is the liberal way.

If I were referring to traditional mainstream liberal democrats (slightly left of center), my post would have made no sense because we have had our share of victory and then some.

Sorry you were offended. But it doesn't surprise me that a self described "extreme liberal" would assume I was a Reagan democrat because I posted something he/she disagreed with.

[Taverner]

8. Irregardless...

I think this article, while I may not agree 100%, hits the nail on the head in so many ways.

And it describes why Bush has appeal with those on the shit end of the stick...

[TrustingDog]

4. Great Stuff

...toppers

[ChompySnack]

5. Brilliant analysis

I agree almost totally with this article.

[sendero]

9. Fantastic. This article..

...puts into words what I've felt in my heart about American voters for a long time.

This is A MUST READ folks! This is the painful truth.

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

10. "What if the truth is Americans dont want to know the truth"

...there is some great stuff there.

    
In this country, tens of millions of people choose to watch FoxNews not simply because Americans are credulous idiots or at the behest of some right-wing corporate cabal, but because average Americans respect viciousness.... ....hey vicariously scream and bully others into submission through right-wing surrogate-brutes. Spending time watching Sean Hannity is enough for your average American white male to feel less cowardly than he really is.

The left won't accept this awful truth about the American soul, a beast that they believe they can fix "if only the people knew the Truth."


"The left's wires short-circuit when confronted with this terrible possibility; the right, on the other hand, warmly embraces Middle America's rank soul and exploits it to their full advantage...

...I think this writer really 'gets-it".

[Taverner]

11. Yes I loved that line

I gotta say this article really fueled my cynicism and misanthropy...and Although I can see other's points that this may splinter our vote, the sad truth is LBJ didn't get elected because he signed Civil Rights Legislation, he got elected because he was a mean sonofabitch who punched reporters in the stomach.

Americans are a vicious lot, and the only thing they understand is intimidation. This may not be the most pleasant truth, but it is, sadly, the truth.

We are a cowardly lot who hides behind demagogues who act irrationally and without remorse.

[bobbieinok]

14. also LBJ had been sen maj leader for years and could twist arms

'he knew where the bodies were buried'

'he knew who had skeltons in the closet'

he was furious over the police/KKK murder of Chaney, Goodman, Schwerner in Philadelphia MS in 1964 and he was able to force segregationist white southern democratic senators to vote for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.....and he wasn't 'polite' in his arm-twisting'

[Hoping4Change]

15. Thanx for posting the article again.

I was as bowled over as you when I first eyeballed this article, feeling that people need to read it. I like you thinks it needs a wider audience.

I think Dean clues into into this viscious streak evidenced by his now infamous comment about Southerner's with Confederate flags on their pick-ups. Unfortunately the response from Democrats was the schoolmarmish response Ames criticizes. Dean was instinctively tapping into this side of America and swatting him down for doing so was a mistake.

I myself realized this aspect of American psyche when I was posting in Drudge Retort (an interesting site since it is frequented by both freepers and democrats). Freepers who were clearly uneducated were royally teeing me off one day by their adulation of Shrub so I threw nicety aside and went off about how ignorant white trash were being used as toilet bowls by Shrubco and since they are so utterly ignorant they mistake being sh*t on for patriotism.

Well wasn't I surprised that the freeper I lambasted wanted me to expand on what I meant. I also ran into this once when I had to take a job telemarketing AT&T Long Distance. My trainer said I'd have a hard time since I was too nice and people would think I was conning them. I saw for myself that obnoxious insulting a**holes were making sales hand over foot. The majority of people distrusted niceness and rational argument. People wanted to be told big lies.

Anyway if you liked the Ames article, check out this out:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040612/DOUG12//?query=doug+saunders

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

12. reading further, a bit simplistic, but I think he has Bush pegged...

"..the priveledged frat boy/jock asshole".

I think thats what has people turned off on Bush. Thats sort of what turns me off on him.

[sendero]

13. I'm pretty sure....

... that everyone hasn't read this yet. Bump :)

[UGABrother]

16. That article pissed me off

I'm going to be a voice of dissent here. Geez, everyone thinks they understand the "American Psyche", as if there is such a thing. True, some people are disillusioned assholes who make themselves feel better by tearing others down. So what. Not everyone is like that. I'm not like that, and my white male friends aren't like that, and I'm an American.
People are people--I reject the idea that white males are a special breed of morons who want everyone and everything to go to shit. The grain of truth in Ames' article is that people want to feel good about themselves.. Bible-thumping, SUV-driving freepers hate liberals because we tell them that everything they're doing, that they've grown up with and take comfort in, is wrong. Does this guy think we'll win more converts to our side if we act like jerks. Please. Al Gore won the popular election, remember?
There are two ways to feel good about yourself: Improve yourself or tear someone else down. People, not even us stupid white males, don't inherently prefer the second way. You have to offer a message of hope-- you know, kind of like FDR or JFK or Clinton or even Reagan--the most successful politicians of the 20th century.
Vitriol is good to have sometimes too of course. We've got plenty of that though. There's a ton of it. Al Franken, Michael Moore, the Daily Show, This Modern World, a ton of online media. People hate Bush, so much so that the left wing has taken heat for beign too negative at times. Does anyone here honestly think there's too little cynicism in the world as it is? God.
And by the way, I don't think Al Gore's outrage is fake. He has more reason than almost anyone to be pissed, and this hack presumes to judge his authenticy?

Mark Ames should be writing cyber punk post-apocolyptic science fiction if he really thinks human nature is such a cesspool.