TOM TOMORROW: Liberals say, cons hear (inspired by the Far Side)

[yurbud]

http://www.workingforchange.com/column_lst.cfm?AuthrId=43

[MADem]

1. For its simple and brutal truth, a K and R!! NT

[liberal N proud]

2. 100% true

[Clark2008]

3. I don't think it's what they hear - it's more what they're TOLD to hear.

But the cartoon is right on.

[central scrutinizer]

4. as translated by Dick Cheney

[yurbud]

6. yep, no facts can penetrate. Most other people have a variation

of the problem though. If you say things in a way that puts them in proper historical perspective and accurately lays out the likely consequences of someothing Bush is doing, for example, you say, "The GOP has rolled back 800 years of civil rights by repealing habeas corpus," or "Bush is about to attack Iran, which could ignite a world war," people call you an alarmist nut who is needlessly exaggerating.

If you tone it down, "That military tribunal law could unintentially allow the abuse of citizens," or "some generals think it might not be wise to attack Iran since we are bogged down in Iraq," those same people won't pay attention.

I haven't felt the same kind of rolling panic since Bush dropped below 50% in the opinion polls, but I still get the feeling like I'm living in the first 26 pages of Elie Weisel's NIGHT. Everybody freaked for a day or two when the nazis came to town, then they got used to it. Everybody freaked when they were rounded up into ghettos, then they got used to it. A foreign Jew who was taken away before the general round up escaped, came back and told of mass executions and babies being thrown in the air and caught on bayonets. Everybody said he was a nut and ignored him, even though it was before the ghetto was walled in and they still could have escaped. Later on, Wiesel tries to convince his dad not to sew the yellow star on his jacket and his dad says, "What's the big deal? It's not like it's going to kill me..."

While the right is pathologically afraid of most change (except toward authoritarianism), most people simply don't believe that it is going to happen until they see it with their own eyes. They won't believe in global warming until the water is up to their ankles, and they won't believe the Bushies are fascists until the hood is on their head.

[William Seger]

5. "*or at least pretend to"

Yup, I don't think "conservatives" really have a hard time hearing what liberals say; pretending to hear something different is just a defensive mechanism.

[yurbud]

7. conformity: I can pretend not to get it because everybody else is doing

the same.

I'm surprised Bush hasn't given a medal of freedom to Stanley Milgram.