What 'liberal' means to the other guys

[mahina]

A dear friend who moved from Hawaii to North Carolina told me today about a conversation she had this morning with her new hiking buddy, another female in her 50's. This woman was married to a pastor for 30 years.
She was talking about 'liberals'. My friend asked her what she thought a liberal was, and the woman said a liberal is a "slutty woman with no morals'.
My friend asked her if she believed in equal rights under law for people of different races. She does.
What about right to birth control? Yep. How about right to decide whether she wants to carry a pregnancy to term? Yep.
Should we invest in libraries, schools, dare I say hospitals? Yep.
How about old folks, should we pitch in so they don't die homeless on the street? Of course.
Then you are a liberal honey. The woman had literally NO IDEA what it meant to be a liberal. The word has been used so badly in the media, it's taken a completely different meaning.
Thought you all might want to know. Interesting.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

1. Yep. Through the Rove politics of divide and conquer,

and the MSM's complicity in exploiting the ignorance of too many Americans, we Liberals are cast as demons in the ignorant's eyes.

[Selatius]

2. That pastor's wife is, sadly, the victim of the most sophisticated propaganda machine invented.

Goebbels would be shocked and awed at the level of capability the men on Wall Street have over the corporate news outlets. In Nazi Germany, the government ran the presses in collaboration with the industrialists there. Here, the industrialists run the presses directly.

[rwenos]

6. The Big Lie

" . . . the magnitude of a lie always contains a certain factor of credibility, since the great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted, rather than consciously and purposely evil, and that therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big. Such a falsehood will never enter their heads, and they will not be able to believe in the possibility of such monstrous effrontery and infamous misrepresentation in others."

-- Mein Kampf, 1925, Berlin.

Selatius, I'd say you have successfully diagnosed the technique.

[mahina]

13. True. The point I take is that asking questions gets you farther than lecturing.

I recently found out here at DU how lousy it feels to be talked down to by a know it all liberal. In that exchange we supported different candidates for the primary, and DANG. Talk about smug and self-congratulatory. Better to probe gently and ask them to think it through without all the superiority.

I honestly think a nationwide letterwriting campaign on what it means to be a liberal, not stooping to respond to irrelevant attacks, would be time well spent. No point here, this state is blue and going deeper blue every blessed day.

My .02

[mcctatas]

3. Slutty woman with no morals??

who knew anne coulter was a liberal? :evilgrin:

[Old and In the Way]

4. It's like Pavlov's dog conditioning.

People who listen to RW Radio probably involuntarily start to salivate when they here the word liberal used on the air. They hate the word...but most like the policy positions.

[rwenos]

5. The Power of Propaganda

The conservatives have done to "liberal" what Hitler and Goebbels did to "Jew."

Elementary principle of propaganda: select your most powerful opposing force, and demonize it.

This poor woman does not even know that she has turned her mind over to a group of fascistic bastards.

[Quantess]

7. Can we arrange a meeting?

I would get face to face with this interesting person and I would call her a liberal.

[wordsaladwithranch]

8. This reminds me

of a battle of letters to the editor that took place in my hometown's largely right-wing dominated newspaper. It went on for about two weeks and consisted of wingnuts writing in letters saying that Merriam Webster describes liberals as "giving to freely to temptation" and other such nonsense. Their letters dramatically outnumbered the responses of liberals.

[tech3149]

9. Welcome to DU wordsalad

Unfortunately, most "liberals" have better things to do than to waste time reading and responding to a RW fishwrapper. Mabey that's our problem, we let the other guy dominate the debate.

[wordsaladwithranch]

12. Thanks for the welcome.

I agree with how we have better things to do. I tend to worry about the people sitting on the fence who fall onto the right side after reading an idiotic and incoherent debate in said fishwrapper... Ive witnessed it. Maybe people who waffle so easily shouldn't be on our side anyway.

[tech3149]

10. Completely off topic, just curious about your friend

My sister and niece have lived on Oahu for decades and do trail maintenance on some pretty scary terrain. Last year we did some sectional on the Appalachian Trail. I'm just curious if your friend might have been part of the club that they hiked with.

[Clintonista2]

11. So true!

This thread got me thinking about a South Park episode I was watching the other day. In it, they used the term "ultra liberal" to describe an organization that convinced children that smoking pot would turn them into "terrorists". I think the real meaning of the word liberal, needs to be regained.

[Gman]

14. The RW is base is characterized mainly by it's ignorance

and lack of education, compounded by an inability to see issues as only black and white and never any gray areas.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

15. The left has also dissed "liberals"

Using rhetoric that "liberals" are not "radicals", too uncommitted, all show and no go. That "liberals" would not tolerate the smell of tear gas in a demonstration.

That was a long time ago.

[blindpig]

16. To understand this I would suggest

reading Deer Hunting with Jesus. It is to a large degree the ignorance, arrogance and indifference to the cares and lives of rural and small town people exhibited by urban and suburban liberals which makes folks susceptible to the RW propaganda machine.

[mahina]

17. I really think you are right.

What to do about it, since so few of us live in those communities? Or at least so few that identify themselves as Democrats? Though maybe things are turning around, looking at the wins in Montana. What's the book about?

[blindpig]

18. What to do about it?

Talk to people. Better,listen to them. Give people their space, give them the respect you'd expect. When you get past all of the bullshit people want pretty much the same things, a living wage, security, privacy, respect. Don't expect them to adopt the superficialities of the urban/suburban culture, they have their own ways and they like them just fine. Stick to the important stuff.

Here's part of a description of the book from Amazon:

A raucous mix of storytelling and political commentary, Deer Hunting with Jesus is Bageant’s report on what he learned by coming home. He writes of his childhood friends who work at factory jobs that are constantly on the verge of being outsourced; the mortgage and credit card rackets that saddle the working poor with debt, i.e., “white trashonomics”; the ubiquitous gun culture—and why the left doesn’t get it; Scots Irish culture and how it played out in the young life of Lynddie England; and the blinkered “magical thinking” of the Christian right. (Bageant’s brother is a Baptist pastor who casts out demons.) What it adds up to, he asserts, is an unacknowledged class war. By turns brutal, tender, incendiary, and seriously funny, this book is a call to arms for fellow progressives with little real understanding of “the great beery, NASCAR-loving, church-going, gun-owning America that has never set foot in a Starbucks.”