Shit like this just makes me want fucking GIVE UP.

[Tyler Durden]

Yesterday, it was some email with two women changed into models with "the miracle of makeup" with a horse's ass changed into Hilary Clinton.

Today, it was a series of pictures of troops in Iraq with "you do this/they do that" heavy anti-liberal captions INCLUDING A PICTURE OF WESTWOOD BAPTIST CHURCH DEMONSTRATORS, INSINUATING THAT THEY WERE LIBERALS.

For the first time in years, I just want to sit and weep. They will never "get" it; the divide is too great.

[KittyWampus]

1. Don't despair. Some people are just serious cases of arrested development. Best thing

is to shine your light in case someone ever wants to see in the dark.

I do not care how corny that just sounded.

IMO, it's true.

Now go find some more intellectual or open minded people and have a nice discussion about something other than politics!

[lonestarnot]

5. LOL!

Is there really something to discuss aside from politics? :shrug:

[BlooInBloo]

31. I don't buy it.

[rodeodance]

9. good advice. The crapola does tend to make a person want to scream.

[Turbineguy]

2. So my question is:

Is what "we" or "they" say the problem or the divide the problem?

[Tyler Durden]

15. The divide is the problem

The person who sent this was SHOCKED that it hurt me, and thought it was "NO BIG DEAL".

THAT is the divide.

[Lasher]

23. You should not feel hurt by this kind of thing.

I didn't see the email(s) but typically this type of thing is not directed personally against you.

[Turbineguy]

30. In any situation

the first one to do something constructive is the adult.

I live surrounded by republicans. I've had the Kerry signs in the window, the DU bumpersticker on my car. The neighbors have a pretty shrewd idea how I feel.

I talk about things we have in common. It's better they think "That guy is OK for a lefty" than me trying to get them to agree with my views.

In the meantime the number of people who are getting the picture grows every day. And some will never get it no matter what.

[Tyler Durden]

34. I thought that was happening HERE.

Now I can see it's largely a facade, but I'm better about it now.

It just stung to think these people lump me with Phelps' crowd.

[KurtNYC]

3. How about sending this email in return....

Ronald Reagan's warning to George W!

David Huckleberry, the former personal diarist of late Ronald Reagan, related this story to a close friend. His friend couldn't keep this a secret:

When Ronnie was in the last throughs of Alzheimers, he still had some very lucid moments. His legendary recall of names, facts and places came back to him, albeit in fleeting moments. One night in Santa Barbara he called out to David at 3am. He told David to "get that Bush kid on the phone" (that was his name for George W. Bush).

David told him that it was the middle of the night. Couldn't it wait? But Ronnie insisted. So David got patched through to the western white house in Texas. David, wanted to know what was so important that it couldn't wait until morning and he also had come to recognize the moments when Ronnie was 'his old self.' He listened as the two leaders talked. This is what he heard:

"Whatever you do, don't occupy Iraq! You will regret it if you do. No country in history has been able to occupy and hold a foreign nation without bringing about it's own demise. We knew this when we got the soviets to invade Afghanistan. We knew that if we kept them there long enough, the Soviet Union would go bankrupt. And it worked. Don't fall into the same trap! The fate of this great nation is at stake. Don't occupy Iraq!"

The call ended. But David was forever struck by what he had heard. Years later he found he could not keep this to himself. If Ronnie was to give this nation one final gift, this would be it. So David wrote this story and began to send it to everyone who would listen.

You can help this country benefit from the last nugget of Ronald Reagan's wisdom. Forward this email to at least 6 people in the next 20 minutes. Do it now!!1!! Make a wish and say "Saint Teresa" Spin around 5 times in a circle and then press "Send." You're wish will come true within 10 days.

[Lasher]

21. From the Reagan Diaries

What Ronald Reagan thought of our president

This is a direct quote from the just published REAGAN DIARIES. The entry is dated May 17, 1986.

"A moment I've been dreading. George brought his ne're-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida . The one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they'll hire him as a
contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work."

[Jed Dilligan]

28. Solid gold, man.

This should be its own thread!

[Lasher]

32. Oops, I just found out this is fiction.

Prompted by your advice I thought I might post this as an OP. But I decided to fact check just a tad first, partly because I had received the information via eamil.

Snopes says this is untrue. Here's a link: http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/kinsley.asp

I wish I would have checked it out before posting to this thread. Junior is a total idiot as it is, and we don't need to make anything up to to prove that.

[spanone]

4. hang in there, the republicons will be gone soon. you can't fuck up a nation this bad

without consequences.

[rodeodance]

12. just so Dems do not get too cocky

[YOY]

6. Reply all

Give 'em some fact. Tell them to f*** off while you're at it. Perhaps explaining to them that if they think Hillary is "liberal" then you've got some swampland in Florida for them.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

7. C'mon Tyler, you can't believe the crap I get from my RW relatives.

I've noticed a change, though.

It's gone from smug superiority to juvenile in its delivery.

And, there have ALWAYS been the propaganda pieces. You should have seen the hair curling emails received after I traveled to Crawford in Aug. 2005!

Hang in, there are many, many more of us than them. :hug: MKJ

[Tyler Durden]

16. It's been such a long, long war since 1968.

Maybe I'm just running out of gas.

I don't know.

[havocmom]

22. And when we bust their chops for the crap, shredding it with truth

they respond with something along the line of: What's the matter with you? You USED TO HAVE a sense of humor!

To which I reply: I still do, but there is NOTHING funny about the fact that cheney/bush/RW GOP is destroying our great country. And if you can't see that you are helping by spreading lies and propaganda, then you are a pitiful tool in the destruction of our great country. You are doing damage. Iraq NEVER did any damage to us.

The emails generally stop.

edited for typo, can I have some more coffee?

[HereSince1628]

8. Methinks THEY get it completely--Blame it all on an enemy

keep saying it. Repetition implies popularity of opinion. The masses will adopt as their own anything they think is popular.

[fasttense]

10. Since the republicans have proven how incompetent, stupid, immoral and greedy they are.

The right wing has nothing left but insults and smears. They can't win anything on the issues because no one believes them anymore. So all they got left are impotent insults.

[iconoclastic cat]

11. Both the emails and their senders are too stupid for you to be depressed. nt

[lpbk2713]

13. Their spin never stops.

They're at it 24/7. I'd be surprised if I didn't hear such nonsense from those assholes. They do it to make the RW radio hatemongers proud of them.

[zanne]

14. I think they do "get it"....

They just can't admit they're wrong because their cultural identities are so closely tied to it. It defines them.

[unpossibles]

20. agreed! Also, in a related way

most of the hardcore 23%ers I know - which is not that many, but enough - are very stubborn people who see everything as black or white (well, "white" mostly, but I digress...). To them, to ever admit that they made a mistake about anything is a sign of weakness.

Think about it. Those were their main points against Kerry: that he was too nuanced and had changed his mind. They like Bush because he "never backs down" even when he's wrong. He's their hero in that sense.

They don't understand that to consider new information and to be able to admit error is actually a strength. They think that admitting Bush is incompetent after they voted for him (twice!), makes them look & feel dumb and worse, makes them feel used because they fell for the BS.

I know it's maddening, but that's how I see it.

[mwb970]

25. Bush being a "dry drunk" has something to do with it.

I'm no alcoholism expert, but I gather that people who drink their butts off for years, like the Jerk did, then suddenly stop without treatment, like the Jerk did, end up with certain personality traits, including black-and-white, dogmatic "thinking".

Here's an interesting piece I found on the topic of Bush's "thought" processes:

What Drives Bush? by Todd Gitlin (TPMCafe, 4/10/06)

That crunching sound heard around the land is the sound of many intelligent people cracking their brains trying to figure out...what makes George W. Bush tick. Does he ignore some facts? Only inconvenient facts? Does he know the difference? If so, when and when not? When, if at all, does he know better than he says, in which case he can be said to be lying?

The brain-teaser is of a very high order, somewhere between Bertrand Russell's and Epimedides' paradoxes in difficulty, though it is not itself a paradox. There actually is an answer--a terrifying one.

After long thought, I am inclined to conclude with a negative: he does not think. That is, he does not (at least consistently) reason from causes to effects. Evidence is where he ends up, not where he starts. Facing choicepoints, he falls for twinges.

Read more here....

[L. Coyote]

17. Read this: The 1,099 Trillion Principle

The 1,099 Trillion Principle
http://jqjacobs.net/anthro/ancestors.html

How many ancestors do we have?
We each have 2 parents .. 4 grandparents...
8 grandparents, 16 great grandparents, 32, 64, 128, 256,
512 great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents,
1,024 2,048 4,092 8,184 16,368

.... every generation twice as many ancestors as the generation before.

Given 25 years per generation, 40 generations occur in 1000 years.
We each have 1,099 trillion ancestors in the last 1000 years

........ we have more ancestors than there are stars in the heavens,
more than the number of humans in all of time.
We all have and we all share the same ancestors!

We are ALL one family.

[Retired AF Dem]

18. "the divide is too great"

And both sides are at fault. Nothing will ever get accomplished.

[Lasher]

19. You're right, some will never get it.

And the rightwing extremists are getting a little emboldened by reported gains in Iraq. Thence the resumption of broadcast propaganda/hate emails.

But don't give up. When you offer a 'reply to all' rebuttal it is more than just the brownshirt who is watching. Don't let their lies go unchallenged.

[Virginia Dare]

24. Here, watch this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

[guitar man]

26. I've been of the opinion lately

that we are just going to have to let it all crash and burn, as painful as it may be, and rebuild the whole damn thing out of the ashes. We seem to be in the "Bread and Circuses" phase of the downfall (heavier on the circuses, lighter on the bread maybe) of this empire. Anything to divert attention from what's really going on I guess.

It's on fire, maybe when it has completely burned down those with their heads farthest in the sand will finally realize what has happened.

[Tyler Durden]

27. "Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out."

You know something? The phoenix rising from its own ashes is a cross-cultural cross-era icon. Perhaps there's a reason for that.

[Catherine Vincent]

29. I wouldn't worry about it.

It's from right wingers.

[EstimatedProphet]

33. The thing with the models was done with Bush first

We win. they lose. Period.