War of Words
I'm reading What's the Matter With Kansas right now (quite worth the read) and as do most books, it causes me to think in slightly different terms than I would without getting so intimate with someone else's views.
Something Thomas Frank hasn't yet said, but due to his book my mind has thought is this--The Republicans have waged a very successful war of words. They've changed the playing field from the actual: the results...and instead cause us all to compete on the field of the theoretical: what sounds good in your head.
By that I mean that Republicans (the party which extols the virtues of looking after those who can't look after themselves) have abandoned the young through cuts in medical programs for the poor, cuts in Head Start, and other programs which are sure to only hurt the poor.
As a measure of how conservative these times are, it feels almost radical for me to offer up the obvious by saying: the rich are quite well covered. It's the poor which need the helping hand. The rich have proven that they can look after themselves quite well, than you.Further, what's so bizarre on this new playing field is that a record that at very best could be called piss-poor is enough to get GW Bush re-elected. The record he ran on has come to be called the God/Guns/Gays platform.
1. Unlike Democrats, we believe in God, and are in fact guided by the hand of him.
2. Democrats want to take your guns away!
3. Democrats want to turn your kids gay by giving gays rights they don't now have.
These arguments are designed to appeal to an irrational side of you that doesn't closely examine anything for facts, but instead recoils in fear. And that's the name of the game. They don't want you to see the miserable job creation numbers, or the exploding deficit, or what we're doing to the environment, or what the rest of the civilized world thinks of us. They want you to think that Democrats are Godless gays who want to keep you from defending your home.
It's time to get the discussion back into the realm of the actual. When you hear people spouting out about gay marriage, why not chime in with "I don't give a damn what people want to do with their private lives...but I'm all worked up about whether or not my child is going to have a job once he gets out of college!" Take the debate to the areas that really matter and the Republicans, with their awful record in those areas, will lose pitifully.
Something Thomas Frank hasn't yet said, but due to his book my mind has thought is this--The Republicans have waged a very successful war of words. They've changed the playing field from the actual: the results...and instead cause us all to compete on the field of the theoretical: what sounds good in your head.
By that I mean that Republicans (the party which extols the virtues of looking after those who can't look after themselves) have abandoned the young through cuts in medical programs for the poor, cuts in Head Start, and other programs which are sure to only hurt the poor.
As a measure of how conservative these times are, it feels almost radical for me to offer up the obvious by saying: the rich are quite well covered. It's the poor which need the helping hand. The rich have proven that they can look after themselves quite well, than you.Further, what's so bizarre on this new playing field is that a record that at very best could be called piss-poor is enough to get GW Bush re-elected. The record he ran on has come to be called the God/Guns/Gays platform.
1. Unlike Democrats, we believe in God, and are in fact guided by the hand of him.
2. Democrats want to take your guns away!
3. Democrats want to turn your kids gay by giving gays rights they don't now have.
These arguments are designed to appeal to an irrational side of you that doesn't closely examine anything for facts, but instead recoils in fear. And that's the name of the game. They don't want you to see the miserable job creation numbers, or the exploding deficit, or what we're doing to the environment, or what the rest of the civilized world thinks of us. They want you to think that Democrats are Godless gays who want to keep you from defending your home.
It's time to get the discussion back into the realm of the actual. When you hear people spouting out about gay marriage, why not chime in with "I don't give a damn what people want to do with their private lives...but I'm all worked up about whether or not my child is going to have a job once he gets out of college!" Take the debate to the areas that really matter and the Republicans, with their awful record in those areas, will lose pitifully.
posted by VTexan at 9:03 PM
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