My parents raised me to always think the best of other people, so my view of conservatives was skewed until Bush took office as President. Now I understand. Sara's right.
Oprah Winfrey once said that the best advice she ever got in her life was from Maya Angelou, who said: "When people tell you who they are -- believe them."
I've gotten good mileage from this advice over the years. Being raised fundie, you spend a lot of your life being told to believe someone else's preposterous interpretation of events over your own lying eyes. Growing up this way really twists your reality lenses; and those of us who come out of it as adults spend a lot of time and energy learning to see and interpret the world clearly again. Angelou's quote is one of the mantras that gave me permission to trust my own observations of what people were saying and doing, knock off the false hopes and wishful thinking, accept this information as literal truth, and rely on it as an accurate indicator about how they were likely to behave in the future. It's knowledge that was acquired late, but has since kept me out of an amazing amount of trouble.
It struck me recently that, too often, we've been very slow to believe conservatives, even when they told us in no uncertain terms who they were. Some things were easy to acknowledge, even in the early years: they're the party of business, they don't care much about the middle and lower class, they believe in hierarchy and aristocracy and low taxes. Others came later: it took us a while to really admit to ourselves that they were pandering to racists, that they were perfectly willing to throw the middle class overboard, and that they didn't really care whether or not a rising tide lifted all boats. The hardest realizations have been the most recent ones: that these people are openly willing to destroy the Constitution, the country, and the planet in the name of privilege and profit; that they have absolutely no concept of the common good, and that the most horrible accusations they level at us should always be taken as an open admission of what they're intending to do themselves.
I had really wanted to support Obama for President, but his statements make me think that his eyes are not yet open to the utterly selfish destructiveness of the American conservatives. It's clear that neither Edwards nor Clinton harbor any such illusions. Unfortunately, I don't think that Harry Reid understands who he is facing either.
2008 is not going to be pretty politically, but I still expect a strong election for the Democrats. Then the conservatives will take the gloves off and make the Bill Clinton years look like a pleasant tea party.
2 comments:
Hello? McFly? George Bush is not a conservative. You're perfectly welcome to go on thinking he is for the sake of your prejudices, but you will go on being perfectly wrong about conservatives. What passes for "conservative" these days is represented by the right wing of our two-party leftist system. In other words, the fight between you and contemporary Republicanism is an internecine battle; it doesn't involve authentic conservatives at all. We're not even part of the conversation. Look at how Ron Paul is being treated if you don't believe me. While technically a libertarian, he's the closest thing in public life to a real conservative around.
Actually it is you who need to get on the movement conservatives for monopolizing the term "conservative" although I think they have a better claim to the term that Ron Paul does. They are a lot closer to Hamilton or Burke than Ron Paul is.
Ron Paul is not a conservative. He is a wack job who should not be outside an insane asylum.
Ayn Rand recognized Conservatives and bashed them in this short movie.
But Ayn Rand herself was a wack job much like Ron Paul.
You and all of them are so enamored in unworkable ideologies that you can't understand what a modern large nationalistic and Industrial state is.
Oddly enough, if you adhere to the original meaning of Conservative, I am more conservative than all of you. I don't believe in replacing an existing society, economy and government that works to some degree with some crackpot ideology that could never possible be adopted and if it were would destroy modern society is any number of really nasty ways.
What we have is far from perfect, but there is no ideology like Libertarianism that would be an improvement. Then the movement conservatives are attempting to install an authoritarian government with them in charge and raking in the corrupt bribes, tax money and monopolistic profits while everyone else is reduced to the level of ignored serfs.
Go 'way James. Get a brain. Forget politics. You will never have the necessary competence to deal with it.
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