the great digital debate, round XLVIII
Too bad she doesn’t have a page full of ads. She’d be making a wad.
on 02/07/2008 at 11:10 PM
I gotta admit I feel a little mad at her for being so dead on the money about it. But I can’t disagree with her.
I guess what I’m saying is that it’s plenty bad enough to know that no matter what I do I’m about to be raped, at least from my own libertarian point of view. I honestly can’t say it helps my mood any to have someone telling me, “Yeah, yer gonna get raped. It’s gonna suck. Yes, you’re going to want to kill things during and afterwards. Get over it and try to think how to minimize the pain.”
Yes, it needed to be said. That doesn’t change the fact that most of us don’t want to hear it, and are gonna be pissed precisely *because* we needed to hear it."Dem’d if you do, Dem’d if you don’t” I’ve seen posted. GoF, it took me about a second to reach that conclusion too. The fallacy of going the “third way” and (choose one) voting for a third party guy, not voting, or doing a write-in for Fred was also quickly apparent.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head; everyone is angry because they are being forced to make a “choice” that really sucks either way, but really really really sucks one of those ways.
It will take more than just one politician emerging as a popular, real Conservative to fix things. It’s going to take a huge national attitude shift, and the only way that will happen is if people’s level of political awareness is quintupled, at least. A huge dose of nationalism and some major understanding of American history would help too. We have had generations raised under the ever growing federal nanny state’s Free Ride/No Responsibility system. It will take a major event to overturn that.
Look at 9/11. See how it took less than a year for most people to go back to a 9/10 somnambulance. Look at NOLA/Katrina and the finger pointing. Where were the bootstrappers? People have no ability to focus anymore, no awareness of how things should be, no realization that their own destiny is up to them, no sense of history, no attention span. We are afraid to hate, afraid to stereotype, afraid to even criticize or lay blame (unless its against ourselves or our government), afraid to even have an opinion.
It may not be End Times, but it sure feels that way most of the time.
More like slow motion decay. Somewhere around the time LBJ launched his Great Society, things went sideways and with a very few exceptions, they haven’t come fully into line since.
LBJ resigned, basically in disgrace and deeply disappointed.
Nixon tried to get it right, but lost his moral compass and ended his career with Watergate.
Jerry Ford was actually much better than anyone thought he was at the time, but he was gone pretty quickly and couldn’t accomplish much except keep the seat warm.
Jimmy Carter - a general disaster who definitely increased the speed of our descent.
Ronald Reagan Almost got things leveled out for a while and did manage to good. He also missed a few points about our military and foreign relations that set us back.
Bush I had a major communication problem and would probably have completed a very respectable job and been well regarded had he been able to have the full eight years. Poor communication killed him. The descent picked up speed again.
Bill Clinton: The only thing he did that I approve of is his getting a quickie from Ms. Lewinski. A disaster, he sold us out to any one with cash, exported out industrial base to China and for all intents and purposes sold our nuclear weapons program to the Chinese as well. Oh yeah, missed opportunities like turning down an opportunity to have Bin Laden in U.S. custody. The towers would still be standing if he hadn’t screwed the pooch on that one.
Bush II: Might have been able to do some serious good beyond what he’s done if he hadn’t been saddled with a bunch of shit-for-brains opponents who’s idea of a political debate was to repeat the mantra: “Bush is EVIL, Bush is BAD”. This they called progressivism. The rest of us called it Bush Derangement Syndrome. Kanye West makes an excellent example here, with his inane remark during Katrina. Look at the Bush Cabinet. Look at his Secretary of State. Overall, I’d say that Bush II has been able to get a slight rise in our position, but with the undercutting by the MSM and the Democrats, he hasn’t done as much good as he might have and I suspect the rate of descent will accelerate after his departure. We’re big and rich. To see the actual bottom of our descent will probably not come in my life time, although some of it is getting pretty obvious even now. How long until we reach equivalence with France? That’s probably not physically possible, but it could be easily possible to lose our dominance.
