I know a lot of smart people that I have a lot of respect for, who voted for Bush in 2000. However, I have absolutely no respect for anyone who failed to cast a vote against this administration last November. I’m sorry, but that is how I feel.
Everything we told you about Bush turned out to be true. He doesn’t want to catch bin-Laden. He ‘fixed’ the intelligence on WMD. He wanted to go to war with Iraq before 9/11, and chose to invade Iraq no later than 9/17. All that crap about complying with the weapons inspectors was a cynical lie, and an attempt to ‘wrong-foot’ Saddam into providing a pretext for the war.
Here’s a choice quote from the Brits:
Here’s another:
“The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few,” Straw wrote in a March 25 memo to Blair stamped “Secret and Personal.” “The risks are high, both for you and for the Government.”
In public, British officials were declaring their solidarity with the Bush administration’s calls for elimination of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. But Straw’s memo and seven other secret documents disclosed in recent months by British journalist Michael Smith together reveal a much different picture. Behind the scenes, British officials believed the U.S. administration was already committed to a war that they feared was ill-conceived and illegal and could lead to disaster.
We told you this administration was criminal, irresponsible, dishonest, and incompetent. You decided that we were wrong, or stupid, or partisan, or something. But we weren’t wrong. You were wrong. And now we are stuck with these utter losers, these corrupt looters, this violent, hateful, and hopeless crew of thugs.
Thanks for nothing.
Those who placed party before country will have to live with their consciences for the rest of their lives.
I think I just figured out why I’ve been in such a horrid mood this past month. I’m bitter.
I’m bitter because I managed to see Bush for who he was long before he demonized John McCain in the South. I’m bitter that now the media and the public are starting to see his arrogance and shallowness without a filter. I’m bitter because even though my suspicions were right, we are now reaping the consequences of his horrid “leadership”.
The 2000 election took place in a very, very different political context. Many intelligent people voted for Bush that year assuming that economic growth would continue and that he would run a non-interventionist, quiet foreign policy. I chose to judge these folks based on what they did once Bush’s real nature became crystal clear – if they voted for someone else in 2004, I was willing to forgive their 2000 vote. But if they maintained their support of Bush in 2004, I wrote them off as ignorant tools of or active participants in the right-wing takeover of our country.
Totally agree. 2000 – what can I say, I know some peeps (not me, of course) who voted for Dubya because…well, who knows.
My future in-laws (apparently) voted for Prince Motherfucker in 2004 – and I still have problems being civil. They also declawed their cats (god for-fucking-bid that the precious couch be ruined!) so what can you say?
I’ve been thinking the sdame thing lately…WHAT WERE YOU THINKING????? Obysmal…
Look, people, most of the electorate doesn’t pay enough attention to politics to know what we know. They rely on the media in a relatively passive manner–as they’ve been trained to do–and media systematically misleads them. We see this happening every day.
The media is in this with Bush up to their eyeballs. It’s why they aren’t going after the Downing Street Memos. (Think it’s because it’s old news? How old was Whitewater? And what news did they ever get? “Newsflash! Our last 10 newsflashes were all based on a couple of psychopathic liars! Oh, wait, we can’t tell you that. Nevermind!”) The media has systematically adopted the surrealistic/postmodernist standards of the GOP/conservative movement in which “reality” is whatever they say it is, no matter how many times it changes. This creates enormous confusion, and that’s all the Bushies need in order to rule.
Even now, with Bush’s numbers in the low 40s they are still higher than his numbers on his signature issues. Why? Because the media continues to puff his image, and present his agenda from his point of view, thus strongly encouraging people to give him “the benefit of the doubt” even when they disagree with him on one or two or ten thousand issues.
This is very sophisticated stuff. The conservative movement has spent billions of dollars perfecting it. It is designed to baffle and confuse. That’s precisely what it’s intended to do. And so far we have just begun to respond with the sort of infrastructure building we need to compete with them.
So let’s not misdirect our anger at the poor fools who fell for this scam. Think of it in terms of seeing some scam exposed on 60 Minutes. Part of you wants to scream at the people who got taken in, “What in the world were you thinking!!!” But another part is mad as hell at the people who took advantage of them. Well, if we want to win elections, we have to tone down the first reaction, focus on the second one, and use it to fuel our efforts to win next time.
Bashing the poor fools who bought beachfront property in Arizona is not going to do any of us any good. Going after the scoundrels who sold it is where our energy should be.
I agree- My anger is directed at those in charge. I already understand the ignorance of half the population because I UNDERSTAND how we have been dumbed-down, brainwashed etc., over the years. I do not like the laziness of those who say they know and don’t vote.
I also believe that there is more ‘sinister controlling’ going on than meets the eye. BECAUSE I cannot believe that Bush is still walking on the planet…
by “more ‘sinister controlling’ going on than meets the eye.” There is certainly a lot of sinister controlling going on in the government. But in the media, unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of it is sinister self-controlling.
As Michael Parenti has noted, recounting an exchange he once had with a proud member of the official press who denied the existence of censorship, citing his own life experience, “You write what you like, because they like what you write.”
p.s. There shouldn’t an apostrophe in “passionate ones.” (I’m an editor. I can’t help myself!)
Around here, I still see lots of W and Bush/Cheney stickers on cars in parking lots. I’m real tempted to make little stickers saying, “Aren’t you ashamed yet?” and slap’em on. BUT, it’s obvious that these people aren’t ashamed yet or they’d have removed these emblems of their stupidity. They are part of the 30-40% who still believe that Dimson is a “good guy.” Or, as Lincoln said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time.” Maybe another 10% will wake up but it’s likely that a hard core will never open their eyes and will always believe their guy got a bagged by a liberal conspiracy of some kind.
Heck, a couple of months ago, down in Georgia, I saw a mouth-breathing redneck driving an old station wagon with a “George Wallace for President” sticker on it! Clearly, his mind snapped shut in 1968 and new information has not been allowed in since then. We are not going to be able to eliminate these fringe types. All we can hope to do is push them back into a box clearly labeled, “Stupid.”
Hey dingbat, you gonna cast your vote on a touchscreen next time? Is it perfectly okay with you that the Bushco corporations count our votes?
I’m not gonna blame anybody that stood out in the rain for hours because they believed in a system that was already broken. If we let it happen again, well “fool me once, fool me twice – shame on you!”
I don’t buy this “it’s the media’s fault” line.
Even if you believed Saddam had WMD and was a threat to our country, by November 2004 it was quite obvious that the whole justification for attacking was bullshit.
The looting, the missing RDX, the lack of armor, the lack of any plan at all for post-invasion Iraq. Not to mention NO WMD.
Just saw a quote from Cheney last night on TDS, saying he’d be surprised if we were there 6 months.
Bullshit bullshit bullshit.
I have no respect for anyone who can’t look past the word “flip-flopper” when electing the leader of their country.
I voted for Bush in 2000. There were some very reasonable motivations for voting for him over Gore in 2000.
However, no one with a conscience could vote for his regime’s sorry ass last November if you had been paying ANY attention to what they were doing.
And even though Kerry’s campaign was HORRIBLE, I voted for him. I could not convince any of my friends to vote FOR him, however. My partisan democrat friends all voted for him, but all I could do was convince half a dozen of my less liberal friends not to vote AGAINST him.
Well, I give you credit. I think very few Bush 2000 voters did the same.
I agree his campaign sucked but his ideas were better than Bush’s.
In any case, BushCo f-ed up Iraq so badly that I don’t see anything wrong with voting against more of the same from him. It was pretty clear that Bush’s direction was disasterous for our country — really Kerry could not have been worse and would probably have been better, seeing that he actually knows what it means to be at war.
True. I didn’t really have a problem with Kerry. He’s a lifetime senator, and that turns many off. I’m sure he would have gotten his agenda through, and I do think he does have decent ideals. I would have preferred Dean or Clark, but hey.
However, I do feel his campaign was more designed to beat other Democrats, not take out a Republican incumbent.
I agree 100% with the moral thrust of this post. I don’t care how horrible the media’s been. In a democracy one is responsible for one’s vote, even if, due to bizarre and faulty electoral and voting systems, that vote often doesn’t count as it should. I assume that most Bush voters would say that they believe in “personal responsibility.” Well, they all bear direct “personal responsibility” for the horrors of this administration.
That said, just as we should have asked why 9/11 happened (which I guess makes me a give-Ossama-therapy “liberal”), we need to ask why 11/2 happened as it did. And I don’t mean simply looking into allegations of fraud. Even if the GOP didn’t win this election fair and square (and I lean in favor of believing they did, though I’m willing to be convinced otherwise), they certainly made it close enough to steal. The Democrats spent months attacking Bush. It didn’t work. The GOP campaign did work. Why? What made tens of millions of Americans vote for more of the same, reelecting a president with below 50% approval?
If our analysis stops with “the voters are idiots, screw ’em” (which is not quite what this post says, but it’s close), you might as well save your time and money, quit worrying about politics, or maybe even get ahead of the game by founding a chapter of the Kampfbund fuer amerikanische Kultur, or whatever similar “patriotic” organization will soon be appearing in a city near you.
I’m writing this as someone who lives in a deeply red state who often grows tired of the attitude of my many friends in deep blue states who’ve never met a Bush voter and find it easier to pin maps of “the United States of Canada” and “Jesusland” to their refrigerator than to deal with the fact that our country includes millions of folks who voted for Bush in 2004, and will likely vote again in 2006 and 2008. The political reality is that progressives need to reach some of these people if we want to win. Moreover, like it or not, they’re as American as you or I, and though their actions last November may deserve our contempt, we can’t stop with that. I suppose what I’m saying can be summed up by a red-state classic: love the sinner, hate the sin.
What has me totally frustrated isn’t those I know who voted for Bush…it’s those around me who voted for Kerry in 04, and after he lost, totally turned off and tuned out of everything political. It’s nearly my whole circle of family and friends of three generations who have stopped watching even the mass media propapablum, and who never seek out any other news source either, and who cringe when they see me coming, because they don’t want to even discuss any of it anymore. It’s those who tell me they aren’t even going to bother to even try to cast an informed vote that is likely to not be counted, or be manipulated to a preordained conclusion by rigged voting machines. It’s intelligent, good people who have dropped out of all of it, because they see the game as so rigged as to be completely unwinnable, who have retreated into the turtle shells of their own privately controllable worlds.
There is literally NO one in my present circle of family/friends who will even discuss any of this anymore. How many others are there out there who have done the same thing? (Sheesh..if I couldn’t go online to be with others like me, I’d go totally nutso.)
How the HELL do you reach people who have their hands firmly clapped over their own eyes and ears who are singing “na na..na na na”..to drown out the sound of your voice?
Pretty much sums up the Right wingnuts.
I’m surrounded by a few – but fewer than there used to be in my circle.
They’re in despair because they don’t see any way to fight what is happening. If it’s hopeless, the rational response is to hunker down and do your best to survive, to protect those you love. One way to do this is to protect yourself from impotent anger and outrage by tuning out as much as you can. Face it, we’ve all experienced the stress and energy drain of 24/7 outrage.
I’ve managed to reach a few of these folks in my circle by focusing on “it’s not hopeless, there are things you can do.”
Send emails with very easy things to do – like a letter to an elected official about an important action item. Put “what to do” (e.g. send letter to [insert specific rep’s name here]) at the top of the email so they see the “action” first. Include link to online letter form. [Make it easy!] Add your (short) sample letter, but suggest that it will carry more weight if they change it slightly. Put explanations of background and why it’s important below (be as succinct as possible).
Share what you are doing – your letters/calls. Political groups you’re involved with, what they are doing. When they see that ordinary folks like you, like me, are getting involved, are finding things to do, ways to fight back, they begin to realize that they can do it, too. Anyone who seems interested – invite them along to a meeting. Two of my friends of the “oh please don’t tell me any more, I can’t take it any longer” variety actually went to DemFest and left hopeful and energized, ready to get to work on progressive fighting back.
Go easy on the “OMG can you believe what these fuckers are doing NOW!!!???” (I know, this is very hard for us.) I mean, don’t totally quit trying to inform, but tone it down and limit how much you share of this – save it for us here. Those in despair already know that it’s Very Bad, even if they’re not keeping up with the details. What they DON’T know is that there are a lot of people actually fighting back, taking action. They don’t know about Rep. Conyers, DFA, Dem candidates just now getting started on running in 06, etc. – share that with them. Some of them can be pried out of their caves of despair.
I agree with those that are of the opinion that if the dingbats voted Bush in 2000 well so be it. There is absolutely no excuse for voting for him in 2004. I am tired of being polite and pc and all that crap to the warmongers. I really am running out of tolerance for their stupidity so I do blame them for either not voting at all or not being informed on the real truths. If we can find it anyone can. They just don’t f’ing care. If it does not directly, personally affect their little bitty world then well so what? The only time I will ever hold my tongue anymore is at work where I cannot afford to piss anyone off. Outside that small peramiter they are all fair game. YES, they are idiots and THEY are complicit in allowing the king to reign for another four years.