It doesn't take much thought to see most of the rightwing's political arguments are ad hominem, particularly when liberals are the target. They have managed to conjure up the idea that Liberal is a personal attribute, some character flaw tantamount to a morally debased state of the human being, something akin to child molesters, more or less along the lines of Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick affair, or more recently Bill Clinton's impeachment for the high crime and misdemeanor of getting a blow job from Monica and then lying about it.
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Sadly, I don't have enough time to contribute to this very important observation as I'd like but I wanted to respond so the thread doesn't die on the vine without some anti-entropic effort being made.
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During the pre-invasion months, that time when pro war bloggers shouted through their keyboards an echo (and often, an enhancement) of Bush administration rhetoric about why it was so vital to assault Iraq, I made the mistake of trying to debate the point on blog forums.
It took me a little while to catch on to what was happening -- because I tried, with mostly good humor, to respond factually to the wild assertions of impending doom -- but once I understood, I knew that argumentation, that is, a presentation of competing ideas, was pointless.
My debating adversaries had labeled me a 'liberal' and therefore, in some sense, mentally ill (the kindest insult offered) or perhaps even an operative, if only in spirit, for the most sinister of forces.
The effectiveness of the system confronting me was astounding: the talking points came from the administration and were taken up -- amplified and riffed on -- by the propaganda/entertainment outlets: talk radio, tough guy 'political' TV shows and the newest tool, warbloggers. This gave the multitude their pre-packaged ideas which could be used in debates with fence sitters and the cursed liberals.
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A very powerful feedback loop system -- **feedback loop** because it seems to me that people often believe things that flatter or comfort them in some way; we participate in the process of being propagandized (if there is such a word). I suspect one of the reasons for racism's persistence is the flatter element of the eternal racist formula: everyone wants to feel good about themselves, even if they're a total sack of shit. Racist ideas allow you to enjoy an illusion of godlike perfection in comparison to the hated other. Our neighborhoods are 'good' because we are good. Their neighborhoods are bad...
The racist impulse can (we now see) be disassociated from ethnic, cultural and/or visual differences and be re-applied, like a dynamically target-able missile, towards political differences. So, the liberal/conservative divide, such as it is, morphs from being a debate over policy objectives and governing philosophies into a battle between the righteous and the evil, the courageous and the cowardly, the strong willed and the limp wristed...a finite collection of expressions that can be infinitely used.
Of course, not everyone is caught in this self-reinforcing system of cartoon logic so the situation is not hopeless.
I think.
.d.