I picked up the term "repug" from this mail list. I suppose people mean different things by the term. For me, it doesn't mean "Republicans are repugnant people"; it means "they hold political views that are repugnant to me" (e.g., support for the war in Iraq, dismantling Social Security, tax cuts that systematically transfer resources from those who need them most to those who don't). That isn't dehumanizing them at all; it's just opposition to their political viewpoint.
And sure, the dems are bad; their capitulation on the war funding is some pretty dubious shit that corroborates Carrol's take on the dems as the loyal capitalist opposition. Sure, what the hell, the dems are repugs too.
> Quite independently of the problematic approach of
> dehumanizing your opponents for dehumanizing their
> opponents, I think your approach smacks of the sort of
> down-the-nose condescension that makes lots of people
> who go off the rails about the "liberal elite." People
> on the left cannot afford to condescend to the working
> class constituencies that the GOP has been able to win
> away from our side. If you give working class people
> reason to think that _you_ think that you are better
> than they are, that will foster further resentment
> that the GOP will be able to aggravate to retain the
> support of people who we must and, if we do alienate
> them by hi-hatting them, can win over.
Whaa--? Where did I say anything condescending about the working class?
If we're going back to Jim's weird stereotype of the working class as a block of far right Christian fundamentalists who all support the war in Iraq, sure, I will mercilessly skewer that view, because it's so obviously contradicted by data. This isn't condescension about the working class; rather, it is defense of the working class against egregious stereotyping. I'm not sure what you're on about here.
Miles