Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Pundit-speak

After Scott Brown's senate victory in Massachusetts, a friend of mine put an intriguing post onto Facebook. I must admit that I only read the part Facebook initially displayed on my news feed. That amounts to the first few paragraphs. I did not read the whole thing until I had posted a response and seen the other responses.

Here is the original post:

I am sincerely thankful for...MODERATE DEMOCRATS!! Thanks to the moderate Democrats who stopped radical healthcare reform in 2009! Without them - the radical progressive socialists would have jammed a government takeover bill down our throats.

Because the Republicans could have all picked up and left town completely and healthcare STILL could have passed if the Democrats all agreed on the bill - you can see that the Republicans had NOTHING to do with stopping this bill.

This radical legislation and others were stopped because of the fight between good, traditional Democrats who share the values of most of this country who put up a fight against the radical extremists led by Pelosi, Obama, Reid, Frank, Franken, Markey, etc.

And so, our moderate Democrat friends - we salute you! And we say - Thank You for taking part in saving our Republic.

And now that we have a little power back - let us be grateful and work hard to rid our nation's capital of ANY and ALL players on BOTH SIDES of the isle who are not honest brokers and do not have the interests of our nation at heart.

And how can you tell who they are? If they voted to help spend us into bankruptcy - then they are not honest brokers. If they willingly helped advance the cause of the Progressives towards the economic collapse of our nation in order to "reset" it their way - without that pesky constitution - then they are either ignorant or complicit. And it's time to relieve them of their duty and send honest brokers to congress.

2010. The year of the 2nd Revolution of the United States of America begins now!

And to Democrats, Independents, Constitutionalists, Libertarians and any other freedom loving citizens of this great nation - I salute you and say.....Congratulations...and buckle your seatbelts because we've only just begun the process of taking our country back!

I read the start and thought my friend had just had a little too much Glenn Beck sauce. He's a big fan. I sincerely think people must be smarter than the raw rhetoric. Here is the response I posted on Facebook:
I think things got out of hand and needed to die, but "Republicans had NOTHING to do with stopping this bill?" Who can seriously believe that? Maybe if we had actually worked together we could make some progress.
In retrospect, I probably should not have responded at all. I normally ignore things like this for various reasons. However, I respect my friend and wanted to call him on the phony logic/rhetoric.

He responded with more of the same:

@Nathan Ummm. The Republicans could have simply not voted, walked out and gone home and nothing would have changed. They were not invited to any meetings. They were shut out of debates and told to go home. Not that they're any good any way - but they had NOTHING to do with this. WE THE PEOPLE put the pressure on the moderate Democrats who feared for their jobs. That's it.

If we had HONEST brokers who were not intent on doing things to INTENTIONALLY destroy our country - then we could make progress. But that is not the case. Washington has been infected by a cancer known as Progressivism. It's in BOTH parties. (Lindsay Graham, John McCain, George Bush, Pelosi, Reed) Until this cancer and the above the law, power-gaining secret combinations are abolished there will be no good progress.

Depending on your political leanings, you may have different reactions to this interchange. My reaction the response was initially a "you have got to be kidding me," but has since changed to an interesting thought exercise in privacy. I think people only say the rhetoric in public in order to put on a good face. However, since there is no privacy any more the rhetoric never comes down. Instead everyone speaks in hyperbole and sound bytes, even among friends and family. It makes for horribly politics, governance, and discourse. However, in my friend's case, it did make some somewhat amusing YouTube videos.

2 comments:

  1. I was thinking about last night's post some more this morning and I realized what I was really trying to say:

    I think politics is like theology. Most people carry around two sets of beliefs: the collection they subscribe to and affiliate with, and then the set they actually believe in.

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  2. Oh no! I decided that I would occasionally publish political things on my blog like this, but now my ads have a bunch of neo-cons on them. Yuck.

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