Quote of the Day
In Wasilla, a comparable home would be more horizontally oriented, clad in aluminum, and perched on wheels and/or cinder blocks. But with the de rigeur meth lab, it would be a more profitable investment than this place. — by SnarkSlope in House of the Day: 47 Sidney Place
In Wasilla, a comparable home would be more horizontally oriented, clad in aluminum, and perched on wheels and/or cinder blocks. But with the de rigeur meth lab, it would be a more profitable investment than this place.
— by SnarkSlope in House of the Day: 47 Sidney Place
Sixyearsandcounting, are you really truly saying the Republicans NEVER call Liberals stupid, or insult our very core values as human beings, for the way WE vote?
What cave have you been living in? Don’t you own a TV?
Gimme a break.
Typical of Republicans. Total inability or refusal (or whatever pathology) to see themselves with any clarity whatsoever. Inconsistent and hypocritical to a laughable degree. And yes, trust me, the world is laughing at them.
SnarkSlope, I’ll need to now login as “Fork Decoy Palin”.
I’m voting for Obama. I guess that means I’m popular, cool and hip. Thanks sixyearsandcounting for the reaffirmation!
I’m no intellectual, but I do try to keep informed. My candidate (guess who?), as most Democratic candidates are, is far more egalitarian than his Republican counterparts.
I have had the (not serious) wish that only informed people should be able to vote but obviously this is problematic to say the least. A test prior to casting votes? My intolerance is not a matter of differing views – more a matter that, “I’ll vote for Joe Shmo because he makes me feel like I can have a beer with him”. Do I think I’m qualified for the job? No.
And by the way, Bill Clinton, a Rhodes scholar is the best President we’ve had in modern history.
Thanks for the link, Biff. I shall henceforth be known as Guzzle Red Palin.
The assumption that anyone who disagrees with us is either stupid or evil is extremely troubling. Rational, intelligent people can disagree about most things, including this election.
Most people vote at least in part on some fuzzy feeling that their candidate is somehow like them – intellectuals and the uninformed alike. The intellectuals believe we need an intellectual, and most others want someone who seems normal to them. Neither is a good reason to vote for anyone.
BTW, it might be worth noting that the most brainiac Presidents of the last 100 years were Wilson, Hoover, and Carter. All of them were failures (Wilson had a lasting influence but was a failure in the short term). By contrast, FDR was said to have a “first class temperament, second rate intellect”. Smarts and expertise ain’t all they’re cracked up to be.
Susan, if what you say is true, the ultimate conclusion must be that citizen participation in the national government is untenable.
Such an assessment of the people is typically used by statists the world over to justify their tyrannical systems of government.
Perhaps the change we need is an electorate divided not along geographic terms, but along professional expertise. The issue is you – and the people you criticize – have limited experience and expertise and differing views. The very problems we have today are due to the inability of politicians to understand every conceivable issue we face in modern times. On some level, you understand this (the jocks versus the geeks or whatever). Instead, think of things in terms of doctors versus engineers versus construction workers and so forth. Your hope however, for an all knowing Fuhrer is simply not going to happen. No man has a large enough brain to competently lead the nation or enforce the millions of laws and administrative rules that currently encumber us.
Sixty, I think you mean “smart” instead of “popular, cool, hip”. Most of us evil North-easterners (as Palin would say) have no problem with small-town America. I have a problem with short-sighted, selfish, uninformed America. The fact is, the majority of the American electorate are just that. Your comparison of the electorate to high-schoolers is accurate. The jocks didn’t like the smart kids either. I just wish that people would vote for the President as if the job required a brain.
This condescension is a huge part of the reason why Republicans keep winning Presidential elections. The truth in any high school, college, or nation is that the popular, cool, hip folks are a small percentage of the population, and there’s a much larger group of normal people out there who resent the snobbery, pretension, and power of the hip/cool/popular/elitist/etc. Any politician who can tap into that resentment has something going for them. Liberals who talk like this about small-town America deserve to lose. Nobody who looks down on the people he/she governs will be an effective leader or will persuade anyone of anything. The only Democrats who have won after 1964 are the evangelical peanut farmer Carter and astroturf-in-pickup Clinton.
Note it has nothing to do with privilege, a matter of birth and wealth, but elitism, an attitude problem.
I recommend Rick Perlstein’s book “Nixonland” for anyone who wants to understand this phenomenon.