I plead "guilty as charged." But I like to trash "conservatives" as a group, because, overall, their parties implement stupid, destructive policies based on a moronic ideology. As individuals, very few conservative voters exhibit the entire gamut of psychological problems and intellectual limitations that most of the Blogging Tories display. They can be reasoned with on many levels. But their political actions remain destructive and indicative either of shallowness and ignorance, or of general stupidity and cruelty.
I once got trashed for describing an Ontario PC voter thusly:
I don't know about you, but where I come from, voting for someone and saying: "Hey! Give me my tax cut so that I can renovate my Rosedale mansion and landscape my Muskoka cottage, and buy the new Cadillac to go with my Mercedes and my Jaguar, and if you have to make thousands of people homeless, and close some hospital beds, and defund public education, and make it harder for a few thousand single moms to be able to feed their kids, so be it."
When told that my depiction was a laughable caricature, I decided to spell it out:
If someone lives in Rosedale, they most likely live in a mansion. Sorry to have to break that to you. If they live in a mansion and they voted for Harris because they wanted a tax-cut, they obviously wanted to do something with the money they got back. Somebody making over $100,000 a year would have netted on average about $7,000 from one year out of the Harris tax cut. Somebody making well over $100,000 obviously made more than that. Such people do own Muskoka cottages (somebody has to you know). Some of these people do own fancy cars. I'm sorry if this is all shocking to you. When they get thousands of dollars back from tax-cuts, they tend to spend the money on something. Again, I'm sorry if this is hard for you to process.If they voted for Harris (especially if they voted to re-elect that thug) then the spending cuts, the increased poverty, all of this real stuff, that the poorest in Ontario have to face each and every single day, is what they agreed to in return for those extra thousands of dollars.
The point is, many of us have blinders on about the extent of the madness around us. Those nice people in those upscale neighbourhoods with CPC or PC Ontario signs on their lawn at election time really are voting for increased homelessness, increased poverty, the cut-backs in needed services, all in return for a tax-cut. These nice people are making selfish choices based (at best) on an appalling level of ignorance about what they're really voting for. All those seemingly sane people in the USA, voting for the Republican Party in the United States really are voting for mass-murder, corruption, voter fraud, the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans, homophobia, racism, and many other sins.
And because of these shallow, selfish, stupid, ignorant fools, perhaps one-million people have perished violently in Iraq. Two million are homeless. Tens of thousands of Iraqi women have been forced into prostitution in order to survive. And I'm supposed to worry about generalizing about the nature of the people who gleefully continue to support these crimes. I think not.
Their choices are abominable. There is nothing further to say. It's not debatable.
3 comments:
I decided to spell it out:
Why is it that the only ones that agree with your sentiments are either lower middle-class lefties like me, or ultra-rich like Soros and a couple others who are so rich that taxes are just some abstract thing one of their accountants handles with his tax attorney? Is it that it takes far too long to explain how cooperative societies are the only ones that prosper, over the long term?
I truly fear for all of us in the near future; Bush has really gone balls to the wall to insure that right-leaning judges are sitting in unelected seats, legislating as if they were the corporations themselves. Not to mention the Religious Right making sure that Christianity and Islam will be at war for as long as America stands.
I like the way you broke it for 'em!
Thanks. In that original debate, I was trying to establish that there are consequences from one's voting preferences. If one votes for a party of fascism, or corruption, or social cruelty, then one must accept the moral criticisms that follow.
That example was for a debate about a poverty group marching through a wealthy Toronto neighbourhood to protest their poverty and inequality in Canada.
But it's obvious that it isn't just upscale neighbourhoods that have pockets of support for "conservative" parties. There are working-class people with enough political blindlness combined with other problems who will vote for these maniacs as well.
The cynicism I fight mightily against swallowing me whole, centers around those you mention. You can't talk to them, or even point them toward the truth; They have no need for it. Especially from people like me; They've heard enough about us atheist lefties, thank you very much. Fine. Go ahead, keep voting for Rev. Weems' "pick as most humble servant of the Lord. Sponsored by: Enron et.al.He's lookin' out for ya, never fear. Strike that...Fear is our friend!
The upper class looks at these dolts, and they talk about 'personal responsibility', as if that meant anything positive to those without the means of opportunity; Quit cryin' 'bout yer insurance and health care. If you don't have health care, why don't you take some personal responsibility and rub that on the sucking chest wound. Okay, now back to work.
"Gee whiz, mebbe he's right. I sure wish this would stop spurtin' so I won't lose my job. I'd really be fucked then. And it would be all my own fault. That's liberty for you!"
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