It's still only July, but already the rough beast of election season has begun moving its slow thighs. President Obama recently rolled out a series of television ads attacking his Republican rival for sending US jobs overseas through his private equity firm, Bain Capital, while Romney has responded (somewhat bizarrely) with spots accusing POTUS of making unfounded attacks on Hilary Clinton during the last democratic primary.
If you're anything like me, this campaign sloganeering has washed over you in the comfort of a politically like-minded community. (Like most of the sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, etc.* with whom I share the borough of Brooklyn, I'm a card-carrying Democrat). Many are not so fortunate. And good luck to you if you're a bleeding-heart liberal in Fort Worth, Texas or a Buckley-reciting, Reagan-worshipping conservative in Dearborn, Michigan--a stranger in a strange land.
Open Salon wants to know: Are you a political pariah in your hometown? How have your views been received? Have you ever been threatened for your beliefs?
Be sure to tag your posts "Politics Open Call." We'll highlight the most relevant submissions both on Open Salon and the home site. Please note that by using the tag "Politics Open Call," you're giving us permission to crosspost your piece in part or in its entirety on Salon.
*Bonus Question: An Editor's Pick for the first reader that can name this quote.
Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Comments
(Just kidding, you're doing great.)
"If you're anything like me, this campaign sloganeering has washed over you in the comfort of a politically like-minded community."
Relative to our current geography we should write, physical or cyber?
libby
is our perspective one of being a white SHEEP or a black SHEEP?
[hah!] sorry I couldn't resist but I think we should not be SHEEP at all. That is where we should be dwelling and communicating from. FREE range not penned!
best, libby
The Poverty of Pyrrhicism
And since I'm an equal opportunity offender, I took the other side to task here:
Nuts.
.
That pretty much sums it up.
singing some weird sheep song, of which i can't
identify — in this part of Connecticut it's
difficult being an affiliative after-affirmation kind of guy.
One more "let's kill the messenger" messenger you are. One more proverbial and enabling sheep in enabling supercilious sheep clothing! Stay in those pens. Too cool for school to really face down the difference between amorality and morality, always talking about horserace election gamesmanship. You enjoy your pragmatism (what a tragedy, you recognize at least some of the profound flaws of Obama but you enable on) and do all you can to support the rotting status quo. Keep on convincing people to stay reactive not proactive. Don't blame me that you are doing so much to ensure the survival of both the corporate sell out legacy party structures. To the doom of this country.
my humble opinion. libby
Like I said, the percentage vote total of your Green shepherd Jill Stein will have a decimal point in front of it and an asterisk behind it -- but in an election as close as this one is likely to be that could be just enough to throw the election to the vulture capitalist sociopath.
For details, see Florida 2000. In short, careful what you wish for.
We simply disagree on where compassion should come form; the individual or the gov. I guess they would like me to think the answer is the gov. On the other hand they know what my answer is and that I practice it. I does confuse them a bit.
Maybe you might find a conservative you can say the same of.
BTW, I generally do not disagree with liberals on such social things a gay rights, etc. Just on fiscal issues. Why? Well to quote the fictional character, Hank Rearden, "Because it is mine".
Libby - thanks . I am too tired to really deal with Tom tonight.
Tom - Need any more proof of your bullying. Rather harsh words for one that does not agree with you. Pretty much calling Libby stupid.
And yes there is a consensus here. Most all voted for Obama. Some/many are disappointed. Yet most all will still vote for him again. So just because there is some banter about what people do and don't like about Obama, in the end they vote the same.
The disagreement here and the left in general is mostly specifically about Obama's actions. I see little disagreement about social/political issues in general. Just on the way Obama has or has not handled the issues.
And if there is some diversity here, there certainly is not in the big left media.
Say -- if you want some real excitement in your life, maybe you can hook up with Libby -- since you're both from NYC, at least according to your bio and her avatar. And you've got at least one other thing in common -- your irrational hatred of Obama. Judging by the "logic" you both display, I'd say it's a match made in ... well, not in Heaven, but in a smoke-filled backroom at the RNC.
Obama should be impeached. But what the hey, let's re-elect him?
Even though he voided his bladder on us and the constitution but MSNBC seems to think that is the thing to do cuz look at Romney and though this is America we only have two choices? What from tv? Bullshit.
And MSNBC hasn't mentioned Jill Stein once. Course MSNBC is run by one of the five major mega-corporations that runs the US mainstream media and maybe Jill Stein is not what the GE etc. bonus babies running those corporations want those charismatic MSNBC personalities whose checks they write to UTTER the name of. Stein who is running on non-corporate funding. Why, isn't that un-American??? Duh.
Dr. Jill Stein is the enemy of the 1% and craven mass media is the propaganda tool of the one percent, whether Fox or MSNBC. It is a great racket. Divide up and conquer the citizens. As long as the Prez is a colossal puppet for the will of the corporatists who, let's face it, already captured the country, the three branches.
Jill Stein is running on a platform for PEOPLE, PEACE AND PLANET. Why that's refreshing. Can either legacy party begin to claim that? Hell no!!!!
I'm thinking Obama if it will get him another term is ready to appease Israel and provoke China and Russia and launch war with Iran. What's another war if it will advance his career opportunism. Oh yeah. He is capable of that. What's that you say. Romney may too? Damn right he might. They both are that close. So, you would think a sane population so against war, war weary and well they should be, would think ... maybe let's get a genuine human being still human in there to stop the insanity!!!!!
So I guess Obama and Hillary better get going on these "humanitarian" bloodbaths even harder in Syria to get on with his possible Iran war agenda before Nov. along with the sociopathic military industrial security matrix that feeds on the insanely bloated budget when our country is desperate for our taxes for infrastructure and jobs and social programs.
Imagine WWIII on Obama's watch. Obama would probably puff out his chest at the idea he seems to be that callow. So in love with weaponry. It is tragically conceivable. No moral compass.
And if the troublemakers like me are stirring it up for him, how useful to have a war to make people think they better not change horses in mid-stream. I mean, "it would be worse under Romney" is the mantra. 80 million people were let down by Obama. BIG TIME. How many still willing to apologize for him? Still defending him. Still willing to keep him in. Still lying to themselves that he has the priorities of the people on his mind, other than put in rhetorically for campaign bullshit.
So why not be pro-active and dump him and the Dem party and not be trapped into being manipulated and thus locked by the gamesmanship into being reactive -- reactive as in politically black-mailed by the Dem one percenter now very wealthy Dem operatives who are shepherding so many to defaultedly vote for the lesser evil (hah!) ones who sold us all out for the corporate overlord pimps. Let's face it they did.
ConEd workers in NYC are fighting for basic benefits they have had in a new contract, and it is of course looking bad because austerity is the bludgeoning world wide message coming from the zillionarie overlords and their wealthy political pimps -- meanwhile the ConEd CEO has so many millions it's obscene. Not touching his yearly income or maybe upping it. Yes, that is what is happening all over the country and world with the talk of austerity. Further economic raping of the working class to up the wallets of the big boys and girls.
But Obama wants to play Lucy and the football about upping taxes on the rich? ISN'T THAT SPECIAL!!! Why, what a great idea Barack. And we should believe you this time because ... because ... oh, wait, you are winking at the overlords to ignore what you are saying to us, the learned helpless so taken advantage of ones, because you know that the pimped out Congress will never let it happen and will take care of their fellow millionaires, billionaires and zillioniares. They all want to be zillionaires, too.
Oh, and the planet? Obama doesn't give a flying you know what about that either. None of them do. Stein does but what does that matter. It's a winner take all gamesmanship over statesmanship and over decency and over empathy country. With a citizenship that has so much deserved bad karma coming at it one day, I'm thinking it might be time to find our sense of decency and ethics and legality and HEARTS, Cordle, our HEARTS as a people and begin to make up for the devastation that has been wrought in our names and that will rain down soon enough starting with the poorest and working its way up fast to the middle class. It was logical they would turn on us, too, in their gated community exceptionalism, the rat bastards of the universe.
Our hearts were beginning to come to life the night Obama won, some who had hope -- since things were so surreally evil under Bush. We weren't wrong for having that hope. Obama was a Trojan Horse, but that idealism was good. And needs to be inspired. To be pumped back into us for energy. What did Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington say, Cordle? Lost causes are the ones most important to fight for.
We just shouldn't trust the damn Dem party to vet a candidate or the G-D media (especially Oprah) for getting us a candidate who seriously can bring about change. What a bullshit slogan that was. Obama was and still is shameless. So we all, myself included, thought it was the naughty Repubs who had done us in as a constitutional republic. We had round two of betrayal with the Dems.
It was so cruel to have to endure the evil of Bush/Cheney and then have Obama slide in with his smiles and lies and hypocrisy. We had to go through the stages of grief for Obama and some citizens are still stuck in the bargaining phase. SNAP OUT OF IT!!!
We need to shake up the Dem Party and say, "ENOUGH OF YOUR CRAP!!!! YOU BETRAYED US!!!" We don't want to be blackmailed into supporting you, you bottom feeding scum suckers!!!!! How many trillions did you hand over in a heartbeat to the perpetrators of the economic disaster in this country? You were not only crooked you were incompetent.
But keep on recommending cuz MSNBC is cherrypicking reality bites only from Romney insanity that the citizens hold their noses and vote for Obama. Obama and the party SO jumped the shark and so are the citizens jumping it if they re-vote either of these EVIL clowns in -- they are on the wrong side of history, the evil one. Not part of solution you are part of the problem. And Obama and the Dems are not part of the solution. Don't want to be on the side of EVIL and join up with the conscious accessories to mass murder and mass criminal fraud!!!! And if you are not awake right now to what this country is doing with their military and economic terrorism, you are really playing ostrich for a really really really long time.
sorry I called you a sheep, Cordle, but leftwingnut is an insult and the people on the left and the people on the right may have more in common than you think, but we on what you call the fringe left don't deserve to be conflated with the racists and xenophobes and homophobes and Islamophobes and misognyists, etc. and that was hitting below the belt!
MLK stood up to LBJ about the war, took a strong stand for morality even though LBJ was helping him with civil rights in a big way, but MLK got it. Many of those on his team did not have that moral vision and imagination and stamina and turned on him. He did the right thing. He got all of it. The forest and the trees and the moral picture.
The point of power is always in the present moment Louise Hay preaches, and the election isn't yet and people can wise up. And if they don't they don't, but I am doing all I can to encourage them to because Obama does not deserve our support in my humble opinion and neither does the Dem party. And if you don't call them out and take a stand, the slippery slope keeps on sucking you and all of us down.
Maybe if Nader had won in 2000 we wouldn't have had a sellout Dem party like we do in 2012!!!
I operate from the stance, don't enable evil. and if the rest of my fellow citizens decide that is a decent way to think and feel, maybe we can be heard, even if the teebee won't want to talk about it. Do we have to pretend reality and leadership is in the magic box of lies?
best, libby
libby
Also I am sorry to inform you that you are apparently as much a psych case as me. Sorry about that.
Masochism would imply somehow you cause me pain. What a joke. I don’t need to tell any shrink about any problems. As I told you I have been tested for 8 hours 3 times, so any problems are known. I can tell you I am i pain at this moment and I don't like it.
I tell you what Tom, I will pay for you to be tested. Want to give it a try? Besides the test you get to read the results and then have a conversation with the psych about the results. You really want to know the truth. Take the test. Maybe we will find out who is the racist, sadist, irrational hater and many other things. You do want to know your own psychology don’t you Tom? You will even find out something about the “critical thinking” thing you think you are so skilled at.
As just a another tidbit. Maybe you memory needs testing too. My bio states nothing than the obvious fabrication I live in NYC and was born on new year’s eve. You know I was born in LA and live in TX. Christ I stated in this post.
As for meeting Libby. That would be fine. I can talk to a liberal that is upset with Obama. I just met a woman who has been a Dem all her life, lived in CA all her life, the daughter of a decided liberal Stanford Professor. And guess what. She HATES Obama after having voted for him. She is constantly telling me Romney is not running an effective campaign and will vote non Dem for him for the first time. Too bad she not still in CA. It might matter there. We don't need her vote in TX.
Anyway, meeting you would be a pleasure. I would be happy to come to TN and visit. I am your worse nightmare. You might have to have it thrown in your face that I don’t fit your mold of what you want me to be. I am highly intelligent , fiscal conservative, born to dirt poor parents who instilled good work habits, chose a stressful career in spite of physical difficulties since a teenager, saved money because I don’t need an iPhone to know my self worth, etc.
You want me to be a over privileged, spoiled, materialistic, racist, non caring, idiot with mental problems. Too stupid to even know what is good for me.
If I am what you paint me to be you would hate me and be pleased I am. If I am who I say I am you will still dislike my politics but you will HATE the idea I exist. And while it is unlikely we would get along you might find it curious that I could get along fine with your more rational liberal friends.
And that is why you response will be predictable. You will come up with some BS again but will you answer question.
Will you take the pysch test? I will pay.
Awaiting predictable response.
Oh, but it does hurt my fingers to practice a new difficult song.
I guess I just can't shake the masochist thing. Damn it !
For everyone else here is a link to a great guitarist many have not heard of and a beautiful song dedicated to his daughter .
Tommy Emmanuel - Angelina
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64FdXlm_cIE
You are either a plant by the RNC -- my strong suspicion -- or a Karl Rove wet dream. Either way you and Joseph are a perfect couple.
I say in the last pew with a cute black.
She French Kissed like a female rabbi.
She was fun. She no cussed the f`word.
She smelled like Great Canadian Bacon.
Maybe she be kissing DJ Rush Limbaugh.
I be on Bah-List since `The War of 1812.
I was readin earlier about Black History.
gov.nsca/nsarm/virtual/africanns /
cn.wikipedia.org ref:, Black Refugees.
We sure no seem to learn from history.
`
I wondered where you were. I be gone to.
Have You found the lost Googles? Gargle?
`
bebop-o
goat gouda blueberry
Good Celery!
clownsense
`
( We all get busy )
I'll be patient too.
Ask Kerry why?
You no delete?
I hope you not.
Good luck too.
Black Loyalist were recruited to fight war.
still thinking about the 'immigrant' OC over here... : )
The ignorant say, "You don't like it? Leave!" Most of us can't. I have a remote option, through marriage, of immigrating to Australia or New Zealand. (We are broke, poor as churchmice, and would have to start from square one with entry-level jobs.) I can at least dream of leaving. I am grateful for that; it keeps me sane. Most posters here would be hard pressed to find any country to take them in. I pity them.
Wow.
I guess you won't be taking that test.
Of maybe you have occasion to take on already.
And of course no answers
All one has to do is look at the precinct\ map after an election to notice this.
Spent 6 weeks there in spring on business in '97. Beautiful!
I also found that there are people on OS who truly care about other people first, and politics somewhere on down the road to never. I like those people. OS has it's own little ( can't say leftist, Libby's a leftist, and one of the most caring people on this site--Democrats?- that's not write either)
How about "Units of the Borg" ( as opposed to believers in free will) circle jerk of barely pubescent boys that believe that social intercourse consists of stroking each other off while yelling the equivalent of "Hubba Hubba Babaee! at anyone who happens by. They aren't interested in your opinion or in adult intercourse between the different genders of government, they see you only as fodder for their small boy masturbatory fantasies of being able to make you OBEY !. They cannot be taken seriously.
That said, I do enjoy my interactions as a T-Partyer with the adult True (classic and classy) Liberals of this site.
from a military family. Too bad I can't think, or write, about that dichotomy clearly.
I live in the Southern part of Idaho or what I call Baby Texas. As a fish out of water I'm now proficient in biting my tongue, praying, and being extremely indifferent to bossiness. I'd write a post but it's a lot of work thinking about the subject, right now I'm into drawing and making ice cream so participating is not on my list.
I don't do open calls very often but I like reading them and getting many views on the same subject. I like the ones you've posted so far. Now it will be nice to read stories of how others deal with being trapped in a foreign political land.
How to interpret this? That women value agreement, or dislike disagreement, more than men do? Or that politics plays a larger role in the world of a “progressive” than in the world of a knuckle dragging reactionary? Or that it takes all kinds? Of course, I live in a college town, where there is only one kind. There are towns with only the other kind, though I’ve never lived in any, and they get much worse PR. So there may be a market for nonpartisan advice on being a social leper.
1. You can’t change anyone’s mind. Repeat: You Cannot Change the Mind of Anybody Else. People can only change their own. You may fantasize a highlight reel of dazzling conversational sallies that cause scales to fall from the eyes of your listeners, who will learn to reward you with lavish thanks. These will not occur in real life and they will not even happen on film unless you’re Aaron Sorkin. A practical tip: In social settings, avoid the expressions “define your terms,” “Pareto optimal,” and “delusional.”
2. Stockholm Syndrome is not your friend. Do not settle for being an anthropological curiosity—someone tolerated at the adults’ table for being, as has been memorably said in another context, “articulate and bright and clean.” If you acknowledge that Newt Gingrich is a laughable jackass do not expect your bonhomie to be repaid by a similar admission about, say, Chuck Schumer.
3. A dogmatist, says G.K. Chesterton, is not simply someone who defends his views fiercely, but one for whom other views are not even conceivable. It’s safe to suppose that a town with only one kind is full of that kind of dogmatist. Will being of the other kind make you feel liberated and smugly superior? Not for long. You will soon recognize that the game has been rigged, the rules of evidence and argument replaced by those of etiquette—or, to be precise, snobbery. Will being underestimated place you in a position affording powerful leverage for political jiu-jitsu? (Reagan certainly profited from his opponents’ belief that a clinching response to anything he said was “Bed Time for Bonzo!”) Maybe, but who really wants to be Clark Kent? He is, to begin with, not getting the girls.
4. In fact, you are superior. You know their views in detail and they don’t know yours. On the other hand, why should they care? (See 3.)
5. Passing. Cowardice is acceptable. I myself do what I can to pass, using The New Republic for a beard—excellent book section, Stanley Kauffmann on movies, and politics by writers who, even if they may be fatheads, aren’t nuts. TNR is what I read in public—waiting for a movie to start, eating alone at a restaurant, etc. Of course, most products of the conservative press ought to be safe. It’s unlikely that The Claremont Review of Books or The New Criterion will be recognized and activate the shunning reflex. (See 3.) But recall that we are dealing with a one drop rule.
6. Coming out. If you feel you must come out, if at some social occasion a blanket of smugness has descended that you can no longer bear, there is a recommended procedure. Say, “Full disclosure: that’s a view I hold.” Offer nothing but that datum. No rule of decorum is broken; no challenge is issued that calls for a reply; yet an undeniable, potentially disquieting, fact has been introduced, with the potential to achieve what Stephen Potter calls “stopping the flow.” You, a physically present human being who has thus far betrayed no bestial tendencies (I’m making an assumption), have confessed to a thought crime. The flow can’t restart unless someone mans up and attacks you to your face. On the other hand, someone might.
7. Does what doesn’t kill you make you strong? If only.
8. Speaking in tongues. If you’re the incorrect kind, you can speak—as cryptographers say—in the clear; it might as well be code. “Federalist number 10” or “the naked public square” or “the unbought grace of life” will establish contact with my tribe over a secure channel. By contrast, everybody understands the language of the correct kind means, reaffirming as it does the default assumptions. Take an extreme example, the theater world, where I spend a lot of my time. Its politics run in even narrower grooves than the politics of the average college—which, after all, has a department of civil engineering. We all know what it means for a script to be “engaged” (left wing melodrama), “relevant” (left wing melodrama about current events), “gritty” or “urban” (ditto with black people), “multicultural” (ditto with white people who are ashamed of themselves), or “provocative” (add sarcasm). Life is simplified.
9. So why do I live in occupied territory? Decent restaurants. Old friends (most of whom are, from my point of view, political fruitcakes). The resigned recognition that, if I were ever surrounded by people who agreed with me, I would have no choice but to light out for the territory.