Brief Aside

Can I tell you how much it cracks me up to see conservatives tell themselves this little fairy tale where liberals used to be so reasonable before the radicals ruined it?

Listen to good ole Ned:

But one interesting angle on this thesis is that the much-touted “southern strategy” was less a factor in Democrats losing their political grip than was their Left-wing radicalism.

See, what tickles me is how it’s like he is faced with a connect-the-dot with three dots and he connects the first two, throws up his hands in victory, and declares himself done.  So, he follows along–“Oh, yes, it wasn’t the ‘southern strategy’ that ruined it for Democrats in the South”  and “Oh, yes, it was their Left-wing radicalism.”–but he never (and I’m sorry to pick on you, Ned, but it drives me crazy that you don’t ask critical questions of what you read because you are too smart for this nonsense) asks himself “What did Left-wing radicals want?”

Racial equality.  Gender equality.  An end to the hegemony of the military-industrial complex.  To send a big ‘fuck you’ to the ugliness of the 50s.  To not have to go to war.  But most of all, radicals wanted equality for everyone.

So, in essense, what you’re saying is that one interesting angle on this thesis is that the much-touted “southern strategy” (of Republicans appealing to racist whites who used to be Democracts) was less a factor in Democrats losing their political grip than their insistance on racial and other forms of equality.

Those are not two different things.  They’re two sides of the same coin.

And, duh!  Of course you can now be a Southern member of the GOP and not be a racist asshat.

But let’s not rewrite history here.  Y’all got where you are when you did by certain means that now that a younger group with the good sense to be embarrassed by it is coming into power and trying to understand where they are and how they got there wishes weren’t true.

It’s as simple as that.

My Platform

Last night, after the polka-ing, we had a long raucous discussion about politics, complete with drawings on a dry erase board.  Ha, I guess that’s how you know that you’re among your own people, when someone can pull out the dry erase board and no one laughs.

Anyway, we had put before us as a thought experiment what three things we would boil the Democractic message down to in order to make our point succinctly to the American public.

I don’t know how much consensus we came to about any one thing.  But it did get me thinking about why I’m a liberal.  And, basically, I’m a liberal or a lefty or whatever because I believe that the deck is stacked against individual people and that the only way for us to achieve anything approaching a level playing field is for us to work together.  And, often, when the weight of individuals working together isn’t enough to get done what we need to get done, we need to bring in the strong arm of the government.

And I had narrowed down my three things to three things I felt like covered a lot of ground, but in a succinct manner:

1.  Restoration of Individual rights

2.  Restoration of the Environment

3.  Restoration of vital government programs

Just thinking broadly again, from where I sit, it seems like we need to bring some of the gun nuts into our fold.  If I were in charge, I’d do this in two ways.  I’d stop advocating for new gun control measures.  We already have a shit-ton of laws on the books.  Let’s set around to enforcing them (bringing some folks in under prong one).  And I’d work with hunting organizations under prong two.  Many of these folks get that what they do goes hand in hand with wildlife conservation.  They want deer for their grandkids to hunt.  They want to pull fish safe to eat out of our rivers and streams.  And these guys are out there in nature.  If we work with them, they’re our first sets of eyes and ears, our first witnesses to environmental problems.

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Holy shit.  I am in a complete fog.  I am like a zombie in search of brains.  Must have caffeine.  Must have caffeine!

More later.

I go in search of my beloved drug.

But I Suck at Memes!

David has gone the “not technically tagging you” route to tag me for this.  Here’s the rules.

1) Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
2) Share 7 facts about yourself.
3) Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
4) Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Are there seven things about me you don’t know?  I don’t know.

1.  I cannot resist rubbing cat bellies, even though I know most of the time I’m going to get bit.

2.  I cannot function without caffeine.  I have no caffeine in the house right now.  You’re lucky you can read this.

3.  I really like having friends that know me well, but I have to say that nothing bothers me more than feeling like my motivations are utterly transparent.

4.  I hate knitting and I resent the cool things knitters can make.  As a 4.5, I truly believe that there are knitters and crochetters and that we come together in common purpose because we both need yarn, but otherwise, I don’t think we have much in common.

5.  I want to learn to spin.

6.  I believe that a willingness to polka redeems just about anyone.

7.  The thing I hate most about pickles is that they have such a satisfying crunch coupled with such an awful taste.  Why would something that is so much fun to eat taste so bad?

Ha, you can for sure tell this is the Diet Dr Pepper-less rant from me, seeing as it’s all about how much I hate everything!  Well, at least that makes me laugh.

I’m not going to choose seven folks.  Just Lee.  Just because.