Concerns About Obama's Inspiring Speeches

[SirNitram]

I believe Rogue's reaction is EXACTLY why the kind of presidency Yogi is advocating cannot happen. We need a Lincoln, minus the gunshot to the head, to heal our country.

Didn't Lincoln's election trigger the Civil War? That doesn't strike me as 'healing', save in the all-out chemical warfare that is cancer therapy.

[Yogi]

Again I say wow because of course escalating reprisals are the best way to govern. Sooner or later SOMEBODY has to be willing to ste above the fray and mediate between the extremes. Otherwise we become Northern Ireland, fighting oursleves for centuries over a groinw litanny of percieved faults by predecesssors until finally we spill enough blood that everyone is ready to sit down and talk. Frankly I would much rather try talking NOW before the bloodshed. Go back and read some Lincoln if you want to understand how you win a devisive partisan struggle because it most certainly isn't playing a constant bloody game of King of the Hill.

I'm glad that you have faith that the Republicians will be willing to sit down and discuss things like civilized people. When you get some evidence to back up that faith, I'll be even gladder.

I'm not surprised you're advocating playing the same game as DeLay, Cheney, and Rove, since you're evidently as stupid as they are in assuming you'll be in the majority forever.

If the Democrarts would forever be in the majority, then they could afford to play nice. They won't, so it's stupid not to press the advantage when they have it.

I suppose if you're in favor of abusing civil liberties, punishing taxpaying citizens for voting the wrong way, and wiping your ass with the Constitution, you really don't see how it would make them worse. Since I'm neither insane nor stupid, I'm voting against the Republicans for those exact reasons, and I'm hoping against hope there are enough people out there that share my opinion to pull the country back from the brink.

Oh I'm sure things would be just fine when Democrats are in charge. Since you're evidently not stupid enough to assume that the Democrats will be in charge forever, what do you think will happen when the Republicians get in charge again? More Democrats getting screwed. If the Democrats will be screwed half the time, might as well screw the Republicians for the other half.

So keep hoping.

Frankly, I think that whoever gets elected will have to deal with the massive fallout from the Bush presidency's brain-damaged policies such as the Iraq War and his anti-Robin Hood economic policies, and no matter what he does, he will end up getting blamed for the results. The conservatives will then sweep back into power in 8 years, riding a wave of anger that they've spent the entire 8 years building up with their constant attacks and divisive strategies and lies about who actually caused these problems in the first place.

Which is why the Democrats need to keep on attacking the Republicians and stay on the offensive, to prevent crap like this from happening, or at least make mitigate the effects.

So you'd make America into a left-wing dictatorship instead?

Given a choice left-wing dictatorship and a right-wing dictatorship, it's not a hard choice to make.

Two problems. First, you need to remember that should it come down to it, the people you're talking about oppressing are far, far better armed than those likely to side with you.

why is everyone talking about civil war? The Democrats were shitted on for 10 years and I don't smell a civil war yet. The Republicians already think that each and every Democrat is a traitor that hates America with every fiber of their being and I don't smell war yet. Please present evidence that this will lead to civil war.

Secondly, fuck you. Frankly, if your brain-damaged scheme happened I'd not be terribly upset when the inevitable revolution started. Open oppression like you advocate is not acceptable. Would it be a nightmare scenario afterwards? Hell yes, but it would just be out of one nightmare and into another, whether the revolution was armed or through a lost election.

If you think rebellion is as bad as repression, then I have really bad news for you. There's no evidence that the Republicians are going to try anything new, just look at who they're nominating. So if the Democrats play nice or play mean, you're going to be repressed on a regular basis, and no amount of moral high road is going to help.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I believe Rogue's reaction is EXACTLY why the kind of presidency Yogi is advocating cannot happen. We need a Lincoln, minus the gunshot to the head, to heal our country.

Didn't Lincoln's election trigger the Civil War? That doesn't strike me as 'healing', save in the all-out chemical warfare that is cancer therapy.

I meant his atitude of reconcilliation AFTER the war. Before? Yeah, not a huge help. In this metaphor we're (hopefully) at the end of our current civil war. Maybe Lincoln was the wrong guy. Andrew Johnson, maybe?

[Flagg]

I believe Rogue's reaction is EXACTLY why the kind of presidency Yogi is advocating cannot happen. We need a Lincoln, minus the gunshot to the head, to heal our country.

Didn't Lincoln's election trigger the Civil War? That doesn't strike me as 'healing', save in the all-out chemical warfare that is cancer therapy.

I meant his atitude of reconcilliation AFTER the war. Before? Yeah, not a huge help. In this metaphor we're (hopefully) at the end of our current civil war. Maybe Lincoln was the wrong guy. Andrew Johnson, maybe?

The guy that pretty much returned to the South back to its status quo only without slavery?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Didn't Lincoln's election trigger the Civil War? That doesn't strike me as 'healing', save in the all-out chemical warfare that is cancer therapy.

I meant his atitude of reconcilliation AFTER the war. Before? Yeah, not a huge help. In this metaphor we're (hopefully) at the end of our current civil war. Maybe Lincoln was the wrong guy. Andrew Johnson, maybe?

The guy that pretty much returned to the South back to its status quo only without slavery?

Alright, we need whichever the fuck president it was that healed America after the Civil War . I give up, its been too long since American history.

[Ryan Thunder]

<horseshit>

Holy shit, calm down. That attitude died in me when I was fucking 12!

[SirNitram]

I believe Rogue's reaction is EXACTLY why the kind of presidency Yogi is advocating cannot happen. We need a Lincoln, minus the gunshot to the head, to heal our country.

Didn't Lincoln's election trigger the Civil War? That doesn't strike me as 'healing', save in the all-out chemical warfare that is cancer therapy.

I meant his atitude of reconcilliation AFTER the war. Before? Yeah, not a huge help. In this metaphor we're (hopefully) at the end of our current civil war. Maybe Lincoln was the wrong guy. Andrew Johnson, maybe?

You do remember what happened to the Reconstructionism Johnson started, right? The right wing of the time set fire to it, burned it down, and put it out by urinating on the ashes. There is no pithy Civil War quote here, save for a worst-case scenario.

[Darth Wong]

We need a Lincoln, minus the gunshot to the head, to heal our country.

The country was never healed. A lot of the same basic divisions of cultural mindset are still present in some form or other, and still virulent.

[SirNitram]

We need a Lincoln, minus the gunshot to the head, to heal our country.

The country was never healed. A lot of the same basic divisions of cultural mindset are still present in some form or other, and still virulent.

Those afterwards actually worsened it, ensuring the failure of Reconstruction, which led the South to become entrenched in all the BS they had, and thus the attitudes were allowed to flourish and colonize.

If there had ever been healing, you wouldn't see so much historical revisionism or 'THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN.'

[Noble Ire]

We need a Lincoln, minus the gunshot to the head, to heal our country.

The country was never healed. A lot of the same basic divisions of cultural mindset are still present in some form or other, and still virulent.

It is often assumed that Lincoln would have been able to heal the United States had he been given the chance. Of course, the likelihood of that is quite debatable (even though it is certain that he would have done a far better job than Johnson); Lincoln might have been able to facilitate a more effective enfranchisement of Southern blacks, but hundreds of years of divergent cultural and political development can't easily be undone by one man (especially one many Southerners despised). Even time hasn't been able to do that effectively; the American North and South are still quite different in a great many ways.

[Yogi]

Alright, we need whichever the fuck president it was that healed America after the Civil War . I give up, its been too long since American history.

That would be Andrew Johnson. Congress tried to impeach him. History was not very kind on him.

[Darth Raptor]

The kind of political healing the United States needs will take decades. Expecting a single president to single-handedly pull it off in eight years absurd. Whole generations must die off and certain socio-economic theories need to be spectacularly falsified before this can be the kind of nation I'd be truly proud to live in. The necessary reforms will be excruciatingly long-term, the engine of which is education. That's why I think, after nuke plants and railroads, public education is the single most vital form of infrastructure we've got. And, like all the others, it's crumbling badly. The ONLY sure way to fix this country is to raise new generations of intelligent, compassionate individuals to replace the stupid, selfish ones. Again, this will take decades. Precious decades this republic might not have.

No matter who wins, they won't be the President who Saved America (assuming of course it CAN be saved). But they could be a decisive step in the right direction. That's the most we can realistically hope for.

[CmdrWilkens]

I believe Rogue's reaction is EXACTLY why the kind of presidency Yogi is advocating cannot happen. We need a Lincoln, minus the gunshot to the head, to heal our country.

Didn't Lincoln's election trigger the Civil War? That doesn't strike me as 'healing', save in the all-out chemical warfare that is cancer therapy.

Lincoln's election "triggered" it in the sense that Southern political leaders were convinced that they were going to be forced to surrender slavery immediately. What was missed, and part of it was due to how campaigns and informaiton were presented in that age, was that Lincoln never advocated for ending slavery in the South simply containing it within its existing boundaries. In turn his desire, oft repeated in border states like Indiana or in divided states like Pennslyvannia, was the only reason he won the election outright instead of having the mess tossed to the House of Representatives. Moreover his continuing ability to negotiate the divide between conservative and radical Republicans in his own cabinet and congress is probably the key reason why the North did not implode on itself (or elect McClellan in '64). He always tempered his public statements, never saying anything until he felt the time was right to enact it and showed a magnaminity in victory (his cabinet was composed chiefly of his three rivals for the Republican nomination) that enabled him to actually govern effectively against most of his recent predeccessors who continually ran into coalitions and entrenched radicals unwilling to move.

For those who dislike compromise there is no more telling point than to say that immediate emancipation would have destroyed the country. Despte the injustice to blacks there are practicalities that cannot be ignored. Had Lincoln immediately ended slavery he would have lost all the border states along with a goodly proportion of his support in the North thus rendering him impotent and unable to actually effect the changes neccessary. it was only by letting vents run in the direciton he nudged them that he was able to slowly and surely work the North to the end purpose of ending slavery and realizing the 13th amendment. His death prevented his plan for reconstruction from seeing light and instead led to the slash and burn work of the Radical wing of the Republican party. In proof of one of his own adages trying to crush the beaten didn't make them submit it only made them resentful and hateful, turning their hate on the most convenient target: the free blacks in the south. A course more like waht Lincoln proscribed in Louisiana would have had far different outcomes and may have led to a very different and equiable soltuion which would not have entrenched the resentment.

At the end of the day its his advice to the Springfield Temperance Society is probably the most prominent. If you denounce someone with thundering tones and an aura of superiroity then then will not react as one receiving wisdom but rather will immediately harden their harts and contiue their course claiming justificaiton in the tone offense was given in. We can decry the stupidity of such reactions but their truth means we must deal with the practical consequences. We could denounce arch conservtives for views and politics which are destroying america and hurting its message to the world. In turn no matter the justness of the statement they aren't going to suddenly say "oh I see, I must have been wrong time to accept a moderate approach." So if you can't win such people by thunder then do it with slow patient negotiation for at the end if they remain intransigent then you have earned the lofty peak with which to take umbrage upon them.

[Patrick Degan]

To underline the point, all through the latter half of 1862 Lincoln worried about how emancipation would be received. He wrote in his diary at one point: "I would do it, if I could be sure that half the army wouldn't desert and four more states would rise up in rebellion." Lincoln had to navigate the ship of state through a very dangerous minefield and it was chiefly his ability to build bridges between rival factions that he was able to see the country through the crisis of the Civil War. An absolutist would have lost the war by August of 1862.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

You've been sitting centre stage to watch exactly what happens when the arch-conservative agenda gets everything it wants. No regulation of banks! Credit crisis people try to paper over by claiming it's 'Just Subprime'. Foreign Policy via Schoolyard Bully mentality. A war everyone's bogged into because, whoops, knocking over dictators -doesn't- wave a magic democracy wand. And the bill starting to come due on 'Free Market' as interperated by the big pharmacutical and insurance companies.

In light of this, it should wake most anyone up.

Those aren't arch-conservatives; neo-conservatives, perhaps. I said:

1. I am anti-capitalist. Not just pro trade-protection like Buchanan, et. al., but anti-capitalist.

2. I am against the populist injection of religion into politics.

Now, you might think that leaves me a neo-con myself on foreign policy. And, oh, once I believed in 1, and in that, to be sure. But now? No. I don't agree with that either. I do not believe in spreading democracy around the world; primarily because I don't believe in it at home. It would be rather nonsensical for me to support the former but not the later.

Why the canned response when you knew that, though? I haven't exactly made my Integralist political sympathies a big secret here, especially since my development of such beliefs has basically made me come to realize every single thing the Bush administration has done is wrong.

[Adrian Laguna]

The country was never healed. A lot of the same basic divisions of cultural mindset are still present in some form or other, and still virulent.

Those afterwards actually worsened it, ensuring the failure of Reconstruction, which led the South to become entrenched in all the BS they had, and thus the attitudes were allowed to flourish and colonize.

If there had ever been healing, you wouldn't see so much historical revisionism or 'THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN.'

Stupid Union commanders share some of the blame, especially McClellan. Imagine if he had utterly crushed the Army of Northern Virginia in Antietam. Since the war was dragged along for four years, the latter two of which were exceedingly bloody and hard fought, it let the Confederate apologists have something of a case. Had the Army of Northern Virginia been utterly crushed in 1862 things would have been rather different. The Civil War would be remembered more as the South being stupid and getting bitchslapped as soon as the Union put an huge army together, rather than the very close run conflict it's remembered as.

[Adrian Laguna]

Or to put it quite simply I don't think that the average American liberal quite understands how much during the Clinton era the American Right had turned into an armed camp filled with paranoid conspiracy theories and recommending that you turn your guns on the federal police if they come to confiscate them, while 90% of the Marines said they would refuse an order to disarm the American population.

I'm wondering what would have happened if democrats hadn't had a run of badly timed incompetence in 2000...

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Or to put it quite simply I don't think that the average American liberal quite understands how much during the Clinton era the American Right had turned into an armed camp filled with paranoid conspiracy theories and recommending that you turn your guns on the federal police if they come to confiscate them, while 90% of the Marines said they would refuse an order to disarm the American population.

I'm wondering what would have happened if democrats hadn't had a run of badly timed incompetence in 2000...

Oh, talk stays talk. Unless, you know, actual substance ends up behind it, like some people in this thread are proposing.

[Vaporous]

You've been sitting centre stage to watch exactly what happens when the arch-conservative agenda gets everything it wants. No regulation of banks! Credit crisis people try to paper over by claiming it's 'Just Subprime'. Foreign Policy via Schoolyard Bully mentality. A war everyone's bogged into because, whoops, knocking over dictators -doesn't- wave a magic democracy wand. And the bill starting to come due on 'Free Market' as interperated by the big pharmacutical and insurance companies.

In light of this, it should wake most anyone up.

Those aren't arch-conservatives; neo-conservatives, perhaps. I said:

1. I am anti-capitalist. Not just pro trade-protection like Buchanan, et. al., but anti-capitalist.

2. I am against the populist injection of religion into politics.

Now, you might think that leaves me a neo-con myself on foreign policy. And, oh, once I believed in 1, and in that, to be sure. But now? No. I don't agree with that either. I do not believe in spreading democracy around the world; primarily because I don't believe in it at home. It would be rather nonsensical for me to support the former but not the later.

Why the canned response when you knew that, though? I haven't exactly made my Integralist political sympathies a big secret here, especially since my development of such beliefs has basically made me come to realize every single thing the Bush administration has done is wrong.

I'm having trouble seeing how that leaves you a conservative at all, at least in the American grain.

[Darth Wong]

The country was never healed. A lot of the same basic divisions of cultural mindset are still present in some form or other, and still virulent.

Those afterwards actually worsened it, ensuring the failure of Reconstruction, which led the South to become entrenched in all the BS they had, and thus the attitudes were allowed to flourish and colonize.

If there had ever been healing, you wouldn't see so much historical revisionism or 'THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN.'

Stupid Union commanders share some of the blame, especially McClellan. Imagine if he had utterly crushed the Army of Northern Virginia in Antietam. Since the war was dragged along for four years, the latter two of which were exceedingly bloody and hard fought, it let the Confederate apologists have something of a case. Had the Army of Northern Virginia been utterly crushed in 1862 things would have been rather different. The Civil War would be remembered more as the South being stupid and getting bitchslapped as soon as the Union put an huge army together, rather than the very close run conflict it's remembered as.

I don't buy it. Even if the South had been crushed more quickly, they were huge assholes before the war; why would they change afterwards? They would still propagandize the facts forever, and the length of the war is generally not cited as a major argument in favour of Southern apologist bullshit anyway.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I don't buy it. Even if the South had been crushed more quickly, they were huge assholes before the war; why would they change afterwards? They would still propagandize the facts forever, and the length of the war is generally not cited as a major argument in favour of Southern apologist bullshit anyway.

They do however include military prowess as part of their national cult, with the way they held out for "so long" against "such terrible odds" being part of it.

[Crown]

What makes you think bipartisanship would lead to the extreme right-wing viewpoint to win out? Bipartisanship is generally a middle road of compromise.

That in itself is a concern, because the GOP has had a lot of success in recent decades by assuming an extremist position on issues and forcing the "middle" rightward. Also, compromise is undesirable on some issues, simply because the Republicans have it completely wrong--the Iraq War and health care are two examples.

Nailed it with your first post.




Oh, I'm lurking now, wave!

[Illuminatus Primus]

There's really no need to start shooting them until they've actually done something that deserves a bullet. Just shove bill after bill down their throats and foward their complaints to the I Don't Give A Fuck Department. There are plenty of perfectly legal and Constitutional ways to make their lives as miserable as possible.

Because ideological conformity and "proving a point" is exactly what being a leftist is about. Not hard to see where "kulakization" et al came from on the Left. Started with a prick like you with an axe to grind.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Somehow, people have to shift the culture. It's become fashionable to make fun of liberals because they blame Big Business for everything. South Park does this on a regular basis. But nobody ever makes fun of conservatives because they blame Big Government for everything.

I hate people who love South Park's social commentary. Its brain-dead.

[Adrian Laguna]

I'm having trouble seeing how that leaves you a conservative at all, at least in the American grain.

It would be more accurate to say she is not a conservative in the modern American sense. I've found her views share various similarities with those of Edmund Burke, who is widely regarded as the father of Anglo-American conservatism. I believe that Burke himself would turn up his nose at modern conservatives, and be rather offended that they use the word "conservative" to describe themselves. In many ways, they're radicals in their own right.

The type of conservative she is hasn't been around in strength for nearly a 100 years, but it is American. It can be loosely described as politically conservative and socially progressive. Its last hurrah was during the Progressive movement around the turn of the 20th century, culminating in the Taft Presidency. That ended with the 1912 election, when Taft and Roosevelt failed to settle their differences, allowing Woodrow Wilson to ascend into office, and forever changing the course of American history.