I saw one of the 31 percent who support * today

[Nightjock]

I was driving behind him.

On the back of a beat up Honda Civic (an older gentlemen with grey hair)had the following bumper stickers.

"bush-cheney 04"
"boycott peace"
"welcome home marine hero's"

..and also some marine company name/number.

It's the first bush bumper sticker I have seen in MONTHS!

I actually saw him pull into the driveway of a beat up looking small house with a tiny yard in SERIOUS need of a landscaper. I wondered why he would support a president (and I use that term loosely) who does not care about him and only cares about his rich friends.

I read somewhere "poor people who vote for bush are like the chickens voting for Colonel Sanders"

Does military service make you blindly support bush?
The man sends troops into battle on lies and without armor but this guy supports him?!....

I'm fascinated by this man who I don't know...and never care to meet. Is anyone here in the military that can explain it?

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Boycott Peace???

That is nuts.

[Mad_Dem_X]

2. I know - what the hell

"Boycott Peace" - that's horrible! :wow:

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. Yes, it is nuts.

But have you ever noticed how the right-wingers sneer at the very notion of peace? Like it's a bad thing? They make fun of "peaceniks," laugh at you if you argue that war should be avoided, call you naive? I think they believe that wanting peace is a sign of weakness, and these guys can't stand to be thought of as weak.

[Xipe Totec]

9. And yet here they are,

instead of being on the front lines.

It nicely puts the lie to all their rhetoric, doesn't it?

They stomp, cheer, and growl for war from the bleachers, as if it was some kind of football game.

[Debs]

34. Just like Bush

They STRONGLY believe in wars they just strongly belive other people ought to fight them and their pampered butts are needed desperately as cheerleaders. And to smear anyone that disagrees

[snowbear]

31. The people who dislike the word peace are probably the same ones...

... who think that the word "environmentalist" means nothing more than a hipnoid, tree hugger.

Most Republicans HATE the word environment, environmentalist, or environmentally friendly.

They seriously need to --------->

[ChairmanAgnostic]

7. I can't even begin to wrap my head around that one.

ask that guy to enlist, and watch the reaction. better yet, someone should send him a draft notice. He probably doesn't read newspapers (or his mandible joint gets too tired and sore when he tries) and watching Faux Gnus has been proven to rot the synaptic electro-chemical receptacles.

[Kelly Rupert]

41. Yeah, every time I see two people talking peacefully,

I punch 'em, just because peace sucks.

[liberal N proud]

3. Must be a retired Marine who didn't get over the brainwash

What kind of idiot doesn't want peace?

[Monkeyman]

4. This Veteran never supported Dubba

[JonDirt]

11. This veteran either

In fact, according to the shit-house walls while I was in Iraq, most of my camp didn't.

[glitch]

14. Welcome home, and welcome to DU! nt

[sarge43]

16. Welcome home, JonDirt and welcome to DU

Get yourself a beer and put your butt down.

[JonDirt]

18. Thanks

I've been floating around here looking at things for awhile but thought it was finally time to start talking. I spent only 4 months in Iraq, and in a small camp outside erbil which i believe is gone now. I left a month before things got really bad. and in the ensuing 3 years i lost my old roommate and a few other people i knew. still got friends there and in Afghanistan.

[sarge43]

20. I wish I had words that would help. I didn't during Nam and

nothing has really changed (sigh). I do hope your reserve commitment is history. If you haven't seen it, there is a vets forum if you want to hang with the long and the short and tall.

[JonDirt]

21. reserve commitment

Ends in November. Trust me, I'm worried and so are all the guys i keep in touch with.

[sarge43]

22. This November or next?

[JonDirt]

23. next

[sarge43]

24. Oh shit.

Well, one fucking day at a time; that's the only way to keep your sanity.

[BikeWriter]

25. Welcome home, Brother. Thank you for your service.

[newyawker99]

26. Hi JonDirt!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[RFKHumphreyObama]

28. Welcome home, thank you for your service and welcome to DU

We are honored to have you here

:toast: :toast: :toast: :yourock:

[joefree1]

6. Youth gone, past that never was

We still see the car flags and Bush stickers here too. Not many though. Mostly on poor white older folk. I don't wish them any bad.Their vision of America was invented in a Advertisement campaign, immortalized by Norman Rockwell, compounded by Television in the 1950s and 60s and exploited by Televangelist and Right Wing Politicians in the 90s and after 9/11.

Leave them alone, they are a dying demographic.

[ClassWarrior]

8. Read "Conservatives Without Conscience" by John Dean...

..."Don't Think of an Elephant" by George Lakoff for a couple of pretty good glimpses into that seemingly bizarre mindset. It helps to know the mind of the enemy.

NGU.

[John Q. Citizen]

12. Yes, "Don't Think of an Elephant" is on my to read list. I heard Lakoff speak

on an Alternative Radio broadcast and he nails it as to why people vote against their own self interests and why liberals/progressives can't understand why they do that.

His thesis is that many people vote their self-identity over their self interests.

The sooner that liberals and progressives can understand this the sooner we will be electing people who actually work for our self interests.

[ClassWarrior]

13. Exactly.

The new one from Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute, "Thinking Points," is good too.

"Don't Think of an Elephant" is a real easy read. I think it's actually a collection of 10 of Lakoff's articles.

NGU.

[John Q. Citizen]

17. The responses on this thread to the OP is exactly why people need to read

and think about Lakoff's thesis. Everyone assumes the least likely reasons why the vet votes as he apparently does.

In a sense, it proves half of Lakoff's thesis, that most liberals/progressive haven't a clue as to what's up with why people often vote against their self interests.

[yasmina27]

10. The 2 military folks I know

think *bush is next to god. It is sickening. One is active duty navy - IT guy at the local recruiting station. Our neighbor - nice enough fellow and his wife and daughter are sweet, but he thinks shrub's shit doesn't stink. They're due to move next summer to his new post and he's worried about selling his house. He way over-paid for it - cause he was in a hurry - and they have spent well over $20,000 fixing it up. The house 3 doors up has been up for sale for over 8 mos. and can't find a buyer. Hello?? Think your "hero" might have something to do with it?? He's got framed pics of * and Rummy on his mantle and one of * and Pickles on an end table. Last year at one of their parties, I put Mr. Yuk stickers on sticky pad paper and kept putting them on the pictures. Every time they disappeared, I put new ones on. Two weeks ago at our second annual (and probably last) pig roast, I draped black streamers over rummy's picture. They actually all thought it was pretty funny.

The other Bush-bot is unfortunately my cousin, who fortunately lives in FL. When she came up last year for my dad's funeral, she was bitching about how the vet's drug formulary had changed, and now their prescriptions cost so much more. When we took my mom down there this summer to get away, my tongue hurt by the time we left from biting it so much!

I know not all military persons support him, but geez, it sure seems like the majority of them do!

[mainer]

30. The one Marine I know supports Bush blindly

and it's so sad, because he's a very well-read guy who seems well informed, and whose mom is liberal, anti-war, and heartbroken that her son is going back to Iraq for a second tour of duty. But he's bought into the whole "we're saving the Iraqi people" myth. And he keeps saying, "you don't hear about all the GOOD news coming out of Iraq." In fact, he's looking forward to going back. I'm not sure there's anything we can do to change their minds. But since these soldiers are so gung-ho about this war, perhaps we should just let them stay in the war zone, to take the places of the soldiers who are against it.

[yasmina27]

32. My neighbor

almost had to go to Iraq last spring. They needed an IT person and he was next on the list. Someone else with his skills volunteered since Dave (my neighbor) has a family. Very nice of him - EXCEPT - so do many of the other folks they're sending over who don't have a choice.

I don't want anyone to be sent over their, because of the f**d up mess it's become, but DAMMIT, they should take those who have made the military their life work first, leave the NG here for emergencies (like hurricanes).

[sarge43]

15. Well, first of all we don't know if the dude in the Civic is a vet

Second, given he probably watches nothing but Faux and its ilk he may have no idea what's really going on over there and that hero may not have clued him in.

Third, even if he does have a clue, never underestimate the power of denial.

The only reason I can think of in answer why do people like him support Smirk is that Smirk gives them someone to hate, an enemy, or more simply he's unable or unwilling to think rationally.

I certainly can't speak for other vets; so all I can say is contrary to popular belief military service does not cause mental entropy nor does it require blind support. It does require obeying orders which is an entirely different matter.

[Auntie Bush]

19. Maybe the answer is as simple as the same physiological reason

that "Love is blind". Look at all the faults everyone else sees in someone else's intended...but they don't see their faults or are blinded
and see only their good qualities or how they effect themselves EMOTIONALLY.

I think this is what happens to bush* lovers. They will have to fall out of love with him before they'll be able to see, recognize or accept his failures and faults. Unfortunately that will take a long, long time or something extremely heinous on his part that devastates them personally. If we expose and prove his multitude of crimes against America...he MAY lose some of his supporters. We can only hope. Right now they are still in love...and blind as a bat.

[Tyo]

27. There can be no shades of grey for them

It's for us or against us, American or Un-American, patriot or traitor. For them, rejecting anything that Bush has done or stands for would mean rejecting it all and I don't think that they can do that to themselves. Easier to deny reality and believe the lies and the spin.

[KayLaw]

29. Here, too.

In my neighborhood, for some reason, it's the less "well to do" families who have those "W" stickers on their cars. I just don't get it. Maybe they're Fox types? :think:

[Joanne98]

33. War is a Force that gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges

From Publishers Weekly
http://www.amazon.com/War-Force-that-Gives-Meaning/dp/1400034639

"The communal march against an enemy generates a warm, unfamiliar bond with our neighbors, our community, our nation, wiping out unsettling undercurrents of alienation and dislocation," writes Chris Hedges, a foreign correspondent for the New York Times. In War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Hedges draws on his experiences covering conflicts in Bosnia, El Salvador and Israel as well as works of literature from the Iliad to Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism to look at what makes war so intoxicating for soldiers, politicians and ordinary citizens. He discusses outbreaks of nationalism, the wartime silencing of intellectuals and artists, the ways in which even a supposedly skeptical press glorifies the battlefield and other universal features of war, arguing not for pacifism but for responsibility and humility on the part of those who wage war.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal
This moving book examines the continuing appeal of war to the human psyche. Veteran New York Times correspondent Hedges argues that, to many people, war provides a purpose for living; it seems to allow the individual to rise above regular life and perhaps participate in a noble cause. Having identified this myth, Hedges then explodes it by showing the brutality of modern war, using examples taken from his own experiences as a war correspondent in Latin America, the Middle East, and the Balkans. These examples highlight the devastating effects of war on life, community, and culture and its corruption of business and government. Hedges is not a pacifist, acknowledging that people need to battle evil, but he thoughtfully cautions us against accepting the accompanying myths of war. This should be required reading in this post-9/11 world as we debate the possibility of war with Iraq. For all libraries.
Stephen L. Hupp, West Virginia Univ. Lib., Parkersburg
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Force-that-Gives-Meaning/dp/1400034639

[xchrom]

36. thanks for the heads up --

i also rely on alice miller's work to illuminate german families pre-wwII -- i think it's very important to understand these motives -- and why -- someone else does or doesn't fall into the herd mentality.

[Joanne98]

37. I think it's sad. We could bond doing good things too...

Like waging a war on the oil companies. Maybe we can recuit these lost souls.

[xchrom]

38. but you sort of exemplify the problem --

for some if not many -- YOU are the problem.

much has passed beyond the abortion thingy or the gay thingy.

we're going to have to see how this new millenium shakes out and their negative apcolyptic views.
they can't hold those forever{i.e. they newish since the turn of the last century} -- it won't sustain.

so i think we have to be a little patient. and believe in the things we believe -- they are sustainable after all.

that being said -- we must understand them -- how they think and how they feel.

[Joanne98]

39. Aren't corporations responsible for the moral decline of America

It's the corporate media who keep throwing sex in everybody faces. And abortions and divorce are good for keeping women in the work force and splitting households in two so they need more stuff. If we explained how corporate interests are served by the culture wars, we may make this man an ally. If he needs a war to give himself meaning, let's give him something to fight. Does he know that the US Chamber of Commerce is lobbying for open borders? A war on the Chamber would be nice.

He just doesn't understand that materialism is the opposite of spiritualism. They have all been suckered.

[xchrom]

40. i probably have some serious problems with some of what you say.

better education -- i.e. the disappearence of a lot of mythology around sex and women and availability of birth control
for women have a lot to do with the things you're talking about -- and i'm not interested in casting about for new ways
to demonize sex and womens roles in the family and bedroom.

we're just coming out of that era.

as far as marriage and divorce is concerned -- this is the first time in human history we've let individuals determine their marriage partners and that has more to do with divorce than anything else -- people make mistakes when it comes to romance.

i suggest you take a look at this and see what christian{conservative} leaders have to say about unions.

you have to scroll down a ways to catch it.

http://www.wisaflcio.org/features/Politics%20in%20America-03.01.04.htm

[goddess40]

35. Bush is pro-life - that's all that matters

except that it's just another lie. Bush is anti-choice and anti-women but he isn't pro-life but these numbnuts can't figure it out because their heads are too far up their ass.

[MasonJar]

42. Hero's is possessive