"the Hate America crowd"

[DeadElephant_ORG]

Since 9/11 it has become increasingly common on the Right to call us Democrats and liberals "terrorist sympathizers" and "traitors". We've become the "hate America crowd". Talk radio hosts and their callers, pundits on TV in slug-fest "news" shows, and ordinary citizens in blogs and online forums... Radical so-called "conservatives" now regularly call us "the enemy". They mean it literally. And in so doing they break the most fundamental covenant of our nation.

As example, here's a comment I received today:

"Typical of the Democrat mentality, prosecute anyone who disagrees with you. Meanwhile, never try to stop foreign terrorist from killing Americans. Oh I forgot, they are the Democrats allies, why would they try to stop them."

Note the casual way this extreme accusation is tossed out, as if it isn't extreme in the least. My response follows:

When you become so in the thrall of your own world view that you publicly declare half your fellow Americans to be traitors - presumed to deserve a traitor's fate - you've reduced yourself to the level of a tattooed neo-Nazi skin-head, or a Klansman in a bed sheet - in short, an absolute fucking nut case. You serve the function the Brown Shirts served for Hitler. You bully. And you try terrify us.

But even still, though you are delusional and a sociopath, I grant that you are an AMERICAN sociopath, and I would never presume to question your patriotism, or your love of OUR country. And I will never stand for you to question mine.

That's the difference between the Left and the Right: Though we both deny the other's sanity, you deny our humanity - our right even to be alive.

I want you to know that you're the inspiration of the DeadElephant campaign. We're preaching your message for you. You should take pride of ownership.

[cliffordu]

1. I just tell them as a Democrat and veteran of the 101st

Airborne Division that they are cowards and they can kiss my heavily armed Liberal ass.

[Warpy]

5. Welcome to DU

I don't know why, but that made me laugh.

I always put idiots who send me this email junk on block after the appropriate "reply to all." The only replies I get from the other people he's bombarded are "thank you" and "you said what I wanted to say."

Face it, these nutbars are a small minority that's getting smaller. Some of them will resist being marched back to the John Birch Society Memorial Lunatic Fringe and act out. Most won't.

[cliffordu]

10. Why Thanks, Warpy....

I love to confront cowards and bullies. I am more than willing to shut them down in person, too.

Most of the 'haters' really are cowards...they seem, underneath it all, to be terrified of everyone.

[DeadElephant_ORG]

22. um... but what if I'm a physical coward and not "heavily armed"?

[Vickers]

36. We got yer back.

:thumbsup:

Signed,

Another armed liberal veteran

[DeadElephant_ORG]

39. ...swwweeeeet !

[Skittles]

25. it's funny

how they assume all military people, active and vets, must be repukes

[provis99]

2. Right wingers don't hate America, they just hate Americans n/t

[patrice]

4. They actually hate themselves and then Project the things they hate

about themselves (behavioral tendencies, attitudes, FEAR) on others as a defensive mechanism against ALL of their own self-hate. This is also why they need meds, self prescribed or otherwise, for their chronic Depressions. And why they are on an average rather unhappy.

[patrice]

3. Projection. = Low Self-aware, yet exclusive cognitive processing that is SKEWED toward

absolutely Self-referential semantics, even though that results in utterly Absurd BuShit! - of the brownist and stinkiest sort (I'm somewhat embarassed to say, but that IS truth.)

Note how much nearly everything they accuse others of are projections of their OWN attitudes and behaviors, especially their interests in getting others to LIE to themselves in the same ways and with the same LIES they tell themselves.

...................................................

PREVENTITIVE WAR IS MURDER!

And "we" ARE War Slaves!

[EFerrari]

6. Yep. It has its uses, though.

It's often possible tio deduce what the thugs did, are up to, or will do by reading the projection.

[patrice]

7. Absolutely possible (if that isn't an oxymoron), because it is VERY script driven.

Some of these types know almost nothing about personal freedom.

[EFerrari]

8. Or, relationship for that matter. Their screaming projections

is their "nuanced" attempt at figuring out relationship. Most two year olds are less sadistic and more appropriately projective.

[patrice]

12. Immature cognitive processing. Under-developed Self and Other Awareness.

Dependence upon simple, uni- (self-referential) dimensions, absolute truth. Limited articulation. Defensively shallow.

[patrice]

9. Is it the Greeks or Shakespeare who says the Truth will set you Free?

Slavery to anything (economic system, religion, ignorance ... ) functions on a Culture of Lies.

[EFerrari]

11. Didn't ring a bell so I looked it up. It was John. Was he Greek? lol

[patrice]

13. The one responsible for the Apocalypse? Listened to Scripture at Mass six days

a week when I was younger, but I'm not Biblical scholar.

Poetry is my bible now.

[EFerrari]

14. Yes, that John. n/t

[patrice]

15. That makes sense, because some experts say The Apocalypse is about Rebellion

against some Invaders, i think . . . .

Too bad I can't K & R this thread (because I posted in it too many times) . . . it's quite stimulating to think about what is going on in "certain bandwidths" of the overall discourse. BTW, how many people would you estimate we're talking about, who think more or less like what is sketched above?

15-20%? 10%?

[EFerrari]

16. Well, at the time, the Christian sect was a rebellion, wasn't it?

It's probable that many literary critics would read it that way unless they had a critical axe to grind.

I personally believe John came here on the Mothership with some really good mushrooms. :)

[patrice]

17. The first Liberation Theologist, perhaps. nt

[EFerrari]

18. The separation of "church" and State is a fairly new idea

maybe even a mad notion as passing as the Pinto. (I'm trying to think of an early culture that managed it and am coming up empty.)

It may be at bottom a reactionary idea, i.e., the separation of YOUR church from MY State, with the result that its mirror impulse is what we're suffering now. American culture sure has enjoyed its reactive demonizations from Day 1. And, it shouldn't surprise us too much that liberals are demonized by Republicans because all they've done is tap into a very old habit.

For all our national pretensions to tolerance, we've been some pretty intolerant sonuvabitches, haven't we? This nation was founded on an opposition, and the "American dream" is that this place is better than that other place -- which pretty much tanks our claims to fairness, equality or inclusiveness.

We could have had a whole 'nother "American dream". We could have dreamed solidarity or diversity or even, longer summers, lol. But, nooooooooo, we dreamed we could be better than the other guys. All of them.

:)

[DeadElephant_ORG]

19. "How many people would you estimate we're talking about?"

The answer depends on how you define the terms. But I would say that the number of Americans who equate dissent with treason or who reflexively accept that "liburuls" hate America is much more than 20%. It must include the entire listening audience of Rush, Hannity, Coulter, O'Rielly, Matthews, Savage Nation, etc. I don't think one could believe that FOX News really is "fair and balanced" without having those assumptions. The point I'm trying to make is that - as of 2008 - this poison has become so pervasive, that our culture is so steeped in it, that we can hardly recognize the inherent extremism of that entire world view. You know that metaphor about boiling the frog alive.

Put yourself in Germany in 1938, and ask what percentage of us Germans really think like Nazis?

[patrice]

21. You're probably right.

It really wouldn't take very much of a change at all to make "our" own version of a "final solution" the American status quo.

[ProfessorGAC]

20. I Don't Hate America. I Just Hate That 20% Of America

They are far more dangerous, scary, and threatening than any foreign terrorist.
The Professor

[Aristus]

23. Does THIS look like I hate America, you right-wing fuckwads?:

[DeadElephant_ORG]

26. Jesus... man... I'm choked up over these photos.

Thank you for your courage and service. You sure as hell deserve better respect from Rush and Savage and the rest.

We created this web badge to respond to Rush's comment about "phony soldiers". Makes quite a contrast with the pictures of you, don't you think?

[Aristus]

27. Thanks. I don't know if it was courage or not. When you've got a sixty-ton tank wrapped

around you, you're not afraid of ANYTHING.

[walldude]

40. Just like a Democrat to pull the "service" card...

Just because none of the Iraqi war mongers ever served doesn't mean they have done any less.... oh nevermind.


A toast for your service, and for getting out alive :toast:

[Skittles]

24. ooh

wickedly awesome response :thumbsup:

[DeadElephant_ORG]

30. ...we do our best. ;- }

[leftofthedial]

28. it will all be okay after November

Democrats and Republicans will get along just fine--

one of our candidates IS a repuke and the other one wants to work WITH the repukes






The idiots of whom you speak are now exposed as less than 20% of Americans. They're just crackpot loony mentally ill criminal vermin. We should just exterminate them now that we have identified their bathtub.

[Dukkha]

29. lazy chicken hawk cowards hate America

They'd rather destroy America by fanning the flames of hate then actually do something productive with their worthless lives.

[Swamp Rat]

31. yep

[Kitty Herder]

32. I have never been able to wrap my head around conservatives accusing

Democrats and liberals of being "terrorist sympathizers" and saying that we liberals embrace the ideology and methods of Islamic terrorists. I can't find any logic in that argument at all. I just can't make that jump. Conservatives are the ones who use the terror in the form of fear-mongering for political ends; they're the ones who seem anxious to turn this nation into a theocracy. Doesn't that make them far more like the "terrorists" than us?

Maybe they think we are "terrorist sympathizers" because we believe in silly things like fair trials and humane treatment for those accused of terrorism and because we are opposed to torture and the killing of innocents in unjust and illegal wars. But again, doesn't their support for illegal wars, torture of terror suspects, etc., make them more like terrorists? After all, those are techniques of terror.

[DeadElephant_ORG]

33. and yet - though plainly illogical - many many do sincerely believe it

But in addition to your argument about what is logical, I find the emotional and relational aspects to be even more unfathomable. How could anyone believe anything so terrible about the human beings who live next door, or in the next town, or who's kids go to school with yours? What would it be like to believe that your grocery checker, your dentist, your librarian are all secretly "terrorist sympathizers" who "hate our freedoms"? When your paranoia grows so broad that you feel utterly surrounded by enemies, how can your humanity - and your soul - survive?

[PA Democrat]

34. When the "America, Love It or Leave It" crowd's kids do something wrong, I guess they say nothing?

I mean to criticize the bad behavior of someone or something you love truly shows hate, right? Right?

[Echo In Light]

35. I don't "hate" the US. See it as a pathetic, failed democratic experiment

And don't for a second buy into the hawk rhetoric of being a "terrorist sympathizer" since the real terror operations have come out of Washington for a long time, and I'm not sympathetic to them or their causes...which are in part funded through our tax dollars.

[LSK]

37. Well if Dems never try to stop terrorists then EXPLAIN THIS BILL

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll015.xml

Why did it take a Democratic Congress to pass this?

[Echo In Light]

38. If our govt really wanted to end terrorism, they'd stop their own state sponsored terror/aggression

[guitar man]

41. The only America I hate

is the "America" they envision in their wildest wet dreams. An "America" where "freedom" means freedom to live according to their religious and "moral" codes as enforced by their own version of a sharia like state.

no, thanks :grr: