Margie keeps threatening to go out early each Sunday morning and remove the editorial pages from the paper, since when I read them over brunch I inevitably get a spike in my blood pressure.
I’m beginning to feel the same way about political debate in the 2004 presidential elections. Hell, it’s only February, and I’m already feeling like the vitriol unleashed against the presumptive Democratic candidate are beyond the Pale — let alone the hatred, disgust, calumny, name-calling, and bitter venom aimed at the Republican incumbent.
And I’m not talking about wingnuts from the Free Republic or the Democratic Underground. Otherwise level-headed, entertaining, interesting, intelligent, engaging, witty, wise, and read-worthy bloggers and commentators on both sides of the debate seem determined to paint the Other Fellow as the current incarnation of Hitler, Stalin, and Satan, all rolled into one. Oh, and that Other Fellow looks like a dolt, too, and dresses like an idiot, speaks in a bizarre fashion, and obviously can’t be trusted because of what he was doing three decades ago. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but throngs of other brainless political zombies seem to support him because of their own pettiness and smallness of heart. He’s clearly a Brainless Buffoon, except for all the times that he’s an Evil Genius, calculated and clever, manipulative of others even as he’s manipulated by powerful interests behind the scenes. He’s obviously deluded, but he’s equally obviously lying through his teeth about everything he says, as part of some Great and Terrible Conspiracy that he is the head of. And, by the way, did you know you can twist his name, position, family, or some other proper noun associated with him into a puerile epithet? Isn’t that kewl?
But, seriously, don’t you realize that the Fate of Civilization and Earth hang in the balance, and that if the Other Guy is elected, we might as well all swallow our guns, because we’ll be Doomed, Doomed I Tell You? And it’s likely to happen anyway, because that Other Guy has evil geniuses working for him, twistnig the minds of the electorate, and other Powerful Forces at his beck and call that will unfairly affect the electoral process, leading to the Coming of the Antichrist, unless we come up with another disparaging name for That Guy, and so prove the righteousness of our position against that hated, evil, nasty, nasssssty candidate. Nassty! We hates him! We hates him forever!
Unlike Our Guy, of course, who patently and absolutely Rocks, who is the Last, Great Hope for America and the World, who’s never made a mistake, never had a regret, likes children and dogs, is fiscally responsible, morally straight, a uniter not a divider, and the Only Way To Defeat Absolute Evil from the Eighth Dimension.
Feh.
(And, yes, Doyce, I realize this is why you only post on politics about twice a year.)
UPDATE: And here’s an interestingly parallel post from about the same time on another blog. I don’t quite agree with it all — it’s not so much the candidates themselves as their “Anybody but X” supporters — but it’s well worth reading.
I was talking with a co-worker about the same thing. Unfortunately, this is not limited to partisan politics. My co-worker theorized with 250 million people you have to be outrageous to be heard over the din. Reasonable discourse simply gets lost. I don’t find myself getting angry, though. Rather, I am sad. The reason why I am sad rather than angry is because of the line from the old Pogo comic strip, “we have found the enemy and it is us”.
Saddly, I think Lieberman was the only “decent” individual offered up by the Dems. I’m not sure why, but I continue to be shocked at how low brow the comments have been coming from and concerning candidates in the “sensitive” party.
While I’m more irked by the Dem/supporter comments and attacks on Bush, it’s mostly because they’ve been doing it snice 2000. There are plenty of low-brow comments and smears coming from the GOP/supporters.
Hatred begets political suicide. One historical analogy that comes to mind is FDR. The Republicans utterly despised Roosevelt. (I still recall the venom from my grandparents.) As a result of that hatred they would buy any conspiracy theory that came down the pike. The “big one” was that FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to happen because he had a secret treaty with Churchill. The end result was forty years of irrelevance for the Republicans (at least in Congress).
I guess I should be a happy warrior at this point and allow the political suicide to run apace. The problem is that while I am a Republican, I am also a Christian and a American. As a Christian, I am commanded as much as is possible to be at peace with all people. As an American I am grieved by the damage the “culture wars” have taken on all of us. I am saddened that the unity caused by the 9/11 tragedy so quickly dissipated. With so many true enemies all around us, we cannot afford to be infighting with our fellow Americans.
What did you expect the Dems to do after enduring eight solid years of demonization from the GOP? More than eight, really, as the constant, relentless demonization of the Democrats was something promulgated very successfully by Newt Gingrich. It is now the norm for both sides. I wish we could regain some measure of rationality or civilized behaviour but I can’t imagine how.
While I do my fair share of grousing about Bush and his administration on my own blog, including making use of unflattering terms such as The Shrub and ShrubCo, I try not to resort to pure villainizing without cause as it bothers me as well. At the same time, I’m not so enamored with any of the Dems to paint a rosy picture of their infallibility as I generally regard most elections as an exercise in choosing the lesser evil. But that’s just me. 🙂