{"id":5605,"date":"2004-02-12T13:58:07","date_gmt":"2004-02-12T20:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/02\/12\/politics.html"},"modified":"2004-02-12T13:58:07","modified_gmt":"2004-02-12T20:58:07","slug":"politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/02\/12\/politics.html","title":{"rendered":"Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 <\/i>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? <\/i><\/p>\n

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 <\/i>hates him! We hates him <\/i>forever!<\/p>\n

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<\/i> Absolute Evil from the Eighth Dimension.<\/p>\n

Feh.<\/p>\n

(And, yes, Doyce, I realize this is why you only post on politics about twice a year<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/u>: And here’s an interestingly parallel post <\/a>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11737,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/02\/13\/when_will_someone_say_no.html","url_meta":{"origin":5605,"position":0},"title":"When will someone say “No”?","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 13-Feb-08 9:19am","format":false,"excerpt":"Bush continues to act as though he has carte blanche to dictate laws -- and Congress, even ostensibly with a Democratic majority, continues to accept that. 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