I'd say most of it is outreach factor, Democrats have been tripping over themselves to cater to them for a long time now as a general part of the whole 'we are the minority party' tenet they've fully embraced. They're also more socially Conservative than they are fiscal though I've read a few things lately that say even that is changing as the numbers of Catholic Hispanics takes a dip and they either become atheists or Muslims.
Rush Limbaugh said on his show one time "the republican party is the party that has a common set of beliefs that holds the party together. The democrats are not a party of common ideals but collection of minority groups that hate republicans."
My first question after he said this, why do all of these groups, environmentalists, feminists, black americans, hispanic americans, females and any other minority I missed hate republicans. If rush is correct; isn't the only real party to blame is the republicans for alienating all of these groups?
No since it's definitely in the Democrats' short and long term interests to mudsling on Republicans as much as possible and cast every single issue as a barnstorming attack on X group, an example of how Identity Politics is totally abusive. This is something that has been increasingly prevalent since the Gingrich shutdown, reached an absolute fever pitch during the 2000 election and continued all the way through Bush's entire Presidency and now due to there being a minority in the Oval Office is something that inevitably hits a little closer to home for those groups.
What happens is every policy opposition is personalized, no matter what it is. Oppose universal healthcare? You hate old people, the poor, minorities, etc etc. Oppose abortion? You hate women, the poor, minorities. It's really never anything dealt with at a philosophical level, the message to their base is always Republicans hate you, want you dead, want you to suffer. Oppose Obama? You're racist. EVERY policy objection results in the most extreme negative stigma.
yup. Let me continue:
If you support obama care, you support death panels.
If you're against the war in iraq, you hate america, you're not patriotic.
Support gay marriage: pro man on dog.
No since it's definitely in the Democrats' short and long term interests to mudsling on Republicans as much as possible and cast every single issue as a barnstorming attack on X group, an example of how Identity Politics is totally abusive. This is something that has been increasingly prevalent since the Gingrich shutdown, reached an absolute fever pitch during the 2000 election and continued all the way through Bush's entire Presidency and now due to there being a minority in the Oval Office is something that inevitably hits a little closer to home for those groups.
What happens is every policy opposition is personalized, no matter what it is. Oppose universal healthcare? You hate old people, the poor, minorities, etc etc. Oppose abortion? You hate women, the poor, minorities. It's really never anything dealt with at a philosophical level, the message to their base is always Republicans hate you, want you dead, want you to suffer. Oppose Obama? You're racist. EVERY policy objection results in the most extreme negative stigma.
There's a funny mockup news headline that gets mentioned by Republicans whenever the latest incident of the above happens:
"World Ending Women and Minorities Hardest Hit"
It's funny because it's the penultimate statement of just how over the top and out of sync with reality the Identity Politics platform is. Watching this happen day in and day out and having had to defend myself against these accusations for a long time now has hardened me to the hysteria but it doesn't take away the fact that even if there's some level of philosophical disagreement between the parties the message to the Democrat base and its various groups is always the lowest common denominator form of mudslinging, playground bullying and vitriolic attacks.
All that comes is attacks, and coming from both the media and "official" Democrat talking heads every compromise that is made must be a Republican compromise especially since all the Blue Dogs were purged a short time ago and the ranks became very solidly Liberal. Republicans have their own messaging issues and internal policy stuff that they can fix but when your opposition makes everything into a personal attack and turns every policy objection into fearmongering and murderous hysterics it's not hard to see why low information voters on the left hate Republicans.
In my experience those low info people don't even know anything about what the Republican Party actually believes in, there's a general "they hate the poor" mixed bag statement but they have no idea on any policy platform, thus extremely susceptible to strong defamatory rhetoric.
Is this problem of mudslinging and identity politics really just a democrat fueled problem?
The idea that some people even have the label as "low information" seems like republicans need to validate their position as correct without any self reflection. When I hear the low information voter excuse what I think of is, "It is not my fault that all of the ignorant voters vote for democrats."
Low information is just a pc way of saying ignorant. Which is ironic because the right seems to attack the democrats whenever they bend over backwards to be pc.
I think it is going to be very hard for you to argue that democrats need to demonize the republicans in order to win and at the same time say that democrats need low information voters to believe their false attacks against republicans.
I'd say most of it is outreach factor, Democrats have been tripping over themselves to cater to them for a long time now as a general part of the whole 'we are the minority party' tenet they've fully embraced. They're also more socially Conservative than they are fiscal though I've read a few things lately that say even that is changing as the numbers of Catholic Hispanics takes a dip and they either become atheists or Muslims.
Rush Limbaugh said on his show one time "the republican party is the party that has a common set of beliefs that holds the party together. The democrats are not a party of common ideals but collection of minority groups that hate republicans."
My first question after he said this, why do all of these groups, environmentalists, feminists, black americans, hispanic americans, females and any other minority I missed hate republicans. If rush is correct; isn't the only real party to blame is the republicans for alienating all of these groups?
No since it's definitely in the Democrats' short and long term interests to mudsling on Republicans as much as possible and cast every single issue as a barnstorming attack on X group, an example of how Identity Politics is totally abusive. This is something that has been increasingly prevalent since the Gingrich shutdown, reached an absolute fever pitch during the 2000 election and continued all the way through Bush's entire Presidency and now due to there being a minority in the Oval Office is something that inevitably hits a little closer to home for those groups.
What happens is every policy opposition is personalized, no matter what it is. Oppose universal healthcare? You hate old people, the poor, minorities, etc etc. Oppose abortion? You hate women, the poor, minorities. It's really never anything dealt with at a philosophical level, the message to their base is always Republicans hate you, want you dead, want you to suffer. Oppose Obama? You're racist. EVERY policy objection results in the most extreme negative stigma.
yup. Let me continue:
If you support obama care, you support death panels.
If you're against the war in iraq, you hate america, you're not patriotic.
Support gay marriage: pro man on dog.
1. There have been liberal talking heads that HAVE said that death panels will be necessary:
There's other links if you care to look for them, but it's been said more than a handful of times by people like Howard Dead, Paul Krugman, etc.
2. Bashing on those that were against the Iraq war was a thing for quite awhile sure, but time and perspective(and a good dose of Libertarianism) has shown many early Iraq war supporters that it was a total scam. This is actually one area where the grassroots has made tons of progress over the last say 3-4 years. There's certainly justifiable criticism of those people for their push early on, but not now as support for Iraq is nowhere near as strong as it used to be and the conflict is actually viewed negatively by an escalating number of Conservatives.
3. I don't know about the bestiality claims, I've never actually seen or heard that one but I do see the rise in extremely far left support of pedophilia because of the gaining support for gay marriage, which I find disgusting on every single level.
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CAMILLA: You, sir, should unmask.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
3. I don't know about the bestiality claims, I've never actually seen or heard that one but I do see the rise in extremely far left support of pedophilia because of the gaining support for gay marriage, which I find disgusting on every single level.
Support of pedophilia is abhorrent. Are these people endorsed by the democrat party?
Are there any things in the fringe right that disgust you?
Is it fair to judge any group by their extreme abhorrent fringe?
You do know that the political parties switched. When the republican party freed the slaves they were the liberal party. The southern democrats were the conservative party.
There is this thing called the southern strategy were Nixon purposefully sought out the southern racist vote and brought the once southern democrats into the republican party. It was a successful strategy and allowed the republicans to win big elections.
It really boils down to a historical accident: the President who signed the Civil Rights Act happened to be a Democrat, Lyndon B. Johnson. Prior to 1964, the Democrats were loosely speaking the party for white racists, though that sentiment more spread out between the parties than they are today, and neither party had a real reputation for being "the party for minorities" or "the party for white people". The real division was geographical rather than factional: within the Democratic party there was a rift between the largely-Southern racists and the largely-Northern egalitarians. (And even this was not a hard-and-fast line - Johnson himself of course was a Texan.) When Johnson signed the bill, he is reported to have said, "We've lost the South for a generation", a prophecy which, two or three generations down the line, turns out to have been optimistic. Outraged over the Civil Rights Act, the Southern racists defected en masse to the GOP, the only other game in town. Nixon capitalized on this political windfall with his Southern Strategy, cementing the racists into the Republican base. But naturally, when all the racists came flooding in, the minorities flooded out. So this event massively polarized the parties into the racio-political situation we see today, like dropping a magnet into a box of iron filings.
I say all this is historical accident because, if the Civil Rights Act had landed on the desk of a Republican president, it is almost certain that the same polarization would have happened in reverse. Eisenhower surely would have signed it; Goldwater surely would have signed it; I think even Nixon would have signed it, for all that in the real world he was responsible for the Southern Strategy.
Is this problem of mudslinging and identity politics really just a democrat fueled problem?
The idea that some people even have the label as "low information" seems like republicans need to validate their position as correct without any self reflection. When I hear the low information voter excuse what I think of is, "It is not my fault that all of the ignorant voters vote for democrats."
Low information is just a pc way of saying ignorant. Which is ironic because the right seems to attack the democrats whenever they bend over backwards to be pc.
I think it is going to be very hard for you to argue that democrats need to demonize the republicans in order to win and at the same time say that democrats need low information voters to believe their false attacks against republicans.
No it's not primarily a Democrat fueled problem but it is primarily a Democrat tactic, straight out of the Rules for Radicals playbook. Republicans have used it as well but Democrats have Identity Politics down to an artform because Racial, Sexual, Gender Identity are more intrisically important to them.
Republicans don't have a monopoly on Low Information Voter, you know. Might be something you should take to heart rather than assume it is a purely Republican phenomenon. And at the end of the day Low Information Voter IS an accurate description of anyone it applies to, regardless of their party. The term is something that shows up in liberal media when it's suited to their description of Low Information Republican voters. So please, by all means if you wish to see it negatively, apply such universally.
Not sure how it could be hard for me to argue that Democrats need to demonize Republicans to win and say that they need their base, low info voters or not to believe such. It happens all the time. You can literally pull up 100 different right wing websites and find linked instances of it with the blogger or journalist breaking down what was said, what context it has appeared in before, what history the speaker has of such things, etc.
There's a whole industry of those websites with Drudge being obviously the pinnacle, a good chunk of the things he links highlight something like that but you also have Newsbusters, Hot Air, Michelle Malkin's blog, Ace of Spades, etc. Full links with articles or posted videos of what is said, and backlogs in some cases going all the way back to the Bush administration and sadly, updated almost daily.
Bill Clinton said today: “I’ve never seen a time– can you remember a time in your lifetime when a major political party was just sitting around, begging for America to fail?”
You could also search up the public statements of people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Alan Grayson, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, John Kerry, Al Gore, Howard Dean, David Axelrod, Sheila Jackson Lee, etc etc. Sheila Jackson Lee would be a good start because she's a low information politician so most of the things she says are vicious attacks with no attempt to deal with actual policy or philosophy.
That's to say nothing for the Liberal media who supposedly get a free pass to say the same things and worse because they're not elected officials or administration people. The entire lineup of MSNBC is a good start but you can also find people like Dan Savage, Charles Blow
I'm not sure what attention you'd have paid to that but trust me even a cursory glance with even the barest of nonpartisan mindframes will make you think wow, these people really sling some serious mud. I don't know if you have partisan goggles on or not, so that'd be on you. If you want to look at what I've said and see if it's true or not that's great, if not I'm not going to rake myself over coals trying to convince you. Winning internet points isn't what it used to be.
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CAMILLA: You, sir, should unmask.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
But this lead to a larger debate, that Republicans, specifically right wing conservatives, are inherently more racists then Leftist and Democrats.
Without getting into all the weird racial theories that you can find on the left and whether they count as "racism", I think most people would accept that the right wing plays host to more of what we might call "Racism Classic". However, we need to make a distinction between two very different propositions: "The right wing has more racists than the left" versus "Right-wingers are more racist than left-wingers". Because there are also plenty of right-wingers who are not racist: if you meet somebody who proposes a flat 9-9-9 tax plan or says "greed is good" or thinks abortion is murder, it's just a bit of a stretch to infer, "This guy must hate people who don't look like him!" And that makes it pretty hard to argue that conservatism is "inherently" racist. It's too broad an umbrella to be "inherently" much of anything.
This is what I came here to say, and Blinking Spirit said it a lot more eloquently than I could have.
I think, if I'm not misusing the term here, the OP's commits what's called the fallacy of composition. Some right-wingers are racist, therefore all right-wingers are inherently racist.
Poor populations are primarily minority, which makes the conservative policy primarily adversely affect minorities. Abortion also is more of a minority issue with unplanned pregnancies (again a poverty issue). There is racism on both side. Side most dems prob view rep as white elitists.
If you want to look at what I've said and see if it's true or not that's great, if not I'm not going to rake myself over coals trying to convince you. Winning internet points isn't what it used to be.
My problem with our exchange is the disconnect in my brain when I hear, "Democrats attack republicans in order to win, and it works because they have enough ignorant supporters that believe these attacks" Do you really not see how this line of argument is problematic?
If this is not what you are trying to say then I am sorry.
If I quote ridiculous statements by republicans would this convince you that republicans are the party of racists and homophobes?
This is not about internet points. This is about cognitive dissonance.
Edit: I also do not identify with the democratic party, nor do I respect it. I might hate them less, but as I get older I hate both parties more evenly.
3. I don't know about the bestiality claims, I've never actually seen or heard that one but I do see the rise in extremely far left support of pedophilia because of the gaining support for gay marriage, which I find disgusting on every single level.
Support of pedophilia is abhorrent. Are these people endorsed by the democrat party?
Are there any things in the fringe right that disgust you?
Is it fair to judge any group by their extreme abhorrent fringe?
Of course they're not endorsed by the party, but they're there. It's just the same as the polygamists on the right. It is fair to judge a political party by its extreme fringe because the deal is that the party is willing to take their money and votes and makes no effort to push them out, they practice negation by ignoring. Pretending they're not there doesn't mean they're not there. I realize you can't ostracize someone from casting a vote for you but you don't see much if any condemnation from their own.
Sure there's things on the fringe right that disgust me, the appropriation of founding principles, symbolism and such that ends up wedded to racist iconography. The Confederate flag is the one that gets the most heat but that's one I don't actually have a problem with because like the NSDAP stealing the swastika and polluting it that flag was and still is hijacked by those who see no problem with Southern Pride and Slavery being conjoined. There's too much Americana that is used and abused by full fledged racists to grant legitimacy to their views and it's a long string of words that would be censored here, no doubt.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CAMILLA: You, sir, should unmask.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
If you want to look at what I've said and see if it's true or not that's great, if not I'm not going to rake myself over coals trying to convince you. Winning internet points isn't what it used to be.
My problem with our exchange is the disconnect in my brain when I hear, "Democrats attack republicans in order to win, and it works because they have enough ignorant supporters that believe these attacks" Do you really not see how this line of argument is problematic?
If this is not what you are trying to say then I am sorry.
If I quote ridiculous statements by republicans would this convince you that republicans are the party of racists and homophobes?
This is not about internet points. This is about cognitive dissonance.
Edit: I also do not identify with the democratic party, nor do I respect it. I might hate them less, but as I get older I hate both parties more evenly.
I see how the wording, scope and such can be problematic and uncomfortable but it is still true regardless of that. Listen to their speeches to their base, it's a combination of run of the mill workers rights, identity politics and vitriolic Republican bashing. The operating term of it in politics is 'throwing red meat to your base'.
I actually thought of how I could write a response to you and not use the words I have and it's pretty hard to do so without taking a statement that's a few sentences long and string it out into this huge thing, just to avoid saying something that is true.
Here's the thing. There's many politicians of all stripes that do this, not just Democrats but the specific Democrat efforts are exacerbated by the Rules for Radicals framework that is the basis of their attacks.
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Mix that with the really nasty tone of Identity Politics and you have a pretty ugly cocktail.
No it wouldn't convince me because I know in many cases especially amongst the Establishment it's true. That's the Grand Canyon gap between Establishment Republicans and grassroots Conservatives that are actually becoming more Libertarian with each passing year.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CAMILLA: You, sir, should unmask.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
It's been hinted at, but I just wanted to draw attention to the ridiculous notion that whenever racism is discussed, it's always defined as "the racism of whites against minorities" when true bigotry of all types is far more pervasive and insidious than merely "the man keeping everyone down."
The problem with allowing it to be too openly applied Hyper is that most of the counters for racism are just another type of (generally less malign though) racism. Very few anti-racist policies don't end up promoting the convex - people have managed to present arguments that MLK Jr is an example of INSPIRING RACISM AGAINST WHITES which most rational people consider bat**** territory.
Not that I'll be continuing in this thread - I hate race threads - but just wanted to offer you that clarification as why since you seem a worthy poster who may have overlooked that. Pragmatically it would be great if we could allow a wide net and get a good signal to noise ratio - but reality is with a wide net false positives go off the chart, and false positives (as the thread demonstrates is an issue IMO) are already quite high.
The problem with allowing it to be too openly applied Hyper is that most of the counters for racism are just another type of (generally less malign though) racism. Very few anti-racist policies don't end up promoting the convex - people have managed to present arguments that MLK Jr is an example of INSPIRING RACISM AGAINST WHITES which most rational people consider bat**** territory.
Not that I'll be continuing in this thread - I hate race threads - but just wanted to offer you that clarification as why since you seem a worthy poster who may have overlooked that. Pragmatically it would be great if we could allow a wide net and get a good signal to noise ratio - but reality is with a wide net false positives go off the chart, and false positives (as the thread demonstrates is an issue IMO) are already quite high.
I want to call a feature of the race discussion - in the US, not just on these boards - that gets overlooked a lot.
The term 'racism' is used differently between the left and the right.
The right uses the term racism to mean, basically, 'anything that treats members of one race differently from members of another race'.
The left uses the term racism to mean, basically, 'anything that creates better outcomes for members of one race than members of another race, on average.'
I mention this only because, for like the 20th race thread in a row, liberals and conservatives are talking past each other while having a difficult time understanding how their opponents could even believe what they believe, and have to put it down to, "They're inherently flawed!", which leads to threads like, "Are Right-wingers inherently racist?"
Yep and exactly why I steer clear - definitions are so variable even within D and R even more than your overview that its impossible to know what the term means between two people without a ton of time to cover all minutiae.
Conservativism is the very definition of close-minded (hence a synonym for 'small/slowly/un-changing' being the term for their view point). That does go hand-in-hand with prejudice and bias, but it doesn't make them inherently racist.
It also doesn't tell you very much other than their political views. I once considered myself a conservative, and that didn't make me stupid in anyway - I just lacked the experience necessary to understand other viewpoints and realize that the Republicans, as a Political Party, were inherently flawed and espoused rhetoric that didn't sync with their own stated beliefs in fiscal conservatism, when you accounted for actual facts.
You need to be clear that 'Republican' is not the same thing as 'Conservative', although the two overlap. Republicans are a conservative political party, but hardly the only one.
As far as the race issue, since we've already established that they're probably a little more firm in their beliefs, what they were raised to believe will probably affect them more heavily. Since most conservatives come from the south and rural areas of America, it's unsurprisingly that a higher percentage of them may hold ignorant or prejudiced beliefs based on their upbringing or more homogeneous community.
But as far as being more racist? I don't think they are predisposed to being racist, but to believing in old ways of thinking or being slow to change their thinking (and again, hence the 'conservative' moniker).
Also, I'd like to point out that this is not just stereotypical types actively proposing crazy race stuff, we also have things like,
The National Policy Institute and this mostly grayscale with splashed of color place is home to research that tries to put a coat of varnish on white separatism. I wish I could get my blog to look at fancy as this thing, its really pretty
Creepy stuff, though, creepy stuff
Still, on Drawmeomg's point, I agree. I think it would be useful for people to say what they mean by racism both the first time they post in a thread and whenever they interact with something. Although, now that I think about that, I think it'd be pretty nifty if we had some vbb code that we could wrap around a word and have a part of our profile where we could add custom definitions to words so that when you click or mouse over [p]racism[.p] the definition you've written pops up. The difference between having programs that address past wrongs or even simply acknowledging racial differences in any respect as being racist, positive or neutral racism respectively, compared to the idea of the racism that causes overt, negative aspects (say, negative racism) is important.
Like Vaclav said, when we allow for a too broad definition of racism we can get into weird territory where MLK can be called racist because, after all, dude was pretty focused on race and, well, isn't that kind of a big deal? When a definition of racism can apply to MLK , you are probably using a bad definition of racism.
So do you actually have any experience, any time spent with Conservatives in a formal or informal setting? Do you regularly spend time with them, have Conservative friends? Know the extent of both their actions and beliefs? Where do you get that Conservatism=Racism? I think that's the bigger question here.
It'd be easy for me to say that your lack of an answer is an answer itself, but I'd rather let you speak for yourself as that is the right and moral thing to do.
Conservativism is the very definition of close-minded (hence a synonym for 'small/slowly/un-changing' being the term for their view point). That does go hand-in-hand with prejudice and bias, but it doesn't make them inherently racist.
It also doesn't tell you very much other than their political views. I once considered myself a conservative, and that didn't make me stupid in anyway - I just lacked the experience necessary to understand other viewpoints and realize that the Republicans, as a Political Party, were inherently flawed and espoused rhetoric that didn't sync with their own stated beliefs in fiscal conservatism, when you accounted for actual facts.
You need to be clear that 'Republican' is not the same thing as 'Conservative', although the two overlap. Republicans are a conservative political party, but hardly the only one.
As far as the race issue, since we've already established that they're probably a little more firm in their beliefs, what they were raised to believe will probably affect them more heavily. Since most conservatives come from the south and rural areas of America, it's unsurprisingly that a higher percentage of them may hold ignorant or prejudiced beliefs based on their upbringing or more homogeneous community.
But as far as being more racist? I don't think they are predisposed to being racist, but to believing in old ways of thinking or being slow to change their thinking (and again, hence the 'conservative' moniker).
Haha, truly remarkable mudslinging here, the epitome of baseless stupidity in and of itself. Democrats, liberals, leftists, anti-Conservatives or whatever term is vogue for the moment always want to imagine themselves as having the leg up, being as the term suggests: progressive. But they show in their unfiltered words the very thing they attack as wrong, the very thing they say they're against.
It shouldn't surprise anyone here, after all this particular website has a known liberal streak a mile wide that is discussed elsewhere in the gaming community as nothing more than an echo chamber for little boys and smaller men who wish to puff themselves up to make themselves believe they've inherited the moral compass of the age, but alas for them it is not so.
I will grant that when you speak of Republican ineptitude you are partly correct because the party is and has been for decades just one switch in the machine seeking to draw from the base when needed and then apologize for the base once they're back in the machine. That however doesn't cast a shadow over Conservatives unless you're looking at the beltway types. They attend the same cocktail parties, after all. Racism however is not an issue of concern, and the fact that it is believed so is ludicrous.
I take the same offense that the very prejudice and bias you claim exists in Conservatism is one that you display here under the umbrella caveat that you were "once considered yourself a Conservative" which is a pretty weak declaration all around. I can claim that the few months I spent several years back learning about car engines put me in a position to "consider myself a mechanic" but that would not be true. Without knowing your life specifics I'd declare that anyone who could be checked off as "considered" regarding anything instead of a full fledged declaration of such was never one in the first place. Perhaps I say this because I once "considered myself a leftist" and have some experience in that wobbly philosophic ground of "considered" but if I'm mistaken here, by all means.
I don't know if you guys toss around these blind, pig headed and frankly stupid declarations against people of a certain political or moral persuasion because it's the internet and there's no repercussions, or because there's obviously a rapt audience for the kind of back slapping camaraderie that can exist among people who so eagerly place themselves and their viewpoint directly above a contrary one with a smile that reeks of being a sneer, or you just can't see past your own nose just how wrong you are and how terrible it makes you look but not only are you wrong, you're dead wrong. Morally wrong. Intellectually wrong. Philosophically wrong. And it's a treat that Conservatives are starting to enjoy on an increasingly frequent basis to when this tired, drained and inept Race Card is played against us, tear it into little pieces and drop it in the trash where it and the mentality that plays it belong.
Here's your que to pull up Mother Jones or Media Matters, go ahead I'm waiting. Or, if such was your goal now is the time to spring the trap.
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CAMILLA: You, sir, should unmask.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
Democrats, liberals, leftists, anti-Conservatives or whatever term is vogue for the moment always want to imagine themselves as having the leg up, being as the term suggests: progressive.
It shouldn't surprise anyone here, after all this particular website has a known liberal streak a mile wide that is discussed elsewhere in the gaming community as nothing more than an echo chamber for little boys and smaller men who wish to puff themselves up to make themselves believe they've inherited the moral compass of the age, but alas for them it is not so.
I don't know if you guys toss around these blind, pig headed and frankly stupid declarations against people of a certain political or moral persuasion because it's the internet and there's no repercussions, or because there's obviously a rapt audience for the kind of back slapping camaraderie that can exist among people who so eagerly place themselves and their viewpoint directly above a contrary one with a smile that reeks of being a sneer, or you just can't see past your own nose just how wrong you are and how terrible it makes you look but not only are you wrong, you're dead wrong.
Are right wingers inherently more racist? Eh probably, it's a complex question to answer. A core tenant of right wing ideology is the concept of us vs them. This can be displayed positively as a strong sense of community and nationalism, or negatively such as in racist remarks about the out community. This is not exclusive to Republicans either, there are conservative parties in Africa too. There is not a huge skin color divide in Africa, instead in-groups and out-groups are separated by religion, and tribe.
A core tenant of right wing ideology is the concept of us vs them.
That is a core tenet of all ideology. For a strong example coming from the left, just look at Janeane Garofalo's remarks linked in the OP. "They don't know their history." "They become confused and angry and highly volatile." "The limbic brain is much larger in their head-space than in a reasonable person." "It is a neurological problem that we're dealing with." "They... they... they..."
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Haha, truly remarkable mudslinging here, the epitome of baseless stupidity in and of itself. Democrats, liberals, leftists, anti-Conservatives or whatever term is vogue for the moment always want to imagine themselves as having the leg up, being as the term suggests: progressive. But they show in their unfiltered words the very thing they attack as wrong, the very thing they say they're against.
I'm none of those things. I could go on about Democrats, but that's not the point of this debate.
It shouldn't surprise anyone here, after all this particular website has a known liberal streak a mile wide that is discussed elsewhere in the gaming community as nothing more than an echo chamber for little boys and smaller men who wish to puff themselves up to make themselves believe they've inherited the moral compass of the age, but alas for them it is not so.
But not you, right? I used to believe I simply knew better than everyone else, and I debated to 'correct' people (I've even dug out some of my old debate topics before). Now I do it when I think a point needs expanding on or to open my point of view to criticism and try to be a better, more complete person for it.
I will grant that when you speak of Republican ineptitude you are partly correct because the party is and has been for decades just one switch in the machine seeking to draw from the base when needed and then apologize for the base once they're back in the machine. That however doesn't cast a shadow over Conservatives unless you're looking at the beltway types. They attend the same cocktail parties, after all. Racism however is not an issue of concern, and the fact that it is believed so is ludicrous.
You are confusing Republicans and conservatives, which are two overlapping but distinct entities, not unlike a rectangle and a square. It's possible to be an intelligent, thoughtful conservative, and many Republicans are such. The problem is that the Republican party as a platform isn't actually fiscally conservative. But we can discuss that elsewhere, I won't continue here and take it off topic. I don't have a problem with conservatives, I have a problem with Republicans, and mostly its because of a sense of betrayal between the rhetoric I believed and reality, and partially because of a sense of unease with an increasingly radical minority that's willing to hurt our economy in order to score political points and seem more concerned by irrelevant and often hypocritical social stances.
I should be clear here that I'm not a Democrat, either. I'm now an Independent and vote for the lesser evil. Often (especially locally) that is Republican.
I take the same offense that the very prejudice and bias you claim exists in Conservatism is one that you display here under the umbrella caveat that you were "once considered yourself a Conservative" which is a pretty weak declaration all around. I can claim that the few months I spent several years back learning about car engines put me in a position to "consider myself a mechanic" but that would not be true. Without knowing your life specifics I'd declare that anyone who could be checked off as "considered" regarding anything instead of a full fledged declaration of such was never one in the first place. Perhaps I say this because I once "considered myself a leftist" and have some experience in that wobbly philosophic ground of "considered" but if I'm mistaken here, by all means.
I'm still registered Republican and I voted McCain in the 2004 primary and McCain in the 2008 election, despite the abomination that was Sarah Palin insulting my intelligence right and left.
My views didn't change until I actually worked in the inner city and did research on the various social welfare programs I'd been taught to believe were terrible and learned the truth was a lot more complicated.
I don't know if you guys toss around these blind, pig headed and frankly stupid declarations against people of a certain political or moral persuasion because it's the internet and there's no repercussions, or because there's obviously a rapt audience for the kind of back slapping camaraderie that can exist among people who so eagerly place themselves and their viewpoint directly above a contrary one with a smile that reeks of being a sneer, or you just can't see past your own nose just how wrong you are and how terrible it makes you look but not only are you wrong, you're dead wrong. Morally wrong. Intellectually wrong. Philosophically wrong. And it's a treat that Conservatives are starting to enjoy on an increasingly frequent basis to when this tired, drained and inept Race Card is played against us, tear it into little pieces and drop it in the trash where it and the mentality that plays it belong.
Here is the problem with this argument: if Republicans want to stop being called 'racist' (which I think is an incorrect for most conservatives), they need to stop their policies that disproportionately hurting minorities. Republicans may see it as closing loopholes, preventing fraud, etc, but everyone else sees it as making it harder for minorities and poors to vote, to get financial assistance, etc.
That actually has very little to do with what I was talking about, however. Let me clarify what I meant to say:
The conservative mindset is slow to change or resistant to change, and so it often rejects newer ways of thinking for the comfort of the old. Conservative literally means holding to traditional values and attitudes.
They skew older, they grew up in a different time and generally come from more homogenous times, so it's really not a surprise that they might, in a simple ration of racist to non-racist, skew more racist than liberals. It doesn't mean they are all racist, or that what liberals perceive as racist (the aforementioned damage to the poor and minorities) is accurate. It doesn't even mean that they hate minorities, more often it's simply because they don't understand them or don't understand how things they meant innocently may come across.
To give an example, a friend of my wife's back in college came from Ohio. Her mother, while an incredibly sweet and open women, had the habit of calling anyone who wasn't white or black an 'international'. Was she racist in the sense it's usually used in? Absolutely not. But it can be perceived as racist and the sweet mother did have prejudices because she was unfamiliar with the culture of her new home on the East Coast as opposed to her 99% White Anglo-Saxon Protestant former home. Prejudice =/= racism, and I think that's the problem here, we're getting offended over 'racist', rather than talking about the simply fact that the populations that skew Republican tend to be more rural and more homogenous than the Democrats. And it's pretty clear that Republicans don't really know how to reach into other populations (it's an ongoing topic of much debate with all the talking heads).
A core tenant of right wing ideology is the concept of us vs them.
That is a core tenet of all ideology. For a strong example coming from the left, just look at Janeane Garofalo's remarks linked in the OP. "They don't know their history." "They become confused and angry and highly volatile." "The limbic brain is much larger in their head-space than in a reasonable person." "It is a neurological problem that we're dealing with." "They... they... they..."
I just kept thinking about this scene, while reading the link and the whole thread.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Don't you see that the whole aim of Moderators is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make infractions literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.
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yup. Let me continue:
If you support obama care, you support death panels.
If you're against the war in iraq, you hate america, you're not patriotic.
Support gay marriage: pro man on dog.
Is this problem of mudslinging and identity politics really just a democrat fueled problem?
The idea that some people even have the label as "low information" seems like republicans need to validate their position as correct without any self reflection. When I hear the low information voter excuse what I think of is, "It is not my fault that all of the ignorant voters vote for democrats."
Low information is just a pc way of saying ignorant. Which is ironic because the right seems to attack the democrats whenever they bend over backwards to be pc.
I think it is going to be very hard for you to argue that democrats need to demonize the republicans in order to win and at the same time say that democrats need low information voters to believe their false attacks against republicans.
1. There have been liberal talking heads that HAVE said that death panels will be necessary:
http://blogs.ajc.com/cynthia-tucker/2011/04/20/yes-we-need-death-panels/
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/09/11/the-case-for-killing-granny.html
http://lubbockonline.com/interact/blog-post/may/2013-02-09/%E2%80%9Cdeath-panels-and-sales-taxes-how-we-do-this%E2%80%9D
There's other links if you care to look for them, but it's been said more than a handful of times by people like Howard Dead, Paul Krugman, etc.
2. Bashing on those that were against the Iraq war was a thing for quite awhile sure, but time and perspective(and a good dose of Libertarianism) has shown many early Iraq war supporters that it was a total scam. This is actually one area where the grassroots has made tons of progress over the last say 3-4 years. There's certainly justifiable criticism of those people for their push early on, but not now as support for Iraq is nowhere near as strong as it used to be and the conflict is actually viewed negatively by an escalating number of Conservatives.
3. I don't know about the bestiality claims, I've never actually seen or heard that one but I do see the rise in extremely far left support of pedophilia because of the gaining support for gay marriage, which I find disgusting on every single level.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
Support of pedophilia is abhorrent. Are these people endorsed by the democrat party?
Are there any things in the fringe right that disgust you?
Is it fair to judge any group by their extreme abhorrent fringe?
I say all this is historical accident because, if the Civil Rights Act had landed on the desk of a Republican president, it is almost certain that the same polarization would have happened in reverse. Eisenhower surely would have signed it; Goldwater surely would have signed it; I think even Nixon would have signed it, for all that in the real world he was responsible for the Southern Strategy.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
No it's not primarily a Democrat fueled problem but it is primarily a Democrat tactic, straight out of the Rules for Radicals playbook. Republicans have used it as well but Democrats have Identity Politics down to an artform because Racial, Sexual, Gender Identity are more intrisically important to them.
Republicans don't have a monopoly on Low Information Voter, you know. Might be something you should take to heart rather than assume it is a purely Republican phenomenon. And at the end of the day Low Information Voter IS an accurate description of anyone it applies to, regardless of their party. The term is something that shows up in liberal media when it's suited to their description of Low Information Republican voters. So please, by all means if you wish to see it negatively, apply such universally.
Not sure how it could be hard for me to argue that Democrats need to demonize Republicans to win and say that they need their base, low info voters or not to believe such. It happens all the time. You can literally pull up 100 different right wing websites and find linked instances of it with the blogger or journalist breaking down what was said, what context it has appeared in before, what history the speaker has of such things, etc.
There's a whole industry of those websites with Drudge being obviously the pinnacle, a good chunk of the things he links highlight something like that but you also have Newsbusters, Hot Air, Michelle Malkin's blog, Ace of Spades, etc. Full links with articles or posted videos of what is said, and backlogs in some cases going all the way back to the Bush administration and sadly, updated almost daily.
Bill Clinton said today: “I’ve never seen a time– can you remember a time in your lifetime when a major political party was just sitting around, begging for America to fail?”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/29/bill-clinton-gop-government-shutdown-obamacare_n_4012148.html
You could also search up the public statements of people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Alan Grayson, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, John Kerry, Al Gore, Howard Dean, David Axelrod, Sheila Jackson Lee, etc etc. Sheila Jackson Lee would be a good start because she's a low information politician so most of the things she says are vicious attacks with no attempt to deal with actual policy or philosophy.
That's to say nothing for the Liberal media who supposedly get a free pass to say the same things and worse because they're not elected officials or administration people. The entire lineup of MSNBC is a good start but you can also find people like Dan Savage, Charles Blow
I'm not sure what attention you'd have paid to that but trust me even a cursory glance with even the barest of nonpartisan mindframes will make you think wow, these people really sling some serious mud. I don't know if you have partisan goggles on or not, so that'd be on you. If you want to look at what I've said and see if it's true or not that's great, if not I'm not going to rake myself over coals trying to convince you. Winning internet points isn't what it used to be.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
This is what I came here to say, and Blinking Spirit said it a lot more eloquently than I could have.
I think, if I'm not misusing the term here, the OP's commits what's called the fallacy of composition. Some right-wingers are racist, therefore all right-wingers are inherently racist.
EDH:
UBGThe MimeoplasmUBG
My problem with our exchange is the disconnect in my brain when I hear, "Democrats attack republicans in order to win, and it works because they have enough ignorant supporters that believe these attacks" Do you really not see how this line of argument is problematic?
If this is not what you are trying to say then I am sorry.
If I quote ridiculous statements by republicans would this convince you that republicans are the party of racists and homophobes?
This is not about internet points. This is about cognitive dissonance.
Edit: I also do not identify with the democratic party, nor do I respect it. I might hate them less, but as I get older I hate both parties more evenly.
Of course they're not endorsed by the party, but they're there. It's just the same as the polygamists on the right. It is fair to judge a political party by its extreme fringe because the deal is that the party is willing to take their money and votes and makes no effort to push them out, they practice negation by ignoring. Pretending they're not there doesn't mean they're not there. I realize you can't ostracize someone from casting a vote for you but you don't see much if any condemnation from their own.
Sure there's things on the fringe right that disgust me, the appropriation of founding principles, symbolism and such that ends up wedded to racist iconography. The Confederate flag is the one that gets the most heat but that's one I don't actually have a problem with because like the NSDAP stealing the swastika and polluting it that flag was and still is hijacked by those who see no problem with Southern Pride and Slavery being conjoined. There's too much Americana that is used and abused by full fledged racists to grant legitimacy to their views and it's a long string of words that would be censored here, no doubt.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
I see how the wording, scope and such can be problematic and uncomfortable but it is still true regardless of that. Listen to their speeches to their base, it's a combination of run of the mill workers rights, identity politics and vitriolic Republican bashing. The operating term of it in politics is 'throwing red meat to your base'.
I actually thought of how I could write a response to you and not use the words I have and it's pretty hard to do so without taking a statement that's a few sentences long and string it out into this huge thing, just to avoid saying something that is true.
Here's the thing. There's many politicians of all stripes that do this, not just Democrats but the specific Democrat efforts are exacerbated by the Rules for Radicals framework that is the basis of their attacks.
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/rules.html
Mix that with the really nasty tone of Identity Politics and you have a pretty ugly cocktail.
No it wouldn't convince me because I know in many cases especially amongst the Establishment it's true. That's the Grand Canyon gap between Establishment Republicans and grassroots Conservatives that are actually becoming more Libertarian with each passing year.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
They did. If the did not it would be safe to say their would not have been a moderate Republican governor of California.
Not that I'll be continuing in this thread - I hate race threads - but just wanted to offer you that clarification as why since you seem a worthy poster who may have overlooked that. Pragmatically it would be great if we could allow a wide net and get a good signal to noise ratio - but reality is with a wide net false positives go off the chart, and false positives (as the thread demonstrates is an issue IMO) are already quite high.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
I want to call a feature of the race discussion - in the US, not just on these boards - that gets overlooked a lot.
The term 'racism' is used differently between the left and the right.
The right uses the term racism to mean, basically, 'anything that treats members of one race differently from members of another race'.
The left uses the term racism to mean, basically, 'anything that creates better outcomes for members of one race than members of another race, on average.'
I mention this only because, for like the 20th race thread in a row, liberals and conservatives are talking past each other while having a difficult time understanding how their opponents could even believe what they believe, and have to put it down to, "They're inherently flawed!", which leads to threads like, "Are Right-wingers inherently racist?"
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
It also doesn't tell you very much other than their political views. I once considered myself a conservative, and that didn't make me stupid in anyway - I just lacked the experience necessary to understand other viewpoints and realize that the Republicans, as a Political Party, were inherently flawed and espoused rhetoric that didn't sync with their own stated beliefs in fiscal conservatism, when you accounted for actual facts.
You need to be clear that 'Republican' is not the same thing as 'Conservative', although the two overlap. Republicans are a conservative political party, but hardly the only one.
As far as the race issue, since we've already established that they're probably a little more firm in their beliefs, what they were raised to believe will probably affect them more heavily. Since most conservatives come from the south and rural areas of America, it's unsurprisingly that a higher percentage of them may hold ignorant or prejudiced beliefs based on their upbringing or more homogeneous community.
But as far as being more racist? I don't think they are predisposed to being racist, but to believing in old ways of thinking or being slow to change their thinking (and again, hence the 'conservative' moniker).
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
The National Policy Institute and this mostly grayscale with splashed of color place is home to research that tries to put a coat of varnish on white separatism. I wish I could get my blog to look at fancy as this thing, its really pretty
Creepy stuff, though, creepy stuff
Still, on Drawmeomg's point, I agree. I think it would be useful for people to say what they mean by racism both the first time they post in a thread and whenever they interact with something. Although, now that I think about that, I think it'd be pretty nifty if we had some vbb code that we could wrap around a word and have a part of our profile where we could add custom definitions to words so that when you click or mouse over [p]racism[.p] the definition you've written pops up. The difference between having programs that address past wrongs or even simply acknowledging racial differences in any respect as being racist, positive or neutral racism respectively, compared to the idea of the racism that causes overt, negative aspects (say, negative racism) is important.
Like Vaclav said, when we allow for a too broad definition of racism we can get into weird territory where MLK can be called racist because, after all, dude was pretty focused on race and, well, isn't that kind of a big deal? When a definition of racism can apply to MLK , you are probably using a bad definition of racism.
It seems you're staying away, you have yet to answer my question.
It'd be easy for me to say that your lack of an answer is an answer itself, but I'd rather let you speak for yourself as that is the right and moral thing to do.
Haha, truly remarkable mudslinging here, the epitome of baseless stupidity in and of itself. Democrats, liberals, leftists, anti-Conservatives or whatever term is vogue for the moment always want to imagine themselves as having the leg up, being as the term suggests: progressive. But they show in their unfiltered words the very thing they attack as wrong, the very thing they say they're against.
It shouldn't surprise anyone here, after all this particular website has a known liberal streak a mile wide that is discussed elsewhere in the gaming community as nothing more than an echo chamber for little boys and smaller men who wish to puff themselves up to make themselves believe they've inherited the moral compass of the age, but alas for them it is not so.
I will grant that when you speak of Republican ineptitude you are partly correct because the party is and has been for decades just one switch in the machine seeking to draw from the base when needed and then apologize for the base once they're back in the machine. That however doesn't cast a shadow over Conservatives unless you're looking at the beltway types. They attend the same cocktail parties, after all. Racism however is not an issue of concern, and the fact that it is believed so is ludicrous.
I take the same offense that the very prejudice and bias you claim exists in Conservatism is one that you display here under the umbrella caveat that you were "once considered yourself a Conservative" which is a pretty weak declaration all around. I can claim that the few months I spent several years back learning about car engines put me in a position to "consider myself a mechanic" but that would not be true. Without knowing your life specifics I'd declare that anyone who could be checked off as "considered" regarding anything instead of a full fledged declaration of such was never one in the first place. Perhaps I say this because I once "considered myself a leftist" and have some experience in that wobbly philosophic ground of "considered" but if I'm mistaken here, by all means.
I don't know if you guys toss around these blind, pig headed and frankly stupid declarations against people of a certain political or moral persuasion because it's the internet and there's no repercussions, or because there's obviously a rapt audience for the kind of back slapping camaraderie that can exist among people who so eagerly place themselves and their viewpoint directly above a contrary one with a smile that reeks of being a sneer, or you just can't see past your own nose just how wrong you are and how terrible it makes you look but not only are you wrong, you're dead wrong. Morally wrong. Intellectually wrong. Philosophically wrong. And it's a treat that Conservatives are starting to enjoy on an increasingly frequent basis to when this tired, drained and inept Race Card is played against us, tear it into little pieces and drop it in the trash where it and the mentality that plays it belong.
Here's your que to pull up Mother Jones or Media Matters, go ahead I'm waiting. Or, if such was your goal now is the time to spring the trap.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
That is a core tenet of all ideology. For a strong example coming from the left, just look at Janeane Garofalo's remarks linked in the OP. "They don't know their history." "They become confused and angry and highly volatile." "The limbic brain is much larger in their head-space than in a reasonable person." "It is a neurological problem that we're dealing with." "They... they... they..."
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I'm none of those things. I could go on about Democrats, but that's not the point of this debate.
But not you, right? I used to believe I simply knew better than everyone else, and I debated to 'correct' people (I've even dug out some of my old debate topics before). Now I do it when I think a point needs expanding on or to open my point of view to criticism and try to be a better, more complete person for it.
You are confusing Republicans and conservatives, which are two overlapping but distinct entities, not unlike a rectangle and a square. It's possible to be an intelligent, thoughtful conservative, and many Republicans are such. The problem is that the Republican party as a platform isn't actually fiscally conservative. But we can discuss that elsewhere, I won't continue here and take it off topic. I don't have a problem with conservatives, I have a problem with Republicans, and mostly its because of a sense of betrayal between the rhetoric I believed and reality, and partially because of a sense of unease with an increasingly radical minority that's willing to hurt our economy in order to score political points and seem more concerned by irrelevant and often hypocritical social stances.
I should be clear here that I'm not a Democrat, either. I'm now an Independent and vote for the lesser evil. Often (especially locally) that is Republican.
I'm still registered Republican and I voted McCain in the 2004 primary and McCain in the 2008 election, despite the abomination that was Sarah Palin insulting my intelligence right and left.
My views didn't change until I actually worked in the inner city and did research on the various social welfare programs I'd been taught to believe were terrible and learned the truth was a lot more complicated.
Does that help clarify?
Here is the problem with this argument: if Republicans want to stop being called 'racist' (which I think is an incorrect for most conservatives), they need to stop their policies that disproportionately hurting minorities. Republicans may see it as closing loopholes, preventing fraud, etc, but everyone else sees it as making it harder for minorities and poors to vote, to get financial assistance, etc.
That actually has very little to do with what I was talking about, however. Let me clarify what I meant to say:
The conservative mindset is slow to change or resistant to change, and so it often rejects newer ways of thinking for the comfort of the old. Conservative literally means holding to traditional values and attitudes.
They skew older, they grew up in a different time and generally come from more homogenous times, so it's really not a surprise that they might, in a simple ration of racist to non-racist, skew more racist than liberals. It doesn't mean they are all racist, or that what liberals perceive as racist (the aforementioned damage to the poor and minorities) is accurate. It doesn't even mean that they hate minorities, more often it's simply because they don't understand them or don't understand how things they meant innocently may come across.
To give an example, a friend of my wife's back in college came from Ohio. Her mother, while an incredibly sweet and open women, had the habit of calling anyone who wasn't white or black an 'international'. Was she racist in the sense it's usually used in? Absolutely not. But it can be perceived as racist and the sweet mother did have prejudices because she was unfamiliar with the culture of her new home on the East Coast as opposed to her 99% White Anglo-Saxon Protestant former home. Prejudice =/= racism, and I think that's the problem here, we're getting offended over 'racist', rather than talking about the simply fact that the populations that skew Republican tend to be more rural and more homogenous than the Democrats. And it's pretty clear that Republicans don't really know how to reach into other populations (it's an ongoing topic of much debate with all the talking heads).
The goal isn't nor has it ever been to 'trap' you. It's just a discussion.
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj46lfpBUlY
I just kept thinking about this scene, while reading the link and the whole thread.