Comments on: Partisanship vs. Personal Integrity

By: Spot

Spot — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 02:49:52 +0000

I agree too. The hatred seems so deep and irrational that I end up defending Bush almost every time he comes up (at least when I am in Ma), which is pretty weird since I disagree with the majority of what he seems to have done. I fear opening a hornets nest, but I also am baffled by the certainty people possess about the war in Iraq. They seem to know both just how things would have gone if we hadn’t invaded, and how things will be now that we have, & I find it very hard to discern either.

Anyway, great post.

By: kraorh

kraorh — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 07:05:31 +0000

If you think George Bush is a fundamentally decent person who has made some rotten decisions, then say so and buck the stupid memes being promoted by your liberal friends.

Amen! Just tonight, I had dinner with a member of the faculty who is a very, very liberal feminist, and several other graduate students, and it’s always difficult to know how to handle the assumption that everyone present, save for me, holds, that Bush and the Republicans are evil. I generally try to make comments that are subtle, and that make those present rethink their assumptions, even though I’m hardly a fan of Bush’s policies. Much of the Bush/GOP hatred comes, I think, from the fact that many of these people are surrounded by people who agree with them down the board, so they tend to get a little too smug, and assume that with so many smart people around them agreeing with them, that the rest of America who voted for Bush must just be stupid, and Bush himself an evil pied piper who leads them astray. If there were just a handful more conservatives and libertarians, who could challenge their assumptions from time to time, they might begin to rein in their rhetoric.

(To give you an idea of where these people stand ideologically, one person mentioned a brother who now photographs, rather than hunts, deer, and how glad she was that he had changed his ways. I started to point out that in Wisconsin, we actually need hunters to cull the size of herds, otherwise the deer overpopulate, starve and get chronic wasting disease. Horrified by my suggestion, everyone pounced on me, saying that it would be far more humane and just if we could instead capture deer with tranquilizer darts and get them spayed and neutered. As it was, I was probably the only non-vegetarian there.)

By: Kathy

Kathy — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:20:03 +0000

I have nothing to add to these wonderfully articulate posts – just want to thank you for helping explain BDS. I think you have nailed it. It’s like sufferers of BDS have lost all their humanity, all sense of decency, and their moral compasses. You have explained it beautifully. I do actually have a question, perhaps better suited in a totally different blog site, but: will people with this malady ever be emotionally and mentally right again? Personally I doubt it because I don’t think they know how deranged they have become.
Once more, thank you~

By: Anonymous Coward

Anonymous Coward — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:17:01 +0000

PS - Whatever the merits and demerits of either view, a lot of the Bush hatred and Clinton hatred was probably driven by addiction to self-righteous indignation. http://davidbrin.com/addiction.html ... I want to zoom down to a particular emotional and psychological pathology. The phenomenon known as self-righteous indignation. We all know self-righteous people. (And, if we are honest, many of us will admit having wallowed in this state ourselves, either occasionally or in frequent rhythm.) It is a familiar and rather normal human condition, supported -- even promulgated -- by messages in mass media. While there are many drawbacks, self-righteousness can also be heady, seductive, and even... well... addictive. Any truly honest person will admit that the state feels good. The pleasure of knowing, with subjective certainty, that you are right and your opponents are deeply, despicably wrong. Sanctimony, or a sense of righteous outrage, can feel so intense and delicious that many people actively seek to return to it, again and again. Moreover, as Westin et.al. have found, this trait crosses all boundaries of ideology. ...

By: Bailey Yankee

Bailey Yankee — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:28:51 +0000

For me the main point of your thread is that hatred leads people to view everything through that prism. Therefore, people like my BDS friend will see a newsclip of Bush hugging a girl whose family home was wiped out by a disaster and said, “What a creep.”

They cannot acknowledge his humanness nor his potential for doing good. Everything he does must be bad. This leads to totally illogical reactions to policy. The actual policy doesn’t matter. To them the source of the policy is what counts. That’s just wrong.

Also, I concur about Clinton. I didn’t like him much at all after he lied on television. But when he did something right, I could at least acknowledge it.

By: Assistant Village Idiot

Assistant Village Idiot — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 02:53:03 +0000

I have long maintained that much of the hatred of Bush flows from two non-rational sources. One is a cultural, almost tribal defense of the right sort of Arts & Humanities people, who believe they deserve to be held in highest esteem. The Business & Technology backgrounds of Bush and many of his people are a cultural insult to the A&H Tribe. Even when Bush reads Camus they can’t believe he really “understands” it. When they hate his accent, his state, and the like, they betray that they are merely preferring their tribe over his.

Secondly, and relatedly, after Clinton’s election in 1992 the Boomer liberals felt they had finally come into their rightful place. Long before there was a Florida recount, way back to the ’94 elections, there were bitter recriminations that conservatives were somehow misleading everyone in some unfair, PR fashion.

By: Anonymous Coward

Anonymous Coward — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 22:06:14 +0000

Oh, I was one of those Clinton haters during the 1990s too (and still am). But I think the anger should probably have been more directed towards his supporters — including the main stream media — which let him get away with lies like “Worst economy in 50 years,” and the Democrats & “feminists” who decided that the sexual harassment laws they demanded post-Clarance Thomas & Tailhook shouldn’t be applied to their guy.

See http://www.reason.com/news/show/30591.html

As justified as the hatred of Clinton is/was, it was counter-productive in the end.

The people who rightfully complain about Bush’s stance on civil liberties were more than happy when their guy was doing a lot of the same things (FBI files, Clipper Chip, police brutality against minorities at Waco, etc.).

If Bush had said crap like this [http://tinyurl.com/bln3j ] two weeks after the terrorist attack, the Clinton Cultists would hate him even more (if that’s possible). Instead, back in 1995, they — including the main stream media — couldn’t lap enough of it up:

…My fellow Americans, we must respond to this threat in ways that preserve both our security and our freedoms. Appeasement of organized evil is not an option for the next century any more than it was in this century. Like the vigilant generations that brought us victory in World War II and the Cold War, we must stand our ground. In this high-tech world, we must make sure that we have the high-tech tools to confront the high-tech forces of destruction and evil.

That is why I have insisted that Congress pass strong anti-terrorism legislation immediately — to provide for more than 1,000 new law enforcement personnel solely to fight terrorism; to create a domestic anti-terrorism center;…

…I would like to say something to [those of you] who believe the
greatest threat to America comes not from terrorists from … beyond our borders, but from our own government.

I believe you have every right, indeed you have the responsibility, to question our government when you disagree with its policies. And I will do everything in my power to protect your right to do so.

But I also know there have been lawbreakers among those who espouse your philosophy….

…The people who came to the United States to bomb the World Trade Center were wrong….

…If you treat law enforcement officers who put their lives on the
line for your safety every day like some kind of enemy army to be
suspected…you are wrong….

…How dare you suggest that we in the freest nation on Earth live in tyranny….

…[T]here is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or
pretending that you can love your country but despise your
government…..

By: kwo

kwo — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:30:57 +0000

I obviously don’t know Pres. Bush personally, and therefore don’t know what type of person he is. But his administration has not been “decent.” Rove was Machiavellian, Rumsfeld and Cheney have been rude (“F— you Senator”), and everything has been slathered with secrecy. I’m glad the Bush administration is coming to a close. Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Kerry (“I voted for it before I voted against it”) in ’04.

By: Fritz J.

Fritz J. — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:28:32 +0000

All too true Mr. Zader. It is to the point that normally honest people are willing to lie and even invent imaginary griefs simply to bash Pres. Bush. Even when you can present a myriad of factual evidence to the contrary, they will not accept it. They are so wrapped up in Bush hatred that they have lost their own moral values, yet I suspect that if you told the same types of lies about them they would be outraged. The unfortunate fact is that they are no longer rational when it comes to anything to do with Pres. Bush as exhibited with their immediate switches in position each and every time Pres. Bush changes course. A rational person would celebrate having brought about such changes, but they immediately switch and then attack the very things they advocated.

By: GK

GK — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 20:12:11 +0000

I agree. I voted for Bush twice, and still like him (albeit less than I liked him in his first term).

While I did not approve of Clinton, I NEVER wished him physical harm or took by disapproval to a level of personal hatred. But we have leftists hoping for Bush’s assassination. I never, ever got anywhere close to that level of dislike for any elected Democrat.