I had a conversation on Twitter yesterday although to call it a conversation is to do the term a disservice. It would be more accurate to say that I was accosted by a fervent supporter of President Obama who decided that there was a need to straighten me out on a few things. She had jumped into another 'conversation' being led by yet another fervent Obama supporter who was offended by comments I had made on my blog.
She started by talking about all the jobs created by the president and it is true that over the past 29 months, the United States has seen consistent job growth and a decline in its unemployment rate from just over 10% to 8.3%. When I pointed out that this was still significantly higher than the 6.1% unemployment rate in 2008 when President Obama was elected, I was informed that the unemployment rate was fluid.
Fluid? Of course it is fluid; that was never at issue. The issue was, and remains. is it higher or lower under this president and according to the United States Board of Labour, it is higher. I was then sent a blog post by someone who went to great lengths to point out that the president wasn’t responsible for anything that happened during the first nine months of his presidency. Therefore, the steep increase in unemployment was the fault of the previous administration.
I also pointed out that gas prices had tripled since 2008 only to be told that I was obviously too stupid to realize that the president had no control over them. Clearly I was afraid of a smart black man being president and was promptly blocked. I couldn’t help but chuckle. She had just done exactly what I had written the extreme left does in my post I Am Racist. You don’t support our candidate who is black, therefore you are a racist. It was that post that started this brouhaha in the first place. To use her vernacular, she was obviously too stupid to see herself in that post.
Earlier this year, the president refused to enter into an agreement with Canada to build the Keystone Pipeline which would provide the United States with a stable, secure supply of oil and gas along with thousands of jobs. While no president can take full credit or responsibility for fluctuations in gas prices, it is clear that government policy has a direct impact on them and you can be damn sure if prices had fallen dramatically, the President and his supporters would be taking full credit for it.
I don’t mind a good debate. Often both sides learn new things when a debate is factual, civil and open-minded but I am weary of the ill-informed, sanctimonious nonsense that passes for debate these days.
I’m tired of those who support the president calling all Republicans racists. I seriously doubt that Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Herman Caine and Thomas Sowell who are all African-American and successful Republicans are racists. They like millions of other Republicans believe in the democracy just as do most Democrats. Part of that belief includes the right to formulate opinion and to freely express those opinions without being labelled as a racist, a fascist, a Nazi, a socialist, a communist or some other equally offensive and unfounded term.
Using the logic of the trolls who were snapping at me yesterday would also mean that former supporters of President Obama like Artur Davis and Caroline Kennedy (who has a pretty impressive heritage in the Democratic Party), Senator Joe Manchin, Gov. Earl Rae Tomblin, Rep. Nick Rahall and some unions and members of the Latino and Jewish communities must now be racists because they have publicly stated they no longer support the president based on his record.
How stupid is that?
I’m quite certain that those who support the president will have all kinds of dismissive comments about Democrats who are declining to support his re-election and some may even be correct but it doesn’t make any of them racists just as it doesn’t make the majority of Republicans racist either.
Name calling is probably the weakest argument in any debate and usually betrays a very limited understanding of the issues.
I get weary of those who never look beyond sources of information that merely confirm their existing bias, putting forth their opinions as God-given truth and labeling all who disagree with them as idiots or worse. Only fools refuse to listen to the opinions of others and only bigger fools refuse to learn anything from debate.
When it comes to fools these days, it’s clear that we have over-planted because we have a bumper crop of them. We also have a wealth of trolls.
Trolls are the Internet's bottom feeders, they surf the web looking for people to attack. They ravage memorial and similar web sites leaving vicious and mean messages designed to hurt others. How small and meaningless does a life have to be that it can only find validation in attacking others? Some trolls hide under their metaphorical bridges waiting for passersby that they can attack with their sanctimonious, self-righteous invective and even though trolls usually act independently, they will come together like a pack of junk yard dogs to attack anyone with whom they disagree.
Informed debate is as dead as common sense and civility.
People don’t look much beyond whatever confirms what they already believe. Too many are so insecure in their knowledge of the real world that anything that contradicts what they believe, anything that might actually teach them something new, or at least give them pause for thought, is seen as a threat that must be shouted down.
Nothing evidences this more than the current election campaigns in the United States and in Canada’s province of Quebec. Elections should be a time when the electorate gets to review and discuss the existing government’s record and to consider the ideas being put forward by alternative candidates.
Forget that.
Any attempt to openly criticize anyone or anything is immediately met with derision, insult and vicious rhetoric from people less informed than adolescents. They buzz around those they have targeted like fruit flies around a bunch of bananas and with about as much purpose or result.
Almost invariably these people have the attention spans of three year olds and they weary quickly of any debate once it gets down to real facts and figures. They lack the knowledge or the intellectual capacity to actually debate beyond a few choice insults and pseudo-facts they picked up along the way on Twitter or Facebook or some website that confirms what they already believe; and they absolutely refuse to listen to, let alone consider, the ideas or the opinions of others who do not conform to their narrow way of thinking.
They are like sheep. They are capable of bleating loudly but not much more and in the end, their own stupidity and intransigence guarantees that they will get sheared at some point and usually by the very people they supported.
Teachers, unions and public sector employees are seeing that in the province of Ontario where after years of supporting the current Liberal government with malicious attacks on the opposition parties, they find their salaries and benefits under attack from that same government. All that bleating to get this government elected hasn’t worked out too well for them it appears and they are more than just a little upset about it.
In the end, it is simply a lack of critical thinking and unwillingness to objectively analyze issues regardless of political inclination. It is intellectual laziness at best and willful blindness at worst. Nothing good comes from it because it is decisions based on emotions rather than facts.
It is one thing to want President Obama to do well because he is charming, intelligent and yes, he is African-American but it is completely another to support him if he fails to deliver on his promises simply because he is black. No one can make that determination without an objective review of his record and without comparing the condition of the United States today to four years ago when he was elected. His race is irrelevant just as George Bush’s race was not a determining factor in evaluating and criticiizng his failed presidency.
Examining, considering and debating those issues is not racist, it is responsible citizenship and it’s long past time for a lot of people to take their heads out of their asses and start remembering that. There are too many who shine with the light of Jesus in their eyes and who feel they have a right to trample the opinions of anyone with whom they disagree.
My father wasn’t well-educated but was well-read and experienced. He fought in wars where he saw terible things, raised a successful family with my mother and he saw reality for what it was. He didn’t live long enough to know there would be an Internet or what social media would become but he had a saying that he taught me and it applies today.
“Non sinas bastardi tere te deorsum”
He didn’t really speak Latin but he cobbled those words together because to him they meant, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down!”
Thanks Dad…….I don’t!
Challenging The Assertion That Some Democrats Can No Longer Support President Obama
I was challenged by someone on Twitter about my statement about specific Democrats who have declined to support the President's reelection. It was a polite discussion and he provided a link to support his position to some degree. While I have other news articles and announcements to support my statement, in fairness, I am posting his link to let you decide for yourself.
http://dailymail.com/News/statehouse/201206180153 RELATED POSTS
Sticks And Stones
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/sticks-and-stones.html
I Am Racist!
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/08/im-racist.html
My Quebec Does Not Include The Bigotry Of The PQ
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/08/my-quebec-does-not-include-bigotry-of-pq.html
OTHER
The True Unemployment Situation In The United States
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/02/09/dont-be-fooled-the-obama-unemployment-rate-is-11/
© 2012 Maggie's Bear
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Good post. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteThank you for taking the time to read it.
DeleteI lived in Quebec and most of my friends there are leftists of one sort or another. Can't get into a conversation with them on politics without being told Romney (!) is a Nazi or they would like to kill Harper because of the terrible things he is doing to the country. And yet they see the welfare bums in their neighbourhood and complain about the rising cost of everything.
ReplyDeleteWhile I am not a religious person I find practically the only people who have standards these days are those who are churchgoers and raise their children to have values. I thank God (or whomever) that Romney is a throwback to the fifties and is so straight. Such a decent man and so much manure being dumped on his head.
Hi Bear,
ReplyDeleteFair enough comments and I do concede your point that very often any criticism of Obama is quickly returned with claims of racism. That being said, I wonder if you do perceive that in some cases there is an underlying level of racism. Two cases in point: 1. The entire Birther conspiracy...what other POTUS has had to go through the unsubtantianted accusations of not being born in the US? Even despite evidence to the contrary, there is a faction within the RP that still contend he is not american born. I would suggest the only reason this conspiracy even evolved was because of Obama's skin colour. 2. During a state of the union address Obama was called out loud a 'liar'. Step aside whether or not the accusation was justified or not, my larger point is that it displayed a unbelievable level of disrespect to the office of POTUS. Although never a big fan of Bush, I would have been equally shocked if a Democrat had called Bush a liar during such an event. It raises the question on why a congressman would feel comfortable enough to level such a comment at a sitting president during a state of the union address. I feel, and we could debate this until we are both blue in the face, that this would never occur if the President was white. Just as much as the rhetoric over racism is overplayed I do think it does exist and that many right of center partisans feel the same.
Just my two cents
You raise valid points and I don't fully disagree with either of them. I have always thought the birther issue was absurd and have stated that in more than one post. I also accept that in some cases it is driven either by racism or some degree of bigotry but that doesn't mean all, or even the majority, of Republicans are racists.
DeleteI also agree with you that it was terribly disrespectful to shout out and call the President a liar during his state of the union address. It shows a disrespect for the office of the President, the Congress and, therefore, the people those two institutions represent.
Having said that, I don't believe it was so much fueld by racism as the growing lack of civility and just plain good manners in our societies these days. I consider that incident to have more in common with the behaviour that we see every day on the social media than with racism.
I'm conservative. My step-daughter is not white, I have two nieces who are Japanese, four cousins who are Nigerian, a daughter who is buddhist, two nephes who are gay, Chinese and Japanese sisters-in-law and have accepted the fact that more than half the family are liberals. In other words, I am about as far from racism as it is possible to get and I resent the weak-minded throwing that label out against everyone they don't know simply because they are too stupid to get informed on the issues.
There are racists in the Republican party. There are also racists who are Democrats.I believe that racism and trolls have much in common. Racism is about bigotry and hatred, not political allegiance and that defines a lot of trolls these days.
Your comments were worth a lot more than two cents and I always appreciate hearing them.
Hi Bear,
DeleteThank you for responding to my comments. Although I suspect we may not necessarily see eye to eye on every issue, I can, however, agree with you 100% on the need for more civility and raising the level of discourse.
Look forward to reading more on your blog in the future.
JC
On this I think we can agree. It isn't important to agree on every issue, it is only important that we can discuss our different points of view and opinions with mutual respect and civility. I believe that is the purpose of freedom of speech.
DeleteI appreciate your continuing support of my blog and welcome your comments whether they are in agreement with what I wrote or not.
Shouting out "Liar" as the President speaks is as rude as stepping out with a sign that reads "Stop Harper" during a Throne Speech yet the young lady holding the sign became a darling of the leftists.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with you on both points. We are losing our civility precisely because too many support it when it suits their purposes. Then they wonder what the hell happened when that same incivility they supported bites them on the ass. The teachers in Ontario are wondering that now.
DeleteI would then be forced to ask you for the basis of your opinion (and make no mistake, this is exactly what it is: an opinion), and why you believe that it can't simply be about following the rules (something we know Obama isn't very good at, given his outrageous sudden reversal on the campaign financing issue part-way through the election).
ReplyDeleteI would be happy to provide you with the basis for my opinion, and it is an opinion, if I had any clue to what you were referring. This isn't a post about Obama or his fund raising. It isn't even a post about rules. It's a post about rude behaviour and a lack of manners.
Delete