Buzzflash gives kristof a little what for!

[HootieMcBoob]

When I wrote about Kristof telling us to "shut-up" (my words, not his) last week a lot of people here said that they thought Kristof made a really good point. Well, I feel much better now that The Daily Howler and today Buzzflash have published articles backing me up.

Here's the Buzzflash article: http://www.buzzflash.com/carpenter/03/11/pmc03213.html

[Brotherjohn]

1. Agree 100%. It's not "Bush-hating". It's called "Opposition".

Conservatives simply forgot what it looked like.

When Kristof cited two articles in which the liberal authors accepted the mantle of "Bush-hater", what he failed to point out was that they did so explicitly stating that this was the terminology of the Right, not them, and that this "hate" (if you want to call it that) was very different from what Conservatives threw at Clinton and Dems for the last decade.

As these writers point out, they simply strongly disagree with Bush's policies, and to express outrage on those terms is entirely legitimate. It is what I like to call a vocal opposition.

Conservatives are so thin-skinned on this count that I think the entire nation will begin to see them as the crybabies they are. P.M. Carpenter is exactly right... the Left should ratchet up its criticism and become even more vocal. This is exactly what the Right fears most.

[Memekiller]

2. I wrote my own letter to Kristof...

...telling him that I thought milquetoasts like him were putting us in a similar box Bush did over criticism of the war. To raise doubt about that policy was "America-hating". Now to criticize is "uncivil".

The real question is why Kristof isn't angry. At exactly what point are we liberals allowed to complain? What would Bush have to do before we are permitted, in liberal columnists's eyes, to complain?

Anger is not something that should be considered inherently evil when experienced by liberals but tolerated as status-quo behavior for conservatives. Anger is a legitimate reaction injustice, inept leadership or just wrong-headed policy. Anger is what sends people to the polls, and motivates them to political action. I'm sorry that Kristof looks at President Bush and sees nothing worthy of getting in a huff over.

[stopbush]

3. Indeed. When are liberals allowed to be angry?

Illegal wars, loss of civil liberties, an economy verging on a depression, innocents killed by the thousands, and all Kristof can come up with is to do the opposite of what the repigs do (I refuse to call these radicals conservatives).

Kristof's strategy works all the way through the election process...where repig anger translates into victories while liberal civility gets its ass kicked.

[sendero]

4. The Right..

... was angry and hating for 8 years, and they based their hatred on such weighty issues as "socialized health care" and "gays in the military".

We have plenty of *real* reasons to hate this administration and if the right doesn't like it they can just "get over it". Morons and hypocrites.

[Brotherjohn]

5. More than that (or actually, less). They hated Clinton for cultural...

... reasons. They hated that a hippie president from the hippie generation was elected president. They hated that he had a strong wife. They just hated him for who he was and what he represented. He could have governed exactly as Bush is doing now, and they still would have hated him.

[Plaid Adder]

6. The Bush-Hater thing is an attempt to disarm us.

Pure and simple. They know that rage and hatred have been the two most effective weapons in their arsenal--actually, them and greed are abotu the only weapons they HAVE in their arsenal--and they don't want to see us using them, because that might, you know, make us effective.

They also shrewdly realize that while most people on the right are proud of hating people, we on the left are going to feel guilty about it, even if that person is George W. Bush.

Well, I'm not going to feel guilty about my, uh, feelings toward Bush. Which basically come down to this:

If I were on a boat, and Bush fell overboard and was drowning, I would help him get back into the boat. I would do that because Bush is a human being and that's what human beings do for each other. As a human being, I don't hate Bush. I may pity him deeply, but that's another story.

As a President, I *do* hate Bush, and I hate him bad. And that is because he is an illegitimate, lousy, incompetent, corrupt, arrogant, ignorant, dangerous friggin' President. There's a lot of people who would be just fine in regular life who you would really start to hate if they got the the Oval Office, and he is certainly one of them.

I have never met Bush myself. Perhaps in person I would succumb to this "charm" one hears so much about. We don't have any way of knowing what Bush is *really* like, because everything we see has to go through so many filters. It may be that at the end of the day he is just a little boy lost in a job too big for him who can't find it in himself to take responsibility for his own shortcomings. It may also be that he's a Satanic puppetmaster plotting the Apocalypse. The point is, we can't hate Bush the man, who we don't know; if we hate Bush we're hating what he stands for, including but not limited to: injustice, theft, corruption, fraud, war without end, arrogance, fundamentalism, willful ignorance, incompetence, and an abysmal failure to value everything that's really important about human life and human culture.

And I love my fellow humans, but I am NOT gonna love all of THAT crap. And I am not going to apologize for not loving it, either.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[HootieMcBoob]

8. nicely said n/t

:toast:

[MIMStigator]

7. Kristoff's a cowardly little weasel

n/t