What Liberals REALLY think about us Conservatives

[Foxfyre]

On another thread, a member is discussing the President's recent description of those who oppose his policies as 'the enemy'. Earlier today, my opposition to his policies was described as 'obnoxious'.

What do liberals really think about conservatives? Do you conservatives care? Does being described as an 'enemy of the state' or a 'child throwing a temper tantrum' or 'not grasping reality' make you more introspective or inspired to rethink your opinions or attitudes? How about being called names or described in other unflattering terms?

Discuss.

The problem, my friends, is US!

Let’s start with the brilliant analysis of Eugene Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize winner who writes a column for the Washington Post. In a piece that runs under the charming headline "The Spoiled-Brat American Electorate”, Robinson writes that, “According to polls, Americans are in a mood to hold their breath until they turn blue. Voters appear to be so fed up with the Democrats that they’re ready to toss them out in favor of the Republicans — for whom, according to those same polls, the nation has even greater contempt. This isn’t an ‘electoral wave,’ it’s a temper tantrum.”

Who knew that Eugene Robinson wasn’t merely a brilliant journalist, but a brilliant psychoanalyst too. The voters are reverting to their childhood. They are scared and in desperate need of a security blanket, which they have sadly found in the Republican Party. “In the punditry business,” Mr. Robinson writes, “it’s considered bad form to question the essential wisdom of the American people. But at this point, it’s impossible to ignore the obvious: The American people are acting like a bunch of spoiled brats.”

Funny how those very same American people weren’t spoiled brats at all when they voted for Eugene Robison’s candidate in the 2008 presidential election. As long as the voters were slobbering over Barrack Obama, everything was just fine. But once the swooning ended, once the voters came back down to Earth, well, that’s when they morphed into spoiled brats throwing a tantrum.

Eugene Robinson didn’t come up with this idea all by himself. Peter Jennings made precisely the same point in 1994 after the Republicans won control of both Houses of Congress for the first time since the 1950s. “Some thoughts on those angry voters,” Jennings said in a radio commentary. “Ask parents of any two-year-old and they can tell you about those temper tantrums: the stomping feet, the rolling eyes, the screaming. It’s clear that the anger controls the child and not the other way around. It’s the job of the parent to teach the child to control the anger and channel it in a positive way. Imagine a nation full of uncontrolled two-year-old rage. The voters had a temper tantrum last week. …Parenting and governing don’t have to be dirty words: the nation can’t be run by an angry two-year-old.”Ah, but Eugene Robinson and Peter Jennings are hardly alone. There are other brilliant pundits who have been examining the sad little mind of the American voter. In the New York Times, Maureen Dowd came to realize that what was ailing America was … Americans. Obama, in this view, was the wise grownup stuck with the unenviable task of governing a nation filled with fearful, mental defects. “The dispute over the Islamic center has tripped some deep national lunacy,” she wrote. “Obama is the head of the dysfunctional family of America, a rational man running a most irrational nation, a high-minded man in a low-minded age. The country is having some weird mass nervous breakdown.”

And in Newsweek, another liberal, columnist Jonathan Alter, concluded that the American people simply do not know what’s good for them. They “aren’t rationally aligning belief and action; they’re tempted to lose their spleens in the polling place without fully grasping the consequences,” he wrote.

Still another liberal elite, Jacob Weisberg of Slate, the on-line magazine, wrote that “The biggest culprit in our current predicament,” he wrote, is the “childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.” He is referring to the tendency of some voters to want it both ways: give us more stuff but cut our taxes; we want government to fix our problems at the same time we want government to shrink. Let’s be fair: there is something to his argument.

Still, the view is taking over among the liberal media elite that the voters – yes, that means you! — are acting out. And yes, the voters – you again! — are throwing a tantrum. You are children — and not too smart children at that. Of course, there’s a pretty good chance that you would get well in the proverbial New York minute if only you went back into your trance and fell in love with Obama and the Democrats all over again. And did you notice? The pundits didn’t write columns about voter temper tantrums and the like when they sent the Republicans packing in 2006 and 2008. I guess they’re only tantrums worth writing about when the voters turn on their fellow liberal Democrats.

More here:
It?s Not Only the Economy, Stupid | BernardGoldberg.com

 

[Revere]

Anyone who is not willing to escalate the fight to where Obama wants to take it is doomed to lose.

 

[Foxfyre]

Anyone who is not willing to escalate the fight to where Obama wants to take it is doomed to lose.

Hmmm. Interesting comment but not real sure where you're coming from. Where do you think he wants to take it? My impression is that he doesn't want to fight. He just wants everybody to grovel at his feet and worship him. But that's just me.

 

[ClosedCaption]

oh god not another "these guys think you're stupid, dont you hate them" threads. how about asking an actual liberal instead of putting words in their mouth. Just a thought yanno...

 

[beowolfe]

oh god not another "these guys think you're stupid, dont you hate them" threads. how about asking an actual liberal instead of putting words in their mouth. Just a thought yanno...

And they wonder why the POTUS describes them as 'enemies'.............ROFLMAO>...

 

[sangha]

LOL!!! I guess it takes a wingnut to write a whiny OP about what liberals say about wingnuts without quoting any liberals saying something about wingnuts.

Even funnier is the way the OP assumes that Robinson was talking about wingnuts when Robinson clearly says he's talking about Americans

“it’s considered bad form to question the essential wisdom of the American people. But at this point, it’s impossible to ignore the obvious: The American people are acting like a bunch of spoiled brats.”

 

[Revere]

Anyone who is not willing to escalate the fight to where Obama wants to take it is doomed to lose.

Hmmm. Interesting comment but not real sure where you're coming from. Where do you think he wants to take it? My impression is that he doesn't want to fight. He just wants everybody to grovel at his feet and worship him. But that's just me.

Do you really think he has any ethical limits, politically? Does a guy like this see any ends as justifying his means?

 

[uptownlivin90]

Obama's going to have to learn to deal with people of different ideologies, and fast.

 

[Liability]

oh god not another "these guys think you're stupid, dont you hate them" threads. how about asking an actual liberal instead of putting words in their mouth. Just a thought yanno...

And they wonder why the POTUS describes them as 'enemies'.............ROFLMAO>...

Well sure. You guys know how "they" are.

(interesting use of a stereotype to deny that you resort to the use of stereotypes.)

 

[Revere]

Let's try this.

I can tell you he exposed tax information from a political enemy, Koch Industries, he could only have gotten illegally from the IRS. His cabinet members routinely threaten legal US businesses they regulate.

And people here will and do defend that.

 

[Immanuel]

At the risk of being... Buuuuusssssssssshhhhhhhhhhed, remember "if you are not for us, you are against us" and the way conservatives latched onto that and declared anyone (mostly liberals) who were not 100% behind the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as being enemies of the state?

I can't say what they really think of us. Many of them on this site are decent people who just happen to see things differently then me. Some can be real a'holes. Some kid around and are funny. Some can be real a'holes.

I suspect most of them are just like us. They like some of us and dislike others of us.

Immie

 

[Foxfyre]

oh god not another "these guys think you're stupid, dont you hate them" threads. how about asking an actual liberal instead of putting words in their mouth. Just a thought yanno...

You don't think that the folks quoted in the OP are liberals? If not, why do you think they are not?

 

[Revere]

If he calls me his enemy, why should I try and compromise with him?

 

[chanel]

Approx. 70% oppose Obamacare. Approx. 70% oppose the mosque at Ground Zero. Approx. 70% feel the country is headed in the wrong direction. Approx. 70% agree with Juan Williams...

Approx. 70% of this country is a bunch of racist, Islamophobic, red neck teabaggers who are too stupid to understand the utopian concept of socialism and refuse to believe in unicorns.

Unfortunately for the left, most of that 70% is picking up the tab. Don't shit where you eat Dems.

 

[sangha]

oh god not another "these guys think you're stupid, dont you hate them" threads. how about asking an actual liberal instead of putting words in their mouth. Just a thought yanno...

You don't think that the folks quoted in the OP are liberals? If not, why do you think they are not?

Umm, yes they are liberals but "No, they are not talking about conservatives"

WIngnuts aren't very strong on the literacy thingy

 

[Foxfyre]

At the risk of being... Buuuuusssssssssshhhhhhhhhhed, remember "if you are not for us, you are against us" and the way conservatives latched onto that and declared anyone (mostly liberals) who were not 100% behind the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as being enemies of the state?

I can't say what they really think of us. Many of them on this site are decent people who just happen to see things differently then me. Some can be real a'holes. Some kid around and are funny. Some can be real a'holes.

I suspect most of them are just like us. They like some of us and dislike others of us.

Immie

I don't recall EVER referring to anybody who opposed any war as 'enemy of the state'. And that Bush "If you aren't with us you're against us" line was in the immediate wake of 9/11 and standing up to terrorism. It had nothing to do with Afghanistan or iraq.

So what is your gut reaction when you're told that you are throwing a temper tantrum if you vote conservative in an election? That you are 'out of touch with reality'? That you are an 'enemy of the state'?

Does stuff like that make you question your conviictions? Soften your opinions? Make you reconsider your position?

 

[midcan5]

The truth hurts. Eugene Robinson, Jonathan Alter and others are correct in their assessment of conservatives, aka today's whining populace. You can add John Kenneth Galbraith's "The Culture of Contentment" to your list of analyzes of American cry babies on the right. Face it folks you lost, stop crying and grow up.


"To serve contentment, there were and are three basic requirements. One is the need to defend the general limitation on government as regards the economy; there must be a doctrine that offers a feasible presumption against government intervention...The second, more specific need is to find social justification for the untrammeled, uninhibited pursuit and possession of wealth....There is need for demonstration that the pursuit of wealth or even less spectacular well-being serves a serious, even grave social purpose....The third need is to justify a reduced sense of public responsibility for the poor. Those so situated, the members of the functional and socially immobilized underclass, must, in some very real way, be seen as the architects of their own fate. If not, they could be, however marginally, on the conscience of the comfortable." John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment


[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Contentment-Penguin-economics-Galbraith/dp/0140173668/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1]Amazon.com: Culture of Contentment, the (Penguin economics) (9780140173666): John Kenneth Galbraith: Books: Reviews, Prices & more[/ame]

 

[Revere]

Obama calls me his enemy? I'll take him at his word.

 

[sangha]

At the risk of being... Buuuuusssssssssshhhhhhhhhhed, remember "if you are not for us, you are against us" and the way conservatives latched onto that and declared anyone (mostly liberals) who were not 100% behind the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as being enemies of the state?

I can't say what they really think of us. Many of them on this site are decent people who just happen to see things differently then me. Some can be real a'holes. Some kid around and are funny. Some can be real a'holes.

I suspect most of them are just like us. They like some of us and dislike others of us.

Immie

I don't recall EVER referring to anybody who opposed any war as 'enemy of the state'. And that Bush "If you aren't with us you're against us" line was in the immediate wake of 9/11 and standing up to terrorism. It had nothing to do with Afghanistan or iraq.

So what is your gut reaction when you're told that you are throwing a temper tantrum if you vote conservative in an election? That you are 'out of touch with reality'? That you are an 'enemy of the state'?

Does stuff like that make you question your conviictions? Soften your opinions? Make you reconsider your position?

bush* and his cronies claimed that people who disagreed with him on several policies (Gitmo, PATRIOT Act, HSA, etc) were "giving aid and comfort to the enemy".

And again, the quotes you posted say nothing about conservatives. The quotes clearly reference american voters.

 

[Foxfyre]

The truth hurts. Eugene Robinson, Jonathan Alter and others are correct in their assessment of conservatives, aka today's whining populace. You can add John Kenneth Galbraith's "The Culture of Contentment" to your list of analyzes of American cry babies on the right. Face it folks you lost, stop crying and grow up.


"To serve contentment, there were and are three basic requirements. One is the need to defend the general limitation on government as regards the economy; there must be a doctrine that offers a feasible presumption against government intervention...The second, more specific need is to find social justification for the untrammeled, uninhibited pursuit and possession of wealth....There is need for demonstration that the pursuit of wealth or even less spectacular well-being serves a serious, even grave social purpose....The third need is to justify a reduced sense of public responsibility for the poor. Those so situated, the members of the functional and socially immobilized underclass, must, in some very real way, be seen as the architects of their own fate. If not, they could be, however marginally, on the conscience of the comfortable." John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment


Amazon.com: Culture of Contentment, the (Penguin economics) (9780140173666): John Kenneth Galbraith: Books: Reviews, Prices & more

So you think striving for the American Dream or reaching one's full potential. . . .that those who seek wealth AND serve society by creating and/or improving or perfecting products, services, and otherwise contribute productively to the economy. . . .that those who think concern for the poor is best served by individual or local initiative and is poorly served by the Federal government. . . .you think those who hold that point of view are whiners and childish?

Can you provide a rationale for that?