You fools! Can’t you see what’s really going on?
I’ve enjoyed the discussions that have flourished in the comments on my recent two posts. I particularly appreciate those people who grappled not with the differences between Bush and Obama hatred (ie, “Bush deserved it, Obama does not”) but the similarities, which interest me more, for present purposes.
Here’s a similarity: both varieties include a belief that the President has somehow suckered the rubes.
Discuss.
March 24th, 2010 at 10:46 am
Peter,
*Every* president gets elected precisely because they sucker the rubes.
March 24th, 2010 at 10:50 am
I’ve read “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” but not the Obama Zombie one. I accept the premise that most people who see social issues as their number one issue probably aren’t looking out for their deepest self-interest, but I found the book to be very repetitive. I also read it five years ago…
But most of Demcratic ideals are ones that I find mainly in my self-interest, so the second book doesn’t make sense as an extension of the Kansas one…
As as a youngish-person (in my late 20s), I don’t consider myself brainwashed by Obama. In fact, I was a diehard Hillary supporter until I was worried that her campaign might hurt Democratic prospects. After Obama won the nomination, I campaigned for him and donated to his campaign, but I would have done the same with any Democrat running that year. I continue to be impressed with Obama’s intelligence and demeanor, but I was unhappy with what I saw to be a lack of leadership on the health care reform debate until after the Masschusetts Senate election.
March 24th, 2010 at 11:26 am
A big similarity between Bush and Obama hatred is that the people who hate him simply can’t stomach the sight or sound of him. That’s very important in this 24-hour media age. To those who hate him, Bush came across as a dim-bulb hick with a frat-boy smirk, while Obama comes across as professorial and condescending, and of course, to a small but dangerous minority, too black for the office. Both groups of haters have a visceral reaction that causes them to change the channel or click away immediately.
March 24th, 2010 at 11:33 am
Ah, it’s all clear to me now: This is just a clever ploy to destroy my business by making me spend all day here defending Barack Obama and ACORN. Touché, Mr. Sagal, touché.
March 24th, 2010 at 11:47 am
I usually don’t like to engage in debates over politics on the ‘net, but this subject has been something I’ve had on my mind lately, too.
For me, I have to look at what the “rubes” were “suckered” into. W convinced them to go to war in Iraq. Obama convinced them to reform health care in this country. For me, “suckering” us to go to war under false pretenses (WMD’s having still not been found), resulting in thousands of deaths of both Americans and Iraqi citizens seems a lot worse than “suckering” us to reform heath care with the hope it will save thousands (maybe more) of American lives. I guess it depends on what you find most offensive: war or health care reform.
Now, if anyone can show me some similarities between the War in Iraq and the Health Care Reform Movement, that would interest me.
March 24th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
@Courtney: I’m an Obama and health care reform supporter myself, but I feel the need to play devil’s advocate here… to counter the point you made (Iraq War = bad; health care reform = good), others would say that W. led us into Iraq and Afghanistan, thus usurping a despicable tyrant, improving our national security, sending the Taliban on the run, and further securing our safety and freedom, while O “duped” us into health care reform, reducing our individual freedoms, raising premiums for all, eroding Capitalism, and putting this great country of ours on the path towards Socialism, Fascism, etc. It’s really just a spin game and a matter of perspective. Just saying.
And yes, this is a fascinating topic of thought and discussion.
-r-
March 24th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
The only resemblance I see between the war and the healthcare reform movement is the number of dollar signs at the end of the day. And, in agreement with @Courtney, I know which one I’d rather throw money at. I have a stepson in the Army and another son who has Type 1 diabetes. With all due respect to my stepson and his comrades in arms, I would far rather my tax dollars go toward curing the younger son than toward training the older son to kill people who weren’t, after all, doing anything to bother US when we invaded them (in the case of Iraq).
I have not noticed, in this era of bank bailouts and ponzi schemes and Great Recession, that Capitalism has shown itself to be such a fantastic system. It seems to me that the only people who fear Capitalism’s erosions are the ones who were using it for their own personal gain at the expense of America as a whole. Perhaps it’s time we started incorporating policies that benefit others as well as ourselves. If that attitude makes me a commie/pinko/socialist/liberal/anti-patriot, I would also like to humbly point out that it also makes me a pretty good Christian, too.
March 24th, 2010 at 8:05 pm
Which doesn’t, of course, answer the question at hand.
It continually amazes me how people can take twisted logic and complete falsehoods and use them as justification for pitying the stupidity of the opposition. Snopes.com is almost exclusively devoted to debunking such things, yet people persist in passing them along. So there’s a lot of rube-suckering going on… but I dont think all of it is happening at the presidential level.
Which still doesn’t answer the question at hand, but my two year old just woke up sobbing so I gotta run…
March 24th, 2010 at 9:59 pm
Not sure if this really fits under the current thread so please feel free to ignore (including not even bothering to approve the post).
The voices and opinions I’ve heard on the news and internet tend to be the more outspoken people with very strong views and opinions on things. After all, the stronger you feel about something the more likely you are to speak up.
So far the debate Peter has encouraged has been based around people with very strong and diverse opinions on the subject. This is a good thing. We should try to understand how people are feeling and why. And understanding all around. Not just one side understanding the other. But one side understanding itself, which can be harder than it sounds. And, I am looking at everybody. Not just the people that you personally disagree with.
So, an offshoot of the debate I would be interested in hearing would be the reasons people might continue to want to get along with people they disagree with. There must be some. People more interested in finding ways to work together rather than stopping, blocking or even wishing harm on the other.
Example, I know there are people out there who have opinions that differ from my own. I know these people feel as strongly about their own opinions as I do about mine. Since there is disagreement, I know I’m not going to get anything and everything I want. So, maybe, that is the first hunt for common ground. Finding people who can agree that they are not going to get everything they want regardless of whether they agree on anything else. That it is okay for everybody to get some of the things they want but not everything regardless of whether everybody likes it.
To repurpose something that Jon Stewart once said and perchance take it out of context, “you don’t have to like them. you just don’t get to hit them.”
March 25th, 2010 at 6:54 am
My favorite part of this post is hearing the Peter Sagal voice in my head saying, “suckered the rubes.”
That said, I think I have to agree with the concept. I have felt suckered by many a politician, reaching back to the pre-Republican Phil Graham, the no-longer-straight-talk-expressing John McCain, the how-can-you-be-so-smart-yet-so-dumb Bill Clinton and right on through to the too-good-to-be-true John Edwards. And I’m pretty smart, as rubes go.
As a liberal-ish independent who has chosen NOT to officially connect to either party, I find myself learning to lower expectations. What I don’t understand is what world people are living in when they can say they feel duped because Obama hasn’t done enough yet. While I wanted to believe in all that hopey-changey stuff, I knew that the reality of the political machine was not going to bow down to the big O.
March 25th, 2010 at 9:37 am
I only volunteered once for a presidential campaign — Gary Hart. THAT was a letdown.
I’ve thought for a while that it takes a dose of arrogance/megalomania to wake up one morning and think “You know who should be the Leader of the Free World? More than anybody else? ME.” Well, a Republican would say “ME.” We pretentious Democrats would say “MOI” just to show off a little.
March 25th, 2010 at 11:12 am
I’m sorry Peter, but that’s just not an interesting question.
1) Anyone who doesn’t agree with me is obviously mistaken.
2) Therefore, they likely are naive, dumb or just plain dumb.
3) If a majority of people voted differently than I did, they must have made the wrong choice, and therefore were suckered into it.
4) Smart, saavy and knowledgeable do not get suckered into things, so it must be rubes. (The others are nefarious and did it intentionally for some horrible reason.)
******************************
The better question is how we got to the point where we are unable to acknowledge that maybe — just maybe — we might be wrong. People are so very sure that those who disagree with them are wrong, without trying to understand how maybe they could be right.
I don’t mean to imply that there is just one right position. Rather, I mean that we don’t think how the ways in which we may be wrong, the or value or persectives by which we might be wrong. Instead, we just see how our values and our persective and our understanding of the facts show we are right, and we stop there.
Does questioning the president in a time of war embolden the terrorists? I tend to think not, but in what circumstances might that be true? Would allowing gay soldiers to serve openly help our military? Many tend to think not, but do they consider the circumstances that might lead to their being wrong? We can go on and on about this.
In a world of black and whites, it is easy to say that others ARE wrong because we (obviously) ARE right. But what if we stop to look at underlying values, the nuance of circumstances and the differential impacts of perferred policies on different groups? It gets messy.
And this bring me back to Dr. Robert Kegan’s Constructive Developmental Theory, again. The desire or need for black and white rules and codes is a developmental thing. The ability to see other value systems without dismissing them as inferior to ones own is a developmental thing. The kinds of supports and hold enviromments that lead to life long development in these ways are special, and often in short supply. And so, we see people on both sides of both political and ideological divides quickly resorting to the “suckered the rubes” argument.