Elicktion Night 2012

[Baby Sandwich]

[RageAgainstTheAoki]

Aw. POTUS teared up when thanking his campaign staff. This is really sweet.

[Hannahrain]

The man responsible for this just lost the mayoral race in Portland, incidentally:

[Baby Sandwich]

White People Mourning Romney

[RageAgainstTheAoki]

Ha! Love the one with "Stefan".

[canexplain]

It is strange for me to gloat, fuck you republicans.....just saying ...... cr****

[xuclarockerx]

Gloating does no good, Colorado Ron...

I like the post of the Chopin piece. The "umad" comment is funny, but more importantly I like that this person is actually open to hearing arguments other than their own, unlike most other engaged citizens out there who are overconfident in their own belief systems. This person seems to be putting out a genuine appeal.

However, on a side note - how difficult is it for people to understand you can remove the original link once it's been captured by Facebook? It looks so much nicer that way.

[canexplain]

Yea I know. I just have never seen where the other side calls the pres a liar and a TRAITOR. I kid my gf that this will be my last election but who knows. Work with us Repubs, or be left in the dust..........cr****

[Baby Sandwich]

One of my favorites

White People Mourning Romney

[HotHamWater]

Yea I know. I just have never seen where the other side calls the pres a liar and a TRAITOR. I kid my gf that this will be my last election but who knows. Work with us Repubs, or be left in the dust..........cr****

Are you kidding me? Where were you when liberals were saying pretty harsh things about George W. Bush?

[PotVsKtl]

Liberals != Congress

[HotHamWater]

Liberals != Congress

Sometimes, yes.

[hawkingvsreeve]

Are you kidding me? Where were you when liberals were saying pretty harsh things about George W. Bush?

Show me footage of prominent members of the democratic party asking to see his birth certificate. Show me footage of one of them yelling that he was a liar during one of his speeches. They bait Obama over and over and it doesn't get called.

[mountmccabe]

Maybe Obama has had it worse but many Democrats/liberals/etc were still awful to GWB during his president. He was caricatured in numerous movies (W), TV shows (That's My Bush!) while he was in office.

How many people still say he was not elected in 2000? The "Not My President" meme started for GWB.

[Gribbz]

Trey Parker and Matt Stone had an Al Gore show prepared in case he won.

[mountmccabe]

See, it's been a dozen years and Matt here is still talking about Gore winning.

[canexplain]

Maybe Obama has had it worse but many Democrats/liberals/etc were still awful to GWB during his president. He was caricatured in numerous movies (W), TV shows (That's My Bush!) while he was in office.

How many people still say he was not elected in 2000? The "Not My President" meme started for GWB.

Actually I wore a shirt like that in the Nixon years. cr****

[RotationSlimWang]

Well I remember Bush getting called a war criminal and mentally incompetent a lot... but the thing is he WAS.

[hawkingvsreeve]

Exactly.

[RotationSlimWang]

Honestly I mean this shouldn't come as that much of a shock to anyone. I remember leading up to the 2008 elections I personally liked Barack the best out of all the candidates--mostly just because the motherfucker was smart and I have a bias in favor of Harvard Law grads--but I was absolutely terrified at the prospect of putting him up as the only viable alternative to another four years of the GOP making a fucking mess of things. I even started a little Facebook campaign which no one wanted any part of entitled Sorry, This Election Is Too Important To Risk Testing America's Racism. 2016?

People liked G.W. Bush because he felt relatable. That in itself is a terrifying prospect that such a large percentage of the country identifies with a thick-headed twerp who failed at every business he was ever handed. But you better believe that anybody who was willing to vote in the friendly guy with the dim look in his eyes over two rather dull and stiff but infinitely less stupid candidates in a row is going to be doubly vehement about the idea of a really smart BLACK guy running things.

A lot of people find intelligence pretty repulsive. Sometimes because the intelligence takes a repulsive form--me, for example--but sometimes just because they don't like the doubt it puts in themselves. The dumb form large groups and scream loudly because they're afraid (somewhat justifiably so) that if they don't mobilize and carefully pick easily repeatable lines of bullshit to adopt as their philosophy that the very small minority of the country who are really smart will end up deciding everything. This same paranoia shows itself when people talk about Zionism. And again, I'm not even sure I can completely blame them for it. My Jewish brethren are a frighteningly effective and powerful but absurdly small portion of the world population. 12 million out of 6 billion and yet a third of the world are terrified by the strength and impact we can have.

I think the essential difference of position that we see forming here is that about half the country believes that you need to take care of your own and look out for number one. That socialistic practices will inevitably bite them in the ass because they're entrusting a small group of supposedly smart people to divvy everything up fairly and if you distrust those who are not like you it doesn't matter whether their dissimilarity is racial, religious, or intellectual. These people are just naturally going to be scared shitless by the prospect of a smart black man having a lot of power while their dumb white asses have very little. After all, when white Anglo-Saxons were the smartest, most powerful people around and we discovered a less powerful, less advanced continent of humans they enslaved that continent and burned through it like a wildfire. Their prey were unlike them, so it was easier to rationalize.

I'm not really sure there's any answer to it. In this particular case I happen to think that the agenda of the smart guy trying to force what he thinks is best for everyone upon a nation where 50 percent of the people are terrified of what secret intentions he might have are incorrect, but I can't entirely blame them. A dimwit in Idaho must look at Barack's hyper-educated half-colored presence the same way I would look at an alien who floated down to Earth in a marvelous spaceship, demonstrated knowledge and skills far beyond anything I could imagine, and then offered to re-organize my life for me. Part of me says I'd be a fool not to let the alien teach me a better way, but another part of me says I'd probably wait for a good moment to sneak up behind that alien and shoot him in the fucking head.

[VigoTheCarpathian]

Randy, why do Americans believe socialism entails the radical intelligiste divvying up everything ? Why do Americans believe Obama is a socialist? Why do Jews tell penis jokes to proper Rhineland children = )

[VigoTheCarpathian]

Why don't we tell the truth? Obama is half honky and pro establishment

[VigoTheCarpathian]

And the chermans have no fucking sense of humor

[RotationSlimWang]

Randy, why do Americans believe socialism entails the radical intelligiste divvying up everything ? Why do Americans believe Obama is a socialist? Why do Jews tell penis jokes to proper Rhineland children = )

Americans believe socialism entails a radical intelligentsia divvying up everything probably because socialism IS about pooling resources and divvying them up and because it was pioneered by a group of academic radicals who were trying to overthrow the establishment.

Americans believe Obama is a socialist because (a) they've heard it said on TV about a billion times and (b) well, the biggest piece of policy he tried to get through--universal healthcare--was the first socialistic practice adopted by pretty much the entire Western world with the exception of the US. Europe got it, we didn't. But supporting certain kinds of socialism in practice and being a socialist ideologically are two very different things which is the nuance that seems to be so hard to get across.

[xuclarockerx]

To be fair, nuance is hard to get across to the masses in ANY realm, be it politics, music, film, etc.

[VigoTheCarpathian]

Americans believe socialism entails a radical intelligentsia divvying up everything probably because socialism IS about pooling resources and divvying them up and because it was pioneered by a group of academic radicals who were trying to overthrow the establishment.

Americans believe Obama is a socialist because (a) they've heard it said on TV about a billion times and (b) well, the biggest piece of policy he tried to get through--universal healthcare--was the first socialistic practice adopted by pretty much the entire Western world with the exception of the US. Europe got it, we didn't. But supporting certain kinds of socialism in practice and being a socialist ideologically are two very different things which is the nuance that seems to be so hard to get across.

The nuance I was speaking to was the widly held conception that federally mandated health insurance has something to do with workers control over production, which, of course, is the heart of socialism.

[RotationSlimWang]

The nuance I was speaking to was the widly held conception that federally mandated health insurance has something to do with workers control over production, which, of course, is the heart of socialism.

It's the heart of Marxism, not so much socialism and certainly not in modern discussion. Granted there's a ton of different variations on socialism, many of them in practice today in the world. But that entire era of ideology around the Marxist thinkers was rooted in some basically flawed tenets like workers control of production and the value of a product. Nowadays when you're talking about socialism I think the qualities everyone agrees we're discussing are the other pillars of the original socialist doctrine: social ownership and the like.

[VigoTheCarpathian]

It's the heart of Marxism, not so much socialism and certainly not in modern discussion. Granted there's a ton of different variations on socialism, many of them in practice today in the world. But that entire era of ideology around the Marxist thinkers was rooted in some basically flawed tenets like workers control of production and the value of a product. Nowadays when you're talking about socialism I think the qualities everyone agrees we're discussing are the other pillars of the original socialist doctrine: social ownership and the like.

That is fair, if only we also admit that modern capitalism is a polar deviation from Adam Smith. and then what are we talking about? Where is the foundation to our language?

[RotationSlimWang]

... Latin. That's where the foundation to our language is. Other terms, particularly philosophical and political designations tend to evolve over time as trial and error weed out certain elements from being useful to the conversation. True socialism is an impossibility. There are still useful and viable elements to it that are present in modern governmental theory and highly debated. You can't throw the baby out with the bath water, especially when it still contains some useful reference points for discussing massive abstract concepts.

[mountmccabe]

Well I remember Bush getting called a war criminal and mentally incompetent a lot... but the thing is he WAS.

Exactly.

You don't think people don't actually think Obama is a Socialist, Muslim, Anti-American, etc?