Reply #68: Is it better to work towards turning your enemy into a decent person, or to continue the war?

[Lyric]

Is it better to try and educate someone who's painfully misinformed and ignorant, or should we just dismiss all ignorant people as worthless wastes of our time?

Racism, bigotry, sexism, xenophobia--all of these things are born of ignorance and fear. We can't just make the Teabaggers disappear from the face of the Earth, so we HAVE to educate them. The fastest way to do that is to show them that we AREN'T the monsters that Limbaugh, Hannity, and Coulter portray us as. We're just people. Like them. Sometimes fucked-up people, with our own prejudices and nastiness, some of which you can see in this very thread.

See, I don't buy into all that "OOoooo, the Teabaggers are all two-dimensional cartoon bad guys!" crap. They're as human as we are, and they are just as capable of coming to the right conclusions, if only someone bothered to take 3 seconds and help them figure it out. But it seems to me like some people, rather than DOING something, would prefer sitting around passing judgement from up high. Well that's not me.

It's soooooo easy to say, "Screw the Baggers. They're worthless." But I don't think we should. I think that if we were all standing up together, focusing on what we AGREE about for once, then maybe the Tea Party would finally see us lefties and progressives as human beings. That helps develop empathy--something that many of them sorely, sorely lack right now, and also something that they NEED in order to be healthy, functional human beings.

When you're teaching a nasty child to behave himself, do you isolate him forever? Or do you spend time teaching him better? Showing him an example of how much less painful life can be when we're kind and compassionate to each other instead of suspicious and aggressive?

I'll tell you this much--no "movement" that utterly rejects the other side of the political spectrum is EVER going to succeed. So I guess, for me, it's a simple decision. Do I want to see this revolution actually ACCOMPLISH something, or do I just want to yell for a while and then go back to being an exploited, failing wage slave?

I'd like to SUCCEED. Let the Baggers come. At this point, anybody who's willing to fight Wall Street with us is valuable. Without the right wing, we're not the 99%. We're the 49%, and that's just not enough.

Flame away, but you all know it's true. The Teabaggers are not really our enemy. The people who helped create them are. THOSE people can be found on the Wall Streets of the nation, and THOSE are the people we need to focus on right now.