The Pendulum has not swung right. The country is not more Conservative

[ComerPerro]

Its all the language and how the debate is framed, people.

"Liberals are for handouts, trial lawyers, decreased safety and security, waffling, abortion, homosexuality and sexual deviance, atheism, and big government interference. Liberals are the elites and the rich."

"Conservatives are for traditional American values, self-reliance, national security, common sense, Christian values, and personal freedom. Conservatives represent the average American."

ITS ALL BULLSHIT, BUT MANY PEOPLE BELIEVE THIS!!!!!

We need to find a way to take back the language, show people how utterly full of shit conservatives are. We need to spread our message and let people know where we stand. Our values are the values that are held by a majority of Americas. They just don't realize it.

Many people voted for Bush against their own best interest because they actually believed that Bush and the Republicans better represented their beliefs and values. But I find it hard to believe that a majority of Americans (though slim) value racism, intolerance, arrogance, lies, greed, cheating, and hatred.

One of the contributing factors to this came in surveys like one in USA Weekend recently that would supposedly help people decide where they stood, and who they should vote for to best represent them. But it was completely skewed, one question was "Who do you trust more, doctors or trial lawyers?" Obviously, if someone answered "doctors", which is the predictable response, then they were told that they were conservative and that they should vote for Bush because of his stance on tort reform.

Suppose the question had been "Lets assume your son is taking a medication that you were assured is safe, but it has rendered him blind. Who will you trust, the medical opinion of a doctor who evaluated him or the trial lawyer working for the drug company to make sure you receive no compensation." Or, perhaps: "Who do you trust more, the doctor who amputated your leg when you went in to have your tonsils removed, or the trial lawyer who is helping you to see that justice is done?"

But I am getting too wordy for today's pace. So I should wrap up.

Just two quick examples of language getting in the way:

Abortion: Pro-life???
Pro-life? Coming from a group of people who support a war based on lies, which claims untold thousands of innocent lives and over 1000 American lives after the war ended? These same people who like to joke about missing WMD are pro-life? I don't think so.

Political correctness / Thought police / Language police
We on the left are accused of this a lot. I have two words for any conservative who bitches to me about PC: Freedom Fries.


We need to be really careful about how the issues are framed and discussed. For too long now, conservatives have been throwing bombs based on distortions and outright lies, and we have been too caught up in refuting the bullshit to address the methodology.

[jackstraw45]

1. Country is just poorly educated

There's a reason the rest of the world, and 55 million of us, wanted Dim-Son out.

And there's a reason a lot of IDIOTS take the word of Fox news over logic.

[ComerPerro]

2. There has to be something we can do about that

There has to be a way to open their eyes, to make them aware enough to start looking around getting real information.

[Cats Against Frist]

3. I agree with you

If the GOP won, they won for one of three reasons:

1. A large part of their constituency is FUCKING CRAZY. (The religious whack-a-moles).

2. They have brilliantly programmed the language. Most people call it "framing the debate," -- but it's more than that. They've de-centered, or dislodged the very language that one would even use to frame the debate. They've created false binaries, as a result of false dilemmas -- examples: with us/against us, war protestor/traitor, homosexual/pedophile heartland/godless liberals -- as a result of their totalitarian psyche. And further, they've LOADED these binaries with sensation, fear -- at quite literally a volume that probably has not been seen since Hitler. And they wonder why we compare them to Nazis.

3. The media is either clueless on how to stop it OR the LIHOP it -- the latter, I would guess, since they're owned by corporate media.

How to stop it? Beats the fuck out of me. How do you disprove a "truth" that is simply a symbol. You can't even call it a lie -- it's something else. You can't get mad, and show any emotion, or the GOP "etiquette squad" will call you "wild-eyed." (Another GOP fave is an ad hominem attack where the vehicle, timing, delivery or "appropriateness" of a message is attacked. While at the same time Rush Limbaugh is sweating and yelling over a microphone that Democrats agree with Osama bin Laden.)

Do you get louder? I think getting louder only makes us think like them.

Can they be reasoned with? Some of them, maybe --the ones that aren't sitting around waiting for the rapture -- but I don't know for how long.

The answer, in my opinion?

Bleed the red states dry:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1305989