Unfortunately, mature and adult political debate has disappeared a long time ago. Instead, we are stuck with a version of political divisiveness that was first explained by George Orwell in his novel, 1984:
"This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, war hysteria is continuous and universal in all countries, and such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious."
This was the original quote. It does not take too much imagination to get from this Orwell view of oppression to today's divisive political environment to get to the following edited version by simply changing just a few words:
"This is not to say that either the conduct of politics, or the prevailing attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, politics is continuous and universal in all parts of the country, and such acts as name calling, personal degradation, accusations of unpatriotism, sexual degradation, verbal assaults, the reduction of whole groups of fellow citizens with opposing views to idiocy and reprisals against common Americans with opposing views, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious."
Rather than lead and fix the problems facing the country, today's politicians only know a scorched earth approach to life and serving the country, worried only about their own careers and self enrichment, the good of the country and the citizens be damned. It does not matter if you have good ideas and principles, the only thing that matters is to eviscerate your opponents with lies, deceptions, innuendos, and nasty trash talking.
As a result, we never resolve any of the major issues in this country. Political dialog is venomous and divides Americans into separate camps and tribes, shutting down all hope of compromise and progress. And this is exactly what the political class wants. We fight each other while they continue to enrich themselves and their political donors, destroying our economy, freedoms, and civility in the process.
So for the past week or so we are calling out the haters, both the political ones and their respective allies in the media who are all too eager to join in the slander, mudslinging, and hate. Until we stop yelling at each other and start holding politicians accountable for adult behavior and adult leadership, we will continue to be stuck with the sad state of the nation that we have allowed the political class to create where it seems that they are the only ones who are doing well.
We started this "hate week" off with two previous posts we have written in the past. Today and the previous two posts got into the most recent instances of hate and call out the haters for the divisions they have driven into Americans.
1) If you are going to stoop so low as to call someone a liar, you should have the facts straight on your side of the argument. Otherwise, you look like an idiot...or U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. The good Senator from Vermont recently spouted out a little hate relative to Social Security: “When people tell you Social Security is going broke, you look them in the eye and tell them they’re not telling you the truth. Today, the Social Security Trust Fund has a $2.8 trillion surplus,” Sanders said. “So when people tell you Social Security is going broke, you look them in the eye and tell them they're not telling you the truth.”
So if you do not believe the Senator, you are a liar. But his statement clearly shows his ignorance when it comes to basic accounting relative to Social Security. There is no pile of gold, Google stock shares, oil rigs, or pile of cash anywhere that is owned by the Social Security Administration that is worth $2.8 TRILLION. Does not exist, has not existed for about fifty years.
Since the Johnson administration, the Federal government and the Washington politicians that operate it have taken the taxes paid under the Social Security laws and used it to pay for other government operations. After raiding that wealth, they left behind an IOU note saying that the Federal government owed the Social Security administration trillions of dollars. Trust me,those notes are not worth the paper they might have been written on, never mind being worth $2.8 TRILLION.
But the Federal government does not have a pile of gold, Google stocks, etc.since they spent that wealth long ago. Instead, they tax Americans more to make up for the robbery and transfer those additional taxes to pay social security benefits. It is a pay, and tax, as you go process, there is no surplus fund. In fact, the Social Security program ran a $47.8 billion deficit in 2012 as the program brought in $725.429 billion in taxes and paid out $773.247 for benefits and overhead expenses, according to published by Social Security Administration.
So you are a liar if you understand basic accounting and reality and you are a name calling Senator if you do not understand.
2) Josh Earnest is Obama’s press secretary. He even got into the hate act recently relative to the fight over whether to confirm Loretta Lynch as the new Attorney General.
Reacting to a comment by Iowa Senator Grassley, Earnest said: “That in my mind is an astounding display of duplicity. It’s possible that Senator Grassley has been in Washington too long.” Ah, the old hate argument that if you do not agree with me you are wrong and maybe you need to go home. Given that a lot of Americans voted for Senator Grassley to represent them in Washington, maybe Earnest is the one that needs to go home, no one voted for him.
But it gets better. When asked if his condescending attitude was helpful to getting Lynch confirmed, he expanded his condescension to all Republicans: “I’ll just observe….that being nice has gotten us a 160 day delay. Maybe after they look up ‘duplicitous’ in the dictionary, we'll get a different result.” Did not know that Mr. Earnest was so much smarter than all Republicans, using big words that his political rivals have to reach for a dictionary to understand. Such condescension, such hate, such immature rhetoric from a press secretary no less, and not a good one at that.
3) One more piece of hate and venom for today. A Democrat activist who sits on two national Democratic party committees has been suspended from her regional party after a string of nasty sexist comments on social media. Sarah Noble made some pretty disgusting and multiple tweets on Twitter, including “kill all men”, “f**k men”, and “die cis[gendered] scum:”
Ms. Noble sits on the national committees of the LGBT Liberal Democrats and the Secular & Humanist Liberal Democrats. She has also been elected to the executive committee of the National Union of Students’ LGBT wing, which, like the LGBT Lib Dems, has a zero-tolerance attitude towards hate speech. Doe not seem like a good way to make friends and influence people relative to your issues and passions: kill, f**k, die. That will certainly make people sit up and take notice of what you are fighting for. Not. Pathetic.
Ms. Noble sits on the national committees of the LGBT Liberal Democrats and the Secular & Humanist Liberal Democrats. She has also been elected to the executive committee of the National Union of Students’ LGBT wing, which, like the LGBT Lib Dems, has a zero-tolerance attitude towards hate speech. Doe not seem like a good way to make friends and influence people relative to your issues and passions: kill, f**k, die. That will certainly make people sit up and take notice of what you are fighting for. Not. Pathetic.
That will do it for today. A U.S. Senator is not only too stupid to understand Social Security but goes out and calls those that disagree with his incorrect version of reality liars, a lowly press secretary calls the majority of U.S. Senators too stupid to understand a big word he used, and a Democratic activist that wants half of the world’s population to die or get f**ked.
Are we starting to see why nothing ever gets accomplished in American politics any more? Tough to sit down and have adult conversations when the person across the table calls you a liar, stupid or desires your death.
Are we starting to see why nothing ever gets accomplished in American politics any more? Tough to sit down and have adult conversations when the person across the table calls you a liar, stupid or desires your death.
That will do it for the hate examples that we have discussed over the past four days. We will summarize all of those posts tomorrow and provide a warning of what is really going on behind the hatred and why we are done as a democracy unless we change the habits, attitudes , and integrity of those that infest our political processes today.
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