Hesiod has this wonderful little screed that perfectly illustrates Democratic arrogance:
POSTSCRIPT: Incidentally, I’ve learned my lesson. Never underestimate the stupidity of the American voter. Just when you think they can’t be bigger fucking idiots, they prove you wrong. That’s not meant to be cynical. It’s just a recognition of reality. 80% of the folks who voted for Arnold were fucking idiots. And, that amounts to around 3 million people in the State of California alone.
Sometimes smart people assume that everyone else is as smart, informed and observant as they are. Thus, they get mystified by the behavior of the general public. Well…this election should disabuse you of that failing.
Even the Republicans who voted for Arnold know he’s a clusterfuck waiting to happen. They just did so for strategic advantage.
So…let this be a lesson to you. Stupid sells. Hence the miraculous relative popularity of Dubyah, despite all of his adminstration’s screw ups and deliberate screw jobs. By rights Bush should have favorability and approval ratings that make Gray Davis look like Mr, Popularity. Yet…he doesn’t.
So, we have to keep hammering him…every day. Until the message finally pentrates the thick skulls of all the dumbfucks out there in voterland.
Sorry to be harsh…but that’s the only way.
Yup, that’s right folks. Unless you agree with Hesiod, you’re a "dumbfuck". This is the attitude of the Democratic Party. The only reason they can lose is because you’re too stupid to know that they’re right and anyone who thinks elsewise is ignorant. It’s not that the Democratic Party is intellectually bankrupt, it’s not that their policy is nothing more than a mix of arrogance and petulance, it’s that you are dumb.
Here’s what I think of that argument:
Hilarious seal!
My god, the way you’ve been whining lately, I’d think that the GOP would have more claim to it…
“80% of the folks who voted for Arnold were fucking idiots.”
Considering that I consider about 95% of the population, Liberal, Conservative, Left, Right, Christian, Jewish, Black, White, Red, Purple or Blue to all be fucking idiots, I’d say that’s a damn good ratio.
Hard to argue that this was an idiotic move. Californians have just set themselves up for an unprecedented game of partisan one-upsmanship in which obstructionism by the Legislature to make the Governor look bad will become the first step in successfully crafting the next recall.
Even if California voters were accepting of Arnold’s sordid past, there’s no excuse for his invisibility at the debates, save for the one scripted debate performance where he cartoonishly traded jabs with Ariana Huffington. It should be blatantly obvious to anyone that Arnold will mimic the modus operandi of our current President, resigned to a figurehead who goes up to the podium and espouses the radical right-wing policies of otherwise unelectable GOP hard-liners in as sugar-coated of manner as possible. A very small percentage of Schwarzenegger voters stand to gain from his election, and a very large percentage stand to lose. Hesiod’s statements were over-the-top, but it’s obvious that way too many people were sucker-punched by the premise that Arnold is a moderate. Anyone who claims Milton Friedman is one of their major influences is no moderate.
I could go on about this theme all day as well. For me, the most important distinction between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats recognize that a functional safety net is a necessity to protect against the inherent fluctuations of a market economy, fluctuations that have been made all the more bruising now that the Keynesian model has been replaced with the bare-knuckled “free market is God and if you’re not a success, it’s your own damn fault” mindset. The presence of a safety net most likely provides a cheaper alternative than what would eventuate if conservatives got their way. The majority of the small number of present-day welfare recipients are either mentally ill or borderline retarded, incapable of holding down a steady job and, in the absence of a safety net, would face two scenarios….becoming institutionalized wards of the state or being ignored and left to commit crimes on the street to survive.
The majority of my family and neighbors have grudgingly accepted short-term benefits of that nasty safety net when they’ve fallen prey to the far-from-over working-class genocide on one or more occasions in the past 20+ years. For the most part, their livelihoods have been stripped from them over this period, but their lives would have been completely destroyed if not for the extremely modest benefits of the safety net that got them through just long enough to find a piss-poor replacement job when one opened up several years later. The safety net was not able to save their families from being devastated in a handful of cases where their teenage children committed suicide as a result of the overwhelming grief of total financial meltdown, but for the most part, they did survive because they had a safety net to absorb their fall instead of the bare cement that most Republicans (and apparently you) find to be acceptable.
I’ve often found that detractors of the safety net usually craft their position based on a perspective of cradle-to-grave privilege, a perspective that hard times only happen to the other guy. I’ve also noticed that when these same people become that “other guy” as misfortune takes a hold of them and doesn’t let go as soon as they like, that privileged perspective yields to “somebody help me” very quickly. Given that current policies virtually ensure that the poorest third of Americans will continue to be battered bloody, alot more people can expect to become their worst nightmare…the “indolent freeloading welfare parasite” who loses their job and has no obvious alternative other than to tap into the safety net for as long as it exists and on the outside chance that their situation is desperate enough to qualify.
Voting for Democrats has often become a “lesser of two evils” exercise in recent years. I’m not liberal on every issue, but a humane policy towards the poor is a vital requirement to earning my vote. Both the Democrats and Republicans have made it abundantly clear that they are only too willing to aid and abet the eradication of blue-collar employment. That’s a difficult enough pill to swallow. But if the Democrats ever follow your position and abandon the desperately-needed safety net on top of a policy that hijacks my neighbors’ and relatives’ jobs, I have officially lost all incentive to vote for them.
Jay you need to be more consistant in your arguments. you accuse Dems of gutter politics but what are you doing now? You have a double standard for Dems vs. Rep’s. its about time you see it.
Um, you all do realize that Hesiod is a freakin’ moron, right? His take on politics is so far to the left he’s about to fall off the edge of the world. My point is that his rantings in no way represent the moderate Democratic agenda, whatever that may be in the confused state it’s in right now. Hesiod is as easy to rip about as wet toilet paper. He (or she, or IT) should not be held up as the voice of the Democrats.
Ryan: Well, you’ll get no disagreement from me on Hesiod being a raving moonbat, but given the kind of things I hear from even moderate Democrats, Hesiod’s attitude seems to be all too common.
And yes, the GOP has it’s blowhards too (*cough* Ann Coulter *cough*).