May 16, 2008

Are Obama Supporters Unable to Read? Or: Rebels Without A Clue

Would someone please read this to the Obama supporters who can’t?

I’m sure the vast majority of them can read (they are, after all, highly-educated, or so they keep telling us), but if the hate mail that’s been pouring in is any indication, an alarming percentage of Obama supporters are completely illiterate.

Oh, we’ve received a lot of wonderful, supportive comments lately — which I promise to get to, as soon as I try (with your help, I hope) to get a few things through the thick skulls of… well, Obama supporters like the one who sent this charming little love letter overnight (certain words redacted, for obvious reasons):

Fri, May 16, 2008 1:42 am
Name: Jim Nacios
emailaddress: jnacios@umd.edu

Message: Your “Pocket Guide to Obamaniac Behavior” is completely witless and you need to get over yourself and realize no one gives a f— if you don’t vote for Obama or if you vote for McCain or if you shove a f—ing stick of dynamite up your —.

The last word was not “ass.”

First thought: If you don’t care, why did you write?

Second thought: “umd.edu”? My, my, what fine, upstanding citizens our universities are producing — and with such an impressive command of the English language, too!

Bookmark that one, folks (you can bet Jim’s service provider has already “bookmarked” it; Jimmy falls just short of qualifying for my “Forward to the FBI” file), for the next time an Obama supporter claims that Obama supporters are not all that abusive, and that any trace of misogyny (I repeat: the last word was not “ass”) is all a figment of our tiny little female brains.

Sadly, it’s not all that atypical.

Granted, Jimmy has proved he can write (and even spell! the University of Maryland must be so proud!) — but Jimmy is one of the legions of Obama supporters who cannot read.

That, or one of the legions of Obama supporters who won’t read — thereby casting serious doubt on their capacity for critical thinking skills.

Let’s look at another message I received this morning:

Fri, May 16, 2008 11:33 am
Name: The political pyrate
emailaddress: ffamily37@—.net

Message: Anyone who beleives that this country is better off following the same course we’re on, by voting for John McCain instead of a viable democratic candidate, a candidate the Hillary Clinton will strongly support in November is she doesn’t get the nomination, is short sighted in the extreme.

This country cannot afford, at this ctitical time, to allow our own dissappointment to stand in the way of stopping the devastiting course we have been put upon by GWB and a course the will be followed by John McCain.

This one isn’t hate mail, per se, and the sender is definitely capable of constructing coherent sentences (despite some misspellings and typos), but is unable or unwilling to read.

What do these two correspondents have in common?

They both assume that if I don’t fall at the feet of Barack Obama, I am voting for John McCain.

Someone show me where I have ever written — not just on this blog, but anywhere on the ‘Net or in hardcopy — or have said (I do get my mug on the TV news once in a while, you know) that I was voting for John McCain, or even considering it.

I have written that I’ll vote for Mike Gravel if he gets the Libertarian nomination (and I may, or I may not; I can change my mind between now and November), so jump all over me for that if you want to — but anyone who ASS-umes I’m voting Republican in the fall loses any shred of credibility from the get-go.

Is that clear? How can I make it any clearer? Do I have to create another brightly-colored chart to illustrate it, since that’s what put this blog on the Obamaniac Attack Radar in the first place?

Now, before anyone jumps on me for even thinking of voting third-party, here’s something I wrote on a message board, about a year ago, to a fellow Democrat who was hesitant to come out of the closet as a 2000 Nader voter (bear in mind, I voted for for Gore in 2000, not Nader):

Pffffft! I’ve never had an issue with ‘00 Nader voters. Last time I checked, this was still a democracy, which means he’s got every right to run, and we’ve all got every right to vote any way we want. I admit, I haven’t voted Green in a national election yet, but I’m more than proud to have voted Green¹ in various California gubernatorial and U.S. Senate elections. (Never for U.S. House, though — I worship my rep², and would give her all my internal organs to keep her alive, and in office, forever.)

The problem isn’t with third-party voters, or third parties — it’s with the two-party system. At the risk of boring everyone to tears, if I had my way, this is how I would change the U.S. voting system — and I guarantee you, there would never again be a rift between the Dems and the Greens (and it would a] eliminate the two-party system, and b] force parties to form coalitions, and learn the elusive art of compromise):

1. Radical campaign-finance reform — meaning, complete elimination of all corporate donations, PACs, and soft-money donations, while keeping the cap of $2,000 for individual donations — and also cap the total amount any candidate can collect. AFAIC, the uneven playing field we have now is what’s killing the U.S. democratic system.

2. Eliminate the electoral college. Period. Popular vote only. That is true “direct representation.”

3. Ban all electronic voting systems. Period. Traceable paper ballots only.

4. Standardize all paper ballots. None of this “butterfly ballot” stupidity again. At the same time, replace all lever voting machines (they still exist) and punch-card machines, and convert to ink-only OCR (optical character recognition).

5. In the case of absentee ballots (which I now use solely), provide an automatic return receipt/confirmation of delivery, with matching voter-card number, from the state Secretary of State. Raise the cost of return postage to pay for it. Exempt low-income voters from paying for postage at all, by increasing sales tax/compensating for the increased tax somewhere else — e.g., impose a luxury tax like New York state does; anybody who can afford a $50,000 automobile can absorb an increase of a fraction of a penny in the tax they’re already going to pay.

6. Force all states to allow its residents to vote absentee, with no need for a “reason.” (I’m not incapable of getting my butt to the local polling place; I do it because I want the best paper trail I can get. Fortunately, in California, you needn’t provide proof of any pressing “need” to vote absentee.)

7. Make voting compulsory. Period. Impose community service (not fines) on every eligible voter who fails to vote. Exempt all mentally-challenged citizens.

8. Make voter registration compulsory, and make registration easy and accessible. Males who reach the age of 18 already must register for the Selective Service; the most they must do is fill out a simple form available at any post office. Do the same with voter registration. Do not impose penalties for failure to register; instead, withhold the ability to obtain/renew one’s driver’s license/state ID card/passport, auto registration, etc., until one registers. Exempt, as above, all mentally-challenged citizens.

9. Repeal all state laws barring convicted felons from voting. Period. Stealing a car has nothing to do with whether or not a U.S. citizen should be allowed to have a voice in the electoral process. In addition: If Death Row inmates have the right to get married while awaiting execution, they should be expected to uphold the duty of active participation in the system that grants them their most basic civil rights.

10. Hold all state primaries on the same day. Period.

11. Instant-runoff voting. Restructure the entire voting system to resemble the best of the Australian voting system (where it is called preferential voting). Ignore the fact that Australians vote for parties, not candidates, and adapt the tier method of voting for candidates: Ballots no longer allow you only a single choice among all candidates in the same race, but allow you to number your preferences, from 1 to 5, 1 to 10, 1 to 300 if need be.

The voter is not required to choose more than one candidate, but may rank two, three, or all candidates. (In Oz, this is “optional preferential voting.”)

If your number-one choice fails to gain a majority, then your #1 vote goes to your #2 choice, and so on down the line, until the process of elimination identifies the top vote-getter.

Australians have been voting this way for nearly a century; although they vote for parties instead of individual candidates, there is no reason the same system could not be applied to individual candidates.

Well, that went off on a tangent, but I still like every last idea.

The real point is at the beginning: I respect the choice of anyone who votes his or her conscience and core values. If one’s conscience and core values are guided primarily by party loyalty, then so be it — hold your nose and vote your party’s candidate. But don’t you dare attempt to coerce me or anyone else to do the same, just to… what is it that motivates you loyalty-oath types, exactly? Do you need external validation that your straight-party ticket really is the right thing to do, and if you don’t get it, you go ballistic with cries of treason? I don’t know. All I know is that it’s difficult, if not impossible, for most hardliners to believe that many Americans really do vote for the person, not the party. (And that doesn’t make them traitors or trolls; it’s makes them thinking people.)

In any case, I do not respect anyone who votes on auto-pilot without thinking his or her vote through.

If you tell me you’re voting for Obama, or writing in Clinton, or drafting Adlai Stevenson straight out of his grave, or — yes, even voting for John McCain — based on your true, genuine, honest belief, after much rational thought, and untainted by doubt, that you are making the very best decision you can (and not because it’s the “cool” thing to do, or because you’ve been intimidated by your own party, or because your wife won’t give you any if you don’t) — then I respect your decision.

Yes, I do respect those who will sit out an election, if the positions of all candidates, from Republican to Socialist, conflict so seriously with your core values that you cannot in good conscience vote for any of them.

If you do something because you can’t stand up to peer pressure, you’ve sold out. You’re not an adult (or not a self-respecting adult) if your true convictions are so shaky that you’ll cave in just because a bunch of people keep yelling at you. (The only exception: physical torture. But I don’t think the Obamaites have figured out how to put the rest of us in concentration camps. Yet.)

Maybe I’m less susceptible — and therefore the most frustrating to the Obamaites — to propaganda, and hardly inclined to do anything just because somebody tells me to do it. I’m gay, after all, and I’ve been completely out since I was 19. If I caved to what everybody told me I had to do, or else, I’d be alone, celibate, miserable, haunting the confessional every Saturday seeking absolution, and rattling my Rosary in the pews, begging God to “cure” me… of who I am.

Anyway…

I do, of course, hope everyone will vote one way or another, and even those sitting out the presidential GE will do their utmost to participate in every down-ticket election, and vote on every state proposition. Hope, that is, not try to force.

I myself will not be leaving any slate unmarked on my ballot this fall. But: My vote is my own, and I will vote my conscience and core values, right down the line. No amount of bullying or threats can change my vote — only I can do that, and whatever way I go in the GE, my decision will be based solely on the research I’ve done, and careful weight given to all the pros and cons of each candidate (and each ballot measure).

Now, all you Obamaites so eager to tell me to stick dynamite up my private parts, get this through your thick skulls: Your bullying does not work, and your thuggery is not welcome here.

If you still don’t get it, Obamaites, read my response to your fellow illiterate, “Angry Black Guy,” and have someone explain the meaning of dicto simpliciter to you. In very small words.

And another thing: Where do you Obamabots get off on assuming every non-believer is part of the Zell Miller conservative wing you want so badly to purge from the Democratic Party? How can you delude yourselves into believing the GOP line that Obama is a “liberal”?

I’m a freaking Kucinich supporter, fercrimenysakes! I’m an anti-war, anti-death penalty, pro-choice, left-wing lesbian who just keeps getting more and more liberal every year. Every time I take the Political Compass, I grow dangerously closer to falling off the lower left quadrant. I’m a bigger lefty than the Dalai Lama (which is understandable; with all due respect, he hasn’t achieved enlightenment in the area of same-sex relationships yet). I believe that Log Cabin Republicans are selfish, narrow-sighted moneygrubbers, or self-loathing homophobes, or both. I’m a happily unapologetic, ex-Catholic agnostic who’s about to marry a happily unapologetic, ex-Baptist atheist, and while we both value the right to freedom of religion as much as we value our own civil rights, we demand strict separation of church and state. Last month, you could have found us protesting one of those “ex-gay” shams.

I’d be a freaking Greenie if I thought the Greens had a practical plan for building the party from the ground up (instead of leaping at the presidency every cycle, without building the necessary foundation to get there first).

I am the Radical Religous Right’s worst nightmare. How can anyone seriously call me a so much as a “moderate,” let alone “conservative,” anything?

But hardly anyone will read or heed all that. In fact, just minutes ago, I received another message, this time a real suck-up job from what I guess must be a Republican, expressing sympathy for Hillary supporters who aren’t getting enough “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” from their own party, and inviting me to join Republicans, independents, and other “moderate Democrats” to bring down Obama in the fall.

“Other moderate Democrats”? Why does anyone get the idea that only “moderate” (read: conservative) Democrats prefer Clinton over Obama — or that Obama is some kind of radical liberal?

Obama supporters (and now, I see, some conservatives) have no clue what a “conservative Democrat” is — or what a “liberal Democrat” is.

Assuming they can comprehend this without visual aids, I’ll try to put it in a way even the most feverish Obama supporters can understand (although I’m not getting my hopes up).

Dear Obama Supporters:

Hillary supporters — and everyone else who hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid, but primarily those old, irrelevant, used-up, “post-sexual” paleofeminists you detest so much — cross all economic, class, social, and color lines.

As the full-page ad in today’s USA Today, placed by the newly-formed WomenCount PAC, says:

We are the women of this nation. We are rich and poor, young and old, married with kids, married without kids, single moms, gay, straight, and widowed. We are every color. We are of every religion. We are from all political parties.

I add: We are also what you will become, Obama supporters — minus the childish vitriol and the “Fine! You can’t be my bestest friend no more!” crap the most embarrassing factions of your camp keep spewing.

What, do you think you invented the politics of “hope and change”? That was your grandparents’ generation — or were you playing hooky from civics the week you were supposed to be learning about FDR’s New Deal? Rebelling against “The Establishment” — which had screwed up the world (a world you never asked to be born into! wahhhhh!) — and demanding the reins be turned over to the younger generation — that was old news before the Summer of Love (1967, for you Rebels Without A Clue) was over.

And you don’t have a corner on anger and despair after surviving eight horrible years under a delusional, paranoid, liberal-hating Republican president who used deceit, dirty tricks, bullying, and outright lies to get what he wanted, who was responsible for the deaths of more than one million innocent people in the dying days of a useless, senseless, immoral war, whose Machiavellian economics devalued the dollar to the point that Americans were blanching at the sight of their grocery bills, whose foreign policy resulted in record-high gas prices all over the country, who shamed the United States in the eyes of the entire world, and who was never brought to justice for his crimes. That’s my generation we’re talking about now: My first presidential vote was for Jimmy Carter in 1980 — a re-election he lost, by the way, after serving the same sort of well-meaning but ultimately ineffectual (save for the Camp David Peace Accords) single term I expect your Great and Powerful Obama will serve (minus Carter’s much-needed wonkism) before being forced to pack it in and move home to Illinois, once and for all. (That is, if by some miracle Obama actually wins the GE.)

That said, I’ll tell you what a liberal is — and isn’t:

A liberal is me — and your mom, and every real man secure enough in his own personhood that he cannot be swayed by peer pressure from doing what’s right, and would never dream of stooping to ugly, little-bully-boy tactics to get his way. We are the ones who marched and rallied for the ERA, the ones who sat in dusty, unused storage rooms on college campuses planning the next Take Back the Night march. We are the ones who actually care about the right of our fellow Americans to personal liberty and autonomy — and who don’t view reproductive rights and same-sex marriage as “wedge issues” to be dusted off and abused to suit a political agenda. (”If McCain wins, there goes Roe v. Wade!” … “OH NOES! How could the California Supreme Court make this decision, now?! Why can’t you gays wait your turn? You’re going to lose us the election!!!”)

A liberal is not someone who slithers out from under the harsh light of reality in a pathetically transparent effort to appease the anti-choice and anti-gay brigades for political purposes…

“I trust women to make a prayerful decision about this issue.”

Well, so much for atheist women!

“I trust women to make these decisions in conjunction with their doctors and their families and their clergy.”

So women are supposed to get permission from their doctors, husbands, and ministers first? Oh, well! So much for atheist women, single women, and women who don’t subjugate themselves or their bodies to anyone else’s authority. C’est la vie!

“Although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.”

There is no secular argument against same-sex marriage. All anti-gay positions stem solely from (uninformed and misguided) religious beliefs. Period.

A liberal does not agree that homosexuality is not a choice, and then deny gay and lesbian people the same rights he has — while citing the same moribund, hateful excuses used to keep his parents from marrying.

A liberal recognizes the “states’ rights” argument against federally-recognized same-sex marriage for exactly what it is: the same old argument against interracial marriage, regurgitated and reprocessed to take advantage of more modern bigotry.

A liberal does not throw gasoline on the fire of anti-gay bigotry among the most conservative churchgoers — who preach love but teach hate — in order to score votes and money, by making a radical “ex-gay” his mouthpiece… and then refusing to acknowledge, much less apologize for, using homophobia against us to win them (but still expecting our money and our votes).

I could go on like this all day — Obama himself has handed me a bottomless quiver — but the point is this: To compartmentalize all of us who do not worship King Obama as “right-wing Democrats” (or Republican poseurs; I, for one, would have had to pretend to be a Democrat for nearly half a century to pull it off) is even more ludicrous than it is insulting.

We were the ones on the streets, demanding our rights, and your rights, and “change” fueled by “hope” before most of you Obamaites were so much as a twinkle in your daddy’s eye.

(As for the middle-aged and elderly Obama supporters? Well, I don’t know about them; I don’t know what in their life experience could possibly make them so blind. I really don’t. But they do seem to be in the minority of Obama supporters, and they’re not sending me the kind of vulgar hate mail our little friend Jimmy did today.)

One last message from the Clueless Comment Bag today before we turn to other things:

Fri, May 16, 2008 9:58 am
Name: Joe Bob

Message: Why is it all your links involve blatant insulting of other people while railing against how these people have been insulting, isn’t that just a perpetual cycle? I apologize if certain people on this wild west of the internet angered you, but i’m not sorry I chose from 3 great people the one I thought was best for the future, yet I come here and see people who 2 years ago screamed “right wing conspiracy” teaming up with those some people to damage someone, it’s all surreal…

“Joe Bob,” you are the most clueless of all. You’re not so much as insinuating that I’m voting for McCain as your cohorts are; you’re accusing me of 1) “teaming up” with Republicans, to 2) “damage” Obama.

Here’s your clue, “Joe Bob”:

Republicans hate me. They hated me yesterday, they hate me today, and they’re going to hate me long past the day Barack Obama’s name is just a distant, bad memory. Why would I “team up,” for any reason, with people who want to deny me my civil rights (and, in too many cases, actually want to see me dead)? Masochism? (No; masochism must be the reason I’m still involved in politics at all.) Racism? Hey, go for it — you’re one of the eight or ten Obamaites left who haven’t screamed “racist!” at me yet.

(I will admit it’s been much easier to read the comments sent me by conservatives lately; oh, they’ll shoot me down on every point, but none of them has even begun to approach the vitriol of the Obamaites. The last death threat I got from a Republican was, I think, in 2003; the last accusations of “anti-Americanism” were a couple of years ago. I don’t know if they’ve been chastened by what they got out of their loyalty to Bush, or if, after the last seven years, they’re just exhausted. I can only guess; to really get into their heads is next to impossible. In any case, the occasional Repubs who write me these days, no matter how much they disagree with me, have been pretty respectful. Of course, even a hearty F.U. would sound almost reasonable next to the most abominable (or Obamanable) of Obamaite nastygrams I’ve been getting.)

I don’t want to “damage” anyone. I want my country to avoid making the disastrous mistake of putting Barack Obama in the White House, because, I sincerely believe, he will be such an utter failure (and a one-term president), he will ensure another eight-year Republican administration, beginning in 2012.

I don’t like his positions. I don’t trust him as far as I could throw a HumVee. I think he’s inexperienced, arrogant, and a media creation no more substantial than a Hanna-Barbera cartoon character. I think he is a hawk in dove’s clothing. I think he is a triangulator, a capitulator, a homophobe, and a religionist whose beliefs (learned at the knee of one of the most bigoted, hate-filled preachers I’ve ever heard) trump his reason. He does not represent my best interests, and, more importantly, he is not the right person to lead this country at this time.

I might be persuaded to change my mind about him — after both he and his supporters get a lot more seasoning in the reality-based world instead of that fantasyland most of them live in now.

After all, I was reluctant to vote for Al Gore in 2000; he was just too conservative for me.

Now… What I wouldn’t give for the new-and-enlightened President Al Gore.

¹ A) Pete Camejo for Governor of California, against Gov. Gray Davis’s 2002 re-election; there was no way at the time California was going to hand the key to the governor’s mansion over to a Republican (until the 2003 recall fiasco; then I voted against the recall, and for Cruz Bustamante). B) Todd Chretien for U.S. Senate in 2006, against Democrat-In-Name-Only Dianne Feinstein, for reasons too numerous to list.

² I don’t “worship” my rep anymore. And while I still might give her all my internal organs to keep her alive, I would no longer do the same just to keep her in office. Yes, Anna, you’ve got my vote again, but you’re on thin ice; if you weren’t running uncontested for the Dem nom in the primary, you might have lost my vote to a different Dem.

Posted by: Sapphocrat