Our Current Political Reality: Where we are now. How we got here. And where it's taking us...

"Bobos" stands for "Bourgeois-Bohemians". People from Ivy-league schools, with capitalist incomes and hippy values, who are the current political class dominating our politics. From the Atlantic Monthly:

HOW THE BOBOS BROKE AMERICA
The creative class was supposed to foster progressive values and economic growth. Instead we got resentment, alienation, and endless political dysfunction.

[...] The class structure of Western society has gotten scrambled over the past few decades. It used to be straightforward: You had the rich, who joined country clubs and voted Republican; the working class, who toiled in the factories and voted Democratic; and, in between, the mass suburban middle class. We had a clear idea of what class conflict, when it came, would look like—members of the working classes would align with progressive intellectuals to take on the capitalist elite.

But somehow when the class conflict came, in 2015 and 2016, it didn’t look anything like that. Suddenly, conservative parties across the West—the former champions of the landed aristocracy—portrayed themselves as the warriors for the working class. And left-wing parties—once vehicles for proletarian revolt—were attacked as captives of the super-educated urban elite. These days, your education level and political values are as important in defining your class status as your income is. Because of this, the U.S. has polarized into two separate class hierarchies—one red and one blue. Classes struggle not only up and down, against the richer and poorer groups on their own ladder, but against their partisan opposite across the ideological divide. [...]

This explains a lot. It doesn't bode well for the country, as we turn on eachother, weakening us and giving our enemies outside, opportunities to exploit.

Read the whole thing. We have to find a better way forward. We have to find common ground again.

Quickly.

     

Time to make Lemonade, not Political Kool Aid

Pat's had some good posts at his blog the past week. Today he had these:

Party-poopers vs lemonade-makers

It has some excerpts from today's column by Jonah Goldberg, in which he responds to criticisms that Michelle Malkin made about his column yesterday that had an agreeable bi-partisan tone. Malkin claimed she would rather be a "crank" than agree with Goldberg. It's worth following the link to read Goldberg's comments and Pat's comments too, about "shrill permanently outraged conservatives". I left the following comment on the post:

Malkin most certainly is a crank, which is why I'll probably end up delinking her from my blog. She still makes some good arguments, but plenty of other conservatives do the same thing without the shrillness. Her commentary also seems to be increasingly petty.

How many conservatives are going to be suffering from Obama Derangement Syndrome for the next 4 to 8 years, beating the shrillness drum? If that's the way it's going to be, then maybe bringing back the fairness doctrine wouldn't be such a bad thing. Then at least, we may get some level-headed conservative commentary interjected into the mainstream media, aimed at ordinary folks who aren't particularly ideological.

I find the ideological shrillness of the right to be just as tiresome as the dopey knee-jerk emotionalism of the left.

It's time to make Lemonade, not Kool Aid. I'll be focusing my efforts regarding political posts on listening to and promoting what the adults are talking about. Kool Aid is for kids at best; at worst, it's for suicide cults.

For years I've heard conservatives joke about the Left drinking the political equivalent of arsenic-laced Kool Aid. It would be too ironic if the Right now starts doing the same, and can't see it.

For eight years, the Democrats were the "shrill" party, always against whatever the Republicans were doing, more than being "for" something positive.

Then came Obama. All the flowery speeches. You can say whatever you like about those speeches, but they were never shrill. But the criticism of his speeches often was.

I did a post a while back:

The Real Winner of the 2008 Election: Optimism

It went into detail about the optimism factors in elections, and even methods of measuring optimism in presidential campaigns, including the most recent one.

McCain tried hard to run an optimistic campaign, but the shrill segment of the party pushed him hard to be more negative, to attack more. He gave in to it periodically.

The final analysis for the 2008 election showed that Obama had a higher optimism factor in his campaign, and of course he won.

Too many people in the Republican party today are drinking the Kool Aid of shrillness. It didn't work well for the Democrats, and it won't be any better for us. Please folks, find a better political beverage. I recommend starting with the Lemonade. Sugar to taste as needed.


Related Links:

What W thinks about O

“To Don’t” List for the Right

No use crying over spilt milk
     

Supporting Obama, as enlightened self-interest

I didn't vote for President-elect Obama. I'm a registered Republican, and my worldview is significantly different from the Democrats. But I accept reality, which is the Democrats won, and are the dominant force in control of our government now. I can only hope he proves to be more of a centrist than a hard leftist. Whatever happens, he is going to be our President, that's a fact. Now we deal with it.

I will expect that Obama will do many things I disagree with, as will the Democrats generally. Such is politics in a democratic republic.

ANYONE who becomes POTUS will have a lot of crap thrown their way. Obama will be no different. Al Qaeda is already shoveling their crap onto our next President, before he even is inaugurated. Ironically their criticisms sound very much like those of the hard Left among us, who are also criticizing Obama for not being extreme enough.

I don't pretend to know exactly what is going to happen over the next four years, but I do know a few things. I will choose my battles carefully. I won't be mindlessly criticizing Obama over every little thing he does. I will praise him if and when he does things I approve of. And like Stephen Baldwin, I will be saying my Prayers for President Obama AND his Administration; those important people he surrounds himself with to advise and assist him.

I may disagree with them on many things, and I may criticize them over the next four years. But they are leading our country, in perilous times, in a dangerous world. How could I not pray, that they love our country as much as I do, and that they will be guided to make wise decisions? I don't envy the tasks they have before them. As a partisan I have to criticize. But as an American, I must wish them a certain degree of success, for all our sakes. For ALL of us.

Palin and the Negligent Malevolence of the MSM

I have recently read a "Straw Man" argument on the Politico blog:

Why the media should apologize
Sarah Palin gave a really good speech. Why go beyond that, asks Simon.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — On behalf of the media, I would like to say we are sorry.

On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry.

We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked.

We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice?

Bad questions. Bad media. Bad.

It is not our job to ask questions. Or it shouldn’t be. To hear from the pols at the Republican National Convention this week, our job is to endorse and support the decisions of the pols. [...]

It goes on, and on, and ON like that. What complete and utter BS. Not to mention arrogance and disdain.

I've never said the media shouldn't ask questions, and I don't know ANYONE who has. So what the hell is he talking about? What has Palin supporters upset is not questions, but the lies, smear and distortions about Governor Palin that are demonstrably untrue, that the media is so quick to embrace, promote and acclaim.

That's quite a different thing from being upset about questions being asked. Note to Simon: don't talk down to us or at us like we're ignorant morons, too stupid to understand the value of questioning. It's just that sort of weaselly, disingenuous elitist BS that's got so many of us angry with the MSM. Many of us understand the difference between real journalism and partisan propaganda.

When I went to college in the late 1970's my major was "Mass Communications". A great deal of that dealt with journalism basics. How to gather information and check facts to assemble and present a news story that could withstand scrutiny.

That is something fundamentally rudimentary to what a journalist does (or should) do.

So it's with this background that I look upon "journalism" by the main stream media today. I'm appalled at what I'm seeing.

So-called journalists seem to simply be lifting and repeating George-Soros Democrat talking points verbatim. They are repeating smears and rumors without doing any research, fact checking or verification. If I, who have even fewer fact checking resources available to me than professional journalists have, can go on line and search through public records and see, in context, what things Sarah Palin has said and done as a mayor and as Governor of Alaska, certainly journalists can do the same?

The talking point today is that she's hiding. The media has sharpened every knife in their drawer, and they now demand that she present herself for a stabbing-fest.

If she's not in a hurry to rush into that, I can't blame her. She's not hiding, she has been available talking to voters on campaign events, but the media doesn't want to cover that.

A lot has happened in her life in a short time since the nomination. She's still Governor of Alaska, and still a mother with kids, including a son about to go off to war. She's juggling a lot of things right now. If she needs some time to prepare herself before facing the decidedly hostile media, so be it. Obama has had a lot more time to prepare for the spotlight in a national campaign, much more than she is going to get. We understand that the MSM would rather deal with her as unprepared and vulnerable as possible, and therfore don't want to wait. But they will have to for a bit.

In the meantime, what the media could do, is actually get off their backsides and do some REAL journalistic WORK. Many of the supposed questions they are asking already have answers; they don't all have to be answered personally by Sarah Palin. If I, a non-journalist, can find the answers to so many of their questions, answers that are in things she has already said publicly, then surely the journalists could do the same - if they were sincerely interested in actually finding factual, true answers.

The MSM has revealed their bias for some time now. Remember Dan Rather-Gate? Fake memos about President Bush, being pushed by CBS as true during the 2004 election?

What about all the things about Barrack Obama that the media neglected to tell us, about his lengthy associations with hate-mongers and terrorists? I was able to find these things out on my own, before they became widely known to the general public. Surely journalists could have done the same? Those things only became know in the MSM because bloggers kept talking about issues that the MSM would not, until it became impossible for the MSM not to address them.

It seems that many journalists knew about John Edward's mistress and her baby. But they deliberately made a decision to not tell us about it. They decide to spoon feed us only what they want us to know or believe.

All things considered, it seems that most journalists in the MSM can't be trusted to dig for information and present facts that don't support their own personal political agenda.

Regarding Palin, it seems that the MSM has already chosen Obama for us; and if we want something different, they are going to fight it. Real journalism be damned.

One of the courses I took in college was called "Propaganda and Public Opinion". I learned how public opinion could be manipulated by withholding information, presenting information out-of-context, and mixing up lies with facts, and repeating lies until they become generally accepted. With such creative mixing and editing of facts and lies, you could make JFK look like Hitler, and Hitler look like JFK. It was a real eye opener.

We need real journalism, not propaganda. Of COURSE the media does need to question Palin; I have no doubt they will have plenty of opportunity soon enough. But let them be warned; we want real journalism, not just regurgitated George Soros talking points. Not neglectful research, partial facts, rumors, unsubstantiated gossip, or opinion masquerading as fact.

Some advice for the MSM:

Just as Sarah Palin needs to prepare to be questioned, Journalists also need to DO THEIR HOMEWORK before they question her; not waste her time and ours by asking questions they could have easily found the answers to on their own, like so many of the rest of us have done already. DON'T WASTE OUR TIME.

I should also add "Don't waste our time asking stupid chauvinistic questions from the 1950's that offend and bore those of us who are already living in the 21st century." I can't believe some of the stuff I've been hearing. Is this really the 21st century? Sheesh!

Journalists need to report on the whole, larger picture, not just fragments they can spin to suit their own agendas. That may have worked in Hitler's Germany, but we expect something better.

They need to be equally vigorous in their questioning to BOTH political parties, and seek to find real answers, not opinion and conjecture. There ARE such things as FACTS. We are tired of their attempts to merely sway public opinion toward the answers they want us to embrace.

To the journalists who want more respect, I say: Start actually DOING your JOB, and you might get it. Ask tough, intelligent questions, of ALL the candidates. Let us decide from the facts, stop talking down to us, stop presenting your opinions as facts, and stop making things up!

I realize that it's human nature to be biased. Save your bias for opinion pieces and editorials; that's where it belongs. Being a PROFESSIONAL in journalism actually needs to mean something; when it does, you will find you are respected more.

More journalism, less BS, please. Thank goodness we are going to see actual debates to base decisions on, not just media sound bites. At least, I hope we are.


Related Links:

Hell freezes over

Sarah Palin Smears, Lies, Rumors and Gossip

Governors, Senators, Qualifications & Reforms