Glock34 wrote:
it's only offensive if you voted for that POS. if it was a white kid, with big ears, saying it's all Obama's fault if would be ok right !! Don't throw the race card around this forum, Political correctness will be the death of this country.
No, see, this is the whole problem. Too many people view basic civility, gentlemanliness, and self-respect as "political correctness." You can behave like a troglodyte as per the first amendment, but then you don't get to complain and whine about "political correctness" when someone calls you out on it. Classlessness is classlessness.
You're right about the double standard, but your conclusion is wrong. People often compared George Bush's witless expression to that of an ape. There are pictures all over the Internet of it. But the issue here is TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT.
I would have thought people would have learned this early on. People who offer the excuse, "but the other side does it" - right or left - lose my respect, and the respect of most intelligent people I know.
I don't object to caricatures of Obama or Bush on the basis of being offended in the sense of "I like or voted for X, and now you've insulted him and that hurts my feelings."
I am offended by the way cheap sewer discourse like this assumes I have the same adolescent sensibilities of the person who posted it - that somehow I'd want to look at it / read it. It is ideological spam. It wastes my time. It makes me not only dislike you, but lose respect for you. It's not the actual content and substance of people's political opinions, but the ugly way in which people choose to express those opinions that loses me.
Is it really so hard to take the high road? Is it so difficult to respect the humanity of one's political opponents and allow for the fact that the different way we experience the world on the basis of race, class, gender, and so on, might lead to different political conclusions, and honestly, based on differing theories of how the world works?
I wonder sometimes if I waste my time straining to do this, especially with specific types of conservatives and liberals, each of whom feel the need to denigrate and destroy the dignity and humanity of their opponents every time they express an opinion.
It's ugly. It's nasty. It's counterproductive. It wastes my time as it is essentially content free. It is a sign of limited intelligence and basically a nasty personality. It is almost mob-driven rather than reason-driven. It often recycles the verbiage of media personalities, which leads me to believe people cannot think for themselves.
I have friends all across the political spectrum, including in the military. We can be friends and we can debate things at length because we have respect for each other.
As for the post yesterday which basically called me a "thing," in a pathetic attempt to dehumanize me (for whose benefit I do not know), I maintain now that it says far more about the character of the poster than it does me - especially the idea that the fact that I am anti-militarism somehow is all you have to know about me to form an opinion as to my worth as a human being.
How full of complete festering hate a person must be to react to a differing political opinion with that kind of response. What is it like being like way, every day?
When you post on the Internet, ask yourself WHY you are posting. What is it you hope to accomplish?
When you post some kind of ugly caricature of someone you dislike politically, why do you do it?
Do you hope to win people over with it? I doubt it. Do you genuinely find such puerile, inane, adolescent expressions of disdain amusing, and are hoping to share it with others of similar limited sensibilities?
What is your purpose? And what is the cost? If you alienate someone who you could have allied yourself with - such as for the cause of open carry or gun rights in general, was it worth it? Do you really want to keep the movement small and homogenous, where everyone has a Gadsden flag for an avatar and listens to Glenn Beck? Because I somehow get the idea that people do want that.
We can assume that people who identify as explicitly conservative and right-leaning are already mostly on our side. It would seem to make sense that if you wanted to grow the movement, you'd want to recruit from the opposition, wouldn't you?
Or maybe that's just how I see it. I'm not here to make left-libertarians out of all of you, which is my political orientation. I'm here to learn about, and discover strategies for advocating for open carry and the right of self defense in general - which I support for the same reasons you do. Because I have a family. Because I believe there are dirtbags out there who would seek to do harm. Because people are flipping their gourds and going on shooting sprees once a month. Because the government is out of control. Nothing different here.
Why would you do anything to discourage or alienate others who may be here for the same reason, and don't buy the conservative political narrative, or do you honestly believe you need to buy into conservative consensus to be a worthwhile human being? If you believe that, I'm not even sure what to say, to be honest. That's just sad. Genuinely sad.
We always have a choice when we go to post. We have a choice of lending our political or other opinions dignity, or dragging them through the mud. How I regard people will always have less to do with their political opinions, but why and how they hold them and express them.
Do people want their opinions respected? Or is just about the joy of bloviating and venting spleen?
