Purists, changers, and elections
In this recent post, I highlighted some WaPo comments from a guy who calls himself “sayoung809132001,” who claims to be a former Democrat union man from Michigan who got laid off and is currently unemployed. The whole experience has led him to have a road to Damascus moment in which his lifelong allegiance to the Democratic Party has ended, and he’s looking to vote for candidates with practical suggestions and business experience.
That summary of mine doesn’t even begin to do justice to the fervor and eloquence of the man; I suggest you go to the original post and read it if you haven’t already (and for those who had trouble with the paragraphing and syntax, here’s a revised and more readable version).
However, some of the commenters on my post were very critical of “sayoung.” For example, commenter “Ilion” wrote:
Unfortunatly, it’s clear that he doesn’t really understand ”¦ and he’ll fall for the Hero on a White Horse who rides into town.
And commenter Mike Mc. responds to some more notes from sayoung by saying:
The guy is a jackass. He wants Obama to give him a job.
Right there is the exact problem with Democrats. They are rotten people.
It goes on (for example, commenter “Tim P” continues with more here, “Baklava” adds more here, and “ghost707” here).
Other commenters join the discussion with various defenses of sayoung (see this and this, for example).
I come down on the side of the defenders. Rage at people like the guy I’ve spotlighted in that post may feel good, but is counterproductive and verges on the vengeful.
As a changer myself, I view it quite differently. Every person who sees more clearly than he/she did the day before is a good thing, and to be welcomed. Reasoned argument will persuade some of further things that seem reasonable to them””not spitting at them for former crimes, or making assumptions about what they think and feel now, and how far they still are from agreeing with you. These people are not the enemy.
Sayoung’s change is relatively recent. So don’t expect it to be complete, or to perfectly toe the conservative line in terms of a well-thought-out theoretical conservative basis for his viewpoints.
In addition—although it’s true that some of the statements he made in this particular excerpt (not featured in my original post) sound as though his vote can be bought by Obama with promises of jobs, that’s not the main thrust of the bulk of his comments at all.
Most of the time, he is speaking of voting for the people most likely to effect reasonable, non-pie-in-the-sky, practical changes that will help improve the business climate in general in the hard-hit state of Michigan, not just for himself or his relatives in particular (although of course the latter would be nice, too). The guy is not looking for a handout, but instead for business-friendly policies from someone running for election who knows something about business.
If you care to read more by sayoung see this, which includes a couple of his other comments at the WaPo. One of them details some of the work he’s done to earn some spare change in the meantime, while he waits for things to improve. His efforts also included re-locating to another state for another job, which then folded as well. Sayoung is interested in getting relief for systemic unemployment in his area, due to policies (including union activism, which he says is part of the problem) that have blighted economic opportunities in the region as a whole.
But this really isn’t about sayoung himself—who he is, what he’s saying, or whether he’s on the up and up. It’s about an attitude I’ve seen over and over among some conservatives about how big or how small their tent will be.
When sayoung talks about Republicans reaching out to the union people in Michigan, it’s because Republicans campaigning in Michigan must reach out to the union people, who constitute a huge number of the voters in that state. Those Republicans would be idiots not to do so. These are the people whose flip from a Democrat to a Republican vote will be necessary to effect a win in that state.
Purist and punitive sentiments towards those people are unhelpful and impractical. If that’s the attitude conservatives and/or Republicans have, they will continue to lose elections. And although perhaps some day a conservative third party may take hold, we are talking about an election that is going to be happening in less than three months—one of the most important in our lifetimes, if not the most important—and it’s going to be between Democrats and Republicans. The race does not go to the purest.
Neo,
Thanks for the link to Sayoung’s other comments. He is a passionate and insightful man. I feel for him. He is really hurting. If there is any way, it would be nice if you could invite him to read your blog.
Neo,
please re-read his comment here:
Obama has precisely 89 days left to EARN mine and my entire family’s votes. We are ALL UNION and we are all democrats. ALL of us have made a pact that if we do not ALL have jobs by Nov 2, we will vote republican as a protest vote.
He so desperately wants to vote Democrat. He is only going to vote against Obama if he and his family do not get jobs.
Meaning, he is not voting for a Republican, he is just voting against Obama, which tells me that he still does not get it and probably never will. He has no idea how an economy works, so he will never make a correct decision regarding politicians.
What he is telling me is that his vote is for sale. He is not voting for a correct path out of this mess.
He will be voting for whoever the Democrat is on the ticket in 2012.
http://neoneocon.com/2010/08/09/notes-from-another-changer/#comment-177541
Welp. I’ll repost it.
——————–
My comments expressed no rage at sayoung (that I remember)
My comments were giving adult solutions to the problem. I didn’t have enough information to know what sayoung was doing or not doing to get a job or make money.
Therefore I gave anybody (not just sayoung) advice about not looking for ‘answers’ from the government.
Yes – my tone could’ve been different.
But I stand by my message.
WE (people in this country) need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps if we are able-bodied. Our children depend on us. People who are not able-bodied depend on us.
This is kind of a “Certs” moment…
“Stop! You’re both right!”
Sayoung IS a “lifelong Democrat” and finding it difficult to change his spots…but if the Republicans offer nothing but scorn and more of the same Democrat lite, we’re still in the leaky ship of state that exists now. Neo is right that–misguided as sayoung has been in the past–Republicans should welcome him and those like him into their ranks, if only to show that our ideas and policies are better, and that we don’t hold their past mistaken beliefs against them. It’s not too late to change, and one shouldn’t be criticized for trying, however it comes about–be it a “they didn’t give me what I wanted, so screw them” vote, or a genuine change of heart and philosophy.
If nothing else, it gives the Republicans the ability to attempt to reverse some of the damage done.
And…
I agree 100% that we need to embrace changers.
But like Paul Tsongas said… We can’t be pander bears. 🙂
The answer to his question about adult solutions is personal responsibility.
Am I right Neo?
Yes, I could’ve rephrased what I wrote to sound nicer ! 🙂
Baklava: I absolutely agree that nothing in your comments indicated rage. And I certainly didn’t mean to imply that all the people whose comments I cited were expressing anger or vindictiveness towards sayoung, just criticism. Quite a few were, however.
This is related – regarding unions, from Ace of Spades:
http://minx.cc/?post=304491
ghost707: I linked to that very comment in my post, where I wrote:
.
And then I go on to discuss what I read as the main thrust of the bulk of his comments.
Thanks Neo.
I’ve had 9 hour discussions with a changer before (He was an African American man who I put up some servers with in San Francisco.
He told me a year later that he attributed his registering Republican to me.
I considered it an honor.
This is a subject I enjoy immensely because I see it as this country’s way forward.
We will not change hearts and minds unless we are able to persuade.
I want him to vote for the right reason – not because he thinks some one will pay him off or “give” him a job.
I want him to realize that WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.
Vote buying will not fix our problems.
We have already gone over the cliff, just how hard we hit the ground is up to the people who really understand the situation we are in.
They need to vote for the right reason – with long term goals in mind.
Meaning, he is not voting for a Republican, he is just voting against Obama, which tells me that he still does not get it and probably never will.
The enemy of my enemy…may not be my friend, but he’s still my enemy’s enemy.
But frankly, ghost707, you’re never gonna get any where if all you do is preach to the choir. sayoung is a man who only a few short years ago wouldn’t have considered anything you might say to him.
Now, he’ll listen. Will you speak encouraging, educating words? or laugh, and point fingers?
Opportunity…she is knocking.
I get the sense that what Neo is saying is that this fellow may be experiencing that “Oh Shit” moment when all his assumptions about the world are crumbling around him. I have a sense that Obama and his minions are pushing a lot of people in that direction.
We have to be a bit tolerant of what they are going through. I remember my own change. Starting as a die hard Dem when I turned 18 and could register. Voted for McCarthy and Carter. My process was a bit slower in that taxes were the issue that started me down a different path and over a decade took me to Independent to reluctantly Republican ( I don;t think they are perfect, but a helluva lot better than the Dems in the current incarnation). This fellow is having a change at a more rapid pace. Encouragement should be what we give such people. It will only help all of us in the long run.
ghost707: and I want rainbows and puppy dogs. What you and I want in a perfect world is, I’m afraid, not all that relevant to the task at hand. I would also like him (and everyone) to realize we’re all in this together, and any number of other things. But that’s hardly the point, nor is it the way to change hearts and minds.
And more to the point, he’s more likely to generate further converts among his peer group than any of us ever could. It’s hard to promote heresy in a church to which you don’t belong.
So cut him some slack. His journey isn’t yet complete, but he’s going in the right direction – and may bring others with him.
As someone who had a political conversion experience from Democrat to DINO (I’m still registered as a Dem because I’ve been too lazy to re-register as “Decline To State) I feel for sayoung. I voted for Democrats for 30 years. When it finally sunk in during 2008 how corrupt the party is, how sexist and how uncaring they are, I had a terrible shock and felt let down . Here I had believed for so long that Democrats were the good guys. I think what I went through is what it’s like to go through the classic stages of .grief. In some ways, I would like to go back to the time before my political conversion. It would be less hard on me emotionally.
I thank you for your concern for this fellow, neo-con. I hope that the Republicans WILL reach out to him
and that people will spend more time listening to him empathetically than judging him. Too bad there isn’t crisis intervention for what I call “disaffected Democrats” because under Obama there will be a lot more of them. ;^)
Political dialogue is, or at least should be, a form of *marketing*. The objective here is to change minds, or at least open minds to the possibility of change, not just to vent.
Changing minds must begin with a person’s existing beliefs. It is DUMB of Republicans to use “liberal” as a cuss word; it would be much more intelligent, especially in communicating with older voters, to focus on the disconnect between the classical liberals with whom they identify (FDR, JFK, etc) and the current crew who have assumed that title.
Sayoung needs to get himself to a Tea Party meeting fast. Kinda like an alcoholic getting himself to an AA meeting fast. The TPs are on the whole enormous tents. Mine sure is. Like TP-ers, Sayoung just wants the rules to be moral, to make sense, and to be upheld.
If sayoung is waiting until EVERYBODY in his family and all his friends, or whatever the requirement is, to have jobs in order to vote for Obama, he won’t vote for Obama.
Can’t happen in 89 days, or in two-plus years.
Not in Michigan, not anywhere.
So, then what?
He had to have been voting dem for more reasons than jobs, especially when he had one.
Like the republicans and the bosses always stick together against the working man.
I live in Michigan. The received wisdom of a good many people has to be experienced and then you wouldn’t believe it.
I can see him opposing zero. I can’t see him voting republican or independent.
Years ago, when a number of labor-heavy areas in Michigan went for Reagan, one of the union leaders commented that if it hadn’t been for concerns about the economy, national security, and rising crime, the union guys would have voted dem. Implication was that they should have. IOW, give up voting for that which concerns you the most.
It’s amazing how guys with nice houses, a place “up north”, boat or snowmobile, nice cars, terrific benefits, can be convinced they’re victimized poor working chumps always dumped on by The Man.
This kind of indoctrination and world view aren’t going to change just because it’s an obvious disaster. The facility with which various left, dem, and union leaders manage to shift blame in the most obviously bogus ways, and do it successfully, makes you wonder about, among other things, our education system.
No,
I don’t laugh and point fingers.
I know exactly how sayoung, feels.
I worked for a company for 12 years, then they decided to outsource their engineering department and laid almost everyone off from that department – from the vice president on down.
I used to work for Delta Airlines before that – at the exact time they outsourced ramp operations.
Last year I got hired on with another global technical service company – I was offered a good position at another location here in Texas. Two days after the offer I was laid off due to merger problems and health care costs going up 28%.
Can’t collect unemployment due to not being employed long enough to receive said benefits.
Paid $189,000 for my house 3 years ago ($42,000 down pymt), now short selling it for $135,000. On the bright side, I won’t be paying a fortune in taxes and interest to banks any more.
No, I am not laughing at all.
I remember back in the late 80s, when I was still a leftist (not merely liberal), I happened to get into a conversation with an older man who was a libertarian. He didn’t rant and rave or insult my beliefs; he just calmly talked about the free market and individual liberty.
The conversation didn’t have much effect on me at the time. I never saw him again, never learned his name, and don’t even remember much of what he said. But when my change came almost ten years later, I credited him with planting a seed of doubt in my mind. And here I am talking about him more than twenty years later.
Obviously, he never knew that he had any influence on me whatsoever.
“I come down on the side of the defenders. Rage at people like the guy I’ve spotlighted in that post may feel good, but is counterproductive and verges on the vengeful.”
I agree… also, I don’t think the government can really give people jobs but it can take them away… i.e., by ruining the economy.
I’ve heard several lefty people say they’re no longer Obama fans and the reason was jobs… that he is killing the recovery. They don’t think Obama’s problem is he is not getting jobs to people. They clearly explain and understand he is strangling small and medium business hiring. Again, lefties and they get this. I just sit there and agree. Maybe I pile on with a mention of the equal worth junk Obama signed right after taking office (so they can ruin your buisness… 20 years from now… if the receptionist thinks she should have been paid what a truck driver made)….
I have a sense that Obama and his minions are pushing a lot of people in that direction.
No.. Most people are corks on the sea..
that’s the truth..
The lie is that other corks get to decide for them one way or another
They are not on any side but their own, and they are unwilling to invest in themselves.
[I don’t mean this in a negative way. it’s just a plain fact not bad or good, but just is.
Its actually a good thing if you look beyond the negative indices of the words]
This is something that is very different than those that are in the deal, with purpose, that others have not. To be on a side, to be with the group that you’re with, is to align with the ideas of the leaders, and not compromise. If they say jump, you jump. If they say believe you believe. If they change that belief tomorrow and again the day after, so do you. Since this is impossible internally, they have a coping mechanism.
One has to understand the healthy or unhealthy dynamic here, the group that compromises with the individual to gain their participation falls apart. So the group does not compromise and remain what it was. The healthy person then either accepts the tenets of that group, or quickly discovers that no group actually represents them as well as themselves (see any side but their own above). That is, if they align, they have a relationship, if not, they don’t.
But I said that there is a coping mechanism, and so the supplicant pretends to align with the group, holding out for their own ideas in a “personal version” waiting for their ideas to get a turn or the organization to change and evolve (see note above).
The Catholic Church presents itself as it is defined by leaders, it also does no validation. So it’s possible for a person to call themselves catholic when their ideas, goals, and almost all they do, is antithetical or not part of that.
The personal versions are the key to the collective. Since a despotic collective can’t bend to all others, all others bend to it, and so those others develop personal versions. They then move from group to group trying to find one that aligns better, and each group they are with gets to vote the groups line, not the individuals who are there but don’t match.
In this way, the herd moves with the group even though that group is not a group but only an unbending leadership, whom everyone is afraid of everyone else, if they abandon it. (That particular cultish behavior does much to make a conditioned response from those that see it and never experience it).
So most are corks with personal versions they traded their real convictions for.
There will never be the day for their ideas to have a turn. Why would there be? What the leaders are doing works, and there is no reason to change. There no reason for feminists to represent women (other than the leaders picks), racialists to represent their race group, or gslen to represent the gays, or the unions to actually represent the workers. Is there?
Faced with the contradictions we either have to stand on our own, find another group, or employ some coping mechanism. With personal versions serving to negate convictions and with no one able to stand on their own with them, we all have to attach ourselves to some group.
Here is the fun part. Once we are used to doing all that, rather than as individuals, the leaders gather people up by taking over their groups and leaving them to find another. Until, there is no other. Even others have the same root… what is the other? The biggest most successful of these fifth columns become synonymous and once they do, you oppose them; you oppose all, since there is no other place for part of all to go. They no longer need constituency, everyone is enrolled automatically by default, and the leaders speak for all in their group as their mind
The corks will defend that what they want is right, and that this thinking is right as it gives them what they want, which is to be a part of the key group they believe gives them a better future. Understanding this and you get how a whole population can be helpless.
In the past such things meant live or die as the losing groups tended to be eradicated. The more instinctual (reactionary) we are, the less human we are. However the less reactionary we are, and the more we are to the other extreme, the less human we become.
That is the true elite autodidact erudite renaissance enlightenment self actuated type person, is in the middle… between the passions of the animal, and the sterility of the machine/insect/automaton. [the elite are at an extreme pretending that’s the middle]
The animal has too many children, the machine has too few. The animal doesn’t look ahead, it lives in now. The machine does nothing but look ahead and so it never learns about now it’s always trying to manipulate then. To the latter, the past is useful only in displaying principals to learn from.
The rest? They are corks that choose sides mostly in self interest with some desire that it all works out for everyone. They are part of the population by choice, the collective by manipulation, free by birth.
they choose sides because they have to, not because they want to.
The processes and other things that I elucidate seek to pervert our natural connection to the world, to use it. Just as we try to use a drug to throw a wrench into something in a way that it helps us.
The machine can make no distinction. It’s clinical, godless, pragmatic, bureaucratic, expedient and all those qualities of iron as resonated in past histories. It can’t make a moral distinction as it is absent the faculty. The faculty only exists outside the extremes were both sides meet.
This is why the messages of religion work for us so well. And real and good religions see balance. Not ideological contrived balance, but actual balance. If you seek the perspective you will note that healthy balance and lack of hard control (bowing to free will making it critical) are signs of good religions.
Why is our population sick? An Asian might say, no balance, and those in the west wont get it. But it’s true from that perspective and many others. Man and women exist in balance, upend that and what happens? The state, business, and people live most productively in a free voluntary balance, what happens when that tips to two over one? Or one over two? What happens when each handles what each is responsible for and balances the interests with the other two?
Dao explains that we suffer our ills because we go against the way…
We go against nature and how things work, we lose balance.
If most people were more like the grandparents they had, they would be more of real conviction, not belief. They would have balance in family, not in false community, and false intimacy as a poor replacement. They would not miss so much beauty before them, and so not need chemicals to boost perception to feel real.
They wouldn’t be screwing in other peoples lives; they would not feel that a cork has any right to push other corks around at sea.
But they aren’t
So they won’t
And such is our fate
Till we learn
Then forget
Then repeat the endless cycles to nowhere
I should point out that the real progress of man was not to move from an animal extreme to an insect extreme. it was to create the range and enter the spectrum, and then keep expanding the whole till the extremes are ill and the balanced whole getting the best of both was the real point of the progress.
if one sees the enlightenment period fully looking at the people, you will find that they had found the sweet spot between varying ill extremes.
to move from one extreme to another is not progress
to halt the pendulum in the middle and move orthogonal to its course, now that’s progressing out of what you were into something new you can be.
the alternative is running between two points and trying to tell someone your getting somewhere because your sweating so much (labor theory of value), and where your going is farther away than where you are and have been.
🙂
neo:
I agree with your sentiments here. I have heard conservatives do the same sort of thing..go after people who might actually vote for a Republican on the grounds that they were not really conservative or really Republican…well, Reagan was a middle aged man before he became a Republican, he was a Democrat for years. He also stressed the need to find common ground and make compromises when necessary, that is why there were so many Reagan Democrats. It just amazes me how so many conservatives can idolize the man and yet totally ignore these very basic facets of his nature. But then they forgot the 11th Commandment as well, they love to speak ill of other Republicans.
And if they created a third party, the same sort of infighting and back biting would still go on in that party as well. They would not be able to decide what a conservative really is, the fiscal cons would argue with the social cons who would have a big problem with the libertarians. This sort of thing has been the not so secret weapon of Democrats for years.
I will vote a straight Republican ticket this November and I hope a lot of other people do the same thing..including upset and disillusioned Democrats.
Terrye Says:
August 10th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
Not only that, he was a member in good standing of the Screen Actors Guild. Then he started noticing that they were being infiltrated by Communists.
I am sticking to my position, sentiments, and even the way they were expressed. Is this guy 12? He can’t take tough talk? Shall we hold their hands?
Guess what? We’ve been doing that for 40 years! It hasn’t worked! America just elected a communist and now some of the people who voted for him are beginning to feel what that really means.
Good! Let them feel the pain. Let them go through hell. Let them have the full experience. They don’t need us to “understand” them. I do understand them! They are rotten! They are selfish! They are lazy! They are wrong!
Welcome to freaking humanity! That’s what we are; what everyone here went through.
Let this guy and all of them walk on their own two feet.
If they can’t figure it out, they’ll be gone after the next sugar daddy politician next week anyway.
Too long have we suffered under Democrats. They have destroyed the very fabric of America. I am not going to not say that. If they think different, let them live with the consequences of their beliefs.
It’s really insane: A guy tells the President he has 89 days to get him a job! If it wasn’t so tragic it would be wildly humorous. I hope sayoung can laugh at himself, because he should be doing that.
Waaahhhh! Mr. President you have 89 days to make me happy or I’m going to hold my breath until I’m blue! Gimmee gimmee gimmee! Get get get!!!
Someone give him a copy of Man’s Search for Meaning. Then he’ll know where it all ends. Then maybe he’ll get serious.
Purist and punitive sentiments towards those people are unhelpful and impractical. If that’s the attitude conservatives and/or Republicans have, they will continue to lose elections. And although perhaps some day a conservative third party may take hold, we are talking about an election that is going to be happening in less than three months–one of the most important in our lifetimes, if not the most important–and it’s going to be between Democrats and Republicans. The race does not go to the purest
I am not sure this is true. When Republicans are conservative and offer a clear alternative to Dems, they have a chance of winning. When they go all Dem-lite, they either lose or are RINO’s. America loses either way.
I agree this is the most important election in our lifetimes.
If the sayoungs of the world can’t figure that out, then America becomes Detroit. What we need to do is to be “pure”, steady, sturdy, in their face and tell them about it. If we go wobbly on them, we lose the whole thing and without a real fight.
That’s been happening for a generation now, with a few exceptions.
Reagan was an exception. George Bush on top of the fire engine at ground zero was at his absolute best, and he couldn’t have been more “pure”, clear, bold, brazen and even tough.
I think conservatives all need to go George Bush on top of the fire engine at ground zero.
Most people have never been forced to defend their beliefs, and votes and politics. We need to put them on the defensive.
That is my opinion.
Everyone who has asked me in the past two years knows where I stand. That includes my two liberal Dem business partners.
There must be some way for Republicans to reach people like sayyoung, because it’s impossible to hope to hold a country together which is perpetually divided 50/50 with daggers at each others’ throats. It will never work; it will just be a repeat of the Obama regime, with THEM seething and waiting for their chance to turn the tables.
Although I like Sarah Palin, I feel that she’s too much a case of preaching to the choir. It’s all very well for rural Republicans to grin and say, “She can hunt and gut a moose! She can build a log cabin with her bare hands!” “Just like me” is the unspoken corollary. But how can this appeal to a downtown Detroit apartment dweller, who coincidentally votes Democrat? That man has never seen a moose, he’ll never go 100 feet into the wild bush, so how can this sort of thing call up his admiration? How can he relate to it?
There’s too much expectation that people who have no connection with the ‘countrified’, salt-of-the-earth rural/small town life will nevertheless bow to its superiority and vote for something totally alien to their life. And the flip side of that is that people who don’t do that are simply written off, as if they can never understand the appeal of conservatism.
What’s needed is a candidate who can connect conservatism to the big-city life people are actually living. I don’t think it’s impossible, but it requires honest knowledge of the lives people are living and a determination to think out ways that they can connect to a conservative message.
Maybe the shlub in a New York apartment complex can’t relate to the freedom to carry guns into the wilderness and shoot game, but he CAN relate to the innumerable degradations and indignities of being bossed around and told what to do by arrogant busybodies. “No, you can’t paint your exterior that color” “No, you can’t put potato chips in your kid’s lunchbag”, “No, you can’t smoke a cigarette on your own balcony” No No No No No. That’s the story of a city-dweller’s life, and I don’t believe that they can’t be reached by someone who’ll tell them that they don’t HAVE to live under the heel of nosy nobodies pushing them around “for their own good”.
Dr. Mab,
It’s not City/Country. It’s good vs evil. It’s self-reliance vs takers and dependency.
You are, understandably, fooling yourself if you don’t think so.
It’s horrible, I know, but there really are bad and rotten people in the world. They are Democrats. They want other people to work for them, and pay for them. They do not want personal repsonsibility.
That’s pretty much what it comes down to.
Color, gender, ethnicity, city, country, suburb is all smoke scfreen stuff. It;s good decent people vs. rotten ne-er do wells.
And it has ever been thus.
There is the story of Moses. When he came down from the mountain the first time, there followed a great fight. Sides were called, and people made to choose. Right there.
People serve different gods. The Dems and then other Americans pray to different gods. Obama, Pelosi and Reid all pray to a different god. The people who support them do too.
It has ever been thus, and it ever shall be.
One day, Paul Revere sounded the alarm, and small bands of Minutemen gathered against, in effect, their very neighbors. The unity they won is now gone. It’s Moses down from the mountain time again.
I’m totally with you on this one, NeoNeocon
I can’t tell you how many battles I’ve fought with my fellow conservatives who won’t accept converts on one basis or another. Usually it’s that they’re not “pure” on all of the issues, or that they can’t be trusted because they’re a “flip-floper.”
More recently what I get is attacks on Peggy Noonan. Noonan was somewhat supportive of Obama way back, but has now become disillusioned. Some of my fellow conservatives are so angry over her quasi-support of Obama two years ago they won’t accept her new position. I ask them, “so would you be more happy if she still supported Obama?”
I rarely get a coherent answer.
Dr. Mabuse Says:
August 10th, 2010 at 10:12 pm
Well said!
Tom Redhunter,
No one said people who changers wouldn’t be accepted. Not even close. That’s impossible anyway. A perons votes Dem or Republican. Their own choice.
I was criticizing sayoung, as a person. I was saying that he, and people like him, are America’s biggest problem. It’s up to him to not continue to be America’s biggest problem or not. He doesn’t need my approval even if it meant anything. He needs to be a grown up man and work for a living and stop voting for commies tyrants and thugs who steal our money so they can give it to him.
He’s holding his vote up as a threat. Give me a job or else! That makes me sick and shows my point about him.
As for Noonan and all the the many many commenters and public figures who proclaimed their admiration for Obama or outright supported him…They already did their damage. It’s water under the bridge. They already failed in the moment of truth. They can’t undo it.
Noonan’s change of position now is wothless. When it mattered, she went the wrong way. There are tons of people like her. If they need coddling and “warm” feelings and understanding to change their minds back???!!!
Unreal. Is that like, “Be nice to me and I won’t vote for Hitler again”? Is that like, “Hey, if you guys don’t be nice I’ll be a Maoist again. Be careful!”
They can do whatever they want. I could care less. Their opininos mean nothing of value now. When it counted they showed they were swept away by the propaganda and peer pressure like everyone else. They are therefore history. Other people matter now. They don’t.
Mike Mc: You write, “It’s horrible, I know, but there really are bad and rotten people in the world. They are Democrats. They want other people to work for them, and pay for them. They do not want personal repsonsibility.” And later you write, “People serve different gods. The Dems and then other Americans pray to different gods. Obama, Pelosi and Reid all pray to a different god. The people who support them do too.”
I disagree strongly with this demonizing of all Democrats. I know plenty of Democrats—plenty (in fact the vast majority of all the Democrats I’ve ever known, and most of the people I know are Democrats)—who never took a handout in their lives and have absolutely no intention of ever doing so, who have always taken responsibility for themselves and their families. They do believe it’s the responsibility of government to provide for people whom they see as down on their luck, and they differ with you on that. But in personal terms they would do almost anything to avoid being in that position themselves.
I see nothing to be gained—and much to be lost—from taking the all-or-nothing point of view you take towards Democrats as a whole.
Neo,
In the earlier post on this topic you said,
I think that you too are making assumptions that aren’t necessarily so. Like that this guy is really having an epiphany. In spite of his holding up his vote as a threat, while asking to be bought off. I guess reasonable minds can disagree on that point.
But when you say, “Rage at people like the guy I’ve spotlighted in that post may feel good, but is counterproductive and verges on the vengeful.” you are subtly trying to paint those who disagree as more than just wrong. That’s a play from the Obama/Chicago democrat crowd.
Go back and see what I said.
My earlier comments are here and the second reply to you here.
Myself, I don’t care about him personally one way or the other. We all choose our paths and have to live with the consequences. What you see as eloquence and passion I see a trying to escape responsibility for his actions and looking for pity. I’d have respect for this guy if he simply said, “I was wrong. I have a lot of work to do to fix things.”
While I’m willing to live and let live on a personal level I don’t forget how this person and others like him didn’t care one iota about the economy as long as they were getting theirs. They were willfully blind to the
a) unsustainable economic realities which were obvious
b) willing to look the other way at union threats, intimidation and violence.
c) willing to corrupt and pervert our local, state and federal governments by electing crooked cronies to office election after election.
Calling it out for what it is isn’t vengeful, it’s accurate.
You talk about reaching out. I say they either see it or they don’t. If they have values and character, if they really do care about things and want to turn them around they will do what they know is right. No reaching out necessary. Either he gets it or he doesn’t. His future actions will speak for him more than his words.
I have far more sympathy for those whose 401K’s were in stocks for GM and others who got screwed so the unions could be bought off. I have sympathy for those who were frozen out of jobs, intimidated or physically attacked by union & their thugs while this guy and his ilk winked and grinned along with the MSM and others.
You want to disagree, fine say so and say why, but as I said above, trying to tar those with whom you disagree as somehow more than just wrong is dishonest at worst, disingenuous at best.
Personally, I want the words ‘Democrat Party’ to be said in hushed, fearful tones, just like a kid talking about the Boogie Man. Except in this case, the Democrat Partry Boogie Man is all to real.
Give him time. Conversions don’t happen overnight. If he, as someone else said above, is just now having his “Oh Shit” moment, then for a while he will still be trying to reconcile his new understanding of reality with his old framework of thought. Eventually he will realize he has to throw the whole damn thing out but only if he doesn’t read people like Mike Mc. insult him. How about instead of saying “Screw you, you should have seen this coming, you should have known, I have no sympathy” you just talk factually about free markets and free people, etc. etc. and let him see that wow, our ideas actually make sense and may even resonate! And what nice pleasant people these Republicans are! Nothing like what I’ve always heard! MikeMc, you talk like you’ve been talking and you’ll only reinforce his worst stereotypes about R’s, and you’ve lost any chance at getting this guy, now and forever. Hope that makes you happy.
(I realize that I quoted Tim and not Mike, but the comment is directed at everyone.)
I’ll tackle these one at a time.
…didn’t care one iota about the economy as long as they were getting theirs.
Sounds like that should end “…and I wasn’t getting mine…” making your protestations of this not being about vengeance a bit hard to swallow.
They were willfully blind to the … unsustainable economic realities which were obvious
Blind, certainly, but willfully? You can’t make that call from where you’re sitting. Do you accuse babies born into cults of being willfully blind too? These people have been brainwashed for generations by the MSM. Which makes those unsustainable economic realities not at all obvious to them.
willing to look the other way at union threats, intimidation and violence.
or more likely, either under the thumb of union threats, intimidation and violence (if they’re union), or unaware of them (if they’re not).
willing to corrupt and pervert our local, state and federal governments by electing crooked cronies to office election after election.
Sure, because that’s just how they campaign. “Vote for me! I’m a crooked crony!”
The problem is, they’ve been campaigning for years saying “Vote for me! Because the Republicans are crooked cronies!” even though, in the worst case, they both are, and in the best case, only the D is.
Boy, you sure picked a funny blog to voice that opinion on. Here, where the host and a sizable portion of the commentariat owe their newfound political sanity to having been reached out to, and having their values shift and their character develop over time. Babies aren’t born with values and character; these things are learned. Either at home from childhood, or by a slow process of conversion or transformation in adulthood. “Either they see it or they don’t?” How about “Was blind but now I see?” And that only happens from others reaching out to educate us and disabuse us of our old notions. So “no reaching out is necessary” is total crap.
A sudden thought: you (all of you who take this tack) must be greatly misinterpreting what neo, myself and others mean by “reaching out.” We’re not talking about dialogue and compromise of our own principles! Hell no! We mean sharing our newfound knowledge of these pure principles with others, to bring others around as we ourselves were. Nobody is suggesting moderating our message to attract the squishy middle, but we can be purists without being callous and insulting.
Damn, that was long!
Being born in a left-wing, union-heavy, democratic area is like being born into a cult. You don’t blame people for being born into a cult. I think people frequently do wonder about people who stay in cults.
It has to satisfy something in them.
You will not learn all there is to know about the cultish issue unless you deal with more than the votes, more than the pension plans, more than the corruption. You need to live around here and listen to the world view expressed when other issues are discusssed. The adjective, the automatic apology for mentioning something quite unnotable, the subject not discussed.
Did you know that there is no shortage of money? The bosses keep it all, screwing the workers. Even some teachers think that of their school system.
Richard, I can’t tell if you were agreeing or disagreeing with my cult analogy.
As far as people staying in cults is concerned: my understanding is that part of what makes a cult a cult, as opposed to say a garden-variety commune, is the (declared or implied) threat towards its members against leaving. It’s part of the whole brainwash. People are conditioned into believing that they can’t leave – for whatever the reason may be. Anything from “you won’t be able to survive ‘out there’ without your ‘family'” to “we have ways of finding and killing your parents”. This is why people have to be (figuratively or even literally) kidnapped from their cults and then “deprogrammed” in order to be psychologically healthy (i.e. in tune with reality) again.
Also, I’m not at all sure what you’re talking about in your second paragraph (“You will not learn…”) but I’m well aware of what you say in the final one.
A friend of mine used to ask if I knew why winos keep their bottle in a brown paper bag. He said it was because they did not want to know when the end is coming.
That is what has happened to the industrial union members in the heavily Democrat states. The decades of big bucks for high school graduates are over. The fully paid medical care and long vacations are fading fast. Early retirement on generous pensions is history. The old pact was vote union and we’ll take care of you. Even your kids can have the deal. Now that deal has destroyed whole industries and states. Like the wino, no one on the inside saw it coming.
I’ve been a Republican since Reagan. I’ve also been a member of three unions. Corporations, esp. those in old-line industries, do arbitrary and high-handed things to workers. There’s plenty of bad things about unions, but there is freedom of association and workers should have a basic right to organize. If Republicans fall into a “unions always wrong, business always right” mentality, they’ll will alienate an awful lot of good people.
I have some doubts about whether this guy is genuine or a provocateur–on our side for once! But let’s take him at face value. By all means reach out to the abandoned union workers. We need them if this country is going to be pried off the rocks.
I would just like to add that one significant factor in my own political change was the slow realization, over a period of many years, that I kept meeting conservatives who were remarkably civil, polite, and rational in discussing politics with me, who did not condescend even when they were obviously far better informed than I was, who relied on facts rather than emotion to support their arguments, and who asked probing questions about my ideas, designed to prompt me to reconsider them on my own, rather than lecturing me about how wrong I was. The contrast between such people and the many liberals I encountered and still, sadly, live among, who use name-calling, juvenile insults, and patronizing contempt (“Don’t you CARE about the poor??”) as their primary tools of argument and who believe as an article of faith that anyone who disagrees with liberal ideas is immoral or an idiot or both, was eventually too strong to ignore; I couldn’t help realizing what it meant. Had the few conservatives I met along the way dismissed me or insulted me — even if I deserved it — I might well still be a liberal today.
A little patience is called for, please. Properly used, it could pay off enormously.
Yackums.
I hadn’t considered a cult to be restrictively defined as you can’t leave.
Whatever it is, many of these people don’t see the reason to leave. One of the reasons they stay is the world view. I attended a civic meeting some years back when, during conversation, a guy mentioned some medical expenses for his son, grousing about the lousy GM medical plan. The rest of us kept our peace, but this guy really believed it.
Once in a while, a couple of sharp guys will think of leaving GM and setting up their own shop (design, etc.) and want the same benefits. We price it out for them and they get hostile, thinking we’re screwing them.
So, instead of a cult, call it a balloon, reinforced by a world view based on pro-labor propaganda, anti-business paranoia, and, which is sad to see in adults, a refusal to address reality, instead retreating to memes like the company wants to screw you.
But it applies to much of public life.
A little patience is called for, please. Properly used, it could pay off enormously.
yes, and while we are waiting, lets rearrange the deck chairs…
Mike Mc. Interesting stuff.
I think we can appeal and persuade without bending our principles.
Here are two methods:
1) Attack the guy. Attack him personally. Attack his character. And say he is the problem.
2) Use the opportunity to teach. He asked for adult solutions. Give him an adult solution. Teach economics 101. Teach personal responsibility and how to spread prosperity (instead of the misery that liberalism spreads).
Which method do you choose? 😉
While I know my girlfriends views and voting patterns are the problem….
I stick to the issues and the solutions.
I’ll never win her heart by attacking her character or telling her she is part of the problem. Her ears will close and WE WILL HAVE LOST
Art, would you please see if you could be a little less condescending? I wasn’t talking about waiting for anyone or anything, as you would know if you actually read what I wrote with any care. I was pointing out that we are more likely to change people’s minds if we summon up the patience to treat them with respect, instead of patronizing them, insulting them, or treating them as you just treated me and as you regularly treat anybody who dares to disagree with you. More of us might read your comments, instead of routinely scrolling past them, if you’d make an effort to take a less obnoxiously superior attitude.
Excellent points in this post. We need all the help we can get to save this country from total disaster. Welcome people into the conservative fold, even if they’re NOT in total agreement with you.
Right now, saving the country is paramount.
Mrs. Whatsit to artflgr:
More of us might read your comments, instead of routinely scrolling past them, if you’d make an effort to take a less obnoxiously superior attitude.
The length is what makes me scroll more often than not.
Art, one more time, I said nothing at all about waiting for anybody or anything. I said nothing about letting any time pass. I just expressed my belief, based on my experience, that treating people respectfully is more persuasive than condescending to them and will change them a lot faster than calling them names. Everything you’ve written has proved my point. It does not take any longer to be civil and decent to somebody than it does to condescend or call them dishonest or lecture them about how they “are the reason we are all in this mess.” Being ranted at, blamed for everything, and told that I have an “entitlement mentality” does not persuade me that you are right about anything. Instead, it persuades me that it’s time for me to go back to scrolling past all of your posts, even the short ones.
However, I’m very sorry to hear about your dad.
Tim P: When I said what I said about rage at this guy, I was not suggesting (subtly or otherwise) that those who disagree with me are more than just wrong. In fact, I wasn’t referring to those who merely disagree with me—I was referring to those commenters who did express deep anger at him.
As I wrote to Baklava (see here), that does not include everyone I listed who criticized sayoung. It just includes the ones who expressed rage. Are you one of those people? Well, you be the judge; I’m not sure. But in your comments, you start off one of them with, “To hell with this clown” to refer to sayoung. One could certainly make a pretty good case that that’s a fairly angry way to respond to the guy; it’s not just a disagreement with the points I was making.
Baklava,
Here are two methods:
1) Attack the guy. Attack him personally. Attack his character. And say he is the problem.
2) Use the opportunity to teach. He asked for adult solutions. Give him an adult solution. Teach economics 101. Teach personal responsibility and how to spread prosperity (instead of the misery that liberalism spreads).
Which method do you choose?
I’m going with method 1, although I wouldn’t say I attacked the guy.
Method 2 has been tried for decades now and it has been an unmitigated and almost total failure.
Method 1 has hardly been tried. Method 1 is the real grown up method. It speaks directly to flawed persons and tells them how flawed they are and the tremendous damage they are doing. That method is tried and true for thousands of years. It is inscribed in the western soul in sacrament and in real events and real change and true progress over time.
method 2 is for people who can’t tolerate the fact that people who are told their wrongs will lash back. They are like the lousy parents who never discipline their kids because the kids cry, whine, moan and act out when they don’t get what they want.
Sayoung is a kid. There are tens of millions of him in the US today.
I don’t care what you say. My opinion is that the sayoungs of the world are exactly precisely the main problem we have in America. He is welcome to change anytime he wants. Remaining a child was his own work; and growing up will be too.
OK kiddies,
From Russell Kirk:
“Perhaps it would be well, most of the time, to use this word “conservative” as an adjective chiefly. For there exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.
The attitude we call conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata. It is almost true that a conservative may be defined as a person who thinks himself such. The conservative movement or body of opinion can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects, there being no Test Act or Thirty-Nine Articles of the conservative creed.”
http://www.kirkcenter.org/kirk/ten-principles.html
For those of you who don’t know Kirk – shame.
Mike Mc.
You have honesty. I’m just saying it’ll do the opposite of persuade.
You may disagree.
I’ve actually converted people including an African American. It’s a hard thing to do.
Most people dig in. They will not see your point or even WANT to be on your side if you are personally attacking them. And that IS what it is.
And yes…. I’ve lost my cool and told people they are lying on this very blog. Did it help? no.
Baklava,
Ref losing your cool and calling somebody a liar.
You won’t convert somebody that way. On the other hand, you won’t convert them at all by any method. If they’re lying, they know better already. Explaining the situation to them merely wastes your time and energy to no point; an Alinsky benefit.
Telling them they’re lying, however, means you know better and might convince them to go someplace else to look for the more gullible and you won’t have to listen to them any longer.
That’s a benefit.
I’m with Aubrey on this one.
The truth is never wrong to say. Calling a liar a liar, if they are a liar, is fine. Better, I suppose, would be to call the lie a lie. If they do it once, they are lying. If they are repeat offenders, then “liar” is a character defect that can be applied to them.
ALL Dems (sorry Neo, I mean ALL), are at the very least lying. Most of them are serial liars. Some of them are just stupid; others lazy; and a good number vain and conceiuted.
NO Dem (no # to speak of) has ANY good character traits in their DEMness. That’s the fact. That’s the truth.
Whiny “concern” and uninformed “sentimentality” is not a character asset. They are defects.
Telling Dems all these things often and consistently and without fail is the best strategy for them. They are rotten people, in their DEMness, and that’s the flat out truth. Period.
Mike Mc.: do you care to explain yourself when you say all Democrats lie? That is, to me, an absurd statement that doesn’t even make sense.
One of the most important characteristics of lying is that the person speaking must be aware that what he/she is saying is untrue. I certainly wasn’t doing that when I was a Democrat, nor are the vast majority of my friends and family who are Democrats.
Oh, and telling people how rotten they are is a GREAT strategy. Good luck with that.
Neo,
Sure I’ll explain myself.
First, there are different aspects to a lie, and different types of lying. You note only one. Technically, when you say something that isn’t true, you have said a lie. You can be PC and nice and say it’s a misstatement, or a falsity, or you’ve misspoken. I prefer the actual term – a lie.
If the lie is intentional, that’s one thing.
If it is unintentional, that’s another thing – but in no way automatically excusable. That’s the single biggest dodge/moral out clause in the history of lying. “I told the truth as far as I knew it!!!” Often enough, that’s one of the biggest lies people tell.
Let’s say someone says that lowering taxes means the government collects less money. This is demonstrably false. There is data. There is experience. It’s a known thing to some degree. It’s tried and true. Mr. Laffer was onto something the same way Messrs. Newton and Einstein were on to something.
Now Democrats either say or imply that sort of thing all the time, over years, forever and ever. In fact, that is one example of what exactly makes a person to be a Democrat. If they don’t tell that “lie” they usually aren’t Democrats. There may be exceptions, but they are so rare they aren’t worth talking about.
If I had the time I could probably think of half a dozen other “lies” that must be told – overtly, covertly, intentionally, unintentionally, and way you slice it=ally.
They’re just lies. Or BS if you prefer. To “be” a Dem is to live these lies. Period.
That’s the way it goes.
Of course there are other aspects to it all. There are maliciousness, and ignorance, and invincible ignorance.
Aristotle, Medieval Moralists, and Western freaking Civilization in general has had every aspect of this worked out over a few millenia. It used to be ingrained in the culture. Every educated person used to know the terminology.
A generation ago now they got rid of all that kind of education. It was “irrelevant” they said. Now people have to have even the basic stuff explained. It’s tedious, and people get offended and all that other BS.
Rule of thumb: If a liberal ever says something is irrelevant (like dead white men and traditional intellectual and moral learning), that means it is the most relevant thing and therefore the most dangerous thing to the diabolos that is liberalism.
The Democrats, today, are only the political wing of the diabolos. That is not as big a deal as you probably think. But that’s another explanation and I am watching football right now.
Mike Mc.: well, you have your own idiosyncratic definition of lying. It’s the same one that Democrats and others use when they accuse Bush of lying about the existence of WMDs in Iraq.
I have actually studied—and written a lengthy paper, for what it’s worth—on lying. Knowledge of the fact that you’re telling an untruth is an essential characteristic of a lie. Otherwise it’s an error.
There’s a difference. Although the negative effect of each thing can sometimes be the same (unfortunately), there is a big difference in terms of ethics and morality. Those who perpetrate lies can (unfortunately, again) easily convince the ignorant or gullible of the truth of those lies, and the latter can unwittingly perpetuate the lies of the former. But the latter are not liars, they are dupes.
P.S.
Oh, and telling people how rotten they are is a GREAT strategy. Good luck with that.
It actually is a GREAT way. And the best way usually. And the most traditional way. And the ONLY REAL WAY that has been almost, the entire engine of real progress in the history of Civilization.
I refer you to the prophets, the gospels, and every great religious and even secular progressive movement there’s ever been.
Now what you said, and the way you said it, and the way I am sure you believe it, was, relatively speaking, a belief that some psycho-babbling shrink, or else Tony Robbins said, a week ago (relative to thousands of years of our history). It is almost surely a crock. But it is the sort of thing we think is so “true” today, that in saying it we also think we are good.
It’s likely not true, or only with serious major qualifications and special circumstances. Most people are rotten, or have been rotten or will be rotten if they don’t straighten up.
I’m not making that up. Read Plato; Moses; Jesus; Abolitionists; Reformers of every type, etc., etc.
It really is crazy how far our ship has gone of course.
Mike Mc.: we differ greatly.
I also am basing my opinion on philosophers and ethicists, not some recent psychobabble. And don’t you know that the prophets were not listened to?
Yelling at people and chastising them is ordinarily singularly ineffective. That’s just an empirical observation of human nature.
Neo,
I wish you were right. Argument and reason would then be much easier. Changing a mind would be a snap – just make a good argument, be kind and gentle, and they’ll get it!
The full weight of civilizational and personal human experience is on my side, however. It’s the hard way, but the one that works. Or nothing works.
The prophets (using them as a metaphor) were the greatest finger pointers and most explicit and loud calling people rotten people there ever were.
When they are not listened to, things get worse. When they are listened to, things get better.
The remarkable thing, the alive thing that goes against the current in history, is that they are sometimes listened to.
Chesterton had a great way of explaining this: The dead thing, like a piece of driftwood, goes with the flow. The live thing goes against it. It works its way upstream or across the river.
Think of your own self and you will probably see I am right. Who ever pointed the finger at you and told you to straighten up and get right? Who ever said, ‘What you are doing is wrong!’
I can think of a few: Parents, teachers, police, one judge, an ex-girlfriend, a woman on a bus, and (certain) readings or stories.
Those are the only things that got me to really change, to really think, to really try to improve or reform.
The “I’m okay; you’re okay” mode only ever told me I was “okay”. No change; no reform; no metanoia.
We have the same exact choice today there ever was ever.
I’m calling rotten people rotten.
You try the other way.
We can compare notes in a few years.
Mike,
I knew Jeremiah and you are no Jeremiah.
Mike Mc: I, on the other hand, have tried respecting people and not calling them rotten when they’re not.
And you know what? I actually have helped (guided? encouraged? not impeded?) quite a few people in changing their minds, both politically and in other arenas of life. That’s been my experience.