Is it just me? or have repubs turned dangerously batguano crazy since

Bush got selected?

I'm 47, so no spring chicken, but I can remember having many substantive debates and disagreements with republicans growing up where I found I respected them, but simply disagreed with them. They had a rationale for their views that while not MY rationale, at least seemed to be in the realm of sanity.

Although I think the Reagan years were the beginning, with the PATCO backstab and throwing the mentally ill out on the street, even then I could open up a relatively normal political discussion with a republican and not feel like I was in the movie Deliverance.

Is it just me, or has the fellini-esque orgy of self-delusion reached increasingly outrageous proportions?

ok, an example: in years past, I could get into a discussion of why social programs, even though an expense, save the society money later on with a republican. He or she would disagree with me, BUT they would disagree by stating supporting theories or data, or simply say they didn't see it that way.

NOW, if you try to even have a discussion with a republican, they accuse you of being communists, traitors, having a war on christmas, try to get you fired, spread rumors you molest children, have police call and harrass you...and they never address the debate, they just attack you like wild lobotomized banshees.



at least, that's how it seems to me anymore.

they're gnawing off their own limbs...

and i don't know.. it's just frickin' hilarious.
I guess everyone loves it when the bully
finally meets misfortune.

Karma. Justice. I'm just thankful that they're falling to pieces.

It's Rovian Witchcraft.

Like poppies before the Emerald City .. we're almost there !!!
Gotta stay awake.. stay focused.. stay energized.
Woot wooot wwooot !!!!
here/// have some coffee.. have some sugar
visualize impeachment - imagine the chimp in shackles
the pukes are going
DOOOOOOOWWWWWNNN!!!!!!!

:-)

I like that. A great pep talk for the morning for us tired folks.

"Like poppies before the Emerald City"!

:rofl:

Then we'll deal with that man behind the curtain ~

up on it. The reason bush couldn't stay away from the Katrina devastation. Obviously was not going to do anything to help but looked like a psychopath on the plane above the tragedy. A good discusssion on "loosh eaters" and bush psy vampires as metaphor on http://p216.ezboard.com Bill Moyers knew who "they" were back in...

Would be getting fed into a sausage maker. Very slowly, feet first.

-based, shit for brain, maniacs took over the rest of the party. They have been plotting this for a Long, Long time.

What surprised most GOPers from the old days, was just how thoroughly they were infiltrated and taken over. What surprised me was how easily the DEMOCRATS allowed these nutjobs to wrench power, money, access, and the ear of the MSM without a fight. They rolled over, played dead, and are even now, pulling a Kill Bill Vol.2, trying to dig their way out of the buried coffin.

And yes, it did start during the Reagan era. PNAC, Contract for America, etc., were all steps toward the destruction of political discussion and reasonable disagreement. Hopefully, the infected pustule that has grown has finally burst and we can now clean out the infection.

But it has to be done right.
absolutely cut off every limb that the neocons infected, and attach new, clean, untouched, transplanted parts. Take the amputated parts, incinerate them, take the ashes and pour them into a vat of lye, seal it in a three inch thick, welded stainless steel vault, bury it under a full moon, add 12 inches of aggregate, 18 inches of concrete, 4 inches of asphalt, and the cover it with a mountain boulders no less than 10 tons each.

Even then, we may want to consider the domestic application of tactical nuclear weapons on the burial grounds, followed by eternal vigilence that even then they don't come back.

that way they can spend the rest of their lives drooling in a (padded) corner.

They're skeered shitless that dems will figure out how to override the Diebold machines and the American peoples' real voice will be heard. Cuz when that happens...is's Slammer Time!

I'm 47 also and I well remember having many enjoyable, healthy discussions and debates with republicans over the years where we'd leave as friends. I grew up on political discussion and it had always been an enriching part of my life.

Not any more. I wouldn't dream of engaging a repub in debate now. As you said, it's all smug, sanctimonious name-calling garbage. It does nothing but make me so angry I think I'm going to have a stroke.

It seems like the insanity started during the Clinton years and has reached its peak now. I don't know if there's any solution.

There are a few rational republicans left. My sister, a die-hard liberal at age 50, has been involved with a republican man for several years. She says that one of the things she likes about him is that she can have rational political discussions with him.

but it is a very superficial smugness,just a bunch of one liners that they repeat ad hominum

If you can stay in the conversation for longer than a minute that smugness turns into defensiveness

... these folks to be totally out of their element in any real debate. All they can do is repeat the talking points they have been taught.

There is a neighbor down the street who I got into it with about the time the war was getting started. After a particular nasty exchange, we haven't spoken since.

Her whole argument was that she "knew in her heart" that Saddam was involved with 911.

I wonder how that's working for her now. I havent' spoken to her since then.

(Pin from the Goldwater campaign, 1964)

went over to the dark side of the Force. After he went to law school and I went to grad school, I bumped into him on the quad and he said, "I think we should gather up all the homosexuals and burn them." He later tried to dismiss it as a joke, but I remember that was the first time I had heard such open bigotry expressed (at least as an adult).

What I think they do is say and do outrageous things, then if they're called out on it, say "I was just joking" or "There you go again" (the quintessential Reagan condescending put-down). I've pretty much given up talking to any Republican. Once I learn they're Republican, I just file them away in the "genocidal, sociopathic" classification.

for people who no longer believe the MSM lies but don't know where to go for the truth. After John Kerry took a dive in 2004, I found Democratic Underground throught some URLs that people were kind enough to publish there despite the batshit crazy right-wing posters.

I think it is a strategy that is used by the right-wingers in Congress. People like to stay away from those who are demonstrably crazy and by chasing people away from messageboards where they might learn the truth and using every filthy trick of bullying, the right wing including current bush crime family produced repug thugs in Congress, they have managed to get away with more evil and causing human suffering over the past decade than anyone could have imagined which is why Dem bloggers are fighting back using phrases like kick ass because though we were trained to be "nice" when you are fighting nazis you have to FIGHT!!!

hypnotized to respond to certain code words. You say terrorism, they say bomb Iraq. You say war on Christianity, they say that the attack on Tom Delay is due to his Christian beliefs. Very scary.

See the Matthews interview on crooks and liar. At the very end, Chris Matthews emphatically claims there IS a war against Christianity. But, since he's Republican and they don't separate their religion from their politics, I can see why he would get so confused.

....and he's well aware of what he's doing.

statement at the end of the clip. He said he knew there was a war on Christianity because he's seen it. But there was no one there to ask him to qualify his statement. He doensn't play hardball, he plays pretendball.

on breaking my fast any time soon. It is just a shame that Phil Donahue doesn't have air time on cable tv.

yeah, I've noticed the same thing.

were pretty nuts during the McCarthy era, so perhaps the swing of the pendulum back in this direction was inevitable but I still say hate-media has made it worse.

Rush Limbaugh and all the wannabees have had, imo, a great deal to do with the ugliness we see now from republicans. These mediocre minds with a microphone were enabled by many mediocre minds in public office. It has ended up like a food fight in the lunch room, only with far graver consequences.

If Limpballs, Hannity etc. all disappeared tomorrow, the Repugs would wake from their trance. I guarantee it. They're inoculated with this crap 24/7.

It's amazing how often I walk past someone sitting in their car and they're listening to one of those hatemongers. And for everyone in their car, there are probably hundreds more sitting at home. It's insidious, but it assures control of the masses.

Hundreds of stations, broadcasting 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, 99.9% of it venomous hate propaganda towards liberals. With a nation so awash in this mind numbing drek, is it any wonder Republicans have devolved into an angry mob?

I do think that's the way it is. I think in the past, the conservatives actually had reasons for thinking the way they did. I still was far from agreeing with them, but you could at least discuss it. Now, I think they have based all their policies on really crazy things that can't be defended. That's why they get so defensive and go on the attack -- there's nothing else they can do. They don't have anything close to a legitimate argument to make for their side. It's where their anger comes from -- that defensiveness.

conservatism has a noble intellectual tradition (although I don't embrace it), dating back at least to Edmund Burke and possibly back to Erasmus of Rotterdam. But you'd be hard-pressed to find much in today's Repukes that has anything to do with that intellectual strain of conservatism. Today's Repukes worship at the altar of the one-party corporate state (Mussolini's definition of his 'fascism' said it should more apprropriately be called 'corporatism').

There is this extreme strain of nationalism that lies behind the "War on Terra", "You're With Us or You're Against Us" kind of rhetoric. It isn't necessarily conservative or liberal, it is just nationalistic to the extreme.

that's when the Terri Schrivo story broke and everything since then has been completely ubsurd.

Not that they didn't do anything before then, but that situation to me was full disclosure.

You should read the article on conservative personality and how it motivates social thinking by Jost et. al. here is one of many available links to on-line copies of it.

http://www.wam.umd.edu/~hannahk/bulletin.pdf

Conservatives like authority, they like simple solutions, and they like things as black and white as possible.

Hence the conservatives are vulnerable to giving support to almost any oversimplified, poorly reasoned idea so long as it is thrown at them by a conservative authority, particularly if that authority also appeals to other fundamental issues of conservative concern, particularly fear.

rather, he has the talent to dumb down an issue to the lowest and slowest common denominator. Many people underestimated him and his goals for changing the political landscape, but he has done both. The fact that he has destroyed America in the process is besides the point.

It's as if some great mass of invisible tentacles has risen up from the bowels of hell to latch onto their skulls and suck out their souls. They're barely human.

Usually their responses go something like this:

"George Bush is a man of God"

Then to:

"If you don't support the war you are hurting the troops"

Then to:

"The liberal media blah blah blah...."

Then finally:

"Bill Clinton's penis...."

They have nothing to support why they are Republicans because all the Republican "values" went out the window in 2000.

would be treated as TERRORISM today.

Scary. This country is locked down on free speech in a way it hasn't been since the early 1960s.

They have let extremists, especially fundie nut-jobs take over their party. The days of Howard Baker are gone.

They're finding less and less reasons to defend him, so they just clam up. And thus, they're still part of the problem.

The first is brainwashing. These people have been so propagandized by hate radio, Faux TV, pulications like the American Spectator, books by Coulter and her ilk, that they have literally become brainwashed into spewing hate. A serious disconnect from reality has taken place, and deep seated denial of the reality around them.

For instance, I was getting into a debate with my co-worker about how higher national debt is going to put more inflationary pressure on our economy. He dismissed the standard economic arguement, based in decades of economic fact, as "just math".:crazy: And the more I pressed him on this, the angrier he got, and the deeper he sunk into denial. How can you discuss matters like this with people who simply deny reality:shrug:

The second reason we're seeing this is hubris. When their boy Bush got into power, and especially after the 'Pugs got majority in the House, Senate, and the Supreme Court, these people felt that they were entitled to do whatever they wished, and that their worldview was indeed the correct one. Didn't the elections validate this notion, of course it did:eyes: Therefore, like any bully who gets the upper hand, they now think it is their God given right to lord their insanity over the rest of us, and that any dissent is tantamount to treason in their eyes.

And the thing that I think is ratcheting up these people here lately is the amount of bad news that is starting to come out. The further Bush goes down in the polls, the more scandals that come to light, the more pressure to end the war is brought to bear, the further these true believers sink into denial. And if you dare to burst this little bubble of denial that they have constructed, watch out, for they will go batshit crazy.

Frankly I think that these people are simply unreachable now, and they will continue to be unreachable until the whole house of Bush cards collapses in complete ruin. And then they will stand amongst the destruction and pitifully wonder why the whole mess happened. Reality, it's a terrible thing to deny.

I just spend the weekend with my fundie GOP sister, and you are right on.

Their worldview is not based on reality. There is no reason or logic, only blind obiedence to what they've been told to beleive.

I can't even have an adult discussion about politics with my repub mother anymore. She cries, "Spin, spin, spin!" when I state facts about bushco. She just as well stick her fingers in her ears & sing "La, la, la" like a seven year old. I'm beginning to think she's beyond reach. She is so deadset down on liberals. To listen to her, we are the reason for all the worlds woes. A previous poster said if we got rid of Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly people would come out of their trance. I don't know if they would, but it would sure be nice to try! I know she's been listening to hate radio for 15 years & she is a completely different person than she was before. It has been incredibly sad for me to witness.

Something about the punishment part really gets them off. :shrug:

I did a wikipedia search on cognitive dissonance, the psychological state where one's deepest beliefs are in conflict with irrefutable evidence. That lead me to an interesting summary of the condition the Repubs find themselves in now, I had to share it.

http://www.freeminds.org/psych/propfail.htm

Festinger observes:

"A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.
"We have all experienced the futility of trying to change a strong conviction, especially if the convinced person has some investment in his belief. We are familiar with the variety of ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions, managing to keep them unscathed through the most devastating attacks.
"But man's resourcefulness goes beyond simply protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view."

"But whatever explanation is made it is still by itself not sufficient. The dissonance is too important and though they may try to hide it, even from themselves, the believers still know that the prediction was false and all their preparations were in vain. The dissonance cannot be eliminated completely by denying or rationalizing the disconfirmation. But there is a way in which the remaining dissonance can be reduced. If more and more people can be persuaded that the system of belief is correct, then clearly it must, after all, be correct. Consider the extreme case: if everyone in the whole world believed something there would be no question at all as to the validity of this belief. It is for this reason that we observe the increase in proselytizing following disconfirmation. If the proselytizing proves successful, then by gathering more adherents and effectively surrounding himself with supporters, the believer reduces dissonance to the point where he can live with it."

a thousand little freeper heads popping

pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop
poooooooooooooooooooooooooooooop
ooops

Welcome to DU! :toast:

It's frustrating trying to talk to a Republican that has been thoroughly and completely Conned. My dad turned into one of those...he used to be a reasonable person. Now he's simply Blinded by the Right. A conversation with him is that any and all things that are un-good are evil and the fault of Liberals/Democrats. Republicans/Conservatives are the only ones who tell "the truth". He'll dismiss a Salon article as not being credible (because they made an error which they then corrected according to him), but will take as gospel things published in Drudge, WND, NY Post, and Newsmax. :grr:

of their right to life and liberty...yes.

They have been fed so much batguano, by the neocons and MSM, they think it's cotton candy.

We are just more focused than we were before the "Big Steal" ..They really only started getting noticed in a big was when Newtie muscled his way into the majority, but liberals were basking in the glow of "good times" during the 90's, so they didn;t really matter all that much..

I started to notice what snotty little trolls they were with the impeachment, but even then I had the confidence that we would end up ok..and we did (sort of)..

Selection 2K was the grenade that exploded..for me at least.. Until then, we could just pick them up and toss them back to them..

Watching them flaunt their gluttony, gobbling up everything in sight is starting to wear on me,..and hopefully on most people..

Old school republicans were in lobe with money, but still had a bit of decency.. This new crop is soulless and just plain evil..

:party:

thanks everyone!

That's why they can't argue with you anymore without making the argument personal. Because conservatism is dead. They've been telling themselves that they're superior for so long that now their superiority complex has consumed them while their ideology has rotted away from the inside. That smug arrogance is literally all they are now. If you ask them, "What's conservative -- to defend the rights in the Constitution, or to usurp them in the name of safety?" you can't even get a straight answer. They don't even know what they believe anymore. They've become a culture of lazy scapegoaters who do nothing but blame others for their mistakes.

You'd think we would've had a "have you no sense of decency?" moment by now.

It's been a real eye-opener about certain types of people who seek positions of power.

so they simply make ad hominem attacks to intimidate you into shutting up. Don't give in. Our weapon is the truth and we are fighting an unarmed enemy.

Lies. Shouting. Blatant homophobia, racism, sexism, greed. It goes on and on.

This method has been going on for so many years that they have become lost in their empty bravado.

Bush. It really started with Rush Limbaugh and all the conservative liars on radio and TV. It just got worse with Bush.

known as "John Birchers" who were, perhaps, the original "Love it or leave it" crowd

:scared:

...And there hasn't been for several decades. Yesteryear's "conservatives" are today lumped with we liberals. What is considered "conservative" today is, in fact, simple anti-liberal. These people have no stance on anything for themselves. They see what democrats, liberals, progressives are doing, and htey take the immediate opposite stance. They do not adhere to the ideals of conservativism - When's the last time you saw a "conservative" take a stand on individual responsability? Against big government conducted by the GOP? You don't.

What we have today amounts to a few camps. On one hand we have the partisan hacks. They're relatiovely innocuous themselves. They just take the exact opposite of whatever position a Democrat takes, not out of maliciousness, but because "democrats are wrong". Sheeple is a common term for them. More disturbing are the "Politically Incorrect" sorts. These people LOATHEW the idea of "political corretness" - Tehy see it as liberal thought control. They believe that conservativcism is a competition to see who can be the biggest anti-PC asshole possible. These are the people calling for lynchings, mass genocide, euthanization of gays, all that other nazi crap you see floating around. Then you have the other kind of sheep, those who are terrified of the outside, brainwashed into believing only Republicans are capable and that anyone else is "the enemy". These are, in fact the most dangerous types, because they kick out of fear, and they won't stop kicking. They're hte most likely to do something crazy to "protect themselves" from the "liberal menace"

I think Conservatives have bought a little too much of their own bull. I also think they are drunk with power.

Years of the Right installing radio Limbaughs in every town and publishing books by Coulter types has confused yet empowered a lot of people who weren't that sharp to begin with. Personal attack has become the tactic of folks who can't win a debate any other way, and the taboo has been removed from this behavior by hearing it done publicly by Limbaugh et al.

Old Ebenezer's famous statement just about sums up their attitude:

..."I don't make merry myself at Christmas, and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned-(prisons, workhouses, the treadmill, the Poor Law) they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."

"Many can't go there; amd many would rather die."

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus poplulation." ...

Rush would have liked old Ebenezer...

But I have heard some pretty crazy things come out of their mouths. My favorite was when a co-worker told me "it was a good thing that the rest of world hated us."

so it may be best not to try.

The new conservative fits one or more of the following profiles:

1) Wealthy, from entitlement
2) Wealthy, corporate sources
3) Religious
4) Was on the "other side" of his/her hippie brethren during the '60's, think Youth for Nixon or some such nonsense
5) Racist
6) Watched too many movies during the '80's starring Sly or Ahnuld and didn't realize that they were movies

So why are these people the new conservatives?

1 & 2:

Well, the entitlement wealthy as well as the corporate wealthy stand to gain from a very close intimacy with government. While the entitlement wealthy tend toward government office, the corporate wealthy merely seek to strengthen ties with the entitlement wealthy in office through lobby and other such influence peddling instruments. Both stand to gain more wealth, power, prestige, and even legacy from making sure that the bonds between heavily monied business and heavily monied authority remains intact. The elected entitlement wealthy garner favors for the corporate wealthy, and the corporate wealthy fill the coffers of the elected so they can be reelected.

3:

The religious have always had a real issue with the so-called secularization of this society for the past half-century. What we see as progress toward Constitutional ideals of freedom of religion, speech, and assembly... in other words, freedom to think and converse about the products thereof... they see as regression away from moral principle. To them, the government has never been the highest authority in the land, God has always been. They vehemently resist and ultimately philosophically reject any social or legal contract that does not mirror the Bill of Admonitions (the Ten Commandments) God has laid out, even if it is in the most ideal way an affirmation of the freedoms inherent in our national charter. The fact is that most modern religious activists are really just hiding behind the Bible as justification for their own prejudices, and seek political remedy for their discomfiture at having to live in a society with people they firmly detest and find wholly evil.

4:

When you think of the 60's, thoughts predominate about civil rights movements, feminism, antiwar sentiment, environmental awareness, non-standard living arrangements, and a generation of youngsters in the enviable position of being able to change their country into one dominated by the principles of equality and friendship amongst all people. But if that's all you think about, you've got precisely half the puzzle solved. For every hippy there was a straightedge or two that reviled their ideas. They've never gotten over the anger of being forced into a world where coercion and degradation of women, homosexuals, and people of different nationalities and religions is neither respected or condoned, and where they are not, by virtue of the conditions of their birth, masters of all they survey. Their exclusionist, hawkish, 'kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out' politics have only gotten crustier with age. The neoconservative is the modern expression of that malcontented young adult.

5:

Racists still exist, it's sad but true. And they're going to vote for someone. The Republican party has shown open hostility to the sovereignty of foreign nations, is overrun by born-again Christian zealots, shows little concern for the poor and disenfranchised, and always takes a hard line with immigration, illegal or otherwise. It is the party which bases itself on an election principle of "If you don't like someone, we don't like 'em either! Vote for us and allow us to help you exact your revenge!". A party which actively appeals to the voters with exclusionist attitudes and rampant bitterness. So who do you think your average racist is going to vote for?

6:

We all know at least one guy who simply LOVES everything about the military. The guns, the tanks, the planes, the uniforms, the discipline, the machismo. They just love the fantasy that the most potent thing in this world is a Middle American kid with an assault rifle and a love of his country. So when the opportunity comes around for the good ole US of A to flex its righteous muscle deep into the bowels of some third world country, well aren't they just elbowing their way up to the front to get some good seats for the show. The classic battle between the Stars and Stripes good guys and whatever evil villainy our spinmasters can cook up, round 10... or is it 11? 12? It's a plot right out of a Schwarzenegger flick... probably one that should have stayed there. It only goes to show that you can make anything exciting if you just add a few explosions. This person views liberalism as weak because the same media which has been force-feeding him Rambo movies since he was soiling his diaper is the same media feeding him the American birthright to righteousness of cause right now. He believed in Rambo, he believed in Commando, he loved it when Rocky knocked out Ivan Drago, and he believes in those same cookie cutter 'good and evil' plotlines to the exclusion of all else. And he votes for the people who espouse (but not necessarily believe) that same simplicity of view.


None of these people actually are conservatives in the truest sense, and all of the true conservatives bailed out long ago once the Republican party got taken over by these sorts. The members of the Republican party are either interested in usurping the government's authority in perpetuity, or are the voters with an axe to grind. The ones you are talking to are those with an axe to grind, have something to be bitter about, have something to fight about, and have something in their brains that makes them desperately miserable. And they want their pound of flesh. The problem is, the fact that it looks like they're not going to get it is probably making them irritable. It would explain the problem you are having.


Hope this little guide helps you sort out your confusion.

B-)

now debating with a Republican is only an invitation for name-calling or violence! Republicans tried to argue cutting taxes would increase revenue..while raising taxes would reduce revenue. But Bush and Clinton have proved this wrong to even the nuttiest neocon! Republicans used to argue that more military spending was patriotic, and it was something all taxpayers should pay for...but never object to. Republicans once argued that Bosnia and Vietnam were liberal samples of nation-building..but this war in Iraq is necessary to prevent another 9/11!

Try and argue that 9/11 was caused by Bush's carelessness, or that the Iraqi war increases the chances for another such attack..Republicans now say 9/11 was Clinton's fault and that we should be more patriotic! :puke:

The repukes seem to have had a head start in developing serious politically based sites. But as of late, the Dem side has gotten it's act together, now their lies are being exposed at record rates, and their opponents are well armed to ginsu their arguments like sushi.
Add the fact that many dems have been ejected from the workforce. Lots of time + anger makes for an interesting game of whack-a-mole that they're not really up for playing.

There's a breakdown happening on their side, and it's accelerating.

All the republicans who thoght there was something to gain from Bush, even if they didn't like where he was coming from, decided that it was necessary to shut up, get in line, and never, ever, ever admit that the wasn't the greatest thing since sliced bread. I suppose that every party does that to some degree, but the degree that one had to do it for Bush, him being the furthest right wing idiot ever, and the way that Bush gloms onto his own power and demands obedience, has got these guys doing backflips in order to keep up the charade.

I agree, say anything that suggests that Bush is anything short of divine and they start screaming "get the fuck out of MY country and move to France and take some sp*cs with you, you commie faggot n*****-loving America-hating traitor, I wish you and every other liberal in America had been in the 80th floor of the WTC on 9/11"

They just cannot tolerate the fact that there are people alive who have differing opinions than them

Are you one of them preverts?