As the election nears, I have noticed an unusual phenomenon over the last few weeks on my blog and on my Facebook posts. Conservatives have stopped engaging with me. The last time I had comments was a bizarre take on my blog post about Lewis Grizzard, comparing Lewis's disregard for the rules with President Obama's. That was several weeks ago. For the most part since then, everyone has gone to their separate corners.
I don't know if that's the way it was during the 2008 election. I didn't have a blog and wasn't using Facebook yet. Maybe what is happening is natural.
I don't miss the vitriol or the blind call of "Socialism!" to every idea or thought. But I do miss the interchange of ideas. It's not like I'm going to lie down and agree with every conservative thought. I intend to battle back with everything I've got. But that doesn't mean I don't appreciate reasonable dialogue. When people just talk sometimes, they find they have more common ground than they thought. Of course, this civil engagement is missing now not just in internet talk, but also in Congress and the national dialogue.
I was particularly trying in my "I Believe" political soap box series. I was making a deliberate effort to discuss issues on a more practical level. To date these have received no conservative responses. I might have gotten more engagement had I instead kept up my Mittbot 2012 5.0 and Paul "Ayn Rand" Ryan attacks. Oh, well.
In the nation and world as a whole, my blog and Facebook comments would not be considered that radical. But here where I live, Southeast Georgia, I am in a very distinct minority. Some of us run the risk of losing our job or alienating our friends if we speak out. Most Facebook environments here are very, very conservative. I have a good friend who said that when President Obama's "You didn't build that" remark was warped into another universe of meaning, she had received hundreds of response vilifying the President for his remark and only mine and one other trying to explain how far out of context the remark was taken. And I believe that is how most people's Facebook newsfeeds are like around here. 99% Fox, 1% a different drummer.
So I will continue to beat that drum, even if the other side acts like they're not listening. From tiny seeds, a mighty oak might grow. Conservatives, I know you're there. Please join the conversation whenever you can. Yes, I will battle back. But even with this impending election, there is no reason for us not to engage. You never know. We both might gain insights that would surprise us!
I don't see how anyone who confronts Obama's record with clear eyes can enthusiastically support him. I do understand how they might of concluded that he is the lesser of two evils, and back him reluctantly, but I'd have thought more people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers.
ReplyDeleteI find Obama likable when I see him on TV. He is a caring husband and father, a thoughtful speaker, and possessed of an inspirational biography. On stage, as he smiles into the camera, using words to evoke some of the best sentiments within us, it's hard to believe certain facts about him:
1.Obama terrorizes innocent Pakistanis on an almost daily basis. The drone war he is waging in North Waziristan isn't "precise" or "surgical" as he would have Americans believe. It kills hundreds of innocents, including children. And for thousands of more innocents who live in the targeted communities, the drone war makes their lives into a nightmare worthy of dystopian novels. People are always afraid. Women cower in their homes. Children are kept out of school. The stress they endure gives them psychiatric disorders. Men are driven crazy by an inability to sleep as drones buzz overhead 24 hours a day, a deadly strike possible at any moment. At worst, this policy creates more terrorists than it kills; at best, America is ruining the lives of thousands of innocent people and killing hundreds of innocents for a small increase in safety from terrorists. It is a cowardly, immoral, and illegal policy, deliberately cloaked in opportunistic secrecy. And Democrats who believe that it is the most moral of all responsible policy alternatives are as misinformed and blinded by partisanship as any conservative ideologue.
2.Obama established one of the most reckless precedents imaginable: that any president can secretly order and oversee the extrajudicial killing of American citizens. Obama's kill list transgresses against the Constitution as egregiously as anything George W. Bush ever did. It is as radical an invocation of executive power as anything Dick Cheney championed. The fact that the Democrats rebelled against those men before enthusiastically supporting Obama is hackery every bit as blatant and shameful as anything any talk radio host has done.
3.Contrary to his own previously stated understanding of what the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution demand, President Obama committed U.S. forces to war in Libya without Congressional approval, despite the lack of anything like an imminent threat to national security.
In different ways, each of these transgressions run contrary to candidate Obama's 2008 campaign. (To cite just one more example among many, Obama has done more than any modern executive to wage war on whistleblowers. In fact, under Obama, Bush-era lawbreakers, including literal torturers, have been subject to fewer and less draconian attempts at punishment them than some of the people who conscientiously came forward to report on their misdeeds.) Obama ran in the proud American tradition of reformers taking office when wartime excesses threatened to permanently change the nature of the country. But instead of ending those excesses, protecting civil liberties, rolling back executive power, and reasserting core American values, Obama acted contrary to his mandate. The particulars of his actions are disqualifying in themselves. But taken together, they put us on a course where policies Democrats once viewed as radical post-9/11 excesses are made permanent parts of American life.
Keen on Obama's civil-libertarian message and reassertion of basic American values, I supported him in 2008. Today I would feel ashamed to associate myself with his first term or the likely course of his second. I refuse to vote for Barack Obama.
I am listening, but I find talking to liberals and trying to change their views is like trying to pick up a turd by the clean end!