The Crazy Right-Wing Republican Fascist…
Posted by Craig Mazin on 23 Jul 2008 at 12:25 am | Tagged as: Miscellany
So I was talking today with someone who’s pretty active in Guild stuff, and she had a question for me. “Ummm, is it true that you’re some crazy right-wing out there Republican?”
And maybe some of you have wondered the same.
Because, and I’m just going on anecdotal evidence here, it appears that some people are talking about it. Let’s consider this an insignificant ripple in the big Lake of Rumors this town drinks from, but since there are certain people in my own union who do enjoy insinuating certain things about a certain me that aren’t certainly true, I figured I’d use my bully pulpit to set the record straight.
This way, if you’re inclined to dislike me you can do so with complete accuracy.
Unlike the great majority of writers, actors, directors, agents, and members of the AMPTP, I am, indeed, a registered Republican.
My conversion to the conservative side of the political spectrum is fairly recent. I voted for Gore and Kerry, for instance. And as far as Republicans go, I’m a moderate.
The short summary is that I used to be slightly left of center, and now I’m slightly right of center, although mostly I’m a libertarian, I think.
So, for those of you who’ve heard that Mazin is some kind of kooky right wing nut, I’ll lay it all out for you.
I think government spending is out of control and very often thoroughly ineffective.
I think everyone’s taxes are too high, and yes, that includes the wealthy.
I’m an atheist. I believe in the division of church and state and I am against school prayer.
I support an individual’s right to bear arms.
I am pro-choice.
I am a foreign policy hawk, and yes, I think sometimes War Is The Answer.
I am pro gay marriage.
I am pro school vouchers.
I am against affirmative action.
I am pro legalization of marijuana, although my personal drug of choice is the occasional single malt, or in my weaker moments, Doritos.
I am pro death penalty.
So, there you have it. Now if you hear the rumor, you can set people straight. I’m a God-hating, joint-smoking, baby-killing friend of the gays. Or a racist, neo-con, prisoner-killing gun nut.
Whatever floats your boat.
I’m an Independent Libertarian as well… or PURPLE as I like to say. I grew up in a family with a mother who’s a Republican political strategist and a father who’s a Democratic political strategist (no, not James Carville and Mary Matalin but at the top of their games nonetheless). And I too am a hawk on foreign policy but knew from my “inside baseball” vantage point back in the beginning of 2003 that the Iraq war was based on ideology and not intelligence from the beginning so that war, I am against…. I still want to get it right in Afghanistan and will vote for Obama in the fall. For more of what being Purple means to me, you might want to check out my blog… everybody’s doin’ it.
Cheers, Little Ms. Purple http://www.LittleMsPurple.com
The thing is though that few will care Craig. People hear ‘Republican’ or ‘Democrat’ and they apply their own labels. Very few people will see the nuances and complexities. And as John Rogers points out, Libertarians are Republicans who want to smoke pot.
Hey Craig, what I find interesting about your conversion is the timing: this current Republican administration hasn’t been too popular since…2004.
When you voted for Kerry.
So I’m going to guess the main reason for your conversion is:
9/11. Am I right?
No need to reply:
I think it’s sucky when people want to judge others as being good or bad human beings coz they don’t like the ‘pick one of two labels’ label someone’s currently sporting, as if we’d all be living in Utopia if only one party would always win over and over.
So if you don’t want to make your bullseye bigger, why should you?
(For the record: I converted from Republican to “Independent who always votes Democrat” way back — but I’m probably going to vote for McCain for Prez and Democrats everywhere else in November.)
Your political views sound very similar to mine. When people ask me whether I’m conservative or liberal I always stick with “bi-partisan”. When people ask me what that means I always say, “It means that I think both political sides have their fair share of both wisdom and stupidity.”
Craig: just happily rediscovered your blog, and I’m commenting to bring a problem to your attention. (Sorry!)
Note the word “rediscovered” in my first sentence. The way I lost your blog was that you changed the address for your RSS feed and didn’t tell anyone. No doubt you did this unintentionally, so this is just a nudge so that next time you do any noteworthy redevelopment of your site, you check to make sure it all still works the same way.
Thanks, and I’m glad to be reading you again!
glassblowerscat:
I did put a post up back when I changed over to WP.
http://artfulwriter.com/?p=290
But the problem is, if you get the blog through the RSS feed, and your RSS feed gets disrupted, you don’t get the news that it changed. So my screwup was posting that after the migration, rather than before. Sorry about that.
I was born and raised a Democrat, though of the pro-death-penalty, anti-Communist, pro-military-strength variety. My first three Presidential votes were Carter, Mondale and Dukakis.
Then the First Gulf War happened. I felt that it was absolutely the right thing for the United States to restore the sovereignty of Kuwait.
And then came the 1992 campaign. For me, and it may sound silly, the defining moment came when Bill Clinton said, “I didn’t inhale.”
See, in 1979, at age 19, I was working at Lockheed Missiles and Space and wanted to move up to a junior digital design engineering job (I was a senior at UC Berkeley at the time). I applied for the transfer and had to go through a Top Secret clearance check, and then a special “Black Program” check.
Got my basic Top Secret clearance and was transferred to await program clearance. Then I got a call that someone from DISCO (the Defense Industrial Security Clearance Organization) wanted to speak to me about one of the answers I put on my clearance application.
I knew instantly which one it was. They asked, “Have you ever used illegal drugs?” Of course, I wasn’t going to lie, and so I wrote “Yes.”
Sure enough, the agent asked me about that very response. I explained that I had smoked weed a few times in high school and again in my first two years of college, but wasn’t much of a fan. I also explained that I stopped when I went to work for Lockheed, understanding their anti-drug policy.
That was that.
I got my program clearance the next day.
So, many years later, I see Bill Clinton unable to offer the simplest of honest answers to a fairly innocuous question, and I knew I couldn’t vote for him. You’ve got to have the basic guts to state simply what you believe, rather than twist and gyrate to say what you think won’t get you in trouble, if you’re going to have any credibility as a leader.
Thanks, Craig, for stating simply what you believe. Not that you’re running for Fearless Leader or anything, but it’s nice to know you’re a mensch.
What I always found the most ironic of all was the behavior of “liberal” writers during the writer’s strike. These so-called left wingers attacked Craig everyday, using the most backwards, insane, conservative logic that directly mirrored the debate over the Iraq War.
“If you criticize our leaders during this conflict, it’ll weaken us!”
Wow.
That sounds familiar. I wonder where I heard that before?
Craig, politically I’m with you about 75% of the time (I’m obviously voting for Obama) but more than that, I applaud you for your honesty and clarifications (as I thought you voted for Bush in 2004).
Now if only I could change your mind over the Iraq War…or maybe you’ve already seen the light?
My thoughts on the Iraq War are complicated. I think my reasons for supporting it were and are probably different from the Bush administration’s.
I think we ought to topple repressive dictators who spray their citizens with deadly chemical weapons and sponsor campaigns of torture and rape.
So not only did I support the toppling of Hussein, but I also think we should be actively working to topple the leadership in Sudan, which is genocidal.
I guess that makes me a JFK Democrat.
And I’m not happy with the way the war has been handled. Pretty much no one is. So there’s that.
I believe there will be a net good in the end. And I think things have dramatically improved over there. But time will tell.
I think we’re way past the possibility of a “net good”. I think “grossly bad” is more accurate.
This link is awfully strange: http://www.dvidshub.net/index.php?script=news/news_show.php&id=21578
[Note to Craig: I will fully understand if you delete this to preclude tedious tangential debate.]
I went to the first Tibetan Freedom Concert a few years back in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. That was generally surreal: an event dreamed up by the Beastie Boys, with them performing along with a chorus of Tibetan monks.
The world expresses outrage over the oppression of Tibet, but in practical terms, nothing will change China’s policy there. It’s nice to go to a concert or protest a torch run, but it’s only a feel-good measure.
The world deplores genocide in Darfur and the ethnically driven war in the Congo (having the same roots as the Rwandan genocide), and even sends UN troops to those areas. But it tells those troops not to shoot unless they feel directly threatened… and sometimes even those troops themselves add to the misery by trafficking in sex with the children they are supposed to be protecting.
So you’d think that the ridding of the world of a guy like Saddam Hussein would be lauded as a good thing. But perhaps many of the people who once advocated it only meant it theoretically.
Well, that’s what I mean when I say that sometmes War Is The Answer. When it was time to abolish slavery and break southern secessionism, war was most definitely the answer. War was the answer in WWI, War was the answer in WWII, invasion and occupation was the answer in Bosnia, and I suspect many South Koreans will tell you that war was the answer in the 1950′s.
Miserable, hellish, tragic…but necessary.
There are people who think war is the answer to everything, and they’re wrong. Same for people who think war is an absolute evil. It’s not. There are just wars, there are unjust wars, stupid wars, smart wars…
I’m in the middle again, I guess.
In theory, war is not necessary, because in theory there is a way for the two sides to reach the post-war result without going through the process of war to get there.
In practice, when one group of people want another group of people to do something different (become slaves, move or die being common choices for that ‘something’) and the other group decides it cannot comply with that demand, war becomes necessary. Some things can’t be negotiated: for example, the Rwandan Hutus demanded that the Rwandan Tutsis all die, and the Tutsis were unwilling to concede that point to the Hutus.
One thing that seems to escape a lot of people these days is that when a war becomes necessary due to the actions of another group of people, that other group has a big say in how long the war will last. I always wonder why generals testifying to Congress don’t answer questions about timetables with, “That depends on when the enemy decides to die or surrender, and that is largely up to them.”
I hope that someday mankind will outgrow the need for war. However, I anticipate that will require many generations of genetic evolution so that certain of humanity’s traits and tendencies atrophy and wither away. We should live so long.
Fuck me.
Makes you wonder how many people you have to kill to get KFC out of your neighborhood.
Wonder if falafel and shwarma are making a comeback in Baghdad these days: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/jun/03/20060603-101334-8512r/
Oops, answered my own question: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=63292&archive=true
Oh, this is bad. I’m almost perfectly in line with your politics and I don’t even like you that much–yeah, we know one another. Our differences? Four in total. 1. The death penalty, I’m sort of for it, depending on the situation. And I’m vehemently opposed to the death penalty should my dumb ass ever hang in the balance. 2. School vouchers. Ummmmm…No, no, no. I say better manage schools in the public school system-don’t spend so much money on administrative salaries, spend it on books, infra-structure, and educational programs. Do that and the need to send your kid to a “voucher” or “magnet” school disappears. 3. I think taxes are a necessary evil–it’s how those taxes are spent which pisses me off. And finally our final difference: 4. I’m no atheist. I’m more of an agnostic, as in my two favorite questions, “God created man in his own image? Really? Have you looked in the mirror, surely you can’t be serious about that one. And, “Okay, if god created the Heavens and Earth and all that shit, who the fuck created God? as in, can you name God’s parents?”
Golly, me and Craig Mazin politically aligned, who the fuck would’ve ever guessed that one. Scary.
Wait a second, Craig…You can’t be a crazy right-wing fascist if you’re pro-choice. As someone who’s pro-life (in Hollywood no less!) I am automatically the crazy, Bible-thumping (never mind that religion has nothing to do with my reasonings), sexist, racist, right-wing fascist whore Republican. Never mind that all my other political leanings lean more democrat. You’ve got to tow the party line, Craig. You can’t be complex in this town. And you certainly can’t put thought into each issue! Don’t you know that by now?!
“Hank”:
Well, sure. But the public school administrations–staffed by the people whose salaries you want to cut–are the ones who spend the money. Because there is no competitive incentive in our educational system, there is no motive for failing districts to change their ways. The money attached to each child is locked to that child’s school district.
But that’s a longer debate.
And I don’t like you much either.
Kevin — now even the Associated Press is picking up signals: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jzxqARN0Huv38n5pgDfdBRwuoiZgD925HT7G0
Craig, re you last sentence, I get that. A lot.
Can’t wait to see how Obama tries to spin that one.
Don’t get me wrong — I think electing a Black president would be great. But, good grief! We haven’t even gotten to the party conventions yet and this clown has already gone back on practically everything he’s said (except, of course, his ludicrous contention that the surge would make things worse in Iraq). Not to mention his disturbing lack of humor.
Voting for someone simply for the color of their skin would be insane. I’m not voting for Obama simply because he’s running. Shit, I wouldn’t vote for Al Sharpton if he was running for the ice cream truck. I’m voting for Obama because I believe he’s the best man for the job.
And regarding the AP article, it was definitely an interesting read. However, there’s really nothing to spin. Basically the article said that “shit was beginning to calm down” (Ok, I’m paraphrasing). But I do believe the same thing happens when you drop kick a hornet’s nest. At first all hell breaks loose but eventually they stop buzzing.
Not to mention the fact that I could probably go online and find another article directly contradicting the AP’s.
Kevin Arbouet:
Agreed on the whole color thing. I have zero interest in the identity politics that suggest it would be good to have a black president or a female president or a Jewish president (although no one’s particularly clamoring for that last one). I just want a good one.
I think the situation in Iraq can’t be chalked up to a natural progression. The natural progression had, in fact, been toward chaos…as the natural progression very often is in life. The surge worked. Now, there are a lot of people (including me) who say the problem is that it shouldn’t have been required, that we should have started at that level, rather than opting for it later as some kind of Hail Mary. And those people are right. But that doesn’t change the facts on the ground.
Like most wars, this one has been sloppy, chaotic, mismanaged and tragic. Hell, when we landed at Normandy, a whole lot of troops missed the target beach entirely. But we’ve lost so many fewer troops than we did in Vietnam or Korea, and bit by bit, struggle after struggle, we seem to be on the verge of making a permanent and positive difference. Iraq is still corrupt, it is still dangerous and the future will no doubt surprise us all.
I hope it surprises us in a good way. For now, at least, the trends are positive. The totalitarian dictator and his rapist sons are dead. There are elections. There is increasing peace in the streets.
You don’t have to stop hating Bush in order to embrace some of what’s happening over there.
Good grief, I just realized I equated 9/11 to the Iraq War.
Looks like Bush and Cheney finally got to me after all… but ironically, even though there was no link between Saddam and Al Quadea, 9/11 will always be linked to the 2nd Iraq War, the phantom menace of Saddam planning to give nukes he didn’t have to Al Quaeda was our justification for going in.
(I’m still amazed anyone with a lick of common sense thought Saddam had the slightest capacity to threaten anyone after we’d followed up the first Iraq War by bombing it for 12 years in a row.)
Of course a surge in troops levels led by a real Secretary of Defense and a real General, not the yes-men Bush was comfortable with, is making a difference, but we can’t maintain the Surge troop – not without calling a draft.
And it’s too late to call a draft now: after 5 years of struggle, how many of the wars “supporters” (“cheerleaders” would be more apt) would actually back up their words with action and go serve in combat? Damn few, I suspect.
The war has weak support because Iraq never was – and still isn’t – capable of threatening us. Massive protests would kill a draft.
So we’ve stuck our soldiers with Mission Waiting For Godot: playing whack-a-mole while hoping the Iraqis finally decide they’d rather share power and police themselves than fuck each other over and kill each other.
The problem with leaving, of course, is Iraq would likely finish imploding, essentially handing the Southern Third over to Iran.
I’m slightly hopeful over the good progress of late, but you’d damn near have to be a religious fanatic to believe another 5 years of keeping our troops in Iraq will bring peace to a people who’ve repeatedly proven they don’t want it.
Travis, I’d simply point out that the 9/11 attackers were based in and supported by one of the poorest, least technologically capable countries in the world — and they succeeded spectacularly in doing what they set out to do.
Saddam Hussein, even after 12 years of sanctions, was able to siphon a billion dollars a year from the Oil for Food program to fund various misadventures (one documented example: sending $25,000 in cash to the family of each suicide bomber attacking Israel). He had plenty of capacity to create mischief on a vast scale, plenty of reason to do so, and a history of doing despicable things to innocent people whenever it suited him.
He does have some folks on his side of the political spectrum in a lather: Robert Scheer writing in The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080804/scheer) says, “Barack Obama is betraying his promise of change and is in danger of becoming just another political hack.”
I’ll admit that the first time I discovered Craig’s Secret I was truly amazed. How could someone so intelligent, creative, funny, aware, with it, be so incredibly FUCKING STUPID???????
That lasted for 5 minutes. Craig is a good guy and we will still talk because we both give each other respect. Unlike what your standard issue Homo Sap failed-brownshirt wingnut will do to anyone who disagrees with him. The Republicans are indeed fascist morons, but Craig isn’t.
That doesn’t mean I still don’t “get it” that he could go join the losing side just before they go glub-glub-glub for the next 20 years as an election as history-changing as that of 1932 comes barreling along – I mean, he’s decided to support a senile bozo who proves the truth of “the first generation makes it, the second generation loses it and the third generation loses it,” who managed to kill 137 of his fellow sailors on the USS Forrestal by starting what’s known in Navy history as “the Forrestfire” on July 29, 1967 because of a juvenile joke-gone-bad (a “wet start” against all the rules of naval aviation) who became a war hero by being moron enough to go back low and slow over a target he’d just bombed (the #1 “Do Not Do This” rule of combat aviation). Everything I respected McCain for in 2000 he has sold out three times over, he’s so desperate to prove himself worthy of his father and grandfather, who really were Genuine American Heroes. He’s always been the idiot who got into the trade school because of daddy and grand=daddy, who graduate 5 from the bottom and always will be. After 8 years of the dumbest moron in American history how anyone could support someone dumber is beyond me.
My bet is Craig will vote Libertarian, because he just can’t pass the IQ test low enough to qualify for membership in the American Hezbollah (The Party of God), no matter how hard he tries. Particularly since they do not believe in or practice any of the reasons he joined.
And after all that, he’s still a good guy.
“The first generation makes it, the second generation keeps it, and the third generation loses it” – my bad.
The Iraq War: Little Georgie’s invasion of Poland.
TcinLA:
Without addressing your editorial content (!), I will say that the whole “McCain started teh Forrestal Fire” thing is bunk.
Even your fellow Democrats think so.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132×6469025
The Forrestal was a tragedy, but there isn’t much evidence to support that McCain started this fire.
I think there’s a group of people inclined to believe that Presidential candidates are plain evil. Those people then spend all their time accusing Clinton of raping a young girl, Hillary of having Vince Foster killed, Kerry of being a fraud, Bush of snorting coke in the White House, McCain of blowing up a frickin’ aircraft carrier…
And the only thing separating those people is a quirk of fate. Where they grew up. How their daddies voted. Stuff like that.
Too much anger out there.
Oh, I heard that Obama shot a man in Reno just to watch him die…
You’ve gotta be careful with that shit, Craig. Too many people out there who’ll respond like Uncle Eddie after Clark tells the kids Santa’s been spotted on his way in from New York:
“You serious, Clark?”
Based on your positions you should be voting Democrat, at least in Federal elections. Me thinks you are just a contrarian…
You were for Dems when they were losing and now for the Repubs when they are about to get their arses handed to them.
If I were to write you as a character, perhaps there would be an early bonding with an underdog?
Um.. like most wars? I seem to remember the one in the 1990s that went pretty well. Bosnia? Having a Commander-in-Chief who is popular with world leaders matters quite a bit. They get others to share the burden. Obama would have the same effect.
Then why are we still there? Why are McCain and Bush tip-toeing over to Obama’s position of a timetable for withdrawal? Where is the political reconciliation?
This is a talking point, not a fact.
I have friends who are Republican, but I let them know, in no uncertain terms, because of the Supreme Court – a vote for McCain is a vote against the civil rights of your gay and female friends for a lifetime.
As Hillary Clinton said of abortion, I will say of Republicanism … “A sad and tragic choice”
One I hope you will re-consider, but I assume you live in a blue state, so I’ll save my typing fingers for my screenplay.
First, “most” doesn’t equal “all,” so I’m not sure your point holds. As for Clinton’s popularity with world leaders…it didn’t seem to matter much in Bosnia, where our troops made up the bulk of the forces on the ground, and the Chinese and Russians were openly antagonistic.
Obama isn’t going to get the Europeans to do things they don’t want to do. They’re already grousing that he’s too much of a foreign policy hawk.
The point of the surge wasn’t to end the war, but to turn it around. That’s happened. Civilian deaths have plummeted, troop deaths have plummeted (ABC reports today that combat troops in Iraq in July were the lowest since the start of the war), a sense of order and normalcy is returning to the country, and now the groundwork has been set for a reasonable timetable for withdrawal.
Because I don’t think either McCain or Obama is insane, I suspect no matter whom we elect, the troops will return when it’s safe for them (and for Iraq).
I’m sure your friends appreciate that sort rhetoric, which I think is a huge part of the problem with political discourse in this country.
Your comment isn’t really accurate. The Supreme Court is now majority “conservative.” Roe v. Wade is still law. Stare Decisis still matters. And while I happen to favor abortion rights, I don’t really think they are ensconced in the constitution. I think Roe v. Wade was a bad legal decision…legislation masquerading as jurisprudence.
But I also think abortion rights are popular, and the Court knows it. They also know that if they overturn Roe v. Wade, there will likely be an effort to pass a constitutional amendment…or so many states will offer legal abortion, the end result will be a wash.
That one ain’t changing any time soon, and trying to scare people into thinking a Republican president is a return to the days of back alleys and coathangers is just melodramatic and dishonest.
Sort of like when people say that if you elect a Democratic president, “they” will start pushing the “gay agenda” in schools!
Kind of surprising to see that there is anyone in Hollywood with views so aligned with my own. The only one of those views I don’t share is on abortion. My position on that tends to change from time to time, though. I poke enough holes in my own logic to convince myself that I’m wrong.
At the moment, I just can’t seem to find any valid reasoning in any of the usual pro-choice arguments. At the end of the day, it’s not her body. It’s another person’s body that happens to be located inside of her body. So “my body, by choice” simply falls apart under even the most cursory examination. I’m not religious, so my position has nothing to do with the most common pro-life arguments. As such, I’m not so militant as to think abortion should be banned even in cases where the mother’s life is in danger or she’s been raped or what have you. But the way abortion proponents will often use those two circumstances as their rationale for making abortion 100% legal strikes me as being akin to abolishing traffic lights because “what if you need to get to the hospital quickly?”
The sad reality is that most abortions aren’t performed because the mother’s life is in danger. They’re more often used as a late form of birth control, which is something I just can’t get behind.
On an unrelated note, I’m digging the new site design. Or new to my late-to-the-party eyes, anyway.
I can’t let this one go either.
i’m female. I have friends. No one’s voting against me. Equating the Roe v. Wade decision with “the civil rights of females” is more rhetoric and implies all females are pro-choice. Most pro-life people I know, including myself, are women.
The civil rights of gay people being infringed by not being legally allowed to participate in activities which all straight people are allowed to participate in is an infringement. It’s not like men are allowed to have abortions and women aren’t. The question of abortion is obviously complex and highly charged, but it’s not a matter of civil rights. “Civil rights” implies granting all citizens the same rights under the rule of equality. Abortion has nothing to do with equality, it has to do with social and moral opinion. To lump civil rights with other issues is insulting to those who truly have suffered discrimination and persecution.
(And to imply abortion is universally desired by all females is insulting to females who disagree, as if we can’t think for ourselves. But I won’t really get into that because this isn’t the place for a full-fledged debate.)
Nick:
I find abortion to be a horrid sort of thing. I’m a father (twice), and when I heard my babies’ heartbeats for the first time, there was absolutely zero doubt that they were alive.
So, why do I support abortion rights?
Ultimately, it’s a utilitarian argument. The social benefit outweighs the moral cost. There’s a pretty sound argument that Roe v. Wade is the primary reason the crime rate in the U.S. has been falling steadily since the late 90′s.
I think abortion is murder, but I still support its legality. I wish I had something more compelling to offer, but I don’t.
No “most” doesn’t equal “all” and not all wars are bad. On that point I will agree. However, I respectfully disagree that the difference between Bosnia and Iraq in terms of approach is not stark.
The Republican “go it alone” strategy, which McCain seems to favor is a proven failure. Iraq having been it’s testing ground. In blood and treasure, it has been a spectacular unnecessary mess as those of us (not all doves mind you) who were against it from the beginning had predicted.
As far as wars can be deemed successes, the Clinton strategy of bringing in member nations (via either the imperfect UN or imperfect NATO) has proven to be a more successful model. When Bush applied it in Afghanistan I was very supportive.
This seems to be more Obama’s model and I happen to think that his popularity with foreign leaders will have an impact. It could be inferred based on their respective war platforms that McCain favors Bush’s model of failure (Iraq) whereas Obama favors Bush/Clinton’s model of success (Afghanastan/Bosnia).
McCain is so focused on “not losing” (ego) that he will continue to throw good money (not to mention the lives of our soldiers) after bad.
Not someone I want running a business, never mind a nation, IMHO.
Or it could be the cool, dispassionate approach of those who have nothing at risk that is a huge part of the problem with political discourse in this country.
Human nature dictates that once one’s own rights and finances are secured people tend to move to the conservative column and put concerns for others rights and finances on a back burner. I call this the “I Got Mine Jack” effect. Even I am much more conservative in many regards than I was in my younger days.
But I can’t ever forget what it was like to grow up gay and blue collar in a country without much use for the working poor or minority. My heart is still going to be with those folks and McCain and the Republicans offer them nothing but boogie men to blame for their pain (Arabs, gays, lattes).
I believe a rising tide should lift all boats. According to the Wall Street Journal, 20% of the country’s wealth is now controlled by the top 1%. This is a direct result of Republican “trickle down” economics. This was not true under “Clintonomics”. Clinton reduced the size of Federal government, balanced the budget, cut taxes for the middle class and raised them for the top 1%. The poor got richer and the rich got richer. Not one at the expense of the other which is cynical, old-thinking and unnecessary.
Clinton’s theory (which Obama is echoing) was that if you give more money to the people at the bottom, they are more likely to SPEND IT … instead of hiding it in their swiss bank account or their Cayman Islands corporation. People spending — good. People shipping their money our of the country — bad. IMHO.
So lets walk through your scenario from a human perspective (keeping in mind that a reversal of RvW will not affect you personally, so IGMJ-effect applies).
You think Mississippi is going to protect abortion rights? Alabama? Kansas? Do you think poor teenage girls are going to have access to proper care? Correct information?
I know it doesn’t affect you directly, perhaps. But I’m not willing to put a man in the Executive branch who promises more Scalias, which will lead to an overturn.
This is not melodramatic, it’s empathetic. As a gay man, I could possibly not care about this girl. How could it affect me? But, as a human being, how could I not?
Damn it I was supposed to work on my screenplay!
Wow! You inferred quite a bit from one paragraph. In many ways I do not have a dog in this fight to be honest. I’m a gay man. If and when I have a child it will not be a mistake and he/she will be very wanted.
I concede your point (well made) that civil rights and abortion rights are different.
I was pro-life until I had to hold my friend’s hand through an extremely difficult choice. She has three children now and loves kids, but she could never tell anyone in her pro-life family about her terminated pregnancy.
Ironically, I was making a pro-life argument for debate class at the same time. I believed so whole-heartedly in what I was arguing until I really walked a mile in (or next to) her shoes.
I can’t imagine what that experience would have been like for her if abortion wasn’t safe and legal (which would be the case in many southern and mid-western states if RvW was gone).
I’ve been pro-choice ever since.
Since Craig is pro-choice, the point was made to him regarding his party affiliation, it was not to infer that all women are pro-choice, or that even those who are would desire an abortion.
However, having been pro-life, I think there is a valid argument there and I am empathetic (unlike the anti-gay platform where I have zero tolerance). I just think it is an incredibly difficult and complex issue. It’s not as simple as “my body, my choice” or “abortion is murder” to me.
This is why I don’t see the justice system being an effective way of dealing with abortion, even though I do think it’s destroying a life.
That sounds weasely, I suppose, but the thought of a teenager or a doctor being brought up on murder charges for terminating a pregnancy is just not something I can support
I don’t think going it alone it was anyone’s preference. Not even Bush’s.
Don’t mistake “moderate” with dispassionate. I’m very passionate about what I believe, but I have this innate sense that trying to guilt trip or accuse people into changing their minds isn’t really ever going to work. In the end, all that kind of stuff does is push away people who might otherwise agree, and generate similar polemics from your equally aggressive ideological opposites. I mean, honestly, do you think any of your Republican friends are going to respond to “you are against women”?
Do you really think they are?
Why be friends with them?
Yeah, I hear you. Well, I’m not gay, but I grew up in a very modest home. My parents were both public school teachers, strict unionists, and my grandparents were blue collar immigrants. Everyone in my family was and still is a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, but I didn’t have a change of heart because I started earning money and stopped caring about the poor. I had a change of heart because I came to the conclusion that the Democratic solutions to these problems were bad.
I do not like the religious right. I wish they would just, you know, stop. There’s nothing particularly “conservative” about fundamentalist Christians, who don’t seem to get that conservatism requires the government to not stick their noses into people’s bedrooms.
But hey, like you said, it’s where your heart is. We all think about these things rationally to an extent, and then let emotions carry us the rest of the way. It’s the emotional stuff that tends to muddy the debate, though.
Yes. Exactly. But you left out the part where the tide did lift the boats. Median income (the best measure of middle class income) has gone up and up and up.
Meanwhile, family size has gone down.
When Reagan entered office, median family income in 2006 dollars was about $41,000. When he left office, median family income in 2006 dollars was about $45,000. That’s a roughly 10% increase. And, of course, Reagan’s tax cuts mean that those middle class families were able to keep more of the money they earned.
Sure, the rich will always get richer faster than the poor will get less poor. That’s the nature of the capitalist beast. But…I do believe it’s the best beast out there.
Anyway, economics tends to bore even the best of us, so I won’t belabor this much longer. Suffice it to say that when you cut taxes for the lower-income brackets, those people will indeed spend the money, which is nice, but not necessarily a driving force for our economy. Much of that money goes overseas because we just don’t manufacture much anymore. However, when you also give tax cuts to the rich and the evil corporations, they tend to use the additional money to grow their businesses, and it’s that growth which generates jobs, increased quality of life and increased tax revenue (!) for us all. Since the Reagan Revolution, unemployment has essentially ceased to be a national economic problem in the U.S.
But now I’m boring even myself.
I can’t sign on to your IGMJ premise. I have a daughter. One day she will be a teenager (unfortunately). It’s my problem. But you ask…
Planned Parenthood, bankrolled by the gajillions of dollars that would roll in from people all across the U.S. should Roe v. Wade be overturned, would certainly be there in Mississippi to provide care and information. Yes. What, you think the day after RvW gets overturned, everyone’s just gonna shrug and say “Oh well.”??? Nah. And yeah, they will find a way to continue providing abortions.
But like I said, I don’t think the Court is going to overturn RvW. And there are too many other issues to worry about. Abortion has become the tail that wagged the electoral dog in this country.
Craig:
I’m not entirely unperceptive to your stance. It is certainly something I’ve argued during one of my pro-choice periods.
The thing that gets to me nowadays, though, is that there are simply much better alternatives. But the pro-abortion agenda (not pro-choice) has done a spectacular job promoting propaganda against any and all alternatives. Abortion itself is talked about like it was no big deal, while at the same time adoption has become a dirty word. Just mention adoption and nine out of ten people will immediately drift into a fantasy about 19th century British orphanages. It is a perception with little connection to reality, but it is the connection we’ve been programmed to make.
The reality is that most couples looking to adopt a newborn sit on a waiting list for years. This image everyone has of babies being born by the truckload while nobody wants them couldn’t be more unrealistic.
I don’t doubt that social situations have been improved by the promotion of abortion over unfit mothers raising and neglecting their children, but I also think promoting better alternatives would be preferable to both.
God knows I’m all for adoption. On the other hand, telling a 15 year-old girl that it’s preferable that she carry the four week-old fetus in her to term, rather than abort…to actually carry the baby, then birth the baby, then give the baby away…
I’m not sure that’s what is best for that girl.
The 28 year-old woman who has multiple sexual partners without protection, followed by numerous abortions? It’s immoral, and I wish I could make that behavior go away. But I can’t do that either.
In all other CM posts, one can detect a very intelligent mind, one that zeroes in on stupidity like a High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile fired by a Wild Weasel against a radar site.
And then…..
This (with comments):
I think government spending is out of control and very often thoroughly ineffective.
In 2001, the Democrats left the Republicans a $350+ billion budget surplus. After 8 years of Little Georgie, the current deficit is $480+ billion, not counting next year’s contribution to the Invasion of Poland. In 2006, after 6 years of undivided Republican government, it was $490+ billion.
Ah yes, the Party of Fiscal Responsibility strikes again.
I think everyone’s taxes are too high, and yes, that includes the wealthy.
Easy to say when you’re a Hollywood Millionaire. No wonder you love McSame.
I’m an atheist. I believe in the division of church and state and I am against school prayer.
Better not speak heresy like this around James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Pat Robertson or John Hagee, or at Hot Air, Powerlines, Little Gtreen Snotballs or FreiRepublik – you free thinker you.
I support an individual’s right to bear arms.
So does Obama.
I am pro-choice.
McCain isn’t, and those folks mentioned above had best not find you in a dark alley if you’re going to spout Satan’s Line like this.
I am a foreign policy hawk, and yes, I think sometimes War Is The Answer.
Obama: “I’m not antiwar. I’m against stupid wars” (Like little Georgie’s invasion of Poland – especially in light of Ron Suskind having two CIA officials on the record about the forgery of the letter regarding the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection, reminiscent of how Adolf put five Dachau inmates in Polish uniforms, drugged them, then shot them near a German radio station on the Polish border, thus giving him his casus belli in 1939). I’d find this more believable were you not one of the standard-issue Hollywood service-avoiders (left and right) – said as someone who knows first-hand what Churchill meant about the exhilaration that comes from “being shot at to no effect.”
I am pro gay marriage.
See above regarding other heresies. Forget dark alleys, stay well away from dark streets. I say this as your friend who wants only the best for you.
I am pro school vouchers.
Despite a 20 year record of not working everywhere it’s been tried????
I am against affirmative action.
Of course you are – give me my white skin privilege anytime. There is not one non-white anybody in Hollywood who didn’t have to overcome guys like you – 70 years ago and yesterday. (Said as a white boy who was trading shots with the KKK in Mississippi 3 months after returning from Vietnam, down in Sunflower County)
I am pro legalization of marijuana, although my personal drug of choice is the occasional single malt, or in my weaker moments, Doritos.
See comments above regarding your heresies.
I am pro death penalty
I love how “conservatives” believe that government fucks up everything it touches – except death penalty sentences passed against poor people of any race. Government gets it right there every time, eh?
After reading tcinla’s post I was struck yet again by the mean-spirited, humorless nature of the attacks so many on the left stoop to these days to avoid debating issues.
While tcinla claims to be someone who knows first-hand what Churchill meant about the exhilaration that comes from “being shot at to no effect.” (is Hollywood really that dangerous for screenwriters these days?) he/she might benefit from another Churchill quote when considering Bush’s actions in the current WOT: “One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!”
I’m hoping that Republicans will rediscover the art of using humor in political ad campaigns, and the Paris Hilton ad seems to be a small step in the right direction. For more on this:
http://nymag.com/news/imperialcity/49124/
I’m REALLY looking forward to AN AMERICAN CAROL (Craig, if memory serves, you mentioned years ago that David Zucker was working on this) and I hope it will have a positive impact on the current campaign. I’m guessing that some liberals (particularly those who take themselves far too seriously) might not enjoy this movie!
http://weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=15385&R=13BA92D4A8
Gary Cameron
Gary Cameron:
David did write and direct the movie. I haven’t seen it yet, though.
Apropos of nothing, it happens that I agree with you on exactly 11 out of 11 bullet points in your original post. Guess maybe there’s something in the water back there in our hometown.
Aside, that is, from the reverse-osmosis and UV light resistant particulates of toxic waste that fall like invisible flurries of death from somewhere in the vicinity of Secaucus.
More info on An American Carol and some blacklisting threats made against Hollywood conservatives:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/david-zucker-commits-hollywood-treason/
And here’s the trailer, with an, er, interesting introduction from one of the cast:
http://www.slashfilm.com:80/2008/08/15/david-zuckers-an-american-carol-movie-trailer/
Gary, thanks for those links. The first one reminds me of the saying, “You know you’re over the target when you start taking flak.”
The trailer looked very good. This could be a hit along the lines of Team America: World Police. I’m amazed that it’s getting distribution before the general election — I’d have thought that someone would have pulled strings to keep that from happening (but I’m paranoid that way).
Who cares.
You sounded like a liberal and those who attacked you like conservatives. Just goes to show you that we all tend to latch on to whatever rhetoric fits our particular POV at the particular moment in time.
Too often character assassination is the preferred method of debate. No one fights on the merits anymore.
Conservatives infiltrating Hollywood?
http://www.observer.com/2008/arts-culture/hollywood-infidel?page=0%2C0