2013-06-01

Why Are Liberals So Rude to the Right?

This article brings up an interesting question and makes some good points, but I sure don't like its conclusion. It calls for more civility from liberals toward conservatives, but the writer forgets that it is rude to kill millions of people, rude to steal their resources, rude to destroy the environment, rude to fleece taxpaying citizens, etc. When someone voted for Bush Jr a second time, or voted for McCain or Romney, they were committing an act of rudeness that would persist for decades and result in immense suffering for millions of people. It's not like cutting me off in traffic or stealing my parking place at the supermarket or interrupting me in the middle of a sentence, something that's over in a moment.

After becoming aware of how Bush Jr and his administration twisted language, lied, and manipulated the public in order to create a "war" against a pathetically weak and broken country (which happened to be sitting atop vast pools of oil), a country that had nothing to do with the 19 Saudis who supposedly perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, to have voted for him a second time was an act of profound rudeness. I would go further and say it was an incremental war crime, each Bush vote a grain of sand weighing down a lever that re-opened the White House door to a bona fide criminal, a mass murderer and thief.


My Libertarian friend Tony of course will argue that I was just as rude to vote for the war criminal Barak Obama. But that wouldn't be fair. There were no good choices in 2008, but there were a lot of less-crappy choices that at least weren't acts of BLATANT rudeness. When I voted for Obama the first time, he wasn't yet a war criminal. McCain, who supported 95 percent of Bush's policies, represented the status quo, the elite .001 percent, not we the people. He was the chosen figurehead for the most dangerous and destructive enemy facing our nation: the transnational oligarchs who now rule and oppress us. So to actually have voted FOR that clown was profoundly rude and selfish, not to mention stupid and evil. But to have voted for Ron Paul or Obama or not to have voted at all--those were at least tries at ameliorating a bad situation that was statistically guaranteed to happen if some action wasn't taken. And while I have zero respect for non-voters, at least they didn't (directly) have blood on their hands from choosing one of the two corporate-stooge war criminals set out for us in a rigged election, an election, it has now become clear, the elites couldn't lose.


By my own arguments, though, Tony would have some grounds to be rude to me for voting for Obama the second time. Still, it was only voting for Romney that was BLATANTLY rude, because Romney was so blatantly emblematic of everything that is wrong in our world today. Romney the billionaire was a symbol for capital being more valuable than people. If given a choice between Nixon and Stalin, anybody in their right mind would chose Nixon.


Should we exhibit our best manners to rapists? To thieves? To murderers? For thousands of years humans have shamed, shunned, and made fun of bad rude humans.