Here's a thing of beauty, a very overheated Kosnik jeremiad:
In many ways why we fail to successfully oppose the republican illogic train is because we so utterly and completely fail to understand how it really works.Be grateful -- I've spared you most of it.We counter their claims with logic and facts and are amazed when blank states are returned to us. We argue real world results, cause and effect, we bring up their claims from three or four years ago and show them how nothing they predicted came true, and they just stare, uncomprehending and blank. We speak with logic, and they hear nothing....
Why do they embrace failed policies so utterly and completely? Because failure/pain is better than the coldness of rational thought.....
Theirs is a mentality built on extreme emotion. Lurid intense passions that must constantly be stoked or they're left with that horrible and deflated feeling of everyday normalcy. Of cold rationality....
This is why republicans need to constantly scare themselves.... They define themselves exclusively by what they are against.
They define themselves by what they hate....
So whereas we continue to apply the logical approach of policy decisions that are "beneficial" and "not beneficial" we might as well be talking Greek to them. They see none of this logic or real world cause and effect....
We must argue from a place of emotional fervor, just as they have.... You can only out-emotion them into submission.... Facts, real world results, are all secondary.
Several things strike me about this reverie:
- Our guy has the usual merit-class contempt for the opposition -- "we" are the party of "cold rationality," the party of people who did really well on the SAT. "They" are the party of irrationality and emotion.
- "They define themselves by what they hate" -- this may be true of the Republicans, but it's certainly true, in spades, of Kosniks.
- The way to defeat them is to become just like them. We have met the enemy, and they are -- no, scratch that, we must be them.
Comments (7)
Absolutely amazing. Except for the last part of this quoted dialogue, these are the very things I've said over and over about the "anybody but Bush" crowd in 2004. Driven by their hatred and fear of Bush, they tenaciously cling to the delusion that the Democratic Party is the solution, despite reason and all evidence to the contrary.
However, I still believe that emotional arguments won't do the trick. Of course, some you will NEVER reach. They've insulated themselves from reality so completely that no argument - rational, emotional or otherwise - can reach them. But even for those who are more reasonable but have yet to see the Democrats for what they are, you can only open the door for them and show them what's on the other side. You can't force them through.
Posted by Paladin | June 3, 2006 8:44 AM
Posted on June 3, 2006 08:44
Holy John Hoyt! I wonder what it's like to be thatthat
Posted by AlanSmithee | June 3, 2006 12:36 PM
Posted on June 3, 2006 12:36
"They define themselves by what they hate"
the daily dose
has what ??
shared rage ????
vs what ???
the yokel la la's
lonesome rage ???
road rage vs trail rage ??/
Posted by jsp | June 3, 2006 12:53 PM
Posted on June 3, 2006 12:53
It's kind of magical, though, to witness that class is irrelevant unless peddled to us in the appropriate context, with the appropriate code words.
Posted by ms_xeno (fka alsis39.9) | June 3, 2006 3:33 PM
Posted on June 3, 2006 15:33
another xeno paradox :
"It's kind of magical, though, to witness that class is irrelevant unless peddled to us in the appropriate context, with the appropriate code words"
and the prefered gradient is income
my income class
middle income ...
middle class
and middle unlike bottom and top
can widen or shrink
to the needs of the self definer
nice metric if you want one big muddle klass
Posted by jsp | June 3, 2006 5:50 PM
Posted on June 3, 2006 17:50
There's something like a black hole at the managerial locus of the parties. It sucks all the sense, sense of humor and eventually the efficacy out of people who get too close. Over the past six years, I've been appalled by the way wingnuts and lib'ruls have come to so closely ape each others' modes of expression. Attempts at reconciling allegiance to organizations which have, as one of their main functions, thwarting action on the principles they're supposed to uphold can really ruin people.
Posted by J. Alva Scruggs | June 3, 2006 6:29 PM
Posted on June 3, 2006 18:29
jalvaism
"thwarting action on the principles they're supposed to uphold can really ruin people"
yup
Posted by js paine | June 3, 2006 8:44 PM
Posted on June 3, 2006 20:44