Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Once in a while - not often, since I and almost all my friends are solidly on the left, but once in a while - someone's comments have made me feel that I'm too far to the left, that I've been listening to an echo chamber too much, that I should give the other side the benefit of the doubt.

This is why I can't do that. Because as far as I can tell, about 80 to 90 percent of Bush supporters think like this shitstain. From the "We’ve won. Winning means not having to say you’re sorry," to the "If anyone needs to work to 'bring the country together' it’s those on the left who have divided it so badly," to the "My life’s goal is to see the Democratic Party virtually obliterated and left as a rump of people like Stephanie Herseth who both mostly agree with us anyways and are easy on the eyes," to the final "Those who didn’t support Bush can go and perform a certain anatomically impossible act. They lost, now they can sit in the back of the bus."

Winning is more important than doing the right thing. Blaming everything that ever has gone wrong in the world on some bogeyman called "the left". Racism, sexism and simply assholery masquerading as the real egalitarianism. Cooperation and diplomacy only being used because they can't get away with violence. And either people like that make up the vast majority of the right, or the compassionate conservative majority is too apathetic or ignorant to stop these un-American fascists from representing them.

This isn't anywhere near an exact quote, but I believe my senator Jim Jeffords said something like this when he left the Republican party: "I didn't move left from the Republican party. They slid right out from under me." If a lot more Republicans don't make the same choice over the next four years, then this country is fucked. Plain and simple.