I wish this wasn't so true.

[madbaker]

"More than any other election in recent memory, this one reminds me of Henry Adams' observation that politics is the systematic organization of hatreds.

"The left-wing political road rage directed at George W. Bush for being dumb and lying about the war reminds me of nothing so much as the right-wing obsessive invective directed at Bill Clinton for being smart and lying about sex. Rush Limbaugh versus Michael Moore, and let the man nursing the most unrequited rage win. The DRAMA and spectacle of the election will be fascinating to watch, but novelists, even more than actors, should be political agnostics."
-Richard Dooling

What I'm reading: Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning... Was the Command Line

Comments

[scendan.livejournal.com]

I agree with how sad it is that all this is based around hate.

However, just to prove myself a total (if admitted) hypocrite...it's not the same. Lying about sex is bad, and stupid, and doubly TRIPLY stupid to do so IN office, UNDER oath.

But the people hurt by it were him, his wife, his daughter, and the person he cheated with.

And it was freaking embarassing all around.

Lying about the war? Come on, you've got to admit that lying systematically about the reasons for invading, preemptively, another country in which many deaths are involved on both sides...that's a lot worse than lying about a blow job or twenty.

Lying about your affair? That's tacky, cheap, stupid, and fifteen other kinds of gross.

Lying in order to take us into war? With fatalities? That's far far more serious.

So...no. I don't think I'm one of the "hateful ones." I think I've made a real effort to listen to both sides, in the debates and otherwise, and to think about what those sides are saying (and in Bush's case, what they've been saying over the past 4 years.) I'm not screaming to have him put in jail, or impeached (although the fact that he's not gone through the proceedings over the war, and Clinton did over lying under oath about sex is ridiculous), or hung up by his thumbs.

But I do want him the hell out of office, you betcha.

Is that hate? I think it's the result of looking carefully at the record of the current president, and finding it severely lacking.

*shrug*

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

1) Clinton lied under oath. That is perjury, and is illegal. Should he have been impeached and/or removed from office? That has been argued to death and I don't care to repeat it.

2) Did Bush lie to go to war? Different argument. Personally, I think he was guilty of many things, such as not planning for anything other than the optimum outcome - absolutely. But deliberately lying (a la Gulf of Tonkin incident)? I don't think so.

The facts that have come out since the invasion are significantly different from what was "known" at the time. People can, and should, argue about the interpretation of these facts; but judging by hindsight is invalid.

But anyway...

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

The thing I liked about the way Dooling put this: Bush drives much of the left barking, frothing batshit. They cannot believe how any sane person could possibly support him given his character flaws, outright lying, smarminess, etc.

Nearly the exact same thing was said by the right when Clinton was in office.

I'd also argue that this entry (http://www.livejournal.com/users/scendan/228779.html) shows a bit more mouth froth than balance... 'course, I don't count myself on either the left or the right so I'm differently biased.

[scendan.livejournal.com]

1. Yes, he did lie under oath, and that is perjury and illegal. Yup, yup, yup. All true, all bad. I think you and I have discussed this before and agreed we agreed on that aspect. Obviously, my stand is that it was a witch hunt, in spite of the fact he made a grievous error in personal judgement and should not have been impeached and certainly not removed from office. But that's my stand...doesn't have to be yours. :)

2. We can agree to disagree. I think there is a lot of evidence that he lied deliberately--or, barring that, high-up members of his administration lied and he was too stupid to notice or stop it. That's pretty damned bad. It's certainly true that they continuously and continually keep attempting to inform the public that there was a link between 9/11 and Iraq, in spite of all findings to the contrary, and also initially blocked nearly all (if not ALL, I'd have to check my sources) attempts to get to the facts behind the 9/11 attacks.

To me, I find mucking with the facts in the case of 9/11 or a war an extremely upsetting prospect--and certainly within the realm of criminal.

Again and again, for me, what it comes down to is this: One president lied, under oath, about what he did with his penis. One president REFUSED to speak under oath about 9/11, tried to block an investigation into the handling of it, and his administration has consistently, for over a year, misrepresented the situation in Iraq to the American people including at times in which it has been shown the administration knew that what they were saying didn't jibe with the information they had.

World of difference. Vast world of difference.

You say judging by hindsight is invalid. Yes, it is. Except that there's a fair amount of evidence these days that what is hindsight for us wasn't for the administration--that they knew, going in, that what they were spinning for us and the rest of the world was not representative of what they actually knew or suspected at the time was the true situation in Iraq.

Anyway...I'm going to back up and cool off. This is, after all, your LJ and not mine. I don't want to offend on your turf and hope I haven't come off offensively.

Re: But anyway...

[scendan.livejournal.com]

*raises eyebrow*

Well, as I said in that entry you cite, I was employing black humor and called myself a potential "alarmist."

So...um. Ok, if you consider that frothing, I can't argue against your opinion on that. I merely point out that I was not stating that I believed beyond a doubt that it was going to happen. I simply stated that my darkest fears were something like that COULD happen, and that the administration had lost my faith to such a degree that my fears could encompass that was depressing indeed.

And further, the fact that it was then SAID by the administration (and quickly retracted) that elections might need to be "delayed" (after I posted that, by the way), implies to me that my "frothing" speculation was not necessarily all that far off.

Did I think that the elections would be canceled or that it would be totally orchestrated by the White House? No. I was using it as a way of showing how, no matter how often I tell myself I won't be shocked by things the administration does and SURELY they won't do X (whatever X is)...they sooner or later seem to end up doing precisely whatever that "X" is that worries me.

Anyway, just trying to clarify what you termed unbalanced and frothy.

I think I sometimes get preachy and very worked up...but I always try to remain rational in the midst of my worked-up-ness.

:)

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

I'm not offended, and I wasn't actually trying to wind you up. I've been known to thrust a stick into a hornet's nest on occasion to watch the furious buzzing, but I wasn't flame-baiting here.

The original point of the post was to point out that the furious arm-waving on the Left against Bush is virtually identical to the Right's four years ago vs. Clinton. I thought that the author said it far better than I could. And no, I don't think "hate" is too strong a word for what is (and was) expressed on each side.

The fact that we detoured so far from the intent of the post may validate the thesis!

[scendan.livejournal.com]

It could. *grin* I agree that there's a lot of arm-waving on both sides...the thing I stuck on is that, frankly, I think that the arm-waving is more justified on the Left, this time around.

Not always. Just...this time around.

There have been ample times I can think of when that's not the case.

But with this President...yeah. I think Bush is far more of a bad deal than Clinton at his willy-wagging lying worst.

So...that's why I reacted as I did. But by the same token, your point is valid. We'll get further, all of us together, if we can actually try to listen to each other and not just scream and yell. And there's a lot of that on both sides right now.

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

This guy is talking apples and oranges. I know we disagree about the severity of Clinton's issues, but really ... the difference between lying about sex, and leading us to war (with how many Americans dead, not to mention the numbers of Iraqis and everyone else?) under false pretenses ... (and seriously, if you know anything about Bush's agenda when he went into office, you will know he NEEDED to go to war for whatever stupid-shit masculine/dick-headed reason he had ... read any book by one of the folk who were on his cabinet that he later fired and you will see that there is lots of evidence showing this). Anyway, my point is that we're talking VERY different things here, and there is no way you can really compare the two.

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

No, he's not.
Re-read the original post. Heck, read the commentary between scendan and myself.

"Bush drives much of the left barking, frothing batshit. They cannot believe how any sane person could possibly support him given his character flaws, outright lying, smarminess, etc.

Nearly the exact same thing was said by the right when Clinton was in office."

This is not comparing misdeeds of the President (or lack thereof). It's comparing blind hatred of said person. And it's expressed in markedly similar terms.

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

I think you are partly incorrect: this is not always "blind" hatred, it is informed horror. The more you actually learn about this Administration, the worse it looks, and the more cause you have for outrage. (I'm not really a "lefty," but I despise this Administration for its dishonesty and arrogance; and I truly do not understand what has happened to the Republican Party.)

The analogy is, I think, superficial. It presumes that there are not real underlying differences - of magnitude and of meaning - between the two situations. But there are; the anti-Bush feeling is not driven purely by ideology or even by personal attributes.

Part of the problem is that news reporters seem to feel that they have to appear unbiased, so they give the impression that there are two valid sides to every issue - even when it is transparently obvious that one side is being deceitful, or lying outright. It's glaringly obvious in the reporting on the debates, but it permeates all reporting since 9/11. Jon Stewart recently pointed this out...