[MD] political harmony

[david buchanan]

Arlo said:...the entrenched will ...continue to stir vitriol and hate and fear from both sides of the discourse, and I see the bitter divide in America becoming even more bitter. Americans no longer disagree with their neighbors, the fear and hate their neighbors, they are "the enemy", a threat, a problem, the root of all evil and problems in the world. Sean Hannity's tagline yesterday was "America Under Siege". Under siege? Are the 50%+ who voted Obama NOT part of "America"? They are "an outside threat" to the "real America" of Palin's divisive portrayal of the only real American's being those who agree with her. Democrats like Murtha fair no better by ridiculing those who'd disagree with him as rednecks. And it is with this rhetoric we will likely live for quite sometime.dmb says:I appreciate your generosity to some extent but it's wrong to assign equal blame to "both sides". To do so would be a case of "grotesque even-handedness". Nobody said McCain was an unreal American, a Marxist, a Socialist, a terrorist, a pal to terrorists, a secret Islamist, an Arab or any such thing. Nobody screamed for McCain's death. There is nobody on the left who can be compared to Hannity, Limbaugh or the dozens of other such hateful radio talkers. There was no internet whispering campaign that accused McCain of being the anti-Christ and nobody said he wanted to sexualize kindergarteners. It is simply a fact that the Republican Party's "southern strategy", which they've been using for at least 40 years, is a divide and conquer tactic. That's what's so disturbing about Palin's "real America" comments. That is code for "white America". It is covert racism. And so Murtha's "redneck" comment at least has the virtue of being accurate, if not polite. If you look at the percentage of uneducated whites who voted for McCain and at the states (Nearly all of them were southern and/or rural), Murtha was only being rude about an obvious demographic fact. And wouldn't you say that it's entirely appropriate to be angry about such a divisive tactic? Does it divide us to complain about division? No, they can't reasonably be compared, much less equated. And I'd add that we live in a social world that centers around competition and we go to war at the drop of a hat. We spent countless hours entertaining ourselves with football, big time wrestling and movies about tough-guy vigilantes. We're surrounded by all kinds of of aggression and yet we're supposed to be "civil" in our political discourse? That's crazy. That is some kind of Stockholm syndrome or battered spouse syndrome. Isn't more reasonable to fight back against this kind of abuse, this kind of culture, with something like a mature and well-reasoned argument? We don't want to get down in the gutter with them or simply throw back a bunch of equally outrageous insults, but I think it's high time liberals grow a pair and stand up to these bullies.Just like Obama did.It works. 
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