The Democratic National Convention is going on in Denver, and I’m really not at all interested in what’s going on inside the convention center: it’s a bunch of people saying feel-good platitudes to get themselves elected, all studiously avoiding saying anything substantial that might annoy a voter. It’s much more interesting to see what’s going on outside the convention, where people are trying to make their real opinions heard. That is actually a bit troubling.
The Coalition of Secular Voters protested the interfaith alliance garbage. This demonstration went well, but was largely ignored, of course — the democratic leadership has their sights set on yet another faith-based political experience.
The primary reason that we chose to demonstrate at the Interfaith Gathering was because repeated appeals had been made to the organizers of the event to include a non-religious speaker among the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist speakers, but all of these appeals were turned down. In addition, the organizer, Leah Daughtry stated, “Democrats have been, are and will continue to be people of faith – and this interfaith gathering is proof of that.”
Not only is this statement factually untrue, but it is also highly offensive to non-religious members of the Democratic Party, of which there were over 8 million in 2001, probably over 10 million now. A much more appropriate statement could have been, “the Democratic Party welcomes people of faith,” which should certainly be the case. Any major political party in America today should be inclusive of both religious and non-religious members.
What’s the harm, you might say. Well, here’s the harm: by prioritizing superstitious ignorance over evidence-based reality, the Democratic Party is sliding away from the positions that actually motivate my support.
What I found most interesting about the Interfaith Service is that the values of many of the speakers that were hosted at the service were at odds with the Democratic Party platform. One of the main speakers at the event, for example, stated that he was opposed to legalized abortion. I found it interesting that the Democratic Party would not host a non-religious speaker who may have fully agreed with every plank of the party platform but they were happy to host religious speakers who spoke in opposition to the party platform. To me this indicates that this religious outreach could have far reaching effects on the party, with changes to the party’s core positions. Other speakers spoke out in favor of school vouchers for religious private schools, etc. It is also notable that legislation in opposition to teaching evolution in public schools and in favor of allowing the teaching of “alternatives to evolution” has been sponsored and supported by religious Democrats in several states, including Texas, Florida, and Louisiana over the past year. Does all of this signify a significant shift within the Democratic party?
A party that kowtows to the conventions of the conservative religious is not a party that will get my vote.
Even worse, a party that acts in defiance of the principles of a free democratic state is anathema. Some demonstrations were not treated at all well. I got a letter from Nathan Acks that recounts his experiences…and it is not reassuring at all.
Last night at approximately 7:30pm I was arrested as part of a mass arrest at 15th & Court and charged with disrupting a permitted assembly and blocking public streets. A third charge – throwing rocks and missiles – was listed on my pre-printed ticket, but the crossed out.
At the time I was not protesting. I was acting as an observer for the People’s Law Project, and was dressed in a button shirt and a neon-green baseball cap stating that I was acting as a representative of the National Lawyers Guild. I followed the protestors out of Civic Center Park, but remained on the sidewalk until pushed by riot police into the street. At no time during the abortive march did any legal observer, or any marcher that I have spoken to, observe any destruction of property, any thrown objects, or ANY ORDER TO DISPERSE BY THE POLICE.
At some point during my visit to Gitmo on the Platte, the compact flash card I had been carrying that contained photographic documentation of the protest disappeared. This included pictures of the badges of some of the officers involved, images of a marcher OBEYING police orders being shot with pepper spray point-blank in the eyes while trying to retreat (when I was hauled away he was sitting with a street medic, and I could hear him sobbing again and again, “I can’t see…”), and photographs of a second protestor who was shot three times by what appeared to be three separate officers with bean-bag guns while KNEELING, motionless, 15 FEET AWAY, hands outstretched as if in prayer, and wearing nothing but a pair of POCKETLESS shorts.
The arresting police officers – Aurora PD – were uniformly assholes, but the officers from the sheriff’s department who handled us after we arrived at Gitmo on the Platte were professional and sometimes even courteous. However, I know that this was not an experience shared by everyone, and did notice a significant change in attitude when it became apparent that I was functioning as a representative of the National Lawyer’s Guild. My hat had been confiscated from me during the arrest, but one of the officers at the holding facility returned it to me shortly after I arrived. I wore it from that point forward.
At 10:53pm I had posted my own bond. At midnight myself and woman who was also arrested and had been able to make bond were released. We were the first two people to leave. I hitched a ride back with her friends, gave a video interview when I arrived back at the People’s Law Project offices, and helped man the phones for the rest of the night, fielding calls from arrestees and worried friends and relatives.
At least as of last night, those of us who had been released were returned to the world STILL WEARING THE ZIP CUFFS WE HAD BEEN ARRESTED IN. The police would cut out one of our hands, but leave the the remainder of the cuff on the other hand. When I left the PLP offices this morning at 10am, calls were coming in that folks being released from the courthouse were being hassled by police in riot gear – ON THE STEPS OF THE COURTHOUSE ITSELF – and that more police in riot gear were stopping individuals – some minors – in Civic Center Park and demanding to see photo ID and to be allowed to search any bags they were carrying. Many of these officers – including many who made the arrests last night – ARE NOT WEARING VISIBLE BADGES, or otherwise have their names and badge numbers obstructed. THIS IS ILLEGAL.
The way that the arrests were handled, the way that we were released still in zip cuffs, the way that bystanders are being hassled today, all represent a continuation of a pattern of intimidation that began before the convention and was already legally questionable. At least some police actions today have now fully crossed that line.
I will not be intimidated.
I’ve slept as much as I can, and am about to leave again, return to the streets, and again take up my position as legal observer. If I am arrested again, then so be it. I have the resources right now to overcome this – something that many others do not. And I have a job to do.
I almost closed my last e-mail with a saying from Frank Herbert’s Dune that has its roots in modern Arabic. I decided that doing so would make the letter too melodramatic (something that several of you commented on anyway), but today I have no qualms. If the explanation I have seen is correct, then it feels very appropriate. I say it now not for myself, but for those I was arrested with, those who stood up and sang as the riot police called in, and those who will also refuse to be intimidated and return to the streets today.
Long live the fighters!
Nathan
Where is this country going? We seem to be on the road to mindlessness and tyranny. We are descending into madness.
There’s your proof of the “tolerance” and “acceptance” of your “peace-loving” and “peaceful” religidioty.
“We are descending into madness.”
Madness? This. Is. America!
/sarcasm
Err, the second ‘your’ should be a ‘their’ …
Where is this country going? We seem to be on the road to mindlessness and tyranny.
Oh no — this is all about respect. Protesting, challenging, marching people are being rude and hurting a lot of feelings. It’s all so negative. If people can’t be nice, they’ll have to be made to be nice. We need a calm, harmonious culture where people behave and express themselves quietly, and in private, lest they be insensitive to others who feel differently. They shouldn’t hold on to their anger, it’s not healthy.
Big Brother is not as dangerous as Big Mommy.
@ Richard: *shouldn’t have laughed as hard as I did*
I just listened to a podcast this morning where this was a news item. “Bleh,” I say. “Bleh.”
And you know what they say: “If momma’s not happy, ain’t nobody happy.”
Seriously, the idea of an overbearing, paranoid “Big Mommy Dearest” who wants to keep us “safe”, sums up America in 2008 perfectly.
Vote independent. Do it for the children.
Why did the seperation of church and state in the USA go?
The Democratic Party seems to be openly stating that membership and/or involvement are conditional on being religious. From which I conclude that it can only politically represent the interests of the religious. That, in my book, is called theocracy. Not least because there is no alternative in the form of the republicans.
Roger Stanyard, British Centre for Science Education.
q: “I’m really not at all interested in what’s going on inside the convention center: it’s a bunch of people saying feel-good platitudes to get themselves elected, all studiously avoiding saying anything substantial that might annoy a voter.”
Bullseye on the political reality of western democracy for at least the last 50 years.
I only caught a snippet, but I was hoping when Hillary said something to the effect of “America for the people….” instead of saying “not America for big corps…” I was hoping she would have said “America for the people and by the people.” S.O.S., more worthless blather from politicians.
Mass protests are just a lousy way to try and make a point in this day and age. They are almost always exercises in nothing more than choir-preaching self-congratulation and butting heads pointlessly with the police, who are rarely the intended audience or care about the issues involved, and whose brutality or professionalism really doesn’t have much to do with anything other than issues of police conduct in general.
It’s not that hard to organize and elect delegates behind particular issues, as Ron Paul’s movement has illustrated. Nor is it that hard to “buy” or arrange media time or space for airing particular issues. Heck: blogs are often better ways of getting the word out about something, and onto the public consciousness, than waving signs in a sea of sign waving.
It’s just a tactic of an older era, which long ago lost its element of originality and special media interest, retaining its popularity amongst (primarily) college students and nostaligic Vietnam-war era protesters because it’s very easy to do and feel gratified about afterwards, regardless of whether the presumable goal (i.e. getting a message to the public or to particular targets) was anywhere near accomplished or not.
This morning I awoke to this news coverage of the faith based meetings at the convention.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080827/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_democrats_faith
I was astonished and dismayed at the ludicrous image this presented. Since Obama has invited in the faith community, it has become clear that each faith has its pet demands, and many are contradictory to each other and the party platform.
They are trying to stuff a dozen alley cats into a bag in hopes of a few million votes. Some trick!
Where did the seperation of church and state in the USA go?
The Democratic Party seems to be openly stating that membership and/or involvement are conditional on being religious. From which I conclude that it can only politically represent the interests of the religious. That, in my book, is called theocracy – not least because there is no alternative in the form of the Republicans.
It is a deadly serious point. The vote accounts for nothing if it is conditional on accepting someone else’s religious opinions.
I don’t care if 99.99999% of the population are religious. The pursuit of life, liberty and happiness includes being free to hold whatever religious opinions we feel comfortable with. Removing that freedom at the ballot box denies democracy.
Roger Stanyard, British Centre for Science Education.
Aren’t these guys supposed to be the good guys?
Or are they just doing this because there is no one left to be disillusioned?
Well, isn’t it obvious? They weren’t in a Free Speech ZoneTM. Had they been, this wouldn’t have happened. It’s all their own fault for not restricting their opinion to a small, out of the way place that won’t distract politicians that require handlers.
Free Speech ZoneTM designated areas are there for everyone’s protection. That way, you know when a cop is going to cuff you in the mouth for deviating from public opinion. Or, as it is designated one foot outside a Free Speech ZoneTM, being un-American.
The alternative – a McCain/Huckabee ticket – could be worse. Much worse. If you want to know where this country is truly headed, watch the movie “Idiocracy”.
Perhaps it would be appropriate to share what I wrote when Obama did a 180 and broke his promise to oppose the FISA bill.
You will have to pardon the bit of woo at the end – it was solely for dramatic effect.
I’d really rather not wake up one day to find that Margaret Atwood was right. She’d almost certainly agree with me too.
As I already commented elsewhere, I think Obama is being extremely ill advised.
This stupid pentecostal minister, Leigh Dauthry, the dems convention CEO, who is the principal responsible for this gross mistake, just doesn’t realise what she’s doing.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jul/19/democrats-party-pentecostal-minister/
If one looks in recent months, t’s clear that the race is getting closer; Obama is losing support (from 48% in June to 46% today, -2%), McCain gaining (from 40% in June to 43% today, +3%).
If one actually analyses where Obama has most lost support amongst all faith/non faith communties, it’s amongst non religious folks, where he lost 8%! (from 67% in June to 59% today). With 16% of registered voters, this basically means that more than 50% of his loss so far (or 1%) has come from non religious folks.
For sure this can be explained by all his pro religious declarations and support for faith based initiatives of the recent months. This last thing will just further decrease his support level amongst this crucially important part of his core support group. Meanwhile Catholics have increased their support +3%, Mainline Protestants remained stable, Evangelicals and other faith groups decreased by 1 to 2%. So all in all, he hasn’t gained any votes from the religious folks, and has lost from the non religious ones.
If this continues and his support decreases to 50% amongst non religious potential voters, which is very predictable, compared to 70% which he could have easily achieved, he will have lost more than 3% support on the national level. Enough to change the result of this election.
http://people-press.org/report/443/presidential-race-draws-even
So, I really wonder if Obama is seeing this. And what this Rev.Dauthry is doing is just going to decrease even more Obama’s lead, who knows, this really stupid mistake might even cost him the election.
From yesterday’s Democracy Now!:
“As Democratic Convention Kicks Off, Massive Security Presence Clamps Down on Dissent in Denver”
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/26/as_democratic_convention_kicks_off_massive
Organize a meeting of superstitious people in the party, exclude the unsuperstitious based upon the premise that the party is superstitious, and cite the meeting as proof of that. Brilliant.
I find those feel-ggod platitudes and appeals to emotion,patriotism and family values hard to digest,never ever would I vote for these people were I in the US,Id rather not vote at all.
I understand what they are trying to do with all the pandering to the religious,and american values lalala,but it smells foul,it makes me feel slimy,and Id never vote for any of those creeps ever.
And by the way, I haven’t seen or read anywhere the analysis that I just posted in #19. Not in any of the usually pathetic mainstream media, nor at pew forum, where they don’t even seem to pont out this crucially important loss of support Obama is provoking amongst non religious folks.
This apparent blindness might really cost them the election.
On the road to? You’ve been there all along. The only difference now is that they’ve finally gotten around to coming for the affluent middle-class white folks.
There are no Parties in the U.S. that are Left of center, only degrees of Right Wing. The democratic Party has abandoned it’s role as an alternative to the GOP long ago.
There are no Parties in the U.S. that are Left of center, only degrees of Right Wing. The democratic Party has abandoned it’s role as an alternative to the GOP long ago.
Where is this country going? We seem to be on the road to mindlessness and tyranny. We are descending into madness.
It’s been like this for years, you just haven’t been paying attention. Ever since Seattle in ’99 the police have had free rein over protesters, beat and pepper spraying at will. All of the “good” liberals just explained it away as that darn “black bloc” stirring up trouble, but anyone who has protested a major event knows better. The police are out of control.
And even worse than smelling foul and making you feel slimy, it’s evidently not working. The religious folks are not increasing their support (-0.5% of total -2%), and the non religious ones are decreasing drastically (-1.5% of total -2%).
Frighteningly accurate, Sastra. You sum everything up perfectly.
as much as i agree that the democrats are betraying themselves and, well, the country, they’re only following a tried and true method the republicans (about as unchristian a group as one can find this side of beijing) have been using, to win elections they didn’t just steal, for a generation or more now.
it’s either suck up to religion, or never win another election, and frankly, though i can sympathize with pz’s disappointment…the u. s. can’t afford another repulican government, fiscally, or to present internationally as your choice of a governing body.
Obama is treading a dangerous line: by kowtowing to the religious this much, he’s risking losing a significant portion of his voters. Those of his voters who value secularism, regardless of their personal religion, or lack thereof, do not appreciate being snubbed and being pretty much told to get lost.
The logic behind this move is that when the rubber meets the road, godless heathens will have no other choice, but to vote the Dem ticket in November and accept the pandering to the delusioned that goes along with it. Otherwise, we get BushLite for, at least, four more years.
Dammed if you do, damned if you don’t.
Before long, our choices will only be between Republican #1 and Republican #2.
Ever notice during these elections how both candidates move to the right?
This makes me sad inside. I’m so sick of voting for the lesser of two evils, especially when the two evils are starting to look so similar. :(
This has nothing to do with religion or the lack thereof. It’s simply the authoritarian style of government that’s been encouraged for the last eight years.
T
Richard,
I’m just seeing the result of this religious pandering. He’s already lost 8% support from non religious folks without gaining any from the religious ones.
If they continue like this for another 70 days, this might cost him the election.
Right now Obama should be making big anouncements focussed towards the non religious folks and stop this religious pandering. Their current strategy is not going to work in 2008. Not after 8 years of a religious fundamentalist as president.
This should have been the first election ever in American history where religious pandering was not necessary for a secularist dem like Obama to win it.
Negentropyeater: This seems to have become a theme of Obama’s campaign since he began including Hillary’s old advisers. Even since she gave up and they joined his camp, Obama has committed some significant missteps, even beyond the religion point that you made. For instance, his vote on FISA. He cast that vote because of advisers who told him it was necessary to compromise his position on the issue so that he would seem “tough” and by doing so, win votes among those who consider him weak on foreign policy. But this betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of modern U.S. politics. Obama’s supposed weakness in regards to foreign policy is not based on his record or anything he has said; in fact, his well-reasoned views and willingness to include diplomacy in the playbook of the United States has been one of the major factors winning him support among those who dedicate their lives to our interactions with other nations. Far from being a fair critique, it is a partisan talking point; the people who believe it do so because they believe anything that a Republican candidate or right-wing media figure says uncritically.
So, by voting as he did on FISA Obama could not have won many votes at all; the people who say he’s weak on foreign policy are people who are never going to vote for him anyway. What he did do, however, was piss off a significant portion of his support, not only among the Democratic party faithful, but also among those typically Republican voters who had decided to support him out of disgust with Bush’s many un-constitutional acts and general incompetency.
What we have seen since he beat Hillary in the primaries is depressingly familiar. We have seen a Democratic candidate running from his liberal credentials. This is infuriating enough given that it is a tactic which has consistently failed, when being true to one’s liberality has succeeded so wonderfully (Clinton was always pro-abortion, despite what the Republicans said about him as a result and, though it is an insufficient policy today, remember that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was a significant step at the time in that it, for the first time in history, create a way in which homosexuals could legally serve in the armed forces.). What makes it even more frustrating is that the current political climate is as liberal socially and economically as any time in this century, and probably more so.
Obama should not be tacking to the center, but standing on the ground which he alone was smart enough to see that most citizens wanted a candidate to stand on.
Oy! Not quite Chicago, 1968, but close enough.
I still plan on either voting Green or staying home.
It was the jingoistic tone of the 2004 DNC which drove me to my first Green Party meeting out of despair. I still ended up voting for Kerry that year. Not again.
Cops have been taught to think of civilians as the enemy, people you have to keep under control else they bring civilization down and wreck things for everybody. We are the enemy, or else helpless fools who must be kept pent up for our own good.
It’s due in part to the militarization of the police, and in part to the segregation of the police from the community. It is my conclusion that we need to disband professional law enforcement bodies, replacing them with volunteers trained in law, the power of arrest, and working with and in their community. No police departments, no official vehicles, just people working together to maintain the peace and apprehend those who violate the law. Our current model has failed, it’s time to try another.
Everyone migrate to Canada. All the cool people are doing it.
Hussein is the Lesser of Two Evils??!
I beg to differ
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2008/08/our-national-milgram-experiment.html
This shit is crazy!!! And so angering at the same time.
grrr….
Wow, that’s all I needed for my daily dosage of morning insanity.
Further proof that the police haven’t gotten any better in the years since their inherent corruptness has been revealed.
Even if they don’t do things as obvious as when they beat Rodney King anymore, it’s still disgusting.
Bullshit. Obama did not generate the initial excitement by sucking up to religion, neither did Clinton. In fact, all evidence points to Obama’s new-found religiosity either costing him votes or has no influence at all. Sucking up to religion just means that you are willing to ditch your principles for votes, and that your analytical skills are severely lacking such that you would think this might work. It also means that Obama really is just another slimy politician in the pond.
What bothers me is not (so much) that the Dems are pandering to the religious voter, but that they feel a need, real or perceived, to do so. Last presidential “election” was good evidence that somewhere around 50% of our populace is profoundly stupid and superstitious; even now, approval ratings for Bush hover somewhere in the high 20’s/low 30’s. The evangelical sector is loud and demanding; whether their numbers would really change the outcome of this election is questionable, but the Dems don’t want to take that chance. It’s like hearing deafening barking coming from the backyard–do you just hope that it’s an unusually obstreperous chihuahua, or come prepared for a pit bull?
It’s still cowardly. I’m still disgusted. But in my mind it’s more about our country than it is about the election, or the Democrats, or Obama.
As to Dr. Myers’ post, the letter most certainly includes some damning claims, but I’m of the opinion that until evidence that this sort of activity took place is available, it cannot be accepted as the unvarnished truth. Perhaps Dr. Myers’ knows the letter-writer in question personally and trusts him implicitly, but I do not know him and thus cannot approach his claims from any place other than skepticism. The NLG website has no stories of police brutality at the Democratic National Convention, nor have I encountered such claims at any of the other left-leaning sites I tend to visit.
Beyond this, even if the claims are 100% grade-A truth, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Democratic Party is the bad guy in this situation. As some posters have mentioned previously, Cops, particularly riot cops, are dicks. They don’t need the nod from the DNC to bust heads and mace without purpose; all they need is a badge and the knowledge that their boss will back them up, and considering the sort of deference which police are afforded legally these days, 9 out of 10 police officers can rely on that back up when and if IA comes calling. One of the (many) big things that needs doing on a national level in the next presidency is a significant strengthening of police oversight and an audit of the kinds of tactics they are taught to use in the Academies.
By wedding a story of police brutality to a story of the Democratic party courting religious voters, you imply a connection between the two events; you imply that not only is the Democratic party responsible for the behavior of the Denver police force, but also that it is the religious Democrats within the party who are responsible, and you provide no evidence, really, to support either of these claims. I disagree with and disapprove of superstitious hoo-ha as much as anyone here, but what separates us from them is a dispassionate, patient world-view reliant not on breathless, self-aggrandizing emotional appeals, but actual, physical evidence.
Let’s not jump to the conclusion that the Democratic party is just as bad as the Republicans on the word of a single unknown individual and our mutual distastes for the religiously motivated.
Again, Americans can drag the Republicans left, or the Democrats right, or sit it out.
P.S. Welcome to my world. It’s about time.
Should’ve been, could’ve been, but as Julian (36) says, we’ve seen this before. What makes me feel dirty about all this is that I’m still probably going to vote for the guy — even if he came out as a raging born-again evangelical — because the thought of McShame in the oval office makes me and baby Jeebus cry.
What?!?! You mean hes not the Kwisatz Haderach?
Geez people, of course Obama is just another slimy politician. So is McCain, so is Hillary. So was Bush, Kerry, Gore, Clinton, Dole, Bush, Reagan, etc. You dont get on the national stage in this country without being a slimy politician. You dont even get close to it.
But there is another choice. A simpler, more convenient choice. Stay home. Don’t vote. No, I do not recomend it – and this is probably the 3rd worst election in US history for godless people to just not vote. But that’s what Obama’s 8 point loss among the nonreligious will translate into. Staying home is easier than voting. When someone is discouraged, they usually take the easy way out.
Recall that high turnout favours the Democratic party.
me #40, that Video at the end of that link is um… uh…
Wow.
The Bush administration has been the worst that the US has ever suffered through. It has severely damaged the US economy, shredded its international reputation, wasted its military resources, further undermined civil rights, moral standards and democratic institutions, ignored major national disasters, used every opportunity to enrich themselves and their friends, and generally turned the nation into the world’s laughing stock. In a functioning democracy the result would be impeachment for every senior member of the administration, criminal investigations a-go-go, and a special convention of the Republican Party at which it dissolves itself. At this point the number of US citizens willing to vote for the Republicans should be smaller than the membership of an exclusive gentleman’s club. Even in Zimbabwe the only way that Mugabe won the elections was through massive intimidation and fraud. Yet, here we are, ten weeks from the next elections and McCain is close to even with Obama in the polls. Clearly, the US is a profoundly sick society and even if Obama should win it will take a very long time before things become much saner as the rot goes a hell of a lot deeper than one disastrous administration. In fact, I fear that things in the States will get a whole lot worse before people do finally wake up. Eight years ago I decided against looking for an academic position in the US and, instead, went to the EU. We have our own problems and lunatics but everything I have heard or seen since then has shown me that this was the right decision.
Bad: Mass protests are just a lousy way to try and make a point in this day and age. They are almost always exercises in nothing more than choir-preaching self-congratulation and butting heads pointlessly with the police, who are rarely the intended audience or care about the issues involved, and whose brutality or professionalism really doesn’t have much to do with anything other than issues of police conduct in general.
Hmm, I think everyone in the US is missing the point of mass protest and democracy. Mass protest is a threat of the capability of disrupting the smooth functioning of society. That is only possible when it is supported by enough people to actually make it happen, which implies that the government no longer has the consent of the governed — in other words, the democratic process is failing to actually reflect democratic will. That doesn’t necessarily mean a threat of violence, but often it does include that.
Now, if that threat isn’t real, like in almost all protests in the US since the 70s, it’s just to dumb to do and dumb to disrupt through police action. Just see the silliness of the petering out anti-war protests — more fashion shows than anything.
What’s saddest though is that the continual police over-reactions themselves don’t lead to mass protests by us — whether you agree with the protesters or not, there is something terribly wrong in a society that quietly acquiesces to the repression of dissenting voices in the public square. Now your suggestion, Bad, limits free speech to only those with significant funding capability — sometimes good ideas do bubble up from individuals and small groups who can’t yet access enough money to fund themselves through the mass-media. Ron Paulites have money — Libertarianism is backed by some very wealthy backers. I’m sure you don’t mean that repression of free-speech is only a problem if the speakers have money, do you?
Now, I agree with Bad that of course there are alternate courses to take when you are still in the process of building up a minority view point that are still efficacious. But at the point where you are really threatening to make changes, it will require you to show your hand — that the choice is fundamental change or disruption. The ability for that to happen must be protected, or we risk eventually being faced with the disruptions with no warning, no opportunity to compromise.
That killed the Soviet Union. Free speech, it’s not out of kindness — it’s the only reasonable way to construct a stable society.
The problem is that these people can’t seem to be able to think critically. I wonder what’s the % of religious idiots he’s taken on board by now amongst his advisers.
It’s obvious that religious pandering was the wrong thing to do in this election for him to win it.
If they’d look closely, they’d see this :
You basically have 4 groups :
Group 1, 20% of the population, consisting of non relgious folks, Jews and humanists/unitarians.
There he should have gotten at least 70& support without religious pandering. With he can go as low as 50%. Loss : 4 points
Group 2, 42% of the population, consisting of mainline protestants and catholics, where he’ll get more or less the same score between 52 and 53% with or without pandering. At the most get 1 or 2 points more with the pandering. Gain : 1 point
Group 3, 8% of the population, members of historically black churches. Here the same, he gets 90% with or without
Group 4, 28% of the population, evangelicals, mormons and jehowa’s witnesses, where he gets below 25% without religious pandering, and where with, he could have hoped for small gain, but actually doesn’t.
So this religious pandering and all these stupid mistakes obviously isn’t going to work out for him. It’ll end up costing him a crucial 3 points, and if McCain can gain 5 points from his usual pandering from Group 4, that’s enough to make this election the same as Bush/Gore, a stroke of luck (or something else).
As a Dutch person (First time I comment, but a long time reader) I find it weird that the two leading parties in America still have people who are supposed to be intellectuals voting for their candidates. The whole world can see that both leading parties in America are totally messed up and populated by corrupted idiots. (apart from a handful of exemptions that is)
It really distresses me that the overall intellectual level of the American people is at such poor level as it directly effects my life outside of the USA. The USA has brought us the war on terror, the war on drugs and countless other counter-productive policies which they enforce upon the world surrounding them, I often wish that the US population would become a little smarter and start ignoring the two parties, after al they have a track record of deceiving their voters and being corrupted to the bone.
From where I’m looking at it the Republican and Democratic parties are like Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola, both basically the same stuff with different labels, with the difference that it’s not cola they are selling, but snake oil.
Wake up Americans, PLEASE, for the world’s sake.
The American News Project and the Huffington Post have some video footage from the protest which can be seen here: http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1417423198/bctid1753232390
It’s very disconcerting.
(I got the video from Matthew Good’s blog http://www.matthewgood.org/ )
If it costs you something, and gains you nothing, perhaps it isn’t a good idea. Attempting to recruit religious voters doesn’t have to work as well (there are more of them), but if it doesn’t work, then you weaken your own base – even if the ones you alienate don’t vote for McCain, they might vote for Nader, or no one. How good is it if you have to sell out your principles to win, and still don’t win – even if you win, your core /soul/self-respect is gone, and if you don’t you have nothing.
I think the bigger question for me is why the Democrats need to avoid substantive issues. On some issues (FISA, the Patriot Act) they are actively complicit with the problems of the Bush Administration, but on others (the economy, Iraq(in part), suppression of science that doesn’t say what W wants), they have been in the right. When your opponents have destroyed much of what makes America good while betraying their principles, I would have thought that you might emphasize those points. Avoiding them seems to hint that you have nothing useful to contribute and something to hide. The only thing worse would be to adopt the tactics of the morally bankrupt to follow them into the abyss – and suppressing people who say things that disagree with the religious image you wish to put forth seems to fit that description well.
I can’t trust the Republicans, and can’t vote for them. What worries me is if the Democrats imitate them to get elected, and depend on the avoidance of real issues to do so. We are where we are because we have chosen to ignore our financial and moral realities to live in a fantasy (even before the evangelical Christians took over the Republican Party – Reagan?) and seem desperate to avoid having to awaken. If the Democrats are also willing to ignore substantive issues, they become (or have already become) complicit in our potential demise, and make it far more likely. A failing world power with lots of nukes and aggression, a large ego and sense of entitlement, and no grasp of reality is a recipe for disaster (though global warming will slow to a crawl for a while – that’s something).
I have to agree with Richard #31. Better a Democrat, which has traditionally supported our right not to be religious, than a Republican, which has been hijacked by christian extremists. Unfortunately many republics still associate being religious with being moral. So Atheists will have to make a choice between the party that excludes us a little and the party that excludes us a lot and thinks we’re bad. Sort of like homosexuals.
Well, you have degrees of sliminess, ranging from JFK to Reagan. Obama is clocking in at about the same sliminess as McCain right now. But recall that his whole platform is that he was going to bring a new kind of politics to the US. Regardless of whether anyone believed him, at least I wouldn’t have felt so unclean knowing that I have to vote for the guy.
glchmst: Bullshit. Obama did not generate the initial excitement by sucking up to religion, neither did Clinton. In fact, all evidence points to Obama’s new-found religiosity either costing him votes or has no influence at all. Sucking up to religion just means that you are willing to ditch your principles for votes, and that your analytical skills are severely lacking such that you would think this might work. It also means that Obama really is just another slimy politician in the pond.
You do know how the US system works, no? There are certain untouchables — God, the flag, mother and apple pie. If you touch those lines publicly, you will immediately have a rabid attack on you – not from the “voters”, but from the establishment media.
Just see M. Obama’s comment that she was proud of her country for the first time. It wasn’t that “regular” people cared per se – it was that this was drummed over and over into people’s head, it created what is called “a narrative” that M. Obama is a black nationalist.
If you don’t court the religious, you’d immediately see stories that imply that you’re a Satanic communist who plans to expropriate all churches and send Christians to concentration camps. And folks will believe it, because they assume that “everyone else believes it”. Just see the attempt on Obama’s comment that many folks cling to religion because they are bitter. By itself, everyone knows that it is true – people become more attached to religion to help them cope with suffering. Nothing that any pastor won’t say — but it became part of a narrative that Obama is part of the secular humanist/communist/Jewish conspiracy (Hollywood liberal elite! Eats arugula!) to destroy the good, salt of the earth, Christian people.
I assume you’d prefer politicians who were saintly and hoisted themselves on a crucifix for the soldiers, rather than the most reasonable but successful gangster we can find? Politics is the art of the possible, doncha know.
This seems to me to represent a real cultural shift– and a very scary one. There are always people who try to join the police because they want to abuse authority and ‘put the boot in’. A healthy police force will identify them and keep them out– and when they slip through, it will punish or fire them. But it seems that abuse of authority is now the norm, from the Whitehouse to the streets (and at many other levels too, from abusive, greedy CEOs to abusive priests to attack-dog administrators). It’s a very dangerous trend, and I hope it reverses itself soon; today, I fear, Watergate would simply blow over. Can you imagine today’s press being outraged about, and reporting thoroughly on something as ‘trivial’ as Nixon’s ‘plumbers’?
@#4
It is your kind of gutless whining that has is in the situation we are today. Poeple like you stick your head in the sand and do nothing while raving fanatics and the incompetend cronies that support them ripe our society out from under us. Freedom is not easy, it is constantly under threat from the power mad and greedy among us and the only way to keep these people from taking away everything we hold dear is to raise our voice in etarnal and fervent protest. Trying to muzzle pollical speach with pointless benalities about respect is a pathetic plow by would be oppressors who are bidding there time untill they can employ more traditiona meand of tyranny.
Intolerance of political protesters is not the fault of the Democratic Party. It certainly isn’t a result of inviting religious speakers to be involved in the convention. Let’s put this blame squarely where it belongs: on law enforcement and the lack of oversight of law enforcement. When the people entrusted with public safety imperil public safety, it’s an abuse of power issue. This is a law enforcement issue, plain and simple. The same bullshit will be happening at the Republican convention. And we have the nerve to tsk-tsk China for not allowing demonstrations during the Olympics.
Bottom line is, Denver-area police officers got all that boss riot gear and a big rush of testosterone, and by God, someone is going to get their head bashed in. They didn’t spend all that money to sit idly by and watch peaceful demonstrations for crying out loud. I always find it interesting that police “train” to contain a problem using the greatest force possible. Maybe they should also train for a little restraint. They seem to have grotesquely poor skills in that.
Don’t lay this issue on the Democratic Party. It ain’t their doing. While all the blowhards may be patting themselves on the back inside the building, they have very little control over the egomaniacs in blue outside.
Richard,
Before ? I don’t think so.
You basically have 3 factors which make religious pandering frankly idiotic for a guy like Obama to do :
1. the very significant growth of non religious folks since the first Clinton election, where they now represent a very significant chunk of the dems potential electorate, and where pandering is clearly stupid.
2. the 8 years of a Christofacist evangelical president which make religious pandering a mute issue for Catholics and mainline protestants.
3. And the tremedous support he’s going to get anyway from the members of historically black churches, who didn’t need the pandering to be convinced to vote for him.
I don’t think any previous election had this.
This should have been the one that would have terminated this pathetic habit that the dems seem to have inherited from the past.
Having voted for Obama in the Democratic Primary, I have been become increasingly disappointed with his continuous genuflecting at the feet of religious hucksters and con men. From Wright to Warren, he seems intent on paying respect to people who don’t deserve it. In truth, the best candidate for those who value church state separation at least this year is Bob Barr, the Libertarian. While the LP has nominated some real wack-a-loons in the past, they got it right this year. Does he have a chance of winning? Of course not. But his positions are more palatable to the atheist voter than the major party candidates. I will be casting my vote for the mustache this year.
As far as the arrests, it should not surprise us that the police are abusing their badges (or non-badges it seems in some cases). 7 years of instilled fear of the turban have blinded a large portion of the public to the loss of their civil liberties. The prevailing attitude will be, “What do I care? I’m not the one protesting! Please protect me from my irrational fear!”
Let’s try to keep the condescension to a minimum.
So you are saying that not pandering to the religious is the same as public mocking religion? Sounding suspiciously fundamentalist here.
First of all, you are exaggerating. Moreover, you assume that this will cost Obama votes, which is very debatable, if not entirely wrong.
And I assume you’d prefer politicians who are all manly man, with an itchy trigger finger, eager to shoot us some commies. See how easy it is to assume? And the crucifix thing was cute too.
@#4
It is your kind of gutless whining that has us in the situation we are in today. It is people like you who bury their heads in the sand while raving fanatics and the incompetent cronies who support them rip our society our from under us. Freedom is not easy. It is constantly under threat from the power mad and greedy among us. The only way to keep these people from taking everything we hold dear is to raise our voices in eternal and fervent protest. Trying to muzzle political speech with pointless banalities about respect is a pathetic plow used by would be oppressors until they can avail themselves of the more traditional tools of tyranny. In short, grow up. Nothing changes in this world unless you’re willing to step on a few toes and right now there are some big toes that need stepping on and hard!
“When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.”
– George Carlin
Are there statistics which show the prevalence of non-faith voters over faith voters?
16% of the US population, as quoted above, are non-faith, but are they more or less likely to vote than the religious? would pissing off that 16% make a stunning difference in poll turnout?
where people are trying to make their real opinions heard.
You mean the ones trying to levitate the mint, or the ones afraid that the police will use the “brown note” weapon against them?
We seem to be on the road to mindlessness and tyranny. We are descending into madness.
It’s about time! :-) I’ve been maintaining a 1973 Ford XB Falcon Coupe in preparation for the day when it all collapses into lawlessness. For those that don;t know their cool films, the Falcon Coupe was Mad Max’s car.
gldchmst: So you are saying that not pandering to the religious is the same as public mocking religion? Sounding suspiciously fundamentalist here.
What does that last sentence even mean? But as for the first, YES! Recall the flag pin kerfuffle — Obama was crucified for not wearing little pins that had the flag on them — it was the cultural equivalent of spitting on the flag. It wasn’t about appealing to people’s rational sense, it was about forming a narrative nucleus around which groups could form to oppose Obama.
First of all, you are exaggerating. Moreover, you assume that this will cost Obama votes, which is very debatable, if not entirely wrong.
See my previous statement. Getting masses of people to vote isn’t a function of individually appealing to them, it’s a function of getting the local pastors, club leaders, etc, to push the idea. It’s about social movements, not individual movements. It’s about narratives and other BS like that. It’s about getting the media to anoint you an irresistable force. The logic isn’t an individual logic — it’s a social logic.
Until atheists start getting together in clubs at the scale of the churches, until we form an actual social movement with barbecues and bake sales and all the other accoutrements of an American sub-culture, we don’t really exist at that level. Churches have that — aka, churches matter much more than as an agglomeration of individuals.
And I assume you’d prefer politicians who are all manly man, with an itchy trigger finger, eager to shoot us some commies. See how easy it is to assume? And the crucifix thing was cute too.
Yeah, I thought it was cute! But in this case, your assumption is not derived from any evidence; on the other hand, your statement that Obama is just another slimy politician was good reason to believe in your naivete. LBJ was the slimy politician; but on the other hand, he saved the US from civil war. He recognized that he had no choice but to throw himself behind civil rights if he wanted to avoid the civil rights movement from becoming a revolution; many more “principled” politicians would have stood firm against civil rights and destroyed the country.
#14.. Well I don’t really look at the Democrats as the good guys. Just the less bad guys.
There is a saying that the military is always fighting the last war. Meaning that they are always trying to apply the lessons they learned in the last war to what ever fight they find themselves in today. But by doing that, they are not really looking ahead and really seeing what the new problems are in the new conflict. They are convinced that the old conflict taught them all they need to know.
The Democrats are doing the same thing this year. They are fighting the last election and not really stopping to see that things have changed. The fundies helped put the last president into office and helped keep him there. Their influence has weakened over the last 8 years as people started to see where that mind set has lead us. But for some reason, the Democrat powers that be are convinced that the path to a win lies through the fundies and they are doing their best to court them. They are saying “we get it now” but they don’t see that things have changed and trend has passed them by yet again. They need to go back to being the more godless party.
For those of you who refuse to vote for Mr. Obama because he’s insufficiently secular: perhaps Mr. Nader will run again — then you could vote for him.
theShaggy,
if you follow the 2nd link I posted in #19, you clearly see that amongst these non religious potential voters, Obama has lost 8 points, and McCain has only gained 3 since the end of the primary. Total less 5.
Nobody knows how turnout will end up being come November, no opinion poll can predict turnout, chances are, more non relgious folks will end up staying at home, demotivated by Obama.
The only thing you can try to analyse is how the level of support is varying over time, and see that it’s gone down very significantly for Obama amongst non relgious folks, and not changed much amongst religious ones.
And because with maybe only 16% of voters Obama enjoyed such a high level of support amongst non religious folks (close to 70%), it makes up at least a quarter of his potential electorate. If he ignores a quarter of his potential voters, and gains nothing from the other 3/4, it’s basically very stupid.
Your problem is you don’t realize that the party platform of the Democrats is, get elected, no matter what it will take, say anything, pander to anyone, just get elected.
That’s what makes Obama the right choice, he commits to nothing, has no record to haunt him, and has no problem saying whatever it will take.
frog: “Hmm, I think everyone in the US is missing the point of mass protest and democracy. Mass protest is a threat of the capability of disrupting the smooth functioning of society.”
First of all, none of these modern defacto, utterly routine protests seriously do that. Even those that do rarely accomplish more than minor inconvienience to their targets. And most ordinary people are far more annoyed at the protestors than anyone else. People LIKE smoothly functioning societies, and aren’t likely to be won over by promises of anarchy and being made to sit in traffic longer than they want to.
“That is only possible when it is supported by enough people to actually make it happen, which implies that the government no longer has the consent of the governed — in other words, the democratic process is failing to actually reflect democratic will.”
Which is another problem: there is no real evidence of such widespread feeling around any single issue. Certainly everyone wishes the government were doing more of what they want to see towards their own partisan beliefs, and complains loudly that it doesn’t fit their wants exactly. But that’s actually the RESULT of democracy (i.e. gridlock, no one fully gets their way against anyone else), not a symptom of the lack of it.
“Now, if that threat isn’t real, like in almost all protests in the US since the 70s, it’s just to dumb to do and dumb to disrupt through police action. Just see the silliness of the petering out anti-war protests — more fashion shows than anything.”
Precisely. They have little to no impact on modern media narratives. And, frankly, to most people, they look sort of silly. Giant paper-mache puppets and placards with clever insults are not signals of maturity and seriousness, to most people. Running struggles with the police almost always detract from the amount of message one gets out from an event, rather than highlighting it.
The mass marches of the Civil Rights movement were compelling in part because they were so novel, both as an event in and of itself, and because it was at the dawn of the electronic mass media age. But the novelty has worn off a long time ago, from both familiarity and their use by every group under the sun. They are now the equivalent of lawn signs in political campaigns: beloved by activists, but demonstrably ineffective.
“Now your suggestion, Bad, limits free speech to only those with significant funding capability — sometimes good ideas do bubble up from individuals and small groups who can’t yet access enough money to fund themselves through the mass-media.”
I don’t actually believe this is true in most cases. What I do believe is that these groups rarely want to actually risk the resources they do have access to (many of their members are either fairly well to do to begin with, or have access to money), or do what it takes to obtain money. They either view it as unseemly, or just don’t want to take the time and effort, because protesting is easier and ultimately a minimal commitment of time and energy compared to actually building an organization, building media contacts, and so on.
“I’m sure you don’t mean that repression of free-speech is only a problem if the speakers have money, do you?”
I didn’t say it wasn’t a problem. I have no problem with free speech, and am a pretty harsh critic of police tactics. What I said was that these sorts of protests are a waste of time as far as getting a message out and having people take you seriously.
It’s interesting that here is an example of a real difference between Canada and the US. To win the last election (as a minority government), the Conservatives had to muzzle the more outspokenly religious members of their party.
I’m sure there is a difference between how the Democratic Party and Republican party govern, once in power, but it’s hard to tell the difference by watching an election such as this one.
I sometimes do a quick tour of the website Democratic Underground, and did so this morning. If those people represent mainstream Democratic Party supporters, and in fact, many represent themselves as ‘leftist’, then this pandering to the religious is part of what they want. They do have a little atheist ghetto buried on their site.
I looked at several discussions over there about the protest and response PZed is posting about (I presume it is the same one), and this letter hadn’t made it over there. What has made it is a lot of people supporting the police action, condemning the protesters, and a very few defending the protesters and outraged by both the police action and the confinement of protesters to designated, walled areas.
Many seem to have disconnected entirely from the meaning of protest, seeing it as marketing, and they are totally paranoid about provocateurs. Many think any left-leaning protest they don’t approve of is run by agents of the governing party.
Frankly, allayez look crazy to outsiders half the time. The sanest sounding Americans, in terms of politics and religion, I read are the people who post on ScienceBlogs. Elsewhere, sanity appears to be a light peppering indeed.
There is but one enemy here and it is Religion. It doesn’t matter which group, what faith, none of that matters. What matters is that they have a say in anything political. They should not.
Religion in general and the zealots in particular, have spent years and years penetrating the Republican Party. They’ve been worming their way deeper and deeper into the very heart of the Republicans and they’ve become very good at it. So good, they can now use all the tricks they’ve learned to penetrate the Democrates with relative ease. This is the enemy that needs to be defeated.
The tools to usher in this defeat are readily available. What’s lacking is the means. Sure the ACLU tries their best, but they just don’t have enough clout. A backer needs to be found with enough financial clout to use the tools available in order to ensure the defeat of religion in politics. A lofty task to be sure, but it’s the only way to regain control of government.
I suspect Obama’s recent focus on religion has a lot to do with the Obama-is-a-Muslim/Obama-is-the-Antichrist crap that’s being spread. My sister, a high IQ, college-educated, biology major/graduate-degree-holding, Democrat all her life and self-identified feminist has, after living in the south for 16 years, bought into the “secret Muslim” crap and is convinced that an Obama presidency will start with a race war. When I tried to point out that voting for McCain would be voting against everything she ostensibly supports – equal rights, anti-war, women’s reproductive freedom [she has two daughters] – her response was “that’s better than a Muslim terrorist”.
Politics will always be the lesser-of-two-evils, voting against, rather than voting for. It’s all well and good to desire a clean candidate, but politics inherently taints those who dabble in it; nothing can truly get *done* in the political world without deal-making, concessions, pandering. Hell – look at Ralph Nader – he went from being an idealist who gave people hope to the egotist he is today. Look at Jimmy Carter – he didn’t know how to play the game, strove to maintain his idealism and suffered through an ineffective presidency that gave us Reagan and Bush I.
I’m hoping that Obama will win, because the thought of a Bush III presidency scares the crap out of me – and because I’d like, for a change, to see someone with an intellect and a grasp of the Constitution in the White House. McCain was at the bottom of his class; Obama was at the top. Obama may subscribe to a personal brand of woo, but McCain would give power to those who would demand that we all subscribe to a particularly ignorant and oppressive brand of woo.
In the reality of politics, not voting for the viable opposition to McCain is equivalent to voting for McCain. Theoretically, Democrats outnumber Republicans – we should be able to elect a candidate. Splitting the vote between the viable non-Republican candidate and one who has no chance in hell of being elected gives the Republicans a decided advantage. Liberals/progressives/whatever have become talented at shooting themselves in the foot – and wouldn’t you rather have had President Gore than Dubya? We might be well on our way to alternate energy, better air, more science education, less woo and certainly less invading-of-random-countries-to-prove-I-have-bigger-ones-than-Pappy.
Just wanted to add to post #73, that the only thing that is very clearly correlated with turnout, in the USA, election after election, is level of education.
Post graduates and college graduates systematically turnout significantly more than lesser educated folks. It’s always been like this.
If you look at a cross comparison of non religious folks with level of education, you see that they are slightly better educated than the average American. So you can expect that non relgious folks would normally turnout slighly more than whatever the average turnout ends up being come the day of the election, if religion wasn’t made such an issue.
This tends to indicate that by making religion such an issue, the dems have even more to lose from a lesser turnout from non relgious folks.
The idea that this is not the Democratic Party’s fault keeps coming up… you think that the police “just did this”? That’s odd, because USUALLY the police plan things out pretty tightly with the hosts for this kind of event. Why would you assume the police are acting without any party instruction?
79: This tends to indicate that by making religion such an issue, the dems have even more to lose from a lesser turnout from non relgious folks.
But non-religious folks have more to lose by not turning out to vote against the G[od’s] O[pressive] P[olice state] candidate.
CraigP @80 asks “Why would you assume the police are acting without any party instruction?”
The police don’t answer to the Democratic Party, they answer to the local authorities. The primary thing that the local authorities want to avoid is a disaster like Chicago 1968. And what they have learned from forty years of experience is that erring on the side of overuse of power produces less trouble than erring in the other direction.
Oh, give me strength… Don’t you know any American history? It has always been the norm, it’s just normally been targeted at blacks, Native Americans, trade unionists, hippies and immigrants.
As for all the people whining about Obama’s “pandering” to the religious, I’d just like point out that Obama is religious! That’s why he goes to church, you know?
Crawford @ 82: I don’t mean answering to the party, I mean working with the party. It’s pretty obvious the party could have put the protest zones in the places where the protesters would have been anyway, or could have made it clear that they were willing to tolerate protests. It seems they went in the other direction.
The police don’t just show up and arbitrarily kick asses. The democratic party told them where and when the event would happen, and almost certainly talked with them as to what kind of police presence was required.
Meh. The police have been doing this sort of thing to anarchists and other left wing groups forever. Frankly, the only shocking thing about this is that anyone would be shocked by it; its is the modus operandi of crowd control cops.
That’s what happens when the precious little lambs in the Democratic party listen to the fascist nonsense and conventional wisdom of spin doctors and communications majors.
Here’s the thing: this whole “I’m just like Republicans, but less so” angle? It doesn’t work. If people want a Republican, they’ll vote for one. They won’t vote for someone who decides to turn into a protean Republican Lite in the forlorn hope that Fox News will leave him alone.
Playing nice didn’t give us the social changes which we now enjoy. The Democrats aren’t talking softly and carrying a big stick — they’re talking softly and carrying nothing at all.
Why are people surprised at the police reaction to protesters? Protesters in the 60s met with the same residence — only instead of pepper spray and bean bag guns, you had billy clubs, fire hoses, and real guns.
This has nothing to do with which convention its at and isn’t the result of the Democratic Party getting their revenge on the evil atheist protesters.
The Democrats are pandering to the religious because the religious dominate the stupid political discourse we have in this country. It will change one day. This year is not the year, unfortunately. But make no mistake. Voting for Ron Paul or some independent will do NOTHING but make this country MORE tied to religious interests when John McCain and all of his new religious friends continue the Bush agenda.
Barack Obama may be hyper-religious, but when weighed against, essentially, ANY republican, he is the obvious better choice for any Atheist.
Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and take one for the team.
Change does not come quick, short of a revolution. And, to be blunt, there is no way to organize an “Atheist Revolution” in government at this time — that would be a mistake anyway if you truly do want equal representation.
How do you fix this? GET LOCAL. Get involved in your local Democratic (or Republican, or Green, or whatever) political group. Run for office. Support those you believe in running for office. Vote for the “lesser of evils” for higher office in the interim.
One day, your guy or gal, the one you supported from school board member to mayor to governor to senator, an atheist even, will have a shot at presidency.
Back to Obama, I saw an interview with Spike Lee who said he never thought he would ever see the possibility of a black president in his lifetime.
Change happens. Don’t get discouraged, but don’t shoot yourself in the foot either.
I’m going to point that out the next time another insufferably smug peddler of convetional wisdom tries to tell me, in their most pedantic tone (as though I haven’t heard it before), about the “race to the middle”.
Bad: The mass marches of the Civil Rights movement were compelling in part because they were so novel, both as an event in and of itself, and because it was at the dawn of the electronic mass media age. But the novelty has worn off a long time ago, from both familiarity and their use by every group under the sun. They are now the equivalent of lawn signs in political campaigns: beloved by activists, but demonstrably ineffective.
We agree on most of the points. But the Civil Rights movement worked not primarily because it was novel (even if it did help that in recent memory of the time there hadn’t been mass protests), but because it was a real threat. Folks like LBJ and his backers knew that if the demands of the Civil Rights movement weren’t met, to some extent (compromise), they really did have the capability to disrupt society at large. Remember, that they had shutdown Birmingham, that it was a real economic threat they embodied.
That in the end, if MLK wasn’t satisfied somewhat, many of those same people would turn to Malcolm X and his cohorts. Imagine what the 70s would have been like if civil rights hadn’t been implemented — I imagine that it wouldn’t have been the communists falling in the 80s, but the West failing earlier. The revolutionary movements (the bombers and radicals) petered out because the 50% of people (blacks, hispanics, Jews, and women) who did have sympathy earlier were satisfied to some extent that they were going to be given access.
The problem I see is that even if the protesters haven’t reached enough people yet to convince them that significant change is needed, the very fact that we (wide we) are repressing them should lead to convincing a wide array of people that we should be out marching in the streets for the very right to peacefully assemble – and if we don’t have that right, the next step would be to not be so peaceful, to actually disrupt society.
In Chile, for example, high-school kids weren’t getting enough money for text-books. They shut the country down. If teenagers demanding a right to education can do it, what is wrong with us that we can’t demand our very right to speak out, in public – not just in some internet ghetto? What is wrong with us?
I’m thoroughly confused by the “there’s no difference” comments. If you HONESTLY and SERIOUSLY cannot tell a difference between the policies of McCain and Obama, you really must be severely mentally handicapped.
Sure, Obama may not be ideal for most of you, that’s fine. But he’s nowhere near McCain.
You may not like it, but compromises happen in government. It’s happened in every representational government that has ever existed. Short of a dictatorship that supports your views, there is no way to get around it.
You think that’s something, read this:
http://friendlyatheist.com/4229/elizabeth-dole-attacks-senate-opponent-for-meeting-with-atheists/
In Republican America, candidates shouldn’t meet with atheists.
Here’s part of the text of my message to Elizabeth Dole, the whole things in comments in that link above:
“We understand we’re a minority. We know we’re misunderstood and that creates mistrust. We know that the only solution to this is to be part of the American dialog.
But we cannot be a part of that dialog if the politically powerful cast us as pariahs in order to win the cheap allegiance of antipluralist bigots. I think it’s no way to act as a United States Senator. It’s wrong to say that certain Americans are lesser, or do not deserve representation or to meet with our candidates merely because of our beliefs. That’s just wrong, and most American Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Mormons and others would agree on that point one-hundred percent.
See, it’s not who Senator Dole prays to that upsets us. It’s that she seems to advocate that political representation be subjected to a religious test. No religion? No meeting with your candidate… that’s the Dole plan.”
Angry yet? Fed up? Good. Now go donate to her opponent, Kay Hagan, who had the bravery to meet with the Secular Coalition of America.
So Hotelling’s Model is still applicable; candidates are just taking into account the non-uniform distribution of voters along the spectrum.
Brownian: So Hotelling’s Model is still applicable; candidates are just taking into account the non-uniform distribution of voters along the spectrum.
An equilibrium model for non-equilibrium systems? I smell economists fooling themselves again!
I think you are missing the point.
McCain and Obama do not have the same policies it is true.
However, to use your terminology, you must be brain-damaged if you think there is the same difference between as quite often is elsewhere in the world. Look at the last French presidential election. Do you seriously think that there differences between Royal and Sarkozy were the same or less than the differences between McCain and Obama.
It’s official. It will be a cold day in a non-existent hell before I vote for Obama. On top of the scripted convetion, the faith based speakers, and the “security” clamp down, Obama seems to fancy himself some kind of god too. I was reading Reuters, and apparently his speech will involve a Greek temple looking stage with a rising podium. How nice, to go from a president that thinks he talks to god, to a president that thinks he’s a god.
#90: Compromises are part of everything – we can’t all get what we want. What would seem to be worrisome is the avoidance of substantive issues and suppressing dissent – in the presence of those, choosing between candidates doesn’t become a matter of accepting compromise but of taking dictation. That would seem to be what has gotten us to this point in the first place, and it would seem to be a very bad idea both for the Democratic Party and the country to follow the Republicans on that path.
We are descending into madness.
Just wait till next week in St. Paul!
If it’s not Classified Information: just what is the range of your cyberpistol?
Country’s going where YOU are mapping it, Little Paul.
Rule by the fist.
Strength and power over all.
Survival of the fittest.
Ring a bell, you pathetic hypocrite?
I’m going to point that out the next time another insufferably smug peddler of convetional wisdom tries to tell me, in their most pedantic tone (as though I haven’t heard it before), about the “race to the middle”.
Don’t forget the “run for the border”. :)
That one’s looking more attractive every day. I hear there’s a lot of cheap, abandoned property in Mexico. I can buy a whole town! :-D
Obama must play up to the religious types so must the democratic party. Relax everyone . Both McCain and Obama might be completely Godless we never know because piety is as easy to fake as patriotism.
There are so many single issue voters that vote soley on piety of candidates that the only way to advance secular interests is to work along side secular theists.
Yes, it is totally lame that they are cracking down on protests.
Speaking of hypocrites….
Actually, the country’s going where it is because people like nobody can’t be bothered to crack a fucking book.
“Survival of the fittest”? Come on. Who still says that other than ID ideologues? Caricature much, you pathetic inbred fuck?
Try to be less stupid in the future.
Touché. However, I first encountered the model in a geographic context, and geography, unlike economics, is a legit social science.
“Strength and power over all.”
Sounds like George Bush’s foreign policy to me.
Amplexus @ #100
I don’t like it when a supposedly progressive party not only panders to a group that reject their values (seriously, have you heard some of the speeches the faith-heads have been giving at the convention?) but treats the group I identify with, atheists, as anathema. Furthermore, it is descriptive of a greater problem, the Democrat’s tendency to sell out on issues, appease moderate conservatives, and give into Republican bullying. I see no difference between Obama’s recent sell-out on offshore drilling and his party’s current love affair with religion. It’s a betrayal of values I hold dear, environmental stewardship and separation of church and state.
Why should I vote for a party when they kowtow on issues that should be non-negotiable? That’s just encouraging more of the same deferment and spinelessness that has gotten our nation and our world into such a mess.
Yeah sure. That is because PZ Myers and his minions, ilk, and fellow travelers had so much influence over the last 8 years. Those shadowy people in tennis shoes and T shirts constantly going into the white house were the secret advising cabal for Bush/Cheney, evolutionary biologists, astronomers, and geologists.
You really should start take your medication again.
negentropyeater, thanks for the analysis.
I only ask because politicians seem to work a very precise game, and completely ignoring and outright shoving 16% of the potential vote around is quite drastic. It doesn’t seem like something a campaign would go into lightly, so it would assume that their risk has a purpose.
I am officially disinterested in the promises of politicians and do not recognize the governance of the wicked. To wit, I follow no law that disturbs my conscience and obey no official that enforces it.
I encourage everyone to do the same.
For those who are curious, the expression at the end of his note is derived from an almost deliberately paradoxical Arab battle cry:
يا حي الشهداء
Lit. Long live the martyrs
Man, someone was asleep during high school biology.
Meh…protesters get arrested…cops get angry…what’s new? Some people went there specifically to try to recreate ’68 so I’m not suprised at all by this.
Using terms like “Gitmo on the Platte” is just trying to stir up people’s emotions.
Well, Herbert did borrow liberally from Islam when creating the mythos of Dune.
Wow! Nobody The Idiot Troll gets a gold star for reaching new depths of malignant stupidity!
Put your hands together for Nobody The Idiot Troll.
#101: “Try to be less stupid in the future.”
The last few years have shown nothing better than the bottomlessness of willful ignorance. I think any attempt by him/her to learn anything (that might require a change in worldview and actions – or not) would cause a brain-melt on the order of Taggart at the end of Atlas Shrugged or Mastermind in X-Men.
I think you’re being overly optimistic.
Jello @61 & 66
Ummm. Sastra was parodying the voice of the oppressive forces of niceness. Hence the warning about Big Mommy. cf Nanny State, Neighborhood Associations, or public school administrators
I though 1968 was when I was a big kid! You mean it’s still here?
Just don’t do it in a swing state. :-|
Why, then, does it work all over the First World?
For some value of
“Diebold + ES&S + Sequoia + Triad Systems”“helped”.What his advisors believe it will take, you mean.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean they actually understand what they’re doing. In politics, stupidity should be the default assumption.
The DNC thing is a massive pain. They have closed the Auraia campus for an entire week.
The protest issue on 15th that night had a lot to do with what happened during the course of the evening. Before accepting people at their word, check out the Denver post or the rocky mountain news. Please?
Nope Coragyps, it’s not 1968, it’s more like 1984. “Free Speech Zones” and the rest. I do wonder if those in government who come up with these phrases are actively scheming, or are curtailing freedom in the name of freedom, thinking they are in the right?
Yes, but in the case of this convention, the theists in charge don’t want us working alongside them. That’s the problem.
I did read the rocky mountain news and the denver post. they are both toeing the party line. Cops say there were rocks. Some cops said the protesters went to the public bathrooms to “restock their weapons with feces.” The only shit here is what is written on the page. Has anybody any real evidence of that? We have been hearing for WEEKS in Denver about urine/feces throwing demonstrators. It is a big boogeyman constructed by the authorities to justify their millions spent on a staggering array of weaponry to crush any civil dissent. I say the cops are lying to cover their asses.
Listen to Democracy Now’s reporting. They are just about the only news group that is actually talking to protesters and, more importantly, observers. Several other observers have corroborated Nathan’s report. Video footage has been given to the ACLU that shows that many of the cops were not wearing id.
The story of the police repression in Denver has been carefully scripted and all but ignored in the mainstream press.If you think you’re going to get the full story from the mainstream newspapers in Denver (especially the Rocky, the Fox News of Denver) you must be kidding me.
Interestingly enough, there has been some evidence of an inept plot by some meth-head nazi wannabees to assassinate Obama on Thursday. The ruling establishment sets up the straw man threat by screaming and pointing at the left and the real violence, with the real guns, once again comes from the far right.
I can’t believe how people are letting themselves believe the lies.
@ #58 above: “But recall that [obama’s] whole platform is that he was going to bring a new kind of politics to the US.”
see, that’s where you make your mistake — it is the MEDIA that has been pushing this meme. obama in fact has been summing up his “whole platform” as Change We Can Believe In.
if you had been paying attention to presidential campaigns for the past 30 years or more you would understand that EVERY presidential campaign includes promises of “a new kind of politics.” obama in fact is one of the very few who hasn’t attempted to proclaim himself an “outsider,” as the majority, with the same or more “insider” antecedents as him, have done in the past — including, currently, john mccain who is in fact pinning his entire candidacy on his false maverick/”outsider” status.
The Arabic term shahid, like the Greek word martys, means “witness” — perhaps a more appropriate term than it at first seems, for those who observe, and are punished for their observations.
After a century of disinformation and propaganda, who would trust the mainstream media or the cops on what happened?
There might have been some rocks or there might not have. Never get the truth from the press or cops on that one. Rock throwing in this context is a cosmically stupid move. But arresting everyone who didn’t throw a rock to get a few idiots that did isn’t justice.
These days cell phones with cameras are ubiquiotous as are video cameras. I would assume someone or probably lots of people are video taping the cops, demonstrators, and so on for future documentation. If they aren’t, they should be.
I have a feeling that Denver won’t be picking up much convention business in the next couple of years.
-jcr
Umm….
Vote Nader?
Coincidentally — he has a Super-Rally happening in Boulder, CO tonight.
All of you Democrats who believe that voting Obama will somehow PREVENT McCain-style follies for the next 4 years should take a GOOD LONG HARD LOOK at this and remember that this is all happening around the DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION.
The distance between “evil” and “lesser of two evils” is a closing gap, and I think this is clear evidence of such.
Now I do wonder. Obviously the Police is not the Democratic Party. In fact, Police is not necessarily all that strongly Democratic.
So, maybe the knucklehead Cops are Republicans wanting to make the convention folk look bad?
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Libertarian. Some people have said that they’d vote Republican before they would vote Libertarian. Ouch! Sure, the government would no longer be the source of all your science funding, etc., but think of it as sort of growing up and moving out of your parents’ house.
DominEditrix @78: I don’t want to sound rude, but perhaps you overestimate your sister. Reminds me of Michael Behe. Apparently smart, but WTF?
And now for a CompletelyTrueTM story:
I was in Denver earlier this month for the American Statistical Association conference. I was outside the convention center protesting for Bayesian statistics and the cops beat the shit out of me and hauled me off to jail. Bunch of thugs. Wouldn’t know a posterior distribution if it bit them in the…
I don’t understand what all the fuss is over the interfaith meeting. Why would atheists want to be there at all? I mean, we need to realize that Obama is trying to de-radicalize religiosity in America by focusing it on real problems instead of political wedge issues.
And, this is actually typical behavior of Colorado police. They are rough! I’m sorry that the protesters have to find out the hard way, but they could have asked anyone living in Colorado about it first. The Colorado police treat every little incident as a riot, they have been doing it for a decade at least. In particular, they like to break out the tear gas and pepper spray and show no mercy whatsoever to innocent bystanders and people with asthma and strong allergic reactions.
aleph1=c,
Voting Libertarian is growing up? Well, yes, in the same sense as drinking so much you throw up and pass out, spray-painting your initials on public buildings, or getting an eyebrow-piercing just to annoy your parents.
Well, I live in Denver and I have to say, most of the people that I know have made the decision to stay away from the downtown area. The reason for this is simple. Denver cops are scary jerks when they don’t have $50,000,000 to buy new toys. I know plenty of people that participate in things like “critical mass” and other peaceful protest events that have decided that they just can’t afford to be beaten and/or arrested AGAIN. Eight hours in jail with no phone call and $1200 in bail and you’re whole life is fucked. All the sudden you can’t pay for rent, you lose your job and you have serious trouble getting another one because you got fired for being arrested (well, actually for not being able to show up for work).
These guys are not messing around. They will expel the media from strategically chosen areas so that all manner of beat down can happen. This already happened here earlier this week, but luckily I don’t think anyone was clubbed or anything. As I understand it, they’re also really enjoying their new pepper spray devices. Got a camera on you but you’re not from the press? It’s gone, bitch. Don’t bother taking down names and badge numbers. Hell, that’s enough of a power challenge to get into some serious trouble with our cops. You can’t win against these guys unless you just happen to have a great lawyer and some rock solid evidence against them, and even then you won’t get much for your efforts.
Writing this is really depressing, but I’m just telling you what my friends have experienced first hand here in the Mile High City. I wish this meant anything and that my countless anecdotal stories were worth writing about, but nobody ever seems to believe them. No evidence. I sort of get this, but if the evidence is collected by those that would be incriminated by it, what exactly do we expect?
This shit makes me so angry. I want to do something, but what do you do against these storm troopers? You sure can’t fight ’em. Even the ACLU says that after asserting non-consent of search & seizure you basically should just roll over and show your belly in submission. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean they won’t beat you to a pulp. While you’re cooperating. On your knees. Sometimes with your hands cuffed.
Welcome to America. Put your hands behind your back and shut up.
“I don’t understand what all the fuss is over the interfaith meeting. Why would atheists want to be there at all? ”
To discuss America. Don’t you get it? This is like holding a “pro family” meeting and disinviting the gays. It’s an event designed to push the democratic party away from any last semblence of a party dedicated to non-sectarianism.
“I mean, we need to realize that Obama is trying to de-radicalize religiosity in America by focusing it on real problems instead of political wedge issues.”
Yeah, and let’s de-radicalize the anti-gay movement by kicking gays out of the party. And let’s de-radicalize the anti-choice movement by kicking out the feminists. Great plan!
Or how about this, let’s have a special kick-off “faith, family and tradition” rally before the convention, and conveniently bar atheists, gays and feminists… you know, to DE-RADICALIZE the republicans. Because that’ll work.
Posted by: Ferre – #54
“As a Dutch person … It really distresses me that the overall intellectual level of the American people is at such poor level as it directly effects my life outside of the USA. The USA has brought us the war on terror, the war on drugs and countless other counter-productive policies which they enforce upon the world surrounding them, I often wish that the US population would become a little smarter and start ignoring the two parties, after al they have a track record of deceiving their voters and being corrupted to the bone…… Wake up Americans, PLEASE, for the world’s sake.”
As an Australian, I’d like to say HEAR HEAR!!
All this huffing and puffing has got me depressed. I am going to focus on a little bit of GOOD NEWS from the DNC!
The DNC has decided as one of the planks for their platform to include a plank that advocates replacing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy with one of non-discrimination!
Of course, it was a Democrat, San Nunn, who was instrumental in getting this BAD policy passed as law when Clinton was president, but now the party has realized that it is a stupid policy which deprives our country of the military service of qualified gays and lesbians.
I say hooray!
I see a lot of vote for Obama as a lesser of two evils comments. However, your party is taking you for granted and will continue taking you for granted. They may see the polls about the 8% loss of the secular vote but know that a lot of you will vote for them anyway to keep the republicans out of the Government.
If I was in the US, I would ask myself if it would be better to sacrifice another term of the Republicans (Remember Bush is gone. Is McCain that bad?) to fix up your party. I would then go to all of the Democrat blogs and say that you are not voting for anybody given the large shift to the right and the pandering to the religious right of the party.
If enough people said this then maybe the democratic party will not take you guys so much for granted.
regards
Michael
Hear, hear Michael J!( #134)
@negentropyeater,
That’s some good analysis you’ve got there. I copied the ideas out of it and sent it in via the contact page on Obama’s website. Maybe if enough of us point this out to them, they’ll reverse course and save their campaign.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/contact2
peaceably to assemble.
Madison didn’t split no infinitives.
ice
Denver and surrounds is NOT where I would have held this shindig. Not exactly non-conformist friendly around there.
Maybe they were paranoid after catching the inbreds mit der azzazination plot, or maybe it was just a typical day in Colorado. Remember Chicago in ’68? This story is pretty tame compared with that.
You guys have to get rid of the Rethugs or things will get a whole lot worse than they’ve been.
Just saying.
The biggest problem with US politics is, as far as I’m concerned, the failure of the mainstream media to provide impartial information. Because the Dems don’t have an informed public to which to propose ideas, or the means to disseminate genuine information to a mass audience, they have to pander or they’ve got no chance whatsoever.
If the voting public were presented with reasoned analysis, facts and honest coverage of events – rather than spin, lies, and the distraction of pointless ‘celebrities’ – then they might be able to make a genuine choice. As it is I doubt that many of them have much of an idea of what’s going in their country and what choosing Dems over Republicans would actually mean for them.
Find a way to communicate to the masses, in such a way that they’d understand, that the people currently in power are bad in many ways, and that a change would be better, and you wouldn’t have much of a contest. Unfortunately, the mainstream media in the US cannot be counted on to do that. Since television networks and newspapers are about making money rather than disseminating truth the choice for their owners/managers is always going to be the option that helps their bank balances and not their consciences.
Change that and you stand a chance of a representative government.
gdlchmst, although i’m sure you’re correctly reporting numbers from poll x or y or whatever, please, don’t forget, polls don’t really mean a whole lot, if they did, hilary would be the democrats presidential candidate.
and although rickflick is correct as well in pointing out that each religion has it’s pet issues, it yet seems possible to get them all on your side, except maybe the muslims, who might be specifically annoyed with the republicans about now, and are perhaps the only block that’s solidly in anyones pocket.
perhaps you’re also correct that if obama had stayed in the spectrum he was in, he’d have won hands down. i just don’t buy that, sorry, don’t believe personally that any candidate can get in if they annoy the religious in any way.
what i DO think would win him the election, is to not annoy any religion if at all possible, but focus on the economy, like clinton did.
even whackaloons like money, and they’re tired of watching the american dollar slide against virtually every other currency in the world, the national debt soaring, foreclosures happening at a rate that smells of immanent depression, and banks and finance companies going down the pipe, or being bailed out with taxpayer money.
See, guys? Party unity is easy! Just silence all the people who disagree with you.
Also, since we all know it takes more faith to be an atheist than a theist, shouldn’t atheists get EXTRA representation at inter-faith rituals?
“Voting Libertarian is growing up? Well, yes, in the same sense as drinking so much you throw up and pass out, spray-painting your initials on public buildings, or getting an eyebrow-piercing just to annoy your parents.” -Nick Gotts-
I see Nick is in fine disoriented and traumatized form, scanning US political threads from his cage in England, looking for any suggestion that ‘Americans are better served when large central authorities are kept out of our lives’ is mentioned so he can prove just how much of himself hasn’t quite evolved from other primates and fling some more fecal matter… Go Nick!!
etha, could you be specific regarding your first statement? not saying it’s incorrect, just wondering how it applies. as for your second line, how does it require more faith to not believe in leprechauns, than to believe in them?
i’m new here, are you the tongue-in-cheek jokester of the group, or just a twit?
Wowbagger @139:
Well said.
Reminds me of this classic Point/Counterpoint in The Onion:
– Point: A Well-Informed Populace Is Vital To The Operation Of A Democracy
By Noam Chomsky
– Counterpoint: Dixie Chicks Fever Sweeps America!
By Jeff Logan
USA Today
Apparently.
Bob Barr argued in favor of DOMA on religious grounds. Barr advocated banning Wiccans and atheists from the military on religious grounds. Furthermore, he consistently supported the insane expansion of govt power known as the ‘war on drugs’. He’s anti-choice, and anti-woman in almost every respect, on religious grounds.
If there was a Libertarian candidate for president which actually stood for something resembling what comes out of a typical Libertarian rag, like, Reason , it might be reasonable to claim Libertarian was an alternative, for non-religious people1 . But that’s not what happened. Instead the Libertarian candidate is some fanatical fuckhead who, if he got any kind of power, would be worse than Bush. Again Libertarians are claiming to ‘try to get Libertarian ideas a place at the table’ – with a character who has a long history of assaulting 80% of the ideals they claim hold dear. Will people remember the 2008 Libertarian vote as a vote for the ideals of Reason, or the ideals of Bob Barr? Look who’s on the ballot. Look who is mentioned in any news article. Not anybody at Reason . It’s Bob Barr, and it’s his ideas which stand to gain from the Libertarian vote.
1 But perhaps not for anyone who wants an environment safe for humans to live in. Until about two years ago, Reason maintained a fanatically credulous knee-jerk anti-environmental stance.
kseniya, care to elaborate that remark, or are you content to prove that brevity isn’t necessarily the soul of wit.
Etha,good to see ya girl !!!
Scott from Oregon @ 142,is there a point youre trying to make,or just your usual pissing contest with NG?
Wowbagger,
in extension to what you said so well above,I think a lot of this pandering to the religious we see is due to the fact that the mainstream media in the US literally demand it.
Just look at the questions the candidates got asked in these prelim Q&A things,if you dont declare undying love and devotion to your country,god and apple pie 5 times per sentence youre basically screwed,and will be slaughtered by the so called “journalists”.
The media is responsible,IMO,for a lot of the nationalistic,chauvinistic,religious nonsense that we see all over society,especially,but not exclusively,in the USA.
No. You’re being an ass. Do your own research.
what, exactly, am i researching, numbnuts?
so, you can’t elaborate, just another wanker.
Let me put this as gently as possible:
I have better things to do than to cater to the pompous and the rude.
@ faux mulder:
Lets see,reading through your posts so far we have:
Intellectual laziness,dishonesty,ad hominems,insults instead of arguments.
You are not going to do well here.
And this:
//i’m new here, are you the tongue-in-cheek jokester of the group, or just a twit?//
has disqualified you from being taken seriously,or even worth debating,by anybody who knows the person you are saying this about,ever again on this blog.
apparently not.
care to elaborate that remark, or are you content to prove that brevity isn’t necessarily the soul of wit?
so, they were being tongue-in-cheek? fine, was that so difficult to say?
or is it just cute when kseniya is intellectually lazy, pompous, uses ad hominems, rude and insulting?
i’m gathering that there’s a clique which i’ve offended, c’est la vie.
it was a legitimate question, you people couldn’t just answer it, oh no….you’re too fucking clever.
faux mulder,meet killfile.
killfile,meet faux mulder.
i’m heartbroken.
You must be a riot at social gatherings.
indeed i am.
faux mulder:
Etha was mocking the all-too-frequent theist assertion that being an atheist requires more faith than believing in god. You agree with her, but you missed the joke.
Go find one then. Because your natural wit and charm seem to be failing you here in place of any worthwhile argument.
i didn’t miss it, i was aware that it was entirely possible that that was the situation.
perhaps it was using the word “twit” in the second possibility which set everyone off, i’m not sure.
it was just a question. thank you llew, for just answering it.
everyone else, my apologies, but you really could have saved us all time and trouble if you’d just said they were, indeed, being tongue-in-cheek.
thank you.
Well done mulder.
Now do everyone a favor and in the future don’t piss on the shoes of someone in a place you are new to. You’ll tend to find the reception much warmer.
So, seeing as this has been dealt with, where were we?
Michael X :
//So, seeing as this has been dealt with, where were we?//
Definition of a troll :
An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial and irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.
And thats why the troll faux mulder got killfiled.
Yes, clinteas. I know the definition. But, also worth looking up is: Benefit of the Doubt.
So where were we?
(If of course I’m wrong, we’ll all quickly know.)
explain how my asking a question was controversial or off-topic.
perhaps the word “twit” did provoke an emotional response, it certainly wasn’t intentional, or perhaps it was, somewhat, if they weren’t being tongue-in-cheek; but they were, so i’m unclear why this is still rankling anyone.
i’ve apologized. what do you want, blood?
btw, those questions were strictly rhetorical.
you don’t have to explain anything, and if you do want blood, i’d rather not know about it.
No one is holding back the conversation but you at this point mulder. Whatever your point was before this misconception started, you may now restate it.
where were we?
well, i had espoused the notion that obama could win by simply doing his best to not annoy the religiously inclined, (bringing them together may have been an error as they’ll surely bring their convictions that anyone who isn’t of their particular flavour of religion is satan spawn)and focusing strictly on the economy, which is where mccain is weakest…any thoughts?
btw, i saw mccain on tv recently, saying that a hundered billion dollars is nothing, and that he could go out and get that tomorrow…cool! if he could do that for 95 consecutive days the u. s. could be debt free!
Any thoughts?
Well as far as those thoughts are concerned, I agree. While I’m sure you didn’t mean for Obama to focus strictly (read:solely) on the economy, I think the war also qualifies as a lightning rod issue that Obama can exploit.
But beyond simply winning, I think most here would be and are angry with the Obama camp for pandering to the block of voters that is very culpable in the fact that we’ve had Bush and his policies for two terms.
The religious vote not only more often than not goes against the progressive platform, it is also the foundation of the principles that Obama has declared himself opposed to. Namely, reason in government, as opposed to government at the whim of the religiously motivated. So it seems too much a calculated move being made by one who repeatedly states himself to be an advocate for change. Though, I admit, I shouldn’t be speaking for everyone.
I see Nick is in fine disoriented and traumatized form, scanning US political threads from his cage in England – Scott from California
I don’t live in England, Scott.
how is it done?
really, it’s flipping witchcraft or something, bringing all the more orthodoxly religious of all (well, almost all) faiths to the same party.
if i knew how it’s done, i’d endorse obama doing it.
atheists in the u. s. are going to have to learn to be a patient bunch, they’re badly outnumbered.
sorry pz, but i’d let them pillory you for a week for tossing a wafer in the trash, if it’d get the religious onside and the republicans out.
rickflick mentioned how the interfaith get-together merely gave a variety of religions a chance to voice their pet platforms or petitions, and atheists are no different, we want our way too.
lets face it though, not everyone can have what they want. you may feel somewhat betrayed and alienated, buck up and bite the bullet, please, this is no time to hand things over to the greater of two evils, again.
My conclusion is the following :
1. if one adds non religious folks, secular jews and humanists/unitarian, one gets 20% of the population.
2. This secular group has now become one of the 4 largest voting communities in America, together with evangelicals, catholics, and mainline protestants.
3. There is clear evidence that this group, at the end of the primary, was providing tremendous support to Obama, with close to 70% of them willing to vote for him. So this group is far more homogeneous than what most usually parrotted ideas seem to make of it. Far more than catholics and mainline protestants, and on par with evangelicals, except opposite candidate.
4. If one calculates 70% of 20%, one gets 28% of what’s needed for Obama to win this election. If also one considers that this group is slightly better educated than average American, this group should, if it were properly motivated, turnout more than the average turnout come the day of the election, and represent at least 30% of Obama’s voters. 30% !
5. There is also clear evidence that this group will react strongly negatively if Obama continues to ignore it, refuses to speak out about tolerance for secular voters, and panders only to the most religious voters, basically if one of the last civil rights issues in the history of the USA is not taken up by it’s preffered candidate. From 70% potential voters for Obama, it can go as low as 50% and really cause Obama to lose this election by depriving him from a crucial 4% votes.
6. So this group can clearly be an agent of change, as much as evangelicals were able to change the course of the 2 previous elections in favour of Bush, it can change it in favour of Obama.
7. But this group has failed.
It has failed to properly influence Obama and the dems,
it has miserably failed to demonstrate how important it really is as a political force, it has failed to demand that the civil rights issue of tolerance for non religious folks should be one of the top issues of Obama’s campaign, it has failed to express its opinions about government money being wasted on faith based initiatves.
But above all, it has failed because it doesn’t have figureheads, leaders that are respected and listened to, interviewed by the mainstream media, and influencing the dems.
Where is the Dr King of non religious folks ?
It’s nice to have associations, websites, blogs, online petitions, but if there are no clearly identified and respected leaders, it will fail.
So, now, non religious folks can decide to make this gamble, Michael J’s gamble (see his post #134). Make Obama lose this election so that the dems listen in the future to secular voters. And let the obviously worst candidate for secular voters McCain win, and 4 more years of Bush type policy for America.
But this is a risky gamble, because above all, the reason why non religious folks are systematically taken for granted is that they do not have respected figureheads and are miserably failing to influence their preferred candidate.
And there’s no guarantee that making Obama lose this election is going to change any of that.
I actually think that secular voters will be far more influential in the futre if they can show that they represent one of the largest chunk of those who have elected Obama as president.
They should vote en mass for Obama, more than 70%, despite the religious pandering, and, once they have found leaders and figureheads who can be carried by these results, really become agents of change for the way politics is done in America.
Doing the opposite will be far more risky and there is no guarantee that anyone will listen to a group that has shown so little support, and who has failed from it’s own incapacity to organise itself and find leaders.
Sorry for the rant. Please, secular voters, vote, and vote for Obama. And find your leaders.
Aren’t these guys supposed to be the good guys?
The police?
No, never… they are merely an necessary evil, and obviously need to be kept on a shorter leash.
Waay back in the 70’s my father observed (from a safe distance) that the US was a police state. It hasn’t gotten any better since.
And BTW, can’t vote, I’m French (you know, 85% of us french support Obama) but I do nominate Dr PZ Myers, to become one of those leaders who will speak out and represent secular voters in the future.
PZ,
show that you can be one of these leaders that we so desperately need,
show that you can influence the dems,
show that you can call secular voters to elect Obama as the next president of the USA.
Show that you can transform your complaints into political actions that work.
faux mulder asked:
In the convention, everyone was going on about how the Dems had to unite as a party, ra-ra-ra. Well, fine, but what about the people who feel that party isn’t representing their views? Oh yeah, they were the ones protesting…that doesn’t look so good for ‘party unity,’ so keep them as far away as possible, and if they try to come near, use whatever means necessary to keep them away.
And what did we see on TV? A bunch of cheerful democrats, all excited to believe in the same nebulous things. What didn’t we see? The dissenters. Voila, party unity. The entire convention was about the show, and it didn’t matter if they violated principles to make it a good one. (Kind of reminds of China & the olympics, actually.)
I would have thought the joking nature of the other part of my post was obvious; anyone who thinks it takes more faith to be an atheist than a theist is also the kind of person who wouldn’t want atheists to have extra representation (or, indeed, any representation) at these events. That’s the irony…they hold up faith as a virtue, then try to tear down atheism by falsely claiming it takes more faith to be an atheist. Huh?
Agent Mulder: I apologize for my shortness with you last night. I did find your tendency to lace your simple questions with unnecessary insults rather off-putting, and your decision to write me off as a “wanker” due to my failure to answer you within two minutes – on a blog, for chrissakes – was a deal-breaker. Nonetheless, my impatience with you was perhaps an overreaction. I could easily have set your straight about Etha (though in fact I was waiting to see if she would check back and do it herself, but she didn’t – oh well). Furthermore, it was way past my bedtime, and I’d had a dreadful day. If it’s alright with you, I’d just as soon put it behind us.
(Confession: If I ever have a daughter, I would consider naming her “Dana”.)
On the subject of Etha Williams, OM, the last word I’d use to describe her is “twit”. Well, ok, maybe that would be the second-to-last word, behind “behemoth”.
:-)
And speaking of Etha, there she is again.
*(waves)*
This isn’t comparable to Rodney King, and characterizing it that way trivializes a brutal mob assault on a defenseless person. This isn’t even comparable to the last “police event” in Los Angeles, where the police broke up a legal and peaceable assembly. Since we all claim to be rational people, let us look at this rationally, shall we?
Have any of you ever been to a Raiders game wearing Denver gear? Or a Dodgers game, in the cheap seats, wearing Giants gear? There’s a quick, marginally dangerous and easy way to subject yourself to the barest fringe of what group emotional discharge is like.
You probably won’t enjoy it.
Mobs are fundamentally frightening. Mobs of people don’t act like groups of individuals. Watch the ANP video posted earlier in this thread, and view the woman screaming at the riot police. She is *enraged*. No stable person screams at someone else like that in public; mobs provide an emotional backing you simply don’t get as an individual (unless you’re unhinged already), the alpha leaders in a mob are venting more rage than they have at the original cause for assembly.
Certainly, the sequestering of protesters is vile political practice. However, this all started when the protesters left the area where they had their permit to assemble and marched to the Convention center. A crowd of hundreds or thousands of people fronted by emotionally charged individuals charged by the mob mentality is not a collection of rational concerned citizens.
It’s an off-the-leash attack dog. The only sure way to prevent such a situation from exploding into random violence is to discharge that violent energy by attacking it with disciplined violence.
To be absolutely clear, I don’t believe that it is acceptable to limit protest to an area away from the event the protesters are protesting *against*. Fundamentally, it’s un-American -> those protesters are part of the event, whether the event sponsors wish to call them so or not.
Given that this is currently the norm in this country, however, blaming this on “out of control” police is disingenuous.
If you don’t like the idea of limitations on free speech, push for a bill that enforces free assembly of the sort you think is right. If you want to make a political statement and don’t believe that sequestered assembly is just, pack a picnic lunch and stage a personal sit-in at the event.
This was neither of those things, this was (unintentionally) creating a mob. When you create a mob, you’re creating something that does not act the way you think it is going to act. Read some science on mob mentality; regardless of the intentions of the people you form into a mob, the mob isn’t the individuals.
The police reaction may have been heavy-handed, and usually in situations like this the heavy-handedness goes on longer than it should (police can be mobs too, although contrary to popular belief they’re far less likely to devolve into a mob simply because they’re disciplined), but based upon the little I’ve seen I doubt it was unjustified.
I’m not a cop, but if I was I’d rather pepper spray a bunch of angry individuals than let them turn into an actual rioting mob where I have to potentially seriously injure or kill one of them.
There are plenty of stories about police brutality, but there is a very significant difference between police acting brutal during the course of their normal duties and police taking brutal action to prevent something from getting out of control. Riot duty is the “triage” of police duties.
Besides, everyone knows I’m the tongue-in-cheek jokester/twit around here.
@ Alan
> Cops have been taught to think of civilians as the enemy
I call shenanigans. This statement is quite frankly utter horseshit. For every story of “incredible random civilian hero jumps into dangerous situation to save other random civilian innocent person” you hear (there’s what, maybe a hundred a year on the nightly news), there are individual cops who do this a hundred times a year.
Yes, we have problems with the police in this country, that is manifestly true. Blanket statements like this make it impossible to address those problems rationally.
An eye-witness account:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/985874/the_democratic_convention_protest_and.html?cat=9
Now, *this* is misuse of police power:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Conventions/story?id=5668622&page=1
ETHA!
You’re OK?
I send you a huge twirling bear hug and a peck on the cheek. *grin*
Another eyewitness account :
http://www.ep.tc/intro-archive032.html
With some additional comments about the police provocations:
http://www.ep.tc/intro-archive033.html
Seems that the protester didn’t leave the park where they were picnicking on a whim. They have been frightened away by the repeated passing, through them and close to them, of cops carrying sticks and rifles and looking rather threatening.
Blog is doubleplus good.
etha, it is in fact obvious, still, i’ve heard the argument used in all seriousness.
my fault i suppose, for having spent too much time in religion chat rooms.
i’m really surprised that so many here are surprised to discover that police, etc., become goon squads at many protests.
always take your pepper spray goggles.
Bob Barr is insane.
He’s also a liar, a cheat and a bigot, which is par for the course for a southern pol, but he’s the kind of liar cheat and bigot that makes people openly discuss that he’s a liar cheat and bigot. Even in the south.
Any country that would let that moron lead it will go down in flames–and deserve to become nothing but ashes for being moronic enough to put him in power. And don’t be so sure that his interpretation of separation of church and state is the same as yours. It isn’t. His record shows 100% pandering to Christianity and 0% tolerance of non-Christianity.
He can claim that he’s a changed man, but he’s done nothing to demonstrate it. He never showed any capability of changing or progressing into a less hateful jerk while he was in office (had power), so what makes anyone think he’ll do it now? This election is too important to take a chance on a senile old attack dog learning a new trick. No offense against real senile old attack dogs…
btw, perhaps i should leave this alone, i seem to be treading on thin ice around here, but, negentropyeater, 70% of 20% is 14%.
correct, but I wrote;
14% is 28% of 50%, or what’s needed for Obama to win this election…
Interesting…research I did in response to the comments in this posting lead me to believe that Barack may be a
uslim, in the eyes of certain Muslims. That is, he was born of a Muslim father, and is therefore an apostate Muslim. Would make for interesting visit to Muslim countries. Might get this whole ‘Muslim child’ ‘Christian child’ that Dawkins rightly points out is horse shit wider play.
For what little it may be worth, I grew up in the Denver area (I moved east in 1979). The Aurora police were notorious back then for their exceptional violence, particularly against people of color. The Golden, CO police were kind enough to share their gentle mercies with me during the 1977 strike against the Coors brewery, and the Denver police and I had warm dialogue about their odd habit of lethal violence against black and latin trans young people. As the ultra-right and the fundies have grown stronger in the state in the intervening decades, I’ve no doubt that policing standards have kept pace.
The anointing of Obama/Biden should make it clear to even the most clueless that the Donkey plan is Business As Usual, But Smarter. Sure, McCrazy may be The Cryptkeeper in drag prone to PTSD rages and Ambien fugues; he’s terrifying, no question. Obama’s feel-good rhetoric about Hope ‘n Change is, however, simply bullshit. Yes, it’s an historic moment, in that now an African-American can tap our communications without warrants, order torture at whim, ‘smart’ bomb the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, and threaten nuclear war against Iran. Biden, we should recall, was a prime enabler of the Iraq war, champion of the “PATRIOT” Act, and is a jointly-owned creature of DuPont and the credit card industry. That’s sure some change I can believe in.
The Donkeys fully support the American Empire and endless war; it’s all that’s left as the empire lurches from crisis to crisis. It’s no mistake that the Democrats have done nothing to end the war, done nothing to hold anyone accountable for war crimes or for violations of US law. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. They have done nothing of substance to oppose the most radical right-wing regime in living memory because they are fine with all of it.
Vote for Obama & Biden if you must, but don’t kid yourself that their regime will have damn all to do with restoring Constitutional rights, rule of law, or ending war.