Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1804 Joined: February 1, 2008 Location: United States
RE: US Presidential election (2012)
American novelist Tom Wolfe explains in this short TV interview, how the Left ALWAYS says that conservatives are idiots and morons. They did it with Eisenhower, and they did it with Reagan, and Bush. He calls the Left the "charming aristocracy", and they see themselves as the educated, enlightened, "annointed" ones, and anyone who opposes them is an idiot from the countryside. So the whole "Palin is an idiot" is really not new.
Member Posts: 37 Joined: October 13, 2009 Location: United States
RE: US Presidential election (2012)
Originally written by John Bunch They did it with Eisenhower, and they did it with Reagan, and Bush. He calls the Left the "charming aristocracy", and they see themselves as the educated, enlightened, "annointed" ones, and anyone who opposes them is an idiot from the countryside. So the whole "Palin is an idiot" is really not new.
Yes, I remember how they painted Reagan as a stupid actor. The left also believes critical discourse on their policies and leaders to be "hate speech," and their are high levels of intolerance amongst people on the far left as well as the far right.
Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1804 Joined: February 1, 2008 Location: United States
RE: US Presidential election (2012)
Of course. I had to leave a conservative forum once because I could not stand the anti-immigrant sentiments on that site. I ended up constantly defending Mexicans and immigrants, and I found many of the people to be real bigots.
But you are right, there is real intolerance on the Left as well. I think it comes from the idea that liberals think that only they know what true progress and enlightenment is, and they get very angry sometimes when you don't "see the light". And yes, they tend to engage in ad hominem and personal attacks, rather than debating. And they did call Reagan a "stupid cowboy" (as if the term "cowboy" would be taken as an insult ! ... not where I live !).
Also, what a lot of Europeans don't understand is the so-called "Jacksonian" American. The Jacksonian is a person (based on Andrew Jackson) who lives in the countryside, hunts, fishes, mostly disdains what Europeans and coastal Americans would refer to as learning and education, but also defines knowledge differently. For a Jacksonian, guns and hunting and fishing and knowing how to fix an engine = knowledge. Being able to track game and having knowledge of the land is considered more important to these people than learning about Plato or Freud. I once hear someone refer to these people as dumb, but I retorted, saying, they can fix an engine and track game, can you do that ? They tend to think that fighting is sometimes (often) necessary, and they thus support a "muscular" foreign policy. Palin is one of them. Many people do not understand this, and just call these people "stupid".
The "charming aristocracy" (as Wolfe calls them) in Santa Monica and Manhattan might be very bright when it comes to Freud or let's say, literature, but drop them into the woods and see how long they can make it, and you might find out the various ways that one can be "smart".
[Edited by John Bunch on November 20, 2009 12:31 PM]
Одрекување на форумите: гледиштата изнесени во форумите се сопственост на авторите и не значи дека се гледишта на сопственикот и/или модераторите на сајтот. Ако читачот смета дека некоја објава е навредлива, тогаш тој или таа треба да упати поплака до модераторот на односниот форум. Поплаката би требало да се разгледа во рок од 24 часа, но ве молиме да го почитувате фактот дека модераторот можеби живее во друга часовна зона. Користењето на форумот ја означува твојата согласност со Правилата за објавување на форумот.
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