hmmm…

John Stewart – “Democarts have to go out and prove they love this country. Everyone already knows Republicans love this country, they just hate half the people living in it.”

Exhibit A, the 2000 presidential election. When Bush won the meme was he *stole* the election with a U.S. Supreme Court decision. I know perfectly intelligent and decent liberals who actually believe this BS. (Really? He stole it? The Florida Supreme court didn’t invent a law out of whole cloth in an attempt to give the result to the Democrats? (”Larceny in plain sight,” I think George Will wrote of it.) Here’s a quiz for the stolen election conspiracy theorists: Of the *top six* counties in Florida with “spoiled” votes, and therefore worthy of having their vote counts contested, how many, based on pre-election party registration, were predominantly Democratic and how many were Republican? Give up? Five Republican, one Democratic. Al Gore contested the vote counts in those five Republican counties, right? No, only the Democratic? Golly, why do you suppose he did that?)

The long and the short of it is that our elites in the law, the academy, the arts, and the traditional news media are overwhelmingly on the left side of the political spectrum. Their instincts are basically facistic –government by expert, the Nanny State socialism that holds sway in Canada and Western Europe — with the U.S not far behind. America, in their view, is a fatally flawed nation that should apologize for its very existence, and one that should be feared far more than gangster states with thousands of nuclear weapons (Prince Vlad’s Russia) or fanatically Islamist ones trying mightily to *get* nuclear weapons (the mullahs’ Iran). That’s the ethos of the tribe of the Left.

The tribe of the Right buys none of that. (Why should it?) It sees a nation that in the last century and this new one has sacrificed the lives of hundreds of thousands of its own sons (and lately, daughters) to preserve the freedom of people in other nations. (Right, I know, the Daily Kos and Moveon folks are are saying, “It was all for GM and Exxon.”) And it sees a federal work force composed of millions of its well-meaning fellow citizens who, on too many days, have trouble pouring piss out of a boot with the instructions stenciled on the heel, because the rules they have to follow are based on laws that are written by Congressional aides who have never worked in the private sector in their lives and haven’t the barest clue about how life outside of government works. They think, at a minimum, when an issue arises, the first impulse should *not* be to say, “There ought to be a law!” Or: “We need a government program.”

In its modern form this culture war has been going on at least since 1933, and it promises to get worse before it gets better. A house divided against itself cannot stand, a wise man said 150 years or so ago. He said it will become all one thing or all the other.

We’ll see.

I used to think that Democrats were just stupid. But 10 years in the NorthWest has taught me differently. They are not stupid; they are bad people.

I have to say that the 2000 election, more than anything, created the gulf between Red & Blue. Even by Nov 01, liberals were berating Bush about the “quagmire” of Afghanistan.
Bush giving in to Powell and going to the UN for authorization didn’t help, especially when WMDs weren’t found,
When Bush didn’t fight back against the Plame smears, it was basically all over for him politically.
I’m still a 20%-er that supports him. Someone needed their sh17 kicked, and Saddam was good enough for me.

Oh, my Gooooodd!! One guy is used to tossing flowers as the coffin is lowered at funerals and the other one is a POW-professional memorial attendee who “reverently” lays down the posies, habituated as he is to public ceremonies….

Obama also chose to have a political luncheon with Clinton, while McCain chose to vistit the memorials & families of 9-11…One has the country’s best interest at heart, while the other has his OWN best interest at heart…

Right …because after 7 years with 16 million more Americans dying, many tragically, and more attention and money than any similarly sized group of politicians ever got from politicians in our nations history? What more important thing can there possibly be for our nation than to have each politician pay homage to the Greatest Victim Families Ever?

Credit to Obama for paying tribute to 9/11 then going on to real business in NYC relevant to his campaign and the nation. Normally it is the Democrats who are the worst panderers to the Cult of Victimhood.
McCain went where he thought the cameras would be. To also nod sagely to the aristocracy of American Victims likely complain to him that they need more Fed money for the billion-dollar Greatest Memorial Ever at the WTC Pit, because the State and City won’t pay for the huge cost overruns.

Very little. Did I say that we live in a fair and logical world? No, I did not—so don’t blame the messenger. A majority of American voters could essentially care less about 9/11.

I think it is Pity Fatigue.

7 years have passed and people did all they could emotionally and financially for the Victim Families and NYC – and in 7 years have faced their own relatives or family members dying or encountering tragic setbacks and they have dealt with those things and moved on. But NYC and the various 9/11 “heroes” and victims still demand the spotlight, more money, more attention…

That the Nation reached 9/11 Pity Fatigue a long time ago, maybe as far back as 2004 as “The Greatest Victim Families Ever!” lined up for partisan attacks on Kerry or Bush, is common knowledge outside delusional NYC folks and fans of “9/11 Changed Everything!!!” Neocons.

It was also on display by 2004, in WOT, when Bush learned just chanting “9/11!!” Heroes! Evildoers!” was not enough to get the rest of the world to approve of his military adventurism, and incompetent leadership…then Americans themselves slowly rejected his 9/11 opportunism. The same year, a level of disgust came about the endless lawsuits by “Heroes working the Hallowed Ground” claiming they needed a million buck check and lifetime disability.
The recent best confirmation was when 9/11 Hero Gov Pataki dropped his idea of running for President when polls had him starting at under 1%. And “MR 9/11″, Rudy Giuliani, once the feared and formidable Greatest Hero, became a mocked and ridiculed Presidential candidate – with a college warning against students playing the Rudy Drinking Game – swallowing a lot of, or chugging a full beer can down everytime Rudy mentioned 9/11 in any debate on any subject not related to terrorism.

“Well, my belief is that the question of religion in schools is something that reminds me of 9/11 and how important religion was to all the heroes that day.”

“We need ethanol. Given 9/11, the subsidies are a good idea, because the money stays in America, with American farmers, and doesn’t fund the terrorists”….(leaving aside most of our oil – 95% of it – does not come from the ME)

Since then, I’ve voted for Reagan, Perot, Clinton and Bush because I thought they were the best choices for the nation at the time.

I don’t love John McCain. But I will vote for him because Barack Obama is terrifying. His lack of experience is horrifying — while he did a great job taking advantage of Hillary Clinton’s ineptitide in the caucuses and some early primaries, his economic plans are redistribution by another name and his foreign policy is scary. He’s coming apart because of some jabs from a VICE presidential candidate who dared to challenge him, and basically has shown that he lacks the composure and experience to be commander-in-chief. Geraldine Ferraro was right — if he were a white male, he wouldn’t have been seriously considered because of his thin resume.

The two ideological sides are not equal. The right — whether it is always correct or not — advocates positions and ideals that would be instantly recognizable to most Americans in the past, whether they were from 1940 or 1840. The left, on the other hand, morally rejects America’s traditions and has instead embraced a post-nationalist relativism that is a creation of the last fifty years.

This is a rift that, frankly, can not be healed… unless, perhaps, through unthinkable calamity. When a significant portion of a society has rejected its traditions and ideals, there is little that can be done to save the entire enterprise.