For some time now, I've been concerned with the execrable quality of political discourse in this country. Quite frankly, the quality of debate sucks, and we Liberals are doing NOTHING to help our cause in this respect (not that Conservatives are doing much to help...). Michele beat me to this one, but we seem to be on the same wavelength here. Politically, we are seldom on the same page, but we seem to agree that this madness has gone far enough.
As Exhibit A, I offer MoveOn.org's commercial contest, which I will not dignify here with a link. It has turned into a vicious, mean-spirited, "I-hate-Bush" fest. Let me offer these travesties into evidence:
Can anyone tell me what purposes these images serve- other than making Liberals looking like mean-spirited crackpots? How can this pure, unadulterated crap meaningfully contribute to our ultimate goal, which, as I understand it, is the defeat of George W. Bush in November? The answer of course, is that it DOES NOT and CANNOT. Once you offend someone, you've lost the ability to reason with them.
It gets worse, though. Apparently, when you cannot beat them with the force of your own intellect, it's acceptable for Liberals to resort to heinous public assaults on the character of one's opponent. To wit:
Or, failing that, we can resort to insulting the physical appearance of someone who (because you do not agree with their view of the political world) so richly "deserves" it. THAT always works, eh??
And, of course, if it comes right down to it, we can always fall back on the "Bush or Chimp?" argument. That surely ought to win us some votes, eh??
Isn't it about time that we GROW THE HELL UP and remember what the goal is here? If the Democratic Party is to have ANY hope at all of defeating George W. Bush in November, we MUST stick to reasonable, well-formulated, and well-documented arguments. If we continue in this vein, the American electorate will laugh in our collective face, and you know something? We'll deserve it.
Civility is a GOOD thing, y'all. We as Democrats are facing an difficult, uphill battle come November. Gratuitous, mean-spirited insults will do NOTHING to improve our chances to effect the defeat of what many of us still consider to be an illegitimate President. Let's keep our eyes on the prize, shall we? If we fail to do this, we will have no one but ourselves to blame if George W. Bush is "re-elected" in November.
