Which is more rude? "Dems are cowards" meme or Dems being cowards?

[BurtWorm]

Kevin Drum suggests the question:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009585.php

Mark Kleiman writes:

Note to Blue opinion leaders: I hate the torture bill as much as you do. Maybe more....But is it really a good idea to spread the "Democrats are cowards" meme six weeks before an election that might restore the system of checks and balances? Would it be intolerably rude of me to note that you're doing Karl Rove's work for him?


Rude, maybe, but hardly undeserved. Democrats have been voting for stuff I dislike for as long as I've been voting for Democrats, but I have to say that their poll-tested cowardice on the detainee bill over the past couple of weeks has been about as bad as anything I can remember. And what makes it worse is that not only is it craven, it's probably politically stupid as well.

The leadership of the Republican Party decided after 9/11 to govern the country by trying to keep it in a state of permanent panic and tarring anyone who opposed their calculated panic as a weak-kneed appeaser. The way to fight this is not to give in to Karl Rove's political machinations, it's to fight them. It worked for Thomas Jefferson, after all, and Democrats consider him the founder of their party. They should take a lesson from him.

[valerief]

1. The person who yells, "Fire," in a public building when there

is fire could be construed as rude, because yelling in a public building is rude. But I think it's okay to be rude if your intent is to save people from death in a burning building.

[TahitiNut]

11. We should always vote for the firing squad with the softer bullets.

:crazy:

[wtmusic]

2. And if the Democrats lose the midterms we should:

a) Blame the people who called them "cowards" after their torture vote
b) Blame the Democrats for not being more cowardly
c) Not say anything -- general election only two years away

:crazy:

[BurtWorm]

4. What was d) again?

:crazy:

[wtmusic]

5. You mean the one that makes a lick of sense?

d) Condemn and criticize whatever actions are unjust -- then vote for the better candidate, which will in all likelihood be the Democrat anyway

[BurtWorm]

6. Yeah! That's the one!

:patriot:

[TahitiNut]

9. Ubetcha. As long as Dachau is better than Auschwitz, I'll vote for Dachau

Anyone who says there's no difference between concentration camps hasn't read the latest issue of "Arbeit Macht Frei!" Dachau is far, far superior to Auschwitz!

[meganmonkey]

7. I pick choice D :

Announcing a Day of Mass Resistance:

OCTOBER 5, 2006

BRING THIS TO A HALT!

YOUR GOVERNMENT, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is openly torturing people, and justifying it.

YOUR GOVERNMENT puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.

YOUR GOVERNMENT suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.

YOUR GOVERNMENT enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.

People look at all this and think of Hitler - and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come.

We must act now; the future is in the balance.

Millions and millions are deeply disturbed and outraged by this. They recognize the need for a vehicle to express this outrage, yet they cannot find it; politics as usual cannot meet the enormity of the challenge, and people sense this. There is not going to be some magical "pendulum swing." People who steal elections and believe they're on a "mission from God" will not go without a fight. There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into "leaders" who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.

But silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable. That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn - or be forced - to accept. There is no escaping it: the whole disastrous course of this Bush regime must be STOPPED. And we must take the responsibility to do it. And there is a way. We are talking about something on a scale that can really make a huge change in this country and in the world. We need more than fighting Bush's outrages one at a time, constantly losing ground to the whole onslaught. We must, and can, aim to create a political situation where the Bush regime's program is repudiated, where Bush himself is driven from office, and where the whole direction he has been taking society is reversed. We, in our millions, must and can take responsibility to change the course of history. Acting in this way, we join with and give support and heart to people all over the globe who so urgently need and want this regime to be stopped.

This will not be easy. If we speak the truth, they will try to silence us. If we act, they will try to stop us. But we speak for the majority, here and around the world, and as we get this going we are going to reach out to the people who have been so badly fooled by Bush and we are NOT going to stop. The point is this: history is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined.

The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.

http://www.worldcantwait.org/

[PATRICK]

3. Transformation of the party

if there IS a big victory in November is step two. After 2000 and 2002 and 2004 the losing ways of the controlling centrists maintained their self-confidence(in controlling the party if nothing else) and will argue that all their actions and ideas were justified even if grass roots progressives provide all the steam in their soot clogged engine. Already candidates matching their "wisdom" have elbowed out young Turks and progressives, sometimes passing on the abuse they submit to daily from the rabid RW GOP.

The things that NEED to happen with a November win face the major obstacles of insufficiency in party leadership and WILL to confront absolute necessities thrown up by absolute extremist crimes. The progressive march to real populist choice, principle and necessary actions for America to even survive face the next stage of an equally difficult internal political battle to change undeservedly entrenched winners-by-default.

But the only way, even in the darkest view, to begin this uphill battle is to win very big in November, keep unity while steering the super cautious toward their duty and indeed their own future survival. I am not sure what political Armageddon Nader had hopes for, inspiring the rise out of the ashes of a new liberal something or other, or what tremendous losses in lives and resources and law deemed acceptable by the pure conscience. It might come to that post-apocalypse scenario(Democratic party meltdown). That is is a worse uphill and morally unacceptable event to "hope" for and ensure by attacking the imperfect and giving the victory to the darkness that is the GOP.

What the GOP wants is for the impotent and the victims to tear themselves to pieces. A petty, spiteful despairing and misdirected futility that solidifies all evil, second only to becoming an enthusiastic part of the GOP soul eater itself. The fight for mere human survival will not end with the defeat of Bush/Cheney, with a Democratic majority, a Dem President, an impeachment, a reversal of bad law and policy, a new media. It will not begin or end perfectly, will not trend in the suites of power toward the rational and progressive. So we know our effort must be persuasive, pervasive, consistent and persistent, not relegated to a clique, a wing or a party or not dependently loyal to any elite or establishment. Nothing has changed, as much as many yearn for conversion of people in undeserving possession of our delegated responsibilities and voice. Nothing will change if we act like easy suckers
doing the easy thing. The paradox of screaming against the Congress is that it shows there are people who really want someone else to change and save us which just might be a weakness of our respect for ourselves as citizens. However Congress got to this sorry state it is up to us and us alone to build change. It always is and success can spoil- as much as defeat disintegrates- the citizen base.

Like good people fighting among themselves.

[blm]

8. What's so damn hard about people being ACCURATE and saying SOME Dems

instead of saying the Democrats or the Dem party when they launch an attack on them?

What do critics of SOME Democrats have against ACCURACY?

[meganmonkey]

10. Can't have it both ways

The people here who say we have to vote for all Dems regardless of their individual vote history because it is the PARTY that matters need to get used to it.

:shrug: