American Gentlemen

[4est_4est_Gump]

Rude, insulting language about Romney (“bullsh****r) from the president. Vulgar sexual innuendo, aimed at seducing young women to vote for him. The vice president asking a bereaved parent about the size of his murdered son’s testicles. It’s quite a spectacle. We’re a fractious people, and our politics have always been full of colorful language, but I can’t recall the current depth of vulgarity. The “politics of personal destruction” have gotten uglier. Does it mean anything? Should we try to understand it?

First, it bespeaks a coarsening of public language. No surprise there (Romney’s gentlemanlyness is more surprising, in fact); for a long time our movies and television have abandoned the rules that banned certain words and phrases. Still, until recently, our political leaders have avoided such vulgarities, at least in their public rhetoric. No more, at least at the highest level of the current Democrat Party.

Second, it shows the shrinking vocabulary of our political life. There are plenty of usable and powerful synonyms of “buls*****r,” but a graduate of Harvard Law School didn’t have any of them on the tip of his tongue. Or perhaps he just preferred the vulgarity.

Third, it is yet another step in the erasure of the line that once divided public and private. We always knew that there was (sometimes) a big difference between public image and private behavior. No man (except maybe Sir Winston) is a hero to his valet, etc. etc. But still, there were proprieties, rules for public decorum, and those who fell from grace in public were criticized and excoriated for falling. No more, at least so far as I can see among the Democrat faithful.

To be sure, there’s a difference between the two parties. When male Republican candidates make disgusting and ridiculous statements about rape, the faithful turn on them, properly so IMHO, but neither Obama nor Biden has come in for punishment for their use of obscenities and vulgarities.

So the rules for proper decorum are out the window, and the former arbiters of good taste are on board, ratifying the changes by their silence. It’s a shame, but there you have it.

http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2012/10/28/why-is-obama-so-nasty-and-vulgar/?singlepage=true

You "men" should be ashamed of yourselves. We thought metrosexuality would be much more articulate and polite.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

OMG! He's rude, he's nasty, he's vulgar.

I had no idea the GOP and "Not Republicans" who now turn out to be Romney supporters had such delicate sensibilities.

Surely (Not) Republicans wouldn't be throwing stones from their glass houses..

Willie Horton ads, Swiftboating, GOP convention-goers waving purple band-aids to mock a veteran's war wounds, birtherism, Ann Coulter claiming that 9/11 widows were "enjoying their husbands' deaths," Rush Limbaugh mocking Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease, ads falsely claiming Sen. Kay Hagan was "godless," Rep. Michele Bachmann calling for an investigation of "un-American views" among some members of Congress, Joyce Kaufman at a tea-party rally: "If ballots don't work, bullets will," Glenn Beck: "Obama hates white people," Rep. Joe Wilson: "You lie!" wingnuts at the FreeRepublic website calling 11-year-old Sasha Obama a "street whore," outright lies from Sarah Palin and others about "death panels," Sharron Angle's "Second Amendment remedies," booing soldiers in war zones for being gay, South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer comparing poor people to stray animals you shouldn't feed, South Carolina state Sen. Jake Knotts: "We've got one raghead in the White House, we don't need one in the governor's mansion," conservative "Christians" suggesting that people pray for the president's death using Psalm 109:8 as a text, Limbaugh calling the First Lady "uppity," and on and on and on …

Sure, liberals can be rude. But we have yet to master rudeness as a political philosophy the way conservatives have.

 

[Saint Peter]

Well placed and accurate.

bull·shit (blsht) Vulgar Slang
n.
1. Foolish, deceitful, or boastful language.
2. Something worthless, deceptive, or insincere.
3. Insolent talk or behavior.
v. bull·shit also bull·shat (-sht) or bull·shit·ted (-shtd), bull·shit·ting, bull·shits
v.intr.
1. To speak foolishly or insolently.
2. To engage in idle conversation.
v.tr.
To attempt to mislead or deceive by talking nonsense.
adj.
Very angry; incensed.
interj.
Used to express extreme displeasure or exasperation.
bullshitter n.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Nine days U_D...


You have nine more days to hammer home my point and then you go on ignore.

 

[mercury14]

Nine days U_D...


You have nine more days to hammer home my point and then you go on ignore.

Tired of people calling you on your rampant hypocrisy? Pretend it's "harassment" and put 'em on iggy.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Sorry merc.


Your special brand of "gentlemanlyness" garnered you an early ignore.

Contemporary leftists, on the other hand, view their opponents as people you send off to the Gulag, unworthy of any respect, deserving of any kind of low blow, no matter how foul. So you accuse Goldwater of insanity, slander Justice Thomas as a sexual monster, casually publish plays, books, and films calling for the assassination of President Bush, and assault the first serious Republican female candidate at her weakest point -- her family. And of course, you scream to high heaven if any form of turnabout occurs in your direction, as in the case of the Obama family, which was declared "off limits" early in the presidential campaign, at the same time that Palin's family was being stretched on the media rack.

This style of political loathing has become effectively innate. It has been systemized to such a degree as to become integral. Modern liberalism cannot do without it. An entire structure has been erected on the basis of political hatred, and from that structure a whole new strategy has arisen.
J.R. Dunn

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Well placed and accurate.

Is that the public language you employ with women?



No wonder you are a very lonely guy...

 

[mercury14]

Sorry merc.


Your special brand of "gentlemanlyness" garnered you an early ignore.

Early as in after three years. Because you logged in and I asked "how about that debate last night". Your response after one single post was to iggy me.

Except you keep finding ways to respond to me. My guess it that you don't have me on iggy at all.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

And for the record, it is just not me that sees it...

I bitched about Bush for six years, and through all that time the Republicans on this board never trashed me the way the Democrats do now that "their guy" is "in charge."

They were angry when Bush was President, but they seem even more angry now that Obama is President.

Maybe it's just disappointment.

Maybe, it's who they really are and have been all along.
A_J, the Wiser

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The Obama campaign is veering toward antinomianism. Since it regards its own motives as pure, it feels it can dispense with the normal rules of accuracy, civility and decency. So we get the political methods of Spiro Agnew combined with the moral self-regard of Woodrow Wilson. It is not an attractive mixture.
Michael Gerson

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

To understand why I’m switching, it helps to understand why I backed Obama four years ago. I am a Democrat, but vote as an independent. I see people, not parties, so Obama’s label played no role.

My choice involved a simple calculation. Would John McCain or Obama be more likely to forge a consensus on big issues? America was dangerously polarized, and unable to act in ways that even 60 percent of the public could support. History shows that paralysis leads to disaster.

The war on terror was falling out of favor, despite the continuing threat. Good ideas were getting thrown out with the bad and Republicans had squandered the chance to govern.

When the financial crisis hit, McCain stumbled. He wanted to postpone a debate and rushed back to Washington — but had nothing to say or do. Obama kept silent and followed the lead of congressional Democrats. While not exactly great statesmanship, he at least looked steady.

McCain, a genuine American hero, often revealed his maverick streak, his choice of Sarah Palin being Exhibit A. Despite doubts about her readiness, I found myself defending her against the vicious attacks from the left, especially by women.

McCain was my real problem. Mavericks make good whistleblowers and lousy CEOs. Upsetting the apple cart is not a qualification for the Oval Office.

Obama’s soaring rhetoric enticed me at first, and I agreed that a restoration of the Clinton presidency would be a bad idea. Still, I got a jolt of Messiah Alert when he said his rise marked the moment “when the planet began to heal.”

Where he totally fooled me was his claim to be a pragmatist, not an ideologue. He spoke of uniting the country and I believed he was capable and sincere. That he won 70 million votes and more than two-thirds of the Electoral College spoke to his appeal.

He failed as president because he is incompetent, dishonest and not interested in the actual work of governing. His statist policies helped consign millions of Americans to a lower standard of living and his odious class warfare further divided the nation. He had no intention of uniting the country — it was his Big Lie.

I don’t hate him. But I sure as hell don’t trust him.

As for the desperate charge that opposition to Obama makes me a racist, let me note that he was black when I voted for him.

Michael Goodwin
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/why_voting_for_romney_orTltVz75rPUIuWCfgNpnJ

 

[mercury14]

The Obama campaign is veering toward antinomianism. Since it regards its own motives as pure, it feels it can dispense with the normal rules of accuracy, civility and decency. So we get the political methods of Spiro Agnew combined with the moral self-regard of Woodrow Wilson. It is not an attractive mixture.
Michael Gerson

And UD illustrated how you're a hypocrite that shouldn't be heeded. Do you have anything to suggest otherwise?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Note how they cannot stop attacking even when they know they are on ignore...

That is a classy act, the manner of a gentleman.



The liberals have fully absorbed the lessons taught by their ideological progenitors, the Nazi socialists and Soviet communists. They understand that the big lie, if endlessly repeated, is extremely effective. Its purpose is to establish in the minds of the target audience an automatic stimulus-response connection, a Pavlovian conditioned reflex: capitalist = fat cat; George Bush = moron; Sarah Palin = idiot; Barack Obama = genius, any Kennedy = gift to mankind, etc. Ask the liberal spouting any of the above for proof that, say, Sarah Palin is an idiot or Barack Obama an intellectual giant, and the answer would be a puzzled stare -- why, everyone knows that she is a moron and he a towering intellect, so it must be true. Just repeat your slogan often enough, and once embedded in the minds of the people the mantra becomes reality for them. So effective is this technique that the left has made the former Alaska governor unelectable in the view of independents and even many conservatives, in effect dictating the available choices for the conservatives....
If tomorrow they decide to call the Tea Party members, say, Ghoulish Ghibellines, the moniker will stick though the people who would use it will have not the remotest idea of what it means (they would probably decide it denotes a particularly vicious breed of goblins). Why do you think liberals have such a conniption fit whenever Obama is called a socialist -- a neat and catchy label? It comes straight out of the liberal playbook and potentially is very effective.
Victor Volsky
The American Thinker

 

[mercury14]

Note how they cannot stop attacking even when they know they are on ignore...

That is a classy act, the manner of a gentleman.

You don't have me on ignore.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

But do not listen to me, I'm a Libertarian.

Take it from one of their fellows, a reasonable guy who crossed them by daring to have an open mind and respect for his opposition and fellow citizens:

The big lesson for me [working at NPR] was the intolerance of so-called liberals. I say intolerance because I grew up as a black Democrat in Brooklyn, N.Y., and always thought it was the Archie Bunker Republicans who practiced intolerance. My experience at NPR revealed to me how rigid liberals can be when their orthodoxy is challenged. I was the devil for simply raising questions, offering a different viewpoint, not shutting my mouth about the excesses of liberalism — a bad guy, a traitor to the cause.
Juan Williams

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

“I used to think the left wing was the home of tolerance, open-mindedness, respect for all viewpoints…
But, now I’ve learned the truth the hard way.“
Juan Williams


Just because it bears repeating; to highlight those who refuse to see either the mirror or the truth of Dorian Gray...

 

[mercury14]

But do not listen to me, I'm a Libertarian.

Take it from one of their fellows, a reasonable guy who crossed them by daring to have an open mind and respect for his opposition and fellow citizens:

The big lesson for me [working at NPR] was the intolerance of so-called liberals. I say intolerance because I grew up as a black Democrat in Brooklyn, N.Y., and always thought it was the Archie Bunker Republicans who practiced intolerance. My experience at NPR revealed to me how rigid liberals can be when their orthodoxy is challenged. I was the devil for simply raising questions, offering a different viewpoint, not shutting my mouth about the excesses of liberalism — a bad guy, a traitor to the cause.
Juan Williams

Stop quoting Juan. He doesn't agree with you that liberals are any more guilty of being "ungentilemanly" than Republicans. In fact he'd almost certainly suggest that Republicans are more guilty of it.

Nobody buys AJ's new-found love of civility in politics. But he's going the extra mile to sell it to... somebody.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

... and we slink like alley cats,
Tearing down what we attack,
To prove that we are 'won...'
INXS

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

They follow the same pattern in all things and see the economic too as the political...

Any advocate of socialistic measures is looked upon as the friend of the Good, the Noble, and the Moral, as a disinterested pioneer of necessary reforms, in short, as a man who unselfishly serves his own people and all humanity, and above all as a zealous and courageous seeker after truth. But let anyone measure Socialism by the standards of scientific reasoning, and he at once becomes a champion of the evil principle, a mercenary serving the egotistical interests of a class, a menace to the welfare of the community, an ignoramus outside the pale. For the most curious thing about this way of thinking is that it regards the question of whether Socialism or Capitalism will better serve the public welfare, as settled in advance -- to the effect, naturally, that Socialism is considered good and Capitalism as evil -- whereas in fact of course only by a scientific inquiry could the matter be decided. The results of economic investigations are met, not with arguments, but with …"moral pathos" …and on which Socialists and (Statists) always fall back, because they find no answer to the criticism to which science subjects their doctrines.
Ludwig von Mises

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

He's got Lukeroids.

lol

A blast from the past...

He, and his fellows also suffer from:

Oikophobia

Xenophobia is fear of the alien; oikophobia is fear of the familiar: "the disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours.' "

The oik repudiates national loyalties and defines his goals and ideals against the nation, promoting transnational institutions over national governments, accepting and endorsing laws that are imposed on us from on high by the EU or the UN, though without troubling to consider Terence's question, and defining his political vision in terms of universal values that have been purified of all reference to the particular attachments of a real historical community.
The oik is, in his own eyes, a defender of enlightened universalism against local chauvinism. And it is the rise of the oik that has led to the growing crisis of legitimacy in the nation states of Europe. For we are seeing a massive expansion of the legislative burden on the people of Europe, and a relentless assault on the only loyalties that would enable them voluntarily to bear it. The explosive effect of this has already been felt in Holland and France. It will be felt soon everywhere, and the result may not be what the oiks expect.
Roger Scruton, British philosopher

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Here's another behavior of the New American Gentleman.

You walk up to the grieving father of a son who was just killed because you refused to protect him, ask him if his son always had cue balls and then get the little lady to assure the father that the maker of a Utoob clip will be arrested because he failed to create a mob attack to cover for your al Qaeda gun-running (to Syria) allies...

Chivalry at its finest!

Saladin weeps...

 

[mercury14]

He's got Lukeroids.

Oh good, you're here to witness AJ saying that Democrats need to act more civil in politics. But Sandra Fluke is a slut and a whore. Republicans should get free reign call call Democrats "vile and despicable" when they criticize Medicare policy but using the term "Romnesia" in a stump speech, well... That victimizes poor, innocent, horribly persecuted Republicans.

As always, AJ has one set of rules for himself and his political allies and another for.... everyone else. And if you mention the fact that it's just a wee bit of a double-standard, well then the rebuttal is iggy. No questioning the rules.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

"The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us."
Eric Hoffer

 

[unregistered]