The views expressed on this site are mine and mine alone, and do not represent my employer, Media Matters for America

Social Media & Research
Blog Research on Genre
BROG Research Blog
SLIS Blogs

Crew
ChikinSandowichi
Dopaminergic
Dystopianethic
Easily Amusing
Esperanza
found_drama
A Found Object
Ickyfoot
lady3jane
Modus Ponens
m00se
Pyrex
Radikal_Papi
Real Tegan
Rites
Synaptic Clog
thewrongtim Winona

LibraryBlogs
Abada Abada
Librarian.Net
Tame the Web

RSS

Terror, Politics, Etc. Posted Thu Jul 7 11:36:23 2005 - 3 comments

3.  Mike   I think you're right on about how the traditional roles regarding foreign intervention have flipped. International intervention was always a platform of the American Left, and it was the American Right that was the isolationist / non-interventionist. posted: Thu Jul 7 19:38:41 2005 EST 2.  F_D   War, soldiers, and everything else with a uniform seems to have become penultimately anathema for anyone with leftist leanings. Or else the leftist with the yellow ribbon loses his/her ride on the donkey by some kind of default. The prevailing attitude seems to be: This is your war. And all war is wrong. Therefore, you are wrong. An attitude that seems to split and divide even more than the usual, predictable partisanship. The odd cut that I keep feeling and pondering revolves around these weird all-too-academia logician's circles re: How does one arrive safely at freedom? That and: Freedom From vs. Freedom To Friends and family that veer to the right all seem to express the sentiment that No Really It's OK To Intervene If You're Going To Make Things Better. Friends/family on the left seem to get very Prime Directive on the whole nine. Which has a half jigger of irony mixed in because it seems very much the opposite of the traditional perspectives (on each respective side) w/r/t/ government's involvement. For some reason this seems more sadly hypocritical than it does sadly confusing. B/c that being said, it implies that the hypocrisy on each side is strictly a Do Unto Others sort of thing. And the worst part seems to be that both sides are not/donning yellow ribbons strictly as a gesture of whether/not they would Do Unto for someone else's freedom and not over whether/not they care that lads with families come home with all their fingers and toes. Or maybe I'm just full of resentment and conspiracy theories. posted: Thu Jul 7 19:07:57 2005 EST 1.  Mike   That is a huge dilemma for the Dems. At the core I think the problem is this: How do a significant number of Democrats (what percentage I don't know. I don't think it's huge, but I don't think it's trivial either), who at a maximum loathe the military as an instrument of American power, and at a minimum are deeply skeptical of the military and any politician that advocates using the military at the same time support those in the military? The Democrat who can answer that question and win the primary will be the next Democratic president. Republicans have it easy, whatever else, support for the military is a key element of the worldview. There are of course exceptions, but they tend to be isolated. Anyway, thinking about this leads to an interesting thought excerise (to me at least): maybe the 60's were the best of times for the American Left, and the worst thing that could have happened for the Democrats because it represented a high water mark for Democratic power and also established a new dominant (generally antiwar) position on foreign policy that allowed the Right to corner the market there politically? Or maybe I'm just full of shit. Prolly. LOL. posted: Thu Jul 7 15:09:08 2005 EST Post your comments. Name & email are optional. HTML tags will be removed except hyperlinks. Name: Email: Comments:    Back to Main Page