No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined.
- US Supreme Court

Monday, September 1, 2008

the feeling of being herded

The boys have had a lot of fun this year calling women hysterical, over-emotional, etc.

Lots of women bloggers have come back defiantly with, "oh yeah? Watch - I'm not going to vote the way you want me to!"*

In fact, people all over the place are being herded - into voting for or voting against - based on insults rather than issues.

Who benefits from this? Not Obama. So why does it seem to be originating from Obama's campaign?

What's really creepy is how perfect it all is. McCain's VP pick just happens to be all of the things that Obama famously sneered at. For instance:
  • Obama mocks small town America
    Palin represents small town America

  • Obama makes a mocking comment about Annie Oakley
    Palin is identified as a woman who shoots big guns
    Palin is tough like a frontier woman

  • Obama mocks those who 'cling' to religion (odd given his own position)
    Palin is a creationist
And so on.

Has it ever occurred to anyone that maybe this was set up?

There is something incredibly disturbing to me in that the guys who founded the two biggest Obama fan sites - Kos and HuffPo - are recently converted Republicans.

Then consider that the PUMA movement is led (and represented on TV) by a woman who is known to have donated a couple hundred dollars to McCain's earlier campaign. And I already wrote once about why the other PUMA founder seemed creepy to me.

And there's something odd about the runaway misogyny at sites like the Daily Kos: I just don't get how anyone who could be smart enough to set up a wildly popular "A-list" blog could yet be so stupid as to so totally alienate the female half of the Democratic party with such rude, thoughtless, infantile behavior. Yet look at the blogger boys going after Palin the same way they went after Hillary. It's like they're either retarded, or they aren't really primarily motivated by a desire to see Obama win.

Of course, that doesn't mean that voting for Obama is a good choice. He'd make a terrible President. But his very existence in this campaign has not only managed to knock Hillary out - he also seriously softens the McCain ick factor. Thinking of what it would be like to have Obama in the White House is enough to make McCain suddenly look good**.

I can't help but wonder if the same people who manipulated the outcome of the MI/FL primaries maybe manipulated more than just that.

If, perhaps, someone knew their campaign would be selecting Palin for VP, it wouldn't really be that hard for a clever guy like Rove to find ways to plant ideas or otherwise insert the necessary set-up into the campaign early on. (You don't even need the storyline about what good friends he supposedly is with Donna B., though of course those with a true love of wild speculation could have a great deal of fun with that.)

What was that Rush called it? Operation Chaos?

I have no doubt whatsoever that some form of manipulation is going on. After all, Republicans are involved.
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*It's sort of disturbing to consider the extent to which, by this reaction, women are in fact being hysterical and overly emotional. Though one could arrive through reason to the same conclusion - the strategic protest vote is (arguably) the rational response to the situation - there are plenty of comments from enraged females, reacting rather than thinking strategically.

This is a sure-fire sign that it is time to start examining the feelings that are being evoked. We might learn something if we can figure out where those feelings are coming from.

**And after Obama insulting "everyday Americans" as he did, I find I quite like the idea of a gun-toting patriotic type in the White House. It feels good. It feels like something was wrong that is now being made right. Yet, oddly, guns weren't an issue for me - at all - prior to this.

Another reaction that has gotten sharpened somehow is the coded language of "small town" America vs. sophisticated city people (which 'obviously' really refers to poor and working class people vs. affluent people).


This is what emotional manipulation feels like. Where is it coming from? Whose campaign is orchestrating it? To what end? Who benefits? (McCain.)


1 comment:

Unknown said...

And I'm afraid the Democratic leadership, including Obama, is in on it. They can't possibly be so stupid as not to understand what people have been screaming in their faces. This has all been a setup.

Post-partisanship (now in the platform). Impeachment off the table. Two years of nothing from the Democratic Congress.

The deciders are all in on it together.