Then why is Nixon STILL hated by my parents' generation? Bitter people with long memories I guess. They should've gotten over it 30 years ago after his David Frost self-defense, but just didn't.
Here's the thing. I thought Bush's economic policies wouldn't work. But I hoped to be wrong. I thought the Iraq invasion was stupid. But I hoped to be wrong. I wanted Bush to be right. You guys want Obama to be wrong. Because you're not true Americans. You're just Republicans.
It's incredibly difficult to come up with a good strategy against nihilism. That's true if a team bunkers in soccer. That's true if a group of people want to hijack planes and crash them. And that's true if a political party wants to shit in the well everyone drinks from. Really, the best strategy is to hope the nihilism burns itself out. It almost always does. You just have to put up with dysentery in the meantime.
This might actually be a topic for a new thread... Back on Topic, Slate has a really good article on ... what were we talking about... oh yeah: Chicago and the Olympics, which breaks it down into a "jocks vs. nerds" debate. http://www.slate.com/id/2231173?obref=obinsite For two years, wonks like Ben Joravsky of the Chicago Reader and Tom Tresser of No Games Chicago have denounced Chicago's Olympics gambit as poorly conceived and wasteful. These stalwarts of the city's nerd opposition have couched their arguments in numbers, rules, and historical precedent, hoping to persuade the Games' supporters through tireless skepticism. Joravsky, Tresser, and their ilk have noted that the city of Chicago hasn't completed a significant construction project on time or on budget in recent memory. On that account, the predicted $3.3 billion cost of the Games can't be taken seriously. It doesn't help that the city's finances are a mess. Chicago's budget deficit has soared from $200 million six months ago to an estimated $500 million next year, and the city has been laying people off and forcing municipal employees to take unpaid furloughs. The Second City's recent parking meter boondoggle, in which it sold its meter stock to a private firm for $974 million less than its estimated value, shows it is incapable of executing a project on the scale of the Olympics, the nerds say. The anti-Olympians also point out that the Olympics won't bring nearly as much money to the region as Chicago 2016's supporters allege. Research from an independent consulting firm estimates the Olympics would bring $4.4 billion in economic benefits to the area, much less than the $22 billion figure Mayor Daley has been promoting. Daley and the bid committee also promised Chicago taxpayers would not be on the hook for covering cost overruns. Yet during a trip to pitch the Chicago bid to the IOC in Switzerland this last June, he agreed to sign a contract guaranteeing the city will cover any losses incurred by the Olympics. According to that recent Tribune/WGN poll, 84 percent of Chicagoans oppose the use of public funds for the Olympics. Yet nearly 50 percent of city residents support bringing the games to the Midwest. The pro-Olympics crowd has been won over by the jocks of the Chicago 2016 bid committee, a group led by Aon Corp. founder and part-owner of the Chicago Bears Pat Ryan.* The jocks have offered a much simpler message than the nerds: The 2016 Olympics represent a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to show the world how fantastic Chicago really is. The Summer Games, they argue, will boost tourism and improve the city's global standing. Though the Chicago 2016 committee has produced a detailed plan for the IOC that lays out the logistics of paying for and hosting the Games, its message to Chicagoans has emphasized emotion. A recent Huffington Post article by bid chairman Ryan has no numbers. Rather than explain the committee's financial plan, Ryan simply calls it "strong" and cautions readers from throwing in with the naysayers who are too afraid of the scale of the Olympics to take them on. Translation: "Shut up, nerds. The Games are going to be awesome!" The hard-to-refute fuzziness of concepts like "the world stage" and a city's "global profile" resonate with large segments of the public. They also drive nerds into a rage by giving them no data to refute. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the two sides are talking past each other, appealing to their constituencies by speaking different languages. We see this same jocks-vs.-nerds conflict play out every time a pro sports team threatens to skip town unless the taxpayers cough up money for a new stadium. The opposition to these arena grabs typically consists of good-government types who argue that the alleged economic impact of the new building is greatly inflated—and wouldn't that money be better spent on education? The jocks play to municipal pride and the desire for the beloved local team to stay in town. And usually, though not always, the stadium gets built. Who in America has the power and the bona fides to end this perpetual jock-nerd standoff? If anyone can do it, it's President Obama. With his professed fondness for comic books and his prowess on the basketball court, he speaks both nerd and jock. And having agreed at the last minute to fly to Copenhagen to stump for the Games, he put himself at the center of the dysfunctional local shouting match. In the end, even the so-called "biggest celebrity in the world" couldn't win over the IOC. Now that he's lost out in his bid to bring the Olympics to his adopted home town, he can turn to less intractable matters—health care reform, Afghanistan—than the country's jock-nerd crisis.
I think it's interesting when anyone paints a large group of people with a broad brush, regardless of political affiliation. You can say, in terms you defined above, that I think nationalization of our health care system is the wrong way to go but if it passes I hope it works. I think having our president and his wife fly to Europe to get an Olympic bid was wrong but I would have attended if it was successful. I thought the bailouts, TARP and all the other financial assistance given out in the last year were wrong but I hoped they worked. Never once did I think people that think differently than I were "not true Americans". I guess that's where we differ.
There obviously are people who do think that way, as evidenced from occurances ranging from Sarah Palin's comment about the part of Virginia where "real Americans" live to the birther's commitment to prove that the President himself is not a "real American."
are "real Americans" the same as "true Americans," or is one a subset of the other? are Canadians "real or true Americans? what about Mexicans? what about south and central Americans?
In English, absent context or qualifiers indicating otherwise, "American" means "of the United States of America".
that is very sad for all the rest of the people living on the American continents. for one country to just simply appropriate the title of their continent just because they're bigger and richer and more powerful than they are. they have just as much right to be called Americans - and ture and real ones at that - as the rest of us who live in the United States of America.
If Topper was the only person you were referring to, perhaps you should have used a phrase other than "you guys". C'mon Wankler. Every politician says whoever he/she is in front of is the best group or some other form of flattery. I am sure Biden said the same about the people at the hardware store he used to frequent. I know there are fringe groups that want Obama removed for whatever reason, same as when Bush was in office. As time goes on the political dialoge continues to head south. When the power changes from right to left, the hunters become the hunted. It's the way of a two-party system and it totally sucks.
No its not sad. The name of our country is the United States of America. That means we're either gonna call ourselves "Americans" or "United Statesians". It's no bigger a deal to call people from the US "Americans" than it is to call people from New York City "New Yorkers". It's not because we're bigger and richer, its because every other country has a name that doesn't include "America" as its subject.
I think you are making generalizations that cannot be proven. I take you at your word that you were hoping to be wrong about Bush. Why shouldn't I? Based on your posts, you seem like a guy who may be partisan but loves his country above his party. But to jump from there to the conclusion that all Democrats feel that way and that many Republicans don't feel that way is a huge stretch. I am sure that most people from both parties love their country as you do and feel as you do, and yet there are some extreme partisans in both parties that are so caught up with their partisanship that they do want to see failure when their party is out of office. Some people get caught up in the partisanship or the hatred that comes from competition. At a more innocent level it can be seen for example when a fan of Boca wants to see Argentina lose because the team has mostly players form River or viceversa. Wanting your country not to get an Olympic bid might also be at this level. At a more serious level, there are people go as far as wanting their nation to lose a war or have economic failure because the party they hate for partisan reasons is in control of the government. I think this type of betrayal has more to do with human nature than with any particular political party or club they belong to.
Be that as it may, it's generally accepted as truth that small towns and rural areas are more "real", hard working, purer and truer to the American ideal. And it's not just a Conservative/right wing thing - city dwellers probably subscribe to the myth of the rural Americana too. I find this disingenuous. When Bush was in office, the nuts who called Bush "the real terrorist" or "fascist" were never taken seriously by the media, if they were given a voice at all, and there were no massive disruptions against civil discourse. Not to mention that Teabaggers and town hall disrupters are the very people who castigated anti-war demonstrators for lack of patriotism and not supporting the troops, and looked the other way when the NYPD cracked down on RNC protesters. As long as there was a Republican in office, protesting was something shrill hippies did. And those who wanted Bush from office called for, at the most extreme, impeachment for an actual crime, as opposed to those calling for a coup d'etat for some nebulous claim that Obama is a socialist/fascist/Islamofascist/Secretmuslim/Kenyan.
I just read this thread from the beginning. There is some real awesomeness in here that I'm excited is preserved for posterity.
SHIT!! Sorry. I had a troupe of Brazilian friends in Grad School that would haul this ridiculous idea out every few months, and I'd lose my shit on them everytime. My bad, I'm gonna go get my sarcasm meter looked at.
amazing some of the things people take too seriously - mostly themselves. and that's coming from a really truly great American! I remember listening to Hanity's radio show once and everyone who called in started off by saying Sean, you're a great American. and the Sean would say back to them, and you too sir are a great American. what a fricking jack-off session. for all he knew, the caller could have been a fricking ax murderer, but hell, he's a great American I guess for having recognized the fact that Sean was a great American.
Who cares if they are axe murderers? If they called Hannity's show and called him a great American, that automatically makes them great Americans. I wonder though, if say a Chinese citizen or Iranian citizen calls the Hannaty show and calls Hannity a great American, would that make them also great Americans?
Well, there's still a difference. Okay, Biden or Obama say things like, "organized labor is the backbone of America," that's still pretty different from saying, "you guys are the real Americans." And for some reason, it was at Sarah Palin rallies where the flattered crowd yelled things like "terrorist" and "kill him" in reference to Obama.