Monday, October 20, 2008

Feed the Fire

I've had a jolly good time debating the ObamaBots at Jon Taplin's blog. These are the true believers who have made his campaign a raging success. It is noticeable throughout the primaries and now just how much his supporters depend on rage and feed on it. It is a destructive technique for culture in general.

The trick is to frame the opponent in a bad light. Jon and his friends are practiced at this but not terribly skilled. It seems to be a reflex move when they are confused by a reply or contradicted. This is something they share with Obama who is thin skinned when his intellectual superiority is questioned.

The framing of his organization as intellectually superior and all others as inferior ('dumb', 'moron', 'scoundrel') has been their most consistent approach throughout the primaries and beyond. This results in the 'self/other' antipathy that feeds the rage machine. They are doing this deliberately because they are doing it consistently. Means matter when considering a candidate and the means used by the Obama campaign indicate his term in office should he win will be a divisive one with little achieved except to drive divisions deeper into the American psyche.

Don't respond with rage or hurt. It just empties your life into their hell instead of feeding your own fire.

3 comments:

John Cowan said...

Amen.

Anonymous said...

I'm in complete agreement. At Taplin's blog I have heard dozens of reasons to vote against McCain, most of which I disagree with, but I have yet to hear any good reason to vote for Obama.
I once asked what has he accomplished and the only response is that he managed to win the primary. Impressive maybe, but not enough for me.

Len Bullard said...

They're part of the Great Get Even. Eight years of Bush drove them nuts. Some aging flower children went right over the edge back to the days of rage. As I said, my only gift for having been raised in Alabama during the Wallace years is an environmentally acquired immunity to it. When you live your whole life in a state everyone loves to hate, you develop a sense of humor about it particularly since the part I live in is a paradise. (Shh! Tell no one! They might move here and we've already been invaded in the 1950s.)

Just don't get sucked into it. In two weeks, we'll have the vote, the man will the man, and we'll go on glad the Bush era is over regardless. We can work on solutions and get on with the good life.

If you want to drive them nuts for fun though, remember this phrase:

Dylan Sucks.

Works like magic. :-)

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