THE STUPIDITY OF POLITICAL ARROGANCE

Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree

EXCELLENCE IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY

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THE STUPIDITY OF POLITICAL ARROGANCE

WHERE DO WE FIND THESE IDIOTS? 

“On 1/25/20, Scott <info@dscc.org> wrote:
Hi Eric L. Wattree, Scott here.
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“I'm the Executive Director of the DSCC,
which means I'm in charge of developing the Democratic Party's strategy to flip the Senate in 2020.
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“I asked Kati, our Chief Digital Officer, to comb through our Democratic supporter database and select a handful of our most engaged Democrats to interview. And you're on the list, Eric L. Wattree!
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“101 of the Democrats we selected in your state have already agreed to be interviewed -- but our data analyst tells me we need at least11 more responses before we can review the results and time is running out for us to lock in our strategic investments to win back the Senate.
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“Please, Eric L. Wattree, we selected you specifically. And now, as the Executive Director of the DSCC, I'm asking you: Will you click here to complete your DSCC digital interview?
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“Your input is crucial as we finalize our strategy to help Democrats flip the Senate from Mitch McConnell's control in the next election!
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“Thanks for all you do,
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“Scott Fairchild
Executive Director, DSCC”
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Thereafter, the attached “interview”, where they claimed to be interested in my opinion, was not an interview at all. What it actually was, was a list of all the things the Republicans are doing that they KNEW would anger me. In short, it’s was a pitch to get me in the frame of mind to donate - and of course, at the end of the "interview", they provided a donation form with suggested dollar amounts already added in for my convenience. All I had to do was check the box with the amount I wanted to donate, or pick "Other" to donate more. It was such a transparent scam that I was highly insulted that they assumed I was such an idiot. So I sent them the following response:
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“To the DSCC,
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“I need you to do me a huge favor and PLEASE don't send me any more of this goddamn clickbait. If you're looking for a donation just ask for it upfront and don't waste my time with this transparent bullshit, because it's extremely counterproductive. You're treating me like I'm so stupid that now I not only don't want donate, but I'm reluctant to even give you my vote.

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This contact clearly demonstrates that you're just as manipulative as the GOP. What, do you think I stupid!!!? So please take me off your mailing list and don't bother me with this time-wasting bullshit ever again. 

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“Sincerely insulted,
“Eric L. Wattree”
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This is exactly the kind of stupid nonsense that makes many people feel like they can’t trust either party but we’ve allowed it to become the norm. Both parties treat us like we’re children, but that’s exactly why we’ve got to become even more involved in the political process and clean house! We need to replace these people with politicians who clearly recognize that they’re not our leaders, but our EMPLOYEES, and they need to act like it.
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And the Republican Party is even worse. Every Republican politician in the senate knows that Donald Trump doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing and that he’s an American disaster, but not one of them is willing to step up to the plate to say as much. The reason for that is simple - they consider their own self-interest more important than America’s welfare, and the United States Constitution. So if we hope to survive as a nation, we’re gonna have to get rid of such people. Watch how Sen. Lindsey Graham describes Donald Trump in the clip below:

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But in spite of Graham's distain for Donald Trump, now that the important matter of his own self-interest is on the line, and not just the frivolous interest of America, his political calculus has completely changed.
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The minute we see that a politician is putting his or her interest before the interest of the nation , we should get rid of them, and the best way to monitor that is to watch who has the most money coming in. If a politician has tons of cash coming in from special interests, we know that he's not working for us. The fact is, we should get money out of politics altogether, because it guarantees that the only ones country who'll get a fair shake are those with the money to buy it.
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You heard what Lindsey Graham said about Trump, but now he's his biggest cheerleader in congress. Can you figure out why? I'll tell you why. Because Lindsey Graham is for Lindsey Graham, so instead of telling Donald Trump to go to hell, as he suggested above, he's found it to his advantage to say it to America. That's not a patriot, that's a self-serving manipulator who's cut from the exact same clothe as Donald Trump himself.

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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com

BLACK WRITERS, INTELLECTUALS, AND INDEPENDENT THINKERS
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Religion: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does. 

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It Is In The Best Interest Of The United States To Keep This Latest Act Of Republican Treachery On The Front Burner

Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree

It Is In The Best Interest Of The United States To Keep This Latest Act Of Republican Treachery On The Front Burner

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The Republicans love to investigate everything, and if ANYTHING calls for a congressional investigation, this does.  The instigator of the Republican 47 treason letter was freshman Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who received a campaign donation of a million dollars from a pro-Israeli organization, helping to make the GOP the majority in the United States Senate. Thereafter, the Republican majority in congress invited Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before a joint session of congress to give a speech undermining the interest of the United States. Thus, these 47 Republican senators were acting against the interest of the United States government as AGENTS of a foreign power.  That's TREASON!
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We've got to stop this kind of thing dead in its tracks. How many more times are American troops going to be sent to die in foreign lands for political gain and the enrichment of the military/industrial complex? So there should be a public congressional investigation of the treason letter, the Netanyahu connection, and Sen. Tom Cotton's association with Bill Krisol, the neocons, and those who would send our troops to die in yet another senseless foreign war.
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One of the biggest problems that liberals and progressives have is they're not politically aggressive enough. They let things like this latest GOP treason be swept under the rug. They've got to stop that, and stop allowing these un-American fascists to wrap themselves in the American flag. That's what's allowed them to drag America perilously close to a fascist state, and I don't intend that as hyperbole. If America doesn't wake up - and fast! - these creeps are going to destroy this country.
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The GOP and their corporate cronies are in a no-holds-barred, single-minded struggle to subvert our democracy and turn this nation into a corporate feudalist state, and it shouldn't take but one more Republican stint in the White House. Due to the rapidly changing demographics in this country, the GOP and their filthy rich cronies have become desperate, and as we've just seen, they are ruthless, reckless, totally oblivious to both American law and tradition, completely devoid of a sense of limits. So if they EVER gain power again, they are NEVER going to give it up - regardless to WHAT they have to do. Think about the ramifications of that. It's chilling.
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And as I pointed out in a previous article, if you're a White social conservative who takes comfort in the ramifications mentioned above, don't, because the rich, fiscal conservatives, don't care any more about poor and middle class White people than they do Muslims, minorities, or gays. You're only being used to keep the working class divided, because the GOP's agenda is so toxic to the American people that their very viability is completely dependent upon maintaining an environment of hatred, animosity, and strife among the poor and middle class. So if they win, they're going to toss aside social conservatives with the tip of their thumb and forefinger like soiled toilet tissue. You heard Mitt Romney - he thinks you're dirt.
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And the Republican 47 Treason Letter isn't the first time the GOP has committed treason against this country, so it wasn't "an accident," and they're not sorry about it AT ALL. They're just sorry - AND SHOCKED - that (for once), it didn't get past the American people's attention.
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Can you just imagine what the Republican Party would do with this if this situation were reversed!!!? The Democrats need to take note - not just for political advantage, but in the best interest of the nation, because these people are further and further out of hand.
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Our young people had to pay a huge price at the hands of some of these very same people due to our ignorance and apathy regarding Iraq. Let's not let it happen again. We owe it to America, and we owe it to our troops.

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Here are other instances of Republican  treasonous behavior:

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The Republican Party's Treasonous and Un-American History

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2015/03/beneath-spineric-l.html

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Eric L. Wattree 
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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So What Do Progressives Do Now, In Response To The 2014 Midterm Disaster?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree  

So What Do Progressives Do Now, In Response To The 2014 Midterm Disaster?

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There’s an old axiom that says, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." I would like to modify that to say, "When the going gets tough, the tough get tougher," and that’s exactly what must happen now that the Corporate/GOP Alliance has taken over congress if we’re going to save America.

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What we saw in the last election was the victory of ignorance over knowledge. That should never happen, and the only reason it did was because the knowledgeable didn’t assert themselves forcefully enough. One of the biggest problems that knowledgeable people often have is making the assumption that everyone can see what they can see. But that’s far from true. I warned my son and daughter about it as teenagers - NEVER assume that everybody can see what you see. The reason for that is, the knowledgeable are only knowledgeable due to their intellectual predisposition. They base their perception of reality ON reality, by giving truth, facts, and logic priority over what makes them feel most comfortable.
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But there are many people in this world who don’t base their perception of reality on truth, facts, and logic. These people tend to be FEELERS, rather than thinkers, so they invariably give ideology priority over truth. When such people are faced with an inconvenient fact, instead of accepting that fact and using it to modify their perception, they’ll do whatever they have to do to contort truth into a configuration that fits comfortably into what they WANT to believe (Yale Study Shows that Many, Particularly Conservatives, Give Ideology Priority Over Truth). We can see that tendency at work in the conservative claim that, "President Obama is un-American - he’s engaged in a socialist plot to insure my family against catastrophic illness." That assertion sounds ridiculously funny to most of us, but to FEELERS who feel a desperate need to hate Obama, it represents perfectly sound logic, and the failure of progressives to recognize that fact, and act on it, is what led to the 2014 midterm disaster.
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In my article, "The 2014 Midterm Election - A Towering Testament To Monumental Stupidity,", I allude to a letter that I sent to President Obama back in February in an attempt to avert this midterm disaster. In the letter I point out the following:
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"So while I think you, personally, should continue in the mode that you’ve established, at the same time, you should create a staff - housed right next door to the Oval Office - whose sole purpose is to debunk Republican disinformation. Then, whenever any Republican appears on the news to distort reality, he or she should be able to look forward to the next day’s news cycle being flooded with information not only debunking his or her words, but also, examining every action that he or she has engaged in during their career that tends to be in conflict with their current position. In short, you should parade their hypocrisy before the American people.
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"If you would take that simple action, Mr. President, you would not only drive home to the people the GOP’s hypocrisy, but you would cause individual Republicans to run away from the cameras instead of stumbling all over one another to be the first one to present the latest Republican assault on reality. In addition, it would appease the thirst for blood among the people in your base, provide writers like myself with grist for our mill, and also give us an indication of what areas of investigation would bear the most fruit."
.I go on to point out that "Since much of the GOP’s popularity and success is based upon the complete ignorance of a sizable percentage of the American electorate, I’m convinced that if the President would have followed my advice and educated the American people to what they’re actually dealing with in the GOP, he could have done an end run around what we witnessed last night."
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But the President didn’t choose to take my advice, and since, for some reason, our Democratic politicians don’t see fit to confront GOP lies and disinformation, as progressives, WE’VE got to become the staff that I spoke to the President about establishing. WE can use the internet to do the research, and WE can, and MUST, go on a single-minded mission to debunk GOP lies, and push TRUTH down America’s throat. If we don’t, the Corporate/GOP Alliance is going to attack, and try to reverse Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, unemployment insurance, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the minimum wage, the Voting Rights Act, and everything that’s been put into place to protect the poor and middle class America since the New Deal. That, is their agenda - to enslave the American people by leaving us totally dependent upon Corporate America.
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Please start your research with the issues presented in the articles below. The information therein represents many hours of research, and provides posters that makes the information easily digestible. They'll give you much perspective, and will allow you to hit the ground running. Providing sound and irrefutable facts and knowledge is the key to getting America to open its eyes - and this may be our last chance to do that. Consider this. If the Corporate/GOP Alliance wins both the presidency and both houses of congress in the next election, the American experiment in democracy, is over.

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RELATED ARTICLES

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FELLOW AMERICANS, DON’T LET OUR IGNORANCE DESTROY US

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2014/07/fellow-americans-don’t-let-our-ignorance.html

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Demographics Are Against the GOP, So They’ve Become Dangerous

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2014/04/demographics-are-against-gop-so-theyve.html

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THE GOP: A ONE HUNDRED YEAR RECORD OF SWINDLING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2010/10/gop-one-hundred-year-record-of.html

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Is Cornel West A Judas Goat - When Was The Last Time You Heard Him Attack A Conservative Republican?

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2014/10/is-cornel-west-judas-goat-when-was-last.html

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Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does. 

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The Dumbest Generation

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

HISTORY REMEMBERS THE AMERICANS WHO FOUGHT WWII AS THE GREATEST GENERATION; WE'RE GOING TO BE REMEMBERED AS THE DUMBEST. THANK YOU, TEABAGGERS.

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HOW DID WE SLIP TO THIS AS A POTENTIAL PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?

AND THIS . . .

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AND WHEN DID WE GET TO THE POINT WHERE POLITICIANS COULD TELL THEIR CONSTITUENTS TO SHUT UP AND LISTEN, INSTEAD OF THE REVERSE?

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NEWS FLASH, MR. CONGRESSMAN.  WE DON'T CARE WHAT YOU WANT.  IT'S WHAT WE WANT THAT COUNTS. 

THE GOP: A ONE HUNDRED YEAR RECORD OF SWINDLING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

Eric L. Wattree

Http://wattree.blogspot.com

Ewattree@Gmail.com

Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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The Republican Agenda: Keep America Ignorant and Miserable, at any Cost

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE The Republican Agenda: Keep America Ignorant and Miserable, at any Cost The Republican Party is a coalition of three separate constituencies with confluent interests. The first group is made up of traditional conservatives. These are highly patriotic Americans who believe in limited government, the primacy of the people over government, and fiscal responsibility. But the other two groups that have coalesced within the GOP are much more malevolent - international business interests, and social bigots. It is the former of these two, international business, that controls the GOP. It's made up of highly educated individuals with huge resources and plenty of clout - and they use every bit of their resources and clout to manipulate what has become their citizen army - the social bigots. The social bigots are the people we see armed to the teeth at presidential speeches, disrupting townhall meetings, and fighting against their own interests. In short, these are the Joe the Plumbers of the world. While the traditional conservatives are legitimately concerned about the direction of the country and assuring that the nation remains fiscally sound, big business could care less about the condition of the American people, because for the most part, they've become international in scope. That should be clear to anyone with eyeballs, considering how they first, created an economic crisis in this country, then used the very crisis that they created to gouge the American people. So all big business is concerned about is making money at our expense, and more often than not, to our detriment. These are the very same people who have gouged America dry, given themselves huge bonuses, then rented post office boxes in other countries to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. And if that isn't bad enough, these corporations then used the very money that they avoided in taxes to buy politicians, who are suppose to be representing us, to feather their nest even further. They also use the incredible wealth that they've managed to maintain, again, thanks to our tax dollars, to clog our airwaves with propaganda in order to incite every undereducated social bigot within earshot to near insurrection. They use these people to distract us from examining the true issues, that would serve to protect us from their greed. And the social bigots are easy targets - not only because they have less than a tenuous grasp on reality, but in many cases, they're willing stooges. These are not true victims. Due to their bigotry - and I don't mean simply racial bigotry, but bigotry against anyone who doesn't happen to share their beliefs - and anger over losing the last election, they're willing to accept any manner of nonsense disseminated about the government, and President Obama in particular. Due to that blind anger they're perfectly willing to not only accept the most blatant nonsense, but they're also willing to cut their own throats, and that of their families, if it means striking a blow in the name hatred. Take the issue of socialism, for example. Shouldn't even the most misguided idiot understand that there's a big difference between the government taking over the free enterprise system, as oppose to protecting its citizens from the predatory business practices and greed of large corporations? Even after being told by Wendell Potter, whistle-blower against the insurance industry and former chief spokesman for Cigna Healthcare, in testimony before congress that "I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick—all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors." These social bigots are trying to demonize a man who's placed his presidency on the line to try to protect their families. Potter went on to testify that "The thing they [the insurance industry] fear most is a single-payer plan. They fear even the public insurance option being proposed; they'll pull out all the stops they can to defeat that to try to scare people into thinking that embracing a public health insurance option would lead down the slippery slope toward socialism ... Putting a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. They've used those talking points for years, and they've always worked." As I've pointed out in previous articles, some things are just too important to our society to be left to for-profit business interests. Those things include police, fire, national defense, and public healthcare. I've also invited the reader to try to imagine calling the police to report your daughter being raped or kidnaped and the police informing you that they were sorry but there was nothing they could do - your daughter just turned 18, so she's no longer covered in your rape/kidnap policy. That's exactly what's happening to hundreds of thousands of people regarding their health-care. They'll pay their premiums for twenty-five years, then after coming down with an ailment that the insurance company considers prohibitively expensive, the insurance company suspends their coverage. A prime example of that is the young woman who came down with cancer, then the insurance company denied her coverage because she failed to report that she had acne as a child. Without a public option to take away the insurance companies' monopoly, they can make coverage so expensive that any other laws that we pass will be meaningless. Let's say that we pass a law saying that it is illegal to deny coverage for pre-existing illnesses. The insurance industry can say, okay, we'll cover you, but it's gonna cost $800 a month, and you've got to pay for 55% of your treatment. That's why the industry is fighting so hard against a public option. They don't want the people to have any place else to go. If we have a government option that sets the price of healthcare at a reasonable rate, the industry can't inflate their prices to make us pay for those $30 million executive bonuses. If they did, they'd lose all of their business. They want us locked in and mandated by law to purchase health insurance, and have nowhere to go but to them. The price of healthcare is going up several times faster than wages, and it has been estimated that it will cost the average person $24,000 a year for health insurance in the next seven years. That's 41% of the average salary. That will not only be a tremendous hardship on the individual, but a severe drag on the economy, since businesses won't hire new people because they can't afford to provide employee healthcare. So the GOP sees defeating healthcare reform as a win-win proposition. It will keep the American people traumatize due to the lack of affordable healthcare, sabotage President Obama's efforts to revitalize the economy, and also appease their true constituents, the insurance industry - all of which will help them to regain power. Thus, the GOP is using its social bigots to disrupt society in order to protect America's moral obligation to allow Wall Street to cut our throats - yet, again. Eric L. Wattree wattree.blogspot.com Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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Carrie Prejean: Are Progressives Becoming as Intolerant as Conservatives?

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE Carrie Prejean: Are Progressives Becoming as Intolerant as Conservatives? I've always been proud to consider myself a progressive, because being a progressive meant that I was open-minded, willing to assess every issue on its own merit, and I'm tolerant of varying points of view. But it seems that many of today's "progressives" have corrupted the term. Though many of these people call themselves progressives, they are not progressive thinkers–they are progressive in name only. Over the years they seem to have somehow lost their way, and as a result, have managed to redefined the term "progressive" to simply mean, not conservative. A case in point is the unconscionable way in which the so-called progressive community has demonized Carrie Prejean after she indicated, almost apologetically during the Miss America Pageant, that she thought marriage should be between a man and a woman. Why in the world did she say that?!! Thereafter, she was called a bitch, seminude photos of her have been posted on the Internet, and she's been generally, dragged through the mud. It is unbelievable that people who call themselves progressive could do that to that young woman. While I 'm in total disagreement with her views on same-sex marriage, those are her views, and she has every right to them. She didn't try to shove her point of view down America's throat; she was specifically asked whether SHE thought same-sex marriage should be legalized. And she and she responded– quite honestly, diplomatically, and in my opinion, quite courageously, that she didn't. Then the judge, Perez, I think his name was, taped a video on Youtube calling her "a dumb bitch." So I ask you, what kind of progressive thinker can take the position that a person doesn't have a right to their own views? Perez even went so far as to dictate how Ms. Prejean SHOULD have answered the question. Who the Hell is he to tell a person what they should think? People like, Perez, is more damaging to their cause than they are helpful, because in many cases, it's not the issue that people are against, they just don't like the people who represent the issue. I agree with Perez on this issue, but I don't like him. So if I was on the fence regarding same-sex marriage, I'd vote against it–not against the issue, but against him, and I'm certain that many progressive issues are being voted down for that very reason. The American Heritage Dictionary defines a progressive as "A person who actively favors or strives for progress toward better conditions, as in society or government." Granted, Ms. Prejean's attitude toward same-sex marriage is far less than progressive, but she never claimed to be a progressive. She said she was a Christian, so there's nothing unusual for her to adhere to a belief system that she's been taught all of her life. On the other hand, however, for so-called progressives to denigrate this young lady as though she doesn't have a right to her private opinion, nor religious beliefs, is far more destructive to society and backward thinking, than anything that she's ever publicly uttered, at least to my knowledge--and such a position is certainly not a progressive point of view. Many of the people who call themselves progressives today seem to have been infected by what old-school progressives considered their most ardent foe and the most pernicious bane on society--intolerance. It's no longer good enough to say that gays and lesbians should be afforded equal rights and be allowed to marry like anyone else in our society, now it is required that everyone must enthusiastically embrace that position–in spite of their religious beliefs, and even in their private thoughts. And it's no longer good enough to say that women deserve equal rights in the workplace, now, any woman who chooses to be a full-time mother and homemaker is considered a turncoat to the feminist movement, and "unenlightened." And please don't let a woman use her femininity in the workplace to get ahead–just as men use their masculinity on a daily basis–she's immediately demonized. In fact, I'm virtually certain that Ms. Prejean's feminine beauty is playing a large part in her demonization. And the irony is, such demonization is often led by other women. Due to our leftist indoctrination, they fail to realize that's the very worst kind of sexual discrimination. They've allowed themselves to be convinced that the only way a woman can truly validate herself as being a worthy individual is to prove that she can be just like a man. A similar mindset is reflected in the Black community. Many Blacks feel like the only way that they can validate themselves is by proving how "White" they can be. Both assumptions are silly, premised on backward thinking, and are highly derogatory to what it means to be a woman, and/or, a Black person. Both President and First Lady Obama are excellent examples of the fact that you have to abandon neither your heritage nor your femininity to embrace excellence. Thus, in this progressive's opinion, such thinking is the very height of ignorance. In fact, it's laying the groundwork for a new kind of latter-day conservatism. After all, it is not so much what Rush Limbaugh and the GOP leadership think that is so insidious, it's their belief that no one should be allowed to disagree with them. And any so-called progressives who share that mindset not only validate Limbaugh's point of view, but are in fact, conservatives themselves. The only difference between them and Limbaugh is that they're conservative regarding a different set of issues. They even share the conservative trait of hypocrisy. A true progressive recognizes that the most important characteristic of any free and viable society is tolerance. They clearly understand that the only difference between the old U.S.S.R. and Nazi Germany was one was led by lift-wing radicals and the other by right-wing reactionaries. But in spite of that, they had more in common than they had that set them apart–they were both dictatorships, they were both oppressive, and like every dictatorship, they were both intolerant of individual beliefs. The very same dynamic is at work, though to a much lesser degree, in this country. Thus, progressives must always remain cognizant of the fact that we corner the market on neither wisdom, intellect, nor morality. Therefore, once we begin to give priority to dogma over independent thought, we cease being progressives, and become just another group of fanatical wingnuts--like Perez Hilton.  Eric L. Wattree wattree.blogspot.com A moderate is one who embraces truth over ideology, and reason over conflict.

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