• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

PoliGAF 2012 |OT4|: Your job is not to worry about 47% of these posts.

Status
Not open for further replies.

Wall

Member
This is something the (very good) progressive evangelical blog Slacktivist talks about fairly often. The blogger argues that these people aren't /really/ terrified of Obama destroying the country, or satanic child sacrifice, or whatever the cause du jour is. But they're bored, and they're looking for meaning of the nice, clear titanic battle of good vs evil kind. So they need a Sauron to oppose, and they find meaning in opposing it. Then suggesting that the battle is unnecessary is deeply insulting to them. Instead of being relieved that there's nothing to worry about, they're angry that someone's telling them that they've been wasting their time (and more importantly that their source of meaning isn't, actually). It's the same dynamic that's behind conservative Christians becoming entirely about homosexuality and abortion and very resistant to changing their minds; what's important is having something Evil to oppose.

I think people also need something to personify whatever it is they feel is wrong in their lives. A figure that can embody all of their pain, fears, and anxieties. Suggesting that figure isn't actually comitting the evil acts they attribute to it is tantamount to saying that these peoples' problems can't be solved. In other words, I think it is comforting for some people to think that making certain problems go away is as simple as defeating a political figure in an election.
 

Hitokage

Setec Astronomer
One side of my family is for the most part Goldwater republican, while the other considered Rush Limbaugh a second prophet. Some people try to claim nobody takes him seriously but I have firsthand experience to the contrary. :(
 

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
That narrows it down. ;)

UJCAw.jpg
.
 

bananas

Banned
One side of my family is for the most part Goldwater republican, while the other considered Rush Limbaugh a second prophet. Some people try to claim nobody takes him seriously but I have firsthand experience to the contrary. :(

My family is weird I suppose.

Everyone is supporting Obama this year.

Both my grandmothers are. As well as my parents.

Funnily enough, my dad who was a huge Obama supporter in '08, feels burnt by him. He just really doesn't like Romney.

And my mom used to lean Republican. Voted for Bush both times. But voted for Obama in 2008 reluctantly, and is huge Obama fan this time around. The reason? She finds foreign policy to be the most important to her, and Obama and the democrats are now the tougher party. Go figure.

I'm in Florida btw.
 

ari

Banned
There is a lot of uneducated people on the comment sections of yahoo news articles. I think it is bots but, Holyshit.
 

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
One side of my family is for the most part Goldwater republican, while the other considered Rush Limbaugh a second prophet. Some people try to claim nobody takes him seriously but I have firsthand experience to the contrary. :(

I have a friend who used to listen to limbaugh on the radio for laughs because he bought into that whole line about how Limbaugh was merely comedy. It wasn't real and liberals were overreacting when they went on about right wing talk radio.

Then Obama came along, Limbaugh was trotted out as a leading spokesmen for the GOP, and my friend suddenly realized what'd been going on all along.

He can't listen to him anymore, get gets sick.
 

AlteredBeast

Fork 'em, Sparky!
re: everyone's families.

I am very glad I grew up in a family that engendered traditional conservative values. We were never the fake conservatives you see today, but instead rugged individualists, skeptics, and charitable.

We never took a dime of government help* despite being lower class my whole life. We were the happiest people we knew and it is reflected in the families that my siblings have made. 10 kids in my family, each is married and almost all have attained what the average American would deem financial success. I think that is something that would have been much more difficult to learn if my parents hadn't shown us how to take responsibility for our actions and for our finances and how to be charitable to others who were even less fortunate than we were. Here we were in hand-me-downs trying to scrape our paper route money together around Christmas time to buy presents for kids in our church or neighborhoods that had even less than we did!

That and the fact that it would be weird if I thought abortion were okay. Thank heavens I am a conservative!


*I am not foolish enough to think that my parents didn't take child tax credits, mortgage interest deductions, etc. but welfare, food stamps, and so on were never an option.
 

Miletius

Member
Both sides of my family that are voting are either immigrants, resident aliens or 1st generation Americans. As such they really aren't into politics. Kind of depressing in a way, probably not as depressing as having crazy family members though.
 

AlteredBeast

Fork 'em, Sparky!
I remember when my sister had to do a paper about the President in 5th grade. It was Clinton's first term and we obviously didn't have the internet at the time. my sister goes up to my dad and asks, "How would you describe President Clinton?"

"Put that he is a Womanizer."

My sister, being naive put that on her paper and there were calls home after that one. I gotta give my dad props for that to this day.
 

Hitokage

Setec Astronomer
*I am not foolish enough to think that my parents didn't take child tax credits, mortgage interest deductions, etc. but welfare, food stamps, and so on were never an option.
Just like any true conservative would say: government spending isn't government spending when it's in the tax code.
 
My parents are both fairly liberal from economic standpoints - my dad as a function of how he grew up (welfare), my mom as her career (social work). I think they retain some level of cultural conservatism however - my mom is very religious, while my dad is still somewhat uncomfortable about certain race issues and homosexuality. Not in a discriminatory way though, both of my parents are for gay marriage for example.

My dad is also very much of the opinion that the two party system is bullshit. He's voting for Gary Johnson, mom's voting for 'bams.
 

AlteredBeast

Fork 'em, Sparky!
Just like any true conservative would say: government spending isn't government spending when it's in the tax code.

I am a hypocrite in that I will take every loophole available to me while also pushing every time it comes up to remove such loopholes. I have talked a lot about how I would close loopholes like crazy if it were up to me. and I presume you didn't mean government spending as you did "welfare" since pretty much any incentive offered by the government against the tax code is in fact some form of welfare.
 

Forever

Banned
My father was involved in the Civil Rights movement and was kind of a hippie so he's always been a hardcore Democrat and hater of Republicans. My political opinions developed independently though, and along different lines even though we're both hostile to American conservatism.

You could say that he is the 60's hippie liberal and I am the modern intellectual elitist liberal.
 

Hitokage

Setec Astronomer
I am a hypocrite in that I will take every loophole available to me while also pushing every time it comes up to remove such loopholes. I have talked a lot about how I would close loopholes like crazy if it were up to me. and I presume you didn't mean government spending as you did "welfare" since pretty much any incentive offered by the government against the tax code is in fact some form of welfare.
Generally speaking, if the law says you can claim a financial benefit it's in your interest to take advantage of it even if you think it shouldn't be there, but this applies to other programs too.

I did mean spending as a more broader point, though, as it's sadly the case that it's infinitely easier to get conservatives to agree to it inside the tax code rather than outside.
 
I'm fairly sure I (and the GOP) pushed my entire family + maternal relatives from being 'moderates' to being a bit to the left of Sherrod Brown.

Except for my dad, who just turned into a full-on Nick Gillespie-esque libertarian (though he was already mostly there before the Bush years)
 

Trurl

Banned
My conservative grandmother read Dreams from my Father a few years ago for some reason and her takeaway from it was "He really doesn't like white people, does he?"

That's funny. My mom drives a lot for her job and sometimes listens to NPR. She's always picking up signs that indicate to her that NPR reporters realize how horrible Obama is and have it in for him.

She actually doesn't put herself in a complete bubble and even used to watch the Daily Show. She's just has a remarkable tendency to pick out what she wants to hear from any media she consumes. Maybe it's a skill that people cultivated before personal media bubbles were possible.

After posing a few questions to her I think that the core of her loyalty to the GOP comes down to being opposed to abortion and gay marriage. It's strange that those two issues are so important to her. One of my best friends is gay and I lived with him for a year and she was perfectly fine with it. She even helped him find a job. Yet preventing him from getting married is one of her core beliefs.

Oh, and RDreamer, she's not rich and my father and sister both have a medical history that should make everyone in my family extremely thankful to the government.

The absolute last thing I'll say about her is that she's very anti-gun. One of her big gripes with the Democrats is that she thinks they have cynically given up any hope of advancing gun control to push for other issues (this is the one thing she's probably right about) but somehow that leaves her giving a pass to the actual gun nuts.
 

AlteredBeast

Fork 'em, Sparky!
Generally speaking, if the law says you can claim a financial benefit it's in your interest to take advantage of it even if you think it shouldn't be there, but this applies to other programs too.

I did mean spending as a more broader point, though, as it's sadly the case that it's infinitely easier to get conservatives to agree to it inside the tax code rather than outside.

I think what it comes down to is the intended point of said welfare:

food stamps => "I can't feed my family" = Personal shame => work harder.

Not accepting food stamps and low-income welfare is a point of pride with people who refuse to accept that they cannot feed their families or give them things like clothing, shelter, transportation, etc.

On the other hand, a tax credit or deduction is seen as a, "thanks for giving me my money back, Uncle Sam."

It all goes back to how conservatives see the government: An intrusive body that does more for people than it should.

Opposite of how liberals see government: a body that should provide for people what they cannot do for themselves.
 

AlteredBeast

Fork 'em, Sparky!
Yeah, but the EIC isn't always just money being given back, and involves telling the IRS you're poor.

That is true, and is a good point.

I know for my family, it was money given back, as my dad always had a couple jobs and my mom worked, too, but in many cases it probably isn't.
 

Forever

Banned
Scary shit.

This dude might make Bush look like a sane and rational guy if elected.

Who knew...

I don't think Bush had personality defects, I think he was just very stupid.

Mitt Romney is not stupid, but he definitely has disqualifying personality defects.
 
Yes. They've a respectable record. Or do you possess evidence indicating otherwise?

No, I was just joking as I remember a few pages back someone dismissed Survey USA for having very swingy polls this election cycle.

Interested to see more VA polls, right now the average looks bad for Obama on back of the Ras and more than that the McLaughin poll. Such a mixed picture. I wonder whether Obama's internals are better for FL or VA.

As per Nate, VA is 3rd in tipping point state chart. I would rather see Obama counter Romney's advances there than FL.

And as much as I love the Romneysia part, it is also time for Obama to put more forward looking ads on the TV. Similar to his 1-2 minute spots released earlier, nationwide.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom