Just got another one of those frothing fund-raising emails from the Democratic Party, this one signed by somebody named Jackie Speier:
Last night House Republicans voted in favor of an appalling piece of anti-choice legislation that could force victims of rape and incest to relive their trauma during an IRS audit and deny millions of American women access to life-saving reproductive health care.
Their assault on women has nothing to do with saving money and everything to do with forcing extremist beliefs into the tax code of the United States of America.
And they didn’t stop there. They used the occasion to sneak in a provision restricting the definition of rape to deny victims access to reproductive health care — even after they claimed to have removed the language in the face of overwhelming public opposition.
We must take immediate, decisive action against this attack on women’s health and reproductive freedom.
Hey, sign me up! I’m all about some “anti-choice” legislation — that is, when it’s about limiting the “right to choose” abortion, or the “right to choose” to force me to underwrite someone’s private education. Or anything else that’s such an appalling idea that the only way you think you can sell it is in terms of “choice.” As though we lack freedom if we’re not totally free to do anything and everything.
Notice how advocates of “choice” have trouble saying what it is that they’re actually for? They have a jargon that is unself-consciously comical in its aversion to plain speaking.
I mean hey, I wish you the best of “health.” As for “reproductive freedom” — go ahead, reproduce all you want; no one’s stopping you.
I think we need a constitutional amendment limiting the 1st Amendment so that it doesn’t protect political speech that mangles the language.
OK, not really. But one does grow tired of such abuses.
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Think I offended everyone enough? Y’all see why I can’t find a home in either party? They both engage in this kind of rhetorical excess in advocating positions that appall me.
And I’m going to keep criticizing these emails in no uncertain terms until they finally figure out that I’m NEVER going to send them money.
Or, at least, criticizing about one in 10 of them. They just keep coming and coming, and I can’t keep up with them…
Brad…..
Do I really need to write a “for the record” comment, or are you just trying to drive page views?
That’s like a no-win question, right? You’re trying to have a chilling effect on my right to choose to fulminate…
And if you want to assign ulterior motives, why not just assume that I’m going out of my way to make sure nobody thinks I’m a Democrat?
This is, after all, one of the big reasons that I’m not. (Others include a nation-crippling aversion to military action after Vietnam, and the whole obsession with Identity Politics. And I’m also quite serious that the rhetorical excesses of both factions are a big turn-off.)
It’s not IMPOSSIBLE to find a pro-life Democrat. It’s just difficult.
And it’s not impossible to BE a pro-life Democrat. Bob Casey manages somehow. But that is also hard. Just as it’s hard to be a Republican these days if you don’t viscerally hate government.
To me, it’s hard enough to be either of those things that I don’t think it’s worth the trouble. All that heavy-lifting rationalization. Better just to reject parties.
And folks, wherever you stand, don’t you ever get fed up with the rhetoric of the people you AGREE with? That certainly happens with me and some of the folks on the pro-life side.
Just now tried to find a good example of that to link to — I had one in mind — but I’m having complex technical problems with finding things on my old blog this week. (The folks at The State have been helpful in helping me solve them, but not everything is 100 percent yet.)
Poor Bob Casey gets it from both sides. First, he’s politically threatened by NARAL types for daring to be iconoclastic. Then the right accuses him of not REALLY being pro-life…
Speier had an abortion herself, when she and her husband had a fetus that was critically damaged.
She’s also somewhat in favor of gun control, having been shot five times by a Jim Jones disciple.
Thanks for sharing that, Burl. A bit LATE, but that’s not your fault.
Of course, her personal story makes me look like an even bigger jerk (if that’s possible) to those who disagree with me on the abortion issue. But however bad it makes me feel for her and her painful experiences, it doesn’t change my mind about what I’m saying.
It DOES make me wish I’d chosen one of the many other emails like it, which seek to bring in money by further inflaming partisan rage, to make my point.
I should have suspected there was a particular reason, known to the party cognoscenti, why she was the messenger on this one…
Guess I blew my chance with this one of gaining any converts in my campaign against such tactics. Unfortunately, I’m afraid I’ll have plenty more opportunities. The emails keep coming…
You could always choose one of those emails and pledge letters seeking funds to “stop” Nancy Pelosi, who has equally little to do with South Carolina.
Not sure why this would characterized as “frothing”. Seems like a reasonable debate point to me. Why should the GOP continue to try and outlaw abortion through the backdoor? The answer of course is that this is one of those issues that has been decided already yet folks continue to sneak around trying to undo the will of the people and common sense. I applaud Jackie Speier for bringing this out.
Brad, for those who favor anti-abortion legislation, I certainly understand the antipathy to the Democratic party. But for such an independent thinker as yourself, you seem to embrace awfully easily a caricature of the Democratic party as spouted by the Republican party (possibly a sign of your true partisan leanings, if you HAD to choose?).
For example, BOTH parties of course have engaged for years in “Identity Politics.” As a white male, you commit the common category error of assuming that that phrase can only apply to minorities, women, etc. From the time Jesse Helms’ ad against Nick Galifianakis touted “Helms: He’s One of Us” to the appalling machinations of Lee Atwater and on into recent times (though it may be on the wane) the Republican party has aimed its message no less at solidifying its support among certain “identities,” by overt and less overt means.
Your other surprising parroting of Republican talking points is referring to the Democratic party’s “nation-crippling aversion to military action after Vietnam.” I’ll leave aside the rich comedic ground of your referring to a nation that possesses nearly as much military firepower as the rest of the world combined as “crippled,” and simply remind you that EVERY Democrat in the House AND Senate except one voted to authorize our use of force in Afghanistan, and that 40% of Democrats in the House and 60% of Democrats in the Senate voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. (A mistake of course IMO, but nevertheless makes my point).
That hardly seems like a party that has an aversion to military action rising to the level of “nation-crippling.”
OK…
Is ANYONE who is a Democrat, or is pro-choice, or whatever, at all embarrassed or put off by these inflammatory emails that read like some sort of spoof of politically manipulative rhetoric? Isn’t anybody creeped out by the thought of someone trying to get into your pocket by whipping up anger toward those OTHER people?
Because if not, that’s a huge problem.
And Burl, I haven’t gotten any emails saying silly stuff like that about Nancy Pelosi lately, but I came down pretty hard on it when I saw that silliness come up during the election last year…
Here’s an example of that. Here’s another. To quote from one of them:
“The last couple of days, I’ve been getting a flurry of releases from SC Republicans that I haven’t stopped to read, because they all seem to be about Nancy Pelosi, which doesn’t interest me since my area of concern is South Carolina.
“But the headline on this one was just SO over the top…” and so forth and so on…
It’s called fighting fire with fire. As long as the anti-choice crowd continues to try and undo the law of the land you’ll continue to see this type of stuff from both sides. As soon as the anti-choice people accept the constitionality and legality of women’s choice this is going to continue. It’s time to move on.
You’re talking about abortion, right? I ask because you didn’t mention it.
And yeah, it is fire with fire. I’m sick of that. Time for less heat, more light.
Oh, and if y’all want some more monotonous sloganeering from the GOP side, I was just reminded of some… I went to the SC GOP web site to find out where this convention is tomorrow, and ran into this video again.
Sheesh. Do people really think they’re saying something meaningful when they say that stuff?
Now, back to beating up the other side, I mean to say this earlier…
Bud said “anti-choice” twice. This reminds me of the way that the most outrageous and confrontational language becomes mainstream in our political parties.
The first few times I heard anyone say “anti-choice” I laughed out loud. It was SO over-the-top, such an absurdly transparent attempt to manipulate language so as to delegitimize opponents, that I could not take it seriously. I mean, it’s one thing that folks on that side don’t want to be called “pro-abortion.” Never mind that what they advocate is that abortion be legal and freely available to anyone who wants one, which in plain English would tend to translate as being PRO that thing. But I understand it. Abortion is a pretty horrible thing to be for, so they don’t want to think of themselves as being for it. They want to think of themselves as pro-“choice.” Fine. Rather than provoke them, I call them “pro-choice.”
Of course, they’re not about to call the other side “pro-life,” even when they’re talking about someone who adheres to Cardinal Bernardin’s consistent ethic of life. Sounds too positive, and they don’t want to give that to their opponents. Fine. I’ve never minded being “anti-abortion,” and I think most people who are opposed to it acquiesce to that label.
And as you see above, I will accept “anti-choice,” because I’ve noticed how “choice” is used as a disinfectant for very bad ideas. When what one is advocating — such as abandoning public schools — is an idea unlikely to win converts, you say you are for “choice.” Which makes me want to oppose pretty much anything that is wrapped in that clothing.
But I’m unusual. For the same reason that some people like to say they are “pro-choice” — you know, because it’s so all-American — others do NOT like to be painted as against something so all-American. It’s an insult; it’s meant to delegitimize.
So at first, you heard it only from the angriest, most confrontational people on that side of the debate, the most extreme NARAL types — not from mainstream Democrats.
That has now changed.
The trajectory reminds me of what happened to the even sillier practice of using “Democrat” as an adjective.
Back when Bob Dole used that construction in 1976, referring to “Democrat wars,” to use the terse description of Wikipedia, “the remark backfired.” Aside from what it said about wars, it was a particularly tacky linguistic construction, a particularly naked attempt to delegitimize Democrats by refusing to refer to their party as “Democratic.” Why? Because being democratic is all-American, a term of praise in our country. He didn’t want to give Democrats that.
Today, it is rare for a Republican to refer to anything other than “the Democrat Party.” It is so normal that there is an entire generation and more of Republicans who grew up not knowing that there was any other way to describe that party. It’s all they’ve ever heard.
Never mind that to anyone who is NOT a Republican and who actually has a decent working knowledge of the English language, it sounds absurd. Not only absurd, but offensive, because you know the origin of the phrase lies in a desire that NOTHING good ever be said about the opposition.
The parties have pulled so far apart in their never-ending quest to tear the country apart, to prevent any sort of consensus on the big issues that face us, that they have invented their own dialects of the language.
George Orwell would appreciate it.
What do you think it means that 11 out of 17 comments to your post are yours?
I think it means that the points I’m trying to make here are important to me. This kind of rhetoric — the kind in this e-mail (this series of e-mails I’ve been getting from the Democrats the last couple of weeks) and the nonsense I was getting last year, on and on about Nancy Pelosi, are all about demonizing the opposition and making people mad as hell so they’ll give money — fighting fire with fire, as Bud says. And it’s destroying any chance of productive politics, of the deliberative process upon which a republic like ours relies in order to function.
It is a huge deal to me.
Have you asked Dick Harpootlian to stop sending out these types of emails?
It’s not him. It’s the national Dems.
By the way, I’m typing this from the SC state convention, where the ideological nonsense is about to make my head explode…