Gesture of Reconcilliation
I respect Ze Frank. But he’s nuts with this:
i would love to see a group project where obama supporters reached out to the mccain folk (and others) in a gesture of reconciliation… [ From 52 to 48 With Love ]
The aggrieved party is not usually the one to reach out and say “I’m sorry.” And I think Ze’s message in that post is flatly arrogant: Obama supporters won, but they did it by being extremists and it’s time to make nice again.
But it was the Republican campaign events where people shouted “traitor,” “terrorist,” and “kill him.” And when McCain gave his concession speech, his supporters booed Obama more than once. And we, as liberals, have been called any number of things over the last eight years: anti-American, objectively pro-terrorist, sympathizers with Islamic extremists, useful idiots.
And what seemed to make the right wing the most angry was we wanted to see due process and dedication to Constitutional principles.
I am not against reconciliation. But I do think I will wait until the other side admits that I’m an American, my principles mean something, and Obama isn’t a stealth Muslim socialist terrorist criminal. And that’s a pretty freaking low bar.
It is a low bar and I don’t truly believe that ignorance and vitriol will ever be resolved by any outside influence, kinda like alcoholics. Gotta give Ze credit for always shooting things up to see who salutes, he ranted for a while about the inanity of hording ideas or some such – he lives his thoughts for sure.
A lot of the contributors are 48ers so that’s kinda something. We have to remember that the loudest voices are often the craziest and most extreme, we’re looking at you Limbaugh – a loudmouth with a horribly lonely and self-involved personal life, not a success by any feeling human’s definition. The <span class=“caps”>GOP </span>is in extreme disarray, hopefully the Lincoln ideals come back and the fundies wise up. Maybe demonstrations of what it means to be reasonable and ‘christ-like’ such as this 52-48 project can bring some around. Maybe.
So if I understand this correctly, we should accept that all the folks shouting threats and insults at Sarah Palin’s rallies last week are now just folks who want to play nice? And they want me to agree that red, blue, whatever — we are all the same? More alike than different? Sorry, no. The differences are too important.
Reconciliation (such as it is) is a great idea, but there’s another word that goes with it and that is Truth. We learned this from South Africa. Without Truth there is not much hope for Reconciliation.
And the truth is people like you and me have gotten blamed for everything from 9/11 to the economic collapse and called traitor and un-American and scum and been, collectively, on the receiving end of innumerable threats of violence just for having the audacity to suggest that maybe, just maybe, policies that are to be implemented in the real world – environmental policy, foreign policy and diplomacy, economic policy, education, religious tolerance, every goddamn thing that’s happened <strike>to</strike> in this country in the last fifteen years – that policies with real world consequences actually be based on analysis of, y’know, the real world, instead of somebody’s theocratic idological fantasy.
Yeah, reconciliation is the ultimate goal, but I want to see a metric fuckload of truth first. First the truth, and then the apology – sincere apology, not a premature “I’m sorry you feel that way” and not before I – before we are done being angry. Because we are angry, and we have every right to be angry, because we have been shat upon for my entire political lifetime, and after the wrong is made right then, perhaps, we can talk about reconciliation.