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There's no doubt that name-calling is confrontational, but does it produce results? I tend to agree with Martin Luther King. In "Stride to Freedom" he wrote that "hate creates more hate and violence creates more violence." But he also said that the non-violent method was not about being non-confrontational. The Montgomery bus boycott was very confrontational. It struck hard at the pocketbook of the bus company, but the confrontation was the act of walking and arranging car pools.
Do you really think "it is all for naught" if we cannot (or simply do not, even though we can) call people names when they oppose or disagree with us?
Here's the thing about confronting the "bastards".
As usual, Somerby does it so well.
First, he quotes EJ Dionne, writing about how racist the Teabaggers are.
'The poll asked: “In recent years, do you think too much has bene made of the problems facing black people, too little has been made, or is it about right?” Twenty-eight percent of all Americans—and just 19 percent of those who are not Tea Party loyalists— answered "too much." But among Tea Party supporters, the figure is 52 percent, almost three times the proportion of the rest of the country. A quarter of Tea Partiers say that the Obama administration's policies favor blacks over whites, compared with only 11 percent in the country as a whole.'
Then he does some basic electoral math.
"At first blush, we have no idea why someone would say that too much has been made, in recent years, of the problems facing black people. In our view, such problems are rarely discussed at all, certainly not by us fiery white liberals. (When did you ever see Dionne build a column around any such problem?) That said, we can’t help noting the facts which follow: Roughly half of Tea Party supporters didn’t answer the question that way—and roughly one-fifth of everyone else did give that answer. From that, we draw a few quick deductions:
Let’s assume there are roughly 200 million potential voters. Based on the New York Times/CBS survey, roughly 36 million of those people are (current) Tea Party supporters. Of that number, roughly 19 million think too much has been made of black problems in recent years.
When we say and imply that these people are racists, it makes us ratty white liberals feel good—but we’re playing with electoral fire. You see, based on that “19 percent” figure, about 30 million additional voters also think that too much has been made of black problems in recent years—30 million additional voters who don’t (currently) describe themselves as Tea Party supporters. When we keep assailing the motives of Tea Party supporters, we’re assailing these peoples’ motives as well. This means there are 30 million additional people we are inviting to vote against us, added to the 36 million Dionne says are already lost. At this point, even Dionne might see an electoral problem looming in November: Could 66 million voters possibly tip November’s election?
In 2006, only 81 million people voted in all."
That's the thing. Every time you call an enemy a name for something he/she says or believes. You are also calling the name to other people who believe the same things, many of whom are not currently your enemy. However, you can make them into an enemy if you keep calling them names. We don't win as progressives if we make more enemies.
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