People are so confused ...

[DURHAM D]

I was just in the parking lot of my local grocery store and noticed an Americans for Prosperity "Keep Your Hands Off My Health Care" bumper sticker on the car next to me. The gentleman who owned the car was loading his groceries so I asked him if he would mind chatting about his views on health care.

We had a great conversation. It turns out he migrated here within the past two years from Iraq with his wife and child. He is an engineer but is working as a maintenance man. The company he is working for has stopped paying health insurance for employees and although his son is currently on Medicaid he is afraid he may lose it next year - thus the bumper sticker.

Bottom line - he is worried about his family and is passionately for universal health care. Health care like he had back home in Iraq and they have in Canada. He believes the enemy of health care is President Obama and the Democrats. I assured him that he is not the only person I have talked to who wants single payer universal health care and is confused into thinking the Republicans are the way to get it and that the HCR debate and the Medicare/Medicaid/SS conversation has confused most people.

He thanked me for talking with him and I wished him luck. He was a really nice guy. When he becomes a citizen and votes he may sadly still think that Republicans are his friend.

The Democrats have a giant message problem.

[Vincardog]

1. The Democrats have a giant message problem. That is what happens when you let 5 rich republicans

own all the

News Papers and TV networks

[DURHAM D]

2. I think they walked themselves into this problem.

Its not the media.

Democrats themselves are off policy so they are off message.

[Vincardog]

4. You are correct the democratic "Leaders" Are bought and paid for by the same 5 republicans

[marmar]

3. The Democratic Party is TERRIBLE at messaging.

It's unbelievable how extraordinarily bad at it they are.

[Raine]

8. It is so TERRIBLE that it seems deliberate. I often wonder if

there are moles in the Democratic party who have gotten into the upper eschelan and are doing this on purpose. I can't believe they could actually be so clueless.

[The Doctor.]

9. Oh, you are SO close.

Right on the verge of realization.

Let me give you a little nudge;

"It's a 'dog and pony show' where the Republicans play the bad, nasty, corrupt role and the Democrats play the 'helpless, ineffective victim' role. The American people buy the roles, pick their 'side' and yell and scream at each-other while the ones who actually run things laugh all the way to the bank."

That should sum it up.

Meanwhile, there are some well meaning Dems, including Obama, who simply haven't the power to effect real change. But they do what they can.

[Raine]

10. Yup, really I can't come to any other conclusion

all for show .. "victims and agressors". I'm sick to death of it.

[The Doctor.]

11. You lied!

You said you 'wondered' when you already knew!

:silly:

Yeah, I still do that too.

Like; "It's almost as though our politicians aren't doing the will of the people." :think:


The real beauty of the way this is all set up is that on the one 'side' there's a great deal of recognition and realization of the real problems, while the other 'side' is the result of cultivated ignorance. They've created the perfect adversarial formula where our 'side' is obviously frustrated by the other's ignorance, and that other side is enraged into torpor over the intellectual 'arrogance' they perceive from us.

I just can't help calling them morons because there's no other conclusion I can come to. No matter how patiently I explain something, no matter cordial I am in a given discussion, they are so deliberately and militantly ignorant that I reach a point where I know I'm wasting my time and finally just tell them they're an idiot. Right then, regardless of reason, they can form a perfect little retreat on their persecution platform. They can immediately discard any latent notion of their own ignorance and settle themselves back into the righteousness of 'resisting an intellectual elite'. Then they say, almost to a one; "You call me names just because I disagree with you.", and all at once they cleanse themselves of any lingering information they might have picked up.

What I've found is that these people can't get away with that kind of ignorance face to face. What they've lost, because of the internet, is any sense of personal shame in being ignorant. It's a fascinating new phenomenon, and I'm really not sure if it outweighs the benefits of this new consciousness.

Either way, there's a bunch of fucking morons letting corporations and the super-rich get away with murder, and they won't ever listen.

[Raine]

12. Heh, yeah

well I can't actually prove it so I'm careful about wording but yeah I KNOW what's actually going on. Some will never ever acknowledge the truth. I guess it's just too awful for them to have to deal with but if you don't how can things ever be different.

[October]

5. You're right. And it's illogical. If WE know it... surely they must know it

After so many years of this "Can't get our message out" -- we need to ask WHY?

By now, we should have been able to explain, learn soundbites, etc.

[Dragonfli]

6. I understand, a good friend of mine came here from Iraq about 20 years ago,

He had good health care there (his family still lives there and that hasn't changed).
He thinks Obama wants to destroy SS and medicare and worries about health care more than anything else. He thinks (he said it much nicer than i am paraphrasing) than Americans are crazy cruel people that do not care about each other, he asked me why we let so many die when there are cures for their diseases, he just can't understand it at all.
I can't say as how I blame him, all I could say, and it is kinda' lame, is that I am not like that and there are other Americans that don't understand the cruelty of this country either.

[Shagbark Hickory]

7. I don't even know where to begin with that

The pot is calling the kettle black so hard

[butterfly77]

13. I have heard this a lot...

from people who haven't been here very long. They believe the republiCON rah,rah America is great and those who don't make here don't or can't because they don't or haven't been trying.


Many still don't get it but many are now getting a lesson in republicon politics especially while watching the debt ceiling debate.

Many come to this country through HB1visa or whatever they call it and are hired and trained on the spot why can't this be done for people who have been here all of their lives.

I hear Bloomberg and the rest say the people here aren't educated enough whose fault is that and if they aren't why would you go overseas and bring people over here to train when your own citizens can be trained.

Why do they hire people for call centers overseas when Americans can do those same jobs.