One More Thought On The Fable

politics aside, this has got to be an extension of Godwin’s Law.

I don’t understand, Lee. Are we supposed to give Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Hannity, O’Reilly, Leader Boehner, Dick Armey, Eric Cantor and all the rest of the A-list Republicans the benefit of the doubt because we shouldn’t unfairly stereotyping them?

Could we please get off this subject. Lee, if you don’t want a back-n-forth like you claimed in an earlier post, why do you keep bringin it up?Please, let it drop.

The point Bob was making, I believe, is this: unless and until the scorpion makes it across without stinging the frog, it would be fairly foolish to just assume it’s changed. Fool me once and all of that. Melissa Harris-Lacewell had an intersting take on Rachel Maddow’s show Friday night.Personally, as a black woman, I’m more concerned with Steele’s policies than I am with the color of his skin. If Alan Keyes had been elected president, I wouldn’t have been dancing on the Mall last week.

No, of course not…individuals aren’t a group. It’s not unfair to criticize Limbaugh’s past and recent changes. But Rush Limbaugh’s problem isn’t his unchangeable evil nature. It’s his choices. That whole frog / scorpion thing is used to justify a concept I don’t believe – original sin.Here’s a list of names. David Brock. John Dean. Robert Byrd. Ed Schultz. Colin PowellPeople change. Institutions change. Sometimes for good, sometimes not. And sometimes they don’t change. But nothing is preordained.

Lee, I don’t need my ideological hatred of the Republicans diffused by your infernal Vulcan logic.I see your point, but you are talking about the generalization of a race, group of people, entire sexual identity, etc. etc. We are talking about our experience with this Republican minority in Congress, which has, by experience, taught us no to trust it. I might even agree with you if a significant percentage of Republicans had broken ranks and voted in favor of the bill. However, they voted, in lockstep, to oppose this bill even after important concessions had been made.They’ve demonstrated they are not interested in being trusted, but instead are interested only in taking advantage of whatever trust we might have in them in order to disrupt the process.I believe Obama will and should approach them each time with a measure of trust, but should also be prepared to leave them behind if they continue to abuse it.

Lee, I think that this is the first thing I have read in this blog that I agree with. You wrote something that was not full of hate or name calling and you put some genuine thought into your commentary. Well done.

Just a minute conservative. I think Lee’s posts are pretty much “hate/name calling free.” In fact, I think I remember lamenting about his endless “My Little Pony optimism” once or twice.

The story of the crowd and admonition of let he who is without sin throw the first stone was a fable, because in real life the stones would have immediately started flying.Some scorpions are really scorpions.

Lee – Trust, but verify.I have been tolerant of the Republicans all along. They take advantage of our tolerance. They have demonstrated time and time again that their only interest is to concentrate all wealth in as few hands as possible. I stopped holding my breath waiting for them to change a very long time ago (probably around 1975). I have seen absolutely no change in their policies.They have just voted against the stimuli package and ridiculed bipartisanship. I just don’t see the selection of Steele as a change, yet. It might be the first sign of possible change. It might not. My money is on the latter.I hope that you are right and I am wrong. I don’t want to be right on this one.I very much admire your optimism.

My 80 year old father, along with some other relatives on his side of the family are dyed in the wool redneck racists. They always have been and they always will be.I would never have dreamed that a black man would be president when I was a kid, but hey look! Attitudes of Americans as a group have changed, but not everyone. The actions of the Republican House are puzzling and disappointing. It may come back to bite them on the ass, or they may just be reflecting the attitudes of the majority of their constituents.

Though the fable uses animals to illustrate the point, I think deriving an accusation of original sin from it regarding a self-selected group like the modern-day GOP is deliberately misleading or simply obtuse.In this context, it is not like painting with a broad brush a whole race or religion or ethnic group — though you are right that it could be used that way and has. When talking about a self-selected group like this ugly, post-Nixon, race-baiting GOP we on the left have been wrestling for four decades now, I think it is an apt metaphor. It is in their ideological DNA because today’s Republican Party exists in the form it does because LBJ gave black people the right to vote, the Dixiecrat racists bolted the Dems and lent the weight of their entire regions voting power to the party that promised them — sometimes explicitly and sometimes in coded language — to stick it to all the pointy-headed East Coast n***er lovers who made them share a drinking fountain with black people. Whatever the GOP had been before Nixon (Party of Lincoln and Eisenhower), after him it was a container for all the bigotry and hatred and mendacity the Dems finally summoned the moral courage to divest.Today’s GOP is tainted with the Original Sin of Racism because their current power derives from its ugly exploitation, along with anti-gay bigotry, misogyny, class warfare and the storm of lies amid the blood-sport politics of Atwater and Rove. As driftglass has pointed out time and again, anyone who has watched the GOP operate for the last forty years and still chooses to put an “R” next to their name knows exactly what that means and is morally culpable. The Dems once were equally guilty, and for a long, long time, too. Forty years in the political wilderness hasn’t wiped their moral slate fully clean, but two generations of time can clean enough of the slate to provide the banner under which we now have our most visible repudiation of the political power deriving from that toxic social order.You may be right, Lee. Steele may represent a sea change in the way Republicans conduct the people’s business. I doubt it. The stain on the Democrats’ soul has only diminished over time because the people responsible quit, died, apologized and truly changed (Byrd) or switched parties altogether. Redemption via attrition.Until the aging warriors in the current GOP firmament retire or die off, the power they enjoy is fruit of the poisonous tree. Steele could be the first step, but unless and until I see solid evidence to the contrary, they won’t get even the benefit of the doubt.

Michael Steele, the new national GOP chairman, urged House Republicans at the end of their three-day retreat to stick to their stand against the $819 billion stimulus measure as they plot their strategy for the 111th Congress.(snip)“I thought it was very, very important that you sent a signal, and you sent it loudly and very clearly,” Steele told the House members. “This party, the leadership of this Congress will stand first and foremost with the American people.“And you made it very clear that in order to grow through this recession that you would not redistribute the wealth of the people of this nation, but that you would empower them to earn it, invest it, save it, and just spend it on their terms. And that is such a powerful message,” Steele said.http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003022250

In the meantime, When voters are given the specifics of the stimulus package, 66% of voters support it.http://www.diageohotlinepoll.com/(both links via Paddy & Laffy)So…the message sent this weekend is that the GOP has a new chairman, but the same old song. WE aren’t lumping them all together, they’ve done that to themselves. They have shown their willingness – no, eagerness! – to sting the people of this country and allow us all to sink rather than trying to work together with the rest of us to fix this mess they’ve gotten us into. Are all Republicans like this? Hopefully not, but THIS group is. IMO, we would be fools to forget this lesson & have to relearn it over & over & over…

It’s nice that Steele is against the redistribution of wealth after it has been redistributed. It is so pre-French Revolution talk. Give even more tax breaks to the aristocracy, which by magic isn’t wealth redistribution, and let those on the bottom struggle to find some bread crumbs, as it is so self-empowering. There quite clearly should be no tax breaks at all for the wealthy in the bill, and on the contrary, there should be special Liberty or Freedom taxes on the wealthy to help defray the cost of the stimulus.

nano, sorry I did not mean specifically Lee as the one using the language I mentioned. This blog has a fair number of contributors who use a lot of hate speech and name calling. This is your blog and what you believe however, it is refreshing to read something here that was written with a lot of heart and thought combined. Well thought out commentary bridges party beliefs.

For me it’s all about at what point do I cease tolerating the intolerable? Answer: when the intolerable doesn’t want to change.But to take this small group of people and claim we;re sterotyping them? Far from it? Desperate men will band together and do desperate things.The GOP’s days are numbered. They know it, we know it, Obama knows it but they just want to be able to suck on their thumbs I guess, and hope for Momma or Jesus to come give them comfrt.I think deep down they know none of that is coming, and since all they’ve done is sow fear, hey, guess what? They’re reaping fear interally. They don’t know anything else.I think Bob would be better off using C.S. Lewis’s analogy: the elves are for themselves. Small minded because they chose to be. Intolerable because they chose to be. Respecting them means staying as far away as possible – something the main media wouldn’t know the first thing about, eh?

The point of the story is to indicate that there are certain aspects of our nature we are born with. As one poster pointed out, she is a black woman. She was born that way and had no choice in the matter. Most people accept that being gay is also something one can be born with. The Scorpion cannot change his Scorpion nature.However, in life we have choice and this is where the difference lies. People choose their beliefs. I once had a guy working for me who had a tattoo of a crucified black man on his back because in his youth he was a skinhead and his attitude was shaped in prison. When I knew him he had chosen to change his beliefs and attitudes and was a very different person to the one he was before-too bad about the tattoo. Republicans chose their attitudes and beliefs, they are not born with them. While the Scorpion could not change his nature and stung the Frog, he chose to lie, just like a Republican.

While I have to agree lee to a certain extent.But let me ask you this, While you want to give the scorpions the benefit of the doubt, and indeed said frog gave the scorpion a chance and maybe the next frog should give the scorpion a chance to prove himself. But at some point after at least 8 years of us frogs giving the scorpions a ride, you have to ask yourself, How many frogs have to die to prove to the eternal optimists that scorpions can’t be trusted?It seems we’ve tried to cut them some slack, Did we try to impeach Bush? no. Did Reid and pelosi roll over every time the republicans try to push something through with the threat of filibuster? yes.But the economy is crumbling before our eyes, and the repubs still want to play obstructionist politics, even though Obama put some things in there to placate them a bit. At some point they need to realize that the dems won and the american people are sick of this crap.We have a Democratic Majority with the exception of 1 vote in the senate. Its not a damn frog anymore. its T-rex. and we don’t need to take the scorpions across. Until the scorpion shows some sign of changing, I say leave them on the riverbank. Maybe the scorpion can change, I’m not willing to brand them as unable to change. I’m just not anxious to see any more frogs die to prove it.

People flew off the handle when I stated on this blog that I expect more from a half-black guy from Illinois than a cracker from Arkansas whose lips are permanently attached to Bush the ancient’s arse.I’m pleased to report that I’m seeing a bit more separation than I believed I would see a couple of months ago.So, yeah, I’m prejudiced: I expect success from blacks politically. White people are too fucking stupid to perform well – no, I kid. Actually, based on the recent developments that are elevating Limbaugh to KING of the Republicans, maybe there is more truth to that statement than I want to admit.

Get over yourself Stranahan.Sure people can change, but not overnight.The GOP spends the last year race-baiting and now after Obama won and the republicans realize that people have more important things to worry about than skin color, they pull out Steele and you think its a big sign of change? What are you blind? Nevermind that this comes on the heels of that Magik Negro song. Time to make nice and look more inclusive!Jeez I think I just wont read this blog for another week or two, again. Maybe people will come to their senses.

Bill Press on Bipartisanship

Yes, the Repubs can change. But, history shows that they won’t. End of story. I appreciate the Dems for being selfless; but, I know they will always be taken by the Repubs. History keeps repeating itself.Who is the nitwit that thinks we should be bipartisan and bend over, again?