Awww, crumb. I hate being lied to. In light of what your first link, Miller's statements about what Kerry opposed in the military do indeed appear so misrepresntative that I would count them as lies. (For a statement to be not a lie, in my eyes, the thrust and general implications have to be true, as well as the exact words.) I had some vague memory that the $87 billion was more complicated than it was represented as, but I wrote that off to politicking. But this is really bad...
Ah well. Good I said something, or I might never have been corrected. (Mom, when she was my music teacher, told me, "If you're going to make a mistake, make it LOUD, so we can find it!"
) Though I still don't yet entirely trust Kerry on the military, that goes a long way towards instilling some faith.
In light of that, it seems to me the liberals need some PR help, and badly. I mean, free speech necessarily allows for there to be a lot of misrepresentation and lying out there, but if the facts are on your side, why not use them and completely pwn the opposition? It's not like the nuanced view takes forever to say--I bet I could sum things up in two or three sentences. It doesn't make sense.
I listened to Kerry's response after the convention--he whined about people questioning his patriotism (something that pointedly didn't happen!). I looked up some Dem representative's comment in the news about the Miller speech, and he talked about how angry Miller was, and suggested that he had only made the speech to sell books. To my eyes, that's a flame response, and an indication you don't have anything substative to say. It's Vander, on the DBB, that finally links to an independant site that tells me the speech is in error. I'm glad I learned that, but I doubt he will get the news out to very many people! Why didn't Kerry say it? Doesn't he know that if you reply to lies with spam, all you are going to do is kill dialogue and guarantee the lies will stick? If that's all you can do, then that's what you do. But if you can do better, why not? It makes no sense.
*sigh* What a crazy world. I don't understand.
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Other owed responses--
To Tricord: I won't address all of what you said, but at least on one point, I thought you misrepresented me, so I need to address that--
Tricord wrote:
Drakk, I am both shocked and sad from your posts. I know you value Bush for things like his outspoken christianity, his aversion from abortion, and the fact that he appoints "pro-life" judges.
This is actually not true. Bush and I are both Christians, and even of a very similar flavor--so that means we share a lot of values. Though Bush is more outspoken than most, there are a -lot- of politicians out there that are, or at least claim to be, Christians. That's not why I like him. And though I like the fact that he's pro-life and anti-gay-marriage and any number of other moral issues important to me, that isn't it either. And if he were appointing rabid pro-life judges, I would actually dislike that--I want judges to respect the law, not further my interests. I don't care whether or not judges agree with me--I care how they arrive at those positions and whether they're legally reasonable.
I like Bush for his character. I like the things he talks about in his speeches, I like the explanation he gives for his actions. I like what the things he's done have to say about him as a person. When I say he's one of my heroes, I mean he's somebody that I'd like to grow up to be like, not that I like his policies. If I have the time, I may start another thread to talk about this more specifically (here isn't the place). The political world is such a fractured place these days, as evidenced even here by the number of "Drakona, you *like* GWB? WTF??!!" comments. It would be helpful if we could see things through each others' eyes.
I can say some things about the policies you commented on, thought for much of that I'm not the person to talk to. I don't have a high estimation of my own ability to evaluate the reasonableness of a lot of policies, though I say things as best I can and how I see them. I don't think it's fruitful here, though. Maybe another day.
To Birdseye:
You said you found Miller's speech angry and uproductive--a long Kerry attack. To that, I'd say there's produvtive, directed anger, and then there's uncontrolled, abrasive angry. I thought the speech was an example of the former--more "thunder for a righteous cause" than "petty abuse."
People have compared it to a southern sermon, and I quite agree with the comparison, both in the shortcomings and strengths of such a genre. I go to a Baptist church, and the pastor there has a habit of thundering on through points I wish he'd give a more balanced exposition of. Sometimes it's painful to listen to. Speeches like that do oversimplify things, and are often they're dead wrong. But on the other hand, they have a way of identifying and exaggerating what people care about. When you mumble under your breath, "I don't particularly agree with the Democrats' priorities on defense," it flies under everybody's radar. When you scream, "The Democrats' policies are endangering our children!!" everybody takes notice. The crowd cheers if they believe you; the opposition embarrasses you if you're wrong.
It's a way of forcing issues. Many of the things he said got a cheer out of me. The spitballs line included--for a very long time I've had a perception of Kerry as irresponsibly weak on the military. I voiced a cheer here, and Vander corrected me, and now I see things weren't as bad as I thought. The whole thing would have never happened but for the speech making a hyperbolic point.
Look at it as an opportunity. Speeches like that crystallize what people believe into a form you can really say "yay" or "nay" to. The crowd really cheered; conservatives on other boards I visit are euphoric over the speech. That means these are beliefs people can really feel--ideas central to the way they view the political world. It tells you what to attack. Don't whine about how angry it was--the very thunder of it means that if you respond substantively, you're almost guaranteed to change minds.
That's what a speech like that is good for. It crystallizes a view and either sets it up to be shattered or convinces everyone who hears it. As speeches like that go, this was a good one--because it was very loud, and everybody really cheered.
) but as the link indicates, the US is far down on the list of possible sources.
