THREE POSTS IN ONE DAY, A NEW RECORD

I got an email from my old school friend Jim, whose comments on some recent posts I let push my buttons and I responded with a bit more vitriol than I'm comfortable with. He had an epiphany when he read Paul Harryn's much more reasoned response to Jim's dismissal of all things Democratic and/or liberal, etc.

I wrote back to Jim that Paul's comment brought me up too. I realized I had been getting quite strident myself and was about to put a comment on that last series of angry exchanges saying so. Then I decided to just make it a new post.

The fact is I invite comments as it says up in the right hand corner, so I shouldn't get so upset at some of them. What was and is upsetting is a tendency from my critics from the right, and I know I sometimes have it too, as do many on both sides of the issues, to generalize the other's beliefs and tendencies.

This is the part that angers us I believe.

For instance the "big government" charge the right constantly throws at Democrats. In fact, most Democrats I know inside and out of politics, do not espouse big goverment. And as I have pointed out repeatedly in answer to this accusation, which parrots a party line with little basis in reality (because it works with a lot of people who begin to believe it), the facts show that the greatest recent expansion of government came under the present president and before that under Reagan-Bush Sr. Under Clinton (actually Al Gore headed the process) many areas of the federal government were reduced in size.

There is little to dispute here, but even if there was, that would not mean that all Democrats or even most of them want government to expand. It is specific goverment programs that are really at the crux of the arguments, and again the differences aren't the way they are protrayed in the right's rhetoric (or mine at times). Republicans insist that Democrats don't support the military because Democrats don't support Republican uses of the military. But in fact neither party has been able to do much in the way of reducing the overexpenditures and even bogus weapons contracting programs and other military contracts that could be gotten much cheaper, because specific Senators and members of Congress of both parties back the programs in their districts and states.

But it is a fact that Republican administrations tend to spend more on those contracts and those weapons than Democratic administrations (at least the Clinton vs. the Reagan-Bush-Bush ones), and that Democrats tend to spend more, or try to (for the past seven years they haven't had the power and still don't in the Senate, yet) on G.I. and veterans benefits etc.

There are some core differences, of course, but even they are nuanced and often not as they are portrayed in each party's caricatures of the other party. There are plenty of Democrats who oppose abortion, for instance, and plenty of Republicans who support it (including all the Bush women as I understand it). But the appointment of Supreme Court justices, as well as federal judges around the country, who back the more rightwing policies and perspectives of the Republican Party obviously often do tend to support anti-abortion legsilation, etc. And so on endlessly.

Jim's, and other rightwinger's dismissal of all liberal programs as failures is just plain silly. Unless you distort or completely deny the facts. Particular laws and/or goverment programs created by the Democrats and/or Republicans have succeeded and others have failed on both sides. I believe that more Democratic ones have succeeded and that the Democratic ones have also benefited more people. They, the right, don't, obviously. We can disagree and state our cases without attacking each other. I would hope and will try to do.

But the main point I want to make is that what drove me crazy the most in the last exchanges was Jim's assumption that because I have more important things to do with my time and other subjects I wish to address on the blog etc. that somehow that means I don't know my facts or care to defend them, when I have done that over and over again in response to his and other rightwing comments and they respond by either dismissing my point of view based on the facts I present or refer to and avoid answering my facts by changing the subject and throwing more of their own arcane footnotes about some other topic or more party-line generalizations.

For instance, the impact of pollution and deforestation and overpopulation as well as the deregulation of certain industries and global corporate businesses has contributed to, and in some cases caused, not only major climate changes around the world and the extinction of thousands of species of animals and insects and plants and other living things, as well as manmade creations (the loss of architectural wonders and art work to air pollution etc. in Venice, Italy, for instance, or the Taj Mahal, etc.), it has also thrived more under some adminsitrations than others. Yes it's true China and other rapidly developing nations should have been included in the Kyoto agreement, but it is also true that had the U.S. lived up to that protacol there would be less pollution here, and less in the world at large, than there actually is, no matter how much is contributed by China (and up until very recently the USA has been the biggest polluter).

I have no fear of defending my "liberal" perspective (though it has been and sometimes still is more radical and/or libertarian in some cases and ultimately unclassifiable like most of us), I just don't have the time to footnote every reference, which at any rate, are so widely available there is really no need to. Any reputable source will provide the same list of worlwide qualified sicentists (unlike Michael Chricton, or however you spell the novelist's name the right so loves to quote on the global warming issue, and yes I know he was educated as a doctor, but that is not a climate scientist) that shows clearly that not just a majority of these scientists around the world, but a close to unanimous percentage of these scientists, have stated unequivically that golabl warming is a fact and that humans are contributing greatly to the reality and that if it isn't reversed within a matter of only a few more years it will become impossible to reverse and then will at least have to be addressed, as for instance the liberal Dutch government already has with their windmills and 1,000 year flood levies that can withstand hurricanes and other natural catastrophes way beyond anything anywhere in the USA can or will be able to in the future, unless our government makes some drastic changes in not just laws governing pollution and greenhouse gases and all the rest, but also in what kinds of preparations are made for weather changes even more severe than we've already seen
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Et-as-I-like-to-say-endlessly-cetera.

PS: And let's accept the reality that both my critics and I and I'm sure all of us love this country and its founding documents, or the ideals in them, including the later revisions that improved them, like ending slavery and legal segregation and inequality for black citizens, creating women's right to vote, etc.