"Here is a topic for you: Obama derangement syndrome. Today my mother got another one in a long line of anti Obama emails from conservative friends. This one had a picture of Obama holding the book The Post-American World and was full of anti Muslim nonsense. The funny part is that I googled it and learned the photo is from 2008. These emails truly never die.
Snopes: What does Obama read
Anyhow, I am curious why these email chains are such a conservative phenomena. I have seen dozens (and I am not at all in that loop) and have never seen a single one with a liberal slant
They are interesting mix of fear, hatred, and conspiracy. I would not enjoy seeing the world from this perspective. My liberal point of view seems more mentally healthy to me." Laurie
WP Conservatives Run Email Rumor Mill
Daily Kos Liberal Email Chains
Chain Smashers Liberal
I guess if the far right Conservatives have the upper hand on fibbing and displaying paranoia through chain emails... I am thinking the far left Liberals have the upper hand on fibbing and displaying paranoia through blogs... I am thinking both extremes self impose a lot of stress and anxiety on themselves while looking for conspiracies. Thoughts? G2A
3 comments:
One of the most difficult promises to keep I have ever made to myself was that I wouldn't do what so many Republicans and conservatives did during the Bush administration. I wouldn't attribute criticisms made of the president to some mental disease or defect. I wouldn't choose to find some sort of Bush Derangement Syndrome in Obama's critics. Primarily, that's because people like Charles Krauthammer pretended to use claims of such syndromes in order to deflect criticism rather than respond to it substantively. I think this failure to consider all sides of an issue was a substantial contributing to so many of the disasters of the Bush years.
Admittedly, this has been more of a challenge than I thought back then. How else to explain birtherism except as some sort of paranoid delusion? And so often, my refusal to blame mental illness for Republican actions, leaves me with alternatives that are worse. When I refuse to attribute Republican attempts to dishonor our debt as the result of some psychotic revenge fantasy, what does that leave me with except the view that Republicans have made a cold hearted analytic judgment that it is in their political interest to wreck the economy? Maybe crazy is better.
--Hiram
--Hiram
You can always mine blogs to find someone saying something stupid. The internet didn't invent stupidity, it just provided stupidity with wider distribution opportunities.
==Hiram
First, let me make my position perfectly clear. When Obama was elected, I said clearly that I expected everything he did and everything he said to be wrong, so that I would not be disappointed, but could, possibly, be pleasantly surprised.
That said, 99% of what I see may be critical of Obama's policies, but very few are of the "conspiracy nut" kind that Laurie is reporting, and I ignore them. The question being asked is whether Obama is evil or just mindless of reality--I was going to say stupid-- but it doesn't really matter, does it? He has ruined the economy, his foreign policy is in shambles, and he continues to campaign as if he has nothing to do with what goes on in Washington. Ridicule is far more appropriate (and mentally healthy) than imputing dark motives.
Laurie, you're simply on the wrong lists, somehow. Those conservatives I know who have, wittingly or otherwise, ended up on official Obama or DNC email lists get 24/7 paranoia, delusion, lies and worse.
Post a Comment