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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (46972)	9/4/2004 5:09:55 PM
From: CalculatedRisk	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 81568

Ken, I participate on two message boards: SI for finance, economics and investing and another board (that shall remain unnamed) for Sports. The other board has a "Free For All" section for any topic (non-sports) including politics. The Bush supporters are whipped into the same Nationalistic fervor on that board. Any time any rational discussion starts on deficits, jobs, foreign affairs, health care, etc. the Bushies flood the board with smears and attack the Kerry posters. It is their method of trying to stop the free exchange of ideas by "shouting down" other posters. On this board, we have the "banning" tool. The extremists are now in an uproar that they cannot flood this thread. Amazing. Lately I've been thinking about a story by Mark Twain ("The Mysterious Stranger") and a book by Sinclair Lewis ("It Can't Happen Here"). Here is an excerpt from Twain's story: "There has never been a just one, never an honorable one--on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful--as usual--will shout for the war. The pulpit will-- warily and cautiously--object--at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers--as earlier-- but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation--pulpit and all-- will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."