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THE NEWEST MEME
As you may have heard, this is the newest thing a lot of Liberals are saying. Per VDH:
...we are told that the new jihadists are not Islamists, but our own Christians who are implementing a continental-wide red-state Jesusland.
From the November 10th cartoon by Pat Oliphant (no link), in which Bush gives Jesus a job interview:
Do you think you could meet our right-wing standards? Do you believe in the merging of church and state?
From a New York Times article by Gary Wills:
The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies.
This is breathtaking in its blatant disregard for any appreciation of the facts. According to Wills, we resemble our enemies because America has citizens who are devoted to Christianity and Islamofascists have terrorists who are devoted to Islam. It doesn’t stand up to a moment’s review.
It’s just a conflation of a lot of things:
THE LEADERSHIP ON THE LEFT LOVES TO SAY THIS SORT OF THING
As I recently noted:
This is the whole Liberal playbook: 1) Say something absurd that has no basis in fact and slams Republicans. 2) Repeat until rank and file Dems think you believe it. 3) Rank and file Dems then figure since their leaders believe it, it must be true.
The meme has to be absurd. The sheer absurdity is the alert to all other Liberal leaders that they are all to keep repeating it as if they mean it.
Then the rank and file on the Left, long-suffering, long-deceived, think that their leaders really believe it. They look around and see no challenge to it from mainstream media, which is colluding with the Left and not laughing these things out of all consideration.
And finally, they look around at us—at the Right—at the Conservatives—and see no response. Why? Because we think the whole thing is so dumb it’s not worth responding to. That’s our key mistake.
Because when the rank and file on the Left sees all their leaders saying it, and no challenge from mainstream media, and no challenge even from us, they conclude—quite rationally—that it must be true!
LET’S GET GOOD AT NIPPING THESE SO-CALLED “MEMES” IN THE BUD
This time we can see it happening almost under a microscope, because this one is just getting underway. We have an opportunity to slam this particular meme into the ground right now. All we have to do is to say out loud how absurd and preposterous it is. There’s enough of us to get the word out.
By not responding to the newest meme, we assist mainstream media to also not respond to it. MSM won’t be so easily able to ignore the absurdity, if we ourselves do not ignore it.
As long as the rank and file on the Left sees a reasonable response, the meme will get busted.
Why will the rank and file on the Left pay attention to what we say?
Because they really do love America and want what’s best for this country.
Update 11-17-04. Welcome, Carnival of the Vanities readers! This site is proud to have this article included in the latest Carnival of the Vanities, hosted this week by Food Basics.
Click here to see the latest articles.
#2can we lighten up on the newfound blogosphere favorite word of the day 'meme'? blech, this is so over-used it's bordering on annoyance.
and p.s. i think we don't respond because mostly these are just jokes and people trying to explain themselves out of their defeat on november 2. but i will also submit that the far right of the gop won't call them on this because if they deny these assertions, then they summarily must deny they had anything to do with throwing the election to bush.
in fact, exit polls and survey after survey and just a hard look at the numbers proves that there really wasn't some evangelical trend in the voter turnout or some grand tidal shift in the perceptions/beliefs/convervatism of red states.
you won't hear that from the religious right, and therefore i imagine these sour grapes 'why we lost' tirades and jokes go on because they would give credence to the hard numbers that prove they (the religious base of the gop) don't deserve special treatment from the white house beyond what anyone else receives.
#3Coyote, the article on your site is excellent. The quote in your article from No Right Turn is a perfect example.
#4Dave, thanks for the comment. While these things seem like jokes to us at the time, the Left takes them seriously. For example, people on the Left have said that Hussein has no ties to terrorists -- when a Bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee found that Hussein had a long history of supporting terrorists. Statements like this are so absurd we consider them jokes, and as a result we don't bother to respond. Then the rank and file on the Left takes our non-response as an admission that the silly statement is true.
That's why it's so important for us to just calmly point out that statements like this are not true.
#5Glad the "Vanities" pointed me in your direction. Good analysis, but I'm not sure that you'll get too many Red Staters to take the lunacy of the Left seriously. Any reaction to "When did you stop beating your wife?" type allegations only encourages the kooks. The D's might really want to question the whole "R-is-for-Religeon" meme since they spent a lot of time in Central Ohio trying to convince Black congregations that Kerry was a Christian and Bush wasn't. Or are they trying to tell Blacks they don't want their "Christian" views in the Party?
Remember, if they make you mad, they win.
#6Thanks, Pat!
...I'm not sure that you'll get too many Red Staters to take the lunacy of the Left seriously. Any reaction to "When did you stop beating your wife?" type allegations only encourages the kooks.
Perhaps to get angry about those statements would encourage the leadership on the Left. But calmly pointing out, in the right place and time, that the statements are inaccurate, could cut down on quite a bit of it.
The D's might really want to question the whole 'R-is-for-Religeon' meme since they spent a lot of time in Central Ohio trying to convince Black congregations that Kerry was a Christian and Bush wasn't. Or are they trying to tell Blacks they don't want their 'Christian' views in the Party?
Great points.
#7Hey, isn't Meme that heavyset angry gal on Drew Carrey?
I'm not going to pretend to know exactly what went on in central Ohio. But it's quite clear that name calling, baiting, and scare tactics happened on both sides. Think about it: The R's used gays as a device in Ohio to no end, it was a device to get people to the polls, and they are actually PROUD of it (even though the results show it wasn't much of an effect). So is that any better than the D's scaring blacks about Bush being un-Christian? Not in my mind, and you don't have the D's out there preaching the success of such a strategy, but you have many R pundits proudly showing off the strategy of using gay marriage to mobilize voters, and it very much included scaring people about homosexuals.
It's not any better. Both sides guilty. And it's not going away.
At the end of the day, I recall being utterly breathless at the lack of response by the Bush campaign over a fall full of nasty tactics by the 527's. And I'm sure anyone supporting Bush was practically screaming at the TV during the debates with better lines to use to question tactics and false claims used by Kerry *beyond 'voted against the 87 b. dollars'*.
My guess is it goes further into the personality of many folks on the 'winning' side of this election. It's a personality that tends to let these little fires burn out.
Or just head to the bloggers.
#8Dave, A lot of folks have been screaming about how the R's "used" the Gay Marriage Ammendment in Ohio. The funny thing is that our R Governor, our 2 R Senators, and my R Congresswoman all spoke out against it...plus the State R Party ran commercials against it. If that was the Party of the President using the Gay issue in Ohio, they sure have a strange way of showing it. But your point is well taken. I'd much rather all parties stick to the issues and promote their own ideas. It seems extremely unhealthy to base our governance on game-playing, dirty-tricks masquerading as strategy, and canards.
The point I was trying to make (but my blood-starved, Jesus-land, Red-State brain kept me from making directly/well/at all) was that the D's appear to be melting down. Attacking Christians across the spectrum, the racist cartoons of Ms Rice, the general hate-n-rage spleen-venting across the board are self-destructive. They need to pick themselves up, get back to work and come up with some ideas worth fighting for...then we'll all be better for it.
BTW - I don't pretend to know what's going on around here either...it's just too scary!!!!
Great post. You're absolutely right. This type of slander from the left needs to be debunked with broad outcries of reason; it should not be timidly brushed off. I couldn't have said it better myself.
The sore losers of the left are out in full force to paint their opponents as weak-minded, ignorant, fundamentalist, sheep, and I, personally, won't have it. I'm glad that you seem to feel the same way.
I agree - these false moral equivilancies are really dangerous. I wrote more on the same topic, particularly in Update #1, here.