"Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Donna and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more likable, more appealing, have a stronger message, speak to morality. Watch them awkwardly quote the bible, trying to speak the ‘new’ language of America. Surf the blogs, and read the comments of dismayed, discombobulated, confused individuals trying to figure out what they did wrong. Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, "Why did they beat me?"
And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic violence shelter if they have heard this before.
They will tell you: Every single day.
The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence."
Before I go further, I should stipulate that I did not vote in the last election, through unavoidable circumstances. While I was a fence-sitter, I actually tended to agree with Kerry on more subjects than Bush. That said, here is my response.
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Dear Mr. Moore:
While I enjoy a creative analogy as much as the next person, I find this particular bit of invective inaccurate and offensive.
You conveniently frame the issue as "Why did they beat us?" as if Republicans physically entered voting booths and bitch-slapped otherwise liberal voters into submission.
The issue is more accurately, "Why don't they like us?" and the answer is apparently far more complex than your dogmatic belief system can absorb. It varies from voter to voter and state to state, and it is the key - the only key - to winning elections for the foreseeable future.
I could take the analogy and run further, likening your diatribe to the whine of a faded beauty queen after yet another desperate one night stand: "But why doesn't he call?" It would be funny, creative, yet ultimately unhelpful.
Because adding to the frenetic partisan discord only widens the perceived intellectual and emotional divergence between the natural allies for the political future: blue and red voters who hold realistic, moderated versions of the right and left wing extremist ideologies. These voters are actually quite closely aligned on most issues, and they are are tired of diatribes, whether tinged red or blue.
They are weary of being accused of prejudice, ignorance, or malice simply for choosing the candidate who aligned most closely with their views; voting for the "lesser of two evils" despite their reservations on the more extremist positions taken.
If they choose to reject their freeloading fringe parasites and align into a moderate party that reflects the viewpoints of the vast majority of Americans, neither your MoveOn crusaders nor the Christian Coalition fundies will be able to win a seat on for class treasurer of Solon High School, much less the presidency of the United States.
But I have a deeper reason not to descend your level of rhetoric: it crudely exploits yet another stereotype of female victimization, and I resent the hell out of that.
I know battered women's syndrome. I worked for three years as part of a rural domestic abuse response team, prosecuting the kind of asshole who breaks a partner's ribs, or bends a woman forcibly over a chair to "check" her vagina for signs of infidelity if she spends an extra half hour at the grocery store. Some people respond to this traumatic stress by becoming classically depressed, repressed, and self-blaming. Others are angry at the alcohol/drugs/abusive background that they think drive the abuser's choice to dominate them and use violence to enforce their superiority. There are myriad responses to the intense stress of an abusive relationship. But to exploit survivors to make a political point is atrocious. I believe you owe them all an apology. Particularly the abuse survivors who voted red - intelligently, willingly and NOT because of they are anybody's victim.
Ultimately, your rant will fulfill it's intended purpose. Your fans will eagerly email it back and forth, with things in the subject line like "Hell, yeah," and "What he said." The red voters will either respond in kind, or simply add a few more bricks to the mental walls that protect them from unprovoked attacks. And you will become just a little more famous. Not that you would stoop to blatantly exploiting people for profit or anything.
What it won't do is win the next election.
You propose this solution to regroup for 2008:
"You don't do this by responding to their demands, or becoming more like them, or engaging in logical conversation, or trying to persuade them that you are right. You also don't do this by going catatonic and resigned, by closing up your ears and eyes and covering your head and submitting to the blows, figuring its over faster and hurts less if you don't resist and fight back. Instead, you walk away. You find other folks like yourself, 57 million of them, who are hurting, broken, and beating themselves up. You tell them what you've learned, and that you aren't going to take it anymore. You stand tall, with 57 million people at your side and behind you, and you look right into the eyes of the abuser and you tell him to go to hell."
I would modestly propose that the answer to your problem has nothing to do with the 57,288,974 people who voted for Kerry this election cycle. You can commiserate all you like, but if you do nothing else, you will still be in the minority on the next election, and you will still lose. The issue is rather what to do about that portion of the 60,608,582 who voted for George Bush who really didn't want to do so, but felt you gave them no alternative. What to do about the 406,924 people who voted for Nader. And, most importantly, what to do with the other 176,147,503 people who either didn't vote or chose none of the above. A hint: I don't think they'd appreciate being called abusive or told to go to hell. Just a guess.
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UPDATE:
FYI: while the analogy is adopted by MM, it originated with the article posted here.
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