The ugly truth and spin

>How do we point this out without seeming petty ourselves?


You can't. Our strategy is to promote progressive values. Our tactics are to reframe the issues that are important to us. If you respond, you are accepting "their" frame, on "their" issue, and you will change no one's mind anyway. Fighting fire with fire is equally unproductive.

This ties in with my post about self-reflection that I submitted not too long ago. It is a progressive trait to want to empathize with others by looking within for the causes of society's problems. But conservatives hate this and don't want to hear any of it. They'd rather hear how everything is really going great and if we could only get all the annoying crybabies to shut up, we could then go back to our state of "bliss."

In my opinion, one of the biggest problems we face as a nation is the fear of our unconscious. We'd rather just be in denial and blame someone or something "out there" instead. But all we are doing is projecting our fears onto some boogie man. We'll never be able to heal ourselves if we keep dealing with problems in this way.

What we need to do is frame this as a sign of strength. It takes courage to confront these things. The easy way out is just to pretend that we are not part of the problem. But it'll just come back to haunt us again and again.

Kucinich perhaps said the most truthful thing back when he was still running for president. It was about how either there is something wrong with Bush's mental health or something wrong with the mental health of the American people. This was blasted left and right. Yet, no one wants to confront why we've reached this point in our nation's history. Even conservatives who are unhappy with Bush refuse to find out why they thought he was great before and now think he's not a "true" conservative. They like to frame it as if they were somehow "tricked." But how are they going to ensure they won't be "tricked" again? They are just thinking the same way as they've done before. No change at all. And yet they expect a different result next time. Does that make any sense?

So now we have Clinton and "straight talking" McCain wanting to pretend that everything is actually going great in this country. But Obama should hold out. It's refreshing to actually hear someone talk openly about the causes of society's problems for a change instead of the usual bullshit.