The last presidential candidate who wasn’t subject to absurd attacks by supporters of his opponents was David Cobb, and he only escaped them because nobody noticed he was running.
The last major party nominee for the presidency who escaped absurd attacks by supporters of his opponents was James Monroe, who ran unopposed for reelection in 1820. Unfair and unhinged partisan attacks are an American tradition which dates back to the Jefferson/Adams elections in 1796 and 1800. To listen to the official surrogates of each man’s opponent, John Adams was a monarchist who wanted to undo the revolution, and Thomas Jefferson was a dangerous radical who would outdo Robespierre’s reign of terror.
Yes, I’d rather all of us discussed our disagreements rationally like civilized people. But to the best of my knowledge, partisan derangement syndrome has been a fact of life in every single contested Presidential election in our history. It’s as American as apple pie. The Republic has survived 232 years so far, and only once in all that time (nearly 148 years ago now) has the losing side of an election actually gone to the mattresses. Partisan derangement syndrome may be annoying and counterproductive, but it’s not dangerous (except perhaps to the blood pressure of those who suffer from it).
If you really want to fight partisan derangement syndrome, start with yourself. If your guys are out of power, just remember how shrill and nutty the other guys’ supporter sounded when your guys were running things, and try to be better than they were.
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I don’t think I have the words to express how strongly I agree with this.Â
I certainly recall a lot of wild accusations about Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton. It seems to me that the extremists and "spokespersons" on either side are replete with a lot of figurative speech, scary accusations and outright lies. I think America’s dominance in the world, our current foreign affairs notwithstanding, has gained us the luxury to be uncivil to one another.Â
I’ve given up trying to reason with the unreasonable and instead am much more interested in finding useful facts and presenting them to the masses in a usable fashion. In other words, I would like to see something replace our current "fourth estate"; it’s clear that they just want to play the same game the politicians are playing while they spend us into oblivion.
But I digress. It would be interesting to see some of the dirt that was being thrown around in other elections circa the Civil War, the Teddy Roosevelt era and both of the world wars. Hint: I’m inviting some of you more historically inclined to offer up some of those.
the thesis that partisan supporters from both left and right are aggressive and insane at times is certainly not remarkable. Whats remarkable is insisting that one side or the other is worse.
I don’t have any links, but I certainly remember coming across some political cartoons from the 19th century which were as vile as anything being published today.
I think one of the key differences between now and then is that it seems our politicians were the biggest mudslingers back then (Andrew Jackson lamenting *not* shooting his vice president John Calhoun, for example) as opposed to everyone slinging lots of mud on everyone else, like it seems now. That may just be my perception, as even my grandparents weren’t alive ‘back then’.
Wikipedia gave me this cartoon about Teddy Roosevelt:Â http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Militarist.JPG
Elisha Feger’s last blog post..Beautiful
In the four days prior to October 11, the Obama Campaign aired 25,000 Commercials.
Then, there’s an internet blogger posting a mere 20 links
demonstrating OBS/partisanship is on the rise.
The first amendment is alive and well.
This election is starting to get interesting.
I absolutely agree with you, Aziz. Generally, a given listener finds the other side’s partisans more annoying than their own side’s partisans, and the party out of power tends to get a bit stranger out of frustration, but neither the left nor the right is inherently crazier.
huh I thought I’d made a post (in response to Keith) but it didn’t show. Could someone check the spam trap for me (and then delete this comment)?
Elisha Feger’s last blog post..stolen from Gullwhacker
I absolutely agree with you, Aziz. Generally, a given listener finds the other side’s partisans more annoying than their own side’s partisans, and the party out of power tends to get a bit stranger out of frustration, but neither the left nor the right is inherently crazier.
Indeed. ‘Scapegoating’ is a very human tendency. Especially when the situation the people are finding scapegoats for is out of their control. The further out of control it is, the crazier the scapegoating.
Next week, I get to go and cast my ballot in early voting. Until then, I’m not paying any attention to political ads. After that, I’ll still not pay attention.
The next political event I’m interested in will occur as the polls close across the nation on Nov. 4.
John_B’s last blog post..Amnesty International Condemns Saudi Executions
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