If we had 50% fewer demagogues in this country, we'd all get along a hell of a lot better.

Yeah. Or if the demagogues picked something else to demagogue about, like which is the best cat breed.

Speaking of SyFy, isn't the Firefly marathon coming up soon? And the reunion special?

The reunion special is also on Sunday, but on Science (the Science channel, maybe?) not Syfy.

meara, the favorite book thing was in a newspaper profile of the candidates, and I was glad to see it because there was virtually nothing else to distinguish between the two. I would not be name a favorite book, I don't think. One of many many many reasons I could not run for office.

Although Game of Thrones would be a fun answer to give during an election. Or something like The Manchurian Candidate.

Yeah, it is, for me, because all those differences come from self-imposed ignorance, and I can't respect that.

There are a whole lot of people in this country, on both sides of the divide, who don't have the luxury of informing themselves as completely as people on this board can due to a lack of time and resources.

I was shocked at how much I cried and felt personally attacked and hated, when it was not what I had hoped, even if it was what I had expected. And that's a state that I don't live in and never have! So...yeah.

Yeah, this.

Heh. Distinguishing candidates by favorite book is probably a perfectly cromulent way. Last year, when it was all small local stuff, the roommate and I looked over the voter guide, and so many of them were nonpartisan and in charge of things we had no idea about. We looked at a few recommendations, and then kinda went "hmm, if they seem the same and we can't tell, vote for the woman, the minority, or if they're both white guys, the one who says he was in the Peace Corps!" Possibly not the best way, but...

ION, Firefox cosplay

Too bad I use Chrome now.

meara, I'm sorry you have to feel like that. It isn't right, no matter what you believe about the subject. What happened to basic human decency?

Yeah, but the reason the marginalization is happening is because the issues are being drummed up by people using that as a lever. Joe Normal around the corner, who thinks he doesn't know any gay people, probably didn't give a damn about gay marriage, until the hard-core conservative right seized upon the issue as a way to make political hay. They built it into a huge threat, thundering away on it, until Joe bought into the premise.

Joe Supposedly Normal probably did disagree with it. Joe Supposedly Normal, even in a liberal bubble like Seattle, has been making the lives of me and mine worse since before the rise of the demagogues. Joe Supposedly Normal made up the jury that acquitted my neighbor's daughter's rapists because the dyke was asking for it.

Joe Supposedly Normal has beaten me, spit on me, and treated me as something less than human. Joe Supposedly Normal didn't need Rush for that.

If I'm unforgiving and radical at the core, there's a lived reason for it. There are people I cared about who are dead by their own hand because their sexuality was considered abnormal.

I am perfectly capable of holding my tongue and speaking politely to my socially conservative friendly acquaintances and co-volunteers. But I will never, ever, let myself trust them again. I cannot afford to do so.

There are a whole lot of people in this country, on both sides of the divide, who don't have the luxury of informing themselves as completely as people on this board can due to a lack of time and resources.

Too true. Drives me nuts when people who rail against the myth of bootstrapping expect people to do it with social justice issues. It's not my job to teach people about any of what affects me, but it is basically my duty, because I recognize someone has to step up and not expect that everyone can autodidact their way to a deep understanding of intersectionality.

There are a whole lot of people in this country, on both sides of the divide, who don't have the luxury of informing themselves as completely as people on this board can due to a lack of time and resources.

I don't expect them to debate me on foreign policy (not that I'm any sort of expert either). But informing yourself that Muslims, gays, non-whites, people-not-like-you are just people who deserve rights and are not evil - I don't think of that as a luxury.

There are a whole lot of people in this country, on both sides of the divide, who don't have the luxury of informing themselves as completely as people on this board can due to a lack of time and resources.

Yes, this. It's that old dictum of never attributing to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance.

Those people on that video clip we mentioned last night, the folks at the Romney rally with their utterly nonsensical claims about Obama: sure, there's a certain amount of malice there, but most of that was just ignorance. Ignorance in the broader sense--ignorance of logic, of the world, of the ways in which "Those People" have the same concerns and worries that they do.