It’s Not Armageddon

The title is from Brent Simmons, who encourages his fellow Democrats to buck up and get back to the beginning. He’s still a bit political for someone who makes his living selling stuff to people of unknown party affiliation. He says, “I think that winning an election by scaring people with gays is immoral.” Allow me to translate that as 51% of NetNewsWire users are homophobes. (See my previous entry for more about the translation.)

SFF.org has more to say about the nonsensical ravings of lunatic minds: “These Internet fantasies about how evil democrats are and how evil republicans are are getting out of hand.” The candidates weren’t all that different. Most notably, they agreed on the allegedly divisive gay marriage issue. There’s no reason, therefore, to kill yourself over the election results.

6 Responses to “It’s Not Armageddon”

  1. Brent Simmons Says:

    I’m sorry you translate my words that way. That’s most definitely not what I mean.

    Do some Democrats think 51% of the nation are homophobes or stupid in some other way? Yes. But I’m not one of them, and I’m ashamed of those people. If I thought as they did, I would have written that it *is* Armageddon.

    My point is that Osama bin Laden and his followers are evil. Americans (minus serial killers and the like) are *not* evil. Republicans are not evil. Red state residents are not evil. Bush supporters are not evil.

    Do I think that Republicans used the issue of gay marriage to help get evangelicals to the polls, and did that turnout help win the election? Yes, I do. But that’s a long way from saying that 51% of any population are homophobes.

  2. Jemima Says:

    I admire you for pointing out that no particular half of Americans are evil. I’m sorry my reason for linking you (that you were trying to be reasonable about the election) was overwhelmed by my quibble (that you weren’t quite succeeding).

    I certainly agree that the issue of gay marriage may have swung the election. If that had been all you’d said, then I wouldn’t have quibbled with you. But you said “winning an election by scaring people with gays is immoral.” There are two reasons why that statement is insulting to 51% of the population:

    (1) Republicans won the election but they didn’t do it by scaring people with gays. As I mentioned above, Kerry also opposed gay marriage. (That people didn’t believe him isn’t the Republicans’ fault—no one believed him when he said he had a plan, either.) The gay marriage issue was not spontaneously created by Republicans but, as some comments in your blog pointed out, by liberal judges in Massachusetts and various Democrat mayors across the country who broke local laws by marrying gay couples. If you’d said Democrats lost the election by scaring people with gay marriage, that would have been closer to the truth, although #2 still applies.

    (2) Being scared of gays is the literal meaning of “homophobia,” so you were accusing someone of homophobia, if not all 51% of Bush voters. Therefore I stand by my translation. Equating opposition to gay marriage with being scared of gays is accusing far more than 51% of the population of homophobia. Every anti-gay-marriage proposition proposed so far has passed, by a total of more than 51%—eleven states during this election and three others before that. National polls also indicate a majority opposition to gay marriage.

    So you have to make up your mind. Are the majority of Americans homophobes, or not? If you think we are, you’re welcome to your opinion, of course. If you think only some of us are, we have no way of telling which ones you mean.

    This entry and the last one are there to point out to the minority that you are insulting people every time you make offhand remarks about how Republicans won this election by “scaring people with gays” or by “bigotry,” “fear,” and “lies” (for which see the previous entry). Maybe you don’t mean all 51% of Bush voters, but how is a random Bush voter to know that?

    Again, it’s your right to insult people, but it’s not good PR.

  3. Brent Simmons Says:

    Some people are homophobes. I don’t know what the percentage is, but I don’t think it’s 51%, no way.

    When you say that “the issue of gay marriage may have swung the election” — I agree. I also think that some Republicans deliberately used the issue to drive up turnout among evangelicals. Is there any doubt about that?

    Are all opponents of gay marriage homophobes? No. I don’t think Kerry or Bush are homophobes, for instance. Most Americans aren’t homophobes.

    Are all Democrats who live on the coast unpatriotic America-haters who follow Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky? No. (Me, I’m fiercely patriotic and I don’t like Moore and Chomsky.) But Kerry supporters are feeling just as insulted as Bush supporters are, I assure you. I do not judge Republicans by their extremes, and I don’t like it when Democrats are judged by their extremes. Yet it happens all the time, to both sides.

    There’s way too much name-calling going on. You’re quite right about that. If you feel that I called you a homophobe, then I apologize.

    What I’d like to see going forward is an effort — on *both* sides — to understand the other side. What I think is going on is that the reds think the blues don’t try to understand them, and the blues don’t think the reds try to understand them. Each side thinks the other is close-minded and dogmatic. *Both sides think that.*

    About whether or not my speaking out about politics is good PR or not — it may not be. I keep politics away from my company’s website, but on my personal weblog, I can write about it. The choice I had was to play it safe or speak up. Should people in my shoes always play it safe? Or is it cool that people with small companies would speak up on their weblogs, whether you agree or not with what they say?

  4. Jemima Says:

    I haven’t heard that Republicans as a party used gay marriage to drive up voter turnout for Bush. I didn’t see any ads to that effect, either on a national level or from the local party. Presumably the local Republican parties backed the state referenda on gay marriage, but that doesn’t involve Bush directly. I know of ministers who advised their congregations to vote for Bush because of the issue, but that’s just citizens expressing their opinions.

    As for name calling, I don’t mind it when the forum is devoted to politics—say, in a liberal or conservative blog. You get what you pay for. It only surprises me when people who have no reason to suppose their audience agrees with them insult one particular half of the country casually, as if only [their] half were reading their blog.

    As for who understands whom, I don’t hear a lot of surprise or disbelief from Republicans about Kerry getting 48% of the vote. I don’t think Bush supporters would have been surprised to lose. They don’t think of Kerry voters as “closed-minded and dogmatic”—those are vague liberal terms of disapprobation—but as wrong. So I don’t think there’s a balance of misunderstanding, but we can assume there is for the sake of argument. It doesn’t affect anything I was saying either way.

    Or is it cool that people with small companies would speak up on their weblogs, whether you agree or not with what they say?

    Well, that’s the question of PR. In my experience, expressing divisive opinions can only harm your chances of moving your product, whether it’s software or books or anything else. If you attempt (as you did) to be fair about it, the damage is minimized. It’s your choice.

    My point here is that people don’t seem conscious of it when they’re insulting potential customers or readers. Either they think the vast majority agree with them (overlooking the contradictory election results), or they think they’re being more moderate than they are (because in the terms of their side they are being moderate, but not to the other side).

  5. Jumping To Conclusions Says:

    Not the economy, stupid?
    If Kerry had won the election, I have no doubt that the dominant themes of the election post-mortems would be how terrible Iraq and the economy are, and how that drove election turnout. But since Bush won, there’s very little…

  6. Jumping To Conclusions Says:

    Not the economy, stupid?
    If Kerry had won the election, I have no doubt that the dominant themes of the election post-mortems would be how terrible Iraq and the economy are, and how that drove election turnout. But since Bush won, there’s very little…