Michael Bresciani
The mid-term election wars of 2010: has intelligence been wounded?
By Michael Bresciani
Mudslinging and character assassination are rampant in the final days leading up to the November 5 election. No election in American history has seen such fierce battles to win the hearts and minds of the nation's voters.
Recently someone compared Louis Farrakhan's religion, The Nation of Islam, to the kind of Islam found in Muslim countries of today. It wasn't a college freshman who made the comparison but a fully lettered Harvard grad. I shuddered to think they were so naïve and wholly un-informed, since the Nation of Islam is a laughing stock to most Muslims around the world. They don't laugh at Farrakhan's religion but only at the comparison.
The same kind of crippled cognizance is plaguing the midterm election campaigns in the U.S. and only the most unsuspecting are the victims of the malady. When conflicting TV ads about candidates are aired it isn't likely that people will jump to their feet and run to some reference book or the computer to check out the claims. More than likely they will ignore what they have heard and vote for the candidate they like the best. Reaction is traction in a political race, while intelligent choices require information and reflection not to mention time.
Last month a blogger on the Huffington Post was quoted for saying "The intelligent voters know what President Obama is up against, and still support him." Comparing that line to Pelosi's "you've got to vote for the Healthcare Bill so you can see what's in it," is cause to question whether intelligence has already gone to meet her maker. If this is the level of intelligence used to coax voters to the polls we ought to stick to reactions and gut instincts and a smidgen of common sense.
Any candidate supporting Obama's policies in this mid-term, already hopes we are not using any higher intelligence to decide how to vote. It would be far more credible to say "Now we know what Mr. Obama is up too and, that is why we will not vote for anyone who is supporting his agenda." Intelligence would admit that if this were a Presidential race, we would have a new President before the votes were completely counted on the eve of November five.
One excuse for suspending both intelligence and decency in the 2012 race comes from Massachusetts' Barney Frank. When Jim Ready, Frank's gay boyfriend, heckled the Republican challenger Sean Bielat, Frank said "Jim's new to political campaigning. He takes it more personally than someone who's used to it." Human Events Oct 21, 2010.
Doesn't anyone see that healthcare packages no one wanted, stimulus bills that waste tax payer's money and waves of new joblessness are all matters that can be taken very, "personally?" Heckling those who brought in these bills is not intelligent but voting against those who authored and voted for them is very intelligent. No Harvard degree needed here!
Intelligence is taking a full frontal assault under the constant encroachment of the speak softly crowd along with reckless adherence to political correctness, especially the kind seen of late in the firing of Juan Williams by NPR's top brass.
Expressing the same feelings that untold thousands of Americans surely feel, Juan declared his trepidation about being on flights where Muslims are present. Because he didn't use terms like "Muslim extremist," he crossed the border into tippy toe on eggshells land where he became a casualty of the PC extremists rather than the Muslim extremists.
Is it a general lack of intelligence that plagues the PC bent in America or just laziness? How many PC detectives have bothered to read the book that both extremist and moderate Muslims read and trust? Prior to 9/11 perhaps only a handful of people ever knew what is now considered common knowledge. The Quran has over 100 references that allow or call for violence against unbelievers who are better known to Muslims as infidels. As for profiling, how about labeling everyone who looks like a westerner, an infidel? How extreme is that? Why haven't the PC people gotten un-glued about that?
Ok, let's not question someone's intelligence but give them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they are just having a lapse in memory. Have the pictures and TV images of Muslims in the streets of cities and towns throughout the world dancing and shouting for joy at the news of the fall of the Trade Towers completely faded away. These were every day common Muslims around the globe, not those who flew airplanes into our buildings. Were they extremists? If not, were they moderates? Perhaps they are in some category in between. Can some hair splitting PC doctor show us how these elusive lines of verbal gobbledygook can be resolved?
Many Americans don't like to gamble but here is a situation where, like it or not, they are forced to gamble that some Muslims will not take the extremist view that the Quran espouses too seriously but they will suppress themselves somehow and, remain moderate. Has anyone calculated the odds for this distasteful wager?
How many people board planes daily wondering if the person they see in Muslim garb may have read the Quran and decided to take it seriously. How would we know if they had decided that they have a god given right to take your life? Doesn't it come down to a wager with our very lives as the stakes? Isn't that a wager Juan Williams tacitly had to make each time he boarded the many flights he had to take in his line of work?
Isn't it strange that we demand that everyone use the word extremist before the word Muslim but, we can run roughshod over anyone who is a Christian? We can defame, defile and demean and, if need be, remove all visible symbols and reference to Christianity at will. No PC police rush to the scene of the Christian bashing. The great hypocritical double standard is alive and well in America and is now showing its ugly head in America's political races.
In the State of fast horses and big coal mines, Kentucky's Democrat Jack Conway has yet to apologize for the slur made about an alleged college prank done by his Republican opponent Rand Paul. After making reference to Aqua Buddha as somehow being Paul's chosen religion Conway never heard a peep from the PC cops who patrol the media looking for violators.
With California on the precipice of making history with either its first female Governor or legalizing pot, who has not heard what someone in Jerry Brown's campaign called Meg Whitman. What a choice, you can have gay marriages, mucho marijuana and the right to label all your opponents as promiscuous as long as you toe the line with the PC crowd. Don't worry they don't fire people in California, for anything, because everything is perfectly legal and socially acceptable. How intelligent is that?
What American past the age of forty has not heard someone say that we are more susceptible to falling, like Rome, from within, rather than being attacked by our worst enemy? If this election period has shown us anything it is that we are attacking each other with a greater ferocity than ever before in our history. I can hear echoes of the Apostle Paul's admonition to the believers who were found squabbling among themselves in the region of Galatia. Paul said "But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another." (Galatians 5:15)
No one wins in the mid-term election wars, if we don't stick to the issues, the voting records and the qualifications of our candidates they just might eat each other up before we get to the polls.
© Michael Bresciani
October 24, 2010
Mudslinging and character assassination are rampant in the final days leading up to the November 5 election. No election in American history has seen such fierce battles to win the hearts and minds of the nation's voters.
Recently someone compared Louis Farrakhan's religion, The Nation of Islam, to the kind of Islam found in Muslim countries of today. It wasn't a college freshman who made the comparison but a fully lettered Harvard grad. I shuddered to think they were so naïve and wholly un-informed, since the Nation of Islam is a laughing stock to most Muslims around the world. They don't laugh at Farrakhan's religion but only at the comparison.
The same kind of crippled cognizance is plaguing the midterm election campaigns in the U.S. and only the most unsuspecting are the victims of the malady. When conflicting TV ads about candidates are aired it isn't likely that people will jump to their feet and run to some reference book or the computer to check out the claims. More than likely they will ignore what they have heard and vote for the candidate they like the best. Reaction is traction in a political race, while intelligent choices require information and reflection not to mention time.
Last month a blogger on the Huffington Post was quoted for saying "The intelligent voters know what President Obama is up against, and still support him." Comparing that line to Pelosi's "you've got to vote for the Healthcare Bill so you can see what's in it," is cause to question whether intelligence has already gone to meet her maker. If this is the level of intelligence used to coax voters to the polls we ought to stick to reactions and gut instincts and a smidgen of common sense.
Any candidate supporting Obama's policies in this mid-term, already hopes we are not using any higher intelligence to decide how to vote. It would be far more credible to say "Now we know what Mr. Obama is up too and, that is why we will not vote for anyone who is supporting his agenda." Intelligence would admit that if this were a Presidential race, we would have a new President before the votes were completely counted on the eve of November five.
One excuse for suspending both intelligence and decency in the 2012 race comes from Massachusetts' Barney Frank. When Jim Ready, Frank's gay boyfriend, heckled the Republican challenger Sean Bielat, Frank said "Jim's new to political campaigning. He takes it more personally than someone who's used to it." Human Events Oct 21, 2010.
Doesn't anyone see that healthcare packages no one wanted, stimulus bills that waste tax payer's money and waves of new joblessness are all matters that can be taken very, "personally?" Heckling those who brought in these bills is not intelligent but voting against those who authored and voted for them is very intelligent. No Harvard degree needed here!
Intelligence is taking a full frontal assault under the constant encroachment of the speak softly crowd along with reckless adherence to political correctness, especially the kind seen of late in the firing of Juan Williams by NPR's top brass.
Expressing the same feelings that untold thousands of Americans surely feel, Juan declared his trepidation about being on flights where Muslims are present. Because he didn't use terms like "Muslim extremist," he crossed the border into tippy toe on eggshells land where he became a casualty of the PC extremists rather than the Muslim extremists.
Is it a general lack of intelligence that plagues the PC bent in America or just laziness? How many PC detectives have bothered to read the book that both extremist and moderate Muslims read and trust? Prior to 9/11 perhaps only a handful of people ever knew what is now considered common knowledge. The Quran has over 100 references that allow or call for violence against unbelievers who are better known to Muslims as infidels. As for profiling, how about labeling everyone who looks like a westerner, an infidel? How extreme is that? Why haven't the PC people gotten un-glued about that?
Ok, let's not question someone's intelligence but give them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they are just having a lapse in memory. Have the pictures and TV images of Muslims in the streets of cities and towns throughout the world dancing and shouting for joy at the news of the fall of the Trade Towers completely faded away. These were every day common Muslims around the globe, not those who flew airplanes into our buildings. Were they extremists? If not, were they moderates? Perhaps they are in some category in between. Can some hair splitting PC doctor show us how these elusive lines of verbal gobbledygook can be resolved?
Many Americans don't like to gamble but here is a situation where, like it or not, they are forced to gamble that some Muslims will not take the extremist view that the Quran espouses too seriously but they will suppress themselves somehow and, remain moderate. Has anyone calculated the odds for this distasteful wager?
How many people board planes daily wondering if the person they see in Muslim garb may have read the Quran and decided to take it seriously. How would we know if they had decided that they have a god given right to take your life? Doesn't it come down to a wager with our very lives as the stakes? Isn't that a wager Juan Williams tacitly had to make each time he boarded the many flights he had to take in his line of work?
Isn't it strange that we demand that everyone use the word extremist before the word Muslim but, we can run roughshod over anyone who is a Christian? We can defame, defile and demean and, if need be, remove all visible symbols and reference to Christianity at will. No PC police rush to the scene of the Christian bashing. The great hypocritical double standard is alive and well in America and is now showing its ugly head in America's political races.
In the State of fast horses and big coal mines, Kentucky's Democrat Jack Conway has yet to apologize for the slur made about an alleged college prank done by his Republican opponent Rand Paul. After making reference to Aqua Buddha as somehow being Paul's chosen religion Conway never heard a peep from the PC cops who patrol the media looking for violators.
With California on the precipice of making history with either its first female Governor or legalizing pot, who has not heard what someone in Jerry Brown's campaign called Meg Whitman. What a choice, you can have gay marriages, mucho marijuana and the right to label all your opponents as promiscuous as long as you toe the line with the PC crowd. Don't worry they don't fire people in California, for anything, because everything is perfectly legal and socially acceptable. How intelligent is that?
What American past the age of forty has not heard someone say that we are more susceptible to falling, like Rome, from within, rather than being attacked by our worst enemy? If this election period has shown us anything it is that we are attacking each other with a greater ferocity than ever before in our history. I can hear echoes of the Apostle Paul's admonition to the believers who were found squabbling among themselves in the region of Galatia. Paul said "But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another." (Galatians 5:15)
No one wins in the mid-term election wars, if we don't stick to the issues, the voting records and the qualifications of our candidates they just might eat each other up before we get to the polls.
© Michael Bresciani
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