From now through the November election, many of your Right Wing friends/relatives/workmates want to tell people like me Obama the Horrible anecdotes they got from the Republican National Committee's paid astroturf websites and pundits and "think" tanks for hire.
Some of these stories are true, others true but taken out of context, some are spun by the GOP's Funhouse Mirror view of reality into a distorted view of the truth, some push guilt by association (usually a false association in the first place), and a lot that are flat out Pants on Fire False.
Okay. If we're going to discuss politics, this sort of thing is inevitable.
Especially for someone in my position, a Democrat living in a solid Democrat college town who voluntarily associates with the few Republicans who live in this town, who all know I'm a Democrat. I'm a lightning rod for them, frustrated as they are, knowing that their vote for President in the state of California makes no difference and never will.
Yet at some level they all believe that this anecdote they just got from PowerMax or some such is so powerful, so damning, that anyone hearing it will realize Obama is the scum he is. They're just bursting with animus for the guy. At my wife's church's Christmas dinner Saturday, a friend who's a very nice guy told me Obama is "a Communist." I didn't even argue it with him. I just pointed out that as a Democrat I was keen on all the GOP candidates, since each has crucial flaws that should enable Obama to win reelection.
But more (or less) seriously, whenever someone's dying to tell you something you have leverage.
So I propose that you tell your conservative friend that you'll willing to listen to his/her Evil Obama anecdote--if and only if they first tell you something about Obama that they find praiseworthy.
This should be a no-brainer for them. After all, these are the same people who were telling me Character is All when Clinton was the candidate. Why should Character suddenly become irrelevant when the Democratic incumbent happens to be a loyal family man--devoted husband and father.
And after all, this is the guy on whose watch--and with whose politically risky go-ahead--the bad man who was actually responsible for 9/11 was nailed. This is the guy who uses UAVs to kill one Al Quaeda leader after another, regardless of what country they're hiding in. This is the guy who OK'd having a Navy sniper nailing three Somali pirates who were holding an American sea captain hostage.
And this is the guy whose economic policies have been conservative enough that the American Left considers him a crypto-Republican. If he's such a Com-yew-nist, why do actual Com-yew-nists believe he's actually a Conservative?
So it should be easy for your right wing friends/relatives/workmates to meet your challenge that they tell you something they find praiseworthy about Obama before they tell you the Damning Anecdote.
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