Patters

I thought it would be interesting to post a thread that cites some formative experiences that helped shape our views of what liberals or conservatives are like. I'm sure in our time, most of us have firsthand experiences with awful liberals or conservatives. I think these kinds of experiences are significant because they are not influenced by media or someone's interpretation.

I have several specific direct experiences with conservatives.

- After moving from an all black neighborhood in the Bronx to a very white suburb of New York City (which had been Republican throughout its existence), I was ostracized as a nine year old kid. When I asked the neighbor boy why he wouldn't be my friend, he said, "Because your family likes negroes."

- As a 10 year old marching with a bunch of pacifists and students to an anti-war rally in New City, New York, I witnessed with my own eyes a group of right wing thugs beat up students while the sheriff's men stood around and watched. (It was a big enough scandal that the sheriff was defeated in the next election.)

- I did yard work for the mayor of the town, a staunch (and very nice) Republican from a very well-known blue blood family. He regularly referred to the handful of blacks in my town as picaninnies and called me naive when I showed him in a high school text book that there was no scientific evidence that blacks were less intelligent than whites.

Now, over the years I've also met some really decent conservatives, of course, but the experiences above were very formative for me. They showed me first hand the kind of intolerance that conservatism is capable of breeding. What are your personal experiences with the "opposition."

wistahpatsfan

Wassamatta, Patters?
Haven't had enough mean-spirited threads this week?

This oughtta be good. I'll pull up a chair, pour another coffee and watch the blood-letting. HAVE FUN!

Patters

Don't you have any personal experiences with the opposition? Or are all your views based on information provided to you by others?

maverick4

I must admit I was a GOP member up until the early part of this decade. I bought into the publicly stated values and principles of the party. Then I started noticing or looking around and realized that most of the real-life officials and voters of this party didn't actually believe in what they preached, and that the base now consisted of religious/racial bigots, pre-emptive war-mongers, and people who denied reason or science. Even amongst people I knew, I would start to pick up on their very simplistic Black/White thinking, love for easy-to-remember (but false) slogans, and intolerance on a ride range of issues (religious, racial, economic, international). I see that the GOP is dead now, especially the way they dismissed the best in their party (Romney, Paul, Powell). It's a circus now populated by people like NEP, Fogbuster, State, and PFEagesLand (with Limbaugh leading the way).

wistahpatsfan

I don't buy into the "opposition" song you and BF dance to.

My "opposition" used to be girlfriends who wanted to get married. Then it was suppliers and subs who were always late and trying to screw me. Today, it's the system in general that spends billions on erectile dysfunction and laser beams that kill while ignoring famine and official murder and children with brain diseases. Yesterday, though, it was the ignorant jackass cop doing street detail who stopped me and tried to write me up for an "illegally-loaded trailer" (it wasn't) because I complained that he was doing nothing to help cars get around the scene (he wasn't. He was talking on his cell phone).

It's not "conservatives" vs "liberals".

Harry Boy

I too lived in a Black/White neighborhood, the black mothers used to say to their daughters "you stay away from those white boys" years later after many years of marriage and children I met one of the daughters at a "Village Reunion" the neighborhood we lived in was known as "Greasy Village" she and her husband came over to our table after sitting down she said "I can't sit to close to you my mother might be looking down" little did her mother know that she used to go swimming with us off the BU Trestle, she was the only one wearing a bathing suit......
Patters, racism is a two way street, both are wrong.

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Harry Boy (Genius)

In The Absence Of Law And Order Society Will Surely Destroy Itself

wistahpatsfan

I hear you, but your example is weak. The same dynamic operated between the Irish and Italians, Protestants and Catholics, and on and on....

Blacks in America never had white slaves or forbade whites from using their bathrooms, getting jobs, or having sex with "their" women. Blacks never did to whites what whites did to them. There's no real historical comparison. That girl's mother was probably more worried that her daughter would get gang-raped by white boys than she was about one marrying her.

reflexblue

In the late '60's i was very aware of the "hippie movement" and exposed to their ideas of peace and love. Peace and love would save the world, even a
a kid i was aware that that was unrealalistic, thats not how the world works, we haven't evolved to that point. They were living in a fantasy world.

For the last ten to twenty years i've seen the neo-con movement seemingly the polar opposite of what the hippies believed. Their philosophy seems to be based on division, power, hate, and the use of force. (at least those are some of the words that come to mind in describing their beliefs) A backlash to the short lived hippie movement of forty years ago.

Again a movement based in fantasy, thats not how the world works . When i think about it its the way it has always been and cause immeasrable suffering and death. Religion and nationalism coupled together, and exampel
Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbian movement using "ethnic cleansing" to imposse their beliefs on their neighbors

I try to stay balanced, on some issues i fall center RT. on others centre LT.
Theres not much i can do (and niether can anyone else) to change what is going on, i can vote for who i think will do the best for the most people buts thats about it. So i do what i can and don't worry to much because its out of my hands.

I'm just along for the ride, but at least i realize that.

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S.H.E.S.
I Likes Spikes.

BelichickFan

My dad is a Democrat and voted for frickin' obama. Enough said

PatsFanInEaglesLand

I've had many conversations with liberals/democrats who have made the most vicious anti-semetic comments. Than when I inform them that I am jewish, I get the get me the **** out of here line. "well I meant Israel"

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