January 16, 2011

"The left wants us to be civil — after being so uncivil for a decade."

Notes Don Surber, whose response is: "Bite me."
When people protested lefties made vulgar remarks about tea-bagging and giggled.

So screw you and your civil discourse.

I don’t want to hear it.

I have been screamed at for 10 years.

It’s my turn now. I am not going to scream back. But I refuse to allow anyone to dictate what I say or how I say it. I refuse to allow the same foul-mouthed, foul-spirited foul people who dumped on me to now try to tell me what I may or may not say.... 
So screw you.

58 comments:

Mikio said...

Aww, someone needs a hug.

DaLawGiver said...

So start with the unilateral hugs and we'll see how it goes......

Mikio said...

C'mere you big lug... *arms open wide with smile*

TWM said...

Surber speaks for most of America right now . . . even the ones who are too polite to say so out loud.

Anonymous said...

Not to mention the invention of an incident in which the Tea Party called congress critters "niggers."

The name calling was fabricated for political advantage.

Fabricating racial hatred for political advantage.

rhhardin said...

The left has a ridiculous position, is all. It's not about retaliation being needed.

Metaphor is the norm, and the extreme of a series is used to represent the mundane.

The political strategy of the ridiculous position is another matter. It's meant to support the tea party being violent racists, by telling them to stop. The subtext is that the audience for that posturing is moronic enough so that it will benefit the left.

LilyBart said...

I believe the lecturing left has no intention of being more civil themselves. They just think they see an opportunity to use recent events to quiet critisism of their ideas and to gain the political upper hand.

Unknown said...

Good for him, and Lily Bart is right on the money.

And it's not a decade, more like 5.

Revenant said...

Yeah, Surber pretty well summed up my attitude, too.

MadisonMan said...

Yes, do let's go back 15 years when everyone was civil. The golden days of the Clinton Administration.

People have really short memories.

pst314 said...

10 years, 15 years? No, it's much longer than that. The left was routinely uncivil in the 80's, in the 70's, in the 60's. Defamation and demonization were the norm.

Eff em.

Lincolntf said...

I'll start being civil the minute the Left starts being honest.
Until then, they can go fuck themselves.

jr565 said...

After eight years of anti BUsh hysteria, the left has no call to demand any civility ever again.

jr565 said...

-cont-
Of course I think republicans will continue to be civil, AS THEY HAVE BEEN (for the most part) to all but the most extreme liberals who insist on wearing their tinfoil hats with pride.
It's just too bad that the extremist liberal is actually the norm, and not the exception.

coketown said...

This whole civility argument is specious in the extreme. What do they think this is, the, the, the fucking 1830's--where if we can't agree on something we should restrict our conversation to the weather and the condition of the roads? Of course rhetoric is heated. It's hot on the left and hot on the right. If it wasn't then nobody would listen.

This conservative backlash against Obama's agenda is scabies for the Left. Rather than participating in a little introspection on how they got this awful rash in the first place, they instead bitch that it itches and just won't respond to reason. The Arizona shooting was just a pretense for the Left to say what they've been thinking ever since Obama's poll numbers took a nosedive: STFU and let us do our thing. They were hoping the rash would go away on its own, but now they're scared they might have to scratch their crotch and risk spreading the nastiness elsewhere on the body politic. The hands-off, ignore-it-and-it'll-go-away approach just doesn't work anymore.

This metaphor has gotten out of hand.

Unknown said...

If civil means polite, then we are not a civil people, and we're not a civil species, and I thank God for that.

We are ferocious, large brained omnivores, who under compulsion, or better yet, a Constitution, will pretend a fragile civility. Nature is red in tooth and claw.

Don't be gulled by the equally cynical and stupid left. In a fight, they'd slit your throat if they could. The Golden Rule is a goal, not a fact. Watch your back.

Anonymous said...

"They just think they see an opportunity to use recent events to quiet critisism of their ideas and to gain the political upper hand."

It's a strategy to get Republicans to unilaterally disarm themselves of the very weapons that led to the historic mid-term election triumph.

Are Republicans so stupid that they'll take political advice from fucking Democrats?

We'll see.

If they do, then we'll have a really good list of those who have spent too much time in Washington, D.C. and need to be retired.

I want Republicans, who control all federal spending, to eviscerate every Democrat Party stronghold by de-fucking-funding them.

The continuing resolution ends in March. Nothing else is important or matters. Anything that distracts attention away from what the Republicans pay for with our tax dollars is irrelevant.

Republicans have until March to write a federal budget which eviscerates the Democrat Party and all of its core constituencies and returns that money to its rightful owners - the American people - so that we can use that capital to create jobs for our fellow Americans.

Either that happens, or we have no further need of a Republican Party.

Why would we support a Republican Party that funds Democrat Party initiatives with our fucking tax dollars?

Either the Democrats are eliminated from the federal budget, or we can get on with the creation of new guards for our defense.

Curtiss said...

Don Surber: "I want them to cry to their mommies."

Finally. Someone has the guts to say it.

It's really annoying to be lectured to by the left on civility. Especially when they really don't mean civility. They mean retraining from criticism.

But they've always confused freedom of speech with freedom from criticism.

Anonymous said...

"I'll start being civil the minute the Left starts being honest."

We're already being civil. We've decided to try elections one more time instead of the revolution they so richly fucking deserve.

These socialists haven't seen uncivil yet.

clint said...

Actually, doesn't the incivility of Democrats towards Republicans go all the way back to the founding of the Republican Party?

Abraham Lincoln felt the need to defend the party against accusations that Republicans were inciting slave rebellions. In the second half of his "Cooper Union Address" he defends Republicans against the attempt by Democrats to smear Republicans with the incident at Harper's Ferry.

My favorite line: "Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it."

That sounds fairly familiar.

Anonymous said...

Mikio:

"C'mere you big lug... *arms open wide with smile*"

Lars smiles at Mikio and opens arms wide. When target is within range, knee is savagely jerked into unprotected groin area.

I'm Full of Soup said...

America has an abundance of smart, witty, independent thinking writers. Don Surber is a great example. Too bad we will never see someone like him on the Sunday Morning national news shows. Instead we get a steady diet of beltway suckups who are mostly librul and have not had an original thought in their lives. I.e. Andra Mitchell, Nora O'Donnell,Andy Sullivan, Chris Mathews, Howard Fineman, Cokie Roberts [for Godsakes!] etc.

DADvocate said...

So screw you and your civil discourse.

I second that.

Show me the way, hypocrites.

ddh said...

The left's civility will last as long as my New Year's resolution to exercise more.

Unknown said...

The RINOs may want to buy into the civility thing - they've been doing it since the 50s.

Everybody else sees their livelihoods going away, so civility is going to take a big hit.

JAL said...

@ ST Fabricating racial hatred for political advantage.

Someday (soon) I hope "minorities" figure out that many of the Lefties don't give a flying flip about them as people.

They want them as ideological (meta4 alert --->) cannon fodder.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

It's interesting that after Ft. Hood, no one speculated that the better part of a decade being told daily by MoveOn, Code Pink, and the like that he was involved in a genocidal torture-enterprise designed to bring in cheap oil at any human cost might have caused an unstable person like Maj. Hasan to snap. There were certainly calls for civility at the time, but they were all the other kind, the "Now, don't you people all go out and massacre a bunch of random Muslims over this, as you no doubt want to and would but for our prescient advice" sort. But calls for the antiwar Left to dial down its rhetoric? Zilch.

Which is fair enough; there was (and is) zero evidence that Hasan either knew or cared about domestic antiwar Leftists. But then there's zero evidence that this dude knew or cared about political rhetoric (not for want of looking, either), and a week later we're still talking about how all of us, but especially the, er, most red-statish of us, have to be civil. Christiane Amanpour ruined a very good broadcast this morning by ending it on that note, and Frank Rich wrote the most uncivil paean to civility in recent history for the NYT this morning.

I think, I'm afraid, that this just strikes a number of people as a neat opportunity to say something they always want to say. If someone on the right kills people, it's a reason to suggest right-wing people dial down the rhetoric. If someone perceived as on the right is killed, or attacked, or threatened, it's a reason to suggest right-wing people (beginning with the victim/target, whether the categorization is accurate or no) dial down the rhetoric. (Cf. Theo van Gogh, Pim Fortuyn, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Molly Norris.) If someone with absolutely no connection with the right kills someone else because of the voices in his head, hey, you can always try it. And if it starts to look too absurd, you switch to gun control, or how involuntary commitments are only for 72 hours, and after that you're thrown back on your medical insurance, which is ever so much better now, thanks to us in Congress!. Since apparently this dude was never committed, voluntarily or not, the point would seem moot, but whatevs.

(Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, thanks for the crassest attempt to make political capital of this massacre since it happened, and that really is saying something.)

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

It's interesting that after Ft. Hood, no one speculated that the better part of a decade being told daily by MoveOn, Code Pink, and the like that he was involved in a genocidal torture-enterprise designed to bring in cheap oil at any human cost might have caused an unstable person like Maj. Hasan to snap. There were certainly calls for civility at the time, but they were all the other kind, the "Now, don't you people all go out and massacre a bunch of random Muslims over this, as you no doubt want to and would but for our prescient advice" sort. But calls for the antiwar Left to dial down its rhetoric? Zilch.

Which is fair enough; there was (and is) zero evidence that Hasan either knew or cared about domestic antiwar Leftists. But then there's zero evidence that this dude knew or cared about political rhetoric (not for want of looking, either), and a week later we're still talking about how all of us, but especially the, er, most red-statish of us, have to be civil. Christiane Amanpour ruined a very good broadcast this morning by ending it on that note, and Frank Rich wrote the most uncivil paean to civility in recent history for the NYT this morning.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

I think, I'm afraid, that this just strikes a number of people as a neat opportunity to say something they always want to say, kind of the way lowering taxes is always just the thing you need to do (whatever the situation) for a certain style of Republican.

If someone perceived as on the right kills people, it's a reason to suggest right-wing people dial down the rhetoric. If someone perceived as on the right is killed, or attacked, or threatened, it's a reason to suggest right-wing people (beginning with the victim/target, whether the categorization is accurate or no) dial down the rhetoric. (Cf. Theo van Gogh, Pim Fortuyn, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Molly Norris.) If someone with absolutely no connection with the right kills someone else because of the voices in his head, hey, you can always try it.

And if it starts to look too absurd, you switch to gun control, or how involuntary commitments are only for 72 hours, and after that you're thrown back on your medical insurance, which is ever so much better now, thanks to us in Congress! Since apparently this dude was never committed, voluntarily or not, and doesn't seem to have medicated apart from his private pot use, the point would seem moot, but whatevs.

(Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, thanks for the crassest attempt to make political capital of this massacre since it happened, and that really is saying something.)

Original Mike said...

Lincoln: "Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it."

That's amazing.

Ambrose said...

These calls for civility remind me of Butch Cassidy. (and i paraphrase:

We can'r fight yet; we have to discuss the rules.

Rules? There are no rules in a knife fight.

OK, then

Big Mike said...

Surber speaks for me, too.

(@Mikio, I wouldn't hug you wearing anything I couldn't afford to burn afterwards.)

Big Mike said...

And speaking of a lack of civility ...

Tyrone Slothrop said...

It's getting boring repeating this, but it has never been conservatives lacking in civility. It is on large-readership leftie blogs like Kos or HuffPo where the commenters routinely call for the deaths of people they disagree with.

I have long observed that one of the most salient differences between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives think liberals are naive, or at worst, plain stupid, but liberals hate conservatives. They wished Cheney dead, called Bush a chimpanzee, hate Ann Coulter, Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, and on and on. How do I know? They routinely say so, without the least shame, and then turn around and falsely accuse conservatives of what they themselves are guilty of.

I agree with Surber. Fuck 'em.

Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...

There is a profound difference between left and right. Out here in Kansas we may see some fag in drag trying to pass as Mrs. Claus in the Macy's parade ... and we say "Those folks on the coasts can be mighty quirky." And then we get back to our lives.

Yet people from New York and San Francisco travel from one small town to another in Kansas, Nebraska, and other parts of the Heartland.

They are searching for crosses, or Ten Commandment monuments to sue, for it is in their nature to impose their views on others.

They are most fortunate that we have decided NOT to give them our ammo, one hot round at a time.

We're happy to leave them alone, but the contra-positive is entirely beyond them,

virgil xenophon said...

Fuck you, screw you, bite me, blow me--ALL of the above. There aren't enough examples of creative invective in the Urban Dictionary to give voice to my disgust. As others have previously stated , for the left now--at this late date after decades of pre-meditated and coordinated invective, intimidation, out-right lies, snark, innuendo and malicious rumor--to even purse their lips and, with a straight face, counsel "civility" for the right takes a Lake Superior-sized vessel full of unmitigated gall!

KCFleming said...

The left over the past 20 years seems under the control of a collective form of borderline personality disorder.


"*Have a pattern of difficult relationships caused by alternating between extremes of intense admiration and hatred of others.

*Have an unstable self-image or be unsure of his or her own identity.

*Act impulsively in ways that are self-damaging, such as extravagant spending, frequent and unprotected sex with many partners, substance abuse, binge eating, or reckless driving [see: Ted Kennedy].

*Have recurring suicidal thoughts, make repeated suicide attempts, or cause self-injury through mutilation, such as cutting or burning himself or herself.

*Have frequent emotional overreactions or intense mood swings, including feeling depressed, irritable, or anxious. These mood swings usually only last a few hours at a time. In rare cases, they may last a day or two.

*Have long-term feelings of emptiness.

*Have inappropriate, fierce anger or problems controlling anger. The person may often display temper tantrums or get into physical fights.

*Have temporary episodes of feeling suspicious of others without reason (paranoia) or losing a sense of reality.
"


Essentially incurable.

Synova said...

In a comment thread someplace a person was earnestly explaining why mentioning "Obama" and "fascist" was pure hate and "Bush" and "fascist" was only telling the truth.

I won't try to argue that the right is particularly interested in civility, but it seems to me that what counts as "uncivil" isn't anything like the same.

One side says, "I hope President Obama fails."

The other side says, "I hope the person so hateful as to say so dies from a horrible and painful disease"... and it's the punchline of a JOKE.

Or someone explains that "Obama is a socialist" is a vile hate filled lie, while "Bush is a fascist" is only telling the truth.

Or else someone explains that when a Republican says "reload" or "second amendment" they're only saying what they really want and if a Democrat says "the guy should be put in front of a wall and *shot*" well, everyone knows that it's just words.

And there isn't a moment when a single one of the blow-hards is going to take responsibility for insisting that the right is violent and hateful, loves war, loves guns and shooting things, are really unstable that way, no way to understand them... and somehow those slanders become the truth that "they really mean it" when the words said are far far milder.

It's meaning that counts and we all *know* what those militant conservative racists really think.

So a conservative can say "reload" and it's violent and horrible and a liberal can say "die, die, die" and it's not hateful at all.

Synova said...

And yes, of course, more than 10 years. More than 15. More than 20.

Look up some campaign fliers or political editorials from the first 100 years from our nation. Go back farther. Waaaay back. Way before America. More often than not, given any freedom to speak politically at all, people were crude and rude, they were "earthy". They used frightening images and scare tactics. Lots of excrement references. Extreme insults and caricatures of leaders. OMGAWD. The horror!

It is, however, just a little bit RICH to attempt to so SOON claim a faintness over disrespect to the president... Joker?... bring out the Bush/Joker images... Hitler?... bring out the Bush/Hitler images... nooses and effigies... wait, there are plenty of Bush/Cheney/Palin beheading images and nooses but where are the Obama ones? OH NOES, we're falling down on the job!

"I hope he fails."
"I hope he gets a painful disease and dies slowly."

Sure, yeah. Exactly the same thing.

Bite me.

kent said...

I give the left all the civility and respect they've labored so diligently to show me over the past ten years.

Any leftards unhappy with that are cordially invited to sit themselves right down and enjoy a big, steaming bowl of freshly boiled Fuck You, with a side order of Suck My Cock.

The Crack Emcee said...

I refuse to allow anyone to dictate what I say or how I say it.

Gee, I just wrote something like that today.

Cool.

Actually - now that I think about it - I write something like that everyday,...so that guy's stealing my thunder!

Megaera said...

Any time I hear a Democrat yearning aloud for the good old days of civil discourse Democrat Congressman Preston Brooks, who cornered Republican Senator Charles Sumner at his Senate desk and beat him so savagely with his gold-headed cane that it was 3 years before Sumner returned to his Congressional responsibilities, crippled for life. Brooks had been offended by a speech Sumner made in which he referenced a relative of Brooks' in regard to slavery, the hot issue of the day. Brooks challenged to a duel a friend of Sumner's, who called him a coward for attacking a defenseless man, but misliked the terms chosen by the challenged man, a crack shot, and never showed up for it. Indeed, the golden age of civil discourse.

Clyde said...

I agree with Don Surber, although my retort to the Left probably would have been even less civil than his. He understandably was constrained by writing a column for a newspaper website. Having no such constraints myself, I could freely have told the hypocritical bastards that they were cordially invited to fellate me.

Alex said...

Public opinion is not on the side of the Democrats. So when they screech that the conservatives need to be more civil, or STFU that doesn't resonate with middle America at all. Americans do not like being lectured to or told how to behave.

Leland said...

Yes, do let's go back 15 years when everyone was civil. The golden days of the Clinton Administration.

Yes, the days when a Democrat President refused to work with a newly elected Republican Congress and shutdown the government. Who could forget? Ever wonder if it was just a game to get people out of the White House, so he could get more time for Monica to suck his cock? Oh good times, good times.

Phil 314 said...

You know, I never liked it when my kids would fight and then when I intervened, hear the plea:

Well, He started it!

And I still don't like it.

Fen said...

You know, I never liked it when my kids would fight and then when I intervened, hear the plea:

Well, He started it!


My wife had the same problem when she was a kid. Her brother would hit her, she would defend herself, parents would punish both.

She finally realized that if she was going to be blamed for things she didn't do anyway, she might as well get a few punches in.

Jason said...

Phil,

If you don't care who started it, you're probably a shitty parent.

What if one of your kids is a sociopath? Not caring is a great way to train one.

Either it matters who started it, or the child who is the victim has little choice but to use so much violence in response that it becomes unthinkable for the aggressor to "start it" again.

What was that saying again? "If there is no justice there can be no peace."

kent said...

You know, I never liked it when my kids would fight and then when I intervened, hear the plea:

Well, He started it!

And I still don't like it.


Then at least one of your kids got boned regularly, discipline-wise. Way to go.

Anonymous said...

The phrase that Mr. Surber is looking for, but is far too classy to ever utter himself, is "Fuck you with 100 yards of curare-tipped wrought-iron fence and a pile driver, and no lubricant."

Carry on.

tree hugging sister said...

(Oh, MOSTEST FUN POST EH-VAH!!!)

BITE ME, too, you hypocritical, whiny, hateful, pretentious assholes!

God ~ that was a cleansing experience.

I feel light as a feather now!

Phil 314 said...

Fen, Jason and Kent;

You're assuming that the claim

he started it

was true.

kent said...

You're assuming that the claim

he started it

was true.


No more so than you're assuming the claim "he started it," in this instance, is not.

Phil 314 said...

No more so than you're assuming the claim "he started it," in this instance, is not.

Exactly!

that's why I got tired of it.

Toad Trend said...

Just hearing the left whine about civility leads me to believe that we are on the right track. Its the very same as the bully that finally got his comeuppance.

It is, indeed, the intent of the left to shut up dissenters using any gimmick, trick, lie, smear, and straw man that they can.

I say we all keep up the pressure. Facts and the truth. It isn't hard to differentiate from the serial demanders - make them take their positions, they are losers in terms of 'ideas'. We have hard evidence of what works, what doesn't; we need to reveal their 'new ideas' as the reconstituted bullshit that it is.

I second Mr. Surber's sentiments, and I choose to illustrate my disdain for our the left-leaning lizards in this fashion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa0cz2V_VqU

kent said...

Exactly!

Not certain what your "exactly!" is intended to mean, as you're plainly missing the point. If one side is guilty/guiltier/guiltiest, of the two: then there's nothing "childish" in plainly stating that. (... and is, in fact, both demonstrably and inherently unreasonable not to do so.)

Phil 314 said...

If one side is guilty/guiltier/guiltiest, of the two: then there's nothing "childish" in plainly stating that. (... and is, in fact, both demonstrably and inherently unreasonable not to do so.)

Well for my kids, too often they were often both guilty; amount varied from situation to situation.

Getting back to the politics that started the discussion; it would be disingenous to suggest that some on "both sides" have been less than civil. Now civility and being right are two different things. But being right doesn't negate the value of civility (or whatever phrase you'd like to use that doesn't generate a political argument.)

Of course YMMV

Ankur said...

Back in 1918, the right was REALLY uncivil!

and then, back in 1904, the LEFT was really uncivil!!1!

And don't even get me started about 1857!