Kathleen Parker gives some good examples of demonizing your opponent:
So why do Republicans hate art, the elderly and children?
Hint: Same reason parents hate their children when they say, “No.” We could just leave it at that, but this is too much fun.
The demonizing of Republicans for trying to seriously address our desperately ailing economy surely begs for a new metaphor. The GOP has become the army of Mordor, fat-gobbed predators who feed on children while destroying all that is beautiful in their relentless pursuit of greed.
Or so one would infer from the fiery rants emanating from the bowels of Capitol Hill and Hollywood.
“Why are the Republicans trying to kill the arts?” Chris Matthews on “Hardball” asked actor Kevin Spacey, who was in Washington to protest cuts to the arts. Elsewhere, actor Tim Robbins compared proposed cuts to an “old miserly man snatching a crayon out of a baby’s hand.”
He hoped that “more adult minds will prevail.”
Indeed.
Everyone is calling for adults these days. President Obama insisted that Congress “act like grown-ups,” adding that we don’t have time for games. I’m not sure where these adults are going to come from since almost no one seems to want to be one. Meanwhile, the vocabulary of evil and apocalyptic imagery has punctuated criticism of the GOP’s proposed 2012 budget, not to be confused with the 2011 budget.
It is helpful at this juncture to recall that Democrats failed to produce a budget last year, despite controlling the White House and both houses of Congress. But back to the end times:
Jonathan Chait at the New Republic declared the proposed GOP budget “wildly cruel,” while Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) projected a biblical “no room at the inn” scenario with “lights out, doors wide open and the drumbeat playing as people are being rolled out of nursing homes in wheelchairs, with crutches, some on beds.” . . .
Gamesmanship can be entertaining when the stakes are small. But as the president correctly noted, the economy is not child’s play. As painful as the truth is, we can’t continue to live beyond our means. Every category of spending will have to take a hit, and we’ll have to figure out how to make the sucker float with a minimum of suffering. In the meantime, we might relax our reflexes just a tad and give hysteria a rest.
via Demonizing the GOP, losing the budget battle – The Washington Post.
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