You can still cast your vote for Hillary

[Ken]

The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

–H. L. Mencken

:)

[JoB]

Well, if it isn’t the choir..

JT..

you are right.. not all experience generates wisdom. but some does… i hope your experience with your parents doesn’t stop you from learning from those whose experience with doing things the hard way could benefit you.

NewResident…

Contrary to what seems to be your belief.. stating your opinion on a forum means that your ideas, opinions and sources are subject to challenge.. not your character.

I want to thank you two for making this request so convenient and timely… becasue it would have been difficult to make without your posts.

can you drop the personal comments so we can all get on with conversation?

[beachdrivegirl]

JT your post is priceless and could not have been said anybetter!

[JoB]

having fun Ken?

is the fun you are having worth encouraging prolonging this?

because it isn’t just about me. I am not the only person that has been attacked on this forum with personal insults..

i am just the favored target for these three since i chose to continue actively supporting Hillary.

what is the next excuse and who will be the next target?

[Zenguy]

If we are LUCKY wisdom comes with age, a willingness to learn helps a lot.

[Ken]

The top two primary has turned this one upside down it seems.

To be appointed to a precinct, whether you live there or not, you have to stand in front of the membership and declare that you are a Democrat. Whether the bylaws require membership is something I don’t know, maybe someone who does will post. (Ivan?)

But the election part, the registration for which was closed in early July I think, required that you be a resident of the precinct and state that you preferred to be described as a Democrat.

There is no party registration in WA sooo…

It might be a bit awkward to be elected to what is essentially a party position, while not being a member of that party, but I suspect this will be happening in some of our very red precincts to the east as a result of the demented top two process.

The Democratic party is the second home already to Greens, Progressive Libertarians and a few Socialist anyway since they have nothing in common with the Republicans. We don’t require the level of purity some other groups do :)

I feel being interested in the common good is enough to define which party you can identify with regardless of other affiliations.

[JoB]

Ken,

i agree completely that interest in the common good is enough to define which party you can identify with.. regardless of your other affiliations.

it’s why i have remained a democrat:)

i wasn’t trying to exclude anyone. but I was pretty sure party positions generally require you declare as a party member…

and thought that probably ought to be clear.

[Ken]

Job

Note the Mencken quote was written when he was quite advanced in age and was meant as self deprecating humor as well as a challenge to conventional wisdom.

Age alone brings us many things, some are more painful than others.

If we are very lucky wisdom is one of them.

If we kept our memory in the aging process we can also remember all the good advice we ignored and had to relearn the hard way on our own. Some of it was best ignored.

Think about how we hurt our parents and grand parents when we ignored their wisdom and cut the spring chickens some slack.

:)

For good or ill it is their turn to seize the day.

Carpe diem pro bono publico

[JanS]

Ken…so this thing about the top two is now in affect? I simply don’t understand why that option even existed/s.We will at times end up with 2 people of the same party, either Dem or Repub…guess that means that we will need to campaign even harder before that, block by block, to make sure it’s OUR party that comes out on top.

I’m glad someone else thinks it a fiasco, too :)

And, for what it’s worth, I’m older (sometimes crankier – lol) than JoB, and I learn something new every day. There’s never a time to quit learning and just sit back and think “I know it all now” ;-)

[JoB]

Ken,

i understood the humor. i too have read Mencken.

He wasn’t challenging wisdom.. he was challenging conventional wisdom.. that which decides something is true or right without examining it.

Examining conventional wisdom is part of what the conversation in this forum is about.. and i confess.. to me it is the most interesting conversation.

I have no difficulty when anyone rejects my advice… I can remember plenty of times when i chose to reject advice from those i respect. Some times it worked out better my way. sometimes i was just lucky. and sometimes i was very sorry i hadn’t listened more closely.

one of my most enduring friendships is based on the mutual rejection of advice…. quite personal and sometimes very detailed advice. I still think her life would be easier if she would accept some of my advice.. but i know for a fact that she thinks the same of me ;-)

It is one thing to reject advice… to decide that another persons knowledge and experience don’t apply to you in your situation…

but quite another to challenge their veracity or to expect silence from them.

Mencken didn’t imply that wisdom didn’t exist.. that knowledge gained by experience had no value… or that those with experience should be silent…

he certainly wasn’t.

[JoB]

LOL JanS.. not me…

i know everything.. so how could i possible learn anything new ;=>

and for $5 i know where to find the map that is sure to lead you to the lost treasure of the sierra madre… it’s an authentic copy!

i heard someone who knows someone who learned about it from someone very reliable.

[beachdrivegirl]

[longtimelurker]

The attitude that someone should listen to you because you are smarter, or have more experience, or just ‘know more’ than they do is an attitude that large segments (say just about 50%) of the population just find repulsive. That attitude, is INMHO, one of, if not, Hillary’s biggest problems attracting support. It seems that attitude is also quite common among may of her supporters.

[JoB]

longtimelurker…

i don’t think anyone should listen to me..

but i do think they should allow me to speak without making personal remarks about me…

especially … on a forum where that is one of the cardinal rules.

[longtimelurker]

I’ve made no remarks about anything except an attitude. I’m sorry if you think it is a personal remark about you.

[JoB]

longtimelurker…

i spoke in the singular.. but i believe this simple maxim should hold true for anyone who posts here…

As for Hillary and her supporters.. of which i am the most visible on West Seattle Blog… i can understand why you would think that is true.. but speaking for myself as a Hillary supporter .. I can assure you that it isn’t.

Speaking for Hillary is more difficult, but i do know that she often spent far more time listening in personal encounters than speaking… although that was not what the press portrayed… that she spent more time than most asking questions of experts and learning everything she could about the subjects she encountered and that she has a long history of public defense of the little guy… and gal… and kid…

That attitude created a great deal of support for her…

perhaps just not in your social circles…

[longtimelurker]

Given that my social circles are lifetime Democrats I don’t think it has much to do with my social circles, but I suppose I could be wrong, it wouldn’t be the first time in my life.

[JoB]

longtimelurker..

i am a lifetime democrat too.. and there was a large amount of support in my social circles…

excepting of course the one i engage in on this forum…

if my personal email was any indication, there was more support for her on this forum than posts would indicate. I can’t blame them for not choosing to risk the kind of personal harassment i got for publicly supporting her…

It’s funny that the group that did the most harassing.. who still choose to lump all Hillary supporters in one boat… are those who cite her “attitude”… (hers and her supporters supposed unwillingness to listen to others) … as justification for their own personal harassment of individuals for doing nothing more than challenging their ideas.

I don’t remember if you were one of those longtimelurker… so i am talking in generalities…

but i am sure you remember whether you respectfully listened to those with a preference that didn’t agree with your own.

then. maybe you didn’t have to if every democrat you knew agreed with you.

can we put this conversation to bed now?

[longtimelurker]

errr I never posted anything at all before tonight about Hillary here but thanks for the ‘harrasment’ comment.

Golly can you not allow anyone to have a different opinion than you without feeling the need to slam them?

[beachdrivegirl]

You can click on the member name and see what people have posted on before. this is actually only the third post longtimelurker has posted. And the FIRSRT POLITICAL THREAD. Welcome longtimelurker it is always a great day when you hear fresh new voices on the WSB hopefully you post again soon.

[JoB]

longtimelurker..

equal thanks for the “supporters” comment..

“It seems that attitude is also quite common among may of her supporters.”

if we can assume that wasn’t directed at me personally.. which by the way my reply didn’t assume that it was…

then i think we can assume the harassment comment was not directed at you personally… but was simply a reflection of the comments that have already been made on this thread.

in fact.. i said the comment wasn’t directed at you.

is there some reason the Hillary can do no right and her supporters are just like her conversation has to continue?

I am not going to apologize for supporting Hillary. Nearly half of our party did.

[JoB]

I have given this some thought.. and i am withdrawing from this conversation.. and probably from the forum itself… at least for a while.. for the same reason that others have done so before me.

I have no illusions that withdrawing myself as a target is going to stop the negative personal comments directed at individuals on this site…

but i am not looking forward to opening my browser any more… this is no fun.

[longtimelurker]

JoB,

I don’t think you should ever apologize for supporting Hillary, she was a fine candidate. I’m not sure where it is you think that I suggested that. What I have yet to understand though is why some of her supporters refuse to see that like the rest of us always struggling human beings she has weaknesses as well as strengths, we all do.

[JoB]

longtimelurker..

i am breaking my silence to reply to you because you asked an honest question.

i am afraid the idea that Hillary supporters refused to see her weaknesses is another of those popular perceptions that just wasn’t true for most of us.

Speaking for myself.. there was a great deal about Hillary as a candidate that i didn’t much like.. but i knew that going into the campaign.

Far from idolizing her, i respected her and what i knew she was capable of delivering.

I really respected the fact that although her political career was built on the backs of the poor (and i am talking about her entire political career.. including the time she spent as “just a spouse”)… she always made sure that legislation was passed that directly benefited the poor.. especially poor women and children.

And i respected the fact that she always knew she had more to learn and thought it was her responsibility to actively seek that knowledge.

I hated her willingness to use military solutions… and saw that tendency as the reason she was so easily duped about Iraq…

I had no illusions about her at all. And i don’t believe i was the exception to the rule.

if there was idolization going on in this campaign, it was of Obama… an unknown entity who campaigned on slogans and remained basically an unknown…. and still will receive the nomination of his party.

I am not rewriting history.

Hillary was the candidate for whom nothing was too vile to say while Obama was the candidate about whom any criticism was too much.

The New Yorker just lampooned bigotry on it’s cover and the Obama campaign called it racism… because of what some people might think..

i thought it was naive at best and poor taste at worst… but racism? from the New Yorker?

I think this was the greatest frustration of the campaign for me.. the many myths perpetrated by the press and bought by too many democrats about who and what Hillary and her supporters were…

we were just fallible human beings like the rest of you who wanted… and still want… the best for our country…

Obama is the only hope we have now.. so i truly hope if elected that he is more like the idol most Obama supporters voted for and less like the politician who is finally being revealed.

In any case, he will make a much better president than John McCain…

[Anonymous]

Obama’s statement on the The New Yorker cover:

*OBAMA: Well, I know it was the “New Yorker’s” attempt at satire. I don’t think they were entirely successful with it. But you know what, it’s a cartoon, Larry, and that’s why we’ve got the First Amendment. And I think the American people are probably spending a little more time worrying about what’s happening with the banking system and the housing market, and what’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, than a cartoon. So I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it.*

Sounds to me like he handled it pretty well and doesn’t project any outrage as implied.

[Author]

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