Here is a political rant my cousin sent me: I then have a response afterwards:
NOW HERE'S A CONCESSION SPEECH I WOULD HAVE LIKED
I concede that I overestimated the intelligence of the American people.
Though the people disagree with the President on almost every issue, you saw fit to vote for him. I never saw that coming. That's really special. And I mean "special" in the sense that we use it to describe those kids who ride the short school bus and find ways to injure themselves while eating pudding with rubber spoons. That kind of special.
I concede that I misjudged the power of hate. That's pretty powerful stuff, and I didn't see it.
So let me take a moment to congratulate the President's strategists: Putting the gay marriage amendments on the ballot in various swing states like Ohio... well, that was just genius. Genius. It got people, a certain kind of people, to the polls.
The unprecedented number of folks who showed up and cited "moral values" as their biggest issue, those people changed history. The folks who consider same sex marriage a more important issue than war, or terrorism, or the economy... Who'd have thought the election would belong to them? Well, Karl Rove did. Gotta give it up to him for that.
I concede that I put too much faith in America's youth. With 8 out of 10 of you opposing the President, with your friends and classmates dying daily in a war you disapprove of, with your future being mortgaged to pay for rich old peoples' tax breaks, you somehow managed to sit on your asses and watch the Cartoon Network while aging homophobic hillbillies carried the day. You voted with the exact same anemic percentage* that you did in 2000. You suck. Seriously, y'do. Thank you. Thank you very much.
*[editor's note: OK, that's not really fair - I've read a bunch on this since the election and while the % of the youth vote did stay the same, that's because voter turnout in general was up... so more young people voted, but so did more of everyone else]
There are some who would say that I sound bitter, that now is the time for healing, to bring the nation together. Let me tell you a little story. Last night, I watched the returns come in with some friends here in Los Angeles. As the night progressed, people began to talk half-seriously about secession, a red state / blue state split. The reasoning was this: We in blue states produce the vast majority of the wealth in this country and pay the most taxes, and you in the red states receive the majority of the money from those taxes while complaining about 'em.
We in the blue states are the only ones who've been attacked by foreign terrorists, yet you in the red states are gung ho to fight a war in our name. We in the blue states produce the entertainment that you consume so greedily each day, while you in the red states show open disdain for us and our values. Blue state civilians are the actual victims and targets of the war on terror, while red state civilians are the ones standing behind us and yelling "Oh, yeah!? Bring it on!"
More than 40% of you Bush voters still believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11. I'm impressed by that, truly I am. Your sons and daughters who might die in this war know it's not true, the people in the urban centers where al Qaeda wants to attack know it's not true, but those of you who are at practically no risk believe this easy lie because you can. As part of my concession speech, let me say that I really envy that luxury. I concede that.
Healing? We, the people at risk from terrorists, the people who Subsidize you, the people who speak in glowing and respectful terms about the heartland of America while that heartland insults and excoriates us...we wanted some healing. We spoke loud and clear.
And you refused to give it to us, largely because of your high moral values. You knew better: America doesn't need its allies, doesn't need to share the burden, doesn't need to unite the world, doesn't need to provide for its future. Hell no. Not when it's got a human shield of pointy-headed, atheistic, unconfrontational breadwinners who are willing to pay the bills and play nice in the vain hope of winning a vote that we can never have. Because we're "morally inferior" I suppose, we are supposed to respect your values while you insult ours. And the big joke here is that for 20 years, we've done just that. It's not a ha-ha funny joke, I realize, but it's a joke all the same.
I make this pledge to you today: THIS time, next time, there will be no pandering. This time we will run with all the open and joking contempt for our opponents that our President demonstrated towards the cradle of liberty, the Ivy League intellectuals, the "media elite" and the "white-wine sippers."
This time we will not pretend that the simple folk of America know just as much as the people who devote their lives to serving and studying the nation and the world. They don't.
So that's why I'm asking for your vote in 2008, America. I'm talking to you, you ignorant, slack-jawed yokels, you bible-thumping, inbred drones, you redneck, racist, chest-thumping, perennially duped grade-school grads... because we know better, and we truly believe that we can help your smug, sorry asses. Thank you, and may God, if he does in fact exist, bless each and every one of you.
Anonymous email
Very interesting rant, of all things. I know my cousin didn't write this, so I'm not criticizing him, just the statement. (I guess to let my feelings be known). However, I wanted to post a very interesting reaction to that rant, which puts things in a different light. I read the "concession" and thought it a little out of whack because of some technicalities I know to be untrue. For example, the whole red-state/blue-state thing is funky, because many kids from "blue states" are the ones fighting in Iraq (asserts the concession) when I know for a fact that the Rio Grande Valley, in "Red-State" Texas contributes 1 percent of all soldiers (more than any other area in the nation), and is the poorest area of the country. Ironically, (aligning poor with hillbilly status) the Rio Grande Valley in Texas is widely democratic, which is an impossible characteristic of hillbillies. (This information I got in a Peace and Povery class last year, and are my own thoughts, not infiltration of my mind by the "Republicans"). Texas may be a "red state" but Austin, where I reside now, is probably the bluest of blue that would make Massachusetts proud, as is the Rio Grande Valley, as are some counties around Dallas, etc.
I found the concession to be hilariously and depressingly filled with so much hatred and bigotry that I seriously was confused and troubled. The "concession" was so infused with hatred, it's palpable, and disturbing. The "concession" declares the hatred and bigotry of the "red-states" to be the worst possible thing, but yet who is this statement of ire and disdain directed to? Anyway, I agree with most of this "rebuttal" and I think that even if one doesn't agree, one should read it with an open mind. Maybe we can get over the fact that Kerry lost, and focus ourselves for 2008 when Bush CAN'T win and laugh about things of more importance than the election. (Like I'll think about more poetry to write, or how I can get access to knitting materials, or something like that).
I definitely propose an open mind when reading this, because tolerance ain't tolerance if you only tolerate the people you agree with.
Rant and Rebuttal:
NOW HERE’S A CONCESSION SPEECH I WOULD HAVE LIKED
I concede that I overestimated the intelligence of the American people.
Reaction: So, Mr. Kerry, it wasn’t your policies or lack of same (on Iraq, Social Security, etc.), or your lack of honesty (about the 2000 Florida election, about women’s wages, about Social Security, about a draft, about Iraq, about your hunting, about your SUVs, about your religiosity, about your “heroic” service in Vietnam, etc.) that turned voters away from you: it was the stupidity of the American people. What incredible arrogance.
Though the people disagree with the President on almost every issue, you saw fit to vote for him.
Reaction: The majority of people do not disagree with the President on almost every issue, Mr. Kerry. In fact, most people agree with him on most issues. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have voted for him. Now, some liberals disagree with him, to be sure. But to suggest that “the people” do is a fiction.
I never saw that coming. That’s really special. And I mean “special” in the sense that we use it to describe those kids who ride the short school bus and find ways to injure themselves while eating pudding with rubber spoons. That kind of special.
Reaction: Very nice, Mr. Kerry. Calling anyone who didn’t support you an ignoramus and a retard. Very sophisticated. Very intellectual.
I concede that I misjudged the power of hate. That’s pretty powerful stuff, and I didn’t see it.
Reaction: Voting for Bush represents hate? Those of us who followed both campaigns closely know very well that almost all the hate and vitriol, easily 80-90 percent of it, issued from your campaign and supporters, Mr. Kerry, not from the Bush campaign and theirs. Remember Fahrenheit 9/11? How about your threatening legal action against the Swift Boat vets? How about CBS’s use of forged documents to bring down Bush? Or how about your supporters’ repeated references to Bush as a Nazi, an idiot, and the like? Or, might I add, how about the hatred that permeates this concession speech of yours?
So let me take a moment to congratulate the President’s strategists: Putting the gay marriage amendments on the ballot in various swing states like Ohio...well, that was just genius. Genius. It got people, a certain kind of people, to the polls.
Reaction: What a fabulous conspiracy theory! You obviously don’t know this, Mr. Kerry, but the initiatives on the ballot in eleven states were attempts to legalize gay marriage. They were not “gay marriage amendments” put there to prohibit it. And for your information, those initiatives were put on the ballot by gay activists and their supporters, not by Republicans. What happened was democracy in action: the people of those eleven states did not want gay marriage legalized, so they rejected the initiatives.
The unprecedented number of folks who showed up and cited “moral values” as their biggest issue, those people changed history. The folks who consider same sex marriage a more important issue than war, or terrorism, or the economy... Who’d have thought the election would belong to them? Well, Karl Rove did. Gotta give it up to him for that.
Reaction: An “unprecedented number”? First of all, Mr. Kerry, only 20 percent of those asked in exit polls cited moral values as an issue affecting their vote. Many more cited terrorism and Iraq. Next, the exit polls were not scientifically done, so the people cited in them cannot be assumed to be representative of the electorate. And for your information, Mr. Kerry, “moral values” involves far more than just gay marriage. I suspect that many people’s moral values were at odds with your secularism, your lack of integrity, your past denunciations of America, and so on. As for Karl Rove, what’s the deal with him when you have Carville and Begalla running your campaign? Finally, Mr. Kerry, I’m getting the distinct impression what you’re really doing is trying to blame your loss on people’s homophobia (meaning they’re bad), not on your own lack of message and substance. Want to know why you lost? Get yourself a mirror.
I concede that I put too much faith in America’s youth. With 8 out of 10 of you opposing the President, with your friends and classmates dying daily in a war you disapprove of, with your future being mortgaged to pay for rich old peoples’ tax breaks, you somehow managed to sit on your asses and watch the Cartoon Network while aging homophobic hillbillies carried the day. You voted with the exact same anemic percentage* that you did in 2000. You suck. Seriously, y’do. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Reaction: First, eighty percent of America’s youth do not oppose the President. The figure is false. As for the soldiers dying in Iraq, Mr. Kerry, they are all volunteers who overwhelmingly support the President and their mission. You disgrace them by suggesting otherwise. Mortgaging people’s future to pay for rich people’s tax breaks? It’s hard to follow this part of your concession speech, Mr. Kerry, but if you’re suggesting that our soldiers are dying for tax breaks and Halliburton, you’re not only wrong, you are again demeaning their sacrifice. Finally, you have more than a bit of an intellectual inconsistency when you imply that Republicans are the “rich,” while at the same time denouncing them as “hillbillies,” and presumably poor. Can’t have it both ways, sir.
*[editor’s note: OK, that’s not really fair – I’ve read a bunch on this since the election and while the % of the youth vote did stay the same, that’s because voter turnout in general was up... so more young people voted, but so did more of everyone else]
Reaction: Might I suggest that few kids voted because they’re, well, kids. It ain’t the Sixties any more, Mr. Kerry. Or maybe they didn’t vote for you because they were turned off by your campaign, its lack of message, its invective. And maybe, just maybe, some of them liked the President and voted for him.
There are some who would say that I sound bitter, that now is the time for healing, to bring the nation together. Let me tell you a little story. Last night, I watched the returns come in with some friends here in Los Angeles. As the night progressed, people began to talk half-seriously about secession, a red state / blue state split. The reasoning was this: We in blue states produce the vast majority of the wealth in this country and pay the most taxes, and you in the red states receive the majority of the money from those taxes while complaining about ‘em.
Reaction: Mr. Kerry, my guess is that everyone would say you sound bitter. Let me tell you a story: in terms of charitable giving, the red states do far, far more than the blue states. The state in which people give the most to charity is Mississippi, followed by Arkansas. At the very bottom of the charitable list are blue states like Connecticut and Massachusetts. But there is a more sinister element to your speech. You are clearly implying that those who pay more should get to boss everyone else around. Dare I suggest to an intellectual like you that this is both an undemocratic and an un-Democrat thing to say?
We in the blue states are the only ones who’ve been attacked by foreign terrorists, yet you in the red states are gung ho to fight a war in our name. We in the blue states produce the entertainment that you consume so greedily each day, while you in the red states show open disdain for us and our values. Blue state civilians are the actual victims and targets of the war on terror, while red state civilians are the ones standing behind us and yelling “Oh, yeah!? Bring it on!”
Reaction: Perhaps you’ve forgotten, Mr. Kerry, but the terrorists attacked America, not just the blue states, and those who are fighting and dying in the resulting war hail from both red and blue states. Fighting and dying to protect you. In any case, and just to keep your geography on track, the Pentagon is located in Virginia, a red state. As for red-staters showing open disdain for blue state values, what about the open contempt and disdain shown by blue state elites, and Hollywood, for the lives and values of “you ignorant, slack-jawed yokels, you bible-thumping, inbred drones, you redneck, racist, chest-thumping, perennially duped grade-school grads,” as you so kindly characterize them later on in your concession speech?
More than 40% of you Bush voters still believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11. I’m impressed by that, truly I am. Your sons and daughters who might die in this war know it’s not true, the people in the urban centers where al Qaeda wants to attack know it’s not true, but those of you who are at practically no risk believe this easy lie because you can. As part of my concession speech, let me say that I really envy that luxury. I concede that.
Reaction: First, President Bush never, ever said that Saddam had a direct connection to 9/11, though you continue to make that charge. Bush certainly made the Iraq connection to terrorism, and he was right to do so. And we are in a war against terrorism, Mr. Kerry, not just a war on Osama bin Laden. As you know, Saddam has supported terrorism in places like Israel. He has tortured and murdered, including the mass murder of his own people. He used chemical agents against Iran. As for your concern that al Qaeda wants to attack only urban areas in blue states, you’re extrapolating from an “n” of 1: New York. Might I remind you that there are a large number of potential al Qaeda urban targets in red states, including Atlanta, St. Louis, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, Miami, Jacksonville, Charlotte, Memphis, Phoenix, Denver, and so on? Their war is against America, and, red and blue, we’re all in this together.
Healing? We, the people at risk from terrorists, the people who subsidize you, the people who speak in glowing and respectful terms about the heartland of America while that heartland insults and excoriates us...we wanted some healing. We spoke loud and clear.
And you refused to give it to us, largely because of your high moral values.
Reaction: You and your fellow blue staters are not the only ones at risk from terrorists. You don’t subsidize the red states. And you hardly speak in “glowing and respectful terms” about America’s heartland. Rather, you do precisely the reverse, patronizing the stupid “hillbillies,” condescending to them, or denouncing them as “bible-thumping rednecks.” (Sound familiar?)
You knew better: America doesn’t need its allies, doesn’t need to share the burden, doesn’t need to unite the world, doesn’t need to provide for its future. Hell no. Not when it’s got a human shield of pointy-headed, atheistic, unconfrontational breadwinners who are willing to pay the bills and play nice in the vain hope of winning a vote that we can never have.
Reaction: Since you’ve obviously forgotten, Mr. Kerry, President Bush tried for fourteen months to get other countries on board for the Iraq war. Many joined us, you may recall, among them Great Britain, Poland, Australia, Spain, and others. Many of our presumed allies who didn’t join us (like Russia, Germany, and France), were being paid off by Saddam through the U.N.’s “oil for food” program. Saddam had essentially bought off the Security Council!
Because we’re “morally inferior” I suppose, we are supposed to respect your values while you insult ours. And the big joke here is that for 20 years, we’ve done just that. It’s not a ha-ha funny joke, I realize, but it’s a joke all the same.
Reaction: The big truth is, Mr. Kerry, you and your fellows don’t respect others’ values. You never have. Not for a day, and certainly not for 20 years. Indeed, you continually deride them and ridicule them (remember “bible thumping” “inbred drones”?), something that isn’t done to you in anything like the same way. And that’s no joke.
I make this pledge to you today: THIS time, next time, there will be no pandering. This time we will run with all the open and joking contempt for our opponents that our President demonstrated towards the cradle of liberty, the Ivy League intellectuals, the “media elite” and the “white-wine sippers.”
Reaction: Mr. Kerry, the President did no such thing. Never. Not once. Instead, he put up with the most venomous slander imaginable from the Democrats. I think maybe you’re confusing George Bush with Rush Limbaugh, who did lampoon your condescension, elitism, patronizing, and sanctimony.
This time we will not pretend that the simple folk of America know just as much as the people who devote their lives to serving and studying the nation and the world. They don’t.
Reaction: Hard to do much of anything here, Mr. Kerry, except feel aghast at such complete and total arrogance. Not to mention error.
So that’s why I’m asking for your vote in 2008, America. I’m talking to you, you ignorant, slack-jawed yokels, you bible-thumping, inbred drones, you redneck, racist, chest-thumping, perennially duped grade-school grads... because we know better, and we truly believe that we can help your smug, sorry asses. Thank you, and may God, if he does in fact exist, bless each and every one of you.
Reaction: Thank God! This apparently is a joke! I was getting worried, Mr. Kerry.
Anonymous email
+ Anonymous email reaction
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