Can You Imagine Having that Conversation??
Families first. Bernie 2016.
6 comments on “Can You Imagine Having that Conversation??”
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Stereoscopy
Digital Empire
Digital Empire 
Yes Bernie. Yes Families. But this is taking it a bit to far.
negative Like.
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Thanks for visiting my blog PeteyBee. I think I see what you mean. I’m not objecting to the negative like, not at all. Can you let me know which part you disliked?
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Thanks for hearing me out. This is going to be detailed and a bit long – I’m trying to present what I think and why I think it, so please don’t take this as a personal criticism.
1. I’m not a religious person, I’m quite liberal in terms of personal freedoms. At the same time I am convinced that monogamy is something that works better (fewest problems) for me, and want the same of my family. Yet I know people who are openly and intentionally not monogamous, and do their honest best to make that work. More importantly, we all know people who claim they are monogamous, and probably even believe it in their heart, yet have gone out and done what they’re not supposed to do. It’s not right, it can be a devastating thing in their lives and even more for their partners, but at the same time its not the end of the world either. Some of these people have led completely respectable and competent lives in every other way. The ones to judge them are their wife/husband, kids, and family, not anyone else. Not their neighbors, not their co-workers, not their business partners, and not their political supporters or political opponents. Perhaps God, if you are religious – I’m not going there. I am a firm believer that one’s personal life is one’s own business, and I am also against forcing my beliefs about personal life on anyone else.
2. From a practical point of view, as in politics and the election, and trying to support or oppose a candidate, there is more. Of all the valid criticisms of Bill and Hillary Clinton, lets say, for being in the pockets of their major donors, for Hillary’s belligerent foreign policy, for promoting trade deals claiming they would favor one group of people when they really favor another, you name it — this one has little or nothing to do with how the country is run.
Going after a politician’s personal life is a cheap shot, distracts from more important issues. It makes whichever opponent of Clinton’s you favor (in my case, Sanders, perhaps in the future other leftist candidates) look bad. It will have the practical effect of making supporters of Clinton rally around their candidate, now that she can be portrayed as a “victim of unfair criticism” – they will have an excuse to avoid the real issues which would be more difficult for Clinton to answer in light of her (and Bill’s) record in government, and who they seem to really answer to.
3, To me, fixating on a another person’s personal life is just as low a personal deed as what they are accused of. This is partially similar to why I cannot support Trump – after he made fun of Jeb Bush’s wife’s ethnicity — even though I was very happy to see Jeb Bush eliminated from the race, and I would be similarly happy to have Hillary Clinton go. To be fair, in Trump’s case, there was the added element of racism which makes it worse, and this is not there in Hillary’s critics — the common factor, tough, is that he went after his opponent’s wife. Very not acceptable.
Again, let me just repeat that this is a very specific reaction I’m having, so don’t take it as a negative opinion of everything else you’re doing.
Regards
-P.
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That’s perfectly reasonable. In this blog I make a lot of silly graphics. Most of the time I put very minimal effort into them, and sometimes they turn out looking lazy, uninspired.
I don’t get a lot of comments or criticisms here (because I like to censor many of them ;D), but what you said will help me understand the climate. Whether it is politically-centric or otherwise, it is helpful for my understanding of the climate. My blog here is very small. I don’t advertise on Facebook, or Twitter, so my readership compared to many of the WordPress blogs I follow is admittedly embarrassing. It’s really why I take every opportunity to express my opinions here at DigitalEmpire, while at the same time considering the thoughts of others carefully.
Back in the old days, when the folks around me had a criticism of someone or something, we would keep quiet and reflect upon the criticism as a way to improve ourselves. Nowadays, with the hyper-connectivity of the internet, that old ideal is slowly eroding. We now take everything as personal attacks, even if it has nothing to do with us ever. I’m a victim of that myself somewhat, it’s what we all go through every day. I’m sure you’ve experienced this at least once in this past week alone. What we should understand is, each person is caught in a conflict in one way or another, but our defenses for these conflicts are so overused and normalized, that it is nearly impossible not to get other people caught in the crossfire. That’s what I’m worried about, because I value your criticism, and I take it as a way to improve myself. But others, lets say in other countries, or maybe even in small cities and big towns, people don’t have that.
CNN, and CBS, and right wing news corps such as Fox, for example stir up the froth by actively scaring people about issues such as these. In part because the presenters, producers, CEO’s, scriptwriters, and pundits are victims themselves. These three corporations run their attack segments 20 to 30 times in a single news cycle, but they never focus on preserving the family, and they never highlight the need to teach people how stay faithful. It generates clicks, it generates ill gotten revenue, and it’s frightening.
The difference though is perception. CNN and CBS makes the act “acceptable” because other Mainstream news corps are forced to mimic the narrative, and thereby reinforce the notion that cheating on the spouse is commonplace. They put in place the message that cheating is taking place, but they refuse to install the counter-argument that cheating is avoidable. These are the current pillars the country hails as the cultural standard, and we inevitably anticipate more juicy stories about cheating with each news cycle. The social safety net of old which dealt with preserving the family structure is almost practically nil.
What I try to do here in contrast however, is to go against that. I try to point out that it’s wrong to cheat on the wife. I also try to point out the inevitability of people taking issue with Hillary Clinton’s numerous failures. The “woman card” of recent hype, is essentially her “get out of jail” card for these failures. The way that a “president” represents a nation’s values is directly impacted because a hypothetical “Clinton Administration” tells upcoming generations that it’s okay to cheat, and that it’s absolutely viable to use “get out of jail” cards anytime it’s convenient. The way CNN, CBS, and Fox incubates this ill-culture of acceptance will attenuate the problem because they are very very dependent on click revenue. We need to resist that I believe.
Plus, CBS and CNN have been bought out by Hillary years ago. I believe CNN’s producers are partly made up of family members of people inside the state department and the pentagon.
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“Back in the old days…”
Hmm, I guess I didn’t do to well at keeping quiet and reflecting :-(
Internet age it is. Re-reading it, I think what I said came out a little too intense.
You’re right to criticize TV and mass media, they don’t care too much for the results of the influence they have. At the same time, I wouldn’t want to restrict their freedom from having their content restricted (with a few exceptions, like banning cigarette ads). Anyway I don’t mean to make the morality of what Bill Clinton did my focus. In his case, too, there are bigger criticisms to make.
To the extent that Hillary is taking advantage of the whole history to portray herself as a victim, when it is to her advantage… that’s a cheap move too, and I don’t like that either. But for her to do that was made possible, in large part, by the Ken Starr public obsession about Monica Lewinsky, so it’s just another example of why this stuff should be left alone.
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There’s a new trailer out for the movie Snowden. You may have seen it already. It looks very interesting. Oliver Stone was so certain of interference by shadow agencies, that he was forced to film it in Munich.
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