CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Obama as The Joker

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

this entry brought to you by modest mouse, "the view"


I've of course seen this around the Internet before it sprang up in my neighborhood, but I was still surprised how quickly it had been since I'd first seen while stumbling through the web-- perhaps a week?-- and when it showed up on a light post.



I took it down, of course.

It's not that I have to support the President just because we're both Democrats and I voted for him. I support dissent from the president-- I sure as hell dissented from the last President, so everyone has the right to dissent from this one. And as far as political protest goes, this was much less offensive than, say, something blatantly racist. To be fair, there have been people commenting in op/ed pieces around the Internet about these fliers that have shown up in LA (and my neighborhood, apparently) saying that they invoke racist imagery, but I don't agree. I think it's a striking image, to be frank. It's not as original as the "HOPE" posters from the election, after all, it's just a knock-off of something existing in pop culture for the past 50 years or so, but it's still striking. Obama has a blank, dead stare. And there's a devilish The Dark Knight Joker grin on it. It's not especially original, but it is evocative, and it looks genuinely like a prank the Joker himself might pull. As far as pranksterism goes, I think this marks fairly high, to be perfectly honest.

...My problem, however, isn't with the image. It's the word below the image.

First of all, it's obvious the person who made this, and the person who printed it up and put it in my neighborhood, has no idea what the word "Socialism" means. It might as well say "Boogey Man", for all of the worthless fear-mongering it brings up. But this goes deeper than that, and indicates a very real problem with the temperament of America right now.

I've never seen any fliers around my neighborhood indicting Medicare or Veteran's Affairs as "socialism".



When the Bush administration bailed out the banks, making the hardest move towards socialism in the history of this country, I didn't see any fliers with Bush on it saying "Socialism".



But you know what? The word "socialist" as a pejorative is bullshit, because it implies that somehow socialism can't work in a first world country, when in fact, virtually every single Western country has some major form of socialism and manages to be more successful than America. Their economies are more stable, their currency is more solid, they're healthier, happier, and live longer lives, while managing to spend less on health care than we do. We are the richest country in the world, and we are not only blowing large amounts of it away, we are also creating more and more of a divide between the rich and the poor.

I am a person who actively wants more socialism, and believe me, if Obama was a Socialist, I'd be dancing in the streets, not furrowing my brow and sighing when Obama does yet something else even more Bush-like, or leading from the middle and going from there instead of starting from the left and then compromising towards the middle. Clearly the word "socialism" means absolutely nothing to the people who throw it around and to the person who made this poster, other than the word "Fear". Never mind that the Joker's philosophies on anarchy are the exact opposite of the orderly, hive-mind attitude that full blown socialism (which nobody is suggesting in any Western country in the world) actually has. It's like having a flier of Hitler that says "Party all the time".

Another thing: When George Bush was actively shredding the Fourth Amendment, I didn't see any fucking fliers around my neighborhood.



When George Bush ordered Americans to torture prisoners in order to get information that back up any sort of attachment between Iraq and 9/11 which we already have established was based on lies-- you know, things that were actually harming America and putting Americans at risk, I didn't see any fucking fliers.



To the person who put this flier up in my neighborhood: Perhaps you had a problem with George W. Bush, but you somehow managed to keep your outrage to a level of civility that you didn't see fit to graffiti up an affluent, peaceful neighborhood with your "dissent". Yet somehow, when a Democrat gets in office and-- how dare he?!!-- he attempts to help your fellow countrymen get health care reform, you are somehow thrown over the edge and the only way to announce your boiled over dissatisfaction is to print up something you found on the Internet.

Why is it that you only printed this up after your heroes at Fox News and Rush Limbaugh started fervently calling to arms and using terms like "socialist" did you react?

Political dissent is well and good, and I wouldn't have a problem with legitimate disagreements with the President. But you are ignorant, you are a sheep, and you have nothing to offer for the public discourse. You are just a nuisance in a very black cloud of bullying and blind negativity with no real knowledge of what it is you're being so negative about, only that somehow it offends you and you don't know why, and while I admire your ability to drive around in the cover of night to anonymously leave behind something you copied and pasted off of a right-wing forum, I have no patience for you. You opinion has been rendered meaningless.
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with love from CRS @ 6:59 PM 

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