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When Politicians Start Talking About Large Groups Of Their Fellow Americans As 'enemies,' It's Time For A Quiet Stir Of Alertness. Polarizing People Is A Good Way To Win An Election, And Also A Good Way To Wreck A Country.

-Molly Ivins

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When Politicians Start Talking

Molly Ivins

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When Politicians Start Talking About Large Groups Of Their Fellow Americans As 'enemies,' It's Time For A Quiet Stir Of Alertness. Polarizing People Is A Good Way To Win An Election, And Also A Good Way To Wreck A Country.

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What You Need Is Sustained Outrage...there's Far Too Much Unthinking Respect Given To Authority.

This Is The Man (ronald Reagan) Who Proved That Ignorance Is No Handicap To The Presidency

Imagine Wasting All That Perfectly Good Anger On Paranoid Fantasies. Not Since Emily Litella Got Upset About "soviet Jewelry" Has There Been Such A Waste Of Anger. You Will Notice A Certain Theme To These Emily Litella Moments. Behind Them All Is A Touching Faith That Someone, Somewhere Is Actually In Charge Of What's Happening - A Proposition I Beg Leave To Doubt.

Personally, I Think Government Is A Tool, Like A Hammer. You Can Use A Hammer To Build Or You Can Use A Hammer To Destroy; There Is Nothing Intrinsically Good Or Evil About The Hammer Itself. It Is The Purposes To Which It Is Put And The Skill With Which It Is Used That Determine Whether The Hammer's Work Is Good Or Bad.

The United States Of America Is Still Run By Its Citizens. The Government Works For Us. Rank Imperialism And Warmongering Are Not American Traditions Or Values. We Do Not Need To Dominate The World. We Want And Need To Work With Other Nations. We Want To Find Solutions Other Than Killing People. Not In Our Name, Not With Our Money, Not With Our Children's Blood.

I Think Of Texas As The Laboratory For Bad Government.

I Never Saw Anything Funnier Than Texas Politics.

Naturally, When It Comes To Voting, We In Texas Are Accustomed To Discerning That Fine Hair’s-breadth Worth Of Difference That Makes One Hopeless Dipstick Slightly Less Awful Than The Other. But It Does Raise The Question: Why Bother?

In The First Place, Any Group Of Folks Willing To Make Asses Of Themselves In Pursuit Of A Good Time Should Be Commended And Encouraged: The Spirit Of Human Frolic Needs All The Help It Can Get.

Conservatives Have Been Mad At The Supreme Court Since It Decided To Desegregate The Schools In 1954 And Seen Fit To Blame The Federal Bench For Everything That Has Happened Since Then That They Don't Like.

If An Armed Nation Were A Polite Nation, America Would Be Paradise. We Have More Than 200 Million Guns In Private Owernship Here. But Our Manners Are Not Getting Better.

When Michael Jackson, A Poor Black Boy Who Grew Up To Be A Rich, White Woman, Married Elvis Presley's Daughter The Scientologist. Makes You Proud To Be An American, Dudn't It?

Texas Is Not A Civilized Place. Texans Shoot One Another A Lot. They Also Knife, Razor, And Stomp One Another To Death With Some Frequency. And They Fight In Bars All The Time.

Satire Is Traditionally The Weapon Of The Powerless Against The Powerful. I Only Aim At The Powerful. When Satire Is Aimed At The Powerless, It Is Not Only Cruel -- It's Vulgar.

Anyone Who Thinks Humans Are Not Capable Of So Fouling Their Own Nest That The Land And The Waters Can No Longer Be Productive Just Hasn't Been Paying Attention.

I Know Vegetarians Don't Like To Hear This, But God Made An Awful Lot Of Land That's Good For Nothing But Grazing.

Bad Policies, Stupid Policies, Gutless Policies Have Real Consequences.

Either We Figure Out How To Keep Corporate Cash Out Of The Political System Or We Lose The Democracy.

You Can't Ignore Politics, No Matter How Much You'd Like To.

Michael Jackson Was A Poor Black Boy Who Grew Up To Be A Rich White Woman

Conservatives Are Fond Of Pointing Out There Are Problems In This World Can't Be Solved By Throwing Money At Them. There Are Even More That Can't Be Solved By Dropping Bombs On Them.

It Is Quite Reasonable To Subscribe Both To The Old Saw That No Good Girl Was Ever Ruined By A Book And To The Perception That It Is Not Good For Children To Be Constantly Exposed To The Sexual Violence In Our Popular Culture. Protecting Children Seems To Me Logically, Legally, And Rather Easily Differentiated From Censorship.

I Believe In Practicing Prudence At Least Once Every Two Or Three Years.

With Politicians, Artful Evasion Is Always Preferable To The Outright Lie.

Humanism Is Not Alive And Well In Texas. Different Colors And Types Of Texans Do Not Like One Another, Nor Do They Pretend To.

I Used To Go On College Campuses 25 Years Ago And Announce I Was A Feminist, And People Thought It Meant I Believed In Free Love And Was Available For A Quick Hop In The Sack. ... Now I Go On College Campuses And Say I'm A Feminist, And Half Of Them Think It Means I'm A Lesbian. How'd We Get From There To Here Without Passing "go"?

It Is Possible To Read The History Of This Country As One Long Struggle To Extend The Liberties Established In Our Constitution To Everyone In America.

If His Iq Slips Any Lower, We'll Have To Water Him Twice A Day

Mostly, Texas Women Are Tough In Some Very Fundamental Ways. Not Unfeminine, Nor Necessarily Unladylike, Just Tough!

It's Like, Duh. Just When You Thought There Wasn't A Dime's Worth Of Difference Between The Two Parties, The Republicans Go And Prove You're Wrong.

In City Rooms And In The Bars Where Newspeople Drink, You Can Find Out What's Going On. You Can't Find It In The Papers.

Whenever You Hear A Politician Carry On About What A Mess The Schools Are, Be Aware That You Are Looking At The Culprit.

Nothing Like A Few Restful Weeks Contemplating The Decline Of Civilization To Restore The Humors. What I Did On My Summer Vacation Was Listen To A Lot Of People Talk About The Decline Of Practically Everything - You Could Call It The Leisure Of The Theory Class.

The More A Body Tries To Explode All The Foolish Myths That Have Grown Up About Texas By Telling The Truth, The More A Body Will Wind Up Adding To The Mythology.

Economist Frederick Thayer Has Studied The History Of Our Balanced-budget Crusades And Has Come Up With Some Depressing Statistics. We Have Had Six Major Depressions In Our History (1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893 And 1929); All Six Of Them Followed Sustained Periods Of Reducing The National Debt. We Have Had Almost Chronic Deficits Since The 1930s, And There Has Been No Depression Since Then - The Longest Crash-free Period In Our History.

Next Time I Tell You Someone From Texas Should Not Be President Of The United States, Please Pay Attention.

...you Could Have Knocked Me Over With Michael Huffington's Brain.

I Learned Two Things Growing Up In Texas. 1: God Loves You, And You're Going To Burn In Hell Forever. 2: Sex Is The Dirtiest And Most Dangerous Thing You Can Possibly Do, So Save It For Someone You Love.

Sit Up, Join Up, Get On Line, Get In Touch, Find Out Who's Raising Hell And Join Them. No Use Waiting On A Bunch Of Wussy Politicians.

So Keep Fightin' For Freedom And Justice, Beloveds, But Don't You Forget To Have Fun Doin' It. Lord, Let Your Laughter Ring Forth. Be Outrageous, Ridicule The Fraidy-cats, Rejoice In All The Oddities That Freedom Can Produce.

Think Of Something To Make The Ridiculous Look Ridiculous.

Most Of Us Think Of Government As Them. Yet Government Isn't Them: It's Us.

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Behind A Smoke Screen Of High-profile Female Appointees And Soothing Slogans, George W. Bush Is Waging War On Women.

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Reading Ehrenreich Is Good For The Soul.

The Pyramids Were Built For Pharaohs On The Happy Theory That They Could Take Their Stuff With Them. Versailles Was Built For Kings On The Theory That They Should Live Surrounded By The Finest Stuff. The Mall Of America Is Built On The Premise That We Should All Be Able To Afford This Stuff. It May Be A Shallow Culture, But It's By-god Democratic. Sneer If You Dare; This Is Something New In World History.

Pigs Get Fat And Hogs Get Slaughtered.

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Havin' Fun While Freedom Fightin' Must Be One Of Those Lunatic Texas Traits We Get From The Water - Which Is Known To Have Lithium In It - Because It Goes All The Way Back To Sam Houston, Surely The Most Lovable, The Most Human, And The Funniest Of All The Great Men This Country Has Ever Produced.

You Look At The Large Problems That We Face - That Would Be Overpopulation, Water Shortages, Global Warming And Aids, I Suppose - All Of That Needs International Cooperation To Be Solved.

We Often Seem To Be Swimming Through Such A Miasma Of Sexual Violence - In Advertising, Television Programming, Heavy Metal, Rap, Films, And Worst Of All, In The Home - That Even First Amendment Absolutists Sometimes Daydream About How Nice It Would Be To Have Government-as-nanny Just Outlaw All This Effluent.

I Know: "guns Don't Kill People." But I Suspect That They Have Something To Do With It. If You Point Your Finger At Someone And Say, "bang, Bang, You're Dead," Not Much Actually Happens.

I've Always Found It Easier To Be Funny Than To Be Serious.

One Thing That Corporations Do Not Do Is Give Out Money Out Of The Goodness Of Their Hearts.

Populism Is The Simple Premise That Markets Need To Be Restrained By Society And By A Democratic Political System. We Are Not Socialists Or Communists, We Are Proponents Of Regulated Capitalism And, I Might Add, People Who Have Read American History.

I Prefer Someone Who Burns The Flag And Then Wraps Themselves Up In The Constitution Over Someone Who Burns The Constitution And Then Wraps Themselves Up In The Flag.

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Economic Globalization

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It's Hard To Convince People That You're Killing Them For Their Own Good.

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The Founders Were Right All Along, But The Results Are A Lot Funnier Than They Intended.

Being Slightly Paranoid Is Like Being Slightly Pregnant - It Tends To Get Worse.

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My Friend Mercedes Pena Made Me Get In Touch With My Emotions Just Before I Had A Breast Cut Off. Just As I Suspected, They Were Awful. "how Do You Latinas Do This All The Time In Touch With Your Emotions?" I Asked Her. "that's Why We Take Siestas," She Replied.

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Sometimes I Think Texas Exists As A Reality Check For Those Who Might Wander Too Far Toward The Precious.

Calling George Bush Shallow Is Like Calling A Dwarf Short.

As They Say Around The Texas Legislature, If You Can't Drink Their Whiskey, Screw Their Women, Take Their Money, And Vote Against 'em Anyway, You Don't Belong In Office.

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I Believe That Ignorance Is The Root Of All Evil. And That No One Knows The Truth.

There Is No Inverse Relationship Between Freedom And Security. Less Of One Does Not Lead To More Of The Other. People With No Rights Are Not Safe From Terrorist Attack.

We've Had Trickle Down Economics In The Country For Ten Years Now, And Most Of Us Aren't Even Damp Yet.

When Politicians Start Talking About Large Groups Of Their Fellow Americans As 'enemies,' It's Time For A Quiet Stir Of Alertness. Polarizing People Is A Good Way To Win An Election, And Also A Good Way To Wreck A Country.

On The Whole, I Prefer Not To Be Lectured On Patriotism By Those Who Keep Offshore Maildrops In Order To Avoid Paying Their Taxes.

California Is Now Close To Spending More On Prisons Than It Does On Higher Education - Surely The Death Warrant Of A Civilization.

Listen To The People Who Are Talking About How To Fix What's Wrong, Not The Ones Who Just Work People Into A Snit Over The Problems. Listen To The People Who Have Ideas About How To Fix Things, Not The Ones Who Just Blame Others.

It's All Very Well To Run Around Saying Regulation Is Bad, Get The Government Off Our Backs, Etc. Of Course Our Lives Are Regulated. When You Come To A Stop Sign, You Stop; If You Want To Go Fishing, You Get A License; If You Want To Shoot Ducks, You Can Shoot Only Three Ducks. The Alternative Is Dead Bodies At The Intersections, No Fish And No Ducks. Ok?

We Are The People Who Run This Country. We Are The Deciders. And Every Single Day, Every Single One Of Us Needs To Step Outside And Take Some Action To Help Stop This War. Raise Hell. Think Of Something To Make The Ridiculous Look Ridiculous. Make Our Troops Know We're For Them And Trying To Get Them Out Of There. Hit The Streets To Protest Bush's Proposed Surge. If You Can, Go To The Peace March In Washington On Jan. 27. We Need People In The Streets, Banging Pots And Pans And Demanding, 'stop It, Now!'

Nice Is A Pallid Virtue. Not Like Honesty Or Courage Or Perseverance. On The Other Hand, In A Nation Notably Lacking In Civility, There Is Much To Be Said For Nice.

I Believe All Southern Liberals Come From The Same Starting Point--race. Once You Figure Out They Are Lying To You About Race, You Start To Question Everything.

Politics Is Not A Picture On A Wall Or A Television Sitcom That You Can Decide You Don't Much Care For.

The Government Can Now Delve Into Personal And Private Records Of Individuals Even If They Cannot Be Directly Connected To A Terrorist Or Foreign Government. Bank Records, E-mails, Library Records, Even The Track Of Discount Cards At Grocery Stores Can Be Obtained On Individuals Without Establishing Any Connection To A Terrorist Before A Judge. According To The Los Angeles Times, Al Qaeda Uses Sophisticated Encryption Devices Freely Available On The Internet That Cannot Be Cracked. So The Terrorists Are Safe From Cyber-snooping, But We're Not.

Texas Is A Fine Place For Men And Dogs, But Hell On Women And Horses.

It's Hard To Argue Against Cynics - They Always Sound Smarter Than Optimists Because They Have So Much Evidence On Their Side.

One Function Of The Income Gap Is That The People At The Top Of The Heap Have A Hard Time Even Seeing Those At The Bottom. They Practically Need A Telescope. The Pharaohs Of Ancient Egypt Probably Didn't Was A Lot Of Time Thinking About The People Who Build Their Pyramids, Either.

Every Two Years, One Of The Most Hotly Contested Elections In Texas Is The Poll Taken Among Members Of The Capitol Press Corps To Determine Who Are Actually The Ten Stupidest Members Of The Legislature. Two Years Ago, There Were Thirty-seven Official Nominees And Several Write-ins.

As For George Bush Of Kennebunkport, Maine- Personally I Think He's Further Evidence That The Great Scriptwriter In The Sky Has An Overdeveloped Sense Of Irony.

What We Have Here, Fellow Citizens, Is A Crassly Egocentric, Raving Twit.

How The American Right Managed To Convince Itself That The Programs To Alleviate Poverty Are Responsible For The Consequences Of Poverty Will Someday Be Studied As A Notorious Mass Illusion.

Democracy Requires A Certain Relish For Confusion

Even I Felt Sorry For Richard Nixon When He Left; There's Nothing You Can Do About Being Born Liberal - Fish Gotta Swim And Hearts Gotta Bleed.

He Was So Narrow Minded He Could See Through A Keyhole With Both Eyes.

Good Thing We've Still Got Politics In Texas - Finest Form Of Free Entertainment Ever Invented.

I Am Not Anti-gun. I'm Pro-knife. Consider The Merits Of The Knife. In The First Place, You Have To Catch Up With Someone In Order To Stab Him. A General Substitution Of Knives For Guns Would Promote Physical Fitness. We'd Turn Into A Whole Nation Of Great Runners. Plus, Knives Don't Ricochet. And People Are Seldom Killed While Cleaning Their Knives.

The Recent Death Of Gene Mccarthy Reminded Me Of A Lesson I Spent A Long, Long Time Unlearning, So Now I Have To Re-learn It. It's About Political Courage And Heroes, And When A Country Is Desperate For Leadership. There Are Times When Regular Politics Will Not Do, And This Is One Of Those Times.

So Keep Fighting For Freedom And Justice, Beloveds.

Fighting For Freedom

The First Rule Of Holes: When You're In One Stop Digging.

Age Has Given Me What I Was Looking For My Entire Life - It Gave Me Me. It Provided Me The Time And Experience And Failures And Triumphs And Friends Who Helped Me Step Into The Shape That Had Been Waiting For Me All My Life.

I Dearly Love The State Of Texas, But I Consider That A Harmless Perversion On My Part, And Discuss It Only With Consenting Adults.

Any Nation That Can Survive What We Have Lately In The Way Of Government, Is On The High Road To Permanent Glory.

Everyone Knows [george W. Bush] Has No Clue, But No One There Has The Courage To Say It. I Mean, Good Gawd, The Man Is As He Always Has Been: Barely Adequate.

I'm Sorry That Government Involves Filling Out A Lot Of Forms. ... I'm Sorry Myself That We're Not Still On The Frontier, Where We Could All Tote Guns, Shoot Anything That Moved And Spit To Our Hearts' Content. But We Live In A Diverse And Crowded Country, And With Civilization Comes Regulation.

If You Ever Get To The Place Where Injustice Doesn't Bother You, You're Dead.

On Bill Clinton: "if Left To My Own Devices, I'd Spend All My Time Pointing Out That He's Weaker Than Bus-station Chili. But The Man Is So Constantly Subjected To Such Hideous And Unfair Abuse That I Wind Up Standing Up For Him On The General Principle That Some Fairness Should Be Applied. Besides, No One But A Fool Or A Republican Ever Took Him For A Liberal.

And The Funny Thing Is, I've Always Been An Optimist - It's Practically A Congenital Disorder With Me.

The Impulse To Make Ourselves Safer By Making Ourselves Less Free Is An Old One ... When We Are Badly Frightened, We Think We Can Make Ourselves Safer By Sacrificing Some Of Our Liberties. We Did It During The Mccarthy Era Out Of Fear Of Communism. Less Liberty Is Regularly Proposed As A Solution To Crime, To Pornography, To Illegal Immigration, To Abortion, To All Kinds Of Threats.

You Could Probably Prove, By Judicious Use Of Logarithms And Congruent Triangles, That Real Life Is A Lot More Like Soap Opera Than Most People Will Admit.

Americans Are Not Getting Screwed By The Republican Party. They're Getting Screwed By The Large Corporations That Bought And Own The Republican Party.

During A Recent Panel On The Numerous Failures Of American Journalism, I Proposed That Almost All Stories About Government Should Begin: “look Out! They're About To Smack You Around Again!

Having Breast Cancer Is Massive Amounts Of No Fun. First They Mutilate You; Then They Poison You; Then They Burn You. I Have Been On Blind Dates Better Than That.

Of Course, It Has Never Paid Much.

Some Days, I'd Feel Better With Punxsutawney Phil In The Oval Office - At Least He Doesn't Lie About The Weather.

What Stuns Me Most About Contemporary Politics Is Not Even That The System Has Been So Badly Corrupted By Money. It Is That So Few People Get The Connection Between Their Lives And What The Bozos Do In Washington And Our State Capitols.

The Thing About Democracy, Beloveds, Is That It Is Not Neat, Orderly, Or Quiet. It Requires A Certain Relish For Confusion.

I Still Believe In Hope - Mostly Because There's No Such Place As Fingers Crossed, Arkansas.

The Thing Is This: You Got To Have Fun While You're Fightin' For Freedom, 'cause You Don't Always Win.

Although A Life-long Fashion Dropout, I Have Absorbed Enough By Reading Harper's Bazaar While Waiting At The Dentist's To Have Grasped That The Purpose Of Fashion Is To Make A Statement. My Own Modest Statement, Discerned By True Cognoscenti, Is, "woman Who Wears Clothes So She Won't Be Naked.

The Advantage Of Being Able To Identify Sin Is That You Can Go Out And Do It, And Enjoy It.

Satire Is Traditionally The Weapon Of The Powerless Against The Powerful.

I Think Most Of Us Become Nicer As We Get Older, Less Judgmental, Less Full Of Certitude; Life Tends To Knock A Few Corners Of Us As We Go Through. Cancer, Divorce, Teenagers, And Other Plagues Make Us Give Up On Expecting Ourselves - Or Life - To Be Perfect, Which Is A Real Relief.

Manners Are Just A Formal Expression Of How You Treat People.

Be Outrageous, Ridicule The Fraidy-cats, Rejoice In All The Oddities That Freedom Can Produce.

In Texas, We Do Not Hold High Expectations For The [governor's] Office; It's Mostly Been Occupied By Crooks, Dorks And The Comatose.

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