Even Us Liberals Have To Deal With Annoying Loudmouths

Editor's note: the point of this post is not to target Bernie Sanders supporters. My intention is to talk about an experience I had with one person in particular and convey that I'm not a fan of his "agree with me or you're not a real liberal!" style of radio/podcasting.

From the website Dictionary.com:

obnoxious: adjective

1.

highly objectionable or offensive; odious:

obnoxious behavior.

2.

annoying or objectionable due to being a showoff or attracting undue attention to oneself:

an obnoxious little brat.

3.

Archaic. exposed or liable to harm, evil, or anything objectionable.

4.

Obsolete. liable to punishment or censure; reprehensible.

I love watching The Young Turks on You Tube. I try to catch clips and stories by the Internet broadcast group whenever I get the chance because you do get to hear the stories that the mainstream media, otherwise don't usually report on, and their views are proudly progressive. I may not always completely agree with the overall points that Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparin and Jordan Chariton try to lay out, but I still respect their reporting and their viewpoint. Well, most of the people on the network save one comedian, but I'll get to that later.

No other viewpoints and overall feelings & opinions were challenged and argued over (through me talking to a computer monitor) than the election cycle of 2016. To begin with, TYT felt the Bern, while I was with Her. Cenk and company made the point that the establishment was firmly stacked in Clinton's favor, I felt that Bernie knew what he was getting into when he chose the Democratic Party to launch is presidential aspirations, and while he clobbered both Trump and Clinton in turning out the youth vote, Bernie did a poor job trying to cater to another vital section of the Democratic base -- African & Hispanic Americans and women voters. 

Their point was that the system was rigged against him the whole time, I countered that simply 7 million more Democratic voters liked Hillary and her platform more than Bernie's and that if the Super Delegates were going to flip for the senator from Vermont, it would have been during the Super Tuesday contests in March, where Bernie needed to start piling up convincing victories and eat at Hillary's pledged delegates count.

And on and on down the line. At some point, after Hillary had all-but locked up the nomination and the "Bernie Or Bust!" movement took off, I was pleading with jaded progressives to understand that while Hillary isn't perfect, she is a better, more viable alternative to Donald Trump, and that she was on out side on various issues on social media, with close friends who were deeply in the tank for Bernie and again, through arguing with my computer screen whilst watching various pro-Bernie guests on TYT.

In the end, through their reporting through the primary season, as well as their coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, I came to the conclusion that some of us liberals were at a crossroads. I wasn't going to convince the Bernie or Bust crowd to come home and support the Democratic candidate, and that I'd have to accept it and stop trying to preach on the sidewalk about it, and that the same would go for everyone else who was for Clinton. 

Which leads me to the person on TYT that I simply cannot stand -- Jimmy Dore.

For the last week or so, I've been watching clips of his podcast show on You Tube and I've noticed a trend: even though I understand where he's coming from and why he refuses to pull the lever for HRC in the fall, I simply find that he comes off sounding like an angry, bitter prick about it. But again, I remind myself of two things:

1. I'm arguing on my tablet and/or laptop. People can hear me, and they'll start to think I'm a few french fries short of a Happy Meal if I keep it up. And...
2. There's nothing I can do to convince him and the rest of the Bernie or Bust crowd that Hillary isn't our enemy, or that this isn't a choice between bad and worse candidates.

But last night, I stumbled onto Dore's latest rant.....

Allow me to respond to some of what Mr. Dore had to say:

1. Yes, Donald Trump is a buffoon, but he's also playing to the worst aspects of our nature are as Americans -- our fears, anger, intolerance and prejudice, and that sort of rhetoric still has a potent effect our politics. And yes, the continued stories about her damn email server during her tenure at the State Department and her lack of clarity about the whole affair are factors as to why he's gaining on Hillary in the national polls, but post-convention bounces don't last forever -- case in point, Trump was within the margin of error in many polls where he was behind a few percentage points, tied or had a slim lead nationally after he wrapped up the nomination and after the Republican convention in Cleveland. She had almost a month of upwards trending poll numbers. A month. Even with Trump gaining on her nationally, she still has the electoral map on her side in key swing states like Virginia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Carolina and Ohio where she has the lead. 
2. Dude, if you want to call her a bitch then just say it. I'd respect you more if you just dropped the pretense.
3. Kindly, and I do mean this from the bottom of my heart: Go fuck yourself! You don't like Hillary (is loathe a more apt word choice here?) -- you don't like that she's the Democratic nominee for president and you'd much prefer that Bernie Sanders had won, and that's fine. I'm not going to try and change your mind or convince you in any way that the Bernie or Bust route only helps Trump win the White House. But let's drop the bullshit and be honest with each other: you were never going to vote for her, period. Not even if she came out for a plan that would eventually grant Medicare for all, or if she came out for re-installing Glass-Steagall. And again, that's your right to hold that viewpoint. In fact, let's be even more honest, this time with the Bernie or Bust movement you belong to....
4. The people who are Bernie or Bust, much like yourself, were never going to vote for Hillary in the first place! She may have adopted some of Bernie's stances at the convention and now they have become part of the Democratic platform for this election cycle, and, thanks to the activism of the Bernie supporters during the race, you guys were able to move Hillary far to the left than she probably would have liked,  but at the end of the day, if it wasn't Bernie Sanders then it was Jill Stein or write-in Sanders on the 8th of November, but it sure as hell wasn't going to be Hillary Clinton. I'll repeat myself: I don't care anymore. I'm not going to try and talk you out of it, because that's just a lost cause. But stop acting like you want her to court you guys, when you're telling her to go fuck herself! But here's the real reason I'm pissed off at you, Mr. Dore:
5. The minute you essentially said the lot of us who are supporting HRC are phony liberals and are supporting a terrible fucking person, that's the moment that I refuse to listen to another fucking word you have to say. 

Donald Trump is a horrible person for ripping of veterans by claiming one of his websites goes directly to charities for vets, but in reality, it went to his own campaign fund. 

Donald Trump is a horrible person for conning various people while attending Trump University, all for the sake of making a profit.

Donald Trump is a horrible person because he's threatening children of parents who came to the U.S. illegally that he'll tear their families apart and deport them back to Mexico.

A horrible person like Hillary wouldn't have taken cases where children were abused during her time at Yale Law School, nor volunteered to help give legal advice to poor people for free during her postgraduate years.

A horrible person like Hillary wouldn't have dedicated much of her time as First Lady and most of her career to speaking out for for the rights of women, or help pass legislation that helped special needs children find a decent home, or create a national organization that helps women who have been abused.

A horrible person like Hillary wouldn't have helped get S-CHIP passed in the late 90's, so kids could get the health care then needed and their parents who were low-income wouldn't have to fret over paying costly medical bills.

And you damn-sure don't get to tell the lot of us we aren't "real progressives" for which candidate we support from our party. 

So I say again: kindly go fuck yourself, you fucking asshole prick fuckface! There's enough smug doucebags like a Sean Hannity, a Rush Limbaugh, etc., running around out there in the world of talk radio and in podcast land, and your brand of being a dismissive, loud-mouthed jerk, to me, gives progressives and liberals a bad look.