I wish I just didn’t have any common sense, access to information and the need to correct people when they repeat really stupid shit, like the lady who told me last night that “senator’s children don’t have to repay their college loans.”
“Uh, that’s bullshit,” I said, trying to be polite.
“A very good friend told me this,” she said.
“And where’d he get it from – Fox News?” I said. “Look, this is what I do for a living. If this were true, I’d know about it.” I whipped out my phone and did a Google search. The only thing I could find was on some wacky wingnut site, whose author said he “heard it on Fox news.”
“And frankly,” I said, “Senator’s kids don’t need loans, since most of them are millionaires.”
Then someone else started talking about that 60 Minutes show about how the poor corporations take everything overseas because the taxes are so high here. “If they lowered the taxes, maybe we could get some jobs back,” she said with naked longing. (Several of the people there were still looking for work.)
I told her that the CEO from Cisco was, well, lying. “The real tax rate for Cisco is 10% after all their deductions,” I said. “What they really want is the ability to bring all that overseas money back here without paying any taxes on it, and they’re saying they can create jobs if they get the exemption.
“But the last time they tried this in 2004, they got the exemption and they didn’t create one single job.”
They just looked at me.
I spend more time trying to put out these little fires, and you know, I don’t think anyone ever believes me.
Take a number, sister. I just gave up trying to engage in discussion, but I admit I retain some sense of fascination with them (like monkeys picking fleas off each other) and why they aren’t able to comprehend anything beyond what Fox News or their preacher tells them. They just give you that empty Bachmann stare. Sometimes I think they all have chips embedded when they join/vote/attach themselves to the Tea Party/GOP/Fox News. When the chip detects common sense, logic or the truth trying to enter the brain of the disciple, it alerts the Master Computer, which then blocks any voluntary synapse discharge in the brain. The Master Computer takes over the dialogue. Hence, blank stare. The Master Computer is housed at Fox News with hubs in various other locations. That’s the only explanation I can come up with.
Nobody believes me either.
It might be interesting for you to read the following article by William James about how people resist changing their opinions.
http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/opinion.html
People arrive at a system of beliefs that satisfies and makes causes the world to make sense to them. Once they have done that, they will fight tooth and nail to avoid changing the smallest part of it.
Susie – I feel your pain. I work for state government and have a coworker who listens to Rush and Glenn on the radio, another who constantly rails against paying taxes (I have to BITE my tongue not to ask if she looks at who signs her paycheck), and a couple who were appalled that we took unpaid time off to attend a pretty large rally at the Montana Capitol yesterday – buses from all over the state. Still, since we haven’t had a raise in two years and the whopping 1% next year and 3% the next was just voted down in the legislature, I am hooping they may soon see the light. BTW gas is $3.45.
The stupid, the willfully uninformed will kill this nation
no amount of facts matter to these cretins
(apologies to cretins)
their world is based on their belief systems so
be it religion, or teabaggism or Foxism
all they need to know is WHAT to think
(sigh)
Yes, little fires. Since I cannot help myself, even though the willfully uninformed of this nation continue to be willfully uninformed, I will try to direct everyone’s attention to the poorest places in the U.S., not that anyone cares except me, apparently. No amount of facts matter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Ridge_Indian_Reservation
The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (Wazí Aháŋhaŋ Oyáŋke in Lakota, also called Pine Ridge Agency) is an Oglala Sioux Native American reservation located in the U.S. state of South Dakota. Pine Ridge was established in the southwest corner of South Dakota on the Nebraska border and consists of 3,468.86 sq mi (8,984.306 km²) of land area, the eighth-largest reservation in the United States, larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined.
The predominant land comprising the reservation lies within Shannon County and Jackson County, two of the poorest counties in the U.S. There are extensive off-reservation trust lands, mostly in adjacent Bennett County, and also extending into adjacent Pine Ridge, Nebraska in Sheridan County, just south of the community of Pine Ridge, South Dakota, the administrative center and largest community within the reservation. The 2000 census population of the reservation was 15,521, however in a study conducted by Colorado State University and accepted by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated the resident population to reach 28,787.[1]
I know. Mostly it’s all blah, blah, blah.
The right has a well organized, well funded megaphone, where they perpetuate these lies.
We refuse to create a well organized, well funded megaphone to perpetuate the truth.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
Just what is the truth, Carolyn? Please tell me and then maybe we can make them all accountable with our MEGAPHONE.
Yeah.
They’re not just willfully uninformed, they’re proudly and loudly ignorant. At the few family gatherings I subject myself to, I’ve given up trying to refute the ignorance and hang out with the kids, kicking a ball around or giving art lessons.
Well, just me, a tiny portion of the truth is what Susie posted.
If we got up off our asses and quit building silos around ourselves, we might be able to build something that would drown out all the lies to the point where we didn’t have to keep putting out little fires.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
Carolyn, if only I could decipher wtf you were talking about we might have a conversation. No offense but you say nothing.
The fuck is that?
Who are you suggesting we make accountable? You seem to be full of hot air.
Silos? SILOS? Please somebody hold me back.
Plus later, if they find out you were right, they absolutely will not remember you said it first.