Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Eye Opening

‘Nothing can be more offensive than to be lectured about what you know by someone who clearly does not know.’ — Robert Stacy McCain        (hat tip to dyspepsiageneration)
Just spent an evening with family, and one of the progressive ones was among them.  She and my step-son got into a discussion on politics that wandered through basically the limited government arguments -- it went on for quite some time.... anyway eventually it got around to Tea Partiers, and she said something about Tea Partiers killing a policeman in Indiana, and that it was happening "all over".

I'd been pretty much biting my tounge up to that point, which I tend to do in the name of family harmony.  But of course, this is the same person who triggered the "Stop an Echo" post.

I had not to this point mentioned I was a Tea Partier, but I decided that it was time for me to "come out" to her as such.  I told her that cop killing is so far removed from what the Tea Partiers stand for that it just wasn't even plausible.  I said she needed to send me the article.

Well I know she can't find it - not because such an article doesn't exist, but because she just can't.  But then I vaguely remembered a policeman killing in Indiana or Ohio a while back that I think the MSM tried to tie to the Tea Parties.

I haven't found that one yet, but I did find the Pentagon dude (John Patrick Bedell) and the attempt to tie it to the Tea Parties.  Of course, all just speculation due to some general anti-government screed.   Naturally, everybody knows that nobody on the left ever made an anti-government screed, and clearly everybody on the right is a "Teabagger" and therefore hateful, racist, crazy, and violent -- or so the story goes.

Also found similar attempted connections with Joseph Stack, the kamakaze dude.

But no direct connections were made to Tea Partiers in the two stories I read about.  They just used the term "right-wing".  Apparently anyone with any gripe against any government agency means "right-wing" to her.  And, again, to her, "right-wing" = "Tea Party".

A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not necessarily a square.  Trapezoids are four-sided objects as well.  But they're neither rectangles nor squares.  That's a thing I know.  I should add that. 

On the way home she was talking to my wife about "these Tea Partiers" and all their "violence" and how I was going to end up just like my dad (who believes you shouldn't pay your taxes and that 9/11 is an inside job and that the U.S. Government has a machine that can cause hurricanes ... but I digress).

At any rate, I guess I should scour the net for that story about the Indiana/Ohio guy.

What got really funny is she's always going off on Fox News, then of course does the oh-so-open-minded "well they're all biased".  She was apparently quite concerned that my step-son would discuss politics especially with someone he disagreed with, and seemed proud that she never discussed politics with anyone who didn't agree with her.

So my wife asked her how she ever got the other side of the story.

"Oh, I read."

"What do you read?"

"Newsweek.  Time."

My wife said "well, they're a little biased."

"No they're not."

What are ya gonna do?

6 comments:

tim said...

"What are ya gonna do? "

Duct tape your head.

philmon said...

I think that one's up for Comment of the Year ;-)

I'm still laughing every time I remember it.

Cylar said...

It seems like every otherwise conservative family has a couple of these airheads running around, doesn't it? Usually a step-something or a something-in-law.

It's certainly the case in mine.

jeffmon said...

She may be a part of the great, squishy middle, those whose opinions blow whichever way the winds blow. This middle is the most troublesome bloc at the polls. We know how the committed right and left will vote, and they seem to be roughly the same size. The capricious middle decides elections.

Don't waste time trying to convince leftists. We have to lead the middle to the truth.

philmon said...

She's not the squishy middle. She's definitely left.

This just in on that front: The press was hard on Clinton, and easy on Bush.

Up is down. Black is white.

Because Bush should have been investigated for all kinds of things and he wasn't (??!!??). When I asked her "like what"? ... she said "well I couldn't tell you NOW."

You're right. Waste of time. If it weren't for the "violence" in the Tea Parties charge she made, I'd still be biting my tounge.

Cylar said...

It doesn't seem fair that the middle 20%-40% of the spectrum has so much power, does it?

A relative handful of voters in each state decide who the state's whole plate of electoral votes goes to, and with that, the entire election. It's much the same story with the senators each state elects.

Sadly, these moderates are often the most poorly informed and touchy-feely of all.

They're the kind that flip a coin in the voting booth or write in "Mickey Mouse." Yeah, generations of braver and better men fought and bled and died, so some moron can do that behind the curtain before heading back home to catch up on "Lost" and "American Idol."