There's an excellent piece in The Week by Ryan Cooper titled "The Conservative Victimhood Complex Has Made America Impossible To Govern," that should be recommended reading for anyone who's worried about what's going on in this country. Spoiler alert, Cooper isn't very optimistic about our chances.
Because while the coronavirus is currently sweeping across our country, a more nefarious pandemic has been devastating it for years. It's called ignorance, and unlike COVID-19, there doesn't appear to be any hope of a vaccine any time soon.
Case in point, the above diatribe that I recently found on someone's Facebook page and copied. It starts off with the typical "a friend of mine" opening. Whenever I see or hear this, I'm reminded of that famous expression, "You know they say." In case you're wondering, "they say" is code for "what I'm about to tell you is strictly my opinion, but I wanted to dress it up and make it more believable, so I'll just say 'they say' and maybe you won't think I'm full of shit." Sorry to disappoint, but you are full of shit and using a plural doesn't make you any less so.
Next tip off that the "author" has a hidden agenda is the use of the term "democrat members of Congress." This is a tactic used by the far Right whenever they're talking about Democrats. They'll use terms like the Democrat Party instead of the Democratic Party. They do it, primarily, to get a rise out of Democrats and sadly most of us fall for it. However, in this instance, it's a dead giveaway.
After that, the letter, if you can even call it that, unravels into the sort of rant one would expect to hear on Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. To call it incoherent would be an insult to the word incoherent. Let's break it down, no pun intended.
"Democrats are literally giddy with the results the virus is having on the economy. They eagerly compare unemployment and market numbers every morning in the halls, offices and over phone conferences, laughing and mocking Trump as they watch the economy he built crumble."
Wow, so much to unpack. Where to start? First off, giddy? I'm from New York and I'm a Democrat and I'm anything but giddy. In fact, I'm fit to be tied. The assertion that any member of Congress, Democrat or Republican, is laughing during this crisis I find to be offensive. But not nearly as offensive as the suggestion that Trump built this economy. For the record, he inherited a growing economy from Barack Obama and through his own negligence destroyed it. Obama didn't play golf for six weeks and call the coronavirus a hoax while it spread throughout the country, and it wasn't Obama who dismantled the White House pandemic response team that could've come up with a workable plan for combating the virus. That was Trump's own doing. Period! Despite what he said in the Rose Garden, he IS responsible for his own messes.
"They are actually excited about what the virus is doing to America during an election year and the opportunities it presents to go after Trump."
Right, so I suppose the author believes that absent this pandemic, Democrats would've had nothing to go after Trump on. As if he was a cross between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. For your information, this virus will likely impact voters of color - the base of the Democratic Party - the hardest, since many of them live in parts of the country that have seen the largest outbreaks and a lot of them don't have adequate health insurance. Also, a good number of polling places in those areas might will be closed in November. So I hardly think "they" are excited at all. More likely "they" are deeply concerned, as would anybody with a conscience and a soul.
But here's my favorite...
"He said Pelosi is ordering/threatening democratic state governors to keep their states shut down as long as possible assuring them they will be rewarded when they take the Senate and the White House."
Wow, I didn't realize Nancy Pelosi was so powerful. Someone should tell her. Riddle me this: If she's that powerful, why is Trump still president? Don't bother answering; it was a rhetorical question. Funny, though, how the author forgot to mention the Republican state governors like Mike DeWine and Larry Hogan, who also have kept their states at least partially shut down. I guess Pelosi only issues threats to Republicans in a special code that morons like the this asshole can't decipher. Interesting, too, how Pelosi keeps getting under the skin of conservatives. She's part of their unholy trinity: the other two are Obama and, wait for it, Saul Alinsky. Thought I'd forgotten about him, did you? By the way, our "reward" will be seeing this malignancy of a presidency come to an end next January, and for that, no one has to threaten us. Millions of us will simply show up at the polls. I, for one, will wade through a toxic waste dump to vote Trump out of office.
I wish I could say that the above "letter" was an anomaly. Sadly, it isn't. As Forrest Gump used to say, "Stupid is as stupid does." And when it comes to this kind of mis-informed thinking, like shit through a goose, there doesn't appear to be any end in sight. All the knowledge of the universe may as well be written on tissue paper for all the good it does. When so many people have accepted intellectual mediocrity as the new norm, it's pretty damn hard to raise the bar.
We're way past the point of arguing about whether tax cuts pay for themselves and whether having the world's largest military presence is such a good thing given the state of our infrastructure. We've now descended into a world where subjective opinion and the objective truth are indistinguishable from one another; where the "they sayers" are on a level playing field with authoritative experts; and where conspiracy theories are trotted out as alternative facts for the gullible.
America elected a reality TV star for president, and in the process lost its fucking mind.
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