The sheer mindlessness of the far right never ceases to astound me. Just when I think that humanity can't possibly be dragged much lower and made much more inhuman, someone bellows something from their slack-jawed mouth across the internet that makes me realise that not all of our species is actually sentient. This morning, Ian Martin (@IanMartin) tweeted a link to a trending topic on Twitter. This topic was #2wordsliberalshate, and contains some of the most appalling, scary and downright imbecilic political comments it has ever been my misfortune to read. My personal favourite (for proving to me that most Americans haven't got a clue what liberalism actually means) is the way that variations on the words 'Proud Americans' crop up with such regularity. Some actually try to be political ('Afghanistan War', 'Shooting Range'), some are genuinely funny ('Republican Party', 'George Bush') but most of them are sadly massively misinformed. Some of these people actually feel the need to tweet incessantly, creating a foul river of bile towards people who don't share their political idealogies and demonising them, painting them as subhumans. I'm going to pick one, a chap called @CREinstein, whose bio on Twitter states "I am a Conservative Republican, Elected Precinct Committeeman, I am an expert on matters of security and some Statistical fields. Veteran and Truck Driver". His tweets demonstrate exactly how schoolyard and pathetic US political debate really is - this guy actually is in the political system, and here's a selection of what he got up to on Twitter this morning. There were well over a hundred tweets to choose from, by all means go and pick your own and let him know what you thought of them:
"Bush Won" (Yes, after the results were 'recounted' in his home state where he has no influence WHATSOEVER over such things...)
"The Truth" (That great friend of the far right, The Truth. Such as hiding most of the contents of the US PATRIOT act from the house until the very morning of the vote when nobody could read it properly to see what it was they were voting for. The Right likes the Truth...on their own terms, and when it paints them in the right way. That ain't a leftie thing, it's a political thing full-stop.)
"In God..." (He apparently doesn't understand the difference between 'liberal' and 'atheist'. There are plenty of Christian liberals and plenty of atheist Republicans around that might be able to explain this to him)
"No drugs" (Are we including alcohol and tobacco in there? Or are you still happy to peddle two of the most lethal drugs to the masses so long as you get your cut in taxes?)
"Pro-life" (Again with the confusion between liberalism and atheism.)
"Hetero sexual" (Given the number of right wingers who get caught out in homoerotic romps, this is a little bit like throwing stones whilst living in a Victorian Conservatory)
"No unions" (Yes, because then unscrupulous employers can get away with really treading all over the working people, pull paid holidays without notice, force people to work at a couple of hours' notice, make them work with minimal or absent safety measures, etc. In other words, the cornerstones of the Right that they try damned hard to hide [there's that pesky thing, The Truth, again] so that they can get the ordinary folk to vote for them in elections without appearing to be a bunch of rapacious greedy rich cunts who would happily work everyone into an early grave as long as profits were up.)
"pay bills" (Because liberals never pay their bills. Not sure where this one comes from. Some Republicunts fevered imagination, like the whole 'Death Panels' thing.)
"Rent due" (And they never pay rent either? Wow, I wonder how so many liberal people actually own their own homes, or make rent payments without fail if they don't believe in paying bills or their rent.)
"unbiased news" (Like Fox? 'Cause they're really neutral.)
"Jesus Christ" (And again with the whole religion / politics confusion.)
"The Bible" (Ditto)
"After life" (Ditto)
"Ten Commandments" (Fuck's sake! Someone get this man to a nightclass or something.)
"Fight Terrorism" (Like those well known Iraqi terrorists? I think possibly he misunderstands, either due to a lack of general intelligence or because he purposefully avoids actually looking at the issue, the difference between liberals hating 'fighting terrorism' and liberals hating governments using terrorism as a bullshit and flimsy excuse for invading a country, butchering tens of thousands of it's man, women and children, and stealing their oil.)
"Personal Rights" (Durrr, you mean the things that is the entire purpose of unions and liberal human rights organisations? Are you trying to have your cake and eat it and also call it a ham at the same time?)
"Personal Property" (Oh, this is a special stretch that shows a complete failure to grasp the span of viewpoints across different poiltical idealogies. Apparently he now ignores the vast gulf that lies between 'liberalism' and 'communism'. Jesus, man, do some basic reading in political theory and realise what a dumb shit you sound making statements like this.)
"Full transparency" (Because the right wing's track record in this area is so unblemished. [Makes a coughing noise that sounds suspiciously like 'PATRIOT act'])
"Patriot act" (Yes, liberals hate this, just as should any US citizen who likes personal rights [quoting you here], full transparency [and again], The Truth [are we getting the point of this yet?])
"US Army"
"US Navy"
"US Airforce"
"US Marines" (So, that and the previous would be liberals...and the rest of the world, then.)
"Coast Guard" (Citation, please. I'm dying to hear of a link to liberals hating coast guards. I suspect it's an allusion to border controls, but it just sounds hilarious to think that this guy imagines liberals all protesting on the set of Baywatch or something.)
"Obama's Records" (Actually I'd imagine the Right hate that more, seeing as how they were made to look like a bunch of incompetent, bullshitting, mudslinging baboons over this whole issue.)
"Welfare reform" (I think there are a hell of a lot of US citizens, liberal or not, who would actually welcome welfare reform - just not in the way that the NeoCons would like to reform it. Apparently someone in the right misspelled 'removal'.)
"Any evidence" (Sorry, when did this turn into #2wordschristiansandneoconshate? Liberals love evidence. It's what they thrive on, because it's there and doesn't involve being hoodwinked by jingoism and religious idiocy.)
"Ugly people" (This from a political party that, if they were all trapped in a burning building, would a) spontaneously ignite via their copious hair products and b) create a poison cloud of burned plastic, botox and silicone that would kill wildlife in a ten mile radius for a decade.)
"Fried Chicken" (I'm a very liberal person, and I, like many other very liberal people I know, love fried chicken. NYOM. Again, I suspect an allusion to a fallacious view, this time the view that all liberals are vegetarians.)
"All Meat" (A-ha. Here it is. All liberals are apparently vegetarians. What an oddly limited world this man perceives. I wonder what he sees when he goes to the shops. I suspect he feels all swollen up with manly patriotic pride whenever he sees someone with a side of beef in their shopping trolley, weeping a quiet tear at the fundamental rightness of that person and all they stand for.)
"School prayers" (Hang on, isn't seperation of the church and state enshrined in the Constitution, that thing that NeoCons keep on harping on about being the cornerstone of their 'perfect society'?)
"Christmas Tree" (Of course all liberals hate Christmas trees. I recall the popular Xmas tree demonstrations that raged across England in the winter of 2005 where vast hordes of filthy stinking vegetarian beautiful people raged across the nation burning Xmas trees.)
"equal justice" (You mispelled 'unequal'.)
"victim's rights" (Erm, completely failing to understand what liberalism is - most victim's rights campaigners are liberals. But I think we're getting that this guy might be a little misinformed in this area.)
"No recycling" (This isn't a liberal thing. If your brain pan isn't filled with scooped up dogshit, you'd be against people demanding an end to recycling. It's about our descendants not having to live in a world full of our own rubbish.)
"Intelligent Design" (No offense, but only a retard would take a look at the mountain of evidence for evolution on one hand, and the small man fervently insisting that you ignore all of that and look in his mouldy old 1500 year old book on the other, and turn away from the evidence to wander off with the little man...That ain't a liberal thing, that's an intelligence thing.)
At this point we are treated to a snide aside to another sycophant - "rofl... This is, as I told someone else, like taking candy from a whole nursery for me! Muwahahahaha"
My gods, he actually thinks that he is being incisive and clever, rather than showing himself up to be a terrifyingly ill-informed and ignorant individual who is as guilty as any racist of painting an entire group of people with made-up, unrealistic, fallacious and downright contradictory stereotypes. He was far from the only one making such a tirade but I figured he'd be a good one to look at as he is clearly actively involved in the Republican party and thus provides a good insight into the how they view their opponents - the answer is quite scary, and makes us look back at the Dubya years and think "Ah, now it all makes sense." I knew the Republicans hated liberalism, but they confuse it with atheism, communism, vegetarianism, and, apparently, anticoastguardarianism. Is it done deliberately to misinform voters? Or do they genuinely believe it? I get the impression that this guy genuinely believes it. His comment at the end there sounds as though he quite genuinely thinks that he can see off any liberal with his points. I wonder if he's actually debated any of these issues with a real liberal, one with facts and figures at their fingertips. I somehow doubt it. But then I think that arguing with the NeoCons of America is akin to arguing with the religious. The problem will always be overcoming their ignorance and their unwillingness to listen or understand evidence. I'm too much of a realist to believe that a revolution will ever come, but opinions like this make me wish it would, because frankly, to have people who actually think this way make up the membership of one of the major political parties in the most powerful, biggest polluting, and most dangerous nation in the world scares the piss out of me.
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