Ice Cream Castles
For whatever reason, and there are many possible ones, political disaffection is measured differently on the left and right. Lefties, as charter members of the reality based community, tend to wait for evidence of malfeasance before they get upset about it, whereas righties can work themselves up into a serious wardrobe malfunction and/or Depends moment based on something that exists only in their gangrenous, foul-smelling brains. Paradoxically as it may seem, lefties write sternly worded letters and blog posts, fretting amongst themselves when a President, say, bankrupts the country, abolishes half of the bill of rights, or somesuch, while righties defiantly take to the streets and urgently plot coups when they’re told that something a President might do, or knows someone who once thought of doing, could potentially upset them and their cramped and delusional worldview.
The process is as familiar as it is insulting. Lefties are vilified as being afflicted with some sort of derangement syndrome and called traitors when they point out glaringly obvious facts about concrete events: the President lied us into a costly, delusional, and catastrophic war, the Republican Party revels in medieval and appalling torture, the President hands the treasury over to his cronies, and it’s MoveOn and the Dixie Chicks that end up in hot water. Righties imagine that the President isn’t a US citizen, that he’s setting up death camps, and we’re about to become Communists, Nazis, or what have you, and Glenn Beck gets his own show and Dick Cheney’s whole family gets to go on TV to wax apocalyptic about it. Reality, afflicted as it is with that discrediting liberal bias, lies splattered in the street like an Afghan wedding party, while fever dreams hatched in a trailer park somewhere become Tonight’s Top Story, night after dumbfounding night. We report, you decide.
Health care is but one example: one side withholds judgement until they see that the eventual bill is just another corporate handout that creates more problems than it solves, and a small minority of them manages to launch a deserved Bronx Cheer, while the other side erupts into a frenzy of Commie/Socialism/Death Panels before any tangible legislation is produced, and darkly foretells the End of Our Freedoms. Guess which side commands the overwhelming voice and media attention in the discussion?
The wars are another: one side withholds judgement until they see that the eventual decision is just another corporate handout that creates more problems than it solves, and a small minority of them manages to launch a deserved Bronx Cheer, while the other side erupts into a frenzy of Islamofascist/ terrorist-coddling/Blame America First before any tangible decision is produced, and darkly foretells the End of Our Freedoms. See a pattern here?
It’s impossible, of course, to argue with people whose fears are so cockamamie and whose pronouncements are so deliberately misleading and bonkers, but in America’s media landscape, argue with them we must, usually in a 1-3 matchup, and the bonkers tends to win the day, because if nothing else, as that hack from Politico put it, it’s interesting. Interesting, like a train wreck or killing spree, with which such tiresome and boring debates must compete, usually less than successfully, on the nightly news.
In our reality TV-sodden world, Ice Cream Castles in the Air are set up against dreary old facts, and everyone loves ice cream, even Dick Cheney. But as the saying goes, shit, even when mixed with ice cream, isn’t improved, and the ice cream is pretty much ruined. Please, someone alert the media.
Ice cream for patriots who hate those communist hippies, Ben & Jerry.
http://starspangledicecream.com/new/new-icecream.htm
I guess that bunch would sooner die(t) than eat “Cherry Garcia.”
“righties defiantly take to the streets and urgently plot coups when they’re told that something a President might do, or knows someone who once thought of doing, could potentially upset them and their cramped and delusional worldview.”
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Yeah, remember all those Republicans setting stuff on fire at the Democratic National Convention? And slashing the tires of rented vans in Milwaukee along about election time? Seems they went ape in Seattle a couple years back, too. Pretty scary, those pot-bellied old bald guys running around in their bermudas and black socks waving their putters at the cops.
If you’ll recall, Iranian-level repression reigned at both conventions in 2004, and Bush moved through the country like a 3rd world dictator, shunning public appearances for eight years. For good reason. He was deservedly hated. Same in Seattle; the WTO shares responsibility for the collapse of all but our richest classes, and if the right was too dumb and partisan to see that, it’s your problem, not mine. The point is the same… legitimate grievances versus looney and stupid ones fostered by Dick Armey and Glenn Beck. Thanks for helping me make that point.
““righties defiantly take to the streets”
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You’re correct, the delegates to the Republican Convention in St.Paul in 2008 did have to “take to the streets” in order to stumble from the auditorium to the saloon and then to stagger back to their hotel rooms. And the “Iranian-level repression” there was implemented by a city regime more indoctrinated with left-wing mental illness than Chairman Mao’s personal laundry crew.
What is it about righty discourse that it always involves a “snappy” one liner of dubious relevance? Chairman Mao’s laundry crew? WTF? And if St. Paul is so indoctrinated, as you say, what about every other large city? Do real Americans like yourself only live exurbs and/or some four-stoplight shithole? I guess that explains the ignorance, racism, and insularity.
Certainly true that the bozos ten to win news cycles. It’s news as roadside accident, to a degree, people can’t resist gawking. But I think there’s also a decidedly political aspect to it.
For instance, most of the truly unhinged now – including the “dry” unhinged, such as Dick Cheney – are on the right, and also tend to get the most attention (DFHs and their rallies, no matter how big, inspire a giant yawn from the media). I think this has to do with an ingrained identification in the national subconscious of conservative white Christians with Real Mericans – even, or especially, among a news media that’s paranoid about its “authenticity.”
…And terrified of being called “liberal.” Trouble is, to avoid that horrid fate, they must studiously avoid calling liars liars, which benefits only the liars. They get called liberal anyway.
I cannot recall offhand any traditional media outlet ever asking teabaggers what sort, if any, health coverage they have; how often they’re able to see a dentist; how many wage increases they’ve seen, and so on.
Yet out pops the “Give me my liberty, you keep the change” stuff which translated seems to mean “Just as our forefathers had the freedom to die before their time so we, too, demand that right!”
Alas.
Asking such impertinent questions to a gun-toting mob would require courage the bobbleheads simply don’t have, and from the footage I’ve seen, the dentistry question answers itself.
More uninformed left-wing poppycock. The signers of the Declaration of Independence lived, on average, to the age of 68. This would include individuals like Thomas Lynch, Jr. of South Carolina, who never returned from an ocean voyage in his thirtieth year. Two of the signers lived into their nineties and fourteen lived to be 80 or over, 25% of the total. Typical of intellectual bantam-weights, you make assertions that you want to believe without making the slightest effort to see if they have any basis in reality. CH refers to that as lying.
Moi? Bantamweight? Figure skating rather than pugilism is more my thing.
As for no basis in reality, there’s that American Journal of Public Health that found some 45,000 people a year die from lack of health care.
However, your evidence is much better than mine: Two of the signers lived into their nineties and fourteen lived to be 80 or over, 25% of the total.
That they were among the elite (better diet, more $$, etc.) doesn’t seem to matter to you.
You’re right, my evidence is much better. I got the names of each one of the individuals that I’m talking about, the year they were born and the year that they died, and the cause of death of most of them. Those are called facts. What have you got on your exactly 45,000 deaths? Got any names, autopsy results, headstone rubbings? What you have are statistics, which aren’t quite the same as facts, and conjecture, which is closely akin to a fairy tale. And, as far as their elite status, more conjecture on your part, a considerable number died in poverty. Might have had something to do with a war. You’re probably an expert on the diet of 18th century America, too. What was the most popular brand of refrigerator in those days?
For Christ’s sake, Nailhead… Just because it was a Harvard study and Rush Limbaugh doubts it, does that make it false? Do some fucking math in your head. Maybe it’s only 30,000, maybe it’s 70,000. The fact remains that our vaunted (on the right) health system leaves out nearly 50 million Americans who can not receive routine medical care because they can’t afford it, and die of preventable disease as a result. A retarded person could figure that out. It would be considerably more plausible to just go back to your usual argument that they deserve to die because they are fat and don’t watch FOX, than to deny mathematical reality. You are stupider than usual this evening, if such a thing were possible.
A perfect example of the Cocktail Hag variety of discourse. Someone points out that a poster has made an erroneous statement that can be refuted by a simple iteration of fact and CH responds by changing the subject. The topic of discussion was the age at which our “forefathers” cashed in their chips, ostensibly before their time, for lack of government guaranteed blood-letting services. I put forward the fact that a significant, and fairly well-documented, group of Americans of that era lived a life of normal length and longer despite being deprived of a national health care system. Since this is a documented, irrefutable fact, in order to keep his utopian argument bubbling, CH is compelled to bring up the unproven, unprovable STATISTIC that 50 MILLION people receive no regular health care and thus perish before their allotted life span has run its course. As if that were somehow logically connected to the previous assertion. There are two possible explanations for this, neither attractive. First of all, that CH is, in fact, an illogical boob who should be happy to survive and perhaps even flourish to a degree in a forgiving and tolerant society. The second is that CH is so intellectually dishonest that he finds it impossible to accept that there might be astigmatisms in his distorted world view. There are probably elements of both displayed in his silly post.
Your entire response is a study in ignorance (as in, not understanding the validity of statistical analysis), but I want to focus on this bit of arrogance: CH “should be happy to survive … in a forgiving and tolerant society“?
You’ve got a nerve, bud. You’re fortunate the likes of CH permits you the opportunity to give voice to your written bludgeoning.
Work on your reading comprehension, and not simply to attempt to “prove” that which your blind ideology and foul temper convinces you is so. Admittedly I wasn’t as clear as I should have been, but the statistics are out there, you just don’t believe them because Bill O’Reilly told you not to. If there are nearly 50 million without health insurance, and thus access to preventive care, much less expensive treatment, the estimate that a certain percentage of them will die prematurely is pretty damned obvious, even if Harvard says so.
You’re the one who changed the subject to the Founders, whom, like the bible, can be read like tea leaves to “prove” whatever one wants. No wonder righties love both so much.
Cocktail Hag has reading problems. “You’re the one who changed the subject to the Founders, whom, like the bible, can be read like tea leaves to “prove” whatever one wants.” Nobody mentioned “Founders” until you did. High school hall monitor timothy3 said, ““Just as our forefathers had the freedom to die before their time. . . .” The lifespan of the signers of the Declaration of Independence doesn’t have any relationship to the bible or tea leaves and proves only one thing, how long they lived.
“If there are nearly 50 million without health insurance, and thus access to preventive care, much less expensive treatment, the estimate that a certain percentage of them will die prematurely is pretty damned obvious, even if Harvard says so.” Wouldn’t you say that a certain percentage of Americans with access to preventive care AND expensive treatment die anyway? In fact, wouldn’t that percentage actually be, ummmm 100%? If there’s 50 million uninsured individuals in the country, that means there must be maybe 280 million that have health insurance. How many of them die in a given year? It’s probably not zero. You’re a pretty glaring example of the failure of the American educational system.
…”will die PREMATURELY…” you asshole. Your every utterance discredits you.