I am connected on the Facetubes to several individuals who are—and I am being as kind as I can here—seriously whacked rightwing nutjobs.

Because I am trying to be a better person every day and in every way,  I generally do not respond to the crap they post about politics, but merciful Cthulhu they have gotten on my last nerve.

I present to you some of the stuff they have posted this week.

::sigh:: Who makes this stuff up?  It’s not true, it’s never true, and yet people post this crap all the time.  First of all, “beloved photo”?  Really?  Okay, sure, maybe members of the DAR all have this on their walls, I don’t know.  But it’s not even a good photo.

But again, who made this up? And why do people believe it?  That second question can be answered with “Because they want to preen their patriotic feathers.”  They are patriots; you are not.  “They hate us because of our freedoms.”  No, not really, and embracing chauvinism as a virtue is not very attractive.

But who made this up?

Yeah, I get it.  We can’t handle the truth.  For differing values of truth, apparently.  What does the geography and culture of the Middle East have to do with… I don’t even know what their point is here, other than they hate Muslims.  And yes, dear, you’re a racist, even though Islam is a religion, not a race, and socialism has nothing to do with the Nazi SS.  Those are your guys, not ours.

Stock photo of black woman.  √ Anti-Obama rant. √  Absolutely no basis in facts… √√

The idea that the “rest of us” are worse off than in 2008 is laughably false.  No, salaries are not where they need to be, but that ain’t because Barack Obama “gave away jobs”—how does that even work??  I think it’s a hoot that whatever rightwinger cooked this one up at least gives black people credit for paying taxes; their usual position is that Those People are moochers.

It’s a lie.  Cf., “I’m a racist,” above.

And then there’s Hillary.  There’s plenty that can be said about Clinton that is true^1; why post absolute fabrications?

Created for a Photoshop contest.

Nothing in this meme is true.  Nothing.

And now we have the whole tsimmes about who poops where.  The ignorance and cruelty is astounding.

Oy.  You can see why I don’t respond on the Facetubes to these idiots.  Can you imagine trying to get them to comprehend, much less empathize with, those whose gender is not the same as their birth certificate? Why, it would be almost as hard as getting them to understand and admit that the problem they’re trying to solve² doesn’t exist.

Would it be snide of me to mention that the individual who posted most of these also posts this:

Yeah, you’re right, it would be.  So I won’t.

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¹ Check out any Bernie supporter’s Facetube feed if you don’t believe me.

² Spoiler alert: they’re not trying to solve it.  They’re trying to fear-monger to get out the amygdala-dweller vote.

That is the sound of rightwing nutjob’s brains when they are invited to leave a comment on a World Daily Online article entitled OBAMA ANNOUNCES HORRIFYING NEW EXECUTIVE ACTION.

First, a little background.  World Daily Online is one of those nutjob aggregators that take brief snippets of news, rewrite the lead-in, slap a clickbait headline on it, and conclude with “Tell us what you think in comments.”  You will notice, if you take a look at the main page, that the screamy headlines are all a bit similar.  If you believed WDO, President Obama and Hillary Clinton do nothing but PANIC, and you yourself will constantly be either ill or in disbelief with the events of the day.

For your average conservative nutjob, it’s the perfect way to get your angerbear on first thing in the morning, and the comments are about what you would expect.^[1]

So what HORRIFYING NEW EXECUTIVE ACTION is Obummer guilty of this time?

Here, go read it.

Right.

Now, I don’t know about you, but an a la carte approach to cable offerings has been a desideratum for this dirty freaking hippie for some time.  Why am I paying for shopping channels or entire channels devoted to the exploits of dead golfers or sitting in boats or college football players who are now more geriatric than I am?

Also—and here the nutjob and the hippie are of one mind—are we not concerned to the point of rebellion over the ickiness of huge, practically monopolistic corporations?

So here the Muslim Kenyan Usurper says, hey, I think we should give the people more choice in how their money is spent, and how do the nutjobs react?

SPROINNNGG!

They can’t do it.  They cannot say, “Wow, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then” or “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day” or any other sequence of words that would give the MKU any props whatsoever.  They simply cannot do it.  The comments are an amazing study of cognitive dissonance.

I love that the article has over 2500 FaceTube shares of this HORRIFYING EXECUTIVE ACTION. I am amused that the authors of the website didn’t bother to recast any of the actual facts, so that their readers get the news that something they probably have bitched about is being supported by the MKU, straight up.

I’m a little concerned that—and this will shock you—the headline and lead are completely offbase in their characterization of the event.^[3] The angerbears, who I am willing to bet are not getting their news from any actual news source, now firmly believe that they have one more example of the MKU’s blatant disregard of the Constitution.^[4]  If you were to engage one in discussion, their unshakable faith in the perfidy of Barry Hussein Soetero Obama would be an irritating, teflon-coated wall, impervious to actual real Things, and this article will have contributed to that.

Oh well.  As the sage once said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  It’s just amusing that some brains can’t process some facts when they don’t agree with their opinions.^[5]

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^[1] Never read the comments.^[2]

^[2] Read the comments.  They’re a hoot, and a great way to get your eyebrows and jaws their exercise first thing in the morning.

^[3]  Here’s the Washington Post article.  See if you can tell the difference. That’s right, Billy, “urging” the FCC to do something is not the same as “issuing an executive order.”

^[4] Unconstitutional?  Meh.  It’s a gray area, but most jurists are inclined to give the sitting President the benefit of the doubt.

^[5] Actually, most brains can’t, but don’t get in my way when I’m being mean to nutjobs.

From today’s FaceTube:

Because the rock star is punching up at the discriminatory power structure, but the baker is punching down at the discriminated.

There you go.  You’re welcome.

Today on the Facetubes:

This encapsulates two of the rightwing positions that just drive me over the edge: worship of the military, and hatred for the poor.

As for the first, the idea that our current deployments in active war zones are in any way “protecting your unskilled butt” is ludicrous.  The last line in particular is one of those rightwinger classics.  I think the allusion is to the second World War, that we defeated Hitler and thus escaped the inevitable universal Third Reich that so captivates the authoritarian mind.

Because you remember how France and Poland and Holland were all speaking German by 1942, right?  Oh wait.^[1]

I might add, if I were of a caustic nature,^[2] that at no point in the last 60 years have any of us suffered the slightest threat of having to learn Vietnamese, Lebanese, Pashto, Arabic, Kurdish, or even Grenadan.  Just because the rightwing brain gets off on imaginary threats doesn’t mean they’re real.  (Spoiler alert: they’re not real.)

In the real world, our current “boots on the ground” adventures having nothing to do with any kind of existential threat to our nation.  They really don’t, and pretending they do is simply a ploy to elevate the good men and women who serve in our military to godlike heroes—a position I’m not sure many of them are comfortable with—for political purposes.^[3]

My second bugbear, hatred of the poor, is there in spades.  Insulting names?  Check.  Disingenuous assumption that “Johnny Fry-Boy” works 40 hours a week?  Check.

But the argument that always just amazes me as an incredible example of the “is not/is too” frame of the rightwing mind is the “job designed for a kid in high school… who is earning enough for gas” thing.  They keep harping on this idea that fast food service jobs are merely some kind of a Happy Days lark, not a “real” job.

As they leave the drive-through at lunch, do they ever wonder who made their Value Meal if the place is staffed by high school students?  How is McDonald’s able to open before 4:00 every afternoon even?

Also, they harp on “burger flippers,” because those people are obviously scum, but of course the country is replete with other minimum wage jobs. (Also.)

Given the rightwing’s insistence on “personal responsibility,” it amazes me that they will look at someone working a job at McDonald’s in order to make a living and still sneer that for whatever reason the person doesn’t even deserve that because of “lack of skills.”  You’re poor and uneducated?  You should have thought of that before, loser.

I mean, and here’s the point, even assuming that Johnny Fry-Boy is a high school dropout and has no marketable skills other than working the line at Mickey-D’s, what do the rightwingers want him to do?

And here’s the biggest point that really leaves me slack-jawed: I see this story and the solution that pops into my head is to make sure our military is paid more too.

You would think that might have occurred to people who think our service men and women are godlike heroes.

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^[1] Sure, the Angles and the Saxons had to learn some French after 1066, but… You know what?  The whole mindset is stupid.

^[2] I am of a caustic nature.

^[3] During the run-up to the Iraq War, the authoritarians were waving the “fight Them over there so we don’t have to fight Them over here” flag, and the dirty freaking hippies were all like, “Dude, terrorism isn’t an army,” and guess who was right?

Let’s take another look at our posting from the Facetubes yesterday:

My problem with this graphic is not that someone says “Merry Christmas” or “God bless the USA” or any of those other things.  My problem is that the author—and I have to assume anyone who posts it—wants you to think it’s a problem that they say these things.

They are hopping up on that cross to be crucified as martyr patriots when in fact no one is standing by with nails.  Most of the country would in fact agree with the honest sentiments expressed in each of the phrases individually.

But these people are not saying, “Merry Christmas.”  They’re saying, “I say ‘Merry Christmas,’ and that’s the way it’s supposed to be and if you don’t say it too then you are the enemy and I will fight you in the halls of Iwo Jima because you are one of Those People.”

They are declaring their über-patriotic stance as the only permissible and credentialed patriotic stance there can be in these here parts, and the rest of us need to take our nelly sensibilities and just move somewhere else if we don’t love the United States of A as much as they do.  That we might love our country as much—and perhaps differently— is clearly impossibile.  It is a thought-crime as far as they are concerned.  They have suddenly realized that there are 300,000,000 other Americans outside their monkeysphere, and they are freaking the freak out.^[1]

Now I personally do have issues with the political stance behind some of these statements, “We support our troops” in particular.  What does that even mean other than militaristic idolatry?  But again, if these people are honest in their troop supporting, I have no issue with that. It’s when they go berserk with their SUPPORT THE TROOPS while at the same time they vote for people that lie us into wars; when they vote for people that don’t pay for those wars; when they vote for people who don’t provide for our veterans; when they post uninformed graphics about rejecting refugees while we have homeless veterans that need to be taken care of  while not voting to take care of homeless veterans; that’s when I have issues.

And I would be correct.  Politically, ethically, and economically.

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^[1] Am I suggesting that they are hooting and flinging poo?  Why are you even thinking that?

Today on the Facetubes:

No, darling, you are not politically incorrect if you say those things.  You may, however, be an asshole if you say them as a way to consolidate your tribal membership to the exclusion of Those People.  And we all know about Those People, don’t we?

Those People are queer, aren’t they?  Or bitches, or chinks, or towel-heads, or niggers—aren’t they?

Those People all up in your face saying you ought to be more respectful of them and their so-called humanity.

Those People who make you so angry because they think that their “lifestyle” or “culture” or “religion” deserves some kind of special rights.

Those People who get their precious feelings hurt if you just say what everyone is thinking.

But no, darling, your saying “Merry Christmas” or “God bless the USA” is not why we might be calling you politically incorrect.  Let me know if you figure it out.

(see also…)