September 13, 2011

What happens if you post a blog and no one reads?

:)

Or perhaps we are just in a time when people are busy with work, families, etc. I know it has been a rough couple of days for me. I contracted some kind of stomach bug that showed itself with a vengeance late Saturday night. I don't think I have ever been that sick, and I am still feeling a little run over.

But reading the news doesn't help either. As I posted earlier, it is hard to find the words to describe the Tea Party assholes who cheerfully shout "yes" to the question "should we let an uninsured person die rather than pick up the tab?" The same type of people, I am sure, cheered Rick Perry's record number of executions. And, I am sure, these are the same idiots who bought Sarah Palin's "death panel" nonsense. Seems like they really weren't concerned about death panels after all, just wanted to make sure it was applied to people they don't like.

As many of my FB friends have noted, many of them, undoubtedly, see themselves as strong believers. That is just a reminder to Christian conservatives what they have lost by selling their faith to the person who shouts "jesus" the loudest.

Yeah, you get these misanthropes. Running for President. With a crowd cheering them on, just as that same crowd would have cheered a public lynching 100 years ago.

My sense is that my conservative friends see the Tea Party the same way they do Rush Limbaugh or Pat Robertson--as an idiot who is unfortunately on the same side of the party line as they are. Of course, they miss how it is these idiots who are shaping their party's policies. But they also miss how their other Republicans are working steadily to stop government from working so they can run on the claim that government doesn't work well.

It won't get better, I am afraid, until grownup Republicans who actually do believe in good governing and don't want people to die in the streets start taking responsibility for who they elect. If the nutjobs in your base nominate a right wing idiot, you don't have to vote for him or her simply because they have an R next to their name. And maybe, just maybe, this bullshit of skating by as a low information voter has to stop. The stakes are just too high.

7 comments:

Bob said...

People read you, but like me, don't always comment.

I tuned in to the debate for 5 minutes. Which 5? The one where the guy(s) cheared "yeah!" in favor of letting the unisured die.

That was enough.

Streak said...

Yeah, I could not watch any of this mess. But that 5 minutes was enough to make me want to wretch--just reading about it.

Noah said...

Oh, I faithfully check here every day. Sometimes, there's nothing to add to your statement but "uh-huh." But I feel you: you want acknowledgment for your posts.

I just did a long one about the death penalty, especially in light of Perry's machismo about not losing any sleep, and the now-famous case where he executed an innocent dude. So to hear his fan-base cheering that shit on instead of deriding it? I just can't bear to watch sometimes.

Streak said...

I appreciate you guys humoring me and commenting. I more wanted to make sure someone was still out there listening.

Some of this feels like outrage fatigue. How much more can we rail against this insanity?

Noah said...

Outrage fatigue sums it up perfectly. It takes tons of energy to be this pissedball the time and try to keep it up til November. I even stop watching Stewart sometimes because even though he is funny, the stuff he makes jokes about just stress me out at a time I'm trying to go to bed.

Monk-in-Training said...

I also read most days, but don't always comment. Sometimes there just isn't much to say.

:)

leighton said...

One thing I brought up in a coaching meeting with an engineer who has been having trouble with soft skills (that's QA-speak for "treating customers abrasively without meaning to") is that deep down, people aren't rational, and in most areas they won't look out for their best interests. People's first priority when they come to us is to vent about how hard it was to find us. It doesn't matter that they're getting in the way of fixing their problem; they would rather have their opinion heard than actually work with us to resolve anything. One suggestion I made to our engineer was that instead of dragging his feet because this fact of human nature is unreasonable, counterproductive, and incredibly dangerous on large scales, why not just give them a couple minutes to spew so we can hear them and get them to cooperate in fixing their problem?

I don't think there's any obvious analogue to this in the political realm - it's far easier to convince people to part with money than to make sensible choices. Though it does seems to me that expecting people to live by their principles is a recipe for frustration and despair. I think the behavior of many Tea Party voters makes more sense when you look at religious belief not as an indicator of behavior, but as a tribal identifier. The fact that they claim to be better than human while cheering torture and the execution of innocent people is more to secure their allegiance to the group than anything else. You can't reach everyone. Not everyone can be shamed or reasoned with.