“Dow 36000”, 2 million tea baggers, “The 5000 Year Leap”…what is it with wingers and big numbers?
Reader Interactions
28Comments
Comments are closed.
by DougJ| 28 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
“Dow 36000”, 2 million tea baggers, “The 5000 Year Leap”…what is it with wingers and big numbers?
Comments are closed.
asiangrrlMN
Overcompensation.
Noonan
Sounds like they’re overcompensating for something. Hmm.
Joshua Norton
If you’re going to lie, lie big.
dmsilev
It’s to balance out certain other, smaller, numbers.
-dms
scarshapedstar
Large numbers boggle their minds. That’s why whenever a bill costs a billion dollars, some Republican senator helpfully explains that if you piled up a billion Ford Excursions they’d make a pile bigger than mount Everest, or whatever.
John Cole
My favorite is still the Jesus math.
Das Internetkommissariat
53 inches
Zifnab
@John Cole: Lulz. That was good times.
Zam
@John Cole: So walmart is god?
arguingwithsignposts
@John Cole:
I had not seen that before. Where could I get in on some of that Jesus money action. I’d really appreciate it more than the trickle-down Reagan/Bush/Bush money I’m making now.
Uncle Glenny
The age of the earth comes to mind. Also.
Dreggas
@Uncle Glenny:
nah when it comes to the age of the earth they use small numbers.
Throwin Stones
Only one (or no) perspective?
Mike G
Jesus Math:
To give the proposed economic stimulus plan some perspective, “if you started the day Jesus Christ was born and spent $1 million every day since then, you still wouldn’t have spent $1 trillion.”
To give the Pentagon budget some perspective, if you started the day Jesus Christ was born and spent $1 million every day since then, you’d cover the Pentagon’s spending for about 12 months.
But in Jesus-Rightard World, the Pentagon isn’t ‘big government’ because their dollars are shit by patriotic eagles soaring high over Ronald Reagan Valhalla.
CalD
All the numbers are in dog years.
Wile E. Quixote
@DougJ
Thousand Year Reich?
Then there’s Larry Craig’s favorite, “eight inches of throbbing pink Jesus”. OK, maybe eight inches isn’t a *big* number, but it was big enough for Larry.
polyorchnid octopunch
Well, you know, when numbers get really really large, people have a hard time conceiving them properly. So, authoritarian leaders throw out really big numbers like the one you cited because they know that they’ll be outside the scope of their follower’s easy conception and therefore will both confuse them and sound really impressive.
…’cause you know, 5 000, 36 000, and 2 000 000 are numbers that are completely outside the brain scale for teabaggers.
Uncle Glenny
@Dreggas: That’s what I meant; they can’t deal with the big numbers.
eyelessgame
Don’t forget SIX THOUSAND YEAR OLD EARTH, bitches!
It’s all about the edjumacation. Cons can’t count.
gwangung
@Uncle Glenny:
Yup. One. Few. Many.
That’s it.
Paulie Chestnuts
The stupid-ass Electoral College makes them think that their take on things is bigger than real life.
Anne Laurie
@Paulie Chestnuts:
For the win! That’s why Larry Craig thinks his ‘wide stance’ is so impressive — he’s using the Idaho EC standard!
Nutella
One of my college roommates, a straight A student, had trouble with the idea of quantity. She insisted, for example, that if one vitamin was good for you then three vitamins must be three times as good. When she graduated she went to work for AEI.
Debbie(aussie)
My poor keyboard just got covered in iced coffee. Thanks for a great laugh.
Gunner
Someone needs to tell the Republicans that they’re using the cm side of the ruler. They need to flip it around for inches.
Analytical Liberal
All Rethugs suffer from the “I’ve Got a Bigger Dick Than You” Syndrome. They have to show how manly they are by grabbing their crotches, puffing out their chests, and bragging about their reality-defying greatness. Or, to paraphrase Jon Stewart, maybe they’re just being dicks.
Numberwang
It’s not just big numbers. Numbers seem above reproach, something you can no more argue with than you could count 5 apples as 4. Some genius in the GOP realized that attaching a number to any argument helps fix it in someone’s mind, and gives them a “fact” to throw at people with whom the disagree. When that number is thrown out there, it sticks in the other person’s mind and, hopefully, becomes one more person spreading your argument.
Remember the army of Republicans marching through TV studios in 2004 who kept repeating that John Kerry had voted against “the troops” X times? Or that he had voted to increase taxes Y times? In both cases, they were artifacts of Senate procedure, caused by one or two particular issues that required a ridiculous number of votes, but they stuck.
Expect to start hearing about how Obama “voted to fund ACORN 152 times” any day now.
slippy
@Nutella: That’s hilarious. I remember being lectured sternly as a young teenager, during the Just Say No era, that people took drugs because if you took some drugs, like aspirin, they made you feel better, so the logic was if you too lots of drugs when you weren’t sick you’d feel great. I was then told that this logic was baaaaaad.
Another case of conservatives having things both ways or whatever way is convenient for them depending on which way the wind is blowing or just whatever the hell they want because conservatives are all a bunch of stupid god-damned liars anyway.