From the comments:
Frankly, I’ve found almost without exception, that Conservatives bark is worse than their bit. If you confront them in person or show the slightest bit of backbone during an argument about politics they turn into a giant pussy! I also truly believe that is part of the explanation for their gun fetish. To compensate for their feelings of inadequacy and because they are fearful little bunny rabbits trapped in a mans body.
From a facebook escapade earlier today with an old friend who now works at RAND and apparently is now a full-fledged wingnut:
Old friend who works at RAND posted the following: “Things you will never hear: I was born at Planned Parenthood.”
I challenged him and pointed out that abortion is one of the minor aspects of PP and lots of lives were saved because of it. My quote was actually- “Something else you will never hear. Poor women thanking middle-aged white men at RAND for helping them have access to pap smears, birth control, prenatal care, breasts exams, and lot of other vital services.”
He responded: “My point was that no new life has ever come from Planned Parenthood.”
My response: “Your point is, well, wrong. Plenty of new lives have occurred because of Planned Parenthood. Women who would have died of uterine cancer or breast cancer, women who otherwise had no access to pre-natal care, women who would have died from STD’s or other issues or lost their reproductive abilities, and so forth, but were saved by access to health care at PP are every single day maturing, becoming more financially secure, and going on to have happy lives as mothers. Because of the care they received at PP.
Quite simply, you have no idea what you are talking about. This is just right wing bullshit you are regurgitating, and you’ve got some jackass from Clear Channel backing you up. That alone should be cause for some reflection.
And what about so-called ‘old life,’ btw. You know, the people who already exist and who are not some semi-meiotic glob of cells (my bad- in rightwing parlance that is a BABY)? Seriously, Joe. I thought you folks at Rand were quants and not prone to speaking out of your hindquarters.”
He deleted my comment, unfriended me, and blocked me. Way to be.
Nothing scares wingnuts more than someone willing to confront them with actual facts to counter their bullshit self-constructed mythology. It terrifies them. They can not even counter with facts, they just run away and hide.
There is a reason that DougJ refers to Pale Fire a great deal and why we talk about epistemic closure and why these guys need their own news channels and papers, because anything that confronts their artificial bullshit reality really scares the shit out of them. All they have is regurgitating bullshit, and when you point that out, they freak out. They have their own language, their own reality, and anything else just scares them pantsless.
And this can not be repeated enough- this is allegedly a quant at RAND who deals with facts and makes policy recommendations to the government. And our news media will just barf up every news release of their alleged studies, because the puke funnel is alive and well.
My only regret is that I was blocked before I could get this guy’s deep thoughts on ACORN and Benghazi.
Our entire establishment is right wing, venal, and stupid. And proud of it.
Just Some Fuckhead
Maybe Planned Parenthood can help him get his head out of his ass between abortions.
MattR
Not sure if he is still around to repost it, but RSA’s comment in the precious post is worth highlighting since it points out that the study’s abstract contradicts the media narrative. Quoting RSA quoting the study’s abstract
jl
Ugh!. Me have up date too. You want see article, I think I find it: See my comment in previous thread.
https://balloon-juice.com/2013/05/16/the-manly-men-of-the-right/#comment-4440541
Edit: for puzzled lefty he-men who can do plenty pull up, research says little about individual variation. R-square from 0.03 to 0.12. I don’t see any o’ them thar regression diagnostics in the article either.
Any BJ egg head who knows that stuff here who has access, maybe you could put down that drink and tell us about it.
shortstop
If I had a buck for every time some winger has started spewing some bullshit, I’ve politely corrected him or her using objective reality, and he or she has responded, “I’m not in the mood to talk politics!” and run away, I could buy you all bench seats at a highly masculine NY theater production.
? Martin
Did you know that the Benghazi gunmen were Acorn operatives sent by Obama to kill Chris Stevens before he could blow the cover on Obama targeting his enemies via the IRS?
Mnemosyne
Guh? I guess I imagined prenatal care and well-baby care on their list of services.
My other guess is that the guy doesn’t know what “prenatal” means and is now too embarrassed to admit it.
Eric U.
I used to listen to Glen Beck a lot, and I think he may actually live in his own reality. I would listen to a long spiel of his and simply not understand anything he was getting at. It was like Dennis Miller, but all the references were to Glen Beck conspiracy theories. Scary to think that people follow him
Omnes Omnibus
@Eric U.: Why would you do that to yourself? Isn’t cutting easier?
drunken hausfrau
The Stupid… it burns me…
Seriously, the willful idiocy drives me to drink.
ranchandsyrup
Bullies are counting on you to back down. Call their bluff.
Hal
My mother, my cousins Mother (they’re best friends since birth) and they’re mutual friend all somehow morphed into Fox news watching wingers. My mother regular starts conversations with “I saw on Fox News” and I just know I’m in trouble.
No matter how many times I have confronted them with facts, they just won’t listen. My mothers friend used to send all sorts of ridiculous emails out; Obama was having “under god” removed from tombstones at Arlington, Obama’s daughter and 30 of her friends flew on airforce one for Springbreak at taxpayers expense, no cola for medicare because Obama said no. Oh, and did you know Obama had Pakistani roommates?
I talked to my cousins mother the other day and she told me she was happy because Obama’s term was almost over (I told her she actually has quite a awhile) and she insisted all her does is play gold and hang out with celebrities. What slays me is one of my cousins is a teacher, and she voted for Romney because she can’t find a job as a public school teacher. I didn’t even bother explaining to her that public ed jobs under a Republican aren’t going to be in abundance.
I’ve given up on them politically. I change the subject and just move on. I don’t know what it is, but there is a specific brand of right wing logic that is simply immune to any facts, and I love my family, but I can’t help but think there are racial components, as well as long term liberal hate in some of their beliefs.
? Martin
@Mnemosyne: ‘Prenatal care’ refers to the welfare forms that sluts fill out before they kill a baby.
Chris
I will say, I do this to wingnuts quite a bit. Usually not because I lost an argument, though. Just when I’m tired of seeing their shit come up on my mini feed or whenever I go visit their pages and they’re quite frankly not worth the aggravation. Really close friends and family who are wingnuts, though, I’ll just ban from my mini-feed, not unfriend. But they have to be pretty damn close not to warrant unfriending for the loud and proud wingnuttery. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
That’s all OT. I get the point you were making and agree completely that they’re a bunch of chickenshits.
ODB
A very similar thing happened to me. My winger facebook friend (“Mr. Personal Responsibility”) posted a rant against the poors who call an ambulance for a broken ankle because they don’t want to go to a bus stop.
I noted that Mr. Personal Responsibility himself failed to buy health insurance, got in a car accident, and incurred $100,000’s in medical bills on which he is currently declaring bankruptcy. I point out that as a taxpayer/insurance payer, Mr. Personal Responsibility is a much bigger drag on the system than someone calling an ambulance for a broken ankle.
He deleted my comment, and called me a “sophist.”
NotMax
Oh, missed opportunity for punnish SF-reference title.
Quant Lose
Just Some Fuckhead
I always argue for more abortions then I’ll finally compromise with Roe v. Wade, but reluctantly.
Baud
So if you’re not a place where babies are born, you’re not worth supporting?
Take that, ExxonMobile.
Calouste
@Eric U.:
You mean Glenn Beck is in “Modal Realist Mode”?
Violet
@ranchandsyrup: This. Wingnuts do not expect people to confront them and challenge them. They do not know what to do so they run away. Classic bully behavior.
Chris
@Hal:
What I just don’t get is why people like this simply won’t shut the fuck up about politics.
Seriously. I am HAPPY to sit down and discuss the local news, the funnies, the latest movies we saw, what’s been going on in our lives, what we’ve heard from or about mutual friends or family lately, home improvement, even the fucking weather, with wingnut acquaintances. I’m literally never the person who brings up politics, because with maybe one or two rare instances, I know everyone’s just going to end up mad, and if I’m sitting here talking to you, I’m probably not angling for that. But apparently there are people who just can’t process that.
drunken hausfrau
But I am confused now… if the conservatives are all such STRONG manly men, why do they run away when confronted with facts? Can’t they just punch the facts? Slap reality around until it learns its place?
+a few … not nearly enough
Bubblegum Tate
I’ve had that exact experience on wingnut blogs countless times: You beat them in an argument, they make up some excuse to delete your comments. They always run away. Always, always, always. And then they invent rationales as to why they didn’t run away.
The cherry on top is that they will then frequently say, “Gee, I guess no liberal is able to counter my mighty argument!”
Baud
@Chris:
Their politics depends on annoying liberals, so if they don’t annoy you by bringing it up, they aren’t fulfilled.
aimai
I’m having your baby right now, John Cole. You are that good.
Violet
Making fun of your wingnut former friend on your blog is a cherry on top of the smack down sundae. As much as wingnuts hate logic and facts, they hate even more being made fun of. Another wingnut characteristic: lack of a sense of humor about themselves or having a thin skin.
Nicole
My sister-in-law, who I adore, but is a right-winger, objected to my saying Obama was relatively conservative. I asked her what made her think he was a rabid liberal, and she posted three untrue things about him that I quickly debunked, via links to articles about these issues. She responded with, “I could post a bunch of links, too, but I’m not going to!” and I thought, “Well, no, you can’t. Because if you could, you would.”
That’s what I don’t get. The absolute refusal to accept when something you think is true is actually wrong. Good grief, it’s not that hard, people.
Baud
@aimai:
He’s a manly man.
Svensker
@ODB:
That is just precious.
Chris
@Baud:
See, in most of the cases I’m thinking about, it doesn’t even seem like that. It’s more like they’re seeking approval.
Hey, I’m the godless fucking Obammunist Muslim lover here, people. Go find validation somewhere else, why can’t you?
Jay S
John,
Those last two paragraphs of your reply got pretty personal. Unless you talk like that on other topics, I’d guess that may have had more to do with un-friending you than your factual argument. It may not be the manly thing to do, but I might walk away from that invective even if I thought you had a point.
Violet
@Nicole: Another wingnut characteristic: inability to admit it when they’re wrong.
So far I’ve got for defining wingnut characteristics:
1. Lack of empathy
2. Reliance on beliefs not facts
3. Thin skin
4. Inability to admit when they’re wrong.
Sound like great people.
shortstop
@Chris: If they don’t have 100 percent, they think they have nothing.
schrodinger's cat
Liberal media is not so liberal after all.
belieber
I wonder if Cole realizes that comment was from me…one of his biggest critics and usually not in a civil way. Oh well, broken clocks and all that.
Baud
@Chris:
Interesting. I guess that makes sense too. Maybe people who live on the edge of reality need constant validation because something inside them is telling them they’re wrong.
MattR
@Bubblegum Tate: A key part of that is that it is always your fault that they are running away.
@Chris: I have one friend that I bring up politics with only because I am trying to gradually nudge him away from accepting the right wing frame on economics issues. I don’t argue with him. I just try to add to the collection of facts at his disposal. (In today’s case I pointed out that no Tea Party groups had their tax exempt status denied or revoked but that a liberal one did while conceding that the some of the follow up questions from the IRS to all groups were inappropriateltely intrusive)
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris:
But they need it from you. Or the fact that you reject the point they are making only reinforces it in their minds.
BGinCHI
Shorter RAND operative: I’m sorry I ate your chocolate squirrel.
shortstop
@Baud: Maybe, but to me it feels more like a control-freak thing. They literally cannot stand it when people don’t accept their worldview. It’s like it’s physically painful to them and they can’t stop picking the scab.
shortstop
@BGinCHI: I don’t get it.
wmd
Mr Rand Quant most likely would love it if you had the chance to point out that he gets US government funding – i.e. he’s a “taker”, and depends on real working Americans taxes for his salary. I know when I point it out to a reality challenged engineering project manager that works for Lockheed he gets offended and says he’s not like those undeserving recipients of government money.
Pooh
My (episcopalian) wingnutty aunt did something similar when I posted a pretty mildly worded statement regarding the offensiveness of her posting some Dennis Prager screed about why we shod repeal Obamacare because of the Holocaust on Yom Hashoah. She posted the old “I’m sorry you were offended” non-apology and pointed out that the word “Jewish” was in the title if the publication, it couldn’t possibly be offensive. Then she deleted my comment. Sadly, she didn’t also unfriend me so I still get to see her occasional spouting if NRA talking points in my feed.
NotMax
@Violet
5. Repetition masquerading as argument
6. Redefining words, especially terms used as labels.
Nicole
@Violet: I would add 5. Daddy issues. Anne Laurie, I think it was, once posted about right-wingers having troubled childhoods, and I’ve found it pretty accurate, more often than not. This is not to say that all people with daddy issues are conservatives, but that all conservatives are people with daddy issues. My sister-in-law is, I think, still seeking her dad’s approval, as is my beloved, but right-wing uncle (much harder for him, as his father has been dead for almost 50 years).
Bubblegum Tate
@MattR:
Oh, absolutely. Hell, one time, the excuse they offered for running away was that the discussion was “off topic.” It was in an open thread.
MikeJ
@Omnes Omnibus:
Isn’t there a Lincoln quote about how the south not only wanted slavery, they demanded that everybody else tell them how great it was?
If there wasn’t there should be.
Bubblegum Tate
@shortstop:
It’s an Anchorman reference.
Chris
@Bubblegum Tate:
Remember when Palin couldn’t be arsed to finish her term, and it was all the liberals’ fault for being so mean to her that it made her run away crying?
raven
@Nicole: I had a fucked up childhood and I’m no wingnut.
Roger Moore
Yeah, and no new life has come from the RAND Corporation. Does that mean we should shut his employer down? No new life comes from cancer wards or burn wards at hospitals; does that make them worthless? It’s a stupid point made stupidly.
Chris
@MikeJ:
True.
I thought that was another one of the things “Django Unchained” got right – the plantation owner for whom it wasn’t enough to win everything – he wanted the guy to demonstrate respect with a handshake, too.
shortstop
@Bubblegum Tate: Thanks, bud!
shortstop
@raven: Read what she wrote again.
Spaghetti Lee
Most of my family is fairly conservative, but I don’t have the ones who post crazy crap on facebook, corner anyone who they can get and blabber on about conspiracy theories, etc. I consider myself lucky for that. I actually got into an argument with a guy on the bus about mandatory vaccinations for children, me in favor, him opposed. Every other sentence out of him was about “The State”, like it was the goddamn bogeyman or something. A third guy on the bus talked about some story out of Pittsburgh where parents didn’t bring their two children in for some curable disease because “prayer healing” and the kids ended up dying. But, no, we can’t trust “the state” to intervene for those kids because you can’t trust the government to know what’s best for your kids. Call me crazy, but I think the government might have come up with a better solution than “futz around until the kids die.” These guys are psychos.
I have one uncle who’s unemployed but went to the University of Chicago in the 70’s and has ‘friends’ on campus and occasionally contributes to books on math and physics and such. He’s not a dumb guy, but he thinks he’s the next goddamn Feynman or something. I don’t know if he reads Slate or the Economist but he’s the sort of guy who would think they’re unimpeachably brilliant. That’s about it for political weirdos in my family. Most of them are too focused on getting a living out of farming or civil service jobs to care.
Bubblegum Tate
@Chris:
Oh my god yes. Wingnuts were sooooo pissed that the damn dirty LIEbruls FORCED Palin to quit, but she didn’t really quit, she just advanced in a different direction, and she nobly decided that it would be better for Alaska if the damn dirty LIEbruls couldn’t HARASS her anymore!
Bubblegum Tate
@Spaghetti Lee:
I’ve noticed a lot of wingnuts do this (they also like to say it was “The Ruling Class” or “The Elites”). It always reminds me of that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry points out how his Uncle Leo blames every little thing that goes wrong on anti-Semitism. “Soup comes out a little cold? Chef’s an anti-Semite!”
Keith G
@drunken hausfrau:
Tonight it’s Hendrick’s Gin served with Fever-Tree Bitter Lemon. Makes it so easy to ignore the noise of the rabble.
Anne Laurie
@Chris:
But their tribe must be the best tribe! And you seemed just like a fellow tribe member! If there are people from That OTHER Tribe, the BAD Tribe, walking around looking and acting just like fellow humans, how will they reinforce their belief that THEIR Tribe is the BEST Tribe?….
It’s like the world (real and virtual) was full of alien lizard beings who walked around looking just like humans! If you divided the world this way (Us, and Not Actually Human) you’d be terrified every time some apparently “normal” tribe member opened their golden, slit-pupilled eyes and revealed the lizard within, too!
Bill Arnold
@Eric U.:
…Glen Beck conspiracy theories. Scary to think that people follow him
Keith G
@Just Some Fuckhead: You and me both.
A pro-er life friend challenged me as to where I would draw the line. I shut down the conversation by saying, “When they can earn a living.” (A bit of an exaggeration)
raven
@shortstop: I confirmed it.
Nicole
@shortstop: Thank you.
Chris
@Bubblegum Tate:
The preferred bogeyman varies by person. If it’s my uncle, it’ll be “liberal elites” or especially “intellectual elites.” If it’s my cousin, it’ll be “secular humanism.” For others, “political correctness.”
It’s funny how they keep twisting themselves into pretzels to create shadowy conspiratorial elites that’re behind all bad things, when the far more mundane and in-your-face elites are staring them right in the face and pretty much saying out loud “we’re going to screw you over, it’s for your own good.”
BarbCat
No, I did not read all your wise comments. Forgive me, by BBF’s l’il wonder cat went in for cancer surgery and where it was found to be inoperable. She was anesthetized, but we sat by her open-but-covered sweet little body for an hour. Then the vet came in and, without waking her, gave her the final shot. My friend is broke so despite her selling the one thing she had left of value, a pre-Mao Chinese sculpture to pay for the surgery (her dad made it and smuggled it to Hong Kong long ago), the loss was merely paying for another loss. She’d do it all againThis woman has taught me mucho about passion and forgiveness in the 20+ years we’ve been friends.
I can’t say I didn’t spend the whole day blubbering, followed by 2 xanaxes and 6 hours of “The Americans”
Peace out, you animal friends, you.
PS, anyone know how Freckles is doing? I get an update every 10 days or so, but I worry.
PSS Hell yes this comment is way OT. I mentioned the Xanaxes, right. Do you know I’ve done more proofing in this post than I did in college?
raven
@Nicole: what
FlipYrWhig
@Chris:
Because they think they’re very smart, and they’re itching to demonstrate it by trying out on you the cool stuff they’ve just learned. Like how children like to use new words, usually incorrectly.
Spaghetti Lee
@Bubblegum Tate:
I don’t get the ‘ruling class/elites’ stuff as much (and when I do I point out that the ‘job creators’ they suck off all day are as ‘ruling’ as it gets). Conservatives, of course, have a definition of ‘elites’ that includes EPA workers, NEA and SEIU members, college professors, and hipsters, but manages to leave out the time-tested ‘people with lots of money and power’ (except rich Hollywood people: George Clooney is totally just as powerful as Charles Koch or Pete Peterson in our political system).
mai naem
@Spaghetti Lee: There’s certain words that when I hear from somebody’s mouth, I know I’m dealing with a wingnut. One of those is statist. Also too, communistic, Red China, Stalinist, and Socialist.
Anne Laurie
@Nicole:
Yeah, I think that was during the Nixonland book chats. Nixon dealt with his daddy issues by turning into a paranoid control freak; Reagan dealt with his by inventing a Happy Perfect Funland Childhood in his head, and flat-out refusing to deal with any inconvenient facts that contradicted the Happy Perfect Funland story. Between those two icons, the modern Republican party and the dedicated tribalists that call themselves ‘conservative’ have built a whole cargo cult. But manly!
Of course, because Daddy Issues are so effin’ common in our postmodern society, the cargo cult is deathly attractive to a lot of would-be liberals who should know better. See, notoriously, Maureen Dowd, or Chris Matthews, or…
Chris
@Anne Laurie:
And of course, there’s George W. Bush, who needed to outdo his father.
There was something like that with Mittens, too, though I’m not quite as sure what it was in his case.
Keith G
@Anne Laurie: Besides Nixonland, John Dean’s Conservatives without Conscience is seminal in the field of id-ing from whence comes the personality of the Right. I highly recommend as a “must read”.
Anne Laurie
@Anne Laurie: @raven:
Well, yeah, because you can admit you had a fucked-up childhood. A big chunk of the “Modern Conservative” problem is that they either can’t admit they were raised in a less-than-stellar manner (the Reagan tactic), or they’re convinced that the only way to avoid C!H!A!O!S! is by micro-managing every thought, idea, and action to conform to the One Right Way of Life (like Nixon, trying to convince himself & the rest of the universe that his abusive father was a Galtian saint brought low by the conniving greed of lesser men).
I’ve often said that the best thing my thoroughly fucked-up parents ever did for us kids was admit that they sucked as role models and in an ideal world would never have been permitted to breed. But then, they were actual liberals, not authoritarians looking for validation (or victims).
Redshirt
W. certainly didn’t have any Daddy issues. George was zen like that – he had no issues. Because he had no idea. Just smile, gladhand, and cliche.
I’m afraid of Conservatives as a group. As in, if they should ever take over society, we’d swiftly descend into an Orwellian Hell, featuring fun things like “Purges!” and “Freedom Torture!”. They’re cowards individually, but as a group, as a whole, they’re dangerous as could be.
cckids
@? Martin: Work the birth certificate into that somewhere & you win WINGNUT BINGO for the night.
Omnes Omnibus
@Redshirt:
Mobs are ugly and dangerous things.
trollhattan
@Jay S:
I am aware of some internet traditions. He unfriended Cole because Cole refused to say “fuck you”–the only way you know you’re Cole’s friend.
Chris
@Redshirt:
I’ve said before that I think a great part of the appeal of the Conservative Movement to its members is that it provides them with a sense of meaning and belonging in the same way that joining a cult might for a more spiritual personality, or a gang for a low income teenager. They move beyond all their individual failings by melting into a mass that becomes their home and their identity.
cckids
@Violet: You missed the XTRA large biceps, no? That is, if they are of a high socioeconomic status. Otherwise, never mind.
Shortstop
@trollhattan: outstanding.
Nicole
@raven: Saying “right wingers had troubled childhoods” is not the same thing as saying “people with troubled childhoods are all right wingers.” I said the former. For some reason, you seem to think I said the latter.
Shortstop
@Nicole: And in fact, you specifically said that not all people with daddy issues are conservatives.
Redshirt
@Chris: Like a Founder returning to the Great Collective, the Wingnut must return to the Hivemind.
Suzanne
@Violet: Add “Often uneducated, but convinced that makes themselves MORE educated.”
I have a HS friend who barely graduated, never went to any college at all, and now drives a truck for FedEx. He thinks he knows more about climate change (I.e., that it isn’t real) than scientists from Harvard, Oxford, Yale, etc. SERIOUSLY do not understand this.
danielx
@MikeJ:
Yup, in his Cooper Union speech of 1860. Abe knew how to turn a phrase succinctly…you could substitute “no new taxes” or “no new regulations” or “no new gun laws” or many another wingnut favorite for “slavery” in this speech and it would come out just the same.
lol
My personal fav confrontation was the Ron Paul fan in Vegas whose basic debate tactics were 1. Yell 2. Get Angry. He couldn’t comprehend that someone younger than him wouldn’t back down from his obvious life experience. He got incoherently angry which resulted in his very apologetic daughter dragging him away from the bar.
Drunken hausfrau
@Keith G: Mmmmmmmm! My kind of evening! I like Plymouth martinis…
Mnemosyne
@Nicole:
Yep, daddy issues up the wazoo. Not all people with daddy issues are conservatives, but all conservatives have daddy issues.
My late (conservative) father sure as hell had them with his authoritarian (and even more conservative) father. My dad wasn’t perfect, but he did at least recognize that his dad was a terrible father and tried really hard to do things differently. He didn’t always succeed, but in retrospect I can see that he really worked hard to not be like his dad.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Manly men use a manly man’s soap, and sing pirate songs in the shower.
mclaren
Right-wingers are kindergarten bullies, and they exhibit all the cowardice and petty spite of schoolyard bullies. The way to deal with those kind of people is hit ’em hard with the facts, hit ’em hard with logic. They fall down and start bawling and run away.
The same goes for the handful of sociopathic commenters on this forum, incidentally, whose total contribution to the sum of human knowledge involves name-calling and accusations of mental illness. Hit ’em hard with the facts, smack ’em down with logic, and they burst into tears and skedaddle in panic. We haven’t heard from General Stuck because I wacked his ass hard with facts and logic and he got tired of looking like a clueless clown. Eventually the same will happen to trolls like Mnemosyne and burnspbesq. These characters will eventually get tired of being proven ignorant incompetent compulsive liars, and they’re leave for greener trolling pastures.
Stalney Milgram’s well-known experiment has, in my experience, a little-discussed upside: when someone stands up against the bullies, others tend to follow suit. Bullies can only play their games if everyone goes along. Once someone hits ’em back, everyone tends to get up on their hind feet and the bully’s erstwhile empires disintegrates.
This is the real reason so many of us have criticized Barack Obama for not standing up against and hammering away at Republicans in public. It’s not because Obama can somehow magically induce the House of Representatives to pass his legislative agenda if he criticizes them more: the point is that when someone with real prestige like Obama stands up and calls out the assholes, it encourages others with less prestige to follow suit. So you get an expanding wave of people in the press and the thinktanks breaking ranks with the “inside-the-beltway mindset” that economic austerity is expansionary, that if Obama caved in more often to Republicans he’d get more of his legislative agenda passed, that if Obama just embraced more endless unwinnable wars U.S. foreign policy would work better, and all the other bullshit myths Washington D.C. drowns in.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Don’t worry, sweetie, I’ll never desert you.
Bill in Section 147
Honestly I have only faltered in a debate with a wingnut when it drills down into a discussion involving professional grade jargon. I am not a doctor and have never run a clinic, for example so I cannot argue a specific regulation or restriction the government puts on day to day operations. I cannot compare managing a medical facility in 1980 to 1999 to 2010, etc.
But the majority of discussions end up with the equivalent of a protruding tongue or a punch.
Sadly most of the wingers are against everything that made them what they are today. They have totally pulled up the ladder once they were safe and the screaming horde below should have just tried harder or moved sooner.
“Oh God! To hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.”
dollared
@mclaren: I agree with this. Really enjoyed Holder dealing with Gohmert. I’d like to see Obama be more direct with the media about where they focus and who they parrot.
Bubblegum Tate
@Suzanne:
One of my favorites is when they accuse scientists of ignoring the sun when doing climate modeling. “You think that big ball of fire in the sky might have something to do with it?” they snottily ask. Because yes, these scientists are making incredibly complex calculations…and then forgetting about the sun.
moderateindy
I do not think it a coincidence that fundies are right wingers. The intellectual paradigm is the same. Analysis is anathema. One is supposed to simply accept whatever dogma that comes from the higher authority. Whether it’s the bible, or Rushbo. Arguments that might suggest that their worldview is not 100% accurate are not to be considered, and analyzed for legitimacy. Instead, they are simply to be declared blasphemous, and the product of evil, and even considering such things puts one in league with the devil.
That’s what happens when you internalize stories from a book that are so easily debunked as unassailable truth, which fundies embrace. On the other hand, there are Xtians that believe that the bible is a set of allegories, and metaphors. Those people are often much more liberal politically, and swayed by actual arguments. Those types also seem to lean more toward the actual philosophical teachings of Christ regarding peace and love and caring about fellow humans, where fundies really seem to have a more “old testament” bent about them. I find the fundies are Leviticus thou shalt notters, while the more “liberal Christians” perspective is more in line with Luke’s book of Acts.
EriktheRed
I also go on usmessageboard.com, and I can tell you there are a lot of wingnuts who show no fear whatsoever when you “confront them with actual facts to counter their bullshit self-constructed mythology”. They just double down on it and call you a commie lib.
EriktheRed
@? Martin:
I thought Hilary ordered the hit because Stevens had evidence she was a closet lez.
chopper
@mclaren:
you truly are the center of the universe.
soonergrunt (mobile)
@mclaren: speaking of people with daddy issues…
southend
@Keith G:
The best way to shut up an anti-choicer is to ask them: “What should be the criminal penalty for a woman who pays a Dr. to abort her fetus?” NOT ONE has ever answered that when I ask them.
DavidTC
I was willing to put up with all sorts of nonsense, and in fact I often make a nuisance of myself by debunking it. Even if I don’t, I’ll put up with any _political_ stuff, but I recently unfriended some people, and then I posted that I would not, under any circumstances, put up with the racist conspiracy theories about a _victim_ of the Boston Marathon bombing.
Often people in the right seem to have absolutely no idea there’s any sort of line. In their universe, posting a misleading graphic about income tax rates is the same as posting conspiracy theories about how the President and First Lady are covering up that some injured Saudi guy was actually involved, because what’s a little light treason among friends.
I look back on the days of Bush and am astonished by the amount of _restraint_ the left showed in complaining about him.
StringOnAStick
In conversation with wing-nuts I am not related to, the ‘run away’ mode is certainly true; I have a good memory and I can lay down facts with the best of them. If you are related, then things change. My father is an old line wingnut, a James Watt loving, never-joined-the-Birchers-but-thinks-the-same-as they, mining engineer who refers to the US Forest Service as “the Green Ni**ers”. Imagine how pleasant spending time with him is, and you’ll see why I don’t. His answer to any argument is to yell until he gets his way, rant like a fucking maniac, and in general treat his 2 liberal kids like they matter much, much less to him than what St. Rush has to say every day, or what BillO pontificated that night. Daddy issues? Oh yes, he has them.
I used to be able to stand visiting by keeping the conversation carefully steered away from any controversy and rolling over when necessary, but now that the folks have cable and watch Fox for hours every evening, he spends every moment trying to pick a fight because he loves, loves, loves his rage. He used to believe that my quiet, non-confrontational husband had ‘turned me right’, but obviously he was always dominating the conversation so much that he never asked anything about my husband’s beliefs. I’ve been married for 13 years, and with my husband for 22, but I can guarantee you that if pressed my father would not be able to remember my husband’s last name, but he would be extremely clear on all the details of whatever crap Fox is pushing at the moment. Fox has destroyed any commity in my relationship with my parents, and has done the same to the nation. Jon Stewart was too kind when he called Fox the Lupus of American media.
Soonergrunt
@southend: Because that would require acknowledgement of a woman’s agency.