Knowing Is Hard

Seems like Twyla and I are always saying that it is hard to know the truth when there is so much ignorance out there.  We don't live like elite people, don't want to live that way, or seem that way to others. But, dammit, I get really tired of hearing people parrot the propaganda that they've been fed by the dominant media that is just flat-out false.  I don't want to talk down to people or purposely make them feel stupid.  I feel like I did when I was fueling my truck one day and this young girl pulls up to the pump next to me and with a lit cigarette in her hand, proceeds to swipe her card, pull the nozzle, open her tank cap and shove the nozzle in.  She was at first shocked when I started shouting at her, and then giggled when she realized why I was shouting.

And I'm really sick and tired of people not being willing to take the time to actually find out the truth about issues that really effect their lives.  I pause here to interject a quote that I got from Belmont Club:

Part of the problem with politics is the problem of datasets. Soap opera issues — like sex and petty abuse of power — are popular with the viewers and newspaper readers because they are the only issues that everybody down to the least educated can understand. They are discussions at the lowest common denominator of human nature. Death and sex are what the King and the King’s chambermaid have in common. Editors know that if “it bleeds, it leads” because everybody bleeds.
Readers who are unable to grasp complexities of the deficit, the War Powers act, or the intricacies of quantitative easing are still able to comprehend that it isn’t kosher for a California governor to cuckold the maid’s husband, for a powerful banker to chase a chambermaid around a hotel room, for a President to hit on an intern or for a Presidential candidate to maintain a mistress with campaign funds while his wife is dying of cancer. They understand that because they can understand that. It is an available dataset to them. Creepy behavior is something they can grasp without a college degree. The same thing is true for gut issues like gas prices and inflation at the supermarket. People who don’t know how the fiscal system or the financial markets work still sense when their wallet is empty. Having an empty wallet not be the most theoretically important economic issue around but it is the dataset available to the average Joe.

I was talking to a friend the other day at a garage sale.  He and his wife don't have a computer and get all their news from the idiot box.  On most accounts, he sees through the leftist crap and seems like a conservative on most issues. But then he says, with total derision and disgust snarling from his mouth, "And what about that, . . . that . . what's his name . . . Paul guy?"
"You mean Ron Paul?"
"No, no, ah . . . "  Fingers snapping.
"Rand Paul?"
"No, no, uh,  Paul something. . . "
"Paul Ryan?"
"Yeah, geeze, what an asshole!"
"What?  Why would you say that?"
"He want's to get rid of medicare."
"Really?  What do you know about his plan?"
"Something about vouchers."

I won't go on with the conversation mode, but I'll admit to being obviously pissed off in front of my friend and then asking him if he actually read anything about Paul Ryan's plan.  No, he hadn't.  All he knew was what the TV told him as if Jon Stewart had written the script.  And when I explained to him the brief, true, and salient points about Ryan's plan, he agreed that he'd been totally misled and that Ryan's plan made perfect sense.

If you think it's more important to pay attention to who is dancing with who, who's getting kicked off the island, who's going to win a contest, how your sports team is doing, and you just can't be bothered to study some issues because it's boring and not any fun, then you deserve what you get when your quality of life goes into the toilet.  The problem is, such people drag the rest of society down into the septic tank with them.

When it all goes to hell and there are people who either sit around wondering what happened, it's going to be hard to feel any pity for them.  And God forbid I should encounter anyone who will say that it's the fault of Wall Street, or Big Oil, or Big corporations or Wal-Mart or any such nonsense because it will take much restraint to keep from beating the hell out of them.  The people who make the law and hold the badges and the guns are the ones who made Wall Street, Big Oil and all the rest do all the things they did.

And no, it's not all Obama's fault.  In fact, only a small fraction is Obama's fault.  Those of us who have been conservatives for decades have known this all along.  We are the ones who have been railing against the crap that led us to this point ever since Tip O'Niel for crying out loud.  The problem is the voters who buy into the crap about "fairness" and "tolerance" and "social justice" and the amorphous, undefinable "Hopey, Changey" pathway to social and economic collapse.  We real conservatives are pissed off that you didn't want to listen to reason and see through the lies when Bill Clinton slicked his way into the White House.  Now we are even more doubly pissed off that you didn't listen or pay attention when BO told you the unvarnished truth about what he wanted to do as president and you voted for him anyway.

Okay, post is long enough and I have a lot of stuff to do today.

Shalom Y'all