Thanksgiving With My Conservative Family Explains A Lot
November 30, 2015

 
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When you’re the only Liberal in a family of Conservatives living in the South, getting together for the holidays can be a tricky thing. But mostly, it has taught me a lot about the Conservative Mind and particularly why they believe what they believe. First, you start with a foundation of bigotry. It may not be very deep, but it is always there. Mexicans, blacks, gays, Muslims… basically anyone that frightens them… which is just about anyone they don’t have anything in common with. And when something annoys them, it’s always the fault of one of these groups. Lots of crime? Blame the blacks. Bad drivers? Typically “foreigners” but not a hard & fast rule. Perceived immorality? Mexicans, Blacks and/or gays. You know the drill.

THEY (ie: White religious Conservatives) are the “oppressed minority”. The rest of the “Liberal Media” keeps trying to force them to accept blacks, Mexicans, gays, Muslim Refugees, etc as “equals”. They already know what’s true just by observing the world around them, and IF they consume any news at all (and believe it or not, they don’t watch a lot of Fox. In fact, they watch almost no news at all. It only angers them), Right-Wing Media merely confirms what they already believe to be true. For example, Donald Trump is CERTAIN that he saw ON TV “THOUSANDS” of Muslims IN NEW JERSEY cheering the fall of the WTC Towers on 9/11. Now, if it were “on TV”, SOME television station somewhere would have tape of it (archival footage is NEVER destroyed), but no one has produced any such footage because IT DOESN’T EXIST. Never happened. (He’s also implying that “thousands” of Muslims already living in the U.S. are terrorist sympathizers that had inside knowledge that this was an attack.) But it doesn’t hurt Trump’s poll numbers because Conservatives all believe they saw it too. Trump is merely confirming what they already believe is true, and no amount of evidence (or lack thereof) is going to sway them.

Conservatives all believe themselves to be “victims”. It’s the ultimate “victim mentality”. When in fact they are far more often the victimizers. Oppressing minorities and bullying the political system till they get their way. In their world, there is a “War on Christmas” if Starbucks removes the reindeer from their Xmas cups. But just why did Starbucks ever offer Xmas themed cups in the first place? Not Hanukkah cups or Kwanzaa cups, but ONLY cups with Christian Christmas themes on them. I never heard a Jewish person accuse Starbucks of a “War on Hanukkah”. No Atheists protested the use of Christmas cups in the first place. But take away a “privilege” they enjoyed that they never had to ask for in the first place… like being wished a “Merry Christmas” by the sales girl… and suddenly they are the victims of “Liberals” out to “destroy Christmas”.

And yet, the great irony is that they ARE victims. Not of The Media or Liberals, but of deliberate misinformation campaigns by the rich & powerful to get the reactionary, ill-informed Conservative masses to do their bidding. Just look at the list:

  • “ObamaCare”: Just before leaving for home, one of my family members said they were “refusing to buy ObamaCare even though the government was telling them they had to” because doing so “would only suggest I approve of it.” In what little time I had, I tried to explain, “You don’t buy ObamaCare. ObamaCare is not health insurance. It’s just a set of rules & regulations telling the insurance company they can’t deny you care or jack up your rates.” The reaction: “Then why are they telling me I have to to buy it?” “They aren’t. You only have to buy insurance. ANY insurance from any old insurance company.” A hand goes up about half-way. “Whatever!” as I was dismissed. My explanation didn’t comport with the “reality” she has been spoon-fed for years. I must not know what I’m talking about.

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  • Planned Parenthood: Another Right-Wing lunatic with a gun murdered three people and wounding nine others last Friday at a Colorado Planned Parenthood, ranting about “President Obama” and “No more baby parts”… clearly a reference to the highly edited video disseminated by an anti-choice group earlier this year that falsely accused PPA of “profiting” of the sale of “baby parts”. Once again, reality was deliberately twisted to convince easily duped Right-Wing lunatics that something they already believed to be true to in fact be the case. It doesn’t matter that the facts don’t bear them out. Someone has already “confirmed” what they always believed to be true, and anyone trying to convince them otherwise is actively trying to deceive them. Meanwhile, yet another lunatic Evangelical white guy with a gun goes on a killing spree, but it’s desperate homeless Syrian refugees seeking shelter that we have to be afraid of.

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  • Global Warming: There are some very powerful interests that don’t want you to believe it is true; the oil industry and the mega-church industry. And in the Deep Red South, there’s about a 99% chance you’re< connected to one or both. And despite the fact we are still seeing hurricanes nearly a month past the end of hurricane season and temperatures near 80′ for Thanksgiving in Houston, ANY cold weather is proof Climate Change isn’t real… because every “Snowmageddon” they’re told “How can there be both Global Warming AND record snowfall?” Don’t bother explaining concepts like “evaporation” and that “warm air holds more moisture” to them because they just tune you out. “Facts” mean nothing when it conflicts with what they already WANT to believe is true.

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  • Tax hikes on the Wealthy are a tax increase on THEM no matter how poor: Despite being about as middle-class as can be, ANY tax increase…even on billionaires… is a tax increase on them personally. There are two reasons for this: 1) They think THEY are in the “Top 1%” if they own their own home. And 2) Tax increases are ALWAYS just passed on to the Consumer (despite their faith in the “Free-Market”.) This is what they’ve been told for years by the people manipulating them and what they already believe to be true.

While watching TV, over the Thanksgiving holiday, a promo for a new reality show came on. Only this one stars an Indian family living in California (IIRC). This quickly drew some agonized groans of annoyance from family members with the response, “this is what they do now. Put on shows about foreigners…” I quickly pointed out, “Not ‘foreigners’. Ethnicities. They’re not foreigners, they’re Americans that just happen to be Indian”, I said in exasperation. The Kardashian girls are Lebanese, but they are attractive, so that doesn’t count (until they bring home their black boyfriends that is.)

Critics of Donald Trump are wondering if his latest indefensible moment caught on video mocking a disabled reporter will finally be the thing that takes him down. Seriously? We’re talking about the same group of people who rushed to the defense of Rush Limbaugh when he mocked Michael J. Fox in nearly the exact same fashion in 2009. “If you can’t laugh at that, you’re just a politically correct Liberal buzz-kill.”

I noticed a few weeks ago that a lot of Fox “viewers” don’t actually listen to the program. It plays in the background while they do something else, occasionally flashing a glance at the TV to read the chyron when a particular word catches their ear. In one recent incident, they did a story about the political leanings of the latest round of students attending college. Their own polling showed that most new college students “tend to be Liberal both politically and Socially”, yet the chyron on the TV read, “College students more Conservative”. How? Well, while the poll found more students overall to be “Liberal”, the same poll found the number of students identifying as “Conservative” had grown over the year before by a few percentage points. Ergo, students are now “more Conservative” than they were a year ago (though still badly outnumbered.) But if you’re the typical Fox “news” viewer who only glaces at headlines without paying attention to the entire story, you might very well come away thinking there are “more” Conservative college students than Liberals. It only confirms what they already want to believe is true, and why study after study confirms Fox “news” viewers are the least well informed of all (less informed than even people who watch no news at all.) It’s also how Fox gets away with saying, “Hey, our stories aren’t biased! We defy you to find a clip where we lied!”
 
Two Fox “news” Chyrons following the conviction of Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby on 7 of 8 counts in March of 2007:
 

Libby Not Guilty Libby Not Guilty

 

Guilty on 7 of 8 counts, but Fox focused on the ONE count he was NOT convicted on, and the casual “glancing” Fox viewer only sees “Not guilty” then grumbles something about how “Librul’s” persecuted this poor man for months.

Oh, and by the way… that nut who shot up the Colorado Planned Parenthood last Friday? When he first moved into town, he recommended to a neighbor that he put a metal roof on his house “so the government couldn’t spy on him.” Why bother with a tinfoil hat when you can put a tin roof on your entire house?

He was then allowed to legally purchase an AR-15 assault rifle, a 9mm pistol and a .357 revolver.
 

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November 30, 2015 · Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: General, Healthcare, Partisanship, Party of Life, Politics, Right-Wing Insanity, Seems Obvious to Me

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