Sunday, December 24, 2006

A discussion almost no longer worth having

Just So You KnowPartisan Politics

As shadowed (whined about, really) in a comment to an earlier post by Minister Buckethead, I don’t see much intelligent political discourse these days. Which is a shame, really - I’ve always enjoyed reading it and have, at times enjoyed writing it or attempting to.

But these days, political discussions tend to appear most often from mouth-breathers with no critical thinking skills or rank partisans pushing buttons on a presumed-ignorant voting populace.  The ratio must be somewhere around 90% today, unlike back in the “old days”, where it was only, oh, 75%-80%.

As an example of the former, I’d give Debbie Schlussel’s recent rant on Barack Obama ("Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always A Muslim") and some of the comments (not the post by the estimable Allahpundit, but some of the comments) in the story at Hot Air, ”Schlussel: Is Obama a Muslim manchurian candidate?“.  Anyone who feels compelled to use Sen. Obama’s middle name, other than perhaps his mother, is an unserious rabble-rouser and should be vigorously ignored.  Anyone who thinks he’s DQ’d from further political office solely due to his Muslim heritage is no different, and has the added disadvantage of being incapable of forming a coherent thought in support of an argument they’re incapable of considering.  Rubes, the lot of them.

Examples of the latter abound; far too many to list, but they include the hubbub about Harold Ford Jr. and his taste for white women and the creepy predilections of Mark Foley.  In the comments to a story (linked to the story) that Buckethead provided below (referenced above), about a congressional aide named Shriber who solicited help from hackers in adjusting his undergraduate GPA, most of the noise wasn’t focused on the fact that Shriber had attempted to violate a federal law, nor that he’d been played so majestically by the supposed hackers he thought he’d found to help with his nefarious plot. 

No, the comments went straight to the heart of the matter - that he was an aide to a Republican. The first of these stories flatly didn’t matter, not a bit, the second was interesting primarily due to Foley’s immediate resignation but not at all due to his party affiliation, and the third indicated that the commenters were humorless drones, politically tin-eared morons without meaningful lives, beating on a drum that people with IQs over 100 wouldn’t even hear.

Those pushing stories like these either don’t know or wilfully ignore how low-budget and minimally meaningful their rants are, to thinking adults.  Yet they continue; they happened throughout the 2004 presidential campaign, throughout the most recent mid-term elections, and are sure to play a part in the 2008 federal elections as well.  Truly a shame, and a waste of opportunity to have an intelligent discussion about what we really want our legislative overlords and masters to do on our behalf.

But enough of my setup - as you all know, Scott Adams’ Dilbert speaks for the common man, and hasn’t let us down in our hour of need.  Witness:

Dec 22, 2006:
image (click for original @ Dilbert.com)

Dec 23, 2006:
image (click for original @ Dilbert.com)

They pretty much summarize my view of the landscape as it sits today.  We, as an electorate have to get smarter, and while we’re working on that, we have to reject the button pushers and the slobbering retards.  Yeah, that’s a plan.


Posted by Patton on 12/24/06 at 02:51 AM
Just So You Know • Partisan Politics • Permalink