on being misinformed and yet always being “right”

Es­ti­mated reading time is 7 min­utes.

THIS ONE’S EASY-PEASY: I don’t ac­tu­ally have to pick a topic, do hours of re­search, ra­ti­o­ci­nate my way through the data, and then spend hours writing and rewriting all, and then more hours poring over photos for il­lus­tra­tions! I don’t re­ally even have to much writing with this one. ¹

All I re­ally have to do here on this piece about being will­ingly mis­in­formed is to type out a few opening para­graphs and then copy and paste some photos from someone else’s web­site! ²

And I get to list this piece under two cat­e­gories that don’t usu­ally share much on my site! The first is “Neal’s Rants (Re­ally Po­lit­ical),” be­cause I am of course making huge fun of the ex­trem­i­ties of the cur­rent rightwing craze in these here United States.

 

Hell’s Belles, little dar­ling, every li­brull I know is sym­pa­thetic with the is­sues of the Tea Party. We just can’t figure out why they can’t figure out who the real bad guys are! Then we read their signs.

 

The second is the “Strunk­and­whiten It, cat­e­gory” be­cause each photo below—unposed and re­flecting the “thought process” of the sign-maker—is a gram­mat­ical faux pas worthy of a chuckle or three.

These people de­cided that they were going to join a crowd and make a public state­ment of their be­liefs. Each then pur­chased or found the nec­es­sary piece of card­board, writing tool, stick, staple-gun, etc., and placed their thoughts onto this piece of hand­crafted media.

These pic­tures were all taken at Tea Party events, which are cool and an ad­mirable public ex­er­cise of the First Amend­ment. But the Tea Partiers are a po­lit­ical move­ment of the right, of which I am not a member in good standing. 

Nonethe­less, I sym­pa­thize with the stated plights of many of these people. Their con­cern for the wel­fare of their chil­dren and their par­ents and them­selves is gen­uine and nothing to be taken lightly.

 

 

 

 

 

We have a missing apos­trophe, an un­nec­es­sary apos­trophe, and three mis­spelled words. I had better photos, but I se­lected those where no one was easily iden­ti­fied. Even a few of the ones I have posted here have been heavily cropped to elim­i­nate any­one’s rec­og­niz­able face. That said, many of the photos with the most out­landish gram­mat­ical boners had the person holding the boner very con­scious of the fact that his or her photo was being taken.

Da Dems didn’t do dat!

The problem is their focus: Obama and the Dems did not give way their jobs, did not raise col­lege tu­itions, did not create a health care system where many have to wait until it’s too late and then make a trip to the ER.

When you com­bine these people and their dumb spelling er­rors with those Tea Partiers with signs con­fusing is­sues (blaming Obama and Dems for bills passed by Rep*blicans) and out­right fab­ri­ca­tions (Obama as Kenyan Muslim Marxist), it does not make the Tea Party move­ment look good to non-members.

 

The im­ages that you are about to view are graphic dis­plays of abuse of the written lan­guage. In the text that ac­com­pa­nies them, you will find no out­right con­dem­na­tion of any group of people. What you will find is amaze­ment at how this hap­pens.

 

In this mix there are also gun ‘en­thu­si­asts’ im­plying im­mi­nent vi­o­lence (“We’re un­armed this time”) and the stag­gering amount of racism, big­otry, and homophobia.

Based on these signs (and un­for­tu­nately, many of the recorded in­ter­views that these folk give to jour­nal­ists), you end up with a group of people who should not only not be al­lowed to vote, they should per­haps not be al­lowed to leave their houses without adult supervision!

Most of their prob­lems are cre­ated by modern cor­po­rate cap­i­talism and these is­sues are not going away.

Things are going to get worse. ³

Just a few years ago, we could say that the GOP was the party bought and paid for by the rich and cor­po­ra­tions. That the Dems were the party of the working class. Due to var­ious changes since then (Cit­i­zens United being the most promi­nent), it will be nigh on im­pos­sible for any can­di­date from any party to run for any na­tional po­si­tion without selling at least a por­tion of their soul to the Devil in­car­nated, be he/she as a CEO, a banker, a stock­holder, etc.

 

Not only did my fellow Amer­cians in Tu­pelo, Mis­sis­sippi NOT vote ’em all out, they voted back in the same Rep*blican in­cum­bents that have been giving tax breaks to the wealthy and the multi-national cor­po­ra­tions while turning a blind eye to those same cor­po­ra­tions out­sourcing their jobs to other coun­tries. Oh well, it’s the thought that counts.

 

Of the 355 mass killings in the US so far in 2015, the total number by Kenyans is 0. Total number of mass killings by Chris­tians: 353.

 

And since I used the word “worse” once, why not again: I saved the worse photo as the penul­ti­mate image on this page. This one is ac­tu­ally clever and ironic, the latter a trait seem­ingly rare in those who sit right of center. But it often seems that no matter what the topic of the con­ver­sa­tion with the rightwingers, some­things are al­ways la­tent if not obvious—violence being one of them.

Irony and conservatism?!!?

Fi­nally, in de­fense of a handful of ar­tic­u­late Rep*blicans on the In­ternet, I have seen a few ex­plain away these egre­gious of­fenses by claiming that they were being done ei­ther a) iron­i­cally to make a point, or b) that they were done by lib­eral in­fil­tra­tors trying to make the Tea Partiers look bad.

Sorry, but for the first, irony and con­ser­vatism al­most never meddle with one an­other. As for the second: sorry again, but no­body I know has the time to get dressed up like a red­neck, paint a sign, and hang out all day at a rally to make Tea Partiers look bad.

That is a job that they seem more than willing to ful­fill on their own: on being mis­in­formed and yet al­ways being right.

 

I want to be­lieve that this im­plies that at least some Tea Partiers have a sense of humor! I’m not much of a believer . . .

 

This is the orig­inal header image until I found the much more dra­matic photo at the top of this page with the threat to club lib­erals. This photo here is not ironic: de­spite the fact that survey after survey shows that people who rely on Fox for their news are among the most un­in­formed people in America, they be­lieve oth­er­wise. Con­tra­dic­tory facts only strengthen their be­lief and their re­solve and thereby their com­fort in being mis­in­formed and yet al­ways being right. ⁴

Leftwingnut rallies and protests

There is nothing like the reg­ular Tea Partiers’ ral­lies among the (ru­mored) left-wing in the US. Cer­tain sit­u­a­tions cause ral­lies or protests to happen. That’s called a tem­po­rary ‘grass roots’ movement.

When they do gather, left­wingers tend to carry gram­mat­i­cally cor­rect signs no­tice­ably lacking in big­otry, racism, ho­mo­phobia, misogyny, etc. Ex­cept for a few fringe el­e­ments (think of the wackos in masks at the WTO protests) they do not carry signs threat­ening vi­o­lence this time or next time. 

Cer­tainly there have al­ways been a small per­centage that throw things or break win­dows or en­gage in acts of civil dis­obe­di­ence that in­volve de­struc­tion of public and pri­vate prop­erty. (Those WTO people again.)

They have al­ways been with us: I re­member having to corral them in during anti-war demon­stra­tions in 1970–71. No doubt they al­ways will be with us.

And they do tend to add a stink to such events that the other 99% have to carry with them.

The large protests by lefty groups tend to be con­trolled and peaceful—until au­thor­i­ties step in and act vi­o­lently. Per­haps that is the mis­take that we are making!

And me? I’m waiting so pa­tiently, lying on the floor. I’m just trying to do this jig-saw puzzle, be­fore it rains anymore . . .

 

FEA­TURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page was taken forty years ago and may in­clude a few people who stopped get­ting high and lis­tening to rock & roll music and be­came Tea Partiers. Of course, when you gather large num­bers of left­wingers to­gether in one place, make sure they don’t have ac­cess to mar­i­juana and music or you could have an out­break of good good good vi­bra­tions. This is often man­i­fested in thou­sands of people spon­ta­neously raising their hands above their heads in a two-fingered peace sign.

 

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FOOT­NOTES:

1   The term easy-peasy is a bit of British chil­dren’s slang of re­cent origin, its ear­liest usage at­trib­uted to the 1970s. I do not be­lieve that I have ever used it in con­ver­sa­tion and cer­tainly not in print, but as the an­cient anony­mous Jewish au­thor of Ec­cle­si­astes opines: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every pur­pose under the heaven.”

2   In this case, the web­site I used was the amazing Please Cut The Crap, where Mr Milt Shook at­tempts to deal with the ir­ra­tionality of mil­lions of his fellow Amer­i­cans by of­fering them facts in­stead of delu­sions and il­lu­sion. Rec­om­mended highly!

3   Much, much worse.

4   The pat­tern of having stone-cold facts that con­tra­dict your be­lief only strength­ening that be­lief is not re­served for Tea Partiers or chris­tians or rightwingers in gen­eral. It hap­pens to you, too. Read Mis­takes Were Made (But Not By Me) by Carol Tavris and El­liot Aronson.

 

Um, when I was men­tioning racism, vi­o­lence, and ho­mo­phobia above, I dunno how it slipped me, but there’s this misogyny thing going on with rightwing  men, too. I don’t per­son­ally get misogyny nor do I get why these guys would want dom­i­nance of this sort, but they do. And yes, this sign is well made and gram­mat­i­cally correct.