One of my favorite places to hang out online lately has been an old standby- Yahoo. Which I like to refer to as "Home of the Internet's Dumbest Commenters." It's a great place to catch up on all the latest dumbass right wing tropes without having to give page clicks to Fox or the rest of the wingnutosphere. Plus I want to have the back of my fellow liberals trying to make their cases there. And it keeps my mind sharp having to pick apart people's fauly logic. Actually, scratch that, it's probably making me dumber, but I can't stay away. Every time I read a story, I have to scroll down to see what the dummies are saying. If I were honest with myself, I would admit that it makes me feel special to know I'm smarter than some of my fellow humans.
I try to take mental notes on some of the dumber shit they say there. Here's a few that I see popping up a lot and some of the responses I tend to make.
We need to stop sending money to __ and take care of things here
This is usually below stories of natural disasters in the US. This is not news, but people seem to think we are spending a big part of our budget on foreign aid- somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 percent. Truth is, it's about 1 percent. I usually respond by pointing this out. And while people who post "we shouldn't be sending money to these countries" under stories about disasters in other nations are cold-hearted bastards, pointing out that they are, in fact, cold-hearted for making this comment is usually pointless because they don't care and will only respond by calling you sissy.
I can balance my checkbook, why can't the government fix the deficit?
Setting aside the fact that a lot of us never even learned how or why one should balance a checkbook, this is just another version of "the government is like a household." One of the dumbest things anyone ever says about our government. But the dumbest thing here is that the problem isn't that the government doesn't know how much money it has and is accidently overspending. Like Congress just decided to buy some missiles, wrote a check and then later went "Oh shit, we forgot to deposit everyone's taxes in the bank" Then the check bounced and now the US is paying overdraft fees. It's borrowing. On purpose.
Liberals are supposed to be tolerant, but they're making hateful comments about____
Every Palin or Beck story ends up with a few of these. One thing I don't like about this is that it's diluting the word hate. There's a difference between "I hate going to the dentist" and "I hate Mexicans." Hating a whole group of people based on skin color or ethnicity is Capital H hate. Hating Glenn Beck is small h hate.
But let's also remember that being liberal doesn't mean you can't hate stuff. It just means that you're not allowed to hate people for things the color of their skin, their gender, their orientation, etc. There's plenty of things I hate, and f-you if you don't like it because it's either none of your business because it doesn't affect you, or you should hate them too. I'll try to think of a few.
War.Traffic.Walmart.Cannibals.Being lonely.Waiting at the airport.Jim Carrey movies.Classic Rock.Papercuts.Famine and Disease.Pedophiles.Our healthcare system.Hangovers.Bureaucracy, especially when it involves filling out forms I can't understand or require documents I can't find.Having gas during a meeting.When Barack Obama says government is like a household.Fascism.Communism.Misogyny.Homophobia.Microsoft and all its creations.Losing.
Wooh, I'm tired from all that hating. Ok, not really. But I also like how they throw in tolerant. As if we should tolerate any old dumb idea. And when it comes down to it, I'm not really being intolerant when I say I think Palin is unqualifed or that Beck is nuts. I'm just stating an opinion. People are free to like them, I'm not trying to prevent them being on the air.
Those are just some of the comments I see often. I put some others in the polls. If you have some favorites, please share them!