Why bother asking these people anything?
This is what a shattered Republican voter from Texas said about Obama:
"I still don't know this man. That is what scares me. He is a very pleasant speaker. But that's all I know."
Right, so your ignorance scares you.
I assure you it scares me more.
How fucking hard can it be to find out everything you could possibly want to know about Obama?!
Fucking hell, just type "Voting history" or "Obama what he stands for" or anything into a search engine!!!
What is wrong with these people?!
Look, if you 'don't know' the most stellar and important person in the US you are a complete moron, so fuck you.
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Remember, these are people who think the word "intellectual" is an insult.
I think that this particular brand of anti-intellectualism first appeared in the form of Dan Quayle. When he was questioned about the mockery he had received for his ignorance, his response was "I wear their scorn as a badge of honor", i.e. "I'm proud of my ignorance". Most commentators thought he simply misspoke and laughed, but the audience to whom he was speaking applauded. He meant exactly what he said, and they got it.
It's one thing to be ignorant, but it's quite a different thing to purposefully cultivate ignorance, and to view ignorance as a preferable state of being.
As usual, George Orwell puts it best:
"A Party member...is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party. The ... speculations which might possibly induce a sceptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline...called, in Newspeak, crimestop. Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity."
It is kind of weird though.
The modern Republican party in the states is made up of this mad Frankensteinian mish-mash of all things labelled "conservative", despite the fact that they have nothing to do with each other. And half of its followers are only there out of decades-old momentum. I mean, I can actually dredge up quite a lot of sympathy for the small-government conservative viewpoint that the government should, for the most part, stay the hell out of my buisiness (though I think its a shame that many of that mindset take the idea to such an extreme that they consider the governments rightful buisiness to be "whatever I want the government to do for me, and nothing else for anyone else.") But what on earth does that have to do with biblical beatings of your wife? Or recognising gay marriage? Or treating all foreign countries as either enemies or prey? I keep expecting a flash of lightning and someone to shout "Bring me the brain!"
And the Republican party hasn't had any legitimate claim to being the small-government party in decades anyways - their last several administrations have spent far more than the last several Democrat ones, and W is the one who has expanded the governments ability to invade a citizen's privacy to Orwelian heights that would have had the founding fathers of the US loading up their muskets and looking for a king to shoot.
They keep talking about Palin running for pres in 2012, and some people are horrified. I think its great. She shatters the unholy alliance of conservatives by being so extremely of the one sort that the rest of them can no longer stomach being associated with her. McCain actually had some integrity before he caved completely for this election run, and he put up a better fight than the results ended up showing; Palin as a candidate would destroy them.
Alas, I trust that the real movers and shakers of the party probably know this.
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