I had a friend. For the sake of protecting his privacy I’ll call him “Mark Pond.” I liked Mark. We had a lot in common. We both loved science fiction. We both still read comic books. We both had cute kids (mine are totally cuter, though!). And then I started paying attention to politics.
As I’ve mentioned before, my political awakening only came in the
last few years. Early 2008 to be precise. I had quit my awful,
short lived, management position at Blockbuster a few months before the birth
of my first child and my wife and I had decided that I would work part time and
be a stay at home dad. She was making enough money for us to afford it
and we had discussed it during the pregnancy. Why work full time and pay
most of my paycheck to have someone else raise my child?
As anyone with children of their own knows, newborns don’t do much
other than sleep and eat (and poop and pee) so I found myself with a fair
amount of down time. So I started to read political websites. A lot
of political websites.
I started reading political threads where very nasty battles were being waged and I noticed a trend: conservative were terrible at debating an issue but were very good at attacking their opponent. I also noticed that this extended to the professional political arena as well. Republicans are awesome at breezing over an issue and launching attacks directly against the reputation of Democrats.
I became very familiar with the phrase “ad hominem”, which is
undermining an argument by delegitimizing the person making it. Sound
familiar? It’s the entire game plan of the GOP. Obama is a scary
secret Muslim who was illegally elected President so anything he says is
suspect. It’s like a Jedi mind trick; it only works on the
weak-minded. “This is not the health care reform you are looking for…”
The more I learned about conservatives and their lies, the more
irritated I got that such a thing should be allowed to work in our
Democracy. So I started to post articles on my FB page in protest.
Some of my family and friends are conservatives (poor bastards)
and they took offense to some of what I said. Some of them
responded. Mind you, I was still getting a grip on conservative positions
and what they actually meant. They’re so heavily coded and misleading
that it takes some time to wade through the bullshit. My early responses
were sloppy and heavy handed. Meh. Have to start somewhere, right?
But then there was Mark. Mark was super conservative.
Something I had been previously unaware of. He mercilessly battered me
about for a while. It was annoying but useful. I honed my arguing
skills (on line at least) and better understood the issues. He caught me
good one time by asking if a President lying to Congress should be more than
enough to impeach them.
We had been discussing Bush and Iraq so I agreed. He, of
course, pounced on this as a Clinton bashing and “both sides do bad things”
moment. I was totally thrown off guard. It occurred to me much
later than equating lying about blow jobs with lying a country into a war that
has caused the death of thousands of American soldier and tens of thousands, if
not hundreds of thousands, of Iraqi civilians was quite possibly the stupidest
version of the “both sides” meme argument I’ve ever heard. But, like I
said, I was learning.
About this time the Fat Smug Bastard started to chime in on my
threads with Mark. Being a liberal himself, the FSB felt it was incumbent
upon him to lend a hand at debunking conservative garbage. That was a
nice surprise, I hadn’t know he was a hard core liberal. Although,
according to the Smug One, he had discussed politics with me on several
occasions, during all of which I rolled my eyes and tuned him out.
Entirely plausible but unsubstantiated.
It was also somewhat relieving. Arguing with the FSB is a
tiresome exercise, there’s a reason he’s called “smug” and a “bastard”.
Further, it was extremely convenient because the FSB is also a committed
Catholic. While I am familiar with the major religions (and some of the
minor), he could quote chapter and verse. Watching him dissect a follower
of Republican Jesus™ is funny as hell. Mark, unfortunately, was such a person.
Also something I had been unaware of.
So we went on for a while in the following pattern: I, or
the FSB, would post a liberal article or comment and Mark would complain.
One of us would rebut and he would start taking offense. Did I mention
conservatives LIVE to take offense to a perceived liberal insult?
It’s a classic tactic designed to make you apologize for hurting
their feelings and concede ground. That works on the fluffy bunny “let’s
all get along” crowd. I am not one of those. Neither is the
FSB. We’re more of the rabid wolverine “lie to me and I’ll gut you like a
fish” crowd. Mark started getting “insulted” a whole lot and quitting the
conversation on a regular basis. Then he would be back on a different
post complaining about something new. Rinse, repeat.
Then, in June of 2009, I read a Media Matters post about Michael
“I’m ashamed to be Jewish” Savage, nee Michael Alan Weiner. The day
before, Mr. Weiner stated that “The white Christian heterosexual married male
is the epitome of everything right with America” Oddly enough, I was disgusted
by this. And yet, Mark actually defended this piece of filth. I
believe his words were “What did he say that was wrong or untrue?”
My mouth was literally hanging open that someone I was friends
with could not immediately denounce this as one of the most offensive things a
person could say. I confronted him, with a great deal of hostility, about
the underlying premise of the statement. If the white Christian
heterosexual married male is the epitome of everything right with America then
anything not fitting that description was automatically lesser.
With me being an atheist of Puerto Rican and Jewish descent, I
asked him, did he think he was better than me? And how, exactly, was
he better? He was instantly offended and avoided answering the
question. When pressed on the point he became hostile and abandoned the
thread.
“Wow. I can’t believe I’m friends with an honest to goodness
bigot” I thought.
Not one to let such a thing go, my engagements with Mark became
uglier. Now that I had a good solid peek under the hood, so to speak, I
understood what he was about. I kept pushing until he also coughed up a
gem of stupidity that I “should get a real job.” Because raising children
and keeping house apparently doesn’t count in the world of manly
conservatism.
When I asked him if his wife knew how little he valued her
contributions to the family, he got offended and dropped the thread.
Satisfied I had made my point I defriended him. There didn’t seem to be
any point in continuing to associate with someone so filled with hate who
thought I was inferior.
The Fat Smug Bastard hung in there for another six months,
though. He had known Mark longer than I had and was less willing to walk
away from their friendship, mutually antagonistic as it was. He also held
onto the vain hope that Mark was not lost. It was like watching a car
crash in slow motion or watching a friend develop a mental illness and be
powerless to stop it.
Mike became nastier and nastier, more dedicated to Fox News’ brand
of paranoia and hate. The FSB finally threw the towel in when Mark signed
a petition against gay marriage and the FSB, being gay, lost it. I was
not privy to that conversation but I’m to understand it ended about the time
Mark started to claim he was the superior believer because he went forth and
multiplied as the Lord commanded and the FSB could never do that.
Or something imbecilic along those lines. The FSB was so
offended that a friend of his could relegate him to the status of a second
class citizen based on his cherry picked understanding of the Bible he
defriended him as well.
I knew it was coming but the FSB hadn’t wanted to believe Mark had
fallen so far. It was blindingly obvious to me that anyone so drunk on
Fox News would eventually denounce homosexuality. It’s all part and
parcel of the Culture Wars and if you swallow part of it, you have to swallow
all of it or risk the foundation of your sand castle ideology collapsing.
Sometimes I feel bad for Mark’s wife and kids since he promised to
brainwash them into being conservatives so they couldn’t grow up to be liberals
(his words, not mine). It’s a perfect example of hate being passed on to
the next generation.
Really, it’s a form of child abuse and, yes, that
is precisely what I mean. Teaching your children to despise the
poor, the gay, the nonwhite, those of another faith or even different political
ideology IS abuse. The more offended you are by that statement, the more
likely it is that that is exactly what you are doing. You
should be ashamed of yourself.
The moral of this story? Friends don’t let friends watch Fox
News.
Author Justin Rosario is a filthy liberal scum who enjoys making hate
filled right wingers cry. Follow him on twitter @FilthyLbrlScum or on Facebook
at Left Wing Nation