Facebook Memes
I have been spending a fair amount of time on Facebook, discussing politics and so forth, and I've noticed some funny and contradictory themes/memes popping up with my "friends".
Friend 1-- "Live for the moment, enjoy life, be spiritual" and also "all the political parties are the same, bankers are the problem, one world government/UN Agenda 21, they're trying to get our guns, Obama is evil, Obamacare is fascism, 9/11 was an inside job, etc"
Friend 2-- "all the political parties are the same, they're trying to get our guns, Obama is evil, Michelle is a tranny, 9/11/Sandy Hook was an inside job, etc". However, if all the parties are the same, why do Republicans consistently block any gun control legislation?
Friends 3 to 5-- typical right-wingers who love FoxNews, think Obama is evil and a Marxist, think the problem with the world is too much welfare and immigration plus Obamacare!/Benghazi!/IRS!/border crisis! and gun control is tantamount to fascism. These people are just completely incapable of any rational debate.
Friends 6 to 9-- "all the political parties are the same" versus "Republicans are dumb, evil, horrible, ruining the country, etc"
Friends 10 to 20-- "Dems and Obama are great and Republicans are the source of all evil"
Interspersed among most of these groups (except the right-wingers) are the typical memes of "GMOs and Monsanto are evil", "eat healthy food", "food is medicine", "go vegetarian", "cops abuse their power", "fracking is bad"
The one meme that every group has in common is that "abuse of pet animals is the worst thing ever" and that saving animals is akin to holiness.
Right-wingers don't care much about vegetarianism and about brown people.
In general, people I know on Facebook don't like to discuss conspiracies in any depth at all, and really avoid the topic of UFOs and aliens.
Now, I am a political liberal and obviously I agree with (or am sympathetic to) many of these left-leaning and life themes and and conspiracy themes. The pure right-wingers are completely wrong and I still think the whole gun control issue is right-wing paranoia run amok, but Obama apologists are wrong too. But the problem to me is the inconsistency in these world-views. I think all these people are well-meaning, but haven't thought their positions through very well.
Granted, we live in a complicated world, and are surrounded by so much information, and on Facebook in particular, you get bombarded all the time by catchy memes that are easy to pass on. Setting aside the hopelessness of Republicans/conservatives, I guess my biggest pet peeve is people who say both parties are the same, when that is a massive over-simplification. Yes, it is true that the parties are the same on some important issues that I care about such as war and the national security state and investigating intelligence community/military abuses. The problem is these are not the only issues and for many of the issues that affect people every day in a profound way, the parties are very different. So saying they are the same is just counter-productive.
Obviously the biggest issue is the super rich and the elites and the powers that be, and they corrupt everything else and we need to fight that as much as possible. But saying everything is the same is basically just giving up.
Friend 1-- "Live for the moment, enjoy life, be spiritual" and also "all the political parties are the same, bankers are the problem, one world government/UN Agenda 21, they're trying to get our guns, Obama is evil, Obamacare is fascism, 9/11 was an inside job, etc"
Friend 2-- "all the political parties are the same, they're trying to get our guns, Obama is evil, Michelle is a tranny, 9/11/Sandy Hook was an inside job, etc". However, if all the parties are the same, why do Republicans consistently block any gun control legislation?
Friends 3 to 5-- typical right-wingers who love FoxNews, think Obama is evil and a Marxist, think the problem with the world is too much welfare and immigration plus Obamacare!/Benghazi!/IRS!/border crisis! and gun control is tantamount to fascism. These people are just completely incapable of any rational debate.
Friends 6 to 9-- "all the political parties are the same" versus "Republicans are dumb, evil, horrible, ruining the country, etc"
Friends 10 to 20-- "Dems and Obama are great and Republicans are the source of all evil"
Interspersed among most of these groups (except the right-wingers) are the typical memes of "GMOs and Monsanto are evil", "eat healthy food", "food is medicine", "go vegetarian", "cops abuse their power", "fracking is bad"
The one meme that every group has in common is that "abuse of pet animals is the worst thing ever" and that saving animals is akin to holiness.
Right-wingers don't care much about vegetarianism and about brown people.
In general, people I know on Facebook don't like to discuss conspiracies in any depth at all, and really avoid the topic of UFOs and aliens.
Now, I am a political liberal and obviously I agree with (or am sympathetic to) many of these left-leaning and life themes and and conspiracy themes. The pure right-wingers are completely wrong and I still think the whole gun control issue is right-wing paranoia run amok, but Obama apologists are wrong too. But the problem to me is the inconsistency in these world-views. I think all these people are well-meaning, but haven't thought their positions through very well.
Granted, we live in a complicated world, and are surrounded by so much information, and on Facebook in particular, you get bombarded all the time by catchy memes that are easy to pass on. Setting aside the hopelessness of Republicans/conservatives, I guess my biggest pet peeve is people who say both parties are the same, when that is a massive over-simplification. Yes, it is true that the parties are the same on some important issues that I care about such as war and the national security state and investigating intelligence community/military abuses. The problem is these are not the only issues and for many of the issues that affect people every day in a profound way, the parties are very different. So saying they are the same is just counter-productive.
Obviously the biggest issue is the super rich and the elites and the powers that be, and they corrupt everything else and we need to fight that as much as possible. But saying everything is the same is basically just giving up.
posted by spooked at 11:51 AM
3 Comments:
Republicans- and many Democrats say they are merely protecting the Constitutional right enumerated in the 2nd Amendment.
Already, millions of citizens are unable to exercise the right to protect their lives, their families, and their property with firearms, thus leaving them vulnerable to dangers their fellow citizens can protect against. also, their are many controls in place that make it illegal to own certain firearms, number of bullets a magazine can hold etc.
Respectfully, I submit that anyone who takes the time to study the legal history and appellate court cases on 2nd Amendment-related issues, would not support amending that particular amendment.
The Swiss just might be onto something. So were our Founding Fathers and millions of ordinary citizens.
Governor Wallace famously said "there's not a dimes worth of difference between the two major political parties". That is as true today as it was in 1972.
Pointing out that many Democrats favor even more 2nd Amendment restrictions than we already have, whereas few Republicans disagree, is really a gross over-simplification if that is being used to illustrate more than a very minor difference in the two parties.
Gore Vidal said we only have one political party in this country:
The Property Party - and it has two wings - Democrats and Republicans.
Vidal's observation was right, wasn't it?
D's = more 2nd A. restrictions
R's = more not needed
A distinction w/out much fundamental difference - in the scheme of things. Either way, the prisoners in our country aren't a problem, because the criminals are still running the country.
I hate the gun control argument... it's needlessly divisive and irrelevant to me.
There are significant differences in the parties, particularly with the idiot GOP of today.
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