Politics

So, just hours after telling everyone to muzzle their crazies because of how some ostensibly pro-life activists have taken to calling a 14-year old girl a “whore” (and so on) because they didn’t like her sign, here’s an interesting story about a woman who showed up at a pro-Zimmerman rally with a sign that read “We’re racist and proud!” An example of a crazy who needs muzzling? Not exactly.

Turns out that she’s actually from a radical left-wing organization. She was interviewed at the rally and asked about her sign, and she said “there are people here who are racist and apparently think that’s OK. I’m not one of them. I’m being sarcastic.” Sarcastic? Or just trying to help “clarify” the racial undertones of the Zimmerman controversy? In either case, it looks like it worked. Check out the caption to the photo above: her sign was taken seriously.

I guess this means there’s a third reason to muzzle your crazies: so that you can more rapidly expose the plants.

Also: I’m depressed about humanity right now. If you have to frame the opposition because they aren’t doing their part to fulfill your stereotype of them, maybe it’s time to reconsider your stereotype? Just a thought.

So a young woman protesting Texas proposed abortion restrictions held up a sign that I find to be rather silly, slightly offensive, and mostly just sad. It read “Jesus isn’t a dick, so keep him out of my vagina.” There have been a lot of low points for both sides during the ongoing political battles in Texas, and this was certainly one of them.

The sign drew lots of attention, as you might imagine, and the young lady’s father took to the Internets to defend his little girl. Now, however, she is speaking out for herself, and her post is an object lesson in why being a jerk is never helpful to your cause.

1. It solidifies the resolve of your opponents. Do you think, that after being called a whore by hundreds or maybe thousands of people who disagree with her political views, this young woman is more or less likely to consider those views in a positive light later in life? How about her friends? Her parents? Her family?

2. It makes you look like a jerk. In the article, this young lady describes a confrontation she had while holding the sign in front of the capitol building:

The first day that we were out protesting at the Capitol, my friend and I took turns holding up the sign I wrote, and an older man came up to us yelling right in our faces. “You two should shave your heads! You should become lesbians! No man will ever want you! You’re ugly!”

Let me ask you this: do you want to be seen as metaphorically standing shoulder-to-shoulder with an adult man who yells and screams at young girls and calls them ugly? Do you think that this has a positive or a negative effect either politically or in terms of PR?

So here’s the thing: if you know someone crazy, try to put a muzzle on them when the foam starts to fly. It can be hard to stand up to your friends, but at least try to put a damper on it to some extent. And if you have a little too much crazy inside? Maybe try a little self-muzzling? Perhaps never reply without a self-imposed 5-minute cooldown between writing the response and hitting “Submit”? I don’t know; be creative folks. Because this kind of nonsense just embarrasses us all.

There’s been a lot of talk about the growing income inequality in the United States, and I’ve become convinced by the research that (all else being equal) more income inequality is usually a bad thing. Along with this narrative, however, there’s an assumption that as the rich get richer and richer the rest of us get poorer and poorer. But that assumes a zero-sum game, and the economy is not a zero-sum game. It also spends too much time focusing on dollars instead of on people. As the chart above shows–lifted from this piece at the conservative American Enterprise Institute–if we just pick a fixed dollar amount (like $75,000) and then ask how many households are above or below it, the result is that more and more families are moving upwards, not downwards. (And keep in mind, inflation has nothing to do with this because the chart is using inflation-adjusted dollars.) 

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I wasn’t going to post this because I’m so fed up with the persistence of the narrative that all conservatives are racist that it seems pointless. What had me so frustrated? This article, which a friend I tend to highly respect despite our different political views, posted on Facebook with the admonition “read all the links”.  I don’t want to spend too much time going through all the things that article got wrong, but there are a lot. Starting with the image it uses at the top:

The point is to reverse the races and ask: would people have reacted the same way? But here’s the problem, they never questioned that the image they are parodying is itself highly biased.

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Here’s the thing: what could Kerry be doing during the Egypt crisis that would actually help? Doesn’t Drudge spend a lot of time talking about how pointless and fruitless our sporadic interventions into the Middle East tend to be? We lent a hand in Libya and that got rather ugly (first Al Qaeda took credit for a lot of the victory, then there was the whole Benghazi thing when we tried to get our weapons back) and we haven’t lent a hand in Syria and that’s even worse. Seems that we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t, so if Kerry wants to go yachting on the Fourth of July: good for him. I wish I had a yacht. That sounds fun.

I’m sure there are these things called cell phones if anything requires his attention and, to be quite honest, the thing that’s most interesting to me here is that he’s still apparently windsurfing at age 69. Not bad!

This kind of dumb “red meat” writing is why I end up finding more in common with the despised moderates and RINOs. It’s pointless, excessive, and probably hypocritical to boot.

I know you need to fill space, Drudge, but go find a real story. I’m sure someone was horribly murdered in an unusual way somewhere or something.