A conversation with devout Tea Partier who taught me that no matter how "intelligent" a person is, no matter how much he or she WANTS to be the exception, no matter how capable a person is of seeing and understanding the truth...essentially no matter how much someone squeals about how badly they want out of the barrel, if their feet are planted against the side, they're not coming out. And if you continue to pull on their outstretched hands, you'll just end up in there, too. This is where I let go:
If you're willing to lie (yes, LIE), purposely incite deep anger and misery in as many people as you can, and fixate on ANYTHING you can even distantly link to an individual against whom you have a personal grudge--to the exclusion of what would be even BETTER arguments, then your motivation is not something I'd ever be willing to support. Again, I let people tell me who they are. I don't HAVE to "make them out to be" anything, just take their word for it, not their opponents', not somebody else's, not even an endless mass of consistent media reports.
Michele Bachmann has demonstrated as clearly as she possibly can, not just with the "breast pump" circus but repeatedly throughout her tenure in government, via overwhelmingly conservative sources but ESPECIALLY since being falsely and foolishly "validated" by the Tea Party just to get butts in chairs, that her single motivating principle is to get more power for Michele Bachmann. SHE has shown (all by herself, if reviewed "critically") that she has NO respect for the truth or the bigger problem of manipulating people's emotions and "critical thought" to perceive whatever monster SHE creates for them to fear and blame.
And here we are back at the beginning. We can't even get PAST the conversation about breast pumps, because you and Michele Bachmann both blew right past what the First Lady actually said and did, just to add fuel to the make-believe fire, which consumes any possible constructive steps that may have come next. And that is NOT an accident. If you can be kept distracted by and arguing over the UNtruths, you won't notice where you're really headed. And you think THIS is EASIER?? You have no idea how wrong you are about that, and I guess won't until it's too late. It is truly tragic that as populated as human history is with instances of this exact process, found almost verbatim in at least 3 books I can see just from where I'm sitting right this second, that such an enormous group of people could be fooled into falling for it again, and yet, here we are. There are SO many smart, decent conservatives, Republicans, who even know better, who've stood up to these self-serving few, not because they're weak, but because they're the strongest of the lot, because they've bothered to LOOK UP and see what's ahead.
Critical thinking based on fiction? That's not actually a very good idea, and even if it were, "critical thinking" demands an analysis of faults and merits, which would require....facts! It also requires aim at your own side, not just the other, and does not involve a knee-jerk "well, they do it, too!" as a response. Do you really think it's more intelligent to just write off every single source of fact obtainable in the civilized, literate world (not just the "mainstream media" to which I have NEVER limited my research, detailed in my posts and yet a fact you also completely disregard).
And if it were "easier" to just look at Bachmann as a big meany, I wouldn't have bothered to look up the WI death threats. I would have just thought about it "critically," replied "well, both sides do it," pointed out how gullible it is to just blindly believe what you hear, and expected that to clear it all up.
Michele Bachmann has demonstrated as clearly as she possibly can, not just with the "breast pump" circus but repeatedly throughout her tenure in government, via overwhelmingly conservative sources but ESPECIALLY since being falsely and foolishly "validated" by the Tea Party just to get butts in chairs, that her single motivating principle is to get more power for Michele Bachmann. SHE has shown (all by herself, if reviewed "critically") that she has NO respect for the truth or the bigger problem of manipulating people's emotions and "critical thought" to perceive whatever monster SHE creates for them to fear and blame.
And here we are back at the beginning. We can't even get PAST the conversation about breast pumps, because you and Michele Bachmann both blew right past what the First Lady actually said and did, just to add fuel to the make-believe fire, which consumes any possible constructive steps that may have come next. And that is NOT an accident. If you can be kept distracted by and arguing over the UNtruths, you won't notice where you're really headed. And you think THIS is EASIER?? You have no idea how wrong you are about that, and I guess won't until it's too late. It is truly tragic that as populated as human history is with instances of this exact process, found almost verbatim in at least 3 books I can see just from where I'm sitting right this second, that such an enormous group of people could be fooled into falling for it again, and yet, here we are. There are SO many smart, decent conservatives, Republicans, who even know better, who've stood up to these self-serving few, not because they're weak, but because they're the strongest of the lot, because they've bothered to LOOK UP and see what's ahead.
Critical thinking based on fiction? That's not actually a very good idea, and even if it were, "critical thinking" demands an analysis of faults and merits, which would require....facts! It also requires aim at your own side, not just the other, and does not involve a knee-jerk "well, they do it, too!" as a response. Do you really think it's more intelligent to just write off every single source of fact obtainable in the civilized, literate world (not just the "mainstream media" to which I have NEVER limited my research, detailed in my posts and yet a fact you also completely disregard).
And if it were "easier" to just look at Bachmann as a big meany, I wouldn't have bothered to look up the WI death threats. I would have just thought about it "critically," replied "well, both sides do it," pointed out how gullible it is to just blindly believe what you hear, and expected that to clear it all up.
