The PC doesn't welch on his promises.
Even if it takes a while for him to get around to keeping the promise.
About a month ago, The Blog promised to open a can of whoop-ass on Conservative, Right-wing, Libertarian, Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, Palin, Bachman, Tea-bag, douche-baggery.
(And, if that last sentence isn't some sort of fucking poetry, I don't know what is.)
It has taken a while, I know.
So long a time, in fact, that the "conservative" FOTB that posted the original FB post that inspired the promised blog post, had time to delete the original post, presumably, to prevent The Blog from taking it any farther.
The Blog had the foresight to take screen-caps of some of the original post.
Unfortunately, The PC didn't capture the whole thread.
So, what follows is a reconstruction of what was on the post...
...plus...
The responses that The Blog did not post on the thread, out of respect to a private request by his friend, to back off.
A bit of background...
The commenter that The Blog refers to here as "Troll" is the same commenter known as "Glen" on the thread that inspired a previous PCBlog post entitled "Teachers."
Check it out here.
Are you caught up?
Good!
Now, here we go...
This all started when The Blog's "conservative" friend shared a graphic from Rand Paul's Facebook page...
Got that?
"The Five Best Sentences You'll Ever Read."
Five mindless, bumper-sticker talking points, that are better than anything you will ever read, anywhere.
God Damn!!!
Better than anything in The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of The United States of America, The Magna-Carte, the works of Shakespeare or even The Bible.
Wow!
The five best sentences EVER!!!
If you have ever endured an ideological conversation with conservative friends or relatives, or read a right-wing Op-Ed column or blog, you have heard all five of these talking points flogged to death in some form or another.
The PC couldn't resist responding to his friend's post in the "Comment" section.
He broke it down something like this...
1. True, in a shallow sort of way. Unless, of course, you mean legislating a minimum wage for workers or a safety net for the truly poor and raising taxes a couple of percentage points (or more) on the wealthy. In which case, the statement is utter bullshit. History and economics have proven that putting a little bit more money in the hands of the working class and the poor increases their spending power, benefiting them personally and improving the economy as a whole. When taxes are higher on the wealthy, the wealthy continue to be wealthy. (Remember that our country's strongest economies thrived when the top tax rates ranged anywhere from 70% to 90%.)
2. Clever wordplay. A clear swipe at those lazy Welfare and Medicaid recipients. But, the fact is, everyone "receives" whether it's a meager stipend to defray the cost of food or housing, or roads, clean water, safe food, public education, libraries, police and firefighters. And, contrary to Mitt Romney's "47%" theory, everyone, rich and poor, pays taxes, one way or another, to pay for those things.
3. I love how conservative "patriots' pretend that the government is some sort of awful, voracious, fire-breathing creature that resides in a cave located between the state lines of Maryland and Virginia, instead of understanding that the government is "We the People." (See point #2.)
4. Said no investment banker or stockbroker, ever.
5. My biggest beef with this one is the math. "...half the people get the idea that they don't have to work, because the other half is going to take care of them." This, again, plays into the "47%" theory. Never mind that the majority of the "half" work their asses off at low paying jobs, or are retirees who spent their lives working their asses off. A few more are hard working folks who worked their asses off until their employers "downsized" or shipped their jobs overseas and are now out of work. If you remove those people from the equation, there remains a very small percentage of people who actually believe that the world owes them a living.
All five sentences, when you get down to it, are "straw man" arguments.
They sound great until you apply facts to them.
The thing that they all have in common is this...
All five sentences reinforce the modern conservative ideology of...
"Mine, mine, mine. I got mine. If you didn't get yours...
...Well, fuck you."
The Blog doesn't know if any of the sentences are directly quoted from the works of Ayn Rand. The Blog does know that the spirit of those sentences can be traced to her philosophy.
Based on the fact that the original graphic came from Rand Paul's Facebook page...
(Ron Paul actually named the spawn of his loins "Rand" to honor Ayn's odious legacy.)
The PC said as much in his comment to his friend's post.
So now we get to the good stuff.
The comments by "Glen the Troll."
The comments that The PC, respectfully, ignored on the original Facebook post.
So, here we go...
You are wrong, "Glen the Troll."
Rich people do not stimulate the economy. They bury their riches in offshore accounts and sit on them. Three decades of "trickle down" economic theory has proven this. The working class and the poor, when they have money to spend, actually spend it. That is what stimulates the economy.
Warren Buffet gets this.
So does the "evil, liberal, billionaire" George Soros.
Even the racist, anti-semitic, elitist, corporate millionaire Henry Ford understood this.
Next...
What an interesting point.
You are so right about this.
And, when someone who is hungry enough to "... get off their lazy butts and go out of the cave to kill it and drag it home..."
Don't come crying to me when someone who is "hungry enough," goes "out of the cave," and robs your arrogant ass and "drags it home."
When that happens, and I hope it doesn't.
(Who am I kidding? I totally hope it does. Because, fuck you.)
Victor Hugo understood this, more than a century ago.
*I am not going to link to Victor Hugo or the story of Jean Valjean or Les Misérables, here. Do your own fucking homework.*
Okay, that was fun.
But, here is the best comment from "The Troll."
Probably (and I am assuming, here..)
... to the exclusion of anything else.
Your analogy is interesting.
But, it's a pile of bovine excrement.
A better analogy might be a story about a boy wizard attending a magical prep school, doing battle to the death with the evil "He Who Must Not Be Named."
Pure fantasy.
Facts need not apply.
Which brings The Blog to an awesome quote by comedian and TV writer John Rogers.
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged . One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
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