MSNBCitis [noun]: A condition wherein one uses facts and research to refute opponents — delivered whilst bespectacled, in a tone suggesting you can’t believe you have to explain this to these *#%$* idiots again.
— John Stewart
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For the last dozen years, a list has bounced around the interweb called “100 Things You Can Say to Irritate a Republican.” It’s a predictable litany of liberal statements designed to infuriate conservatives by rubbing their noses in inconvenient facts and truth.
It ends with, “Bottom line? If you want to anger Republicans, tell them the truth.”
Take THAT, you knucklehead conservatives.
The interesting thing is, the list has remained pretty consistent over the years. It’s usually passed along as-is. Lefties typically don’t march in lock-step like right-wingers, so that’s unusual.
Also unusual: when the right-wingers have retaliated with their own lists designed to provoke Democrats, there is very little consistency.
Apparently, each individual conservative wingnut is so enraged, so white-hot with anger, that he or she is compelled to strike back with a custom list that vents the vitriol stuck in his or her own personal craw.
Now, let’s be candid. The “irritate a Republican” list indeed is designed to provoke, but it is largely objective and factual. Fascism IS a right-wing ideology. 9/11 did happen on George Bush’s watch.
At the same time, many of the statements veer off into insult and zinger territory. For example, “Republicans hate illegal immigrants, unless they need their lawns mowed.” Or “Tea parties are for little girls.” Or “Republicans are against gay marriage, but in favor of lesbian sex.”
Good for laughs, but not for advancing the argument.
So, just for the heck of it, I waded into “100 Things You Can Say to Irritate a Republican” and whittled it down to 50 things that have meat on the bone.
Here’s the list.
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1. Jesus healed the sick and helped the poor, for free.
2. Senator Joe McCarthy was a national disgrace, and he got the public humiliation he deserved.
3. The Civil War was about slavery, not States’ Rights.
4. The Founding Fathers were progressives.
5. Fascism is a right-wing ideology.
6. The Earth is round.
7. Evolution is real.
8. Ronald Reagan legalized abortion as Governor of California.
9. Reagan raised taxes 11 times as President.
10. Reagan supported gun control.
11. Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency.
12. Global warming is real.
13. President Obama is a Christian born in America.
14. George W. Bush held hands with the King of Saudi Arabia.
15. Jesus was a liberal.
16. Republicans talk big, but they always spend more money than Democrats.
17. Public schools educate children; private schools indoctrinate them.
18. The Constitution is the law. The Bible isn’t.
19. Corporations are not people. People are people.
20. Fox News isn’t real news. It’s a hateful right-wing propaganda machine.
21. The Federal Reserve was a Republican idea.
22. Women are equal citizens who deserve equal rights.
23. Women have the right to control their own bodies.
24. Social Security is solvent through 2038.
25. Health care is a right, not a product.
26. The Roe v. Wade decision was made by a conservative-leaning Supreme Court.
27. Waterboarding is torture.
28. The first African-American President was elected fair and square. Get over it.
29. 9/11 happened on George W. Bush’s watch.
30. Separation of church and state is in the Constitution. It’s called the First Amendment.
31. Muslims are protected by the Constitution, just as Christians are.
32. America is a nation of immigrants. We are all “anchor babies.”
33. The Earth is 4.54 billion years old, not 6,000 years old.
34. Federal law trumps state law.
35. The Republican reaction to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill was to apologize to BP.
36. Getting out of a recession requires government spending.
37. Fox News is owned by Rupert Murdoch, an Australian media mogul who inherited his fortune from his daddy.
38. President Obama saved the American auto industry. Republicans were willing to let it die.
39. Corporations care about profits, not people.
40. Republicans complain about immigrants taking American jobs, then freely give American jobs to overseas corporations.
41. Labor unions built this country.
42. Republicans only care about children before they are born.
43. The Christian Right boycotts movies that contain violence, yet promotes guns and insurrection.
44. Republicans think a miscarriage is a crime, but rape isn’t.
45. Churches should stay out of politics or be taxed.
46. The current corporate tax rate is the lowest in 60 years, so stop whining about taxes being too high.
47. Republicans resort to voter suppression tactics with no qualms whatsoever.
48. Obamacare is helping millions of Americans, as the liberals predicted.
49. Republicans say teachers are union thugs, then proceed to mug the middle class on behalf of corporations.
50. Republican politicians are not above using any tactic, including shutting down the government, for political gain.
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If you want to see the 50 snarkier statements I deleted, Google the full list of 100.
Judging from how the right-wing loonies have reacted online, the list certainly succeeded in irritating them to great heights of blind fury.
Reading their responses is not only entertaining, but also greatly revealing of the conservative mindset, notably the wacky beliefs and loose-screw thinking.
Here is a sampling from various “Irritate a Democrat” lists. I cut it down to 50 and also took the liberty of correcting the many distracting spelling and punctuation errors.
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1. Jesus healed the sick and helped the poor, without government handouts.
2. Senator Joseph McCarthy was a proud American who hunted traitor communists posing as Americans.
3. The South lost the Civil War. Racist KKK Democrats should get over it.
4. The Founding Fathers created a “REPUBLIC.” Hence, Republicans.
5. Barack Obama is a Muslim.
6. Global warming is a farce, but Democrat morons will believe anything.
7. Barack Obama is a traitor.
8. The Earth is round, and big enough for a lot more people.
9. Public schools educate children about socialism and hate. Private schools teach them actual history.
10. The Constitution is the law. Try sticking to it.
11. Women control their own bodies. A growing baby has its own body. A pregnant woman has no right to kill someone else’s body.
12. Health care is NOT a right.
13. Abortion is murder.
14. Muslims who want to become Americans are protected by the Constitution, just as much as anti-American Democrats.
15. America is a nation of immigrants who actually wanted to be Americans, not the first wave of infiltration.
16. Barack Obama killed the American auto industry. Republicans tried to save it.
17. Democrats hate Glenn Beck because he tells only what is true and provable.
18. Federal law trumps state law only in certain instances. Otherwise, state law always trumps federal law.
19. Getting out of a recession requires government to stop thinking up new regulations.
20. Fox News is the only real news. It reports on the racist, sexist, hateful, left-wing propaganda machine.
21. MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN are all under the thumb of a self-hating Nazi Jew who was instrumental in sending his own people to death camps.
22. Labor unions destroyed this country.
23. Democrats only care about children as tools to be used in politics.
24. Democrats will allow everything and anything in movies, then wonder why their children are whores, on drugs, or in prison.
25. The Democrats’ answer to the BP oil spill was to blame George Bush.
26. 9/11 happened while Barack Obama was in the U.S. Senate; therefore, 9/11 happened on Obama’s watch.
27. Republicans invaded Iraq because Hussein was a butcher. Democrats wanted Iraqi civilians to keep dying.
28. Waterboarding is torture, but it produced intelligence that enabled Obama to give the order to kill Osama bin Laden.
29. The Civil War was about slavery AND states’ rights.
30. Corporations care about profits to stay in business, so you can have a job.
31. Republicans are educated, and arguing with them is a waste of time if you aren’t.
32. Obama’s birth certificate is a fake.
33. Obama’s social security number is a fake.
34. Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen.
35. Obama’s college records will show he is a foreign student.
36. Democrats need illegal immigrants to mow lawns, pick crops, and vote for them.
37. The Democratic Party started the KKK and murdered blacks for attempting to vote. And still will if necessary.
38. The faux President was born “someplace” to “someone” and a white woman.
39. Jimmy Carter was the worst President ever. (Besides Obama.)
40. Democrats like to give money away, but never their own.
41. Tea partiers are patriotic Americans. They don’t smash windows, rape women, fight police, or crap on the streets.
42. Sharia law will exist in America if Democrats have their way.
43. Voter disenfranchisement exists only in the minds of morons.
44. When Democrats see black, they start talking funky ghetto in some vain attempt to blend in. A sign of a true racist.
45. Democrats who allow gay marriage are probably in the closet themselves.
46. Democrats couldn’t hack it in school, so they are dumbing-down public education.
47. Democrats are pro-gay marriage, pro-drugs, and pro-killing babies.
48. Democrats have their own terrorists: ACORN, AFL/CIO, the teachers’ unions, etc.
49. Teachers are union thugs.
50. Camping out in public squares is for Boy Scouts and filthy hippies.
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Yes, indeed, every Democrat I know is itching to institute Sharia law.
That list is very telling about the beliefs of the right-wingers, the terrors that haunt their nightmares, and their seething hatred of Barack Obama.
Especially interesting is number 15, which cites the “first wave of infiltration.” In the world of the lunatic right, immigration has morphed into a zombie apocalypse closing in from the south.
And then there’s number 50, which takes shots at both the Occupy movement and the “hippies,” a movement that came and went in the 1960s and 70s.
To this day, the right-wingers still hate the vile, degenerate hippies — all that promiscuity, mini-skirts, free love, long hair, drugs, sex, rock music, communes, sex — with every erg of energy in their beings.
It’s probably no coincidence that around the time the hippies came on the scene, the right wing started to break with reality and begin its long, steady descent into a la-la land of delusion, irrationality, and paranoia.
A couple of weeks ago, Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson (who, ironically, could pass for a hippie himself) spoke at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. In accepting the “Andrew Breitbart Defender of the First Amendment Award,” he said this:
You lose your religion, according to John Adams, and there goes your morality. 110 million Americans now have a sexually-transmitted illness.
There’s a penalty to be paid from what the beatniks — and it morphed into the hippies — you say — what do you call the 110 million with the sexually-transmitted illness? It’s the revenge of the hippies! Sex, drugs, and rock and roll have come back to haunt us in a bad way.
You want a godly, biblical, medically safe option? One man, one woman, married for life. I don’t want to see you die early or get sick! I’m trying to help you, for crying out loud, America! If I didn’t care about you, why would I bring this up?
No doubt Robertson cares very deeply, and “one man, one woman” is a solid idea, no question. But more to the point, he illustrates the right-wing obsession with those immoral, decadent, unwashed hippies from days of yore.
Conservatives still think the hippies are responsible for pretty much everything they perceive as wrong with society.
And where the hippies aren’t to blame, welfare queens are.
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