Why Can't We Call Them Assholes?

While Limbaugh, Malkin, Coulter & Beck are obviously assholes, what about their followers? When someone says straight-faced that unemployment benefits makes someone lazy, doesn't that make them an idiot? Or that Social Security makes everyone just another calf needing the government teat - isn't that the thought process of a total dickhead?

Cheney defends the torture we practiced upon our prisoners as "moral", and many Republicans agree. Besides unAmerican, doesn't that make them assholes?

While, in the spirit of compromise, we try to get things passed that will benefit the maximum number of people while not offending the assholes amongst us, we compromise our way into some sort of weird political limbo, where the above statements (made by people that a lot of other people take seriously) actually drive the compromise backwards towards asshole land. Meanwhile, everyone tells the so-called liberal politicians that they're wimps. Which is, on the whole, mostly true. For which they're very, very sorry. Really. So sorry.

Fuck. Me.

I think it's time that we stopped playing nice, and stopped acting like the uninformed, misinformed, self-induced ignoramuses should be given ear. Just because someone is trying to have a "reasonable" argument on a topic that they obviously know nothing about, doesn't give them the right to be treated well or politely. Polite doesn't work. Agreeing to disagree means that nothing gets done, and no one has to change.

If no one has to change, then the status quo wins, and we continue on with an underemployed, increasingly desperate, demoralized populace. I've got my cushy corner of the world pretty much taped off, and I'm pretty sure it will stay that way for the forseeable future. Other people aren't so lucky. I contribute to local charities, I volunteer to do what I can within the community and the world at large, but my individual contributions "don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." I think, as my New Year's Resolution, that I'm going to tell people who I think are wrong, that they're wrong. I'm probably not going to be nice about it anymore.