Here is my utterly serious reaction to that 'bombshell':
Well, WHOOP-DEE-DOO.
You might want to sit down for this, but there's something important you need to be aware of...
We're all hypocrites.
At some point everyone who participates in political discussion long enough ends up committing this sin, even you I imagine, if you're honest,(notice also that above I already have stated that I too have been guilty of this at times) will admit to having done this at some point. This goes for all groups as well. The fact that our hypocrisies don't get the widespread attention of major groups or public personas does not substantially separate us from them.
When an accusation amounts to little more than "hey, you guys have two arms!", it warrants all the righteous indignation of a "Yeah, and....?"
It doesn't matter if it's the Tea Party, the Democratic Party, PETA or the NRA. Singling out one group for a behavior which is fairly ubiquitous across humanity is starting an argument for the sake of being self-righteously indignant.
The added salt in the wound is that unlike actual substantive arguments, arguments based around the 'outrage' of hypocrisy never have a snowball's chance of being in any way edifying or illuminating, because, -and let's think about this honestly for a moment- I have yet to see any of them distinguish themselves as being different substantially from two bickering siblings in the back seat of their parents' SUV on the long trek to Wally World. The more I hear it, the more I feel the spirit of Clark Griswold try to overtake me and make me want to lose my grip and 'turn this thing around!'
no subject
Well, WHOOP-DEE-DOO.
You might want to sit down for this, but there's something important you need to be aware of...
We're all hypocrites.
At some point everyone who participates in political discussion long enough ends up committing this sin, even you I imagine, if you're honest,(notice also that above I already have stated that I too have been guilty of this at times) will admit to having done this at some point. This goes for all groups as well. The fact that our hypocrisies don't get the widespread attention of major groups or public personas does not substantially separate us from them.
When an accusation amounts to little more than "hey, you guys have two arms!", it warrants all the righteous indignation of a "Yeah, and....?"
It doesn't matter if it's the Tea Party, the Democratic Party, PETA or the NRA. Singling out one group for a behavior which is fairly ubiquitous across humanity is starting an argument for the sake of being self-righteously indignant.
The added salt in the wound is that unlike actual substantive arguments, arguments based around the 'outrage' of hypocrisy never have a snowball's chance of being in any way edifying or illuminating, because, -and let's think about this honestly for a moment- I have yet to see any of them distinguish themselves as being different substantially from two bickering siblings in the back seat of their parents' SUV on the long trek to Wally World. The more I hear it, the more I feel the spirit of Clark Griswold try to overtake me and make me want to lose my grip and 'turn this thing around!'
/rant.