Political Tidbits: Roll Tide Edition

I don't know where to put this political post—I cooled it with the Facebook political posts, and I don't really use Twitter for anything other than (bad) jokes anymore—so I'm going to dump it here, on a Friday morning, on a blog that three people read.

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The big news currently is Democrat Doug Jones' win for the Alabama Senate seat over Republican Roy Moore. I woke up Wednesday morning at like 4:30 and laid in bed for a half hour, afraid to look at my phone. I figured that Moore had won, that Alabama had elected a racist sexist pedophile into the Senate, and I wanted to just lay and bed and enjoy the last moments that I could have hope for the best outcome before it was all ruined. And then I finally looked at my phone. Doug Jones! It's really bad to think of politics as a "team sport" or whatever, but honestly, just this once, I'm just gonna let myself feel: The good guys won this one.

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There was a lot of talk this week about how there's NO WAY a backwards state such as Alabama is going to vote against a Republican, even if that Republican creeped on teenagers so often that he was banned from local shopping malls. A lot of shit was talked about Alabama in advanced—it's hick country, they are backwards, they are a stain on the country. And like I said above, I had no faith in Alabama either, I thought for sure Moore was going to ride his horse Sassy to DC as our newest Senator.

After Jones' historic win, I'm reflecting on a reddit post I saw a couple weeks back from a liberal in Alabama. It was in a thread where people were expressing their lack of faith in Alabama, and this dude was basically like: "Hey! The Democrats down here are working their ASSES off to support Doug Jones. We're motivated, we're mobilizing, we're determined. Stop talking shit on our state! We're doing the best we can!"

He was right. It wasn't fair for people to be dumping on Alabama. The Dems rallied, and they pulled off the upset. Thank you, Alabama. You did our country proud.

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Hey, you know what I fucking hate? When journalists or reporters visit "trump country" and have the people there explain their ignorant fucking views, like we're supposed to be empathetic to these people. The latest was this Vox article that asked Moore voters why they are voting for this (vile, hateful) man. Basically, these "Christian" voters think that the victims of Moore are "political plants" putting on an "amusing performance," and they think Moore was a "folk hero" because he believes the bible is a higher rule of law than the fucking Constitution.

How about this article on Politico? This shit boils my blood:

"Everybody I talk to," he said, "realizes it’s not [t]rump who’s dragging his feet. [t]rump’s probably the most diligent, hardest-working president we’ve ever had in our lifetimes. It’s not like he sleeps in till noon and goes golfing every weekend, like the last president did."

I stopped him, informing him that, yes, Barack Obama liked to golf, but Trump in fact does golf a lot, too—more, in fact.

Del Signore was surprised to hear this.

"Does he?" he said.

"Yes," I said.

He did not linger on this topic, smiling and changing the subject with a quip. "If I was married to his wife," Del Signore said, "I don’t think I’d go anywhere."

It's just pure fucking ignorance. Anyone that ignores reality just to shore up their own factually incorrect beliefs shouldn't be paid attention to. Stop giving these people the time of day.

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People who voted for Moore, some of them anyway, allegedly were making their case like this: "Moore may have molested a few teenagers, but that's nothing to the millions of babies that Jones is murdering." This is absurd logic. Some people just vote based on abortion alone. Millions of votes are thrown to Republicans just based on this issue. So I've been working on a response. Any chance this would work?

"Hi sir or madam. I definitely hear your concerns about abortion, and I am here to say that I agree with you, and so does the current Democratic nominee that I am campaigning for. You see, our Democratic Nominee wants to limit the amount of abortions in this country, but he is going about it in an innovative way. As it turns out, abortion rates have been declining ever since abortion was made legal. It is our nominee's opinion that reversing abortion's legality would in fact increase abortion rates. Think about it like you would if you had a daughter who was dating a boy you didn't like. What would happen if you told her that she can't date him? That would only spur her to want to date him more. But what if you took measures as she was growing up to help her see that, even though she was allowed to date this boy, that dating him wouldn't be in her best interest? Wouldn't that be the smarter decision? In the same way, my Democratic Nominee wants to decrease the abortion rate by keeping abortion legal. It may seem backwards, but science and data back this up! Please read more at the following link: CLICK HERE."

I know, I know, appealing to science and reason is a SURE FIRE WAY to get through to Republican voters, ain't it?!

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I was working on a much larger piece about this, but I became uninterested in it (and it totally seemed like the type of bullshit that would not age very well), so I'll just stick it here:

I think I'm done with arguing on Facebook. I would say it was "fun while it lasted" but I wouldn't even say it as fun. But I did commit to doing so at the beginning of the year, so it's notable that I'm going back on my word now. See point #3 on my "FIVE POINT PLAN FOR THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY" that I posted on January 22nd:

I was wrong on all counts. It wasn't worth it. It's hopeless. People are so set in their ways that no one is ever going to change their mind on anything just because I argue with them about it. The more I argued, the more people ignored me completely, or ignored my point and called me an asshole or "snowflake" or whatever. None of it makes sense, all of it was frustrating.

The big issue in Washington right now is the overhauling of the tax code. According to third-party analyses, this new law would be a huge tax break for the rich, and would ultimately harm the middle class. How am I supposed to convince my peers that this is a big deal? Especially my conservative-minded friends whose minds have been warped by the conservative media and trump himself? Arguing on Facebook ain't gonna do shit, man. Especially when the only things that are being posted on FB that I can see now are, like, "NFL players have no respect for veterans" or "we say MERRY CHRISTMAS in this country."

I strive to stay out of a "liberal bubble" but whenever I step out of it I'm just ignored or disrespected or end up arguing about fucking Christmas. It's ridiculous.

So I've gone cold turkey from arguing on Facebook. I'll step up and argue ONLY if someone posts something that is egregiously factually incorrect. But seeing as I've unsubscribed to most of my Facebook friends at this point anyway, I don't see too much coming across my timeline at all, let alone legitimate fake news.

I'm done being the old man who yells at clouds. It's time to take my political frustration and utilize that energy somewhere other than social media.

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Hey, speaking of factually incorrect, I regrettable saw a few factually incorrect things on the liberal side during the last few weeks. The two main ones were both tweets that I saw retweeted (or reposted, whatever), and both had to do with voter intimidation. The first was retweeted by a dear friend who retweets seemingly every political tweet she can find (it's mostly good info though, I'm gonna keep following her):

Voter suppression is a concern! But the article linked in this tweet is from 2015. This was pointed out to the original tweeter, and her response in the tweet thread was "It's only gotten worse under trump." Which may be true in a broad sense, but for this DMV issue specifically, it's way less of a concern in 2017 than it was in 2015 (according to this Vox article).

The other was picture of this tweet that I saw on Facebook:

Again: yes, these are all concerns, but we gotta fact check this shit. And the fact check results are spotty. The best I could find, post-election, was this Newsweek article, which gave anecdotal evidence in support of up to maybe four of those five claims. A few stories don't necessarily mean that these examples were widespread. And I found absolutely zero evidence, scientific or anecdotal, from any source claiming police intimidation. There are ways to fight voter suppression (hopefully), but scare tactics and ALL CAPS tweets are not the way.

Yes, we have to fight for fair votes, for equality, for justice, but we owe it to ourselves to be smart about it, to focus on the truth and base our OUTRAGE on that. We have to be better than the fake news-slinging scumbags. We have to be.

Please keep fact checking, not just your enemies, but your friends too.

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Here's a question I'll leave you with. We all have friends that say they "don't give a shit" about politics. These people don't vote, don't care, don't get involved in any capacity. How does one convince these people to vote? Like, how would I convince a non-political friend to vote in the midterms next year? Is there a strategy here, or is it a lost cause? It's something I have six months or so to figure out. I really want to get involved more in politics next year (as much as my government job will allow, anyway). I'll write more about that when I write up my New Year's Resolutions in a couple weeks.

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Thanks for letting me vent, folks. Have a good weekend!