The Annotated Idiot

I enjoyed this haloscan troll comment from Atrios so much that I decided to repost it here, with footnotes to aid those unfamiliar with Red American Culture. It doesn't matter what the original post was about, the comment was a total non sequitur (1) anyway.

1. Liberals (2) openly gloat when U.S. soldiers get killed in action and the war effort. Liberals want the USA to fail. (3)
2. Liberals provide aid and comfort to terrorists and tyrants with their mindless lies, accusations, attacks, etc (4)
3. Liberals worry about terrorists/tyrants rights so that more Americans can die. Liberals want to ban the Patriot Act.(5)
4. John Kerry, a typical liberal who has engaged in anti-American activities during the Vietnam war, is the perfect embodiment of the "hate-the-military" Democrats ---- a political party that simply cannot be trusted to defend and protect America. (6)
5. Liberals support and promote socialism and communism, a FAILED philosophy (7)
6. Liberals think all corporations (America's employers) are evil and that big government should support them (8)
7. Liberals demanding to ban "The Pledge Of Allegiance". (9)
8. Liberals engage in spitting on and burning the American flag and not honoring it (10)
9. Liberals ashamed of using the words "patriotic" or "God Bless America". (11)
10 Liberals block every effort to drill for USA oil and force Americans to buy foreign oil (12)
11. Liberals and the Democrat party (John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, etc) use their power to emasculate our intelligence services and weaken our military. Liberals want to ban the Patriot Act. (13)
12. Liberals = Good news for America is TRAGIC news for Liberals (14)
13. Over 1000 more NEGATIVE reasons (15)
WHY DO LIBERALS HATE AMERICA? WITH SO MUCH HATE FOR AMERICA, WHY DON'T THE LIBERALS MOVE TO FRANCE? (16)
By any definition, you'd call them dirty little cowardly traitors. Defending the age-old, FAILED system of liberalism/socialism/communism. (17) Typical godless philosophy preaching perverted ideas with twisted logic.The ranks of the spineless Left are infested with traitors. (18)
True American Patriot Email Homepage 12.13.04 - 12:58 pm #

(1) non sequitur
n 1: a reply that has no relevance to what preceded it 2: (logic) a conclusion that does not follow from the premises or evidence

(2)As I discussed in my long post about existentialism that everyone hates and no one read to the end of, the backlash right views "Liberals" as a sort of ethnic group, a culturally alien ruling elite that conspires to make America lose wars and watch TV shows featuring tits and ass and celebrities eating bugs.

(3)These people are furious that we were right about the war in Iraq - no WMD, no connection to al Quaeda, no cakewalk, no happy peasants with flowers. And everybody likes to be right. But the sad fact is, the most glaring evidence that the invasion was a mistake, to most Americans, is the steady trickle of dead American bodies. So every time we said, "see, we were right!" We pissed somebody off, who inevitably said, "those bastards are sooo fucking happy to see our boys die because it proves them right." So their pain at the loss of our soldiers and their hatred of us blur together and somehow it's our fault. Look, buddy. We're not gloating, we're not happy, we didn't want this stupid war. We didn't want that idiot to be President at all, remember?

(4)I honestly have no idea what he's talking about here. But if he's saying that it aids terrorists to criticize people in authority who are doing a crappy job of dealing with the global Islamic fundamentalist movement . . . no, I still don't get it. But I do know that the whole point of living in a free country is getting to speak you mind and disagree with the powers that be. Actually he fears criticism because he can't counter it, and can only keep believing in the flimsy "logic" of the conservative movement if he can protect himself from rational debate.

(5) Actually, the Patriot Act was really really long. There was something in it for everyone to love, and hate. For example, many of us think it's a good idea for the FBI, the CIA, and the Border Patrol to share intelligence about suspected terrorists, but don't believe these organizations should be investigating what books you check out of the library. Also you don't "ban" an Act, you "repeal" or "amend" it.

(6) Actually Kerry's big complaint was that the civilian government had forgotten about its soldiers, and had condemned them to keep fighting and dying in a war the government already knew it would lose, but wouldn't stop fighting for political reasons. Ironically, many people were afraid a President Kerry would do exactly the same thing in Iraq - something I doubt very much.

(7) Arguably, any government intervention in the economy can be called "socialism." Is he arguing for the end of Social Security? Occupational Safety and Health? The FDIC? FEMA? How have these programs "failed?" NOTE THAT IT IS ACCEPTED CONVENTION AMONG ALL EXTREMISTS THAT CAPITALIZATION IS A PERFECTLY ADEQUATE SUBSTITUTE FOR A CONVINCING ARGUMENT.

(8) Guilty as Charged. Big corporations are evil, or at least amoral. They work to improve their bottom line and don't care about the costs they externalize, the communities they destroy, the damage they inflict on the environment. The government should regulate them to protect the public interest.

(9) Huh? The only reality this charge comes near is that one guy who sued to get "Under God" removed from it. Which only makes sense. Why should my kid be required to pledge allegience to your God?

(10) I haven't seen anyone do this stuff in years, and I don't approve of it. But I get the feeling that by honoring the flag, he means blindly following the people who are waving it. If the Founders had behaved that way, we wouldn't even have a country.

(11) Only because we're afraid we'll end up sounding like you. "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel," they used to say. That was before TV preachers.

(12) There is perhaps a 2 year supply of oil in Alaska, not enough to make us oil independent ever. The real force behind Americans' continued dependence on foreign oil is Big Oil and Big Auto companies that keep resisting common sense measures to promote conservation (like requiring more fuel-efficient cars) and alternative fuels. In other words it's you and your big stupid truck, buddy.

(13) We covered the Patriot Act already. As for intelligence, John Kerry got slammed in the campaign for proposing a cut in intelligence, but the money in question was for a spy sattelite program where the sattelite had never been launched. No sattelite, no program. Duh. Kerry was warning about shadowy terror networks back when Condi and Rummy were still blathering about rogue states and missile defense. In fact, they are still blathering about those things, and missile defense still doesn't work.

(14) Number one again - the party out of power always benefits from the mistakes of the party in power. That's because the public occasionally holds the party in power responsible for their mistakes. It's called democracy. And conservative policies are always going to result in bad news for the not-wealthy. Conversely, the incumbant party gets props from the people for good news. So yeah, we were kinda hoping the bad news would hit before the election when it would do us some good, rather than now. But did I really long for bad things to happen to America? See footnote (3).

(15) All the reasons you guys can come up with are negative because you don't have a positive vision for America. You blame everything you feel has gone wrong on an imaginary "liberal elite," and rail against changes to society wrought by the economy and social mobility which no government policy can hope to undo. By your logic, the only solution would be to put all us liberals in camps and kill us. I hope you are too unimaginitive to figure that out.

(16) What is America? Does he mean the land? Who hates that, it's mostly pretty here. Does he mean the principles behind the American Revolution? We hold fast to the Founders' vision of democracy, freedom of speech, the rule of law, and separation of church and state. James Madison rocked. It's the "conservative movement" that has abandoned those principals in favor of Iranian-style theocracy. From the liberal perspective, there ain't no difference between Jerry Falwell and the Taliban in terms of goals - only the tactics differ.

(17) See footnote 1 for a concise definition of "non sequitur." Far from "cowardly," it would take elephantine balls to come out and defend Communism in today's America. It would be wrong, but it would certainly be brave. As opposed to defending lower-middle class social conformism, which is chickenshit. I read an article in the Sun-Times today expressing shock at the names ditzy rich people give their children. Now, I would agree that naming your kid Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily is kind of mean. But the author also objects to Coco and Hazel, which seem like cool names to me. Apparenlty he's not comfortable unless we all go ahead and name our children Jennifer like everybody else does. Nothing personal, Jen, Jenn, Jennifer, Jenny, or Jen, but that kind of enforced conformist mediocrity does not lend itself well to a vibrant, creative society. I'm sorry you are intimidated by people who dare to be different and have different ideas - but if somebody's cowardly here, it is you who so desperately wishes to disappear into a crowd and have everybody's approval at the same time.

(18) Once again, it takes a lot of courage to publicly be an atheist in this country, so "spineless" and "godless" really don't go together. As for his charges of "treason," once he has defined Americanism as expressing total agreement with his uninformed reactionary views, anyone who disagrees with him is of course going to be called a traitor. What he's really objecting to here is any deviation from the norm. Not being a standout success himself, probably because of his profound ignorance, he takes comfort in being as mainstream as possible. His support for american militarism and bible thumping religion give him a sense of belonging, of validation as part of the community. As long as he follows the rules he is okay. Or so it would seem. But there is a darker motivation at work here. Deep down, he knows he's inadequate, mediocre. So the "liberal" forces that question the value of everything he works for also give him an opportunity. By publicly "defending" his values by attacking liberal bloggers, he shows himself and his ilk that he is worthy of them, a champion of traditional values, and thus a valuable person deserving of respect, and not just a big fat loser.