I Know What an Uninformed Conservative Sounds Like
I didn’t know what a truly, severely uninformed liberal really sounds like, though. Until today.
One thing I can really say about FNC is that the liberals that do make it on (and who don’t get blocked from talking by Gibson) are pretty good. Or at least I think so. I feel like a lot of times the arguments that are presented put the issue in a clear light, letting you choose between two points that only differ at a point where assumptions or arguments begin to diverge. When Sean isn’t going nuts and Alan isn’t being a fruitcake, Hannity and Colmes can have this effect on me. Heck, when O’Reilly tones it down I can get some decent left side input from the likes of Al Sharpton, et al.
Today, I heard a tin-foil hat type argument that was not designed to argue. In fact, the point was to deflect the argument itself into a netherword of political conspiracy and greed. It reached the point where the very existence of the Kyoto Protocol was called into a moral relativist-style question.
The truth is, the arguer doesn’t know what the Kyoto protocol is. That was pretty funny. She didn’t know that the current administration would rather conduct a gay marriage on the White House lawn than secretly sign the Kyoto protocol and hide it from the American public.
Oh, and Bush’s Saudi ties are creating a conspiracy to raise crude oil prices. Of course, once informed of the fact that OPEC sets crude prices and that the Republican majority in Congress rides upon a good economy, which in turn rides (seemingly exclusively) on gas prices, it became the evil other countries in the world who are fixing prices.
I thought Iraq was supposed to be about lowering the price of oil. Why would Bush then conspire to raise prices? I think this sort of contrast happens when you don’t think about what you’re saying.
Oh, and capitalism is great, but we should have a revenue ceiling on our companies to prevent greed.
Luckily, I wasn’t doing the arguing. I let another girl do it, which was outstanding (and humorous). She did a good job. I would have loved to have heard a good, well-formed socialist argument about oil prices, or a look at international relations from an intellectual anti-American. What I got was what I suspected was being circulated amongst the “Viva la Revolucion” style red-shirted college liberals. Which is effectively horse poop relativism crossed with a sense of fairness that is only superceded by one’s own greed and selfish wishes. I’m watching it on MTV right now.
I would like to think I’m fair enough to hate on a conservative that does this same kind of thing, only laced with poor religious arguments or racial hatred. In fact, I feel like I’ve done this very thing before. It really hacks me off when I see someone who sacrifices their own ability to have a thought process for the sake of being angry and one-sided.
Maybe I’m guilty, too. If so, I’m working on it.