The Douche Alert Has Been Raised to Orange

I found this guy's blog a while ago. He's a twenty-something history teacher in my home area. Yes, a shaper of young minds. I have to commend him in that he set out to write a blog every single day for a year, and he has succeeded so far. The problem is, he writes things like this:

"Politics - Pick A Side

Any time people in this country question my ideals or values, I always tell them to look at the players on the two sides. Where do you fit in?

This is not even persuasive political bantering. This is a simple list of the folks on each side. So if you do not follow politics and were wondering where you fit in, pick your side:

The Pope, the soccer mom, the minister and his family, the farmer, the doctor, country musicians, the PGA Tour, grandma and her generation, and the small business owner are on one side of political debate.

The pedophiles, Al Qaeda, the rappers, the terrorists, death row inmates, Hugo Chavez, drug addicts, Alec Baldwin, the trial lawyers, the hippies and their generation, socialists, and Oprah are on the other side of the political debate.

Hmmmmm. Tough call who is correct, huh?"

- "Kufsy", April 21, 2008

HOW DOES ONE EVEN RESPOND TO THAT. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Now I say a lot of stupid things, but I say them with some sense of irony to point out how ridiculous some things are. This guy, on the other hand, is not only completely serious, he's also trying to be snide in order to make everyone that sees things a little differently feel stupid. It's one thing to be a complete ass, but it's quite another to be a complete ass that's convinced he's the new messiah of blogger pundits.

It's cute that he's trying to sway me to the chosen side over there with all the "desirables" (at least as he sees them). He's essentially telling me I'm incapable of coming up with my own political ideals, so I should pick a side based on who my "friends" are, and I'm not friends with pedophiles and terrorists am I?! Well, no, I'm not. But I ain't friends with no hate-spoutin' Toby Keith-type country musicians, either. Soccer moms - stay-at-home drivers of minivans who devote their lives to overdecorating their homes and falling all over their spoiled, bratty children - are everything I aspire not to be. The Pope doesn't support reproductive health care or equal rights for homosexuals. Small business owners tend to underpay and overwork their help. So no, they're not my friends, and I'm more than happy to stay out of their "category". I'm at a loss for how PGA golfers fit into this, but we'll move on.

My minister and his family don't fit in your traditional white-bread small town version of reality either. My minister recently gave a great sermon about how we shouldn't go judging homosexuality on the basis of it being something that the Bible speaks against. My minister pointed out that in several instances, the bible supports slavery and the subordination of women. He ended the sermon by suggesting that we think about such things the next time someone says to us "because the Bible says so". My church, in fact, broke off of its mother church because our former pastor prayed for the soul of John Brown after the Harper's Ferry incident in the 1860s. My church is still committed to our legacy of standing for peace, tolerance, and social justice.

Don't go talkin' bout my grandma like you know her, either. My grandmother was both a grandmother and a small business owner. She owned a beauty parlor and worked as a cosmetologist for nearly sixty years. My grandfather was a part of the Civilian Conservation Corps, a public work initiated by FDR and the democrats in the 1930s, when young men my grandfather's age had trouble finding work. Both she and my grandfather were very progressive people who consistently leaned left and even had a portrait of JFK hanging in their living room. I come from a long line of spicy, progressive, honest, hardworking, good people. We just happen to believe in social justice, equal opportunity, and making sure that people who are disadvantaged in some way don't slip between the cracks. That hardly makes us terrorists, murderers, drug users, or rappers.

What's wrong with Oprah, Alec Baldwin, and rappers, anyway? Some rappers are a bit misguided, but most of them (ever heard of Tupac Shakur? Kanye West?) have learned from their upbringings, risen above it, and inspired others, which is clearly more than you've accomplished. Hiding behind your computer, your narrowmindedness, and your angry, defensive uberconservative rhetoric has done nothing but make people such as myself realize that, despite electing a progressive black president, our country has a long, long way to go.

He's just shown me that he, like many conservatives, has no understanding of what it is to be a democrat or a liberal. He's also shown me he has a limited understanding of what it is to be a conservative. It seems that many people are becoming conservatives now because "they're not liberal". They've chosen this because "liberal" has become a dirty word and an insult because of people like him - people who are too simple to realize that being a liberal is not being Alec Baldwin or a hippie or a socialist. Most people don't even know what socialism and communism are, let alone that they're not interchangeable terms (I expected more from a history teacher). Fox News, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and this guy have done a great job of scaring people into conservatism by doing just what he did in that blog entry - associating liberalism with terrorists, murderers, drug addicts, and socialists (and let's not forget abortion lovers!), and conservatism with "regular people". They know that fear-mongering and propaganda are the only way to get people to subscribe to their crazy-assed beliefs. The Republican brand is hurting. They know this, and they're employing whatever desperate pathetic tactics they can to build up their team. Unfortunately for you, people are not as stupid as you hope they are and they're not buying it. You are not that smart. Bullshit is bullshit, no matter how nicely you try to wrap it. Life is not high school, and people can't be bullied into thinking like you do.

These are just the typical narrow-minded bitter rantings of someone born into small-town white male privilege who thinks that he's "normal" and his ideals are "right" just because they're what work for him. Your ideals are just fine for you, but consider that not everyone in our country or world is you, thank goodness, and they probably don't subscribe to the lifestyle or beliefs that your Cayuga County existence has shaped for you. Additionally, I find it deplorable that someone who is a TEACHER is constantly referring to President-Elect Obama as "King Barack Hussein I", obviously emphasizing the Hussein to remind us all that he's an "Arab" and a "terrorist". You, sir, should be ashamed and embarrassed. I am truly afraid for your present and future students and desperately hope that you don't conduct yourself this way in your classroom.

The best part of all of this is that this pilar of morality is dating his former student.

Case. Closed.