I Got Into It With a Republican Yesterday.


I was recently drawn into an online, Republican v. Democrat pissing contest. It began when this fellow claimed that America's ills - the debt, the loss of its manufacturing base, national security - were all the Dems doing.

In reply I posted a link to a web site that chronicled America's national debt and listed the amount added during each postwar administration.  It revealed that, in peacetime, the Republicans were high-rollers on both spending and deficit. The exception was Obama who arrived just in time for the Bush-Cheney "Great Recession" to land in his lap.

I got no response to that but this fellow moved on to remind me how American lives paid for freedom for the Vietnamese.  This person had no idea that the United States lost its Viet Nam war. He obviously didn't know that the communist north captured the south, even renaming Saigon "Ho Chi Minh City." Or that the country is still called "the people's republic" or that it does not hold free, multi-party elections. 

The breadth and depth of this stupidity is breathtaking. Is it any wonder these people are easy prey for fear mongering and conspiracy theories?  The reason I find this so troubling is that it proves how deeply divided the American public has become, how tribal, and how willing some are to believe nonsense that is unsupported by fact.  How can Americans sort out their problems if they're on different planets?

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