This is the sort of ignorance we're up against.

[requiem99]

Had a family dinner with the folks today, mom, dad, and my mom's parents. They all 4 of them are bible thumping christians (in word more than anything else) and all of them know where I stand on the election. No matter how many facts I pull out, no matter how much information I forward and pass on, no matter how convincing my arguments and information is, I cannot break that fantasy bubble that separates True Believers from the truth. None of these 4 people are hardcore bushbots, but they are all conservatives. Anti anything thats against their religion, meaning gays, booze, drugs, abortion, any kind of sex outside of marriage, etc.

What I don't understand is how can these people be so intelligent yet so unbelievably stupid and ignorant when it comes to assessing the United States' position in the world and direction? My dad's argument, weak as it is, is the best: "I don't think Kerry has what it takes to lead the country. It's easy to judge in retrospect that Bush did a bad job, but given the same position, he would not have done any better, and at least Bush is firm, resolute, not influenced by what anyone thinks, and a strong leader."

Thats the BEST he can come up with. None of the reality based retorts make a dent. "Sticking to your guns when you are dead wrong isn't such a good trait in a leader" gets me absolutely nowhere. Listing why the Iraq war was unjustifiable and a sham and a lie gets me nowhere. In fact, my mom says constantly "I'm too busy to pay much attention to the election. Neither candidate is good, we need to scrap them both and get a new set." and the classic "My woman's intuition says that Kerry just says anything people want to hear."

And then I overhear her talking to her mother saying that "Oh, Kerry came back from Vietnam and insulted all our troops and the country itself." when she doesn't have the SLIGHTEST clue what he really did. They REFUSE to watch F 9/11. FLAT REFUSAL. They REFUSE to watch going upriver. FLAT REFUSAL. But they DID watch "Faith in the White House" (a sickening example of theocratical propaganda if I've EVER seen one)

I confronted my mom last week after she tried the lame meme "Kerry always changes positions and we don't need someone like that to lead the country during a war" WORD FOR FUCKING WORD FROM THE ADS. I asked her to name ONE position Kerry had changed, or even one position he had TAKEN. She couldn't name ONE. NOT ONE. She tried to say "Well he's a democrat so he wants to let gays get married" but I shot that one down really fast. She tried to say that Kerry was a flip flopper but again I could not get her to name one single stand he had TAKEN, much less changed.

Her mother is worse. I hear "Bill Clinton is scum" and "those evil liberals in congress" all the time. She's 72 years old and her fucking Social security is assured BECAUSE of "scum" like Clinton and "those evil liberals in congress"

At this point I'm unwilling to write this off as a random event. We have a 'willful ignorance' crisis in America, and I think the only way we're going to get around it is to make 2 completely separate Americas:

The Democratic States of America, and the Free Republic of America (I couldn't help myself), because we as a nation are NOT United anymore. It might take a civil war, but I am no longer willing to kowtow and submit to a government that is going fascist faster than 1930s Germany.

Change is on the wind, one way or another.