Incestuous (Is What It Is)

My wife is active on Facebook. 

I backed away from it because I was not getting enough love. My posts are brilliant, obviously, and when I post them I expect 1,000 likes and 500 comments. Unfortunately I typically get 2 likes and no comments.

My ego. My bruised ego.

Anyway, my wife came across the post of a typically uninformed Maga head, who was getting sarcastic about liberal violence. She answered with a list of liberal people who have been killed or wounded by extreme conservatives. He did not know about these people. He had not heard about this violence. And yet he is forming opinions based on this sanitized "news" he is getting from whatever biased platform he goes to.

So hatred rears its ugly head, and gets intensified by our dicktator fanning the flames with lies, along with his vicious sycophants.

The right listens to the right, the left listens to the left, and a hell of a lot of people do not even make the effort to verify the "news" they are getting. We have this thing called the internet. You can do your own fact checking, you know. The truth is out there somewhere if you make the effort to dig it up.

How did we get so stupid?

My wife watches lots of MSNBC. What I see when I watch it is a bunch of liberals stroking each others' egos and fanning the flames of panic. What's the point of the discussions they have if they are preaching to the choir?

Same for the right. A bunch of people actively engaged in censoring the news for the consumption of people already filled with hatred and gravely misinformed. What's the point?

A lot of people are not really looking for news, they are looking for someone to support their political views with no concern for truth or what's right. How fucking short sighted is that?

And the pot is boiling.

Went out for lunch yesterday with my wife to a restaurant beautifully situated on Lake Winnipesaukee. Got a table on the deck right on the water on a beautiful day. First time there. Great atmosphere, excellent food, perfect service.

We loved it.

We wasted the last 15 minutes there having a political discussion, instead of looking at the lake, and enjoying the sunshine, boats, and people. It left me depressed. I deeply regret that. We don't go out often because we are paupers, and spend most of our time counting pennies in a jar to assess the nature of our financial stability (of which we have none).

That's how bad things are getting.

Political stupidity in this country has become all encompassing. And you end up arguing about it vehemently even though you have not chased down all the facts.

I want those 15 minutes back.

How did we get so stupid?