You Can’t Make this Stuff Up! (well you can and they do)

This is my favorite exchange on Face Book today (2/12/2017)… Names are removed so as to not offend the parties, but if you recognize yourself feel free to be offended and unfriend me.

First there was the prepared meme posted by person 1 who remains silent for the rest of the exchange.

So, let’s talk about this.  First, it plays on the typical left-wing propaganda that all white people are racist.  It then assumes facts not in evidence, to make emotional accusations.  There were a number of people, a significant number at that, who did not like what the Obamas were doing during their two terms.  This included the spending on lavish holidays, and foreign travel not directly related to the business of the nation.  Yet in the eight years of the Obama administration neither the tea party nor the mass of white people ever rose up to protest to the degree we saw with the “Occupy Wallstreet Et.Al., the BLM, and other liberal zealots.  So @longwall26 makes a racially based, completely unsupported charge that gets forwarded along by people unwilling to actually think for themselves or challenge the lack of fact based information.  At least six apparently like-minded people thought this was a great meme.

Then we have what I can only describe as a hissy-fit exchange between someone who disagrees and the people who apparently believe in the absolute truth of the meme.  By the way I say hissy-fit because facts really never enter into the exchange.  Here is the play by play.

Person 2 (apparent Trump supporter): “Trump is living in his Tower he built at his own expense. Fake news again. When are you sore losers going to give up???”

Person 3 (supporter of original meme): “He is not paying for security!”

Person 4 (another supporter of original): “We are not losers, we won the popular vote by a few million.  We will never give up and we don’t cry, instead we do something.  It’s called resistance.”

Person 2: “The popular vote is yet to be proven as legitimate”

Person 3: “^^^Seriously?^^^”

Person 4: “Alternate truth again.”

Person 2: “Whatever time will tell !”

Person 2: “Every President gets that security that’s not their decision it’s the way it is. People need to come together and fight for us the working America. Acting like a jackass and not letting the proper things go through is certainly not in the countries interest”

And thus, ends the great Facebook debate of February 12^th.  I am not sure where to actually begin talking about this, other than to say this is why I’ve learned to generally not comment on political posts.  No one really wants facts to get in the way of a good rant.  But just for the sake of argument let’s work our way through the exchange.

I’ve already commented on the false nature of the original post so you can decide to believe it or me, but if you want to agree with the meme you owe it to yourself to have a fact or two that shows what the writer suggests would actually happen.  I don’t have one.

As to person 2.  While undoubtedly a nice person, she epitomizes what the left believes about the low information voter of the right.  Rather than challenge the facts of the meme she suggests Mr. Trump built his tower “at his own expense” and that somehow justifies the tax payer cost of security.  Two points here, as a businessman he would not have used his own capital to build Trump Tower, he would secure loans or investors to spread risk.  Although he gets to put his name on the building it was not built with only his money as the principle, any more than the house you live in was built with the builder’s money.  The whole concept of investment banking plays into the funding of these types of buildings.  The second point is Trump is not living in the tower his wife and son are.  The real issue is how significant is the actual cost.  Compared to overall government spending the cost is insignificant.  She then leaps immediately to name calling.  Nothing wins an argument like telling someone they are a sore loser.  Finally, she claims the popular vote has not been proven (it has) and then rambles on about how every President gets security and has no say in the matter.  That last fact can’t be true, because there was discussion of Trump’s existing chief of security staying on and working with the Secret Service.

The exchange with persons 3 and 4 aren’t much better, since neither of them seem to actually have facts to support their case, they just fire off their opinions.  I will say for person 4, the whole idea of resistance seems to fly in the face of the liberal outrage that manifest itself when President Trump said he might not accept the results of the election.  If you hate America enough to destroy it (for that is what resistance is) then ramp up that resistance so we can move directly to civil war.  If you’re not going to do that you’re just throwing a time consuming and expensive tantrum that will likely result in the loss of more Democratic seats in 2018.  Also by the way, Hillary won the popular vote by about 4 million votes or almost exactly the margin of victory in California.  Without California she might not have won even the popular vote, and thus the reason we have an electoral college so one state can’t control the union.

To all those who played in today’s debate thank you and you may return to your corners for the next round.