Squirrels and Capybaras

When watching the news, aimlessly scrolling social media, reading message boards or talking to random people in public, I find it hard to fathom that I am from the same country as the racist and radical right though right now the entire right is radical. While I recognize that there are many bots and people are different online, it still is hard to figure out where these people went wrong. Were they not paying attention to history? Did someone not pay attention to them? It’s wild to me. Be nice and tolerate others doesn’t seem like that hard of a concept to grasp. Even the Bible they claim to have read says that, but it isn’t followed. They sure love following the “thou shalt not” part from the angry God. Well, the ones that are convenient to them. Rules designed for an era long past.

Anyways, I remember reading books that taught how to act civilized, movies that clearly showed who the good guys or bad guys were, comic books based on societal norms and civil rights. They all seemed very black and white to me. Like clear who the villains were and the heroes. Not black and white in the us versus them mentality the conservatives seemed to take away from it. Maybe something in your youth makes you take the wrong path. I don’t know. I just find it fascinating that a party or president can have all the evil attributes from history, books, movies and every other form of media, both fiction and nonfiction, but the right refuses to see it. A president posting a racist image on twitter at night can be explained away. They even lie about the origins and it is believed. “The left does far worse” is a line I hear or see often. They never have examples or it is a false equivalency to a person that isn’t the president of the country. Okay, the random guy who donated $20 to a democratic race three years ago is also a pedophile. That’s terrible but don’t equate that to the president being a pedophile. It is not the same thing. Well, it is. It’s horrific but the two people are not in the same position. Do not equate them in your defense of the president. The critical thinking skills on the right tend to make them miss this difference. 

How do they also not realize the lies? Fake news? How is that a thing? If I don’t like it, it is fake? That’s so dumb. Is it a participation trophy for news? Well, I tried to understand or at least read something. So that counts as news! I guess that is the one strength of the right. You can’t argue with them when they can change the facts to fit their narrative or dispute the ones they don’t like. It is frustrating to witness. It is very us versus them. They need to believe their view is right and everything else is wrong. It gives them the illusion that they are fighting against the enemy. It makes them think they are the hero in their story. It’ll be too late when they realize they are wrong. How many will die because of it? Will they ever admit they are wrong? Maybe the solution is to jail or remove this group from political discourse once the fascism is over. They certainly can’t be allowed to influence future generations. I guess to circle back to my original train of thought. I think I realized while writing that the No Child Left Behind Act may have ruined us. Well, at least the younger generation. The older generation is just full of selfish narcissists just like the president. The members of that generation who support the president and fascism are easily explainable to me. My generation and younger seem to have been allowed to continue to move through the school system to make sure everyone had a degree. No one ever checked to make sure the students understood what they were reading or took away the right beliefs from the stories they were seeing. It seems to have caught up with us.