Stupid Arguments

So, the comment thread over at Huffpo was on why white men don’t support Obama, which I thought was sort of a bogus way of divvying things up even though the author had stats on his side, but that’s beside the point.  I posted a list of things which Obama could do to get me to be more supportive.

Don’t get me wrong…I would never, ever vote for a Republican.  They are evil incarnate.  I’m just not as enthusiastic about our man Barry as I used to be.

Anyway, the list included things like tax the rich and stop kissing Republican ass, some real basic stuff.  I made the mistake of using the phrase “common sense.”  Now, I say mistake because it really is an overused phrase, and it’s basically used to mean “I think it would be a good idea.”  Also because those who know me in real life would generally agree, I think, that common sense is not one of my dominant personal characteristics.

WTC 7, the Forgotten Building

But I got a comment back that said, “if these are such common sense ideas, why haven’t they already been implemented.”  At first I thought that was just the stupidest argument I’d ever heard in my life, because basically if all the good ideas anybody ever had were automatically put into place, we’d be living in a paradise world, constantly improving in an upward spiral, instead of in the horribly conflicted, self-destructive and often violent world we actually do live in.

Then I realized that there are plenty of bullshit arguments on various topics that irritate me just as much.  When speaking of space research, for instance, there is always someone who says “I think we need to solve the problem’s right here on Earth first.”  They are generally people who don’t know that the sun is a star and who hate Star Trek, but that’s O.K.  The idea is stupid enough on it’s own merits, without me resorting to ad hominem attacks.   When Columbus discovered America, a lot of Europe’s problems were solved:  How do we get rid of these religious fanatics, these beggars and thieves, the wretched refuse of our teeming shores, and bring in some revenue at the same time?

Of course, several of the most irritating arguments deal with 9/11.  To me it’s just bloody obvious that it was an inside job and it irritates me no end when people say “I just can’t believe our government would do something that horrible.”    Gulf of Tonkin, people.  Governments do, indeed, do such deeds.

Or “it would have to involve too many people and nobody could keep a secret that big.”  I figure it took about 30-40 people and it wouldn’t have been hard to recruit them at all within the military and the CIA, people who say shit like “you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs” and”sometimes you have to destroy a village to save it.”

How many people kept the secret of Operation Overlord?  Also, those directly involved have pretty powerful motives for keeping the secret.

But the worst are “I was in New York that day, so shut up” and “I knew people who died.”  I will leave those statements undisputed, since a lot of people were in New York that day and a lot of people knew people that died.   It doesn’t mean it wasn’t an inside job.

So, next time we discuss these subjects, anyone making these aforesaid arguments will be ignored, or perhaps mocked.