In italics, excerpts from the original article, which I have not cleaned up or spell-edited, so as to preserve the authentic flavor of the vitriol stew. In bold are my point-by-point rebuttals. "SI" is meant to stand for Selective Ignorance.
Selective Ignorance is the technique invented by, and now practiced widely, by republicans everywhere.SI is what allows them...no, ENCOURAGES them to simultaneously embrace two opposing philosophies , and to bifurcate their thinking processes.
Progressive Ignorance is a disease, like a progressive cancer of the brain that eats away at the mind's capacity for rational thought.
SI is what causes them to march in parades, carrying woefully misspelled signs, as they protest abortion, while at home, their 14 year old granddaughter recovers from a "D&C" performed by the family doctor...for "female troubles".. Her "troubles" started when Uncle Fred took her camping with his family.
Progressive Ignorance is what causes sufferers to continually use illogical arguments, like promoting abortion as a cure for incest, when in fact it is the best thing that ever happened to incestuous abusers, because it contiunally obliterates the most concrete proof possible that the abuse occurred.
SI is what causes them to repeatedly vote against school levies, and then to complain loudly at school board meetings about the deplorable state of their schools, and the threatened demise of their beloved football program...
The eventual solution has to be to de-fund the public school, fire the union teachers, and start up a voucher program. Of course, the vouchers are probably only worth enough for a storefront-Jesus school or a co-op quasi home-school system. These same people will now demand that their children still be welcomed into the athletic programs , and the extra-curricular programs of the shcools they left behind. (yes, he actually wrote "shcools)
Progressive Ignorance is what causes victims to keep calling for further funds to be poured down the public education rathole, regardless of the consistent failure rate of this strategy. It causes them to screech like howler monkeys in abject fear that some child, somewhere may actually be learning something in an alternative system.
SI is what allows them to send in their hard-earned money to support candidates who promise to close those borders, but when it comes time to vote, they always come up short on delivering.
Progressive Ignorance is what causes them to call in to NPR during call-in straw polls and announce that they are voting for the Democratic Candidate Du Jour because upon taking office their guy will immediately end war, make the world fall in love with us, make everybody prosperous, save the planet, make every schoolchild smart and save us all from the dangers of Ten Commandment displays.
It's a moot point anyway, since SI devotees often have no qualms about "getting themselves a Mexican" from Home Depot, if they need some hard landscaping done....or their car waxed cheaply...or their garage cleaned out..or their roof repaired..
Progressive Ignorance is what makes them think that everybody is as work-averse as they are, therefore speculating that prosperous conservatives must hire illegals in order to shirk the increased responsibilities that come with a hard-earned higher income.
SI makes it possible for them to repeatedly elect gay congressmen and senators, while these same voters feel perfectly okay about getting drunk and bashing a few "gays" when the opportunity arises.
The same SI allows those elected gay officials to portray themselves as NOT GAY..NO WAY , in order to get elected, and then live unhappy, closeted lives..always one "incident" away from being exposed. They spend their time in office pretending to be the "confirmed bachelor", or worse yet, find some desperate woman willing to play the part of devoted wife.
Progressive Ignorance is what allows them to creatively invent non-existent trends like widespread gay-bashing. It causes them to pretend to be tolerant of homosexuality, while the worst weapon and most heinous accusation they consistently use to hurl at their ideological opponents is to call them gay - saying loud and clear that being gay is the worst thing there is.
SI is also what causes them to sacrifice their long-held beliefs , and to be willing to support multiply divorced, lifestyle-challenged candidates, when no other republican is available.
Progressive Ignorance is what allows them to assume everybody, including their ideological opponents, is as deficient in integrity as they are, and that Republicans will automatically nominate Rudy Guiliani for their next Presidential candidate without considering another choice.
SI allows them to praise big business and to pretend to follow the intricacies of the stock market because they have a 401-k, and it will somehow make them rich. It allows them to demonize unions, because they might have to pay those "damned union dues", and lord-knows , they don't want some union boss telling them how to vote.
Progressive Ignorance causes them to blindly support unions even though their strong-arm tactics result in fewer jobs, more company closings and the very problems that they like to blame the President for.
Little do they know that their beloved 401-k's are morphing into 001-k's. SI tells them that as long as Maria & Erin are smiling and flirting with them, everything's gonna be okay.SI lets them love their guns, and still be worried when they send their young 'uns off to college . Of course the solution they come up with , is to arm the teachers AND students.SI can turn a campus into a shooting gallery, but at least their son/daughter is locked & loaded.SI allows them to love their God, while actively hating other people for not loving the same God.
Progressive Ignorance allows them to viscerally hate and fear anybody who dares suggest there is a being higher themselves and government. It allows them to despise and portray as hateful those who believe in a just and loving God, while insisting on tolerance for a religion centering around a God who tells its followers to murder anybody who doesn't agree with its teachings.
SI allows them to think at, as Christians, they are the favored ones, while at the same time, believing that God created everyone, and everything.SI allows them to feel free to destroy nature, and still find enough animals to hunt, and fish to catch.
Progressive Ignorance allows them to consider a tree a sacred being while insisting that annihililating human children is a sacred right.
SI allows them to eschew evolution, yet accept the fear of evolving mutations of Bird Flu and other pandemic possibilities.
Progressive ignorance allows them to make patently untrue generalizations, such as it is conservatives who are afraid of pandemic diseases.
It allows them avoid science, and then run to science to cure what ails them.
Progressive Ignorance allows them to claim devotion to "science" while citing principles like "consensus" which are diametrically opposed to any remotely scientific methodology. It allows them to cling fanatically to a primitive theory of evolution which has never been conclusively proven and has indeed been refuted many times in over a hundred years, whose every major "find" has been proven to be a not even very elaborate hoax, even though the rest of science changes so consistently that last semester's science textbooks are already outdated in places.
SI allows them to fight like maniacs to deprive already-born children of food, shelter & a decent education, while claiming to want to preserve pregnancies of women they don't know, will never meet, and never plan on supporting.
It allows them to believe that they are big-hearted humanitarians because they would rather see children brutally murdered before birth rather than face the possibility of a life where they might have to eat Kraft Dinner a few times a week or wear second-hand clothes.
SI makes it possible for them to value huge tax cuts for rich people, and meekly accept pay cuts for themselves.
Progressive Ignorance is what makes them oppose tax cuts that help everybody and support tax hikes, which hurt the lower classes more than anybody.
It makes them happy to HAVE a job..any job, even if it means that the profits of the company they work for, are never distributed to them and their families.
Progressive Ignorance makes them rail against anybody who is successful and self-made. It makes them insist on a raise on the minimum wage as the cure to all society's ills, when in reality it only hurts business and workers alike. It makes them espouse policies that keep workers from having more employment choices. It makes them happy to not have a job....ANY job if they can get welfare instead.
SI makes them crave the biggest baddest car/SUV/truck, and gives them license to bad-mouth people who choose smaller, safer, cleaner forms of transportation.
Progressive Ignorance allows them to preach the evils of prosperity, while insisting from the other side of their mouths that the right and noble thing to do is spend exorbitant sums on alternative cars that will take many years to pay for themselves. They want to keep Joe Public on minimum wage while castigating him for driving a $900 used Buick.
SI allows them to feel superior, even if they have to choose between braces for their kids, and gas for the cars.
Progressive ignorance lets them feel as if they are somehow better than everybody else - smarter, more sophisticated, certainly much more high-minded than the average Joe who is not able to tie his shoes without liberals insisting he ensure they are equipped with "fair trade" laces.
It leads them to the belief that rather than having a child grow up with the eventual hardship of someday needing braces, it is better to dismember it before birth and toss its remains in a hospital dumpster.
SI gives them a euphoric lift when they deliver a crushing blow to an opponent, even if the opponent was right.
Progressive Ignorance is what allows them to entertain the notion that "progressives" are ever right about anything.
SI is what makes them savor pyrrhic victories, as they watch their own world crumbling around them.
Progressive Ignorance is what allows them to pooh-pooh the most dangerous and eminent threat of our times, terrorism, while dedicating all their energies to combating the imaginary spectre of "global warming" - and insisting we all do the same.
SI is also what creates the illusion that they are the majority, instead of a cacophonous minority, hurling insults and epithets at the rest of civilization.
Progressive Ignorance is what creates the illusion that the so-called "religious right" is a force far more powerful than it actually is, and reacts in fear of fundamentalist Christians taking over the country.
Finally, Progressive Ignorance is what will cause this post to be obliterated in record time because they don't have the guts and can't afford to allow their locksteppers to be exposed to any opposing viewpoint. Fortunately, it's been preserved on my own blog.
Update: The post was indeed deleted in record time, as was my account with that forum.
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