Visiting behind the lines...

[mcscajun]

I spent last weekend at the home of my only openly Republican friend and his wife.

Toward the very end of the visit, he had FauxSnooze on just as Coretta Scott King's funeral was beginning, with the sound off (he just about always turns the sound off on anything he's not really paying attention to.) I'm pretty sure he's not paying attention to the main screen, just the crawl, so I ask him if he can change the channel. Here's what he said:

"...I only watch the 'crawl' that's how I keep up with what's going on." :banghead: C'mon folks...it's bad enough when somebody actually watches this garbage; this guy goes for the "condensed version" and claims he's "keeping up"? :wtf:

I don't know what item on the crawl wound his gears, but a few minutes later, this speech started:

"...we should stop all foreign aid until we fix our own problems here at home...we need that money here. We send more money out than we can afford. We send more foreign aid out than any other country, and we're going broke. You know the last country that did that? Germany. They paid out all that money to Europe in reparations after WWI. That's what wrecked their economy and led to the Nazis taking over."

I couldn't even begin to address everything wrong in those last two statements...my head was too busy getting ready to implode from an illogic bomb nearby. :nuke:

We'd managed to avoid politics the entire time I'd been there, and this was down to the last half-hour before I was due to leave; I didn't want to get my blood pressure up before the long drive back home, and ruin what had been a good visit until that point. I know, some of you would have torn him a new one, others would have had their facts and figures marshalled and ready to shoot down his ridiculous statements. I'm sorry to say I did neither. I'm pretty darned sure the Billions we've spent on Iraq dwarf by some magnitude the money we've spend in overall foreign aid; I just didn't have all the data at my fingertips with which to assault his ignorance.

Those of you who read the thread some weeks back "Arguing with a Conservative" http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=179670&mesg_id=179670 will understand why I just made grunting noises and let him ramble.

Repeating: How can even a Republican claim to be "keeping up with what's going on" by only watching the Fox crawl? :wtf:
We have very little hope of changing some of these people. Really.