After another vigorous yet inconclusive volley with my old blogvesary, I realized what a long, strange blogging trip it’s been. I disapprove of what you say, my friend, but I will defend to the death your right to blog it …well, after I take out the stupid parts and add some jokes. Ha! Republicans invariably think liberals are ignoring the facts, when in reality facts are simply not their thing. Nothing Hannity or Limbaugh covered last night was even mentioned by the lamestream media! Amen. It’s exhausting trying to keep up with each accusation that arrives at the speed of right. Fast & Spurious? Uranium None?

My blogversary, Pokey McDooris, remains transfixed on the cultural malaise sweeping the planet. This is a very real phenomenon and the factors for this are endless and bipartisan. Andrew Sullivan’s recent article nailed it. Whereas politically Dems have mustered a few good points over the years, our Republican friends remain just a few good points away from having a few good points. This is especially true when their conspiracy theories turn out to be approximately 70% rubbish (Benghazi, Uranium One, Fast & Furious), 20% truthiness/bipartisan procedural (Who funded the Dossier, FBI wrongdoing, Susan Rice unmasking) and 10% totally true, but only minimally disturbing (Hillary’s three classified email faux pas).

What?! She used an unprotected server and mishandled classified emails, Zano!

Look, Colin Powell had the same server set up, which also supports my theory:

Every bad poltical practice begins with a Republican.

Keep in mind, while Melanie was still picking out the curtains, our president invited Russian spies into the oval office and revealed classified information. So Trump managed to trump Hillary’s worst transgressions, not amidst four decades of service, but during a Gilligan’s Island three hour F-ing tour. And, amidst all of Trump’s nepotistic oligarching (which is a verb), his entire family continued to use unprotected devices for some time. iPhoney? Face it, you really don’t give a shit about classified information, do you? Or, as my theory asserts, you’ve simply lost all perspective on our political reality. Stop agreeing with fools, Pokey, you are smarter than this. On a good day you’re even smarter than me. If you recall, we only found out about Hillary’s egregious Colin Powell-level transgressions (CPLT) during the seventh Benghazi hearing. Hyper-unfocused?

Hint of the Day: Why investigate Colin Powell’s email transgressions when he and his bosses should be shot for their part in the invasion of Iraq?

If you could keep score, which you apparently cannot, Powell’s misdeeds rated a whopping eight on the Richter Scale and Hillary’s affronts are a whopping 0.8 (a 0.8 that should technically be added to Powell’s score). Remember decimals? I only ask because of your ability to misinterpret world events at lightening speed …Mathamphetamine?

We used to agree on stuff, like what pub, what party, what girl he better keep his grubby hands off of. Ha! Fast-forward to 2018 and my only interest in any Republican opinion is as a necessary check mark. So they don’t agree with me? Check. How do we get them to realize the points they were trying to make last week, last month, and last year all turned out be less than relevant?

This is a wonderful chart, stolen without permission from MediaBiasChart, that points to the crux the problem:

This chart is perhaps the biggest reason your right-leaning friends seem to have lost all perspective. Over the years our slanted media has proven to be our biggest O’Reilly Factor. It continues to skew our worldview, left and right. Sadly, the left is trying to match the right’s journalistic indiscretion, but at least for the moment most are hanging onto the basics. Half our country will focus on a NYT retraction, never realizing how their own news source is probably one giant retraction—who, incidentally, never makes retractions. To my mind, this chart is very accurate and strangely validating. Even though I complain about MSNBC, The Discord is probably only slightly north of them ideologically. And I am not a journalist, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Pokey’s plots and points are generally hatched in that lower right quadrant, which is why next to none of these ‘scandals’ stand the test of Times. Sorry.

Upon hitting the archives, I found a couple of dalliances into the second lowest quadrant. One time I referenced the Daily Kos (an article on Hillary Clinton) and three passing references to the Huffington Pissed. Meanwhile, the right side lives almost entirely in those Orange and Red rectangles, somewhere between Fox News and InfoDrivel, or ‘Nonsense damaging to the public discourse.’ This is precisely why the age of meaningful conversations has ended. This, in part, is what led an Oxford professor to conclude:

“They (Trump supporters) are playing with different facts, and they think they have the inside scoop on conspiracies … It appears a small chunk of the population isn’t able to talk politics or share ideas in a sensible way with the rest of the population.”
—Phillip Howard

The Discord has never quoted anything from the left-red quadrant, ever, but the right gets constant solace and sustenance from the Breitbart-lands. In fact, a few months ago the dude was sitting in the White House. Even my blogvesary, a once moderate voice, has sniffed the Glenn Beck chalk powder and now resides amidst the AM radio ethos. You can climb out of that unfocused group anytime now Poke.

One way to help prove this point is by reviewing what Republican contributors were all fired up about six months ago, or even a year ago. Unfortunately, zenwrongness seems to have a half-life longer than Uranium One. Looking back six months or even a year into our archives revealed the same faulty themes and assumptions. Republican hindsight is 20/200. Yes, my blogversary was rambling on about Benghazi and unmasking *sigh*. So what if we go back to the beginning? It might be old news, but that’s the point, their nonsense was never news in the first place, because they reside in a fact-free wasteland of their own creation.

The first of my features in the Discord archives is Restore Habeas Corpus: Then Explain It to Me and my blogversary’s is: Crying In The Grocery Store Coffee Shop. My article is a protest of Bush’s expansion of power that resulted in an American citizen, Jose Padilla, being picked up in the middle night, brought to a secret location, and tortured to the point of permanent mental illness. No lawyer, no phone call, no rights. A guy from Brooklyn, who we later found out had little to do with any terrorist cell but his emotional wellbeing is permanently damaged. Pokey denied this was occurring at the time. Now, fast-forward a few years from this post and Obama admits his predecessor, “Tortured some folks.”

Meanwhile, Pokey’s earliest article from our way-back machine can be summarized as: 1. How dare you try to expand health insurance for all Americans? and 2. How dare you infringe on my right to infringe on other people’s rights based on religious prejudices? Actually, there is an argument for opting out of an emergency room tax, but then you don’t get to use the ER unless you or a loved one brings the cash. Good luck with that. For his second point, there is an argument to be made that the business owner has the right to serve who they wish, but, again, if these are your biggest concerns amidst the Earth’s sixth mass extinction *cough*, let’s stick with your strengths. Fat Burning To Benghazi!

For those gluttons for punishment among us, here are the links to those two early Discord features:

Restore Habeas Corpus: Then Explain It to Me , and Pokey’s Crying In The Grocery Store Coffee Shop.

[Winslow: How about the one that started it all, No Biden Bounce, Democrats Opt for Conjoined Ticket? Now there’s some political insight.]