Your reality has been disconnected

I'm really noticing a major break from reality in a lot of people lately. I'm not talking about getting things a little bit wrong; I'm talking "fuck the facts I'm just going to make shit up" wrong.

We've got the Missouri farmer who placed a huge sign on his farm calling the Democrats the "party of parasites." This same farmer has accepted a million dollars in crop subsidies from the federal government. Sir, I know parasites; I worked with parasites for much of my career. The Democratic party may have its share, but certainly does not have the market cornered on parasites.

Then there is Michelle Bachmann, teabagger royalty, who takes every opportunity to rail against big government and Obama's "socialistic" agenda. Bachmann's farm received over a quarter of a million in federal subsidies. Kind of digging that whole socialist scene, aren't you, Bachmann? At least when it is you who is the beneficiary.

Let's see...then there is Lutheran pastor Tom Brock, who is virulently anti-gay and takes every opportunity to tell gays that they are immoral and disgusting and going to hell if they don't change their ways. In his down time from gaybashing, he attends conventions with other pastors, and in a recent one in Slovakia, apparently fell into temptation and was weak...and had some sort of a homosexual encounter with a Gypsy (who he says are toothless, filthy, and smelly, although I guess for such an encounter, toothless might be a plus!). Oh, he's admitted that he's gender-confused, and belongs to a group that promotes abstinence among men who are fighting homosexual urges. All the while, he continues to preach his I-hate-gays-and-so-does-my-god rhetoric. What an amazing amount of self-loathing he must be carting around! Give it up and be fabulous, dude!

We're not done. There is the lovely desert flower, Jan Brewer, who, in order to drum up more support for her racist immigration bill in Arizona, is claiming that illegal immigrants are mainly concerned with smuggling drugs across the border rather than trying to get jobs here to feed their families. The assertion that illegal immigration in Arizona has led to higher crime rates is simply not true. It is a falsehood, and Brewer continues to spew such lies...and people continue to fall for it.

In a delusional break that hits closer to home, I've had a person who ridiculed my nephew as a coward and a "mama's boy" for not deploying to Afghanistan while in the Marines--despite the fact that he was hospitalized for over a week with a severe abscess and designated as non-deployable by the U.S. Marines themselves--in a tizzy about their own family member's possible immediate deployment, and ensuring that such deployment was delayed by whatever means necessary. Gee, really? How is that cowardice, mama's boy thingie working for you?

What do all these things have in common? From what I can tell, it's such a hatred and disdain for the other side that there is an inability to recognize one's own inconsistencies and irrational behavior, or that of whatever group affiliation is claimed. We saw it during the health care debate, when teabaggers were calling for smaller government, but at the same time shouting, "Keep your hands off my Medicare!" Or when Palin continued to harp about "death panels," when it was a patently absurd suggestion and a complete fabrication and misrepresentation of something that every family should discuss. I honestly don't know if it's a matter of being unable to grasp the larger complexities of an issue, or simply willful ignorance. Not all of these people are unintelligent; I believe it's often a calculated attempt to prevaricate and persuade through dishonest means. It is most certainly a disconnect from the reality of a situation. I may try to persuade with my arguments, but I always stay firmly rooted in reality. Once you give that up, I suppose you can justify anything, at least in your own mind.

That doesn't change reality, though. No matter how deeply you've managed to deceive yourself, those of us who haven't followed you to your own personal Bizarro World know the reality of things.