Favorite Search: Did The Democrats Destroy The World?

Honestly, I feel a bit bad that we here at POLITUSIC have another “democrats will destroy” theme as our favorite incoming search this day – but the truth of the matter is, these sorts of Internet searches continue to be very, very popular inside the extreme right-wing factions of the Republican Party. Far-right believers are much more prone to search why democrats are destroying life as they know it than do lefty progressives of the inverse (seriously, we have the data).

As far as we can tell it’s a ten-fold difference – Democrats seem content just watching Jon Stewart. They don’t tend to seek out blogs until they find one that supports their own fears and conspiracy theories as do the beloved and self-beguiled republican base of the Obama era. Sure, liberals gather around the water cooler standards of left-leaning online magazines, but they don’t dig deep into the abyss of the Internet with the same self-justification vigor as does the far right.

“Did the democrats destroy the world?”

What I like about this particular Best Search is that it’s in past tense: “did the democrats destroy the world” – as if the destruction of all the rocks, water, and elements that make up “The World” have already been destroyed… leaving all 7.097 billion of us floating around in some sort of Daily Kos created dream in which all we have left is Internet access. (…seriously… we have surpassed 7 billion people occupying this planet… and since the Democratic Party ins’t rabidly against birth control, I’m pretty certain that aspect of the world’s destruction has nothing whatsoever to do with democrats).

I’m prone to believe that apparent dream-state in which this poor person resides tells us something as to how afraid they are by how quickly time passes and culture changes. That’s the only possible way I can see that their subconscious used the past tense – as if the world passed them by and they can’t figure out what happened. I wonder what it’s like to live in this person’s shoes. They wake up on a Monday after a long 4th of July weekend… got some work done, and at lunch time decided to take a few moments to search, “did the democrats destroy the world”

It’s as if Rip Van Winkle awoke to find his wife and friends have died, and then immediately blamed Obama and the democrats – when the whole time he was the lazy one who dreamt through the decades of late-night policymaking, and never took the time to figure out who was really fighting on behalf of his friends and family during the war.

This POLITUSIC visitor didn’t search “who” destroyed the world, nor “will” democrats destroy the world – but a past tense search performed after the demise of said world. I guess they’re operating under the assumption that yes: a political party made up of people who think single-payer health care might be a good idea for a wealthy country (… just like it is for every other post-industrial nation of the world … of the world that has not yet been destroyed, mind you..) that these evil people who believe something different than they do, did – some time in the past – destroy the world!!!!

… and the world is a rather large place travelling at 66,000 miles per hour around the sun, by the way. Why is this apparent world destruction entirely the fault of a political party in the United States? If it has to do with policy, why not blame Canada, and Australia, and most of Europe, and who knows where else because I went to an under-funded public school which means I’m not very good at geography!?! Doesn’t it seem a wee bit too convenient for the advertisers and sponsors that the sole cause of the end of the known universe always ends up being President Obama and the Democratic Party? I would start questioning my news sources if the blame card always seemed to be the exact same value continually dealt from the bottom of the deck.

… or maybe their world really is that small – that something as simple as not restricting freedoms of someone just because they happen to be gay, or want control over their own reproductive organs really does destroy the little world they inhabit. Personally, I’m glad that my own beliefs, and the world that I inhabit aren’t that fragile…

All this talk of America and the world being destroyed is happening inside the republican bubble, because if someone believes in an idea that is different than their own… in Republicanland that means that Other is trying to destroy what they believe not merely believe something different. Minor gun regulations, gay marriage, minority rights, immigration – all of these things get twisted into a direct threat upon the very existence of their own personal beliefs… rather than merely being… different. As such, “destruction of me and my ability to believe” has become the default answer to any group of people that is different than their own. Such right-wing beliefs used to be reserved solely for radical Islam (and Nancy Pelosi), but now they use it as the default position for literally anyone with whom they disagree. Condemn any and all ideas but their own…

… if only they truly understood how similar their total lack of pluralism makes them brothers-in-thought to extreme Islamic jihadists. That’s with whom they share a philosophical bed, and lord knows they can’t even see it.

I also wonder from where, exactly, I write this. Honestly. Maybe I should search for this post online to verify my own bias that I believe the world has not been destroyed. Write a post, then search for it online to prove I’m correct in my thinking. Yeah… that sounds good. I can jump onto the self-justifying-belief wagon, too.

Alas, dear friend who spent some of your lunch time searching on Google if it was the democrats who destroyed your world: why don’t you sit down and speak with some democrats instead of searching for other people who already think they way you do? We’re all actually OK people who aren’t even half as crazy as Glenn Beck claims we are.

If your planet has been destroyed… first, I empathize with that, I really do. When I discovered Santa wasn’t real, I would have searched online for weeks to dig up who killed him. The Internet didn’t exist back then, though, so I had to take my mom’s word for it about how the world could possibly exist without Santa keeping all the kids behaving themselves with his well-researched bribery tactics… it’s then that she first told me about things like “tax incentives” and “incarceration” – dark times those were for me. Anyway, it’s hard when you discover what you believe is not actually the whole truth, but rather that the Truth is made up of You along with mountains of Different and Other and Unknown that are mostly out of your control. But we are all in the same Truth. I always find at least that part comforting, and a mighty fine starting point.

It can be scary. I hear yah’ on that point. It’s even scarier these recent years because many people have been convinced of total American destruction by the more extreme right-wing media flunkies who exist only to sell scared people survival products and gold coins. Scaring you is their business. It’s what they do for a living. That’s why some things feel so cluttered and chaotic – it’s the best sales tool there is.

Like I said: have a chat or two with a democrat or three. I promise you the world won’t explode, and we all might learn a few things about one another – and hopefully some truth about politics and policy.