I know I should just let these things go, but I've noticed that my tolerance for bullshit has hit an all-time low. Maybe it's the political season, maybe it's the war, or maybe it's just the fallout of 30 years of daily cow flop from assholes like Rush Limbaugh, a man who assumes everyone is as stupid as his listeners.Recently, a man who should know better passed along one of the most virulent and obviously bone-headed canards of the war. He said that last year, more people were murdered in Detroit than soldiers killed in Iraq.
This gross and pointless apologia for the war has been around in different forms for quite a while. But they all have one thing in common - they assume you're an idiot.
It doesn't take more than a few minutes with Google to learn that last year, 418 people were murdered in Detroit and 899 soldiers were killed in Iraq.
That's right. But just being wrong isn't what gets under my skin. I'm wrong about a lot of things, just ask my wife. No, what chaps my hide, is the utter bullshit behind such a claim.
Even if the numbers were the same, we're talking about a difference between 150,000 soldiers vs 900,000 citizens. And no, we can't count Iraqi civilian deaths, and we can't talk about serious American casualties, which are in the tens of thousands. No, because then this completely bullshit comparison would be so odorous that not even Rush's listeners would be suckers enough to buy it.
But buy it they do, and they pass it along in emails and casual conversations, and they pass it along with a smug superiority, grasping at any reed, no matter how slender, that would make this war look OK and make their vote for Bush defensible.
Bullshit. It's what's for dinner.
And I'm not having any of it.
6 comments:
Jon Stewart used to have a great recurring line. He'd read a story about someone spouting off this kind of bald-faced lie, look at the camera with an expression of pure disgust and amazement, and yell "DO THEY THINK WE'RE RETARDED!?"
He's stopped using it, possibly because it's become all too depressingly evident that the answer us "yes, yes they do."
And isn't the administration somewhat responsible for the dead of Detroit too? If some of that war money came this way, maybe there'd be enough cops on the street, social programs, etc. All of them have been gutted. Maybe they don't care about domestic programs but we do.
A point of clarrification...
I think the comment was that there have been more murders in Detroit this year than there have been casualties in Iraq this year.
It's still one big pile of stink.
There are fringe lunitics on both sides of the conservative/liberal eternal struggle. Limbahhumbug, with half his brain tied behind his back, and a legion of researchers, qualifies. Sheeple, no matter their leaning, amaze me at their gullability. Jessie Jackson was referred to as a race baiting, poverty pimp. With the rate oil prices are soaring, Limbaugh will soon be one too!
Dread
I was there when the comment was said and it requires a slight clarification. "More people died in Detroit during the month of January than died in Iraq." What I think this person was trying to imply, using a convenient but misleading statistic, was that it is safer in Iraq than Detroit. However if pressed, I'm positive he'd move his family to Detroit faster than he'd move them to Iraq any month of the year.
Hell! Givnen that logic...more people die in nursing homes every week than soldiers in Iraq, but I doubt very many of them are shot or blown up!
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