I hate memes. Seriously. Hate them. They have become the quick, easy way of stating an opinion on a topic without saying anything of substance, giving us your real thoughts. Yeah, they can be funny, but they are as often stupid, unintelligent, and downright wrong.
Take for example our political system. It’s all about memes, all about click bait titles and manufactured outrage. Long gone are the careful investigations into wrong doing with journalistic integrity in mind, it’s all about getting eyeballs on your page and drawing in readers so you can generate that wonderful ad revenue that keeps you going. It started with FOX news and the rise of the rabid ridiculous right and their FEAR EVERYTHING! attitude towards the world, particularly liberalism. But the mainstream media dove into the cesspool as well, and now there is nothing but bullshit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all designed to whip the public into a frenzy over stupid shit.
Take terrorism. The right is HUGELY afraid of terrorists, particularly (actually mostly) those who are Muslim. Yet we are the most heavily armed nation in the world, which leads me to contemplate just how much of a bunch of pussies and pansies these folks are. You got the guns… use them, you idiots. You busted everyone’s balls about your need for concealed carry licenses (even as crime dropped and dropped and dropped), and now that you’ve got them, not one of you seems capable of stopping a terrorist. You want guns for all? Well then, you can keep enjoying the mass shootings that happen (99.99% of which involve our own citizens, not those from “away”).
What does the left respond with? They fear monger the fear mongers, taking every comment as out of context as possible so it seems bizarre, ludicrous, pathetic. Half the time what they said wasn’t even that remarkably bad, or would have stood on its own as being of questionable quality, but they use click baity titles like “Trump Wants All Muslims Dead” to get you to read the story, when in fact he only wants TERRORISTS dead who happen to be Muslim (and is simply ignoring the question of other terrorists).
I get it. Right now the Muslim world is ablaze with war and fear and hatred. Much of that we in the west helped cause with a century of policies that stole land, broke up countries into pieces, marginalized local populations and basically shit all over a region in our pursuit of the control of oil and other natural resources. That part of the equation the right wants to ignore. But the left wants to ignore the actual anger and violence that is part and parcel of Islam in that area of the world. Refugees aren’t something we should fear, but neither should we ignore how our own people are being radicalized by agents of ISIS and other groups and how the CIA and NSA are allowing that to happen so they can “monitor” these folks.
Muslims are not all bad. Christians are not all bad. Atheists are not all bad. People are good and bad, and they wrap their beliefs up in those choices. A citizen radicalized to perform a jihadi attack may have easily have been radicalized by Christian groups to shoot up an abortion clinic. That’s the real truth that is overlooked so that we can be righteously indignant about the belief of others, rather than focus on their actions, the history of the conflict, and what needs to be done to bring about peace.
The middle east is a mess. And we keep meddling. But we don’t need empty memes and vacuous comments and click baiting titles. Here’s a radical notion: let’s support people with real Democratic ideals, and otherwise leave the middle east alone. Let’s stop selling weapons to tyrants and dictators in the name of some nebulous idea of peace. And let’s stop overlooking our own continuing history of violence against ourselves.
Here’s my “meme” for the day: a VW bus sidecar. My two favorite vehicles combined, motorcycles and VW’s. Go ahead, turn that into a pithy clickbait header.
