I'd like you to meet someone. I'd call him "my friend" but we have a quiet little ideological war going underneath the pleasantries.
We'll call him Wingnut Coworker, or occasionally when I am feeling personal, Wingnut Bill.
Wingnut Coworker is a white middle aged man, going bald, with a bit of a paunch. You wouldn't give him a second glance on the street (unless he was holding a sign). He has a steady blue collar job. He lives in Anytown USA, where 70% of the population works for government contractors but 70% of that population thinks the government is way too big, and is uncomfortable with the presence of Yoke's Farm Fresh Market.
I think Wingnut CoWorker may have some rage issues. Even mundane topics about his job can get him rocking in his desk chair. You can hear him all the way down the hall. People new to the building always ask why I keep my door open.
It is because I choose, rather than feel anger or pity, to be amused. I like to savor the Wingnut like tart fruit. And then I write it down and post it on the Internet.
Note: everything in quotations are as close as I could get to direct quotes.
Wingnut Coworker doesn't believe in giving anyone the benefit of a doubt; if you do not agree with him, you are misinformed. Wingnut Coworker watches a lot of FOX News. Trying to argue with Wingnut Coworker is like trying to argue with a very noisy, Sean Hannity-worshipping brick wall. He thinks that if Sarah Palin shot it, it deserved to die, especially if it involved helicopters. I briefly considered putting up a big poster of Keith Olbermann surrounded by big pink hearts and imagery of organic farming and Socialist healthcare, but really that would be embarassing for him.
Wingnut CoWorker likes to call people idiots. If his rants were more well organized and included interviews I wouldn't be able to distinguish them from Bill O'Reilly recordings. Wingnut Coworker often hesitates over the "church words" he utters where most of us just curse, yet he does not hesitate to say Mexicans don't even deserve to get the illegal farm labor jobs around here. Mexicans are such idiots.
Wingnut Coworker votes Tea Party but can't stand how wishy-washy Ron Paul is. He thinks government should stop passing pesky laws, like the ones that tell companies they can't not hire women, and the ones that allow the state to distribute mail-in votes in Chinese. He believes in freedom of speech up to the point where someone says something he disagrees with, especially if it's in another language. Wingnut Coworker is very proud that he knows 10 words in German.
Wingnut Coworker thinks that, being a mechanical engineer and a former weatherman and knowing those 10 words in German, he is qualified professionally about not only evolution and global warming, but also neuroscience, economics, and international politics. We totally need to bomb Iran, "because Muslims are idiots. The Jews too. We should just nuc the whole reigion until it glassifies and start over."
He was once stationed in Hawaii, and remembers thinking all the tiny asian women were kind of "vaguely unattractive and shrill and weird. And their food was weirder. Fish I couldn't pronounce."
But he is not a racist because he says "black people" instead of...well, you know what. That word your great-uncle in Alabama who you avoid uses? But Wingnut Coworker thinks it's unfair that companies are not allowed to discriminate against "black people." And "sexual orientation." And women. It hurts productivity, because... because women. He decries illegal immigration but thinks food is too expensive. He thinks "Idiot young Europeans come by the droves to work in the US because they think Americans are fat, stupid and lazy." He works in an office full of immigrant engineers from the UK. And women.
Speaking of Europe, "it's full of counterfeit designer handbags and women who don't shave their legs." The US doesn't stand for that sort of thing. Well, maybe THE CITY, but they're not really America.
Wingnut Coworker has some novel ideas about economics. The other day he delared that he had solved the Middle Class Financial Crisis: "Just charge all those rich people who make a lot of stock trades twice as much as the peons, and charge the rest of us harkworking people less." I pointed out that that is awfully socialistic (because in his little world even very poor people put their money into the stock market, and that stock trading company coffers are the same thing as the social support system), and he turned a very satisfying shade of reddish purple.
Apparently nothing pisses off Wingnut Coworker more than Obama's fiscal speech a few months back. I was out, but I have been told that several people took notes for me. Perhaps feeling as though I missed out, Wingnut Coworker generously confided in me this morning his get-rich-quick scheme, which involves donating the same pair of jeans to Goodwill over and over, taking the tax write-off(1), and hey, as a bonus, his laundry's getting done. And if you're one of those squishy liberal types, you can rest easy knowing that he's helping "employ people who otherwise would be unemployable." How generous!
Wingnut Coworker doesn't like teachers. In fct, he really hates teachers. He thinks they all suck at their jobs, even though he has not had a kid in school for 10 years. He thinks they should shut up and quit asking for more money. He thinks "teachers shouldn't whine about large class sizes because it's their fault that kids aren't behaving right," but thinks that "no discipline is all because of the parents." He thinks teachers shouldn't teach evolution, "because it's not science.(2)" Also, Darwin was a racist. And property levys are unconstitutional.
Wingnut Coworker thinks that because his daughter is a professional opera singer, he must be pretty darn good at it too. He believes it is necessary that he shower this "talent" upon us. He also thinks his daughter is entitled to anything she wants. Screw qualifying people based on talent when it's his own kid. But he doesn't hesitate to tell her that she's made all sorts of stupid choices about her life. On the phone, in his office, with his door open. Obviously he's the best parent ever.
Especially because he's right about someone getting half-naked on a stage can never qualify in any way as art.
And especially because he objects to the soda tax: "I should be able to force-feed my kids sugar water if I ugging(3) want to!"
In the 2 years I've known him, Wingnut Coworker has not once talked about his wife, except in the context of how much money her hobbies cost, and how annoying it is to find that electric kiln she wanted. He had to call an electrician for some voltage information and then drive to THE CITY.
He thinks I'm a flightly little librul commie pinko idealist becase I loved THE CITY when I lived there. That's obviously where I got all those wrong ideas about taxes being useful and vegetables being tasty, and weird hair dye also. THE CITY has diversity and stuff! People ride the bus and recycle! And GPS data about them is sometimes wrong!
Wingnut Coworker's sequential logic is much akin to the organization of this diary.
Wingnut Coworker thinks of himself as an an Average American. I really hope not.
(1) If Wingnut Bill ever donated things, he would realize that in taking a tax write-off, you can only claim the resale value of a clothing item. And since donations are not matched dollar-for-dollar in tax reduction, he would actually be losing money on that deal.
(2) To my knowledge, Wingnut Coworker is not a qualified evolutionary biologist, inexplicably suffering from the common ignorance-fueled belief that if you are a scientist, you know everything about every kind of science, ever. Also Darwin.
(3) Yes, "ugging".
Follow Wingnut Coworker's ramblings on my twitter feed @CaelanAegana #WingnutCoworker (updates as ramblings present themselves), and/or add your own!