I consider myself a left leaning independent; fiscal conservative and somewhat liberal on social issues. A few years ago, you could’ve branded me a blue dog democrat until I formally re-registered to drop my party affiliation (I’ll write about that later).
Growing up and living in the Southeast is tough if you’re not a diehard republican. I even had a cousin de-friend me on Facebook because of ONE statement I made about GW Bush in retort to his absolute racist driven character assassination of BHO. What’s shocking about that is anyone will friend some slag they met in a bar one time, but de-friend a family member? That was the first time I realized things were unraveling here in the Southeast.
When I hear people talk about our President, I hear hatred. Living in the Southeast, you hear this rhetoric so often you start wondering if these are mainstream views. Being independent minded, I started counter balancing the things I heard on the street with a sort of fact check mission of my own.
What was surprising was discovering that I could easily debunk nearly everything espoused as the truth down here. Has anyone ever lied to you so often, and so badly that when they even start to talk you tune them completely out? That’s how I feel in Georgia and Tennessee. Everything lobbed at BHO is so crazy, so obviously mistruths, that I can’t even take people seriously.
This all reminds me of how my friends on the right used to continuously brand liberal minded people as “robots”. I used to laugh even though I really never understood the reference. Well, the reference is well understood now. When I look across the Southeast, I find states full of conservative robots – repeat someone’s talking point, ignore facts and spread the misinformation.
This has never become as apparent as it has in this year’s election cycle. Daily, I hear the Romney campaign rattle off some one-liners only to hear my social circles repeating this filth 24 hours later. You see a campaign when pressed about facts; stipulate, “we’re not going to allow our campaign to be run by fact check.” How is that acceptable? GOP supporters see this as sticking it to the left-wing media - how absurd. While they cheer for their candidate for taking that stance, they didn’t even realize they were being told, “that’s right base, we’re lying to you because we cannot beat BHO – we have to make stuff up. We also know you won’t check out anything we say.”
This is not even akin to a Jedi mind trick. These people are absolute sheep.
The lies that Mitt Romney and his campaign perpetuate should be called out, over and over. I hope he gets beaten with these throughout the debates. Will any of the moderators have the gall to press him on these issues? We’ll soon see.