Update: You know, it never ceases to amaze me what does and does not go viral. This post has taken on legs of its own and again, despite the hate mail, it’s obvious that this post touches on something many folks feel strongly about. This tickles me. That’s the point of writing, to touch on the things that move people, to inspire conversation and dialog.

That said, while I appreciate that the vast majority of people who read Stonekettle Station and go through the effort to comment here on a regular basis seem to be a cut above the usual internet free-for-all, when a post like this takes off, it tends to attract those who aren’t house broken. Since I’m now pulling in a larger than normal percentage of trolls on this post, comment moderation is now on. I’ve got things to do today other than play whack-a-troll with these silly buggers.

Remember, folks, you’re free to disagree, but if you can’t follow the basic commenting rules (that you didn’t bother to read in the first place), then you’re not going to be allowed to interrupt the adults. That’s how it is, you pays your money and you takes your chances. //Jim

I’ve got a couple of old Navy buddies.

Had rather, I had a couple of old navy buddies, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

They’re both from the military generation just previous to mine, i.e. they were senior NCO’s when I was but a wee junior enlisted man.

Back then they were good guys. At least I thought so.

When I was coming up through the ranks I admired the both of them.

When I put on my Chief’s anchors and joined the ranks of the senior NCOs myself, and later when I was commissioned to Warrant and became an Officer, I worked with both of them in a special branch of military intelligence. Our job was to get it right, to get the information right, to look at everything with a critical eye, to check the facts and double check them, to risk our very lives if necessary if that’s what it took to get the actual ground truth. We were trained that way, there were systems in place that were designed to force the military intelligence community to think critically, to double and triple check the information – but we, us senior NCOs, us Officers, we were the final check, the final stop before the information entered the system. Our job, as best we were able, was to ensure that only vetted intelligence made its way to the decision-makers – otherwise people tended to die.

Beyond that, as military leaders our job was to lead by example.

Always, as a Chief, as an Officer, your job is to put a stop to the wild rumors that grow among a crew far from home, among Sailors who live shoulder to shoulder in close quarters for months on end. Our job as leaders was to depend on clear-eyed fact and to never fall for group think and mass hysteria and the other pitfalls of leadership under such conditions.

Like me, both of these men are now retired from military service.

Ten years ago, they would have settled into retirement outside some base in a Navy town, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Mayport, Pensacola, San Diego, Seal Beach, Oak Harbor, and grown fat. They would have hung around outside the local base Exchange, parked on a bench outside the barber shop, like old retired Sailors do, sighing and rolling their eyes at the current generation. Drinking free coffee from the Commissary, pining for the good old days of the Cold War and Reagan and the 600 Ship Navy, those were the days, we were real sailors back then, man, I’ll tell you what, not like these punks today. They’d have drawn a stool up to the bar down at the local VFW or the Legion and surrounded by other like minded beer-bellied old warriors they’d have cried into their cups about how the country was going straight to hell.

Their bitching and complaining would have been confined to few old gray-hairs, bitter at the loss of their youth, the loss of their power and authority, the changing world that was increasingly leaving them behind. But see, no matter what, they were always surrounded by the next generation, those hard young men and women, clear-eyed and lean, the ones who proudly wear the uniform today and who smile indulgently at the bitching of fat old men on a bench outside the barber shop. The presence of those fine young men and women make you stop and take stock, make you realize that you’ve become one of them, those garrulous old curmudgeons, and suddenly you’re self-conscious of the fact that you’ve been running your mouth instead of setting the example and you shut the hell up.

Think of it as a sort of a natural check and balance on pessimism.

But nowadays, these guys, they’ve got the Internet.

And instead of sitting down at the base food court, they sit on the couch in their den with Fox News blaring in the background and their pistol on the table next to an open bottle of Jack and a blister pack of blood pressure medicine, and they comb the web for all the misery and pessimism they can find. Somehow, all that training, that hard won skill at fact checking and critical thinking that was once the very core of their being, is forgotten. Where once their bitterness was confined to a few doddering old farts down at the VFW, now they can reach hundreds, thousands, of like minded strident pessimists, reinforcing each other’s increasingly hysterical worldview without check or pause for reason.

I get a constant stream of woe and misery from these two – and from other former comrades in arms.

It’s an endless litany of pessimism and bitter grumblings fleshed out with the latest NRA hysteria, TEA Party conspiracy theories, Fox News lunacy, and silly chainmail nonsense.

Here’s a typical example:

Jeff's got something to say... Unfortunately, it's about this country... Sad but true.

- [name redacted] _________________ by Jeff Foxworthy: If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for entering and remaining in the country illegally - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If you have to get your parents' permission to go on a field trip or to take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If you MUST show your identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor, or check out a library book and rent a video, but not to vote for who runs the government - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If the government wants to prevent stable, law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines that hold more than ten rounds, but gives twenty F-16 fighter jets to the crazy new leaders in Egypt - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If, in the nation's largest city, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not one 24-ounce soda, because 24-ounces of a sugary drink might make you fat - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If an 80-year-old woman or a three-year-old girl who is confined to a wheelchair can be strip-searched by the TSA at the airport, but a woman in a burka or a hijab is only subject to having her neck and head searched - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If a seven-year-old boy can be thrown out of school for saying his teacher is "cute," but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If hard work and success are met with higher taxes and more government regulation and intrusion, while not working is rewarded with Food Stamps, WIC checks, Medicaid benefits, subsidized housing, and free cell phones - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If the government's plan for getting people back to work is to provide incentives for not working, by granting 99 weeks of unemployment checks, without any requirement to prove that gainful employment was diligently sought, but couldn't be found - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If you pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big-screen TV, while your neighbor buys iPhones, time shares, a wall-sized do-it-all plasma screen TV and new cars, and the government forgives his debt when he defaults on his mortgage - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If being stripped of your Constitutional right to defend yourself makes you more "safe" according to the government - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. __________ What's happened to our aountry!=============

You know, I used to admire these men. I would have walked through fire for them. But that was long ago. Back before they forgot how to think critically and before they settled into a hog wallow of misery and pessimism and fear and hysteria.

I hated to do it, I really did, but this was my response.

Of course, I know what comes next. I know it all too well.

_________________________

Enough, Shipmates, e nough.

Enough of this crap.

What the hell happened to you guys? When did you start buying into this garbage?

Jeff’s got something to say?

What the hell, fellas?

Jeff Foxworthy? The has-been “you might be a redneck…” comedian whose popularity waxed in the mid 1990’s? That Jeff Foxworthy?

Oh, well, if Jeff has something to say, I mean, Jeff, well, I guess I should probably listen. Right? I mean what? After his comedy career faded, he became Ambassador to China maybe? He and Larry the Cable Guy won the Nobel for a new economic theory? Did he lead troops into battle and win the Navy Cross? Maybe he founded a string of hospitals for the poor? Built a Fortune 500 company from the ground up and then sold it off to build the next generation of private spacecraft? I mean, shit, Jeff Foxworthy, now there’s an authority on the state of the nation, you bet.

What?

What’s that you say? He’s the guy who hosts Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader on Fox?

Oh.

Okay. Sure, that’s sort of the same thing, I guess.

Sad but true.

Except, of course, that part where it’s not true.

What’s actually sad about this, besides it coming from you guys, is that the entire thing is made up.

Jeff Foxworthy never wrote this. Five minutes of fact-checking would have confirmed it. It’s just something some bitter old codger made up, and figured he’d get wider play if he pasted a famous name on the bottom of it rather then his own forgettable one. It’s complete bullshit. It’s like all the crap attributed to Morgan Freeman, or Ben Franklin.

It’s bad enough that the average idiot would believe this nonsense, but you two men are far from stupid and you were trained intelligence officers. In uniform, you’d have never stood for this kind of sloppy bullshit from your watch team.

What happened to your critical analysis skills, did you take them off with your uniform?

The format and the topics bear no resemblance to Foxworthy’s actual material and should have set off alarms right away, which should have led to some fact checking starting with Snopes. Instead you just nodded because it confirmed you own bias and so you hit the forward button and dumped this crap on me. Thanks for nothing.

Confirmation bias is the single most egregious error you can make in the intelligence field – well, next to just making shit up, I mean. Confirmation bias leads you to invade countries by accident, because you ignored information contrary to what you wanted to hear. Confirmation bias gets people killed. You guys taught me that, so what the hell is this?

If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for entering and remaining in the country illegally - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

Talk about logical fallacies.

You can get arrested for hunting without a license, but not for entering the country illegally – except for the part where we arrest tens of thousands of people for entering the country illegally every year.

In 2011, for example, 447,731 illegal immigrants were arrested along the southern border of the United States. That’s 447,731 on the US/Mexican border alone. That doesn’t include all the other illegals arrested attempting to enter via other access points or the arrests of illegals already resident in the US.

It’s almost impossible to get a solid figure on the number of arrests, nationwide, for illegal hunting and fishing in the same period (they are typically different figures, maintained by each state), but it’s on the order of maybe a few hundred, maybe a few thousand, at the high end. Nowhere near the number of illegal aliens arrested, not by an order of magnitude. The two figures aren’t even remotely comparable. It’s the fallacy of false comparison, just as is every other item on this list.

And yes, there are plenty of illegal immigrants in the United States, just as there are plenty of folks who hunt and fish illegally and remain uncaught or commit numerous other crimes all of which cost each of us money and resources. The question is, just how far are you willing to go to catch them all? How much of your own freedom and liberty are you willing to give up in order to catch these offenders? I’m all ears. Are you willing to show your papers at every turn? Are you willing to have all your communications monitored? Are you willing to be strip searched in the airports because you look like a foreigner? Come now, how far are you willing to go? Oh, right, never mind, you complained about all of those things further down in the list.

If you think illegal aliens aren’t subject to arrest, you might be the very idiots you’re complaining about.

If you have to get your parents' permission to go on a field trip or to take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

You people have abortion on the brain. Shut the fuck up about abortion.

You spent your entire lives in the profession of arms, knowing that your actions might some day involve the deaths of children (can’t wage war without killing kids, fellas, you know that just as well as I – given that we fought in the same conflicts together. Omelet. Eggs. That’s just how it goes) but now you’re all about saving the babies? Now?

Again, the fallacy of false comparison. The reason a kid can’t take a field trip without a permission slip is that the field trip might be to the local museum, where the kid might be exposed to ideas about evolution and carbon dating and dinosaurs or climate change or other such taboo knowledge. Or the excursion might be to the local market where kids might get their heads filled with sustainable agriculture or be exposed to people with funny accents and strange religions, they might hear about birth control or safe sex or solar panels or god forbid, wind turbines, or any of a thousand verboten topics that make Jesus cry like a kid whose puppy just got run over.

I agree that it is insane that that an underage girl can get an abortion without her parent’s permission, that if the procedure is botched the parents are responsible for all that comes after including the medical bills even though they didn’t get a say. But that’s what it’s come down to. Insanity. Because you people can’t speak reasonably about abortion, because you can’t leave your God and your hypocrisy the hell out of it.

Fellas, extremists and extreme positions leads to extremism. Every time. As you damned well know. If you take up an extreme position, and then complain about extremism, you’re very likely the kind of extremist idiot you’re complaining about.

If you MUST show your identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor, or check out a library book and rent a video, but not to vote for who runs the government - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

The difference is intent.

And you know it.

If you don’t want to be talked to like a child, then stop acting like a fucking child.

When the government makes you show ID to board a plane, it’s because it’s their job to make sure the passengers onboard are who they say they are. Because given the abject examples of our nation’s recent past, this is obviously important. Ditto having to show an ID to cash a check or buy booze, history would indicate that demand for identification is a good idea.

Now despite endless efforts to the contrary, nobody can show a significant percentage of voter fraud, or even an insignificant amount for that matter. In the last presidential election, despite intensive investigations on both sides of the political aisle, the only people caught illegally voting were Voter ID advocates who were deliberately attempting to vote illegally in order to make a point. And they all got caught, without ID. They made a point, just not the one they intended. Imagine that.

Again, it’s the fallacy of false comparison: we make people show ID to board a plane because we’re trying to make air travel as safe as possible for all passengers and crew, but you guys want Voter ID laws solely in order to keep certain people you don’t like from voting for other people you don’t happen to like.

The simple truth of the matter is this: if we’d make Voter ID laws fair and equitable for all, laws that guaranteed access to all legitimate citizens instead of tying to disenfranchise them, then we’d have an ID law that we could all live with.

Here’s another simple truth, if your guy can’t win without keeping people away from the polls, he doesn’t deserve to be President of the United States of America. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, you’ve both seen enough third-world shitholes to know better.

If you demand voter ID laws solely in order to fix a problem that doesn’t exist, you might be the very idiot you’re complaining about, especially since further down in this list you start complaining about too many laws and regulations and your solution is what, more laws and regulations? Right.

If the government wants to prevent stable, law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines that hold more than ten rounds, but gives twenty F-16 fighter jets to the crazy new leaders in Egypt - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

And again, the fallacy of false comparison.

Not to mention shooting yourself in your own foot.

Let’s start with this “…stable, law-abiding citizens…. “ Fellas, if we can’t do universal background checks because your friends in the NRA shot down that legislation despite overwhelming national support, just exactly how are we supposed to tell if the guy buying that high capacity magazine along with his assault rifle is stable and law abiding?

No, really, please do explain.

I guess we just let him buy the gun and see how it all turns out, right?

Talk about idiotic.

You were both trained by the military, I know you both, I’ve shot alongside you, you’ve shot on my range under my command, and neither one of you would have allowed an unqualified or unstable individual anywhere near a gun. But now? Now you send me an endless stream of hysterical NRA bullshit squawking about how anybody should be allowed to own whatever gun he wants without so much as a background check?

You two guys wore the uniform for more than twenty years and now you’re taking orders from the likes of a coward like Ted Nugent? You’ve lost your fucking minds, the both of you.

As to the F-16’s, see those were actually sold to the previous ruthless dictator of Egypt. The one conservatives and gun owners didn’t have any trouble supporting, the guy who killed his own people and who stamped out freedom and democracy whenever and wherever it appeared in his own country. Don’t tell me you didn’t know, like me, you spent plenty of time there. Conservatives had no problem selling more than 200 F-16’s and over a 100 M1A1 Abrams tanks to Hosni Mubarack. The deal was struck back in 2009. General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin have been cranking out equipment ever since. So, theoretically speaking, what? Those companies are good with getting stiffed? They built the planes and tanks, but now that it’s time to ship, they can’t sell them? Who picks up the tab? Them? Us? You willing go with maybe another bailout?

And who exactly do you think was up there on Capital Hill lobbying for the deal to keep going though? Liberals?

If you demand that “stable law abiding citizens” be allowed to own guns, but refuse to support a process that would verify that the prospective gun owner is indeed stable and law abiding, then you might be the very idiot you’re complaining about.

If you demand government get out of the way of business, but then complain when the military-industrial complex sells weapons to people you don’t like, you are indeed the very idiot you’re complaining about.

If, in the nation's largest city, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not one 24-ounce soda, because 24-ounces of a sugary drink might make you fat - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

You know, for a bunch of people who believe in local self-determination, it cracks me up just how much New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg bothers you guys.

You can’t buy a big soda in New York.

So?

So what?

I don’t live there. I don’t care.

If you’re a New Yorker and it chaps your big fat ass, well, then vote for a different mayor.

The size of soda, that’s what you’ve got to gripe about? I remember when the two of you were fit and trim and you used to complain about the fatties, times sure have changed since you stopped running seven-minute miles, haven’t they?

Seriously, if you’re complaining about Mayor Bloomberg and you don’t live in New York, you’re an idiot.

If an 80-year-old woman or a three-year-old girl who is confined to a wheelchair can be strip-searched by the TSA at the airport, but a woman in a burka or a hijab is only subject to having her neck and head searched - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

Point to one case where an 80-year old woman or a three-year old girl was actually strip searched. Strip searched. Actually made to go into a booth with an agent and disrobe. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Personal rights violations by the TSA in some extreme cases are bad enough without exaggeration. And in those cases, the old lady and the kid were patted down same as the Muslim woman. Because, see, that whole bit about “a woman in a burka or a hijab is only subject to having her neck and head searched” is a straight up bald-faced lie invented by Glenn Beck and promulgated via The Blaze.

Muslim women in burkas or hijabs are subject to pat-downs and scans same as everybody else, and everybody goes through the naked body scanner, Christians, Muslims, pilots, old ladies, kids, veterans, everybody.

There is an exemption: adherents of a certain religion are allowed to do a self pat-down of their head covering and then their hands are scanned for signs of explosive chemicals, but they are still required to go through the full body scanner which looks through the head covering. In this case, the head covering itself is considered sacred, the religion isn’t Muslim, it’s Sikh. But I don’t suppose that matters at this point.

If you’ve got to make up shit in order to be offended, you might be the very idiot you’re complaining about.

Then again, if you’re listening to Glenn Beck and calling Jeff Foxworthy an expert on the state of the union, there really isn’t any question of being an idiot, is there?

If your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

Right.

Talk about an idiotic over simplification. No acknowledgement of how the debt got to the level it’s at now. No acknowledgement of the basic fact that spending by the government is one of the main things that kept the global economy from collapsing into another Great Depression. No acknowledgement that the three primary causes of the national debt are the defense budget, social security, and medical costs for an aging nation – i.e. all sacred cows that no one is allowed to touch.

You’re not going to do a damned thing about the debt until you address those three things.

If you think the state of the economy can be summed up in one line and then laid at the feet of one man just because you don’t like him, you’re very likely the exact idiot you’re complaining about.

If a seven-year-old boy can be thrown out of school for saying his teacher is "cute," but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

The kid was nine, not seven. And the school immediately admitted its overreaction and the principal was fired. Of course, that doesn’t really fit the narrative of political correctness run amuck here, so I suppose that’s why the entire story wasn’t included.

As to diversity, are you really – and I mean really – going to go down that road?

You know, if you’ve got to twist the facts and leave stuff out of the narrative in order to make whatever ridiculous point it is that you’re attempting to make with this statement, you’re very likely the kind of clueless idiot you’re complaining about.

If hard work and success are met with higher taxes and more government regulation and intrusion, while not working is rewarded with Food Stamps, WIC checks, Medicaid benefits, subsidized housing, and free cell phones - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If the government's plan for getting people back to work is to provide incentives for not working, by granting 99 weeks of unemployment checks, without any requirement to prove that gainful employment was diligently sought, but couldn't be found - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If you pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big-screen TV, while your neighbor buys iPhones, time shares, a wall-sized do-it-all plasma screen TV and new cars, and the government forgives his debt when he defaults on his mortgage - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

So, what’s the narrative here: We need less regulation on the billionaires and millionaires who crashed our economy and destroyed the employment and housing markets, but more regulation on the people who suffered the consequences. We need less regulation on the folks who looted and liquidated American business and shipped American jobs overseas, but more regulation and restrictions on those people who are unemployed as a result. Seriously?

When somebody like John Thain crashes our economy, destroys, literally destroys, a venerable old company like Merrill Lynch and puts tens of thousands of people out on the street, your plan is to give him a tax break on his multimillion dollar golden parachute and stick it to the folks who he left unemployed, is that about right?

The fuck is wrong with you?

No, seriously, how does somebody get this twisted?

The poor haven’t cost us a tenth of what Wall Street has. It wasn’t the poor who outsourced their jobs to Bangladesh and Mexico, it wasn’t the poor who caused the housing bubble, and the Dot Com bubble, and the Tech Bubble, and all the recessions. And your neighbor, the one whose mortgage was forgiven? You really might want to put in a little more research on that subject if you think he made out on the deal. Was he an idiot? Sure, but it was lack of regulation on business that let him indulge his gullibility, and the fact that guys like you think capitalism ought to work like the Wild West.

If you can’t understand why, in a civilized nation, we have a moral imperative to take care of the less fortunate, why civilized nations establish social safety nets for the poor and unfortunate, if your sympathy lies with the rich and powerful and you have nothing but contempt for the poor whom you’re willing to dismiss with blind eyes, well, sir, you are the very idiot you’ve been complaining about and I wonder exactly how you square that with the admonishment of your religion to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and heal the sick. Last I checked, Jesus said exactly dick about giving the rich and powerful even more free passes, but then you probably think he was an idiot too.

If being stripped of your Constitutional right to defend yourself makes you more "safe" according to the government - you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

How, exactly, have you “been stripped of your right to defend yourself?” Be specific. And since you brought it up, how does allowing crazy people to buy guns make you and me safer? When this revolution comes, the revolution that you’re all praying for, when you take up arms and start shooting it out with the government and killing your neighbors, the ones you find undesirable and un-American, how exactly will that make you safer? Again, be specific.

What's happened to our aountry!

Nothing.

Not a God damned thing is what happened to our country.

It has its ups and downs, same as always.

It has its good days and bad, same as always.

Sometimes there’s a conservative in the White House, sometimes there’s a liberal. And America has managed to survive them all equally well – as somebody of your advanced age should know by now.

The only thing that’s changed is now you’re one of those miserable old bastards who sit around all day complaining endlessly about how the country isn’t like it was back when you were king of the world. The only thing wrong with this country is people like you, those who used to be problem solvers and leaders, but are now little more than broken down old sons of bitches who piss away your time in an endless litany of woe and defeat and misery.

I doubt that that I’ll change your minds in any way, I know just how stubborn the two of you are. And it’s obvious that you’ve sunken far into this morass of fear and despair and misery.

It saddens me that the two men I used to admire have come to this end.

Take me off your mailing list, delete my name from your contacts list. Forget that you know me.

I prefer to remember you two the way you were back in the day, when we were young and the world was ours.

I want nothing to do with the bitter old miserable bastards you’ve both become.