First (because it’s possible the post is a TL;DR) have you seen my giveaway? One signed copy of Queen’s Man going to some lucky personage!
Now to my grumble of the day.
I’m always complaining I don’t have enough time. I have so much to do and so little time to do it in…and then I stop by Facebook for a few minutes (this is not going where you may think it’s going) and I see someone I care about is being stupid in public. Or someone is being stupid at someone I care about. Or just generally someone needs smacked with a clue-fish.
But it’s the internet. It’s public. Must at least make an attempt at diplomacy, no? Don’t post anything you wouldn’t say to their face and all that? I do try to live by the three rules.
I bend them a bit, though. Maybe I’m not the one who NEEDS to say something, but how do I know? Someone needs to say it, in my opinion. And if I’m going to attempt debate, I need to take the time to be polite, or what’s the point? So I’ve learned to work on indicators. When is there actually a point in saying anything?
Like with the person who was debating funding for public schools in the age of the sequester.
Person: It’s scare tactics. Schools don’t get their funding from the federal government.
KD: *side-eyes, ponders, goes to Google and gets facts to answer person*†
Person: So they’re closing schools. You don’t need that many. The only teachers getting fired are the lazy ones. Good teachers don’t have anything to worry about.
KD: *goes and gets facts on correlation between quality of education and class size, and also how stupid inaccurate an indicator standardized test scores are of children’s learning*
Person: This sequester is Obama’s baby, so blame him.
KD: *remembers history of sequester, from budget fight to “super”committee to all the months and petitions to Congress to get their heads out of their asses and deal with this oncoming issue* *takes a deep breath and walks away*‡
I’m trying to learn when it’s a waste of my time to even comment. To weigh “do I have a chance of getting facts through this person’s perceptions? How many people who might be influenced either way will see this? Do I have sixty gazillion other things I should be doing? Will this bug me all day if I walk away now?”
It pisses me off that people STILL don’t get that austerity measures will only deepen the recession, when we have Europe’s repeated examples in front of us. It makes me angry that people STILL don’t get things like “close the tax break for corporate jets and we can protect education and a whole lot more.” It pisses me off that in the same job I’ve held for ten years with great performance evaluations, my GROSS has gone down the last three years. My net has gone down faster, and my family has been pushed onto intermittent foodstamps. It annoys me that the state is so freaking fearful I might get $20 more than I should that they spend probably hundreds of dollars every month or so to make sure that there isn’t any magically-appearing money coming into my household from God knows where.
But the fact is that some people have wrapped their delusions so tight that not even a glimmer of reality can get in. Arguing with them has absolutely no point, not even illuminating others. These people reveal themselves–I don’t need to do it.
So no. Most of the time, it does not need to be said by me, now or ever.
Deep breath and walk away, KD. Go write a book.
†Between 2011 and 2012, AZ lost over $200m in federal funding for k-8 education, a reduction of about 25%. THEN voters decided kids aren’t worth that extra penny they’d been paying in sales tax.
‡Yes, I’m aware the idea originally came from the White House. It was meant to be a doomsday device–something both parties would work to avoid. It was SUGGESTED by the White House, but adopted by Congress, and has been allowed to continue to threaten and then to actually happen by Congress.
I’ve known people like that.