Minding Memes

This past week, while checking out Facebook, where people keep their friends updated on their activities as well as share lame jokes and simplistic ideas, I ran across this meme:

“When both the Republican Establishment and the Democratic Establishment attack the same candidate, then you know you’ve found your guy.”

The only reason I saw it, having no desire to visit that page, was because a friend shared it, and another friend liked it.

My immediate response was, “Seriously? A man who claims to be Christian, yet has commented he’d ‘do’ his own daughter and has been married three times? A man who wants to go back to ‘the good old days’ when you could physically beat people who don’t agree with you? A man who makes fun of the disabled? A man who thinks he can do whatever he wants to simply because he inherited wealth? A man who wants to torture and do worse to those he thinks might be terrorists? A man who can’t control his own temper?”

There were six likes on the meme itself, and two on my comment. No one else has commented at all on the post.

This has continued to bother me. It seems as though too many people aren’t thinking things through. I’d like to apply this ‘reasoning’ to other situations to show how shallow it is:

Suppose you were new in town and asked for suggestions as to which grocery store to frequent. If everyone you talked to said don’t go to RottenMart, would you then decide to do all your food shopping there?

If you asked for recommendations for a dentist, and everyone said they didn’t like Dr Toothache, would he be the one you’d choose?

If you were looking for a veterinarian and Dr Killpet was soundly criticized, would you decide he was the one to care for your precious Fluffy?

It seems to me that most major religions denounce the devil. Does that mean he must be a fine fellow and we should revise our opinions?

You get the point. When everyone is against something or someone, perhaps there are valid reasons for that. Perhaps some more investigating should be done, or perhaps that something or someone is genuinely bad and should be avoided.

Next on my short list of current irks is one shared by my brother. There’s been too much ballyhooing about how President Obama is a lame duck and the country can ignore everything he says and does now, and wait for the next president to move us along.

The definition of lame duck is “an elected official whose successor has already been elected.” Obviously, that successor has not yet been elected. We don’t even know who’s going to be in the running. The president will only be a lame duck for two and a half months, between the election in early November, and the swearing in which occurs in mid-January.

And since when does Congress get to decide who gets to nominate a Supreme Court justice? The constitution is quite clear that the president has that responsibility. He was elected to serve an additional four years, not three. The people decided who was to make that nomination when they elected him to serve again.

Should Congress get to circumvent the Constitution just because they don’t like the sitting president? What happens if their party is unsuccessful in electing the next president? Do they refuse to consider all nominees for another four years?

Or perhaps their candidate will gain the top seat, but at the same time the other party regains control of Congress. Can they then refuse to consider any nominees since that precedent has been set by themselves? Where does it all end?

For our country to work the opposing parties must learn to negotiate and compromise. They can’t be intractable. They must be moderate. Sometimes, in politics as if life, one must give a little to get a little.