I like Derf. He's mean to everybody. I don't know why there can't be more commentators who spread the joy around like that.
I got into it on-line with a dressing-up-like-a-sea-turtle type the other day, not over sea turtles but over something else where I commented on the story as reported and he became furious with me for not discussing what the reporter surely meant instead of what he actually wrote. Which interpretation was directly, specifically contradicted by what was written. A bit of Googling showed that what was written was correct, but that didn't cut any mustard because it wasn't in keeping with the accepted storyline about evil corporate masters plotting in boardrooms.
Meanwhile, on another conversation at the other end of the political spectrum, someone was insisting that there are 50,000 Russian troops already stationed in the US, waiting for the word from the New World Order to take over the country. And he was perfectly serious.
It reminds me of something I ran into during that period back in the early 70s when the Watergate/Pentagon Papers abuses were getting out and the media (pretty much all mainstream in those days) was reporting on the domestic spying and harrassment of COINTELPRO and other FBI and CIA hijinks.
A friend of mine was in med school at the time and going through his psych rotation, and he said it was all very problematic to have this stuff in the news, because it made it much harder to sit down and try to have a rational discussion with a paranoid patient who thought everyone was spying on him. The gentle argument, "But that doesn't happen ..." was rendered inoperable by all the news stories indicating that it did indeed happen, at least to somebody.
Well, those turned out to be the good old days. I don't know how shrinks deal with these things now, because, no matter how far into the looney your paranoid, partisan delusions reach, there is some web site or talk show prepared to provide reinforcement.
So, yeah, I'd like to see all the Corporate Conspiracy Buffs take on the Black Helicopter Buffs, if I thought it would turn out like the Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat, but I'm afraid I agree with Derf that it would simply turn into a slap fight.
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