I’m about to relate a Facebook story to you. I know. Blogging about something that happened to you on Facebook. It does not get any more nerdlinger than that. But it’s relevant.
I do post some political things to my Facebook, but I spend as little time as I can in political combat there. It’s pretty useless. I know who in my Facebook friends are tea-baggers. I know I’m not going to change their minds, and I damned sure know they aren’t changing mine. It is futile.
Sometimes, though, one of them puts something out there, you just can’t resist. Allow me to paraphrase.
She wrote something to the effect of, how stupid does Obama think we are. He’s lowered gas prices just in time for the election. Did he think we wouldn’t notice?
I ignored this statement at first. Until a friend of hers asked, how does a President lower gas prices? I was girded, having a peer now. I chimed in as well. Yes, pray tell. How?
Well, I don’t know, she replied. He just does. Please don’t tell me you don’t think the President controls gas prices.
As a matter of fact, I don’t.
Hell, I’ve defended George W. Bush on this one. There are too many factors that determine gas prices that are out of the President’s control. What’s going on in the Straits of Hormuz this week? Is it summertime, or fall? What does the futures market look like? Did Syria REALLY just bomb the crap out of Turkey? And, bloody hell, have you ever heard of supply and/or demand?
Well, she replied, you’ll just have to feel what you feel about it, and I will feel what I feel about it.
Gas prices go up every summer. Every summer, gas prices go up. Every fall, they come down. This is not how someone “feels” about this argument. It is an observable fact. Yet, people like this, people who believe that among his sworn duties, the President of the United States wakes up every morning and decides what you are going to pay for a gallon of gasoline, people like this person are going to the poll in droves in two weeks.
We’d better get out to meet them there.
Ya can’t fix stupid.