House of Eratosthenes

Back in July I had made a denigrating reference to the “Dime People”. The “Dime People” make up a pretty fun crowd. They get way too much attention, although for some reason I neglected to add them to my list of people & things that get way too much attention. They are fun because they tend to be brittle. “Brittle” has a razor-thin, precise meaning here; it means when these people come into proximity with a spoken, subjective opinion that is different from their own, they can’t tolerate it. It’s an unfinished task, which they lack the restraint needed to logically evaluate, rationally question, or simply let stand without comment. And their own opinion, which must always be given the final word, is that there is “not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties.” That is, Republicans and Democrats.

Conventional wisdom dictates that anyone with serious misgivings toward both major political parties, is a “centrist.” My personal experience contradicts this sharply. Over time, I’ve noticed certain things about Dime People:

For every one that is centrist, or leans right, three or four more of them lean hard-left. They have an agenda, and this agenda has a lot more to do with the destruction of one of these parties than with the any damage to be dealt to the other. Very rarely are Republicans attacked for bearing too close of a resemblance to those far-left, extremist, nasty Democrats; the disenchantment being communicated, far more often, is toward the Democrats for “caving in” to those far-right, extremist, nasty Republicans.
They think “Fahrenheit 9/11” was a documentary. The most reckless, frenzied, baseless liberal propaganda, is very rarely met by them with so much as a whiff of sensible skepticism.
Without exception, a “Dime Person” fancies himself to be a truly independent thinker — yet his response to certain arguments, is absolutely predictable. I mean absolutely. Nobody who’s been paying attention, will have even the slightest doubt what the counterargument is going to be, when you tell a Dime Person “well, you know, Clinton was a Democrat, and he lied.”
I’ve noticed they have a particular spike in their level of emotional excitement when they are accused of being Democrats. The denial of “no, I am not a Democrat” is like Game-Set-Match, for them. The argument has been won — any cognition that was endorsed by them, has been irreversibly proven, and any that met with their disapproval, has been irreversibly refuted. Although, how, exactly, is a mystery known only to them.

Well, now that we are in Day Four of Cheney-Shotgun-Gate, I see some enterprising individual has — at breakneck speed — produced a handy bumper sticker capturing his thoughts, and no doubt the thoughts of millions of others. “I’d rather hunt with Dick Cheney than ride with Ted Kennedy” (link goes to site where you can purchase for a low, low price).

It’s a reasonable personal preference, I must say. After all, one of the things that makes Sen. Kennedy’s 1969 mishap such a scandalous event, was not so much the accident itself but the failure to go get help — something the Vice President did immediately.

The Dime People have been getting louder and louder as the Republican party stays in power longer and longer. Conservative Libertarians would love to peel off a layer or two of Republican support, and use those numbers to raise their own party into some position of power…and the liberal Libertarians, well, they just hate everything the Republicans stand for. Those two unlikely bedfellows have been allowed to fuse themselves together, spared from the harsh and scrutinizing questions that could be used to divide them again. So they just get to parrot over and over again…not a dime’s worth of difference…not a dime’s worth of difference…not a dime’s worth of difference…

Here’s a bumper sticker caption. Well, it almost fits, anyway.

If there really wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties, Mary Jo would be alive today.

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Dime PeopleWednesday, February 15th, 2006

Dime People
Wednesday, February 15th, 2006