This is a friendly epistle to those who are die-hard GOPers and read this site, for whatever reason.
There are plenty of GOP folks out there who just fundamentally don't understand why those of us on the left can't take their policy positions seriously. They honestly don't get why their arguments are not considered just as reasonable as our arguments.
Well, folks, come past the fleur-de-Kos for a few reasons why.
Dear GOP,
The reason nobody on the left takes you seriously (or can take you seriously) is that your beliefs are nonsense. I don't just mean I don't like them. I mean they are nonsense. Fairy tales. Gibberish. They make no sense.
Take, for example, the oft-repeated claim that Obama is a Muslim. If all you knew about Muslims was that they wear turbans and they tend to come from the Middle East and Northern Africa, I could see your point. But you also know, if you've paid any attention, that Obama is a Christian because he attends a Christian church - one whose pastor many of you took great pains to vilify and demonize, four years ago. So your belief that he's a Muslim? Makes no sense when you look at the other evidence that is right there, in front of your faces, as plain as the noses on them. But you seem to have an erase button that gets rid of any evidence that contradicts your current paranoid rant, even if you created that evidence yourself.
Unfortunately for you, most of us on the left seem to have better memories, or at least memories that remember more than ten minutes ago, and just in case our memories are off, there are these convenient internet things called Google and YouTube, which will cheerfully re-play and re-display any video or news article created showing what was happening at any point in recent history you care to name. While you may choose to ignore history, it's not ignoring you. In a hundred years our great-grandchildren will watch videos of you with your tea bags hanging off your ball caps while you hold up misspelled protest signs and wonder why we let your collective insanity go on as long as it did. And they'll probably laugh at you, too. (They won't be able to help it - you look pretty ridiculous, you know.)
Here's another example - the recent commercial produced by the Children of Mary Order, which claims that contraception causes men to become gay. While this may have worked back in the Dark Ages since nobody knew how contraception worked in those days, anyone with half a brain today knows that a) contraception works to prevent pregnancy in women, and b) homosexuality is an inborn trait just like eye color or height. This is just one of many truly bizarre claims that can be easily debunked with a small dose of science.
And that, right there, leads to the main reason we can't take you seriously (apart from worrying about you being a deranged mob hell-bent on destroying the planet, our nation, and each other, eventually, when you're the only ones left here). Here's that reason:
You don't accept science.
Let me repeat that.
You don't accept science.
Science, which gave us (and you) the television set, so you could watch Fox News all day. Science, which gave us (and you) the radio, so you could listen to Rush and Hannity 24/7. Science, which produced the computer, the dishwasher, the refrigerator, the car, plastics, medicines, and all the other modern conveniences you use and abuse.
You don't accept science if it conflicts with your beliefs. You'll use its products, but you ignore its evidence. You make bizarre claims that sound like they came from a paranoid schizophrenic, and which are easily debunked with easily-located evidence, but you reject the very basic, very obvious, and very solid evidence that climate change is really happening.
And you wonder why we can't take your claims seriously?
Please, get some help. Get a therapist. Get some Thorazine. Talk to someone who isn't in your paranoid little circle. Because you know what you, and your representatives, are sounding like lately?
These folks.
(And if you're proud you sound like them, just remember, your great-grandchildren are going to laugh at you. They're going to think you're crazy. And worse than that, they're going to think you're stupid - and they'll be right.)