About 6 years ago I had an analogy. The analogy was birthed because during covid discussion of vacines would go off the rails as idiots got emotional from their news talking head bullet points. I would try to make a point, and rather than listen, and engage in critical thinking, I was getting CNN and Fox News talking points argueing things that were never even said by me, but they were being argued as part of a broader discussion on tv.

So I needed a fake topic that no one had emotions over. Something there were no talking head points on. No parachute for these mouth breathers to fall back on.

At the time, the 2020 election was about a month away. Trump was still president. I feared a 2nd term would be far worse than his first. Sanders a few montbs prior, before the summer, was looking to be the only option democrats had. Which would have been great. Then Biden came out of 5th place in 2 weeks, and became the top pick. So I made an analogy of the differences between the parties.

I said:

I want you to imagine that Russia has a government building with a very healthy lawn. A government lawn. And for some reason it’s seen as a mark of national pride. A lawn that Russia uses to belittle the USA. They claim to be the superior country, because their lawn is greener. So now the USA has to make the lawn of the white house greener than the Russian lawn.

Here’s how the democrats would handle it. They would have 50 different viewpoints, and argue for 50 different solutions. In the end, nothing can get done because they’re all argueing which method will result in the greenest lawn. In the end, they do nothing. Brown spots remain on the white house lawn.

Meanwhile republicans don’t argue. They just find the guy with the loudest voice, and all get behind his plan 100%. Even if it’s terrible. The end result is that trump finds an intern, gives him $100 to go to home depot and buy as much green paint as he can. Then they’ll paint the lawn green. Only to discover that the 4 buckets of paint isn’t nearly enough to paint the whole lawn the same color. So their response is to just dump the paint all in one spot. Let it flow where it runs, and then call that a huge sucsess. Even though all you did was slightly color a 30 foot radius of a huge farm a slightly greener green. Then take publicity photos in just that one spot, and brag about how you did it. All the while the democrats, who did nothing, are blaming the republicans for not actually doing the job. Both sides calling the other a hypocrite for doing nothing but blaming the other sides failures.

Ya know…now, 6 years later, we got a UFC event on the white house lawn, and they repainted the pool so now it’s becoming a swamp. Because blue paint promotes warmer water in pools, and creates conditions that allow algae to grow.

Soooooooooo, remove the russian element from my fake analagy. Change the paint color to blue. Put in the pool instead of the lawn, and now somehow I lose the ability to use that analogy because now people are emotional over the white house lawn and UFC. Now people are emotional over republicans painting things at the white house with disasterous results.

I specifically thought out my analogy to be so stupid that people won’t get tripped up in the minor details, and instead concentrate on the core contrast in how the parties (don’t) work.

Now I’m fucked. If I start to use that analogy, they’ll just say “Oh, they lost the right for the white house lawn to be a matter of national pride when they put on that UFC event.”

Or

“They won’t use green paint. They probably have extra blue paint left over from the reflection pool.”

sigh

Ya know…you can’t just take the stupid things I say, and make them reality.