I just heard a wingnut give the stupidest explanation ever for Western European type socialism

[Douglas Carpenter]

I was sitting in a local bar that does attract a pretty broad range of clientele - including some very colorful characters and some intractable dumbasses. The reason why Europeans have to put up with such terrible things as socialized medicine, and a far more extensive economic safety net and laws mandating worker input into management and long six week vacations is simple - it's because they have been disarmed and they don't have guns to fight back against the oppression and this terrible assault on their liberty. I'm not kidding you that was the explanation. If only European had guns like Americans their governments would not being doing all these terrible things to them.

I have found that usually when one right-winger says something crazy and ignorant on any subject - a whole bunch of them are saying it around about the same time and the source usually goes back to someone on Fox News or some other crazy right-wing source - and before you know it the most preposterous claims in the universe have become common knowledge and they think the people who are not in the know are the ignorant ones. I wonder who started the cycle of this one going around?

[warrior1]

1. They have to believe those things because

If they didn't world wouldn't make sense

[Jackpine Radical]

2. I dunno about that one, but My Favorite Wingnut was on about how

the socialists were ruining Europe and causing the economic problems in the Mediterranean countries, etc. & I said that it was basically the predatory international bankers who were doing it. He actually agreed, and then explained that the predatory bankers were all socialists. I thought this was one of the craziest notions I had ever heard--still do, in fact, but I ventured out into the online Tea Party universe & found that the Socialist Bankers meme is all over the place out there. The idea is no less nuts, but he was just passing on the common lunacy that pervades his environment.

[Douglas Carpenter]

3. yeah, they seem to pick up certain stories from somewhere and then they all seem to spread it across

all their networks including social media - The recent story about Obama being constantly on lavish vacations was one example:

Obama is on track to take about a fifth of the vacation days George W. Bush did over his two terms. Obama took 131 vacation days in his first term – which would amount to 262 if he kept that pace in his second term. Bush took a staggering ......1,060 vacation days over eight years, by far the most vacation in history (he also took the longest single presidential vacation in the modern era, a full five weeks.) Can someone explain why Obama is supposedly the vacation-hog? Joan Walsh for salon.com
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/how_not_to_seem_like_a_racist/

but they are cooking up new craziness every day

[baldguy]

4. Free healthcare & six weeks' vacation is oppression?

I'm guessing he thinks the slaves were getting 18 weeks' off each year?