I wish I could say this didn’t happen every day, but it does. I was in a “centrist” group on social media, mostly because I am sick and tired of both the left and the right, and we were talking about how both extremes on the political spectrum were following the same playbook, just for different audiences.

Someone popped up and said “you don’t know what you’re talking about!” Really? Then why are my posts getting absurdly up-voted and yours are getting endlessly down-voted? I think you’ve got that backwards.

Now as I said, this is a very common thing. I’ve watched it for years on end. The person in question was a very clear left-wing shill who spends all of his time attacking anyone who isn’t completely onboard with far-left-wing politics. That’s not much of a surprise. I’m not sure why he thought he’d be accepted into a group that mostly opposes the extremes, but some people are just dumb.

Usually, those are the people with terrible approval ratings.

Granted, that doesn’t matter. Imaginary buttons on a screen don’t mean a thing. The only thing that matters is what’s said and how defensible it is.

In the discussion at hand, I’d posted plenty of evidence, surveys, studies and data to back myself up. He just came along and tried to crap on the parade, with laughably detrimental results. It’s clear that he doesn’t want his side of the political aisle to get laughed at so he attacks anyone with a bad word to say about the Democrats, Biden or anything else remotely on the left-wing spectrum. In fact, I’ve seen these people, recently, trying to redefine the left/right divide so that anything farther right than the hard-core religious right, suddenly, that’s all left-wing territory. Everyone is on their side, if they have to drag them there kicking and screaming.

That’s not how that works.

In the real world, people get to define themselves and where they fall on the spectrum. There are lots of people who don’t like the political left, just as much as they don’t like the political right. That’s where I’m at right now. I can’t stand either extreme and so long as both parties are pandering to the extremes, I don’t want anything to do with either of them.

Sadly, it’s not like you have a choice, at least if you care about your vote.  I actually want to vote for someone who I think is going to make a positive contribution to the country. We don’t get people like that. We only get politicians and political parties who are after power and influence. Screw them. It’s why I don’t vote for third party candidates that can’t win the popular vote because losers can’t make a difference. The last third party candidate I voted for was Ross Perot in 1992 and really, I only did so because I didn’t want either of the other losers in office. Sadly, it didn’t work.

Just as an aside, the idiot just posted “well I don’t want to be liked by anyone who would agree with you!” and went stomping off like a 5-year old. I trust no one is surprised by that. I know I’m certainly not.