Evolution Of Another Source Of False Right-Wing Outrage

This is how it works: in the face of yet another mass murder, some people, myself included, are getting a little tired of the "thoughts and prayers" predictably issued by politicians who otherwise have done and will do nothing to address the scourge of gun violence in the US. Never missing an opportunity to feel aggrieved, our highly-sensitive and prayerful right wing, as megaphoned via Fox "news" et al, have taken great offense, seeing this as an attack on prayer. Even giving it a name: "prayer shaming." Gotta love those guys.

... The charge of “prayer shaming” is that people mocking the by-now rote tweets about prayers are saying “don’t pray.” Or that they don't understand what prayer does. Or that they’re just plain evil, as Fox News’s Elizabeth Hasselbeck suggested when she said “I say this, if you want to line up with terrorists and try to take God away, you’re not on the right side. That’s all I’d have to say to those politicians who want to tell you to stop praying. Just don’t.”...

Really? That's the conclusion you reach when people point out it'll take more than thoughts and prayers? No one has said to stop praying; what we're saying is it's not enough. Seems pretty damn obvious to me.

But this is the modus operandi of today's "conservatives" for all things reasonable said by "liberals": distort, dissemble, take offense, mock, deny and, in the end, use the ginned-up outrage as a weapon on the gullible to maintain their spoon-fed ignorance. Ignorance. Too harsh? I mean, the root is "ignore," right? Isn't that the preferred approach, whether it's gun violence, climate change, the fact that generic hatred of all Muslims is exactly what ISIS wants, that abortion is still legal, that any "balanced" budget that cuts taxes on the wealthy and increases military spending is either mathematically impossible or heartlessly draconian. All of it. Everything. It's shameful.

And it's deliberate. We can only pray that it'll end.

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