And oikophobia. And not a little credulity.
I have just been treated to some idiocy, and I need to vent. A customer came in today, and Conspiracy Coworker asked him something about working on Presidents’ Day. Our customer then starts spewing some garbled nonsense I can only assume he got from some learned worthy with a YouTube channel. The lowlights are these:
Our constitution contains so many checks and balances, including presidential term limits, because everyone thought George Washington was a Big Meanie.
Abraham Lincoln, a strong supporter of slavery, drove the South to secede over his plan to impose a tax on slaves. He was also a Big Meanie.
I hope I don’t need to point out that, aside from anyone’s opinion on these two presidents, or the accompanying historical facts, the two theses above are just nonsense based on nothing. Conspiracy Coworker immediately agrees with these feces theses. He fears nothing more than a) appearing insufficiently cynical and skeptical, and b) someone thinking he cares about anything.
Upon the departure of Credulous Customer, I remarked on how inane his (the customer’s) comments had been. Conspiracy-bro’s reaction, not surprisingly in hindsight, was to claim that it’s all a matter of which history books one reads, and that he is conversant with the slavery-tax and everyone-hated-George schools of American history. This caused me, unfortunately, spasms of uncontrollable laughter. Unfortunate because this further triggered Conspiracy-bro, the guy I have to work with all day. He decided to interpret my laughter as anger, somehow. As if I was simply unable to cope with anything less than worshipful admiration of Our Great Presidents, so I was laughing out my anger. Or something. As if I’m unwilling to admit there are different points of view.
Now I’m the bad guy for not immediately affirming this cracked version of history. Some people just don’t seem to get that you can have a view of history in between America the Flawlessly Beautiful and Everything Is a Lie. I guess they haven’t tried actually reading any history books, and just settle for Vox Explainers about how the 3/5 compromise meant that black people were only allowed to vote once they had 2/5 of their bodies cut off. Or something.
I give up.