Two Peoples Divided By A Single Language

JMM has a little note up about Michelle Obama's continuing efforts to make life a little easier and less horrific for military families.  Its no big deal--First Ladies have always taken up a popular cause, worked hard on it, and done something for the selected group as well as for their husband's public standing and the office of First Lady's public standing.  But I have been in arguments with true believers on the Right who insist that the President and Mrs. Obama are personally rude to the military they encounter while flying around the world, or walking into events.  Despite the many pictures of the President and First Lady comfortably interacting with the military, donating services and time to military families, bringing military family members to the Conventions and Speeches, etc..etc...etc... these people are convinced that in private the President and First Lady literally walk by the outstretched hands of the military, snubbing them when they are not in public. "They don't even say Thank You for your Service!"

This is all part of the general right wing assertion that the President is both a Machiavellian strong man and also an ineffectual boob and wimp.  It also goes well with the argument that Michelle is a trashy, lazy, fat, Marie Antoinette, completely out of touch with the real duties of a real First Lady and only in it for the glamor and snacks.  Of course if they are evil through and through everything they do that is apparently good must be either truly evil or at least understood as fake and for show.  So every public good deed, in the right wing imaginary, must be balanced by an identical reversal of itself in private.

For these people, as I believe Ezra Klein just noted in the Vox piece I'm not bothering to read, the evidence of their eyes reinforces the beliefs they already hold and what they see can never contradict what they know.  In fact: the more pictures they see of Michelle and Jill Biden doing things for the Military the more convinced they will be that its all a lie. They can't even grant Michelle enough machiavellian evil nature to assume she can carry on the fraud in private.

I've got no clever cure for this. Its just an observation.  To the extent that we share any values with the right wing at this point--even love for fluffy kittens, or cute babies, or veterans--we still can't share any real work with them administratively or on policy. Because their goals and their sense of our motives and intentions are so askew.

Cross Posted at No More Mr. Nice Blog