Signs You Are Not Dealing With a Serious Person

1. They tell you in all earnestness that Hitler was a socialist;

2. They cite the Heartland Institute [sic] as a legitimate source of information;

3. They insist that the availability of military assault weapons to lunatics has no relation to the frequency of massacres in the United States;

4. They say global warming is bad, but it would be even worse to stop it; after all, we must think of the poor Africans, who shall never get a chance to chow down on Big Macs in their Hummers if those cruel Scientists have anything to say about it;

5. When you point out that the poor Africans will suffer massive droughts and desertification because of anthropogenic global warming, they simply deny that such warming will occur, as though the stipulations of Microeconomics 101 (Milton Friedman edition) about how the world is supposed to work over-rule the Laws of Physics;

6. They talk bravely about the wickedness of The State, while drawing a salary and benefits therefrom;

7. They believe that openly carrying pistols around ice-cream shops and university campuses is a sign of deep civilization;

8. They insist that when private actors defraud the Commonwealth, it is the Commonwealth's fault for trying to prevent the fraud in the first place, on the visionary theory that if only we'd let these "job creators" alone, they would stop trying to screw us.

9. They blame schoolteachers, cops, and firemen for the current economic crisis;

10. They wonder whether 9/11 was "an inside job".

  This was another installment in "Life in a Post-Empirical Age!", in which the methods of deconstructionist postmodernism get taken and applied by the political Right (who could have seen that coming?).