Do your own damn research....dammit!

I have to admit, I have been engaging in a lot of political battles on Facebook.  I know it's fruitless.  I know that people don't really change their views on matters based on Facebook arguments.  But I can't really help it.  I just can't let the stupidity just hang out there unanswered.  So, when someone posts a meme that I know is either untrue or misleading I have to point it out. 

I have been reading about and discussing political issues since I was 14 or 15.  I have always been into reading the newspapers.  My habit would be to scan the headlines and read the first paragraph or two of the story.  (Learned this trick from a junior high school history teacher who explained the inverted triangle style of news story writing.)  Then if a story caught my attention I would go back and finish it before moving on to the Op-Ed page.  I'd read them all, so I would see what Art Buchwald would have to say, then George Will, then David Broder and the local Eugene Register Guard editorial staff opinions.  Then I'd read all the Editorial comics.  OK, who am I kidding?  I always started with the comics.  All of them, and The Register Guard had a very large comic section.  Then, after I got out of college I worked in Japan as a high tech journalist and the newspaper had a connection to the Bulletin Board Service (BBS) of the US Embassy.  This was pre-WWW so we logged in via our 28.8 modems and using command lines we could access news reports and get press releases from the US Trade Representative.  The US and Japan were in some pretty contentious trade talks at the time so we needed to keep up to date.  It was on that BBS in the political section where I needed to grow some pretty thick skin.  That is where I learned that talking to faceless pseudonyms via a keyboard can lead some folks to be pretty nasty and say things they probably never would say to someone face to face.  I also learned how to argue with people and "win" by being armed to facts and reason.  It also didn't hurt that I had a degree in political science and had been keeping pretty well up to date with the news since I was 14. 

So now one of my biggest frustrations in arguing with people on Facebook is the number of people who just don't know how to do their own research.  For example: This last year there has been a lot of visibility into the latent and in some cases, overt racism of the Trump Campaign, and invariably when you get into arguments with the Fox News informed conservatives they are going to point out two things.  First, they will point out that it was the Republicans who freed the slaves from the Democrats following the Civil War and second, one of our "recent" party leaders was the Grand Wizard of the KKK.  They are, of course talking about the late Senator Robert Byrd.  So, clearly, it's the Democrats who are racist and not the pure as the driven snow Republicans.  So, I then point out that Byrd said he was sorry for his past and made amends with the civil rights leaders and that they accepted his apology.  And I point out that the Southern Democrats who opposed the Civil Rights Legislation all changed their party affiliation to Republicans and gave rise to the Southern Strategy for how the GOP captured the South.  Then they want me to prove it.  I need to prove to them something that should take them 5 minutes of Googling to get results and then some time to start educating themselves.  Once again, I need to emphasis that I have a degree in this shit.  I am qualified to talk about it, but there are many, many online resources that can catch them up and dispel the Fox News induced hypnosis.  I can handle the debating techniques and the name calling, but the willful ignorance is getting on my last nerve.