Lies…

Partisan Hackery…

Terrible Writing…

This Douglas Ernst rant has it all!

Today, we’re going to explore the anatomy of an angry Douglas Ernst rant.  Lets start off with some stats:

You can already tell that this rant is a Douglas Ernst specialty and conforms to his rule that his rants not take more than 2 minutes to read.  As I’ve said before, partisan hackery is not about in-depth looks at difficult issues and Douglas Ernst has picked partisan hackery as his writing style a long time ago.  This particular rant is special, not because it highlights partisan hackery, but because of how terribly written and biased it is, even by Douglas Ernst standards.

Now lets look at the title: “Telling: JPMorgan Probed While the U.S. Postal Service Loses Billions”.  With that title, you may assume that he is going to be comparing two completely different companies in two completely different industries by some standard they both share and is reasonable to use as a comparison tool.  I mean, why would Douglas Ernst use that title if he wasn’t going to mention why JPMorgan Chase being probed while the US Postal Service lost  billions is “Telling”?  After reading the rant, you still have no idea why that is “Telling”.  What point is Douglas Ernst trying to make with that title and a rant that doesn’t bother to explain it?  Seriously, read Douglas Ernst’s rant twice then tell me what point you think Douglas Ernst is trying to make.

Douglas Ernst then cites a Reuter’s article that mentions the financial difficulties the United States Postal Service (USPS) is having.  Regardless of how you feel about the USPS as an entity, if you are going to quote an article that covers the financial burden it represents to the US taxpayer then you should definitely include the final sentence of the article you’ve linked to that says: “almost all of the red ink … stems directly from a burden that Congress imposed and Congress could fix overnight“.  Wait, what?  Did I read that right? It seems to be saying that the $5 billion dollar loss that Douglas Ernst felt the need to bitch about wasn’t an actual loss, but a loss booked because of a change in accounting practices.  Surely Douglas Ernst isn’t stupid enough to include a link to an article that can be cherry-picked for information in his favor, but also points out that he is making shit up at the same time.  Let’s investigate!

It turns out that in 2006 the Republican led congress passed legislation that increased the amount of health care expenses the USPS had to pre-pay dramatically.  In fact, if you look into the issue with any effort at all you could find the following article with one (1) Google search:

it’s only those prefund (healthcare) mandates that Jimmy talked about that cause the post office to be so far in the hole, because otherwise, they’ve turned a profit of $837 million in the last four years, $226 million in the last quarter. NPR.org

Either Douglas Ernst is much, much, more lazy than the 500 rants he’s posted to his blog would indicate, or, he does not know how to finish reading an article after he’s seen the quote he wants to use.  It has to be one of those two options because you can find a ton of articles bitching about the 5 billion dollar loss that do not mention why the USPS is losing money.  If he wasn’t too lazy to look for a new article he could have cited one of those and not give anyone ammunition to use against him in the same citation.  Or, he didn’t really care about reading the article and didn’t actually finish it.  He probably already knew what he was looking for, and simply copied and pasted the info he wanted without finishing the article.  Responsible punditry?  Not even close; partisan hackery all day, every day.

Next, Douglas Ernst targets the congressional probe of JPMorgan Chase who had one bad trade that lost $2 billion dollars.  Even though he never comes out and says it, I think Douglas Ernst was probably trying to say that the lack of a congressional probe into the $5 billion dollar USPS loss is unacceptable if the government was going to probe JPMorgan Chase’s  $2 billion dollar loss.  I know what you’re thinking: “how could you possibly figure that out from merely reading what Douglas Ernst wrote?”   You’re right,  I can’t say with 100% certainty that Douglas Ernst was trying to comment on a perceived double standard of allowing unreasonable losses in government operations without oversight, while punishing any mistakes in the private sector with congressional probes.  I honestly can’t think of any other reason he would write this rant.  Although, Douglas Ernst does provide a lesson to my future students on the reasons they should try to answer whatever questions the title of their essays raise.

The most important thing to know about the $2 billion dollar JPMorgan Chase trading loss is that it was much more than $2 billion dollars.  The trade in question was based on hedging potential losses using derivatives and credit default swaps.  True to their name, a derivatives trade derives its value from some other hard asset.  This means the value of those trades goes up and down with the market, not based off the trade itself, so there was no way to know how much the trade would cost when they made it.  When JP Morgan Chase announced the loss, it was at $2 billion.  It was a bigger loss by the end of the week and would eventually become a bigger loss on that one trade than the $5 billion dollar USPS (false) loss Douglas Ernst bitched about.  By the Friday following the trade, the loss had cost investors $20 billion dollars.

There are two important things to note about how Douglas Ernst chose to treat the JPMorgan Chase loss:

1. Douglas Ernst seriously understated how much the loss was even though the date he published his rant was after many media outlets revealed that the loss would be much higher than $2 billion dollars.
2. Douglas Ernst is either too stupid to understand why there was a congressional probe, or, Douglas Ernst is too unethical to write anything that contradicts his opinions.

Contrary to the words Douglas Ernst uses, the congressional probe was not a punishment for making a mistake in the private sector.  Businesses rise and fall every year without anyone probing why.  A simple explanation of the reason for the congressional probe was because Wall Street banks received billions upon billions of dollars in bailouts in 2008 to stave off a complete economic collapse, that crisis was, in part, based off bad bets in credit default swaps.  When a bank as big as JPMorgan Chase admits to a $2 billion dollar loss on one trade that was based on derivatives of credit default swaps less than four years after they crashed the whole world’s economy using the same exact tools, the US congress may think it is their duty to ask why.  You may think congress has no right to question JPMorgan Chase, but you can’t deny that the picture Douglas Ernst painted about why there was a probe is completely wrong.  By the way, if you saw the disgraceful footage of members of congress apologizing to the CEO of JPMorgan, you might think that he enjoyed the ego boost more than he despised them for summoning him.

There is one more point to make about this terribly written, horribly dishonest, Douglas Ernst rant.  If Douglas Ernst had bothered to write the truth about the USPS financial woes, he would have been able to point at one very specific example of the federal government literally eliminating the profits of a business for five consecutive years via legislation.  Everything Douglas Ernst claims about the federal government ruining businesses actually happened to the USPS and it was a Republican congress that enacted the profit-killing legislation.  This stunning example of irony make this Douglas Ernst rant my favorite by far.

This post has absolutely nothing to do with figuring out whether or not Douglas Ernst hates America.  My apologies, I promise to (try to) stay focused next time.

Smurfalot

What happens when a person’s dreams die and they have to explore alternatives?  What if someone never really got over their original dream?  My Imaginary girlfriend has served her time in the penalty box and has come out swinging, trying to debunk my labeling of Douglas Ernst (ugh, she was quiet for long enough for me to humor her one more time) as a partisan hack.  Her insistence that I support all of my accusations seems trivial when comparing my work to someone who lies as much as Douglas Ernst, but here we go again.  What if someone wanted to be a screenwriter, but failed and became a partisan hack instead?  Where could we find such an example?  I present to you: the bitter partisan hackery of Douglas Ernst.

By now, it should be obvious that Douglas Ernst is a partisan hack.  If you don’t believe me, here’s a quote I would like you to read, “(regarding) the sad state of affairs the country is in. If I was a partisan hack I’d say that it all began with Barack Obama’s apology tour of the world.”  I picked this quote for 2 reasons, 1. I think it is funny that Douglas Ernst is pretending that he isn’t a partisan hack; 2. Douglas Ernst is pretending he isn’t a partisan hack while simultaneously blaming all of our country’s problems on a new president’s so-called “Apology Tour.”  You can’t make this shit up. It wasn’t a decade of war, a brutal financial crash, a feeling of abandonment in natural disaster victims, the tarnishing of American character and honor when war atrocities and sanctioned torture were revealed to the citizens, none of that.  It was the “Apology Tour” that President Obama went on in 2009 that has caused the sad state of affairs in our country.  After reading that quote, if anyone thinks that Douglas Ernst is not a partisan hack (including Douglas Ernst himself), I would happily read whatever you want to write to prove me wrong.  Otherwise, we should all admit what we know to be true and move on to why Douglas Ernst isn’t being all the partisan hack he could be.

It’s a numbers game.  Partisan hackery isn’t about writing 1 long article a month that is well researched, well written, and balanced.  It’s about writing 15 posts a month about why Liberals suck and Conservatives rule.  Douglas Ernst is doing this correctly, not a single article he as written will take you more than 2 minutes to read, nor will they say anything positive about anyone who doesn’t claim to be conservative.  That’s part 2 of the numbers game, accepting and defending people who (even in a slightly, kinda, way) claim to be conservative so that your numbers are inflated, but provable.

The most important part to Douglas Ernst is that they have to claim to be conservative.  If he was maximizing his partisan hackery he would write about all the people who say they are liberals and then claim them for the conservative cause.  Any true conservative would argue that someone like President George W. Bush is not a conservative (a quote from conservapedia: “”Bush clearly is not a Reaganite or “small ‘c’ conservative.”), but he does claim to be a conservative, so Douglas Ernst accepts that as validation and defends him vehemently.  That’s exactly what a partisan hack would do, but Douglas Ernst needs to adopt (kidnap may be a more appropriate term) more people who label themselves as liberals into the conservative fold.  There is room for improvement, but for the most part, good job Douglas Ernst.

It’s about misinformation.  Partisan hackery requires you to take the truth and twist it into whatever shape you want it to be and then convince others that you’re not lying.  Douglas Ernst is doing this correctly; he repeatedly lies about little things a normal person wouldn’t suspect that anyone would lie about so his lies sound believable.  Since Douglas Ernst is more than willing to lie to support his claims, he doesn’t think he actually needs the truth to write a short post that takes 2 minutes to read.  That is where his partisan hackery is lacking.  I would say that you must write 25% of your posts fib free so that anyone defending you could point at those posts and say, “look here, Douglas Ernst is saying some uncomfortable truths about conservatives”, that gives you just enough appearance of partisan-free hackery to fool some people.  The space between always lying, instead of using the truth to say something similar, is the area that needs improvement.  But, for the willingness to lie to support his opinions, good job Douglas Ernst.

There are lots of things Douglas Ernst is doing right, but there is one area in which he could use some improvement: celebrity endorsement.  Douglas Ernst spends an unusually large amount of time bitching about celebrities.  A quick search of his blog for the word “Hollywood” will yield 731 results.  After seeing that number I didn’t need to do any other searches to know I was on to something.  If you look through the search results, all you see is negative articles about people who have no idea Douglas Ernst exists.  Keep digging, and you’ll find his rants about movie adaptations of comic books and you can practically taste the bitterness from Douglas Ernst’s words.  At this point, I felt kind of bad for Douglas Ernst and had to stop reading.  Here is a guy who loves comic books and wanted to be a screenwriter, that is picking apart the work he wishes he was doing.  Just because he’s not doing what he wishes he was doing, it doesn’t mean he has to alienate the people who are.  If he wants to take his partisan hackery to a new level, he will have to get some of them on his side to help, not only advance his cause, but advance his career as well.  His bitterness and envy will need to be shelved for now and revisited when he has some powerful celebrity allies in order for him to be all the hack he can be.

Some may say this was a side-step and curse my imaginary girlfriend because we didn’t move forward, but I feel differently.  It puts what Douglas Ernst thinks about the “Hollywood Elitists” in perspective and it allows us to learn a little more about him.  Both of these will be necessary for my next few posts to make any sense.  We’re in the back half now, almost ready to add everything together in a big bowl, mix it up, and bake it to see what kind of cake we get.  Only a couple more entries left, I’m hoping you’ll stay with me so that together we can find out if Douglas Ernst hates America.

Comic books have grown from something completely childish to a form of art respected by the young and old.  The protagonists usually have abilities, and a sense of honor, above and beyond what a normal human being has and as a result they are referred to as superheros. The darker, more adult, versions are called graphic novels as a way of identifying them as having much more mature content than a 10-year-old should read, but despite the increase in violence and edgier themes, the superhero’s morality remains unchanged.  The artist lets the blood fly a little more, the victims are raped instead of mugged, but the superhero maintains his usual devotion to truth and justice.  These themes are applied across mediums as well, even if it would sell more tickets, Batman does not go around killing people in movies because he is Batman.   The very best superhero stories come down to the forces of good sacrificing everything but their honor to defeat evil.  It has always been this way because human beings admire the integrity and honor superheroes have in the darkest of times, they bend while we would break.  Superheroes will not let the actions of evil doers determine the amount of honor they display, that’s why they’re superheroes.  Who would say that the antagonists actions should determine whether or not a superhero compromises his own integrity?  Douglas Ernst.

It’s almost unbelievable.  Someone that says he loves comic books, Douglas Ernst, actually advocating that superheroes should torture and kill suspects to pry information out of them and prevent a disaster.  It’s as if he has never read a comic book before.  Here is  brief summary of what he is saying: the evil doers do evil so superheroes have to get just as evil as them to stop them.  Don’t think I’m exaggerating, that is what Douglas Ernst is saying, superheroes should get just as dirty as the villains to stop them.  Who would buy those comic books?  You wouldn’t even need an actual comic book to sum up what happens, you could just publish a fake newspaper that has the same headline over and over: “Spiderman Kills Some People Because He Loves Justice”.  How would this complete change in a superhero’s moral code affect the world’s in which they live?

One of the main sources of conflict in the Batman comics is the rest of the world trying to determine whether or not he is actually good, or a bloodthirsty vigilante.  Every single movie contains an average human wondering if his actions are justified since he is essentially taking justice away from the citizens and carrying it out himself.  If he sacrificed his integrity, and started behaving the way the rest of humanity behaves, they would instantly declare him a threat and demand he be arrested.  What is the real reason Douglas Ernst thinks every superhero should be just as dirty as the antagonist?  It’s because he thinks the honor and integrity that prevents a superhero from lowering himself to the level of his enemies is a liberal concept, and Douglas Ernst hates liberals.

(Quick side note: Douglas Ernst must have a very short attention span, he seems to think that not seeing an issue talked about every day in the news means it went away and is gone forever.  “Isn’t the ozone layer so … 1989?”  Obviously, since it isn’t on the news anymore the problem must have been solved, right?  No,  it is still being depleted, and our own actions will change our world forever.  I’m not sure why ridiculing any attempt to prevent our home from becoming a uninhabitable hell is such great entertainment for Douglas Ernst.)

Why would the idea that a superhero’s honor which prevents him from torturing and killing people be a liberal concept?  I have no fucking clue.  It doesn’t seem like asking our government, or our superheroes, to not torture  people is a liberal idea, or that it should be partisan at all.  John McCain is a conservative that was tortured and now thinks that torture is wrong.  The Bush administration put so much effort into classifying what is and what isn’t torture that they obviously knew they were playing with fire even though most of the world would classify what they authorized as torture.  How does Douglas Ernst view a superhero that will not torture his enemies to achieve his goals?  In his own words, “You’ve turned my childhood hero into a morally bankrupt loser.”  Douglas Ernst feels that Spiderman is a morally bankrupt loser because he will not torture and kill people.  I don’t even know how to respond to that.  I’m hoping that those words do not mean what Douglas Ernst thinks they mean.

In asking that his superheroes be just as evil as he is, Douglas Ernst has set a new low for conservatives all over the country.  You’d have to imagine that sometimes he cheers for the bad guys to win just so he can say the heroes should have tortured and killed more people to prevent disaster.

Things are starting to take shape now.  Douglas Ernst can be compared to Adolf Hitler during his rise to power.  He is obsessed with race, or racism.  He makes shit up in attempts to justify whatever he wants to say.  He is a writer that doesn’t seem to know the difference between satire and reality.  He chose to be a partisan hack instead of respecting his grandmother’s wisdom.  I think we’ve crossed the half way point on our journey and the end is in sight.  Just a couple more points to consider before we can decide what all this information means, and I’m hoping you’ll stay with me so that together we can determine whether or not Douglas Ernst hates America.

When writing 500 blogs posts I’d imagine that it gets difficult for Douglas Ernst to think of new and exciting ways to insult  all the liberal elitists he hates.  They may have unknowingly created a supervillian if they did tell him his screenwriting was terrible.  Between thinking of new and exciting ways to make shit up about all the terrible Tyler Perry movies that are much more profitable than his equally terrible blog, Douglas Ernst sometimes mixes it up by writing satire.  Satire seems simple enough, and you get to make shit up without the threat of anyone calling you a lying liar that lies about whatever it is you’re lying about.  Unless, of course, no one knows you’re intentionally writing satire and it reads just like one of your real blog posts.  Such a thing could be considered opinionated, however, I have to admit the possibility that I could just be a terrible reader.  My imaginary girlfriend (who I tried to break up with for being too critical lately, but she wouldn’t let me.  I’m not sure why she thinks she has that power, we’re amidst debate about it at the moment.) feels my low-level of intelligence may be hindering me when I try to tell the difference.  She has a point, I mean, who could possibly be so bad at writing that he doesn’t change his style, format, or add jokes when writing about things that are considered important news items, and when trying to create satire?  Douglas Ernst.

First, lets talk about his poop jokes.  For some reason, the easiest way to get on Douglas Ernst’s shit list (is that a poop joke? I don’t know you decide!) of people to criticize is to be a celebrity and make any sort of comment that isn’t related to the reason why you’re a celebrity.  Dave Matthews of “Dave Matthews Band” fame is just the kind of guy I never would have imagined to make blips on a conservative blogger’s radar, but that is exactly what happened when Dave made some comments about the BP oil spill in the summer of 2010.  I’m not sure why a company named British Petroleum was defended so devoutly by the right-wing crowd, they’re a foreign company that killed American workers and destroyed American land and property through negligence.  Regardless, Douglas Ernst felt the need to compare a Dave Matthews Band incident where their bus driver dropped poop from their tour bus onto some tourists, to the BP oil spill.  If you haven’t heard about it, the band was driving over a bridge that had grates instead of a solid road and the bus driver released the contents of the bus’ bathroom waste tanks out which hit a tour boat full of tourists below.  If you’re not one of those tourists, that is some funny shit (!!!).  The odds of that happening on purpose have got to be outrageous, on accident, it has to be astronomical.  Douglas Ernst has some good material to work with, but he wastes it on terrible puns.  To me, the biggest waste of all is when Douglas Ernst types at the end of his post, “Consider yourself Crushed, Dave”, “Crushed” by his wit, I’m assuming.  This is the biggest waste of potential I’ve seen in quite a while.  If anyone was “Crushed” it was the tourists, not the “Dave Matthews Band” that will never read this shitty (!!!) rant.

I mentioned the poop article to give you a short example of the, possibly, terrible writing of Douglas Ernst.  That is actually one of the better articles on his blog.  The picture with Dave covered in some sort of black goo (“Don’t Drink The Water” video?) is actually funny, unfortunately, Douglas Ernst ruins it with his words.  That isn’t the only documented piece of terrible comedy/satire writing from Douglas Ernst.  I give to you the results for a search of the word “Satire“.  Notice how many times you can read on the 1st Google search results page alone the aforementioned Douglas Ernst saying something to the effect of “It is categorized and tagged as satire”.  As a FYI, because I know you wont read that terrible writing, he isn’t saying that in his actual post, he’s saying it in his comments section when people ask “Is this a joke?”  It happens over and over again, with the saddest I’ve noticed so far being one where he has to publish a disclaimer:  Update: I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do this. One word: Satire.  He had hoped he wouldn’t have to, but his, possibly, shitty (!!!) writing made that impossible.

Which of these seems more logical to you: Smurfalot is a terrible reader that can’t understand greatness, or, Douglas Ernst is a terrible writer that has to actually tell people he is writing satire.  You’ll have to decide that on your own, no one can tell you what to think, I, personally, do not think that  I am a terrible reader.  I feel a little dirty after writing this one, like I need a shower.

Here is what we’ve learned so far: Douglas Ernst might be a young Hitler who is obsessed with racism and makes shit up whenever he feels like making shitty (!!!) jokes.  The path they lays ahead is still wild and menacing but I’m hoping you’ll stay with me so that together we can determine whether or not Douglas Ernst hates America.

Smurfalot

In my last post I gave a list of attributes and then asked you to decide who I was talking about: Hitler in 1925, or Douglas Ernst today.  After I had published that post (Hitler’s Footsteps), my imaginary girlfriend asked me about a couple of the attributes I mentioned and how she thought I was stretching the truth too much for a reasonable person to say that they could be applied to both Hitler in 1925 and Douglas Ernst today.  One specific attribute she doubted was “race is always an issue for him”, since I didn’t go into detail about why that could apply to Douglas Ernst, her reasoning was that I just made up a list in my head, without checking to see if all of them could be applied to both Hitler in 1925 and Douglas Ernst today.  What kind of blogger would I be if I just made shit up?  Douglas Ernst, I’d be Douglas Ernst.  After initially rejecting her claim, my reasoning being anyone who read Douglas Ernst’s blog could easily see how race is always an issue for him, and planning to ignore it completely, it occurred to me that Douglas Ernst would react the same exact way, and the idea of doing anything the way that Douglas Ernst would do it is unsettling.  That is the reason I decided to address this one attribute and see if I could elaborate on why race is always an issue to Douglas Ernst in an attempt to keep this blog’s level of credibility far above the angry partisan rhetoric of Douglas Ernst’s rants.

If you had 100 conversations with Douglas Ernst and he made it a point to mention that he was DEFINITELY NOT GAY in 99 of them, would you think he was gay?  Now switch the word “gay” for “racist” and you’ll start to see where I’m going.  Douglas Ernst has written 500 blog posts and all of them could be considered a conversation with Douglas Ernst: Douglas Ernst really enjoying hearing himself spout bullshit while you sit there and observe how bullshit flows.  If we could somehow data mine all those posts, I’m calling them conversations, would we find an unusually high percentage of Douglas Ernst denying that he (or people like him) is a racist?  Luckily, Google was invented for just such an occasion.  If you perform some basic searches you can see how often the douglasernstblog.com site mentions specific terms: “Racist” 358 results; “Racism” 33 results; “Race” 357 results; “Racists” 39 results; “Racial 19 results; “Racially” 48 results. If you add those 5 search results up you have 892 examples of Douglas Ernst claiming  that he (and people like him) is DEFINITELY NOT A RACIST without anyone but himself prompting him to do so (my imaginary girlfriend read this and mentioned that it is impossible for him to have 892 different posts about racism when he only wrote 500 total.  She’s no scientist, so how could she prove such a thing?  After some debate, we agreed on the word “examples”.)  If Douglas Ernst mentioned that he was DEFINITELY NOT A RACIST in 172% of his blog posts, would you think Douglas Ernst was racist?

If I held a series of conversations with someone and constantly mentioned that I was DEFINITELY NOT A RACIST to them, even when unasked, I wouldn’t expect that person to believe me when I said that race isn’t an issue for me.  The fact that I was bringing up race, or racism, in a vast majority of our conversations shows that race, or racism, is always on my mind.  If I can’t reasonably expect someone to believe that race isn’t an issue for me, then the only alternative is that race is, indeed, an issue for me.  That’s how we use reason and logic, we eliminate one possibility and focus on what remains.  If race, or racism, really isn’t an issue for Douglas Ernst, then he wouldn’t need to mention that he (or people like him) isn’t racist so often, you could easily read (or write) 500 blog posts without ever thinking about race, or racism, if the author truly considered it a non-issue.  But, with Douglas Ernst’s blog, that isn’t possible because he wrote about race, or racism, in a vast majority of those 500 posts because race, or racism, is always an issue for him.

Sorry to wander off the main path when I promised I would always be marching forward, but it seemed necessary to highlight this attribute so that later on I can use it against him in a surprising new way.  I’m hoping you’ll forgive me for this side step and stay with me on our journey so that together we can find out if Douglas Ernst hates America.

Smurfalot

Adolf Hitler applied for and was rejected from art school twice, after the 2nd rejection, his mother died and he entered into a period of homelessness.  If Hitler’s mother taught him that if he worked hard he could become anything he wanted, then he learned the hard way that she was lying, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t refocus his ambition.  Over the next few decades, he rose to power and started the world on a warpath that would leave tens of millions dead.  Hitler’s life was full of what ifs, what might have been, scenarios.  What if he had been accepted to The Academy of Fine Arts.  What if his mother hadn’t died and left him homeless?  What if he had died from exposure before he found a homeless shelter?  What if the charity group that took him in wasn’t religiously prejudiced or antisemitic?  What happened to him when his dreams were dashed and reality was much bleaker than he thought it could be?  Hitler’s life shows us that not all of the most evil and destructive people who have ever lived were born that way, they changed at some point.  We don’t know exactly why he changed, but we do look for insights into his world so we can try to prevent history from repeating itself.  Is there anyone out there, hiding in plain sight, that sets off warning bells, signaling that they could turn into Hitler #2?  I present to you: the curious case of Douglas Ernst.

Douglas Ernst reveals to us, in his own words, that when he was younger, he had no interest in politic blogging at all he “just wanted to move out to California and write screenplays.”  According to Douglas Ernst, it was unethical liberal professors at the college he attended that swayed him from screenplays to becoming the super-credible blogger he is today (if he is telling the truth, that he was outraged by partisan hacks enough to change careers goals, he has somehow become that which he despised without realizing it, more on that later).  On the surface, that makes sense, writing a blog has got to be more fulfilling and pay better than writing a Hollywood blockbuster.  Wait, I got that backwards, but even if I had written it correctly it wouldn’t change the fact that trolling away at partisan bullshit on a daily basis is super fun.  It’s also easier than writing a Hollywood blockbuster (maybe, some movies make me wonder) because you can be like Douglas Ernst and make your blog so partisan that no one needs to actually read it when important news happens, they’ll already know what you think.  But, what if Douglas Ernst is lying about changing his mind in college?  What if he actually put effort into becoming a screenwriter, but was rejected by the liberal elitists in Hollywood?  If that happened, wouldn’t his hatred of liberals make a lot more sense?  Since we can’t find out for sure if he is lying about the reasons he isn’t a screenwriter, what would we learn if we assumed he was lying and started looking for warning signs that not only did he fail as a screenwriter, he also seeks vengeance against liberals?  Would it reveal that Douglas Ernst fell into Hitler’s footsteps?

I’m going to list some attributes of one specific person and I would like you try to picture who I am describing: Personal failure in the creative arts, right-wing political ideology, unreasonably opposed to political compromise, known to voice his personal beliefs through writing, loyalty to his country’s current democratically elected leader is nonexistent, unreasonably obsessed with illegal immigration, race is always an issue for him, unreasonably strong belief in national solidarity/isolationism, denounces any religion that isn’t Christianity, denounces pacifists as unpatriotic, denounces any differing political ideology as destructive forces to national security, strong proponent of military action for unprovable/irrational claims, proclaims to have answers for every problem, those answers involve the elimination of civil rights for minorities.  Who are you picturing in your head: Hitler in 1925, or Douglas Ernst today?

Of course, Douglas Ernst would denounce the idea that there are similarities between him and Hitler.  He would probably say that he isn’t going to answer any questions about being the second Hitler because it’s too preposterous to acknowledge.  He would probably say that he isn’t  failed screenwriter and was never rejected by Hollywood’s liberal elitists because he never actually attempted to be a screenwriter.  He would probably try to argue that he was successfully accepted into college and therefore couldn’t be considered on the same path as Hitler, but doesn’t refusing to answer questions, and pointing out minor differences to deflect suspicion, sound like something Hitler #2 would do?

The parallels between Hitler and Douglas Ernst are chilling, what will happen if he somehow becomes a powerful politician?  I don’t know, and neither do you!  My main question is still unresolved, and we need more information to find out if he’s interested in helping America or wanting to fashion it as he thinks it should be.  That is exactly what I’m gong to do, and I hope you’ll stay with me so that together we can determine if Douglas Ernst hates America.

Smurfalot

Who is Douglas Ernst?

You’ve most likely never heard of Douglas Ernst before (find his blog here), but it isn’t because he has tried to hide himself from the world, in fact, he really wants you to know his name.   He has written 500 posts over the course of a few years and each of them are an example of  bipartisan reasoning and cool-headed logic.  Just kidding, they are all random rants that test the limits of bullshittery one webpage can handle.

Will I learn anything by reading this?

Absolutely not.  You will not learn anything new, nor will anything I’ve written make you have any revelations that force  you to spend a night in deep thought, haunted by the impact of something you just read.  I can promise this because I’m going to be writing about what Douglas Ernst writes about, and that, my friend, is as shallow as it gets.

Why bother blogging about him?

I have nothing better to do and nowhere else to go.  Also, he’s a dick that makes shit up when it suits him; imagine Rush Limbaugh, but not as talented and with less integrity.  Just calling him out on the most egregious items he posts is enough motivation for me.

There has to be something else, what is it?

Small-time conservative bloggers have passed the tipping point from relevant commentary on modern politics to blatant propaganda machines trying to out shout each other in pursuit of the success and riches people like Ann Coulter have enjoyed.  I’m concerned that they may have lost their way and are now a bigger threat to our country as a whole than they are to the specific liberal politicians they hate.  If you read Douglas Ernst’s blog, you will not find a single solution, only problems.  I hope to make this a blog dedicated to being just as reasonable as they are, and giving the same exact number of solutions they give as well.  Although I will find inspiration among many bloggers, I’ll keep myself limited to Douglas Ersnt as much as possible.

What is the timetable of this thing?

I’m going to figure out if Douglas Ernst hates America, then I’m going to stop writing.   However long that takes is the timeline of this thing.

Smufalot

Conservative blogger Douglas Ernst has opinions about everything and he isn’t afraid to use them.  With dedication few have, he has written over 500 posts to his blog (where he describes his ideology as “Solid-Snake Conservatism”) covering controversial topics ranging from liberalism in comic books,  to why he hates liberals, and then back to liberalism in comic books.  His writing style can be described as “attack dog” in nature, always with an angry tone and insults at the ready for the slightest perceived infraction.  His masterful use of language and the elegance in the way he illustrates his points are somewhat lost on readers that have taken a history class, but if you suspend your doubts, he is quite the orator.   After reading a few posts, not one person could deny that they have never thought of some of the things he bitches about as problems before, nor will they ever consider them problems again after they close the page.  From sensational headlines that lack the content required to support them, to self-congratulatory summaries, Douglas Ernst is a fine example of the modern conservative blogger.  In short, he has a truly unique viewpoint of what is wrong with this country.

“Why don’t you just ask him why he hates America so you can save yourself the time you would have spent writing a blog, and put that time to better use by boning me more?”  My imaginary girlfriend asked me.  This easy answer is because Douglas Ernst doesn’t take shit from anyone even when no one is giving him shit.  If he writes a post intended to be satire, but you find it to be lacking any wit or humor, it is not because he’s a terrible writer, it is because you are a terrible reader, and therefore too stupid to understand.  Douglas Ernst seems to be the kind of guy that got C’s in college, but only because his professors were terrible teachers.  If I thought he would just tell me why he hates America I would ask,  but he usually goes on the attack instead, and even if he did respond, he makes shit up so often it wouldn’t be an answer I could trust anyway.

I’ve read many of his posts and I’m beginning to think that Douglas Ernst feels the main problem with America is all the  Americans that call it home.  “Smurf,” you may be thinking, “The title of your blog is misleading, hating Americans does not equal hating America!”  And you would be right.  It isn’t one of his posts that make me suspect he hates America, it is all of them working together in an odd mixture of myths and half-truths that help you envision how he wants things to be, and that vision does not resemble  reality  in any way, nor would it if applied to any period in American history.  A conservative that hates America certainly sounds like an oxymoron, and I’m sure that by now you’re shouting at your computer screen: “EVERY CONSERVATIVE HAS A FLAG PIN PROUDLY DISPLAYED ON HIS CHEST, OF COURSE THEY ARE ALL PATRIOTS!”  But, please, let me make my case.  Douglas Ernst has been an inspiration to me and I’m going to be just as honest, credible, and thorough in my posts as he is in his.  I’ll be covering some of  the finer points I’ve noticed about his posts and then I’ll try to take them to their logical conclusion; I can promise you that you will find some of them surprising.

I’m fascinated by people in general and have studied human beings throughout our shared history, but Douglas Ernst has me wondering how well I understand the human race as a whole.  I”m hoping to figure him out and I’m hoping you’ll join me  as I journey into the psyche of a conservative blogger so that together we can determine whether or not Douglas Ernst hates America.

Smurfalot