MSNBC viewers amount to about 1/3rd of 1% of Americans, at best. So...... One would hope that you don't expect MSNBC to be miracle workers, and one more thing...Gobama 2012!

Arguing with goonybirds is a lesson in frustration. tell them they're delusional and you know it and there is nothing short of a professional psychiatric or psychological professional who can help them. Tell them they are a lost cause, and you can't help them. A lot of older white folks are simply a lost generation. Personally, with no reflection on your situation, I think a lot of them are aging drunks and many are clearly over medicated. They're minds are just gone. They can't help it and you can't perform miracles..unless you can, of course.

Well, they ARE my relatives. Our brains come from the same gene pool.

And I have this ONE little problem (big problem?). I got piled high and deep on the subject of Rhetoric in grad school. I sort of obsess on rhetoric and the art of persuasion. Have since I was a little kid, trying to out-argue my mother over doing the dishes.

I actually believe in Rhetoric, that mushy, sophistic discipline, more than I believe in philosophy, or logos alone. When the rubber meets the road, logos needs ethos and pathos as well to get the job done. And some good enthymemes, rather than sentential logic proofs.

It's a problem because it makes me crazy. I've even been stupid enough at different times in my life to think ANY given person is persuadable, given kairos and an effective-enough argument, the "right words at the right moment."

Reality came crashing in, many years ago, when I did discover that it is impossible to argue with a drunk person (that doesn't mean I didn't spend years trying, but hey, at least I feel so much better about losing, now).

I have a friend who is like you and is a University educator. I have learned that he never will learn that you can't open a closed and vacuous mind. Besides, if we were able to open the minds of fringe folks, it might scare us into oblivion. I say just accept the reality that some folks are simply leaden closed vessels who never will sail the high seas of knowledge or reality or feel the pleasant glow of facts and insight rustling through their minds. Of course, on the other hand, my friend just loves to argue and to chastise, so he's happy when he's angry at some goof on the right. He argues because it gives hin satisfaction to destroy the vacuous, even though the vacuous are rarely cognizant of much actual factual reality. Most folks live in quasi reality buttressed up by psychological defense mechanisms, imo. Happy trails. .

"Most folks have mental lives akin to vacant huts buttressed up on stilts of psychological defense mechanisms on the barren shores of a dry lake." That's my take on it and.......That's life. I posess enough intellect to realize and understand that most folks simply lack intellect, but put on a show of intelligence to cover up for their intellectual vacuity, and they will never, ever become enlightened.

If you really want to get through to vacuous folks, put your arguments in the form of cartoons or very, very, very simple analogies, that are easily grasped without "mental perspiration." Get folksy.

My rellies aren't vacuous, is what I'm saying. I like them. I like my aunt-godmother quite a lot. She's one of the cleverest and funniest ladies I know (besides the fact that she was in high school when I was born and often had to change my diapers, as she loves to remind me. We're invested in each other at the diaper-ailments-blood-is-thicker-than-water level.).

They're sort of intense, internet-using, bookish types, who live across the lake from you-know-who and are deep in that Alaska Bible Belt. They are steeped in the Fox News and secessionist attitudes like the tea the Tea Party spouts.

They're in the propaganda-zone, in other words, but they're no dummies. They aren't the kind of people you can be dismissive of. One must engage.

Especially because this is a test. It is a test of persuasion and reason, of Enlightenment values in the face of media-demagogic influence. For a media-communications researcher like me, this is a fertile test case.

And of course, I am failing at it. Which, in itself is revealing.

Are you actually an NRA'er making the case that this happened so the Admin can curtail gun rights?

Where did you get that?

Feel free to read stuff I've written on these boards over the past two years, if you really think that may be the case. LOL.

I think I now know the meaning of the word convoluted.

What would be a general statement from yourself on the broad area of 2nd amendment rights. Where do you stand on gun rights and further gun restrictions including the banning of the largest ammo clips for semi automatic weapons? Do you think that the Attorney General is hiding evidence from Congress for the purposes of hiding lawlessness on the part of the Attorney general? Did you support the Brady Bill? Do you think the ATF let guns fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels in order to advance further gun restrictions in any way? If I may ask...