COGs are rarely overtly political. COGs correctly view politics as a flamboyant method to avoid getting a real job. However they seem to wind up financing damn near everything through their taxes. You’d think this would encourage them to get more active but instead it encourages them to view the rest of the population as useless layabouts. (Which, statistically speaking, is true.)
Figure 1: A visual demonstration of a politically active NON-COG. There are no photos of politically active COGs because they're all working on something boring like the street plowing schedule for Muncie Indiana.
- COGs are annoyed when Al Sharpton calls them a racist. They are not racist. They think Al Sharpton needs a real job. Something useful like replacing tractor brake pads. Yo-yos like Al Sharpton would be less annoying if they had a purpose in life that didn’t involve bitching at COGs.
- COGs are annoyed when a fruit loop wearing the American flag as a turban, a dog collar, a diaper, and Nikes is prancing around at the gay pride parade. COGs are not homophobic. However, COGs want you to quit blocking the road because it’ll make them late for their daughter’s orthodontist appointment. COGs assume the fruit loop in the streets would calm down if he had a job.
- COGs are annoyed when someone self detonates in a discotheque in Jerusalem. COGs are pretty sure God doesn’t communicate through explosives. COGs are absolutely convinced that jerks like that are what happens when people don’t have jobs.
- A COG can have a gun or not have a gun. A COG who doesn’t have a gun (usually urban) doesn’t go to anti-gun candlelight vigils. A COG who does have a gun (all rural and some urban) doesn’t staple the second amendment to the front door. All rural COGs have guns, this is tradition and COGs adhere to tradition. Gun owning COGs don’t generally own flashy firearms. If you have a cannon you’re not a COG. COGs, regardless of whether they have firearms or not, do not care if you have a weapon; unless you’re a criminal in which case they’d like you put in jail for for a couple hundred years. If you’re trying to rob a COGs house and they have a weapon, they will use it. They’d rather not because they don’t want the hassle of patching a hole in the drywall.
- COGs vote. COGs won’t try to get you to vote for their guy even if they think your guy is a moron. COGs are pretty sure your guy is a moron. COGs wonder how most politicians got that far without having a real job. They wonder if their politician ever mowed his own lawn. They’re sure yours hasn’t. Until recently a COG would always vote for one of the two useless parties in America. COGs are increasingly voting third party but do so furtively. COGs don’t put political bumper stickers on their car because that would mess up the paint.
- A COG can go to church without speaking in tongues. A COG may think an atheist is going straight to hell and still help him install a garage door.
- A COG doesn’t care whether the electricity is made from coal, windmills, or unicorn farts, so long as the refrigerator keeps the milk cold.
Yes, COGS foot the bill for the layabouts. There didn’t use to be photos of politically active COGS, but, no, now there ARE pictures of politically active COGS – we go to Tea Party rallies. However, there are no photos of politically active COGS destroying private or public property, or of us being arrested. There are photos of public places after politically active COGS have finished a rally – those areas are cleaner than they were before the rally.
Indeed. I once went to a Tea Party Rally and the most notable thing was meeting several hundred people who felt like they were “dragged into” politics when they’d rather be home weeding the garden. I found it refreshing.
I also think the TEA Party is a short term phenomenon. If they get what they want they’ll go home and disappear. Wouldn’t that be cool! More likely one of the two major parties will co-opt just enough of their agenda to kill them as an independent entity. (The “stupid party” seems to be pursuing this path with zeal.)
I would argue that COGs occasionally become at least a little politically active. The difference between COG and non-COG political agitation is that NON-COGs are politically active because of something they think or something they are, whereas COGS become politically active because of something they do, or have done in the past. Thus non-COGs march because they are minorities or because they think EXXON is stinky. COGs march because they hunt or shoot, and don’t want to be pestered about it, or because they went to Vietnam and want to remind the aging hippies (and Hippie wannabees) that hippies’ warm memories of the ’60’s came with a price that the hippies didn’t pay.
Sorry, AC, I must protest.
“If you have a cannon you’re not a COG.”
I consider myself pretty COGnitive, yet I have a cannon. Which I built. From scratch.
It involved work to design & build.
So there.
I actually pondered this one before I wrote it down. Mostly because the general population has a 0.000001% incidence of cannon ownership and my (albeit small) readership had a 90% chance of at least one cannon owner.
Please don’t take offense. It’s not just COGs and non-COGs.
COG’s and non-COGs (like the useless twits who are “occupying” Wall Street) are but two elements in my unified field theory of humanity. It’s not a dichotomy where you’re one or the other. COGs were my attempt to classify folks who kept civilization on the tracks without extreme actions. Plain old folks and families that were the backbone of the system. Sometime (probably after a few beers) I’ll expound on the folks who assist civilization with a heck of a lot more depth than the COGs. Something akin to the monks who preserved knowledge during the middle ages or Rand’s captains of industry.
Thats why Steve Jobs (who built an empire without government subsidy) can be self supporting (unlike Cheech and Chong) and a benefit to society (aside from iNinjas) without being a simple COG. I’d say owning a cannon (and especially building it) is just plain too cool for a COG. (Hell, it’s too cool for Steve Jobs.)
Hm. So you say, but your list of things COGs do is becoming extensive. I fell off it quite some way back. So if there are non-COG types of whom you approve, maybe you could get to mentioning them?
Stay tuned. I’m cogitating.
Some more elements in the unified field theory shall be unveiled as soon as I get around to writing something.
Just for the record I don’t fit the COG definition either. No shame in that.
Aw, shucks. *with hands in pockets, kicks dirt*
We’re (the Mrs. & I) still pretty much plain old(!) folks, with the occasional opportunity to briefly rise within the unified field of humanity.
We get over it, & go back to our COGnitive state.
Now go get a job.