Let's Drink Water and Make Fun of Hitler's Mustache

When you know you’re skirting Godwin territory, you might as well jump right in.  So.  Hitler has a goofy mustache.
There. I said it.
And when I complain about Hitler, I’ll concentrate on mocking that dippy nose-skirt of his.  What a ridiculous look!  What kind of barber would agree to those premature borders on a hair growth?  I’ll make LOLcats mocking Hitler’s mustache, and I’ll encourage my friends to add funny captions to pictures of Hitler mocking that misplaced soul patch of his, and by the time I’m done he’ll be a laughable cartoon to anyone who reads me.  Just a big old mess of facial hair.
What?  The Holocaust?
The wars he started?
The brainwashing of the young and the overthrow of a democratic government?
Well, as it turns out, anyone not paying real attention to Hitler (and getting their news through your feed) won’t hear a fucking thing about any of that.  Because instead of focusing in on the real and very tangible crimes the man committed, you have decided to focus in on the childish, school-room superficiality that a fifth-grader would find humorous.
Good job!  What you’ve done to the folks not paying attention – which is most of them – is convinced them that the reason you don’t like Hitler is because of facial reasons.  Which will strike many of them as unfair, and mean-spirited – which, yes, you totally are being.  And they won’t get to hear about Hitler’s many murders, because BWAH HAH HAH LOOK AT THAT MUSTACHE is what you’re spending the majority of your time publishing. In fact, by turning Hitler into a cartoon, you’ve actually made it easier to not discuss his policies, which lets your opponents spread the damage that your Hitler-hatred is personal and immature, which in turn lets them keep thinking that there can’t possibly be any valid reasons for disliking Hitler.
You wonder why there’s no real debate any more.  Well, that’s because you – yes, you, you nimrod – have supported this infantile desire to mock a mustache over the real work of dissecting Hitler’s reasonable-sounding policies and explaining the many subtle evils they will cause.  You’ve ignored a serial killer’s murders to focus in on his lack of fashion sense.
Good.  Fucking.  Job.
Likewise, today’s idiocy is that in rebutting President Obama’s State of the Union Speech, Marco Rubio took a rather awkward swig of water.  When I log into Facebook and Twitter, what do I see?  Tons of “HA HA RUBIO LOOKED SILLY ON CAMERA” jokes.  Not, you know, a breakdown of the actual promises in his speech, or a Fact Check of his statements, or even a discussion of why the Republican promises won’t work this time.  Just animated GIFs of a man drinking water.
Are we fifth graders?  Are we so idiotically concerned with style over substances that a man tripping, or coughing, or dressed slightly funny, is enough that it will obliterate everything else that person says?  These are the people running America, and when we reduce their many and potentially harmful policies to “neener neener, look at that stupid spray-on tan” you lower the fucking level of discourse for everyone.  You elevate a cheap, senseless laugh over content.  You train people to start looking for other funny bits to chortle after instead of actually using their fucking brains to debate.
“But it’s funny,” you say, getting surly.  Fuck you, buddy, that’s the point.  Sure, you can interrupt your CEO’s speech with a whoopee cushion and that’s a big fucking hoot, and when that’s all anyone talks about instead of, you know, potentially unionizing to protest the insurance cutbacks he just announced, then you can sure laaaaugh your goddamned way to an absence of doctor.  This is shit that affects people’s lives, and by shrinking it down to a punchline what you’ve done is squashed the level of discourse to an Adam Sandler movie.  Good on you!  You’ve made the world very funny.  And not at all functional.
So stop it.  Stop mocking politicians for the stammers and stutters on-camera, the bad suit choices, the ugly wigs.  Concentrate on the ugly ideas.  Because their wigs aren’t going to hurt you, their funny suits won’t take away your rights, but their policies will cut your budgets and erase your freedoms unless you combat them…. and there you are, making it seem like the most noteworthy thing that Rubio did was drink water funny.  No.  He was outlining the Republican opposition to Obama.  He’s convincing people who didn’t think the water drink was all that notable.  And you are drowning in a tiny bottle full of insipid humor.