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Edited on Tue Nov-02-10 05:35 PM by 20score
(Repost from a few days ago with a different title. But with the recent changes being considered at MSNBC, thought this was relevant.Fox will lie with impunity but emotional responses to those lies are what have to go?)
Part of conventional wisdom is that understanding lies in the middle. That the left and the right are too extreme, so both sides are equally wrong. That idea has been part of the main stream media’s modus operandi for years, now. Put two to six people arguing on a subject on any given television news program and rarely is the objective truth pointed out by the anchor/moderator. For the last two years, it has also been part conventional wisdom that not only are both sides equal in ideas and facts, but both sides are also equal in violence perpetrated. But just as in the argument about global warming, only one side has actual facts.
Personal experience is one basis for the commonly held misconception that, “The truth lies somewhere in-between.” Everyone has seen or experienced fights between siblings or romantic couples. And in those cases, many times the truth does lie somewhere between the two sides of the story. But that is certainly not true in science and it is not true in the major issues of our day. We have an objective reality in everything from climate change, to torture, to deregulation. History and scientific studies give us the answer to who is right whenever we dig down deeper than a talking point. Global warming is a perfect example of the fallacy of the he/said, she/said type of argument in the media and at the water cooler. One side has hundreds of scientific studies, the other side has none. One side has made predictions that have started to come true, the other side said it was cold last January in Chicago. The science of climate change boils down to this: No one is disputing that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. This has been established science for over one hundred and fifty years since John Tyndall discovered its properties in the 1850’s. Add that to another fact that no one disputes: that we are emitting 29 billion metric tons of this greenhouse gas into the air annually. When millions of years of accumulated and sequestered carbon are thrown back into the atmosphere, it will have an effect. This should not be a partisan debate, but it is because this false dichotomy allows it.
One big lie now - which will no doubt gain in popularity with the Teabaggers as the story about Lauren Valle is covered - is that the violence is coming from both sides. No, it’s not. Numerous acts of violence are being committed by one side only - the right. There is nothing close to equivalent violence from the left. Violence predicated on political differences is nothing new, of course, and there have always been people like the Teabaggers with us. (Not all Teabaggers are like Tim Profitt and the other cowards beating a woman at the Paul-Conway debate, but the Teabag movement has attracted many like them.) Angry, misinformed, reactionary and wrong about almost everything. Molly Ivins wrote a column a few years ago talking about this type of low intellect, high adrenalin coward. Ms Ivins was relating the bully phenomenon to war time, but it holds just as true in bad economic times -because now it’s not the war that is stirring up passions. She wrote, “War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were "German dogs." They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds.” The gutless weaklings like Profitt and Mike Pezzano, plus others, ganged up on a woman. A male Teabagger and supporter of Sharon Angle punched Kelly Tanaka at an Angle-Reid debate. Leah Burton was badly beaten by Palin supporters two years ago. The list of Teabagger violence is pages long now, starting with the election of Barack Obama. The list is filled with beatings, vandalism, murders and threats. But the fights are rarely, if ever, evenly matched. (For more documented cases, check the Southern Poverty Law Center and their reports on right-wing violence.)
Whether a person is on the left or the right, or even the middle, after one’s first exposure to a subject, one’s sources should be checked and an opinion formed only after the subject is understood. When Beck tells his army of Teabaggers that Hitler was a progressive and empathy is what started the Holocaust, it only takes five minutes of research to prove, not only that he is wrong, but that he’s a nauseating liar that has inverted reality to serve a purpose that cannot be good for the country. And the lies have been coming fast and furious for years now, with one side sucking them up like paper towels, and the other side left shocked at the ease in which reality is upended. Maybe that’s a component of the strategy. Inundate the public with a cascade of lies designed to rile up the crazies and confuse the uninformed; all the while distracting the opposition from the real issues as they debunk the nonsense. If the media refuses to perform its only obligation – to correctly inform the public – then at least those in the ‘middle’ can check into who is telling the truth, and therefore, who is correct in their pronouncements. My feeling is that if the people in the middle fact checked the important issues of the day, the lies would stop gaining ground, and quickly.
It’s been said many times before, but I’ll say again. We all have a right to our own opinions, but not our own facts. Even with that as a given, contrary to conventional wisdom, not all opinions are equally valid. A well thought out opinion, based on as many facts as can be gathered, is more valid than an opinion based on the repetition of a fictitious talking point.
When demagogues like Beck and Limbaugh lie, the result isn’t just a misinformed portion of the public, it is a more violent portion of the public, also. (Especially when those lies incorrectly label the opposition as Nazis, hell bent on taking your freedom.) And despite the rhetoric, that violence is not divided equally between the left and the right. It is coming from the right, almost exclusively. Pretending that the left and the right are equal in their opinions –and equivalent in their violence - is not only demonstrably wrong, it does not allow for the problem to be resolved. Unless we want to rely on just luck to solve all our problems, we need to deal in facts. That means digging deeper than, “they’re all crooks,” or “the left and the right are both wrong.” It may sound like the “wise” thing to say, but it is non-the-less, untrue.
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