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A Little Parable About False Witnessing and Malice from the Slacktavist...
The Slacktavist has a little parable about bearing false witness on his blog today that is really a must-read.
It's also pretty clear just who he's talking about in his parable as he tries to explain the fearful, malicious mindset we're seeing coming from the "Obama is reely a sekrit Muslim!" crowd and Palin's vicious acceptance speech, which seemed to be 50% lies. (Oooops! She lied again again! And again!)
And what really confuses the hell out of me is that even after Palin's been caught in several lies over and over again over the past week, she keeps repeating the same damn lies. It's almost like she thinks people are stupid.
The Slacktivist — reporter, progressive, and evangelical Christian — attempts to explain this mindset to us reality-based peoples in today's blog entry. (It's Part 1 of a two-part series.)
Although I am loathe to support his anti-Heinlein theory that one should never attribute to stupidity what can be attributed to malice, since he's more familiar with the kind of mindset that he's targeting I'll take his word for it that the population of people who fall into this category is a whole lot bigger than I'd like to believe.
In the meantime, I still believe that there are some low-information voters out there who just need a few facts.
So, mon amis, I have a list of sites you should bookmark and read on a regular basis so that when you meet a low-information voter who just might believe that Obama's a supah sekrit Muslim bent on killin' whitey (presumably after he raises whitey's taxes), you'll be properly prepared to set them a-right.
[Oh, and for you GOPers out there, you might want to take advantage of these sites, too. No matter what they tell you, the facts do not have a liberal bias. I swear. Cross my heart and hope to die.]
Sites you need to bookmark until at least November 5:
P.S. — Can someone tell me where the summer went? All I know is that one minute it was June 30, and now it's September 8.
Do you realize that I still owe something like 5 people phone calls from the first week in July that I said I'd call? [Tries not to look at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
szandara and kurukami and a handful of other LJ-type people who might not want the general public to know they live near me.]
I swear I meant to call. I did.
But, see, I was kidnapped by this army of ducks while kayaking...
This meeting of the Glorious Duck Revolution shall now come to order. Top of the agenda: How do we get stupid humans to feed us more bread?
[Photo taken while kayaking the Charles River on Sunday, July 27, 2008. (Photo by Lizbeth Marcs)]
It's also pretty clear just who he's talking about in his parable as he tries to explain the fearful, malicious mindset we're seeing coming from the "Obama is reely a sekrit Muslim!" crowd and Palin's vicious acceptance speech, which seemed to be 50% lies. (Oooops! She lied again again! And again!)
And what really confuses the hell out of me is that even after Palin's been caught in several lies over and over again over the past week, she keeps repeating the same damn lies. It's almost like she thinks people are stupid.
The Slacktivist — reporter, progressive, and evangelical Christian — attempts to explain this mindset to us reality-based peoples in today's blog entry. (It's Part 1 of a two-part series.)
Although I am loathe to support his anti-Heinlein theory that one should never attribute to stupidity what can be attributed to malice, since he's more familiar with the kind of mindset that he's targeting I'll take his word for it that the population of people who fall into this category is a whole lot bigger than I'd like to believe.
In the meantime, I still believe that there are some low-information voters out there who just need a few facts.
So, mon amis, I have a list of sites you should bookmark and read on a regular basis so that when you meet a low-information voter who just might believe that Obama's a supah sekrit Muslim bent on killin' whitey (presumably after he raises whitey's taxes), you'll be properly prepared to set them a-right.
[Oh, and for you GOPers out there, you might want to take advantage of these sites, too. No matter what they tell you, the facts do not have a liberal bias. I swear. Cross my heart and hope to die.]
Sites you need to bookmark until at least November 5:
- PolitiFact, a graphics-heavy, interesting little site from the St. Petersberg Times. Be sure to read the commentary that comes with each of the ratings, because you'll quickly find that something may be technically true (and thus rated as true) while still being a lie.
- FactCheck.org from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Not flashy, but definitely my fave. So painfully politically neutral that its earnestness rolls off the page.
- OntheIssues.org, non-partisan guide to the candidates and the issues. Feels a little like it's being held together by chewing gum, spit, and a whole lot of volunteers, but definitely a good way to get a quick snapshot on where all the candidates stand.
- OpenSecrets.org is where you go when you wanna follow the money in the politics.
- I'm not a fan of RealClearPolitics because it's got too much opinion and not enough analysis. That said, I'm throwing it out there because it's got a lot of fans.
- FiveThirtyEight (leans left), Electoral-Vote (leans center-left), Pollster.com (neutral), and Election Projection (leans right) are all excellent sites that help the common voter make sense of polling, the Electoral College, surveys, and how news (and the lack of news) affect polling results from one day to the next. Highly educational whatever your political stripe.
P.S. — Can someone tell me where the summer went? All I know is that one minute it was June 30, and now it's September 8.
Do you realize that I still owe something like 5 people phone calls from the first week in July that I said I'd call? [Tries not to look at
szandara and kurukami and a handful of other LJ-type people who might not want the general public to know they live near me.]I swear I meant to call. I did.
But, see, I was kidnapped by this army of ducks while kayaking...
This meeting of the Glorious Duck Revolution shall now come to order. Top of the agenda: How do we get stupid humans to feed us more bread?
[Photo taken while kayaking the Charles River on Sunday, July 27, 2008. (Photo by Lizbeth Marcs)]
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Sometimes I think my parents might be slightly odd. I was on the phone with my mom while we were watching Palin's RNC speech. It was at some point during the speech that my mother became convinced that Palin was evil. And she's skated Godwin's law a couple of times since.
I'm pretty sure that Palin's not evil, although it appears she's never met a lie she didn't like and is willing to repeat it over...and over...and over again even after she's been caught out.
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And don't bother replying unless you like talking to yourself--I'm not revisiting this thread.
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Oh yeah, and lie about it later to try and cover her tracks. Forgetting that she has much all over her moose-hunting boots and has left a trail that anyone willing to look can see... *eyeroll*
Palin's the Quayle and Agnew of this election cycle, rolled up into one beauty-contest-winning package. *headdesk*
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There are a lot of legitimate reasons to criticize Palin, such as her "flip-flop" on earmark spending. You would do your point of view a lot more credit to focus on proven facts like that, than on an ongoing investigation with undetermined conclusions.
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Her publicly reported record and the speeches she has given reveal her as spiteful, disdainful, manipulative, power-hungry individual willing to twist the truth to her own ends, with a clear lack of comprehension as to political realities beyond her Alaskan conservatism.
It is that very combination of stupidity and ego, along with the potentially campaign-stopping alleged scandal of TrooperGate, which makes me compare her to both Quayle and Agnew. Stop trying to trip me up with semantics.
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On the other hand, if she's innocent of any wrongdoing there, why is the McCain camp trying to block the conclusion of the investigation until after the election? The innocent have nothing to hide, right? Isn't that what seven years of Bush-era governmental spying and data-harvesting have taught us? ; )
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