Tuesday, February 07, 2017

Trump vs. Reality: The Press *Down-Plays* Terrorist Attacks?

If these people really believed the nonsense they say, I'd be a lot more worried. 
It's bad enough that they can kinda talk themselves into sorta believing it, and bad enough that they'd say this even for show, as a move in Trump's on-going junior-high-level slap-fight with the press...
But at least they're not crazy enough to really believe this stuff.

7 Comments:

Blogger Pete Mack said...

It's abominable no matter what the cause. It's pure newspeak. Trump is trying to debase the value of truth by inuring us to lies.

12:45 PM  
Blogger Pete Mack said...

Elsewhere, the SOB is threatening to 'destroy the career' of a TX state Senator. The cause? A sheriff who disapproves of him because he is against asset forfeiture. Still think the left is more dangerous because they 'control the culture', whatever that means? (As far as I can tell, it means newspapers referring to trans people by their preferred gender, presumably as a matter of courtesy.)

12:59 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Dude, you seriously do not believe that the left controls the culture?

And it's just wrong to say that it's only newspapers and it's only courtesy with the transgender thing. This is being pushed as truth and and obvious truth and as obvious truth that you are evil if you deny.

Oh and: you can be fined up to a quarter of a million dollars for refusing to use "preferred pronouns" in NYC...and it's also illegal in DC.

And that's just the most obvious and ridiculous expression of political correctness insanity. That sector of the left is *determined* to subordinate facts to their theories.

And they control universities, the media, and the majority of large philanthropic organizations.

But...c'mon...all you gotta do is this one...little...thing... Just believe this one little falsehood...it's all we demand... What's the harm...?

1:14 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Besides, the point of the transgender stuff is: regardless of harm, and just in terms of flat-out denial of facts, the right's got nothing to compare to that stuff.

1:53 PM  
Anonymous cb said...

"...just in terms of flat-out denial of facts"
Climate change is not real (or is a Chinese hoax)
Women's bodies naturally prevent pregnancy in cases of rape
Tax cuts to the top 0.1% are the best form of economic stimulus
Obamacare included "death panels"
George W Bush kept us safe from terrorism
Obama is a Kenyan Muslim Communist whose biography was written by Bill Ayers
Allowing gays to marry will lead to bestiality
...

And again, those holding the above viewpoints are not random 20-year-olds, tumblr feminists, or academics in do-you-want-fries-with-that fake disciplines, but actual elected officials who wield actual power and their rich and influential media backers.

4:20 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Climate change isn't going to work here because it's a fight over expert testimony. Few on the right deny climate change, anyway, though many do doubt that it's anthropogenic. But: it's a far less egregious case because the average person has no clue as to whether it's true or not. The denial there involves a failure to weigh expert testimony as we weight it. So very different.

Women's bodies naturally etc.: One guy said it. Nobody believes it. Again, not to the point.

In fact the only one that comes close is the Bush / 9/11 one, and, even there, they weren't trying to convince us that 9/11 didn't happen. They were cheating by illicitly limiting the universe of discourse to after 9/11. It was just a garden-variety rhetorical trick. They wanted it to have the force of "Bush kept us safe the whole time," but could always claim that they meant "he kept us safe after 9/11."


As for widespread attempts to push a straightforward denial of facts observable to everyone--so no expert testimony is involved, and we're not fighting over the strength of evidence--I can't think of anything on the right that rivals the transgenderism case on the left.

Which is not to say that the right's BS might not be worse overall--their position on climate change obviously has the possibility of being catastrophic. But--unless we count the Bush 9/11 case, which is actually different, a case of ordinary bullshit--I can't think of a single case where the right is insisting that we deny facts that we all directly perceive.

But furthermore: I'm also trying to push people to see that *the left is only semi-serious about its assertion that e.g. Jenner is actually and literally a woman.* They are insisting on that...but c'mon...nobody's that crazy. Like so many such tricks, they're hoping that our brains will get stuck somewhere between "Jenner has literally become a woman" and "We demand that you misuse the language and start using 'woman' to mean something else." Neither of those is going to fly if you say them clearly. You've got to hope people get stuck in the middle.

4:47 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Also: it's not a few kids on Tumblr. It's the goddamn Justice Department. And the Canadian Government. And I'm fairly sure the European Union. In its scope, this is worse than climate change denial, which is limited to the American right. It's widespread in universities, it's crept into the government and the law, the NCAA is getting in on the act and punishing states for not complying with the fantasy...

Besides, don't you have work to do?

4:50 PM  

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