- Aug 12, 2009
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- #41
What a post.Facts are facts people...they are no RW facts or LW facts.
Something is either true, or it's not...that's it.
Another thing, cut out this "Main stream media" or "lame stream media" claptrap...it's nonsense.
Trust me when I tell you, I'm no fan of the Corporate Media myself, they have only THEMSELVES in their best interest...they stopped reporting the news perhaps in the early 80's when I was a kid. It's now sensationalism, drama and in the case of networks like FOXNEWS catering to very specific target audiences that only want a specific set of news, or even facts.
We can agree that the media is in the dumps, but we have to agree on what is true and what is false.
There's many more things that we need to work on, but those are two of the big ones IMO.
"Facts" unfortunately can sometimes seem malleable and difficult to pin down or establish clearly in public consciousness, particularly when a good portion of the population has, rather tragically, been thoroughly brainwashed by clever propaganda campaigns that utilize all of the tricks of modern high-tech media and all of the advertising/mind manipulation techniques that have been developed to such a fine art in this country. Of course, in some cases, let's face it, the facts of whatever matter is at hand can be somewhat 'fuzzy' and perhaps not clearly determined as yet. But that does not mean that there aren't any actual, objective, well established facts (as opposed to just opinion or conjecture), nor does it mean that we can't determine the facts of the matter to a large degree in most cases. Google can often really help with scientific questions so that part is usually fairly easy.
Your hope, as expressed in the OP as I read it, seems to be that we should all, right and left, just agree on the basic facts of the matter in many areas of political contention and go from there rationally. I would share that hope and I wish it would happen but I have to admit that it seems somewhat naive and improbable in light of the rather obvious state of pretty crazy outright reality denial that many of the right wingers have been manipulated into at this point by the rightwingnut media echo chamber. There are a lot of folks who just listen to Rush, or someone similar, on the radio and watch FauxNews on TV and read some equally insane far-far-rightwingnut blogs on the internet and maybe catch some rightwing columnists in some of the newspapers, and they will often hear the same misinformation, spin, propaganda and outright lies echoed everywhere within that media bubble. A lot of folks on the right seem to live in that bubble of fantasy and denial so much that they can no more be broken free of the spell they're under than could a good loyal North Korean. There seems to be about the same level of brainwashing.
Case in point - anthropogenic global warming and the climate change crisis. Quite a few Americans (far fewer people in other countries fortunately) have been bamboozled into believing that the entire world scientific community is in on a conspiracy to lie to the world about the reality and severity of the climate change crisis. Rather interestingly, some recent studies have shown that quite a few of the folks who believe that idiotic conspiracy theory also tend to believe a lot of other conspiracy theories. Our problem in coming to a common agreement on the 'facts' is that too many people have been so severely misinformed and propagandized that they have just lost touch with reality on a very basic level and live in a sort of fantasy world where Obama was really born in Kenya, we didn't really go to the moon, the world is secretly run by the Jews/Masons/Illuminati/Bilderberg/Aliens/etc.(you name it), and the Arctic didn't really just melt back this last summer to its lowest extent on record, by a large margin, or that sea levels aren't going to inevitably keep rising faster as the land ice of the world melts away at increasing rates.
How do you suggest we deal with such denial of reality? How do we get such severely brainwashed and usually somewhat ignorant-to-begin-with people to recognize the 'facts'? 'Cause even when you shove their noses in the evidence that supports those facts, they find ways to stay in denial. They often seem quite impervious to objective, observable reality - they literally believe that they 'have their own facts' and they are sure that whatever nonsense they've been conditioned to believe must be the 'real facts' because they've heard those (in reality quite false) 'facts' repeat and reverberate around the rightwingnut echo chamber so many times. So they will stick to their bogus non-facts no matter what evidence or scientific affirmation or observational data they are shown. How do you propose to deal with that so that we can finally get to the point of really mutually agreeing that:
"Facts are facts people...they are no RW facts or LW facts. Something is either true, or it's not...that's it."
I'm really curious. I'm really asking you. I'd really love to know.
That's a very hard question to answer, b/c as you outlined in your magnanimous post, many are thoroughly brainwashed. To that degree, many, perhaps even most are lost, however, there's always a subset of individuals who are sincere...and that's the target audience. There's always a subset of sincere individuals in any and every group who are either true believers or truly lost or both, typically both, or I'm probably describing the same thing. These individuals are true seekers of truth and are willing to seek out additional info to get to the bottom...most others are simply happy and content to stay in whatever belief they hold true.
Like you suggested, it's very hard to penetrate their bubbles, but the only ppl you can penetrate are the sincere, the other believers are hopeless...they don't wanna hear it. They block out everything else with nonsensical terms like "lame stream media" and other such things. It's usually done on a one-to-one basis when it's done anyway. A person in the media who has been rather sucessful in converting the lost is Randi Rhodes. My brother, if you hvaen't listened to her, I implore you to try to tomorrow, she comes on 3pm to 6pm EST weekdays, just google her and you'll find her.
It takes patience, kindness and a lot of intelligence. It seems a working strategy is simply pointing them and steering them to the facts, allow them to read themselves, from the sources where the facts are. Show them how they've been hoodwinked, that's part of the process, arguably the most important part. It's very hard for an individual to agree that they've been lied to all along, so the natural inclination is resitance, that much is understandable, but with time, patiences, gentle care (not insults), and lots of intelligent education it's possible to get to these people.
As far as I know.
Clearly that's easier said than done...clearly.