What we had in the AIDS epidemic was political opportunism married to what became obvious ignorance. What we are seeing now, promulgated by a conservative bubble machine that has built a self-sustaining universe around itself, is political opportunism married to an active campaign of disinformation. This is a terrible thing. The people making a profit out of it are people who are too lazy to mug old ladies or swindle the blind. The people making a profit out of it are people without consciences, people who are as free of patriotism as they are free of the inconveniences of having a soul. These are dangerous people, and it's far past time for the honorable people in my profession to stop treating them like the worthless hacks they are. They are no longer cute. They are no longer funny. They are no longer the respectable "other side" of some fanciful imaginary political debate. They are dangerous propagandists. They are peddling poisonous lies and putting people's lives at risk. Every journalist who treats them as anything else, and every politician who treats them as anything else, are actively abetting evil.
Take, for example, Laura Ingraham, who cashes a very nice check from ABC News in addition to her day job as a radio flamethrower. Ingraham has begun to traffic in "alternative" theories about Ebola, treating a virus as though it were another vote to suppress or immigrant to bash, and lending her microphone to fringe nitwits because panic is profitable, and because almost everything, even a rare disease, is worth throwing at a president you don't like.Like the man said - the earth is a roughly spherical body that turns on its axis about once per day and orbits the local mid-sized star about once every 365 days, and while you're entitled to believe otherwise, your opinions to the contrary don't mean diddly-shit.
The country simply cannot go on this way, with one of our two political parties completely insane, and with a counter-cultural universe that claims the right to promulgate its own science as equal to the science produced by actual scientists, and with this dangerous lunacy treated as legitimate by powerful people who ought to know better. As I once wrote, it doesn't matter how many people vote for the anti-gravity party, you still can't flap your arms and fly to the moon. A dangerous disease is not a matter of debate. Your profitable fantasy and the reality of the disease do not deserve an equal place in the discussion of what we as a society will do about the disease. The response is going to have to be precise and empirical. It is going to have to be impatient with cant, and immune to the delusions on which demented ideology feeds.It's kinda important to believe as many true things as possible, and to not believe as many false things as possible; and so it's really really really important to be able to tell the difference.
We are quick to criticize elected officials and government bodies when they seek to limit the public's access to information, either by operating behind closed doors or concealing documents which should be readily available for the asking. It is similarly important to single out such groups for praise when they make a decision respecting those principles.
That brings us to the University of Virginia, the commonwealth's flagship institution, which smartly walked away from a worrisome aspect of a proposed "statement of expectations" being prepared for its Board of Visitors by a subcommittee of that board.
A draft circulated earlier this month attempted to quash dissent by members, instructing them to avoid speaking publicly on board decisions "whether past, present or imminent" unless granted the approval of the board's leader. Essentially it would require the board to speak with one unified, unquestioning voice.Starts out pretty good, but then this:
Dr. Sullivan was pressured to resign before public outcry led to her reinstatement in what can charitably be described as a debacle for the university's Board of Visitors and a highly visible black eye for the entire U.Va. community.That last bit sounds a lot like Blaming The Victim, so I gotta ask - in what way do you think Terry Sullivan was at fault for being the target of an attempted coup orchestrated (in secret) by Helen Dragas; and how exactly was it wrong for an outraged public to protest such dirty dealing?
Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.hat tip = Snopes
The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.
The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.
The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.
The seventh rule: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings.
The eighth rule: Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.
The ninth rule: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
The tenth rule: The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.
The eleventh rule is: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative.
The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying "You're right — we don't know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us."
The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
"one man’s allegations are another man’s evidence."As long as that other man's a booger-eatin' moron - which is what the GOP Brain Trust thinks we all are. Unfortunately, they're right when it comes to about 25% of us.
Let us state this unequivocally: false equivalency – the practice of giving equal media time and space to demonstrably invalid positions for the sake of supposed reportorial balance – is dishonest, pernicious and cowardly.Sometimes, the opening graph is all ya need.
On the other hand, according to the grassroots American Council of Liberty Loving Ordinary White People Propped Up by the Koch Brothers, the liberal media want to contaminate your precious bodily fluids and indoctrinate your children in homosocialism.
Ultimately, the grown-ups in the room will have to do their jobs, which in a democracy with divided government means compromising for the common good. That means Mr Boehner, his counterpart in the Senate, Harry M Reid (D-Nev), minority leaders Sen Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) and Rep Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and the president. Both sides are inordinately concerned with making sure that, if catastrophe comes, the other side takes the political hit. In truth, none of their reputations stands to benefit.And so - "the left" is right about how "the right" is wrong.
Aside from the silliness of the exercise, this little exchange is another illustration of a point I’ve noticed before: the way hard-right commentators assume that the other side must be their mirror image. They insist that no government intervention is ever justified; so liberals must support any and all government interventions. They want smaller government, as a principle; liberals must want bigger government, never mind what for. They believe that deficits and printing money are always evil; liberals must be for deficits and money-printing under all circumstances.This mirror-imaging thing has been effective for a long time, and it's the big reason (I think) for why Democrats get beat even when they have better ideas; why they're seen as weak in the face of political opponents who've got nothing but slander going for them. Unfortunately, The Mud-Slinger usually wins - especially if he's the first to sling that mud. Gerrymandering has plenty to do with why Dems couldn't get a majority in The House this time even when they got more votes overall, but the main thing is that way too often, the Repubs have put out some bogus crap - either a false positive for themselves or a false negative for the Dems - and let the already-in-place belief that "both sides do it / they're all the same" do the rest.
