Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label false equivalence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label false equivalence. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

The Great Divide


Basically, there're two kinds of people, so we generally find them on opposite sides of the "political divide", and it ends up like this:

Side 1:
I've suffered
I don't think anyone else should have to suffer
I'll try to do the things that can help people avoid all that suffering

Side 2:
I've suffered
Others should suffer as well
I'll do what needs to be done to make sure they all suffer

Both sides my ass.

Wednesday, September 06, 2017

About That False Equivalence

The Daily Beast, Dean Obeidallah

Let’s put it bluntly: Antifa is not part of the Democratic Party, while white supremacists are part of the GOP. 

But that hasn’t stopped some on the right from peddling the false narrative that antifa is part of the Democratic Party and somehow Democrats have to answer for the movement. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson recently declared that Antifa “is a political militia that is doing the bidding, in effect, of Nancy Pelosi and Governor Jerry Brown and the mayor of Berkeley and all these supposedly mainstream Democratic politicians.”

- snip -

Sean Hannity added his voice to this chorus of false equivalency throwing a temper tantrum about antifa while asking: “When are the Democrats in this country going to condemn this out of control left-wing hate and violence?” And the list goes on with people like Laura Ingraham parroting this talking point.

You get the idea. The right wants people to believe that antifa is a wing of the Democratic Party and that Democrats must answer for its violent actions. This couldn’t be more wrong and the right knows it. 

Let’s be clear about who antifa is and isn’t. It’s a decentralized anti-fascist group. Experts make it clear that antifa members are “self-described revolutionaries” who are “anarchists and communists who are way outside the traditional conservative-liberal spectrum.”

Monday, September 04, 2017

Fun Fact


WaPo, Margaret Sullivan:

Right-wing extremists committed 74 percent of the 372 politically motivated murders recorded in the United States between 2007 and 2016. Left-wing extremists committed less than 2 percent.
- snip -

But it’s safe to say that most news consumers, if they know anything about antifa, know what the president has told them, and what they’ve gleaned from the club-wielding protesters shown endlessly on TV: that it’s roughly the left-wing equivalent of neo-Nazis and white supremacists. 

That’s not only untrue, but it has the effect of tarring everyone who protests Trump, as well as those who peacefully march for climate-change awareness or rally against hate-mongering speakers such as Milo Yiannopoulos, the onetime Breitbart provocateur.

The best thing journalists can do is to relentlessly explain the beliefs, scope and scale of antifa, and to resist conflating it with liberal groups. And most important, to challenge politically motivated efforts to create a false equivalency between antifa and the rising tide of white supremacy. There is no comparison.

Friday, May 13, 2016

It Is To Laugh

If it was any less tragic, it wouldn't be funny.



And there it is - right there at the end.  Did you catch it?  

It's always some variation on, "Yeah, but the Democrats" - what driftglass calls "the razor in the apple".

This was a 4-minute piece about Trump dropping in on the enemy encampment in DC.  They spent the whole time saying not really much of anything except that a buncha Show Ponies got together for a little meet-n-greet, followed by the usual grip-n-grin photo ops etc, and while it sounded like we were kinda getting a little subtext about the really bad shit going on in the GOP, in the end, the Press Poodles at PBS just have to bring it back to the crapola False Equivalence that keeps the coffee mugs and the tote bags flying off the shelves and blah blah fucking blah.

Friday, June 26, 2015

Just Thinking

Spit-ballin' may be a better word for what I'm doing, but no matter - this is just a silly blog that's practically invisible, so I get to blather away to my little heart's content.

Here in USAmerica Inc, we have an attention span roughly equivalent to the life expectancy of a meth-addicted fruit fly, so I'd better get this one bit of "thinking" out of my head and onto the InterToobz posthaste.

On the matter of The Confederate Battle Flag, and the various monuments and statues of the heroes of The CSA etc, here's the thing:

Ya gotta figure there were plenty of Tories left in this joint in about 1783, so I'm wondering why we don't see any statues or monuments in the USA commemorating George III.  And where are all those elementary schools named after Benastre Tarleton, and Charlie Cornwallis?  

It's a wonderment.

Sunday, October 05, 2014

Listen To Charlie

Logical fallacy is the bread-n-butter of American Media.  Almost everything that goes out on TV & Radio, or into what's left of the Dead Tree Publications business is going to include some level of "Yeah but the Democrats" and "Both sides do it" and "It has to be all and only this way or all and only that other way".  

Wanna know where all that False Equivalence and False Dichotomy shit gets us?

Here's Charlie Pierce to 'splain some of it to us:
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.

--and--
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.

Listen to driftglass and BlueGal every Friday, and almost every time, you'll get a decent reminder on how to spot the "both sides" crap.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Revisiting The Visitors Thing

From The Daily Press (Virginia tidewater area) yesterday, talking about the most recent attempt to swing government towards the Authoritarian side of the spectrum:
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?

It's not always easy to see who's wrong and who's right, but sometimes it's actually pretty clear.  But then somehow, no matter what the issue is, and no matter what the outcome was; for the public, the discussion of these problems must always be shoe-horned into "both sides..." and "plenty of blame to go around" and "it makes everybody look bad" etc etc etc.  False Equivalency must prevail.

The Press Poodles have become extraordinarily adept at making it sound like they're just trying to be the voice of moderation - trying to keep the peace - trying to maintain a healthy balance.

Maybe we're seeing the logical progression of the very sorry state of affairs in the News-As-Profit-Center model of "journalism" in the 21st century.  They can't afford to take any financial hits, so if they piss off any of their readers then they stand to lose revenue, and that means they dance according to whoever's paying the band, and that means we get "news" that's been bleached to the point of invisibility.

But for me it also means we're being told not to pay attention; we shouldn't let it worry our pretty little heads, and we can all just go back to sleep.

Bullshit.

It matters what's true and not true.
It matters what's best for the most.
It matters what my government is doing in my name and with my money.
It matters that I have a say in how my government operates.

And it matters a lot for the 4th Estate to get back up on its hind legs and start doing it's fucking job again.

Hey, News Editors - if you think something's fucked up, then you say so.  If it turns out you got it wrong, then you own it and you say you were wrong about it - and hey, guess what - that means you'll have something to put in your little newspaper tomorrow.  Could we try that for a while?

Saturday, August 02, 2014

The Challenge

On the The Professional Left podcast this week, Bluegal referenced the video below (Samuel L Jackson saying motherfucker - 171 times)...



...and then issued a challenge:  Somebody should do something similar with Chuck Todd and Cokie Roberts and any other Press Poodle who draws a paycheck for being adept at Pimping The Horserace - ie: making sure that whenever Ted Cruz walks across the rotunda and publicly skull fucks John Boehner, what we hear at the end of the TV segment is, "Yeah, but the Democrats..." and "Both sides..." and "There's plenty of blame to go around..."

Once you know what to look for, it's easier to find.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

The Opposites Game

Using the same tactics you criticize your opposition for using.

Let's call this one The Alinsky Gambit.  The following is a list of Power Tactics that Saul Alinsky put together in his 1971 book, Rules For Radicals - A Pragmatic Guide For Realistic Radicals.  See if you can spot the ones being employed by your favorite "conservative" organization.
Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

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.
hat tip = Snopes

And yes, the Dems use the same tactics - but then the Dems aren't saying it's a bad thing for the other side to be doing it.  There's only one side doing that.





Along the same lines - "conservatives" bluster and harrumph about something like Rules For Radicals, but then turn around and mimic the thing they spend so much time and energy slagging.  Here're a coupla books on Amazon that I guess are intended to countervail Alinsky:



Just A Quickie

...on the Bob Menendez thing.

I think it's a bit suspicious that Menendez suddenly has another "corruption problem" pop up just as Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell are getting fried for actually and obviously being corrupt.

I'm not saying it's not possible for Menendez to be less than a perfectly straight shooter - there's a fair probability that he's at least a little crooked, cuz a) he's a politician and b) he's a New Jersey politician.  It's just that the timing seems a little too coincidental, and after the bullshit allegations about him and Dominican hookers, this new stuff has to be seen through very skeptical filters.

But here's the real kicker.  This is a tweet from Brad Dayspring, Repub Nat'l Senatorial Committee:
"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.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

A Confirmation Bias To Call My Very Own

The Guardian:
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.

But then:
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.

And to drive the point home, he quotes WaPo:
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.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

A Special Message

For all of our friends out there who're still hung up on the conventional wisdom - stuck in the rut of False Equivalence  - still convinced that "both sides do it" - "they're all the same".  These are otherwise good people.  And no matter how fucked up the Repubs get, they're just always going to say, "Yeah, but the Democrats..."

This is for them - because we love them:

Monday, February 04, 2013

The Basic Fallacy

Krugman has a quick one about the argumentative attacks that get thrown at "Liberals":
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.

Once you've set up the framing that requires this Manichean binary simplicity, it gets easier.  And if you have Press Poodles who're willing to help maintain this false balance between false equivalence and false dichotomy, then you have the required 3-legged stool on which to build the perfectly false reality we kinda find ourselves in right now.

Saturday, February 02, 2013

Today's Quote

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.” --Winston Churchill

That quote came to mind as I was listening to the podcast from The Professional Left.


Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Little Red State Fundy

A golden oldie from driftglass.


I'm not overly fond of the Scary Scenario.  Repubs use it all the time to spook people - trying to talk us into believing they've got answers to questions they're usually just yankin' outa their asses.  But I guess the difference here is that you can look at something like driftglass's Little Red State Fundy and see some real historical foundations for it.

So there's an element of "both-sides-do-it" - no denying that.  I just think it's important to remember always to test for False Equivalence.

Monday, October 29, 2012

A Quickie

Undecided Voters get a lot of attention, and I think the spanking they're finally taking is richly deserved and long overdue.



I think I can (mostly) conclude that The Undecided Voter is trying to rationalize his apathy by hiding behind this phony impartiality.  Being "undecided" becomes a way to deflect criticism for staying deliberately ignorant of practically the whole process.  And the more we kiss their asses trying to move them one way or another, the more Undecided Voters we create - because we end up rewarding this childish behavior.

In the end, Undecided is just another form of Both Sides Do It / They're All The Same etc.

It's bullshit and they need to be called out for it.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Out On A Limb

I have to admit I've been a little intrigued by what Lil Donny Trump's October Surprise could possibly turn out to be.  But then, along comes Gloria Allred and it's very possible that I can make a solid connection, and a prediction with a fair probability of being right.

First, the leading speculation seems to be that Trump has "uncovered" some "evidence" indicating that Barack and Michelle Obama were like all set to file divorce papers back in 2001 or whatever.  So this is not a big deal in any meaningful way except as a political tool.  Did the Obamas get a divorce?  No.  Did they move beyond some kind of preliminary filing?  Apparently not cuz they're like y'know, still married.  Does any of that shit matter?  Yes - but only if you think I should be in jail because I've tho't about kicking Donald Trump in the nuts; or that Tagg Romney should be in a cell at Gitmo for saying he wanted to take a swing at Obama.

Enter Ms Allred, who is helping out Maureen Stemberg Sullivan in her divorce efforts against Tom Stemberg (founder of Staples).  It seems ol' Willard gave sworn testimony in the divorce proceeding, and that his statements were sealed, and that The Boston Globe has petitioned the court to unseal them for all to see and enjoy.

Could there be anything in the testimony that's bad for Willard?  Well, what if his statements were to the effect that Staples wasn't as profitable as WIllard was telling his investors?  What if he kinda fudged it all - just a little - so his buddy Tom could kinda fuck his soon-to-be ex-wife out of a nice big chunk of settlement money?  And it doesn't have to be anything all that horrible.  If the story is that Romney did anything but stand up and champion Mrs Stemberg's cause, you can bet Benjamins to Baby Wipes he'll come off looking like a paternalistic wife-beater to lots of women voters.

So in rides The Donald to make a pre-emptive strike that works to show Obama in the same light.  On the one side, you've got Romney + Divorce, and on the other side, you've got Obama + Divorce.  Simple equation.  Both sides do it.  Both sides are exactly the same.  Nothing to see here, nothing to think about.  It's all even - go back to sleep.

Ya heard it here.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Same Shit, New Day

Repubs absolutely adore this play.  They run it all the time.


hat tip = Addicting Info

In 2004 and 2008, RushBo and Cheney at al were telling us that if we voted for the Dems, al-Qaeda would get us.  Now it's "Vote Republican or lose your job".  There's just always a boogey-man du jour.  But, Repubs (generally) use threats that aren't firmly anchored in a little thing called objective reality.  We elected Obama, and none of the bad things they told us would happen happened.

  • no concentration camps
  • no confiscation of guns
  • taxes are down, and the Dow is up
  • oil and banks and telecomm weren't nationalized
  • no forced gay marriage (or whatever the fuck that one was about)
  • kids are still reciting The Pledge in school every day
  • and on and on and on

But - throwing a bone to the centrists in the crowd - yes, the Dems play the same game (tho' with one notable difference).  The Dems have been trying to warn us about the Repub agenda:

  • kill the unions
  • overturn Roe v Wade
  • defund the safety net
  • de-regulation
  • cut down on competition and accountability
The difference being that the Dems are warning us about real problems with a Radical Right agenda, and the Repubs are mostly just makin' shit up.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Urinalysis

This one makes the rounds every so often.


I was thinking that if one of you "conservative" geniuses ever once tho't of challenging the Pee Test in the courts on 4th and 5th Amendment grounds (eg), maybe you'd feel a bit less inclined to shit on poor people all the fuckin' time.  Cuz that's really it, right?  You need to be absolutely sure that you never have to admit that the guys you're always voting for are bending you over the table and fucking you with your pants on; you can't stand thinking that everything they've told you over the last 30 years is total bunk; and how they're using you to do their dirty work on everybody else.

So it just can't be that you're allowing yourselves to get fucked over.  It's really all about how you need that shit to roll on down the hill, so you can feel a little better about the whole filthy mess - that you helped create - that you help perpetuate every time you buy into this cynical manipulation.

Would this be a bad time to start talking to you about accepting responsibility for your part in turning this country into the giant FUBAR that you're always pissin' and moanin' about?

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Both Sides Do It

But one side ain't been tryin' this shit.

First, take a tweet from an Obama staffer:
Then, ignoring the the actual content (not just the context) of the Milbank piece Messina referred to, pretend that it's the Dems who're insulting Latinos.
And guess what?  Because they never check on anything, the rubes will swallow it whole.  Another bit of "evidence" is manufactured and another "truth" is born.

(hat tip = Wonkette)