The Washington Post is up in arms about the truth with an article about falsehoods perpetuated by both campaigns and the EJ Dionne question “Does the Truth Matter Anymore?” Candidates poison the information market for their own gain, embarrssing themselves with such nonsensical logic as Republican Strategist Mr. John Feheery’s analysis in the article:
“The more the New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there’s a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she’s new, she’s popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent,” Feehery said. “As long as those are out there, these little facts don’t really matter.”
I do regret missing that day in philosphy when we examined the relationship between the varying sizes of facts. Of course, the reason why men and women of great accomplishment are forced to engage in such mind-numbing behvaior every election season (and it would be impossilbe to say that anyone who ran for President in either field was not a person of remarkable accomplishment) is because the competition for elective audience demands it.
No matter that a free and independent mind should rather incur physical pain than say such stupid things without accepting correction and apologizing, the core problem is the Mr. Feehery is, in his own perversley put way, telling the truth about what does and does not work in democratic politics in our age. What he does for a living works. And before you start thinking up examples of people victimizing others that “work” for the vicitimizer like a sotry about an excellent bak robber or some such thing, you can spare me right now. It seems quite obvious that there is a “pull” in the information market for such lunacy, and Mr. Feehery and his colleagues and oppostie numbers on the Democratic side are as much rushing to fill demand as they are to create it. It is way harder to create demand for something than it is to supply something that people already want.
The demand for lousy information that self-confirms for people the idiotic propistions that no sane person could hold collectively without contradicting the actually sane propostions they hold to be true, combined with the interests of the candidates, professionals, interest groups, and candidates makes for a soup of lethally gross information out of perfectly rational behavior. The candidates, stafff, party loyalists, and sympathetic interests think they actually have the best interests for supporting their candidate anyway, so they will distort everyone else’s perception the way that people need to vote for their candidate. So you say inanely false things that obviously you do not believe, you get your person elected, you keep the craziest people in society pacified by conning them into thinking the candidate they voted for “speaks to them” and you go home and everyone wins. What could be so wrong about that?
What could be so wrong with that, is that the miserable lot of people handing over the power, the majority, are so pathetic in their reasoning skills, and so out of practice in using them with any ounce of wisdom that before you know it, they start deciding that they should elect judges, support leaders to upset the balance of powers, overwhelmingly support a President for going to War and then overwhelmingly turn on him for starting the exact same war they overwhelmingly supported.
Sandy Levinson once responded to me at Balkinization that the tyranny of the majority is an overstated problem, I don’t see how it can be overstated it is clearly the worst of the tyrannies because it represents the tyranny least likely to be capable of rational decision-making. It can only aggregate decisions when the choices are simple, but when the choices are simple enough for majorities to make rational choices, the stakes tend to be lower and thus the outcome of one or the other becomes less relevant anyway.
And that’s just the problem with majorities and their ability to make rational decisions, much less reasonable ones. The use of public reason is practiced so badly that if it were sport, it would be unwatchable.
An example, if oyu will permit: check out the reactions to this part of EJ Dionne’s column:
And now comes a truly vile McCain ad accusing Obama of supporting legislation to offer “‘comprehensive sex education’ to kindergartners.” The announcer declares: “Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family.”
Margaret Talev of McClatchy newspapers called the ad a “deliberate low blow.” Here’s what she wrote in an excellent fact check: “This is a deliberately misleading accusation. It came hours after the Obama campaign released a TV ad critical of McCain’s votes on public education. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama did vote for but was not a sponsor of legislation dealing with sex ed for grades K-12. But the legislation allowed local school boards to teach ‘age-appropriate’ sex education, not comprehensive lessons to kindergartners, and it gave schools the ability to warn young children about inappropriate touching and sexual predators.”
Now let’s see the responses by commenters:
This ad is in line with the Willie Horton and Harold Ford “call me” ad linking black men with sexual topics. Lying is bad enough, race baiting is reprehensible.
No. the media will continue to swoon over Palin and be intimated by the Republicans as they have been since 9/11.
Pretty unreasonable, but let’s keep going:
Question: is any kind of sex ed appropriate in kindergarten? Frankly, I thought this was the kind of thing better left to parents.
Ummm, did you not just READ the section above in the column?
If McCain/Palin are so concerned about sex ed, they need only look at Alaska which has the highest rape & incest rate in the entire country, according to a guest on Countdown. Add this to the reports that Alaska also has the highest high school dropout rate in the country. What’s up with Alaska?
Thanks for the comment. That was very helpful and topical to the discussion the article raised. (sarcasm)
One of my favorite internet comment genres, “Reading this in the newspaper makes me wonder where the media is in terms of covering these stories!”
Does the truth matter anymore?
It has NOT mattered to Bush, Chenny, Rove, Libby, mini-Bush-McCain, and now Sarah Palin, for they rather LOOSE a nation than an election.
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This lady Sarah Palin claims that the Iraq war is a plan of God, AS IF SHE KNEW GOD’S PLANS! That’s the same OLD tactic of corrupt leaders, corrupt priests, voodoo witches, and the like.This contribution is adorable because it highlights the outrageous nature of perpetuating falsehoods and then turns around and pushes a quote by Governor Palin that is inaccurate.
From my view in Toronto, I can not believe all the garbage you folks get get fed. Where is the press asking the tough questions. We get a very different slant on your politics up here. Too bad many of you don’t.
I read to that Mcain is in a dead heat with Obama. Unreal!?!? How does such a great nation continue to get it so wrong now for almost 10 years!?!?
This comment provides the insight that the information market must be pretty screwed up if the candidate that they believe to be the best might not win.
There is really no appropriate level of sex education for children in kindergarden. Wake up folks. When we will stop over-sexualizing our youth? Let them be kids, watch winnie the pooh, etc. This crazy stuff makes me question my previous support of democrat party candidates, and pushes me towards voting republican.
What? What on earth is so unreasonable about warning about inappropriate touching to Kindergartners. How is it unreasonable to say inappropriate touching is bad and you should tell someone if it happens “over-sexualizing our youth?” I admit I am not a big popular music person, but I don’t think todays music megastars are peddling songs aobut how if you are touched sexually, you should contact an uthority figure immediately! When Mr. Rogers explained “being touched where my bathing suit doesn’t cover” to me when I was “just being a kid” and learning how yellow crayons were made, it was a message that I understood as important (to the point where I still recall how he phrased it) that didn’t even mention sex.
Obama is for sex education. He was representing a very liberal constituency and operating in a mostly liberal legislative body. His votes are going to be examined.
Deal with it.
Teriffic, the “I’m right and everyone who disagrees with myt assertion is a wimp” genre, I was wondering when we would see this one.
Wow, the “far left” is strong here. Get over it. I want them to investigate Obama more than has been done. He is getting a free ride by the press who wants him elected. The media in this election will be talked about for years to come even if their “chosen one” loses. HAHA!! I love it!
Ummmm…. what?
I find it hard to believe that Dionne does not know the “Big Lie’ propaganda of Hitler’s Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Dionne, just Google the “14 points of fascism, living under fascism, Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda”, and you will finds the answer to your question.
and here’s our ad Hitlerum.
Alaska has the highest dropout rate because it has the best paying jobs in the country. Kids can drop out of grade 11 and get a job and earn 80K/year.
Imagine you’re 16 and someone is waving an 80K check and a 10K signing bonus and a company truck. You might go for it. I might go for it.
It is success, that you can support a family without having to write essays on Hamlet.
Stupid Hamlet. Actually, I actually think this comment is pretty reasoanble, including the “Hamlet” part. I just sort of got caught up in the internet commenting spirit for a second there.
Well, you get the idea. I believe, ecause someone else convinced me by reasoning with me about it, that the fact that people gesture towards trying to give good reasonsbetray that they understand some reasons are better than others. Pursuing the best possible reasons, according to the lieks of Peirce and Misak, requires a community of inquiry, and the commitment that the community of inquiry to which you belong has access to knowledge that can improve your own reasons. I think this is true for an individual in a community that does not seem to act like they believe it is true at times. Even in the worst epistemic community, more people is still better. More “better people” (at reasona exchange) is even better still. That seems to be how it is for the individual, but how many in a community of inquiry need to be skilled in the exhcange of reasons before it is better for the politician? To be discussed further I hope (in a reasonable exchange, of course!)
the press has decided to sleep this one out.
no one asks Republicans any questions
there is a complete pass, as the commentators spew the lies over and over and over again.
WHY?….