08-10-2021, 12:36 PM
(08-09-2021, 09:58 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The above seems a less controversial, less confrontational version of the blue narrative. I guess we do need a resolution, but I doubt it will come by just ignoring our differences.
Rachel Maddow came back from vacation this week, and basically asked (with tongue carefully in cheek) how dare they have news on the big issues while she was away? Her three leading segments were on the Covid response, the Big Lie and fighting global warming in time. My thought as she presented her segments, and rather convincingly with Dr Fauci and a senator on the relevant committee as guests, was that she was preaching to the choir. The people watching her show were blue. The people that need to save lives, reject the Big Lie and preserve the environment are not watching her show. They are going to custom red media that will tell them what they want to hear.
Now the above isn't wrong, but we can't just sidestep the key issues. The big meme of the crisis to be hammered home in the high is that we can't accept lies. I don't care if it is some media wannabe or as S&H suggested the civic generation that reinforces the point, but it has to become basic and central. We cannot live on the assumption that because it would be nice if something were so that it must be so.
"The choir" is a predictable audience, and the only reliable audience in a significant number. The rest of us will decide based upon results and the credibility of promises made by the challenger. Some incumbent Presidents are much stronger campaigners and have more events going in their favor, and only rarely does a solid President (Obama) face a strong challenger. Weak Presidents usually get stronger challengers because a likely loss to an incumbent President isn't a good prospect. If the incumbent President seeking re-election has a three-year economic meltdown working against him (Hoover in 1932), has never won a statewide election and is a continuation of a troubled Presidency (Ford in 1976), is enduring partisan fatigue (Bush 1992), or has bungled everything except consolidating the base (Trump in 2020), then a shrewd campaigner has an obvious chance to oust the struggling incumbent. Davis 1924, Smith 1928, Landon 1936, Willkie 1940, Dewey 1944, Dewey 1948, Stevenson 1952 (loser of the previous election!), Goldwater 1964, McGovern 1972, Mondale 1984, and Dole 1996 all had obvious weaknesses as challengers that anyone could have seen -- from being political neophytes, being cheerless characters, or being seen as dangerous radicals. Dubya was vulnerable in 2004, but his opponent was weaker intellectually (as shown in his performance as Secretary of State) than usual for a Presidential nominee. Mitt Romney was stronger than any challenger to an incumbent president who was at least solid in performance. Romney was "close to being close" in the count of electoral votes, which says more about him than about Obama.
In any event, Rachel Maddow has an audience largely convinced that Donald Trump is a despicable person. The difference between her and someone like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, or the late Rush Limbaugh is that she has fact-checked material that backs her. Ideally the question is not so much what one wants to be the truth but instead what is the truth. We are all free to hold our opinions, but we have no freedom to choose the facts.
Maddow's audience learned about COVID-19 the easy way through the consolidation of facts even of those facts are ugly and inconvenient. The opposite audience has found things out the hard way -- through the experience of truth at its harshest. Maddow's audience largely wore masks, washed frequently, did social distancing, and avoided the environments most likely to spread COVID-19. The other audience heard what it wanted to hear and is now finding out the hard way. One group has largely dodged COVID-19, and the other takes the disease at its harshest.
Maybe what we learn from COVID-19 will select Humanity for respect for objective facts over convenient falsehoods. Some people will have learned that objective truth is a more reliable guide to life than is what one wants to believe. I might love to believe that I have far more in my bank balance that I have, and that I could pay cash for a better house, a nice new car, and some really nice clothes, appliance, furniture, and electronic goodies with a side dish of some memorable excursions abroad. The reality is that I must struggle with some stark choices in life that I dislike. But if I should act on the assumption that I have a huge bank balance and do some wild spending, then I will be busted for writing hot checks. But that would reflect a self-generated lie. Believing someone else's lie (such as that Donald Trump really won the 2020 election) could be even more harmful -- just think of Ashli Bobbitt.
We are going to need to change our habits, and especially those of children, so that we can better discern truth-telling from lying or foolishness. We must also accept that telling the truth is less troublesome than is dodgy expression of something else. One can get away with lying until the truth becomes obvious. Just think of people who loudly lament their missing children and then are found to have murdered them and hidden their bodies. Truth need not be convenient, but it is certainly vital. That is how we will deal with all sorts of economic, political, and social distress.. and severe dislocations and tragedies. If you think COVID-19 troubling, then just think of horrors from the Holodomor and the Holocaust to the Bataan Death March and the horrific firebombing of Axis cities from Hamburg to Tokyo and finally atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you think the death toll of the Second Punic War -- excuse me, World War II -- and some of the most egregious offenses against human life and dignity associated with that time, then just think of what AGW can cause. Susan Smith could get away for a short time with drowning her young sons, but eventually she could get caught. We won't have the chance to drown huge numbers of peasant farmers in decrepit cars driven into the rising sea and get away with it.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.