will the lying ever stop?

[realthog]

Senator Obama has said that, as President, he will end the gross waste of money spent on the military in the form of graft, corruption, scientifically unfeasible weapons systems, war profiteering, etc.; he will also work toward a world free of nuclear weapons.

Every competent economist reckons Obama must cut military spending if he is to introduce things like universal health care; every competent economist realizes that the money is there to be cut, thanks to enormous Pentagon wastage and the gross overmilitarization of this country -- unless I'm misremembering the figures, the US spends considerably more on "defense" (to use the Orwellesque term) than all the rest of the world put together.

Meanwhile, every competent military strategist recognizes the desirability of returning the world to its status, at least so far as weaponry is concerned, of nuclear-free zone.

So Obama's not saying anything particularly outrageous or revolutionary -- he just wants to halt a known gravy train and decrease the likelihood of worldwide annihilation.

Well, not according to the exceptionally dishonest scaremongers over at Macsmind, the self-styled blog of the MacRanger Radio Show (whatever the hell that is).

Either they're profoundly stupid or they're pathological liars -- probably both -- but they describe Obama's pretty staid statement as his commitment to "universally" (sic; it's clear they mean "unilaterally") disarm the US.

This bullshit has attracted 130 comments so far. Here's a selection:

+++++

The plans of Obama is so terrifying. I shudder to think what will become of America, the Great Nation? If Obama wins in the election America shall be invaded by terrorist and rule of ungodly people shall reign in America. American people should pray and rally not to let Obama win in the election, and I know for sure that people around the world will help to pray for the future of the United States of America. God will Bless America!

+++++

I was the USAF’s Nuclear Security Inspector 1972-77. This man is the biggest danger America has ever faced!

Robin Wayne Edwards
LTC USAF Ret.

+++++

Is he the Anti Christ? Who knows. One thing is for sure, the signs are all right for him to appear. Right is now considered wrong and wrong is now considered right. Christians are bad. Athiests, murders, thieves, rogues, child molesters and any other abonimable practioner is considered good. Gog and Magog (Russia) are aligned with the Middle Eastern Jew Hating Terrorists, while the Red Dragon (China) with it’s 200 million man army is standing by to join in for the kill. The US is considered the main enemy now because we are the only country strong enough to make a difference. If Obama is elected President, we can hang it up because we will have a leader who is aligned with our enemies. How do I know. Every thing he says indicates he is ready to disarm our country and surrender to our enemies. The rest of you may not think he is a Muslim but I don’t buy it. He is either a Muslim or a fool and I dont’ think he is a fool. He is too ready to put his faith in those radical terrorist regimes and “negotiate” with them when everyone knows that their religion promotes lying to non believers as a virture and using negotiation as a tool to stall while they reinforce their position. If he isn’t the AntiChrist, he is a damned good imitation.

+++++

Yes, Lets all run out and vote for NERO! IT WORKED OUT GREAT FOR THE ROMANS, DIDNT IT!

+++++

How could you possibly vote to have a man named OBAMA run our country after Sept. 11th. Have you people forgot about that? I havent. He is all about giving to minorities. Thats just what we need, more handouts for the lazy people. He will RUIN this coutry.

+++++

OBAMA is helping to stage IRAN to not only NUKE Israel but also the USA. He may have an education, however I would like to know a couple of things. Did he attend class and how do we know if he sent somebody in to take it for him.

+++++

It amazes us…….and really frightens us… that there are so many “American citizens” that insist on voting for Barrack Hussein Obama to be the leader of our United Stated of America. Are they so blind and forgetful as to put aside the fact that we’ve been fighting terrorism technically since 1990 and Osama bin Laden has been spreading hatred since 1979? And, NOW, they want to elect a leader who has a name that not only sounds like our enemies’ name but has absolutely no experience dealing with wartime affairs? In fact, we hadn’t even HEARD of him before! Yeah, he wants to “change” our country–into one that will be easy for Osama and his gang to over-power.

+++++

That's as much as my digestive system can take.

There are two points here.

First, how extraordinary -- and extraordinarily depressing -- it is that so many of our fellows are not only so misinformed but also have so little connection with straightforward everyday logic. They lack the mental tools to construct a rational argument and the common knowledge upon which to base that argument. This is not to say that they're necessarily stupid: they're just appallingly undereducated or miseducated.

Second, people in certain news media, like those of the MacRanger Radio Show, want to keep it that way. Clearly they recognize the danger to their vile ideology of an educated, informed public.

So they lie.

When will they ever stop?

Comments

[eglady.livejournal.com]

Oh. My.

The thing I don't get is how advertisers can still be sticking with some of these media outlets. Where is the outrage of logical people demanding that they pull the plug or lose their customer base?

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"The thing I don't get is how advertisers can still be sticking with some of these media outlets."

This puzzles me as well. You'd have thought it might have occurred to the advertisers that they're losing potential sales, even without folk phoning or e-mailing to protest. I mean, Pam and I boycott a fair number of products on the basis of where they advertise; and if we're doing there must be millions of others doing the same.

Perhaps the advertisers think their products' main hope of finding a market is with stupid people?

[eglady.livejournal.com]

"Perhaps the advertisers think their products' main hope of finding a market is with stupid people?"

Buy now, and you too can follow the idiots into the abyss! It's what all the cool kids are doing!

[realthog.livejournal.com]

It does seem to be the case, doesn't it? I'm amazed by the number of tv ads for fast-food chains that stress the quantities all the yummy high-cholesterol, artery-jampacking, heart-devastating, acne-detonating stuff they'll ladle onto every portion.

[louismaistros.livejournal.com]

I keep seeing this kind of thing, and it always leaves me speechless. Which is hard to do.

It's like the evil among us are so desperate to smear Obama, and when they find there's nothing to smear him on, they make up these outrageous stories.

What's sad is that there are plenty of uneducated people out there who are willing to buy this nonsense by way of their own irrational fears and ignorance.

Bush being re-elected should have been an impossibility. This method actually works. It is scary.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"What's sad is that there are plenty of uneducated people out there who are willing to buy this nonsense by way of their own irrational fears and ignorance."

Even sadder is that those fears and ignorance may doom the rest of us.

[louismaistros.livejournal.com]

Amen, brother. But I am holding out a hope that common sense still exists on a large scale. Hopefully, large enough.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I wish I were that optimistic!

[quilterbear.livejournal.com]

It feels like trying to hold back the sea...

[realthog.livejournal.com]

A simile that very often occurs to me, too: the ocean of false knowledge and corrupted understanding has become too great to be resisted, and soon it will inundate the remaining islands of truth and reason. My prognosis for the species is a gloomy one.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

The lying will never stop.

We can stop believing the lies.

I never did.

Neither did you.

Nor did anyone who posts and reads this blog.

People want to believe the lies.

That's what we must combat -- their need to believe these lies.

Love, C.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"That's what we must combat -- their need to believe these lies."

True, dat.

But do we have time?

[hefngafr.livejournal.com]

I grew up in a Conservative Baptist family, and my brother and sister still belong to Baptist churches, don't believe in evolution, think climate change happens all the time anyway, believe the Bible is literally true, and so on. I can tell you that these are not stupid people. As somebody said, what they are is ignorant. The scariest thing to me about it is that they are just simply not interested in information. They're interested in how they feel, and Fundamentalism makes them feel good. My sister has quoted to me more than once the adage that "If you're a Republican before you're 30, you haven't got a heart; if you're a Democrat after 30, you haven't got a mind." How do you respond to that? What's the comeback? When *I* got interested in information, I had to leave the church and break my mother's heart. To her it was unfathomable that what you think about, say, evolution could possibly matter more than how you feel about it. ("I don't understand why you'd rather believe people came from apes than that God made them." Rather think??? You can't argue with that mindset, and it can't be changed. And it is exactly as scary as you think it is. These people VOTE.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"The scariest thing to me about it is that they are just simply not interested in information."

Agreed -- I find it not just scary but incomprehensible.

"These people VOTE."

And they rise to positions of power, which is as terrifying. Every time I recall Il Buce talking about how he'd looked into Putin's soul and seen he was a good guy, I have a shiver run up my back. That's not the most dangerous of Il Buce's "thinkin' from the gut an' proud of it" conclusions, but it's the one where his absolute divorce from logic and reason was most visible. It clearly never occurred to him that judging someone this way was asinine, and most especially so when the fate of nations might well depend upon it.

[guidoeekhaut.livejournal.com]

Absolutely frightening, this sort of rhetoric. All the more, as you say, because these people are probably not stupid (that would be bad too), but have no insight into basic historical and political facts. I'm sure, however, that this sort of reactions would emerge from any public in any country. But the communications media have now given unlimited power to anyone who can buy a computer and use a keyboard. Clint Eastwood once said: "opinions are like assholes, everyone has one". It's not about having an opinion, it's about having an informed opinion. And with mass-media being more and more about opinions (more and more 'columns' in newspapers for instance) and less and less information and knowledge, this is only getting worse.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Yes, the advantage of the mainstream media used to be that their news coverage used to be, in effect, peer reviewed -- that was what editors were all about. Now they've discovered it's cheaper to fill the columns with opinion than with proper news and analyses, and that they can appeal to readers by echoing and reinforcing those readers' basest and most ignorant opinions.

Why should they worry if they're hastening the onset of another Dark Age?

Yeah, well . . .

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, I find these lies as frightening and disheartening as you do. On the other hand, they are so batshit gibbering insane that I suspect they're influencing only the fringe groups like Stormfront. (The Chinese have an army equal to 15 percent of their total population? Ye gods and small fishes, how do they do that?)

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"On the other hand, they are so batshit gibbering insane that I suspect they're influencing only the fringe groups like Stormfront."

I wish I could agree with you on that. I think great swathes of the public swallow this nonsense whole -- and, worse, regard the underlying illogic as rational discourse. There's a good piece here (http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/409183.html) about how it's the emotive garbage that gets the applause . . . and the votes.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Certainly, people respond to emotional appeals. But they're not the only thing people respond to, and they can be overriden by realities -- like having to pay the bills.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"they can be overriden by realities -- like having to pay the bills"

You'd have thought so, wouldn't you? Yet a high percentage of Americans believe Obama intends to raise their taxes, McCain to reduce them, even though such a belief flies directly in the face of the two candidates' expressed policies. If these people spent one minute in rational consideration of which policy is more likely to help them pay their bills . . .

Meanwhile, over at http://pastorbear.livejournal.com/109883.html we have someone expressing her "sincere belief" that Obama is paving the way for the coming of the Antichrist.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"we have someone expressing her "sincere belief" that Obama is paving the way for the coming of the Antichrist"

That "someone", I should add hastily in case of misunderstanding, is not the excellent pastorbear herself.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

On the basis of apodeictic assertion and nothing else!. On that basis, I proclaim you the reincarnation of John Knox and myself the second coming of the Ba'al Shem Tov (well, we do share a birthday).

It's easier, I think to appeal to irrational fears when people don't have real ones to deal with. More people today have real fears to deal with.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"well, we do share a birthday"

We do? How embarrassing. I must go and change mine at once.

"It's easier, I think to appeal to irrational fears when people don't have real ones to deal with."

Hm. This sounds convincing but I'm not sure how true it is. I must think it over and get back to you . . .

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

No, the Ba'al Shem Tov and I...

You may change yours, of course. I recommend the Diada the Catalunya.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Further to that: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/08/another_possible_dover.php

[eglady.livejournal.com]

I have otherwise well-intentioned normal relatives who have been brainwashed by Fixed News. If it's on the news, it has to be true.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I would like to see added to every educational curriculum a course in how to think. I imagine that in olden days the study of philosophy filled that bill, however irrelevant or misguided many of the philosophies might themselves be. But we all tend to assume that logical thinking's a natural function like breathing and excreting; in reality, it's something that has to be learned . . . and many of us never in fact learn it, being able to "get by" without doing so.

Lack of education...

[teacher-bear.livejournal.com]

Oh how I agree with you. The presidential election is scary. Look how americans vote in American Idol!

Re: Lack of education...

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I've never followed the programme, I'm afraid. Does it prefer the talentless to the talented?

I thought some of these talent shows did occasionally unearth someone good. The only one I can recall offhand was Mary Hopkin, who was probably picked for all the wrong reasons (long blonde hair, cute face) but who turned out in fact to be quite a find -- her Apple album was pretty good, and I've heard some later stuff of hers which was pretty fine.