When I talked about the Truthification of Public Discourse I had people like John Podhoretz in mind. Facts simply don’t matter for these folks. The worst thing about the IRS scandal was that it was treated as a partisan scandal in the first place. No evidence has ever surfaced that anyone outside the IRS had any role in their screening process, and progressive organizations were flagged along with conservative organizations. In the end, despite some inexcusable delays, no conservative organizations were denied tax-exempt status. And that’s the real travesty.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Oh, jeez, BooMan, you’ve stepped in it now. AG is an IRS Truther. I’ve engaged him on the subject this very day:
http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2014/1/11/82250/5972/33#33
Let’s see what he comes up with next- pass the popcorn!
has he called you a flock of sheeple yet?
But of course! His hostility is exquisite!
Arthur’s extremely rigid ideology prevents him from seeing he’s doing the TEA Party’s bidding, and that he misinforms just as his beloved PermaGov does; he just misinforms in different ways, and with different motivations. He is sincere about the issues he cares about and expresses some real knowledge about them before he moves on to his propaganda. Unfortunately for him, telling people to fuck off on a regular basis does not persuade; it repels.
In addition, it’s worth noting that there are a whole raft of important issues that BooMan, Steve and most of the commenters here care about. Arthur doesn’t care about some of those other issues, and is actively opposed to progressive solutions to others: voting, labor and civil rights, sexism and racism. His support for Ron and Rand Paul provides unavoidable evidence of this.
Finally, it’s become striking to me how thoroughly AG’s media critique methods mirror the TEA Party’s. We have plenty of complaints about the media, but we’re willing to acknowledge that factual information does exist. He conveniently pulls the mediatainment card whenever confronted with evidence which pushes back against his cases. To me, this tends to make Arthur’s stridency not only irritating, but awfully weak.
I accept him. It’s certainly futile to expect AG to evolve and grow. He likes himself. That’s fine.
Krugman covered similar territory in his blog today.
The IRS “scandal” and the Benghazi “scandal” share one key characteristic: each has been thoroughly debunked several different ways. At each of these stages, the more naive think, “surely that will put all this nonsense to rest.” And it never does, because the facts simply don’t matter to these people. At all. And we have a national media that, almost to the person, is too cowardly to call them on their anti-factual bullshit.
And we have a national media that, almost to the person, is too cowardly to call them on their anti-factual bullshit.
They are paid to be cowardly. Upton Sinclair nailed them so many years ago. To wit:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
Quite true. And Sinclair’s quote, now as then, explains much in American politics. But just because they’re paid for it – quite well – doesn’t make it any less cowardly.
Well, it makes them members of the world’s oldest profession, as well as cowards.
I thought the real travesty was that they found a woman to punish for their scandal. So now we’ve got at least one less female in public service.
This is getting real tiresome to watch – nothing ever really changes, does it?
Let’s say enough travesties to go around of which this was definitely a big one.
Yes, people keep forgetting that these so-called “social-welfare organizations” existed to function as campaign funding laundromats in blatant defiance of expressed congressional will and needed to be investigated. In the whole of the mass media only Stephen Colbert (supposedly a comedian) even attempted to draw attention to the fact, but the tax exemptions ought to have been denied and the Cincinnati officials should have been promoted rather than disgraced. The press response is what should have caused a scandal. Do I need to point out that political campaigns buy ads and that television and newspapers depend on ad revenue?