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shannon_aIf we lived in a country where there were two different points of view over how things should be done, and people made an honest choice between those options, I could live with it, even if my point of view were frequently ignored--as has indeed been the case these last 8 years (and longer when you consider stuff like NAFTA under Clinton).
But one of my biggest problems with today's politics is that there isn't a chance for honest discourse in this country right now, and that's largely because of lying politicians.
It was bad enough in bygone years when the Republican party ran on campaigns of lottery dreams. There were years when they talked about lowering taxes for the rich, and you could see that their underlying message was, "Hey, you might be rich some day, blue collar worker. So wouldn't you like to make sure that taxes are low for that glorious future?" I always felt like they were fooling people, like they were convincing the average American to vote against his best interest by holding out a carrot that they'd never get to eat.
But that's nothing to what the Republicans have done in this century.
I've heard Karl Rove's technique called The Big Lie several times, using the term that originated with Hitler. I think now we can look back and see that's how we got into the war with Iraq. According to Wikipedia:
But nowadays Republicans seem to be taking it to the next level. They're not just lying about the big things, they're lying about everything. McCain gets out there and offers the Big Lie of being opposed to George Bush, which might have been true 8 years ago, but hasn't been true since he prostituted himself to win the nomination. His campaign has also constantly been lying about Obama, most consistently purposefully misrepresenting his tax policies.
Palin may be even worse, as she seems to have been lying across her whole political career. She's now saying she's against earmarks, though her earmarks were so bad when she was mayor of Wassila that she made the bad-earmarks list of a certain Senator in congress three times.
(The senator? John McCain.)
She's saying she was against the infamous Alaskan Bridge to Nowhere, though she campaigned on pushing it through when she was trying to become governor of Alaska. At the convention she even claimed that Obama has never authored major legislation, a fact that's outright false (unless, I suppose you have a pretty frickin' high bar for "major").
The problem isn't just these lying politicians (and I'm sure there are some Democrats too, though among the Republicans it seems entirely endemic, and I think the contrast is most obvious in the political race), but rather than our media isn't doing anything about it.
We've started to get a little lackluster fact-checking by some of the main media, but it's still only offered secondary or tertiary attention. And, much of the fact-checking is still being done by second or third-tier media who no ones pays attention to. What happened to the media being the watchdogs of our society? They've entirely abrogated that responsibility. They should be calling politicians out when they're serial liars. That should be the big headline ("McCain's Newest Ad Once More a Big Lie!"), but instead they repeat the lies in their main stories, then list the incorrect facts back on page 33.
That's crap and they should be ashamed of themselves.
Barrack Obama today put out an ad straight-up calling the McCain campaign liars for the bullshit they've been saying (using a rare media quote that actually used the word "lie"). Hopefully it'll bring some light to peoples' eyes, but it has the unfortunate potential to backfire if he's suddenly seen as the "angry black man." But, he shouldn't even have to stick his neck out like that in the first place. The media should be doing their job, and they haven't for a long time.
But one of my biggest problems with today's politics is that there isn't a chance for honest discourse in this country right now, and that's largely because of lying politicians.
It was bad enough in bygone years when the Republican party ran on campaigns of lottery dreams. There were years when they talked about lowering taxes for the rich, and you could see that their underlying message was, "Hey, you might be rich some day, blue collar worker. So wouldn't you like to make sure that taxes are low for that glorious future?" I always felt like they were fooling people, like they were convincing the average American to vote against his best interest by holding out a carrot that they'd never get to eat.
But that's nothing to what the Republicans have done in this century.
I've heard Karl Rove's technique called The Big Lie several times, using the term that originated with Hitler. I think now we can look back and see that's how we got into the war with Iraq. According to Wikipedia:
The Big Lie is a propaganda technique. It was defined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf as a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously".
But nowadays Republicans seem to be taking it to the next level. They're not just lying about the big things, they're lying about everything. McCain gets out there and offers the Big Lie of being opposed to George Bush, which might have been true 8 years ago, but hasn't been true since he prostituted himself to win the nomination. His campaign has also constantly been lying about Obama, most consistently purposefully misrepresenting his tax policies.
Palin may be even worse, as she seems to have been lying across her whole political career. She's now saying she's against earmarks, though her earmarks were so bad when she was mayor of Wassila that she made the bad-earmarks list of a certain Senator in congress three times.
(The senator? John McCain.)
She's saying she was against the infamous Alaskan Bridge to Nowhere, though she campaigned on pushing it through when she was trying to become governor of Alaska. At the convention she even claimed that Obama has never authored major legislation, a fact that's outright false (unless, I suppose you have a pretty frickin' high bar for "major").
The problem isn't just these lying politicians (and I'm sure there are some Democrats too, though among the Republicans it seems entirely endemic, and I think the contrast is most obvious in the political race), but rather than our media isn't doing anything about it.
We've started to get a little lackluster fact-checking by some of the main media, but it's still only offered secondary or tertiary attention. And, much of the fact-checking is still being done by second or third-tier media who no ones pays attention to. What happened to the media being the watchdogs of our society? They've entirely abrogated that responsibility. They should be calling politicians out when they're serial liars. That should be the big headline ("McCain's Newest Ad Once More a Big Lie!"), but instead they repeat the lies in their main stories, then list the incorrect facts back on page 33.
That's crap and they should be ashamed of themselves.
Barrack Obama today put out an ad straight-up calling the McCain campaign liars for the bullshit they've been saying (using a rare media quote that actually used the word "lie"). Hopefully it'll bring some light to peoples' eyes, but it has the unfortunate potential to backfire if he's suddenly seen as the "angry black man." But, he shouldn't even have to stick his neck out like that in the first place. The media should be doing their job, and they haven't for a long time.