On 4/12/2011 4:10 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:31:59 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> When exactly are we going to stop accepting the endless and constant
>> bullshit,
>
> Never, because there will always be people who will take 'belief' over
> 'knowledge' because they've been conditioned to do so.
>
> Jim
True enough. But, the question is where is the tipping point. Where do 
people stop accepting, as a general whole, obvious lies, simply because 
a lot of people say they believe them? There is some hope, and some 
terror in that regard recently. On one hand, most rational people won't 
trust Fox News to say that the sky is blue, without either checking 
themselves, or having some prior knowledge, which makes the statement 
plausible. On the other, they have *no* problem listening to Oprah, 
Depok Chopra, accepting everything printed in say, Huffpo as true, even 
when its about medical science (which they know about as much about, and 
get right about as often as a medieval alchemist). Most also don't even 
question whether or not some place like CNN has checked their facts, or 
bothered to find someone that **actually** has a damn clue what they are 
talking about, just how many unrelated doctorates they have. Watching 
something from them, sometimes... its literally like pitting a physicist 
against a theologian, while talking about bioscience. A decision that 
makes about as much sense as asking your auto mechanic, and the village 
idiot, discuss effective farming. One probably hasn't a damn clue, and 
can't address, correct, or even get right, key points, and the other is 
there to talk about what their foot fungus told them last week about the 
subject. Neither should have been there, but for people like CNN, its 
*important* to show both sides, even if you pick the two worst possible 
people to address either one of them.

Not to say that, for example, MSNBC is much better. These people 
actually "put" the owner of Huffington Post as someone to discusses 
issues, and actually think Depok has some profound understanding of the 
universe, which he can use to talk about various subjects. But, its 
**still** marginally better, in my opinion, than either bringing two 
complete idiots on, to both spout total gibberish, a la CNN, ABC, etc., 
or just the theologically driven ones, or business driven, etc., who... 
well, lets just say that there is always on person in your family you 
would never talk to about anything important, lend money to, trust to do 
what you asked, or have a conversation about certain subject with, 
because they are a complete, self serving, clueless, nitwit. Fox would 
find that person, and give them their own segment.

Fox's owner isn't an idiot. He gets what a lot of them, including the 
fools that keep trying to "show both sides" without actually saying 
which one is more plausible or not, and calling it "integrity", can't 
seem to grasp. It doesn't matter if you are right, if you tell the truth 
or lie, if you contradict yourself, or you spend all your time playing a 
game of wag the dog. What matter is if your viewers will bother double 
checking any of it, if they really pay attention, if they are willing to 
compare notes, and **how spooked, crazy, paranoid and fearful you keep 
them**, precisely so they will never do any of those things. Its the 
Evangelical Church of media news. "Don't watch any one else, don't trust 
anyone else, don't listen to anyone else, don't question, don't wait and 
think about it, just do what we say, think what we say, hate who we say, 
and keep watching!"

And, 90% of the TV news, and most of the papers, all just present 
"balanced" views, by simply repeating, without comment, what ever insane 
gibberish one side says, and what the other side says about what was 
said, without so much as lifting a finger and saying, "According to our 
own fact checking, X side is off their rocker, and/or lying." No, they 
let someone else say that, then just present the two sides as equal, "So 
and so said X. The other so and so says its a lie. As news people, we 
have no opinion at all, or if we do, its the opinion of the person that 
pays, not the opinion of someone that cares about which one of them *is* 
telling the truth."

Personally, I consider someone like Chopra to be a completely useless 
source of any information, but... he just muddies the waters. The wackos 
on the other side, can't legally burn every copy of a book they don't 
like, but they sure as damn will do the next best thing, and ban it from 
as many places as possible, if allowed. In other words, the choice is 
between having some moron give bad information, and having a lot of 
people believe it, or someone telling you that you are not even 
**allowed** to decide what information you get to pick from, when 
looking for facts. This.. should scare people. And seriously, it is how 
the right thinks, about religion, about science they don't like, about 
medical things they don't like, about social things they don't like, 
etc. You can pick one of any three approved things, but you can't even 
look at the 497 unapproved ones they deemed, "too dangerous to allow you 
to even know about." That none of the three approved ones work, doesn't 
matter, they are protecting you from the other 480 that don't either, 
and the 17 that they don't like, find icky, seem ungodly, etc., some of 
which work well, and others at least *do* work, if badly.

All that matters is if they can approve of your choices before hand. 
Hell, the whole political system is that way in the US. You don't pick 
who get presented for election, you don't get to pick which one of those 
"wins", the parties do, then if there is more than one of them, in most 
states you can't pick a Democrat, if you like them better than a 
Republican, should you happen to be registered Republican, or vise versa 
(this being explained that you need to let the "party" pick its 
candidate for itself, since, apparently its the candidate best for the 
"party" not your state, or country, that matters), then, finally, you 
get to pick between the two left, or any random, no name, non-moneyed 
extra that might be floating around. The result is, you get people 
shackled, ankle to ankle with their party, in most cases, and if that 
party drifts away from its core values, turning more and more to the 
right (I haven't seen a single damn case of either of them ever moving 
more left in the US), the "choice" you get is, short of pure accident, a 
representation of what the *party* wants, not what the people think they 
need.

Frankly, I am not sure why they bother campagning at all at this point. 
If both parties fielded candidates, and all they said was, "we stand for 
our party", we would still end up with one of them in office, and they 
would still ignore the public's interest, and push for what ever their 
party thinks the country needs at this point (while completely ignoring 
the public). Just look at the fiasco in Wisconsin, where they pretty 
much just declared that all the protest where from a) people too stupid 
to understand, and b) unions, not actual concerned citizens. Or, the 
equal fiasco in the federal government right now, with some idiot 
suggesting they, "keep the governments hands off of people's medicare", 
by effectively erasing it for everyone younger than a certain age, so 
that they go right back to where everyone was *before* the program 
existed. Except for the "vouchers", which I imagine would, like the 
vouchers for private schools, work just as well, you know, by producing 
"worse" results, over all, when someone bothers to check the numbers, 
than "public" schools, which are failing with the same grace and 
government disinterest as certain deep water oil wells...

I am just waiting for the Regressives to decide that they need to "save 
money" by cutting Bushes "No Child Left Behind" program, thus killing 
two birds with one stone. They, "reduce government", and eliminate the, 
generally otherwise useless, program that produced all those disturbing 
numbers that suggest voucher systems don't work, and that "private" 
schools are probably actually almost as bad as fundi-gelical home 
schooling in some cases (not to be confused with the maybe 1% taught by 
parents with lots of money, time, and high educations, who *don't* buy 
books from Answer In Genesis, or the fundi-home school sources, for 
their kids "science" education, "adjusted" history, and various other 
atrocities).

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