Holy fucking fuck. It is starting to make my stomach hurt to see these ads and hear these people with their subjective realities. Take vague, political talk about community, said by Romney AND Obama, but turn the one said by a Democrat and non white man into some sort of creeping socialism. Bam, campaign done. Even when you point out the blatant out of context snipping required to get the phrase about businesses not building themselves up, the conservatives declare that it is worse in context. Somehow pointing out that we live in a community and that communal, government run projects like roads and the internet allow entrepreneurs to make their money is akin to socialism. At least when a Democrat does it. Romney really gave a nearly identical speech at one point. It is meaningless political talk about community, although it does support Obama's claim that trickle down economics is a bad idea.
I have no deep analysis of this bullshit. It is, on its face, completely awful. Politics involves a lot of attack ads focusing on out of context statements and lies, but this one seems to be the pillar of Romney's campaign right now. He has based his entire campaign on sentence fragments from an unimportant Obama speech, and it works because conservatives (and most moderates) are really, really gullible. Authoritarian attitudes mean they believe what they are told, not just in spite of evidence but often because of it. Recent scientific studies have suggested that the conservative mindset, defined as well as possible, is only strengthened when proven wrong. Rationalization at its finest.
We live in a country where evidence only increases the passion of one side, and is forgotten by another. There are few progressives left, and tons of conservatives. Then there are the regressive, who not only believe what their leaders tell them but actively deny reality as "satanic." Ancient books and conn men are the source of information about the world for half of the US. Fact checking is seen as liberal bias, and when reality disagrees with opinion, reality is declared wrong. From laws in North Carolina declaring the sea level rise to be less than it actually is to poorly cut quotes to more than a hundred million people in the US who genuinely think a bearded man made the entire universe just for humans (white humans) six thousand years ago we live in a nation that values lies over truth.
Logic Priest
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