STABBY (On false neutrality)

It is really, really irritating to listen to Republicans. Not the heads of the party, but the little guys on the street. They buy anything said heads sell them, no questions asked. When told that repeating the policies that caused the recession will fix things, they buy it wholesale. When told Obama hates business because of one really out of context quote, they convince themselves that is what Obama said. When told the Obama didn't pass any budgets in his recent two years, they forget it was because of the GOP dominated house blocking everything. When their party breaks shit and blames Obama, no matter how obvious, they buy it.

What is interesting is that Democrats, the little guys, don't seem to buy their own party's bullshit as quickly. This isn't to go on about the supposed intellectual differences between the GOP and DNC, but it is interesting how self identified liberals question their own leaders while self identified conservatives refuse to ever admit one of theirs could be wrong. At this point the cognitive dissonance of pinning the blame for things that happened in 2008 must be painful. Any time a fact check points out a GOP inaccuracy (read: lie) they claim the media is biased and full of shit. When the same fact checkers point out a DNC lie they jump all over it as absolute truth, which is interesting because sometimes in the interest of appearing neutral people like politifact and CNN apply a higher standard of truth to the DNC claims than the GOP ones.

Politifact and CNN are the worst ones about that. They are so desperate to appear in the middle they forget the truth has nothing to do with the middle. The truth is independent of any ideology and as Stephen Colbert said, reality has a well known liberal bias. Both parties lie and misrepresent facts, but the GOP is far, far worse about it because their own base will believe anything they tell them. The Democratic party cannot lie as much because their own party members will call them on it and the media spends a lot more time on it.

Really there isn't much to be done about the deliberate ignorance of conservative voters, they spend their whole lives deluding themselves with gods and alternate pasts. But I really dislike the imaginary version of neutrality the media is attempting. If you hold the DNC responsible for misstatements or slight inaccuracies then hold the fucking GOP accountable to that level as well. Take the time to make it very clear to liberal and moderate voters that the GOP rarely, if ever, speaks the truth. Point out lies from both, but hold them to the same standards. Pointing out the higher volume of GOP lies doesn't make you biased, it just means the GOP lies more. This universal media attachment to the golden mean fallacy is bad for the system, bad for democracy in general. Media should focus on the truth, not the opinion of an unappeasable conservative base. No amount of pretend neutrality will ever make Fox News watchers admit they are wrong. They watch Fox News for fuck's sake, where anything to the left of fascism is a filthy communist.

Logic Priest