Losing Touch With Reality

[chris_gerrib]

There are days that I think America has a real problem, namely that its citizens are loosing touch with reality. A few examples:

The Food and Drug Administration

I had a conversation via email with a PhD in economics and professor at a prestigious university. At the end of the conversation, he told me, in all seriousness, that the Food and Drug Administration was not the reason we had safe food in America. I asked about Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and was assured that, if I took the good Professor's courses, I would be enlightened about why the FDA was "corporatism."

I declined the offer. I will continue to "proudly flaunt my ignorance" as he suggested in his email.

Birthers

"Birthers" is the derogatory term for people who claim that Obama wasn't born in the US or otherwise isn't a natural-born citizen. It's easily disproved bullshit. What I found most interesting, though, was the graph below, showing the concentration of this bullshit in certain regions of the country. (Source = Political Animal blog)



In the South, the last bastion of the Republican Party, this idea is approaching common knowledge. In the rest of the country, it's lunatic fringe.

The bottom line is that it's real hard to have a rational discussion with irrational people. Maybe I should stop trying? Or is that too rational? ;-)

Comments

[jetfx.livejournal.com]

Politics for most people is more a matter of emotion than a rational consideration of the facts. I have no problem with people of different political persuasions if they can mount a decent defense of their position by appealing to the facts.

[stonekettle.com (from livejournal.com)]

Interesting graph regarding the Birthers, Chris. I wonder how accurate the data is, not that I have any reason, or even inclination, to doubt its accuracy. Based on my own recent experience, I'd say it's damned close.

I've often harbored the suspicion that America would have been better off to let the South secede from the Union - this graph only reinforces that. ;)

Then again, I suspect that my own state of Alaska would show pretty much the same results as the South.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

It's a Daily Kos-commissioned poll. I should say that my little corner of Illinois (DuPage county, full of Chicago suburbs) is heavily Republican but I personally haven't met a Birther.

Republican and stupid are not yet ENTIRELY the same thing.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

p>America would have been better off to let the South secede from the Union - yes, she would have, for a number of interlocking reasons, not least of which being that the States were allowed to do that, on paper anyway. This is not taught in schools today, but it's quite true: It was a voluntary union of States. Until someone decided to test that idea.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Hearing Republicans who winked at President Bush's blatantly unconstitutional adventures in Iraq, now carrying on about whether Obama is a US citizen, makes me tired. IT DOESN'T MATTER whether he's a citizen or not - any more than it matters that Congress never declared war on Iraq. Washington does as it likes - see any US Senator's lifestyle.

The "Good Professor"

[(Anonymous)]

Upton Sinclair's the Jungle was a work of pure fiction - did they not teach that to you in history class? In terms of the economics of the day (the corporatist economics), the meat packers themselves supported government regulation and were in the forefront of the effort to extend it so as to ensnare their smaller, unregulated competitors. Sinclair himself was viewed as dishonest and untruthful, by none other than trust-buster TR himself. Further, Sinclair was point-by-point refuted by the US Congress itself, prior to passage of the Meat Act in 1906. By the way, the government inspected meat packing plants long before this law was passed.


Sinclair founded the same Intellectual Socialist Society best known perhaps for spawning the journalist claiming the USSR was the future and that "it works."

Well, if you like the mass starvation and slaughter of millions of people, it was a ringing success.

If you want to call that capitalism, be my guest - my students will learn the facts of history and decide for themselves what to make of folks like Sinclair. As for the FDA - let's just say you have a "loose" touch with reality.

Re: The "Good Professor"

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

No, I was taught that the meat-packing conditions reported in The Jungle were factual. I found a source (http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=7229) that supports your theory.

In history, we have a technical term for that source and your claims - revisionism. More polite than "bullshit," it means attempting to re-write history to suit other goals.

Re: The "Good Professor"

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Sinclair's belief in communism is actually irrelevant to whether or not he was telling the truth. Same for his intent, which was NOT to expose the meat-packing industry.

I do not share his beliefs in communism. Insisting that meat-packers sell me safe food is not communism.

Re: The "Good Professor"

[(Anonymous)]

Do you not find the irony in that last comment as a criticism to my "bullshit"?

Believe your fiction if you wish ... next time you go to the barbershop, ask them if the reason they don't slice your ear off is that they are afraid of losing their license.