Private Mars Rocket II

I've had several encounters online in which I am assured by people that actual facts and statistics are not, in fact, valid. The people assuring me of this have a strong desire to support some alternative set of facts. There is another name for "alternative facts," namely lies. The latest incident of this is a newsletter from the writer Cat Valente in which she was assured that Obama personally killed her grandfather. Spoiler alert: Obama did not kill her grandfather.

Cat makes the argument that the person telling her this couldn't distinguish between fact and fiction. With all due respect to Cat, I think that's wrong. The people supporting "alternative facts" don't care whether or not they are wrong. They have started with a preconceived notion such as "Biden is controlling the weather and sending hurricanes to hurt Republicans" and seek out support for that belief. They want to be lied to. The lie validates their opinion and makes them feel good.

We saw an example of that after the 2020 election. As you may recall, Fox News briefly tried to be a real news organization and delivered more-or-less truthful reports that Trump in fact lost the election. What happened was that Fox News viewers left Fox to find some other news source that told them what they wanted to hear.

Related to this, there has been a tendency to blame media, such as talk radio, for the right wing's departure from reality. But here's the thing - talk radio hosts did not drive around forcing people to listen to their shows. There was an existing demand, and they met the demand.

The bottom line is this: it's very difficult to prevent people from lying to somebody who wants to be lied to.

One of the problems with dealing with the American Right is that they lie. Repeatedly. Example - Glen Reynolds, a law professor, is lying by suggesting that Obama is somehow "violating his Presidential oath" by "arresting" Nakoula. You would think that a law professor would know better.

Nakoula:

1) Is on supervised release from Federal prison for a 2010 bank fraud charge (his second felony conviction).
2) The terms of that release say he was not to use the Internet without specific permission from his parole officer.
3) He appears to have violated that order.
4) He is not under arrest or being detained.

The Federal judiciary, who handles paroles, would be remiss if they didn't investigate him.

Sources:
On Nakoula: Associated Press.

On who administers parole in the Federal system: Federal Probation Service

Facts matter, even, or perhaps especially, in our political debate. So, here are some facts:

the Underpants Bomber is providing intelligence to authorities. Despite various Republican statements to the contrary, we are in fact getting intelligence out of this guy. In part, we're getting intelligence because his parents came to America to help out. Somehow, I don't think they'd be as helpful if we were busily waterboarding the SOB.

Global Warming The website surfacestations.org cataloged hundreds of US surface weather stations, with the goal of proving that microclimates (station too close to a parking lot, etc.) were causing a warming bias in temperature data. Apparently, there is a bias; the 'bad' stations skew cooler!

Don't Ask, Don't Tell When I was in the military, allowing gays to serve didn't seem like a good idea. But as I was reminded recently, that was decades ago. If I were still in, I would be Captain of a ship - the "Old Man" both figuratively and literally, at age 43. The attitude of today's youth is different. Even Colin Powell,the guy who invented Don't Ask Don't Tell gets it. So what's John McCain's problem?

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? ;-)

There is a very irritating trend in modern political discourse. I speak of the trend to just Make Shit Up, or invent "facts" that conveniently support the author's argument.

For an example, see today's Wall Street Journal, where a pair of economists argue that FDR's New Deal prolonged the Great Depression. Well, this is flat wrong. First, see this site. Note please that the nation's GDP fell about 25% during Hoover's administration, and steadily increased under FDR's, except the period 1937=1938, when FDR backed off of his stimulus package. Regarding the bogus employment claims of the Wall Street Journal opinion piece, see this post.

ETA For a line-by-line de-bullshitting of the Wall Street Journal post, see here. Shorter post: Hours worked is not a good measure of economic recovery.

Now, making up facts is not solely a Republican thing. ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich has been arguing that he couldn't call witnesses at his impeachment trial. Wrong - he could, but chose not to. There were certain witnesses he was not able to call, but that list also applied to the prosecution.

Allowing people to roll their own facts is a dangerous thing, since rational people attempt to make decisions on facts. Garbage In, Garbage Out - bad facts equal bad decisions.

Here's the kicker - people Make Shit Up because facts have biases. It's a fact, for example, that the Republican party controlled the Federal government from 2000 to 2006, and government was tied from 2006 to 2008. It's also a fact that the Federal budget went from surplus to massive deficit. When you state those facts, the obvious implication or bias is that the Republicans caused the deficit.

Similarly, it's a fact that over the same time period, the economy has had two recessions: 2000-2001 and 2008-present. Again, in as much as the government controls the economy, the implication is obvious. Most folks get this - can we say "President Obama?"

Much like everybody's favorite ex-Governor, allowing these facts to stand put the Makers of Shit Up at a serious disadvantage. Thus, new "facts" must be created. And when new "facts" are created, rational people need to call out the inventors.