Techwag

On the Political side of the fence this morning is a report that in the oral arguments before the Supreme Court, The Republicans have posted a video on YouTube, and are airing it on TV that shows Solicitor General Donald Verrilli stumble over words, with the idea that “Obamacare is a hard sell”. Regardless of what we think of the actual

argument, there has been a problem with “spin” lately.

It is getting very hard to tell the truth about anything.

We have entered the screaming phase of yellow journalism, and as we continue on with the silly season in politics, when we desperately need to be told the truth, just the facts, we end up with spin. We end up with some marketing idea of what we need to know. We are exposed to more spin, more fear, and in many ways the marketing and information process makes the argument we are all doomed if we keep on going the way we are going. There were the same things under almost every president we have. We work out a way to make the two opposing candidates “the other” we demonize them, we try to cast them as against society and everything that “America stands for”.

This is the kind of video that simply shows how far we have come in relationship to spin, and as Bloomberg and others have reported, it is doctored. This is not an authentic video, this is not an authentic recording, and is the base of misinformation in politics. Now the bad part is that while we have some people reporting that it is doctored, we don’t know for sure, we were not there, we have to somehow find a way to trust the sources of information that we get informed by.

This is the problem, media right and left have so distorted the “truth” that we really don’t know what we can believe anymore, or who we can trust as an unbiased source of information in which to make good decisions with. We can no longer make the fine discrimination in our rational minds, as we are tossed around on a sea of emotional appeals. Yes, emotional appeals work, but at some point we need to sit down and rationally work out our problems, as a nation, as a population, as a multi-cultural society. If we keep on being pandered to, if they keep on going for the emotional appeal, rationality gets further and further away. We end up screaming at each other because the sources of our information have demonized the other, the ones that will destroy western civilization as we know it.

We not only need to have a more civilized discourse, but we need to bring the facts back into the picture. Without knowing what is really happening, and where the true issues are, we can be hardly called a civilization, rather we are “muppets” or “sock puppets”, controlled, manipulated, and more sadly, more ill-informed than we need to be to run America as a democracy.

 

 

Related articles

• RNC doctors audio of Verrilli for anti-Obamacare ad (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
• Republicans bash health care using faked audiotape (dailykos.com)
• AP Spins Obama’s Unanimously Destroyed Budget as GOP Obstructionism (rogueoperator.wordpress.com)
• RNC Relies On Doctored Audio In Anti-Health Care Ad (thinkprogress.org)

Donald Verrilli, Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act, Politics, Republicans, Supreme Court, United States, United States Supreme Court, YouTube