- Items from Facebook about MAGA conflation; John Kenneth Galbraith; and conservatives’ lack of a sense of humor;
- How legislators in North Carolina left homes vulnerable;
- Fact-checking the debate, Vance’s irritation that he was fact-checked, and how Republicans consistently lie and misrepresent more than the Democrats;
- Vance wrong on climate change, and conspiracy theories about Hurricane Helene;
- Yet another example of Fox News doing what it does best.
Three items from Facebook.
Public post by Don D’Ammassa, 30 Sep 2024:
A year or so back, I mentioned that various things we take for granted – social security, disaster relief, roads, etc. – were actually socialist. Our society is a mixture of socialist, capitalist, libertarian, and other concepts. A fairly well respected writer whose background is in the sciences objected that these were not socialist because they were good things. I can’t even begin to explain how sad that is.
Comments to this echo my thoughts about how most people don’t actually know what these words mean and conflate them all as ‘bad’:
Too many people don’t know the meaning of the words. They slept through their Junior year of US History in high school.
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The MAGAs love to exchange socialism, communism and fascism like these are all synonyms. Like Catholic, Buddhist and Paganism are the same?
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An anonymous post:
20 Years Ago on July 6th, 2002 – the brilliant economist and thinker John Kenneth Galbraith, gave an interview in which he said this perfect bit: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
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Another from Don D’Ammassa
Ive seen several memes indicating that conservatives, generally speaking, do not understand satire. I thought it was just a cheap shot initially, but the more I think about it, and the more I see, the more convinced I am that it is valid.
As some of the comments to this indicate, and as I’ve noted myself, conservatives seem to lack a sense of humor. They are always grim. You’ve never seen Trump smile, except derisively.
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Followups from previous days.
- NY Times, Christopher Flavelle: How the North Carolina Legislature Left Homes Vulnerable to Helene, subtitled “Under pressure to control housing costs, Republican lawmakers rejected standards meant to protect against disasters, experts say.” Comment: blame special interests? Or another example of not planning for disasters, i.e. marshmallow longtermism?
- NY Times, 1 Oct 2024, in today’s paper as Fact-Checking the Debate, subtitled “A few missteps from Walz, and a cascade of false and misleading statement from Vance.” This is the general conclusion of other fact checks I’ve seen. In the NYT tally, three issues from Walz, 17 from Vance.
- So is this any surprise? Washington Post, Dana Milbank, 1 Oct 2024: Opinion | At debate, Vance whines: You weren’t supposed to fact-check me!. Which is to say, he apparently assumed he could say anything, and get away with it.
- On a similar note: LA Times, Robin Abcarian, 2 Oct 2024: Column: JD Vance turned in a debate performance that was a true master class — in gaslighting
- What does this say about conservatives? Over and over, more lies and disinformation spew from conservatives than from liberals. Do they live in some fantasy world in which they think merely saying something makes it true? I’m guessing not; but they do know that can say anything and at least that some people will believe it. They seem to be shameless about this.
- Salon, Matthew Rozsa: JD Vance is wrong about climate science, experts say. It isn’t “weird,” it’s overwhelmingly accurate, subtitled “During the VP debate Tuesday, Trump’s running mate spewed climate change denial. Scientists were unimpressed”
- And this: Media Matters, Olivia Little, 2 Oct 2024: Conspiracy theories about Hurricane Helene are going viral on TikTok. Like, the hurricane was manufactured in order to clear land in North Carolina to enable lithium mining. Are these people completely disconnected from reality? (Actually, this is an illustration that conspiracy theories can be concocted about *anything.*)
- Once again, don’t believe anything you hear on Fox News. They have ulterior motives, in this case, the demonization of immigrants (i.e. the comforting of white racists).
- Media Matters, Zachary Pleat, 2 Oct 2024: Fox praised JD Vance for releasing a “study” to back up his lies about immigrants – actual economists were quick to point out that it’s junk, subtitled “Economist Justin Wolfers: ‘This was not a study, it was not by economists, it’s not really about immigration, it’s also not about housing prices, and it does not make the point he claimed.'”
