- Republicans repeatedly are admitting they lie;
- How Republicans voters trust Trump as a source of election information;
- Reading Timothy Ferris, revisiting the ancient astronomers and their presumptions about the universe — not unlike the modern discovery of psychology biases.
Increasingly, they’re saying it aloud, admitting that they’re lying because they can get away with it, and their goals justify it (a rationale I’ve long noticed).
AlterNet, David Badah, 19 Sep 2024: Yes, Republicans are lying — and they’re not going to stop: ‘Enjoy it’
Despite the photo, the guy quoted here is admittedly not a Republican spokesman; he’s just one of the many Christians (a pastor!) who support the Republican agenda, and strategy, apparently.
This week, a Christian podcaster offered up what might be seen as a permission slip – or a “get out of jail free card” – for Republicans who have been lying to the American people: “enjoy it.”
“It’s okay to use deception in service of defeating the left. It’s not sinning in order to do good. It’s being righteously shrewd in order to do good. It’s also okay to enjoy it. Lighten up.”
Those are the words of Josh Daws, whose bio at Founders Ministries says he is “dedicated to helping Christians navigate the complex and rapidly changing cultural landscape through his biblically-based cultural analysis.”
We’ve just seen that with JD Vance. Most recently, it was pointed out to Vance that most of the Haitians in Spring, Ohio, are actually there legally, while he keeps calling them illegals. “The freshman junior senator made clear he did not care. … In short, Senator Vance was lying, and lying to a crowd, however small, who ate it up, cheering, applauding, and at times nodding in agreement.”
Once again, as I’ve said, so much for Christian, or Republican, veneration for the Constitution, or the rule of law and order. Or basic morality.
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This is a useful companion piece.
Vox, Nicole Narea, 20 Sep 2024: America’s looming election crisis, explained in 3 charts
The article summarizes responses to three questions in a PRRI poll, which I’ll paraphrase: 1, If Trump loses the election, should he do whatever it takes to take his rightful place as president?. 2, What sources of information do you trust about election information? 3, Did Trump do anything wrong in trying to overturn the 2020 election results?
Here’s the answers to the second question:
Third from the bottom. Of Republicans, 67% believe him and his campaign. And of Democrats, 0% do.
How many times do Republicans have to hear their Republicans politicians, or their stand-ins, admit that they lie, before they stop believing them?
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Been under the weather for a couple days. That’s why no post yesterday.
And today, briefly.
I’m reading Timothy Ferris’ COMING OF AGE IN THE MILKY WAY, from 1988. It’s a history of humanity’s understanding of the size and extent of the universe, despite tradition and religious preconceptions.
Meanwhile I’m refining my essay for Gary Westfahl, which in part is about evolutionary psychology, and how humans are born with various notions of ‘intuitive physics’ or ‘intuitive metaphysics’ — like, that everything is alive, that the mind can affect things at a distance. And it occurs to me today that the presumptions of ancients were much the same kind of naive notions. That Earth was the center of the universe; that the heavens must be unchanging; that the orbits of the planets must be circles, because that’s the most perfect shape. All of these turned out to be wrong. So in this early 21st century, as we understand the biases of human nature, and try to take them into account, it’s not a new problem. We’ve seen it all before. But however much we can accumulate knowledge and pass it to following generations through education, that often doesn’t work. People prefer tribal myths to knowledge. Every child is born anew with all those naive presumptions.
And of course the resistance to scientific developments, to humanity’s understanding of the universe, for a thousand years, was driven by the Catholic Church. (Has it ever gotten *anything* right?)
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Another item from this book, about Columbus, next time.
