mykeystrokes.com

"Do or Do not. There is no try."

“Wallowing In Ignorance”: Epistemic Closure Comes Back To Haunt The GOP

Five years ago Julian Sanchez did us the favor of defining a pattern among conservatives that he called “epistemic closure.”

One of the more striking features of the contemporary conservative movement is the extent to which it has been moving toward epistemic closure. Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted. (How do you know they’re liberal? Well, they disagree with the conservative media!) This epistemic closure can be a source of solidarity and energy, but it also renders the conservative media ecosystem fragile…If disagreement is not in itself evidence of malign intent or moral degeneracy, people start feeling an obligation to engage it sincerely…And there is nothing more potentially fatal to the momentum of an insurgency fueled by anger than a conversation.

The entire basis for the existence of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News is the belief that the “mainstream media” cannot be trusted to tell the truth because they are all “liberals.” This fed something that we as human beings already tend to do anyway – reject information that doesn’t conform to our already-established beliefs. It feels good to not have to grapple with the cognitive dissonance that comes with consideration of conflicting facts. But the end result is that it kills curiosity and we wallow in ignorance.

The disastrous results of epistemic closure for conservatives have been on display for some time now. It explains how they continue to deny the science of climate change, assume that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is “cooking the books” on unemployment data and led to a whole movement during the 2012 election to unskew the polls. But for everyone from Murdoch to GOP leaders, it worked to keep the base angry and engaged.

And then…it got out of control. Take a look at the results of Frank Lunz’s focus group with Trump supporters.

“They’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore,'” Luntz said. “And (Trump) personifies it: Each sees in him what they want for the country. They want him to fix what makes them mad, and they believe he will.”

It is Trump’s ability to reflect back to voters their most fervent wishes for the nation, Luntz said, that makes the political outsider so dangerous to the rest of the 16 other GOP 2016 hopefuls. The main reason for this, Luntz found, was what he termed a willingness of Trump supporters to live in “an alternative universe” in which any attempt by the media to point out inconsistencies in Trump’s record or position was seen as a politically motivated conspiracy.

“When the media challenges the veracity of his statements, you take his side,” Luntz asked of his focus group. Only one person sat quietly, her hands in her lap, as 28 other arms shot up in agreement.

For these participants, the Republican establishment (and perhaps even Fox News itself) have now joined the liberal New York Times in peddling a politically motivated conspiracy when they challenge Donald Trump. That should come as no surprise when these same people have been told for years that they can pick and chose their facts based on how they make you feel. Stephen Colbert was positively prophetic when he coined the term “truthiness.” And now it’s all coming back to haunt the GOP.

 

By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, August 26, 2015

August 26, 2015 Posted by | Conservative Media, Donald Trump, GOP Presidential Candidates | , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“A One-Man Blooper Reel”: The Media Should Go Easy On Mitt Romney For Their Own Sake

“The media wants to beat up Mitt Romney,” Sean Hannity told his Fox News viewers this week, “which is driving me nuts.”

Me too, Sean. Much as I’d like to see Hannity driven nuts, I agree that we in the media have been far too rough on the Republican presidential nominee. In fact, I send this urgent appeal to my fellow members of the lamestream media: Please go easy on the guy — for our own sake.

First, Romney was pounded for his false and tone-deaf statements about the attacks on U.S. embassies in Libya and Egypt; in a weak moment, I joined in the criticism.

Then Politico came out Sunday night with an article titled “Inside the campaign: How Mitt Romney stumbled,” discourteously detailing all sorts of infighting and missteps.

Worst of all was Monday, when my friend David Corn had the temerity to post on Mother Jones a surreptitiously recorded video of Romney dismissing nearly half the country as moochers.

At this rate, Romney will surely lose the election — and for journalism, this would be a tragedy.

At these times of declining revenue, we in the media need to stay true to our core interests. As the old saying goes, we should “vote the story.” And the better story in this election is clearly President Romney.

Romney’s hit parade — insulting the British, inviting Clint Eastwood to the Republican convention, flubbing Libya and now dismissing half the nation as parasites — may make good copy for the next seven weeks. But if we go easy on the man, we could have four years of gaffes instead of just seven more weeks. Admittedly, this may not be the best outcome for the country, or for the world. But in this race, there is no denying that one man will give us much better material.

President Obama has many talents, but he is not good copy. He speaks grammatically, in fully formed paragraphs. He has yet to produce a scandal of any magnitude. He is maddeningly on message, and his few gaffes — “you didn’t build that,” “the private sector is doing fine” — are inflammatory only out of context. If it weren’t for the occasional relief offered by Joe Biden, the Samaritans would have installed a ­suicide-prevention hotline in the White House press room by now.

Romney, by contrast, showed his potential for miscues in his first presidential run (see: varmints, hunting of), but he truly blossomed in the gaffe department this cycle, when he became a one-man blooper reel:

“Corporations are people, my friend.”

“I like being able to fire people.”

“I’m not concerned about the very poor.”

“I’m also unemployed.”

“Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs.”

“Ten thousand bucks? $10,000 bet?”

“I have some great friends that are NASCAR team owners.”

“There were a couple of times I wondered whether I was going to get a pink slip.”

“I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake; we can’t have illegals.”

In addition, Romney frequently gives the media fresh opportunities to rerun the blooper reel with his attempts to explain the original mistakes. This goes back to his explanation for why he strapped his dog Seamus to the top of the family car: The dog “enjoyed himself” up there.

More recently, Romney offered this explanation for his claim that Obama was making America a less Christian nation. “I’m not familiar precisely with what I said, but I’ll stand by what I said, whatever it was,” he said.

Saying zany things and then standing by them: From a presidential nominee, this is newsworthy. From a president, it could be sensational.

Romney caused an international incident when he went to London and spoke of “disconcerting” signs that the Brits weren’t prepared to host the Olympics. Were he to do that as president, he could bring transatlantic relations back to War of 1812 levels — and that would be a big story.

At home, likewise, he has caused consternation with his remark that 47 percent of Americans “believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name it” and won’t “take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” If he governed that way as president, he could stir up social unrest not seen in half a century — and that, too, would be quite a story.

Usually, reporters have little trouble recognizing our self-interest. For all of Newt Gingrich’s complaints about media bias during his primary candidacy, reporters fantasized about a Gingrich presidency.

We should do the same now as we consider prospects for a Romney presidency: gaffes in news conferences, diplomatic slights at state dinners or ham-handed attempts to placate conservatives in Congress. This is exactly the man our industry needs. Be gentle.

I’m from the mainstream media, and I approve this message.

 

By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 18, 2012

September 21, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

“Frauds And Fabricators”: What Drives The Obama Doubters And Haters?

There are Obama doubters and haters out there who claim with righteous anger that they are “vetting” the president, something they say the mainstream media never did. Some of them have said that my new biography — unwittingly, they argue, for I am too dumb to understand what my research has unearthed — proves that Barack Obama’s defining memoir is phony and that his entire life is a fraud. My intent is not to defend Obama or his book; he can take care of himself, and I have my own questions about “Dreams From My Father,” which I make clear in my book. But when comparing the liberties Obama took with composite characters and compressed chronology — which he acknowledged in the introduction to his memoir — to the stretches his most virulent detractors have taken in building their various conspiracies, I believe that they are the frauds and fabricators.

Not all of them are “birthers,” but the notion that the president was not born in the United States remains at the epicenter of the anti-Obama mythology. Here is the conspiracy that would have had to exist if Barack Hussein Obama II were not born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Aug. 4, 1961:

First, the local newspapers would have had to have been in on the scheme, because they ran notices of his birth among all the other local births that week. Second, the Immigration and Naturalization Service would have had to have been covering something up, because INS officials were closely tracking Barack Obama Sr. when he was at the University of Hawaii on a student visa from Kenya. They thought that he was a bigamist — which he was, having married a woman in Kenya before coming to the States — and a womanizer, which he also was. INS documents in the weeks and months before and after the son’s birth clearly establish the father’s whereabouts and the birth of his son. Finally, the name of Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann, was unusual enough that doctors and nurses in Honolulu remembered it and her giving birth. One prominent doctor was asked by a young journalist if anything interesting had happened in the medical world that week, and he responded, “Well, Stanley had a baby!”

In tandem with the birther notion comes the idea that Obama is a secret Muslim. His Kenyan grandfather, Hussein Onyango, was Muslim; his Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was Muslim; as a boy he was instructed in Islam at a school in Jakarta; and many of his college friends were Muslim. None of this adds up to Obama being Muslim, except in the minds of conspiratorialists. Obama never met his Kenyan grandfather. After infancy, he spent time with his Kenyan father only once, and in any case Barack Obama Sr. was an atheist. The truth is that Muslims had nothing to do with the rise of the Obamas of Kenya and that conservative evangelical Christians were essential every step of the way.

It was proselytizing Seventh-day Adventists who first came to the Obamas’ villages out near Lake Victoria at the start of the 20th century. They taught English and Western ways to the first wave of young boys from the Luo tribe, including Hussein Onyango. His son, the president’s father, was also educated at a missionary school. Later, as a young adult, Barack Obama Sr. was mentored by a remarkable evangelical Christian, Betty Mooney, whose grandfather was one of the founders of Texas Christian University. Mooney, who went to Kenya in the late 1950s to spread the gospel and literacy, met Obama Sr. in Nairobi and hired him to translate some of her literacy books into the Luo tribal language. She encouraged and helped sponsor his coming to the United States and specifically to the University of Hawaii, where he met Stanley Ann Dunham. One can say that President Obama would not exist except for evangelical Christians.

While living in Jakarta from ages 6 through 9, young Obama temporarily took the last name of his stepfather, Soetoro, for school purposes. He was listed as a Muslim on school documents because students were listed in the religion of their fathers. Lolo was not particularly religious; Stanley Ann was spiritual but not part of any formal religion. For most of his three-plus years in Indonesia, Obama attended a Catholic grade school. When his family moved to a better neighborhood in his final year, he went to the local grade school, one of the best in the city. The central doctrine taught at S.D. Besuki was not Islam but Pancasila, or five principles, of modern Indonesia, which evoked the unity of the islands on the vast archipelago, social justice and a belief in one God. Conservative Muslims detested Pancasila (a Sanskrit word revealing Indonesia’s Hindu heritage), insisting that it was too liberal and open to too many religions and interpretations.

In both the issues of Obama’s birth and of his religion, documents and common sense lead in one direction. Obama’s doubters run the other way: His birth certificates must be fake; his espoused Christianity must be a cover. Another group of right-wing doubters hold on to the notion that Obama is a closet socialist, some sort of Manchurian candidate, an idea that his every move as a pragmatic liberal politician over the past 16 years has utterly disproved. Some others maintain that he was not smart enough to get into Occidental, Columbia and Harvard Law, and too inept to write his own memoir, which one particularly obsessed conspiratorialist claims was penned by the former radical Bill Ayers. What about the well-written letters from Obama that are published in my book? Those, too, must be frauds slipped to me by the Obama administration.

In the introduction to my book, I took note of a sick political culture where “facts are so easily twisted for political purposes and where strange armies of ideological pseudo-historians roam the biographical fields in search of stray ammunition.” That sentence is now cited on right-wing Web sites as evidence that I hold them in contempt. True enough, one of the few accurate things that I’ve read from them. I do hold some of them in contempt, not because of their politics, nor because of their dislike of Obama. Political debate and disagreement are the lifeblood of American democracy. No, I hold them in contempt for the way they disregard facts and common sense and undermine the role of serious history as they concoct conspiracy theories that portray the president as dangerous, alien and less than American.

What drives them? Some of it can be attributed to the give-and-take of today’s harsh ideological divide. Some of it can be explained by the way misinformation spreads virally to millions of like-minded people, reinforcing preconceptions. And some of it, I believe, arises out of fears of demographic changes in this country, and out of racism.

By: David Maraniss, Associate Editor, The Washington Post, July 27, 2012

July 30, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Meaning Of “That”: Romney Finds Words To Twist Around To Make A Deceptive Point

If you’re Mitt Romney, it can mean whatever you want.

Mitt Romney is, without doubt, a representative of contemporary capitalism, a spectacularly rich financier who got his money not by making things but by buying and selling companies, exploiting leverage, and a whole bunch of other things folks like you and me will never have the privilege of understanding. So it isn’t surprising that this campaign has featured a debate about the nature of our economic system. That debate could be a salutary and educational discussion that leaves us all more informed and aware. Or it could be an occasion for some of the most vile demagoguery you could imagine. Do you need to ask which course it will take?

By now, we can all agree that a large portion of the Republican party has created in their minds an imaginary Barack Obama, one who is either a literal or philosophical foreigner (Romney has begun dropping the word “foreign” in as often as he can when discussing Obama), who hates America (here’s Rush Limbaugh on Monday: “I think it can now be said, without equivocation—without equivocation—that this man hates this country”), and one who hates success, hates rich people, and hates capitalism itself. And if you can’t find any actual evidence for these propositions—if “Barack Obama hates job creators so much he actually wants to increase the top income tax rate by 4.6 percentage points!” doesn’t have quite the ring you’d like—then it isn’t hard to find words you can twist around to make your point.

Which brings us to the word “that.” If you’ve been to a Mitt Romney speech in the last day or so, or if you’ve watched Fox News or listened to conservative talk radio, or even if you’ve watched some mainstream news*, you would have heard that Barack Obama said that people who own businesses didn’t actually build their businesses. Only a secret socialist could say such a thing, and Romney and his allies assure us that Obama did indeed say that and he is indeed that kind of person. But here’s what Obama actually said:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the GI Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President — because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.

When this quote worked its way up from the conservative media to the Romney campaign, they knew they had something. Sure, it’s obvious that when Obama said “you didn’t build that” he was talking about roads and bridges. But who cares? You can take that one sentence out of context, lie about what “that” in the quote refers to, and you’ve got evidence of Obama’s America-hating heart.

And yes, it is a lie, a word I use carefully. Romney and the people who work for him know full well what Obama was and wasn’t saying. But they decided to go ahead and engage in an act of intentional deception anyway, and I’m sure he’ll be repeating it many times.

There’s actually a discussion to be had about the radical individualism that has taken over the conservative movement, which Obama was responding to in his speech. I’d be interested to hear Mitt Romney’s thoughts on it, not in a “gotcha” kind of way, but because I genuinely want to know what his response to Obama’s arguments would be. Does he think that every rich person got rich completely on their own and owes nothing to the society that created the context that allowed their wealth to be created? I really have no idea. But the deeper into this campaign we go, the more it becomes clear that we’ll never know what Romney really believes about anything. And he may not be the most dishonest presidential candidate we’ve ever seen, but give him time—he’s working on it.

*Last night I saw Peter Alexander on NBC Nightly News do a story in which he showed Obama’s quote clipped exactly as Romney did, making it seem that Romney was being absolutely truthful. It was one of the most maddening acts of journalistic jackassery I’ve seen in some time.

 

By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, July 17, 2012

July 19, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

    Next Entries »