talkpolitics | Common Knowledge

sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com posting in

This post started as a response to Jeff's but started to get overly heavy and in keeping with the monthly topic so here it is in it's own thread:

I will open with an assertation; specifically that "conventional wisdom" is bullshit.

Now I have been charitibly called cynical, skeptical, and paranoid by the people who know me and frankly I consider such words to be compliments. It is my belief that many of the things that we consider to be "facts" are actually assertations that we have simply decided to believe because it is convient to do so or because they have been presented to us as true.

Hitler famously opined that "people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it." (OSS profile of Hitler), p.51

Why why is this? The answer is really quite simple. People lie. Usually the lies are small, we may lie for personal convenience (to receive a reward or to avoid punishment) or to spare the feelings of someone we care about when the truth could be hurtful ("Does this dress make my ass look fat?”) we Lie all the time and yet we will hesitate at a real whopper either because A: we’re basically honest and couldn’t bring themselves to tell one, or B: we’re wary of the consequences. Much of Conventional Wisdom is often not supported by logic or evidence it has simply been repeated often enough that people take it to be true.

The remainder of the post has been retracted, please go <ahref="http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1034927.html">here for further information.

Rolling Stone Magazine recently published a critique of Fox News and it's Chairman Roger Ailes. On the surface this may seem like saying "the pope is catholic" but on page 12 is the following interesting quote.

The result of this concerted campaign of disinformation is a viewership that knows almost nothing about what’s going on in the world. According to recent polls, Fox News viewers are the most misinformed of all news consumers. They are 12 percentage points more likely to believe the stimulus package caused job losses, 17 points more likely to believe Muslims want to establish Shariah law in America, 30 points more likely to say that scientists dispute global warming, and 31 points more likely to doubt President Obama’s citizenship. In fact, a study by the University of Maryland reveals, ignorance of Fox viewers actually increases the longer they watch the network.

Clearly the author considers the above assertations (the failure of the stimulus package, muslim asperations, dissent over global warming, and claims of Obama's non-citizenship) to be false. Otherwise he would not have used the word "misinformed". What I find interesting is that the conventional wisdom would agree with him despite the fact that an objective case can be made to the contrary.

There IS debate over whether Global Warming is anthropological, and there ARE muslims who would like to see Shariah supplant western law. The jury's still out on the stimulus package and the birthers ARE full of shit but what's 2 (maybe 3) out of 4 between friends? This raises the obvious question of who is more misinformed, your average FOX News viewer or your average Rolling Stone journalist?

You see we all know that Bush lied about Iraq's WMDs (ignore the uranium and the history) just as we Know that Sarah Palin is unfit to be president and Obama is.

The point I suppose is to question what you are told, and distrust anyone who would ridicule you for doing so.