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The point she is making is that playing 'gotcha!' with relatively minor errors (in this case misinterpreting 21 trillion dollars worth of unaccounted for income
by jackvalentine 8y ago
The point she is making is that playing 'gotcha!' with relatively minor errors (in this case misinterpreting 21 trillion dollars worth of unaccounted for income AND expenditure as merely 21 trillion dollars of cash unaccounted for) misses the greater conversation about huge military spending vs civilian spending.
Sure you can spend your life being pedantic about things and us nerds commonly fall in to that trap, but it doesn't engage the conversation in a meaningful way and is very petty.
The reason I linked it is because the larger back-and-forth with Cooper where she admits facts are important and talks about when she makes mistakes provides colour that is missing from the misleading snipped quote "being morally right is more important than facts".
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- leereeves 8y agoIt's perfectly reasonable to debate whether we should spend money on the military or on healthcare, but that's not what she said. Instead, she suggested we could pay for Medicare for All just by improving Pentagon accounting, without making sacrifices, which is false. Pointing out the difference is neither petty nor pedantic. It's also dangerous (but all too common) for her to suggest that her position is "morally right" and anyone who questions it, anyone who supports the military, is "morally wrong" without even considering what happens to the world if Pax Americana ends.
- torstenvl 8y agoIt is not a minor error. It's not pedantic. It's not petty. She claimed the DoD lost more money than it has ever had, cumulatively, in its entire history, including when it was the Department of War. If you want to have a conversation about military spending vs. civilian spending, fine. Let's have that conversation. But it's only worth having that conversation with people who will be honest and admit when they're wrong.
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