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As loathe as people are to hear "both sides", 'The Left' absolutely does this as too. They just use different names and insinuations to communicate the same poi

As loathe as people are to hear "both sides", 'The Left' absolutely does this as too. They just use different names and insinuations to communicate the same point, that sources presented by the other side is not to be trusted.

mrtesthah 5y ago
>'The Left' absolutely does this as too. Remember when Biden claimed that COVID-19 was invented by the Republicans to make his presidency look bad? Remember when Obama refused to acknowledge that Trump won the presidency and when CNN aired nonstop coverage from conspiracy theorists claiming that the entire election was fraudulent? Remember when Obama claimed months in advance that any election in which a Democrat lost was necessarily fraudulent, and then incited a mob to take over the US Capitol building during the electoral vote count? And then when Obama refused to authorize the national guard to prevent US senators and house representatives from being taken hostage? You're damn right -- they're both totally the same.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  This is very likely to devolve into a partisan squabble, so I don't want to keep going back and forth on this. I was ready to cite examples of the left playing fast and loose with the truth but I sense it will just create hostility. If I pick only one example, it looks like I'm not prepared and have nothing substantial to counter with. If I list multiple examples, it will look like I came here prepared for a fight as a right wing partisan. How do you want to proceed, if at all?
  - mrtesthah 5y ago
    Can you cite an example of left-wing news outlets playing "fast and loose" in a way that literally jeopardized the foundation of US democracy and incited mass violence? Even if you think the investigation into Trump's ties to Russian influence was unjustified, it relied on democratically-elected representatives to impeach him, and it never undermined the rule of law itself. I'm sure you can find examples with lesser consequences, but given the stakes, are those really relevant here? It's easy to dismiss all such disagreements as being boiled down to partisanship, which is why it's more useful to look past the actions and focus on the outcome. Violent rhetoric from politicians and their supporting news outlets has real consequences, and in this case the actions of one side are resulting in the potential for mass vigilante violence: From Ethnic antagonism erodes Republicans’ commitment to democracy[1] About half of all surveyed Republicans agreed with these points: 1. The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it. 2. A time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands. 3. Strong leaders sometimes have to bend the rules in order to get things done. 4. It is hard to trust the results of elections when so many people will vote for anyone who offers a handout. 1. https://www.pnas.org/content/117/37/22752 https://www.pnas.org/content/117/37/22752
    - iammisc 5y ago
      You start off with a premise that is not immediately obvious. You claim right-wing news outlets are jeopardizing the 'foundation of US democracy', but most right wingers would counter that democracy is not the foundational value of the United States, but rather, individual rights, that even democracy is subservient to the rights of the individual. For example, no matter how many people would vote for such an ability, a modern 'right winger' would reject the notion that the people should be able to buy others. Your insistence that democracy is being eroded by the right, is easily countered by most conservatives that individual liberty is being eroded by the left, and they can easily point to the coronavirus lockdowns which seem neverending, obviously overreaching, and -- given the vaccine -- also unnecessary. They can point to multiple examples of what they see as having their rights trampled over, such as being forced to participate in events they have moral concerns with, while facebook and Amazon and other large companies apparently have every right to kick off those they agree with from their multi-billion dollar platforms. So the counter to your claim that the right is undermining democracy is that the left is undermining civil liberties.
      - CalChris 5y ago
        I don't disagree with your description of right wingers saying that individual rights are foundational rather than democracy. I will point out that neoconservatives just spent $6T trying to export democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan rather than individual rights. Indeed, there is no second amendment in the Iraq constitution which we wrote.
        iammisc 5y ago
        Neoconservatives are not a meaningful cohort in the gop at this point. The nomination of Trump was the end of that chapter. I think most people agree that Afghanistan And Iraq was a terrible idea. At least all the young conservatives do. And I honestly think we shouldn't read too much into foreign policy. Both parties are happy to support all kinds of regimes that follow all kinds of anti democratic or anti individual rights ideologies, so long as it's in their perceived best interest of America.
      - 5y ago
  - TomSwirly 5y ago
    I'm not an American, but this is silly. > I was ready to cite examples of the left playing fast and loose with the truth but I sense it will just create hostility. I mean, sounds like an excuse to not participate. The question seems quite black and white. We have a few classic lies: * Obama is a Muslim from Kenya * His wife is transgender * Climate change is a hoax * COVID is a hoax * Climate change is a hoax * There is not enough pollution in the world * The Democrats are Communists * The Democrats run an occult pederasty wing through Twitter * Trump won the 2020 election All of these are widely believed by Conservatives and all of these have been widely spread by Conservative speakers. Can you find even one comparable lie to any of these spread by prominent Democrats (not some random Twitter account)? Trump is is in a category of his own. * Here he is claiming to be the best at all these fields he knows nothing about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GqJna9hpTE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GqJna9hpTE * Here are his lies about COVID: https://doggett.house.gov/media-center/blog-posts/timeline-trump-s-coronavirus-responses https://doggett.house.gov/media-center/blog-posts/timeline-t... * Here's an approximate count of his lies over 4 years - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-fa... All of his lies have been strongly supported by Republicans Can you find one Democrat a fraction as mendacious as Donald Trump?
    - BitwiseFool 5y ago
      "> I was ready to cite examples of the left playing fast and loose with the truth but I sense it will just create hostility. I mean, sounds like an excuse to not participate." Actually, I was exactly right. I'm sensing some hostility from you right now and I'm making the mistake of engaging when I should just let it go. >"Can you find even one comparable lie to any of these spread by prominent Democrats (not some random Twitter account)?" So on the one hand, the laundry list you gave is acceptable as "widely believed by Conservatives", but I have to provide counterexamples that are only restricted to "prominent democrats"? You also don't qualify what 'widely believed' means, so I can just as easily claim that people on the left widely believe other falsehoods. If it is so bad that some conservatives agree with the idea that "Democrats are Communists", is it not exactly the same thing as Democrats believing that "Republicans as Fascists"? This is a widely believed view by Progressives. I'm not here to chuck a laundry list of "lies" at you. Quite frankly I see something like "Trump’s false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years" and I roll my eyes. Am I seriously expected to believe that number is anywhere close to accurate? I dare say the majority of those are subject to interpretation, which we will not be doing here.
heavyheavy 5y ago
Any examples of this?

mrtesthah 5y ago

>'The Left' absolutely does this as too. Remember when Biden claimed that COVID-19 was invented by the Republicans to make his presidency look bad? Remember when Obama refused to acknowledge that Trump won the presidency and when CNN aired nonstop coverage from conspiracy theorists claiming that the entire election was fraudulent? Remember when Obama claimed months in advance that any election in which a Democrat lost was necessarily fraudulent, and then incited a mob to take over the US Capitol building during the electoral vote count? And then when Obama refused to authorize the national guard to prevent US senators and house representatives from being taken hostage? You're damn right -- they're both totally the same.

BitwiseFool 5y ago
This is very likely to devolve into a partisan squabble, so I don't want to keep going back and forth on this. I was ready to cite examples of the left playing fast and loose with the truth but I sense it will just create hostility. If I pick only one example, it looks like I'm not prepared and have nothing substantial to counter with. If I list multiple examples, it will look like I came here prepared for a fight as a right wing partisan. How do you want to proceed, if at all?
- mrtesthah 5y ago
  Can you cite an example of left-wing news outlets playing "fast and loose" in a way that literally jeopardized the foundation of US democracy and incited mass violence? Even if you think the investigation into Trump's ties to Russian influence was unjustified, it relied on democratically-elected representatives to impeach him, and it never undermined the rule of law itself. I'm sure you can find examples with lesser consequences, but given the stakes, are those really relevant here? It's easy to dismiss all such disagreements as being boiled down to partisanship, which is why it's more useful to look past the actions and focus on the outcome. Violent rhetoric from politicians and their supporting news outlets has real consequences, and in this case the actions of one side are resulting in the potential for mass vigilante violence: From Ethnic antagonism erodes Republicans’ commitment to democracy[1] About half of all surveyed Republicans agreed with these points: 1. The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it. 2. A time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands. 3. Strong leaders sometimes have to bend the rules in order to get things done. 4. It is hard to trust the results of elections when so many people will vote for anyone who offers a handout. 1. https://www.pnas.org/content/117/37/22752 https://www.pnas.org/content/117/37/22752
  - iammisc 5y ago
    You start off with a premise that is not immediately obvious. You claim right-wing news outlets are jeopardizing the 'foundation of US democracy', but most right wingers would counter that democracy is not the foundational value of the United States, but rather, individual rights, that even democracy is subservient to the rights of the individual. For example, no matter how many people would vote for such an ability, a modern 'right winger' would reject the notion that the people should be able to buy others. Your insistence that democracy is being eroded by the right, is easily countered by most conservatives that individual liberty is being eroded by the left, and they can easily point to the coronavirus lockdowns which seem neverending, obviously overreaching, and -- given the vaccine -- also unnecessary. They can point to multiple examples of what they see as having their rights trampled over, such as being forced to participate in events they have moral concerns with, while facebook and Amazon and other large companies apparently have every right to kick off those they agree with from their multi-billion dollar platforms. So the counter to your claim that the right is undermining democracy is that the left is undermining civil liberties.
    - CalChris 5y ago
      I don't disagree with your description of right wingers saying that individual rights are foundational rather than democracy. I will point out that neoconservatives just spent $6T trying to export democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan rather than individual rights. Indeed, there is no second amendment in the Iraq constitution which we wrote.
      - iammisc 5y ago
        Neoconservatives are not a meaningful cohort in the gop at this point. The nomination of Trump was the end of that chapter. I think most people agree that Afghanistan And Iraq was a terrible idea. At least all the young conservatives do. And I honestly think we shouldn't read too much into foreign policy. Both parties are happy to support all kinds of regimes that follow all kinds of anti democratic or anti individual rights ideologies, so long as it's in their perceived best interest of America.
    - 5y ago
- TomSwirly 5y ago
  I'm not an American, but this is silly. > I was ready to cite examples of the left playing fast and loose with the truth but I sense it will just create hostility. I mean, sounds like an excuse to not participate. The question seems quite black and white. We have a few classic lies: * Obama is a Muslim from Kenya * His wife is transgender * Climate change is a hoax * COVID is a hoax * Climate change is a hoax * There is not enough pollution in the world * The Democrats are Communists * The Democrats run an occult pederasty wing through Twitter * Trump won the 2020 election All of these are widely believed by Conservatives and all of these have been widely spread by Conservative speakers. Can you find even one comparable lie to any of these spread by prominent Democrats (not some random Twitter account)? Trump is is in a category of his own. * Here he is claiming to be the best at all these fields he knows nothing about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GqJna9hpTE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GqJna9hpTE * Here are his lies about COVID: https://doggett.house.gov/media-center/blog-posts/timeline-trump-s-coronavirus-responses https://doggett.house.gov/media-center/blog-posts/timeline-t... * Here's an approximate count of his lies over 4 years - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-fa... All of his lies have been strongly supported by Republicans Can you find one Democrat a fraction as mendacious as Donald Trump?
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    "> I was ready to cite examples of the left playing fast and loose with the truth but I sense it will just create hostility. I mean, sounds like an excuse to not participate." Actually, I was exactly right. I'm sensing some hostility from you right now and I'm making the mistake of engaging when I should just let it go. >"Can you find even one comparable lie to any of these spread by prominent Democrats (not some random Twitter account)?" So on the one hand, the laundry list you gave is acceptable as "widely believed by Conservatives", but I have to provide counterexamples that are only restricted to "prominent democrats"? You also don't qualify what 'widely believed' means, so I can just as easily claim that people on the left widely believe other falsehoods. If it is so bad that some conservatives agree with the idea that "Democrats are Communists", is it not exactly the same thing as Democrats believing that "Republicans as Fascists"? This is a widely believed view by Progressives. I'm not here to chuck a laundry list of "lies" at you. Quite frankly I see something like "Trump’s false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years" and I roll my eyes. Am I seriously expected to believe that number is anywhere close to accurate? I dare say the majority of those are subject to interpretation, which we will not be doing here.

heavyheavy 5y ago

Any examples of this?