SMATTERINGS OF TRUTH BY BOB LEFSETZ AND PAUL KRUGMAN, WITH A COMMENT BY GART
Lefsetz
So now we can all communicate. And what we've ended up with is noise, a Tower of Babel society, where you only hear what you want to. Where Hillary fans know no Trump supporters. With all this information at our fingertips we actually know less, because we filter for our prejudices. We just reinforce what we already know, while those in power try to sell us what's advantageous to them.
Shooting black people is bad, but somehow it's now the African-Americans' fault, explain that to me, please. And if Trump loses his supporters want to overthrow the government, not realizing that Congress has nearly done this, by not promulgating legislation and not anointing a Supreme Court justice.
And the problem is we all live in a society, we're all in it together, and no one wants to live by that credo, everybody's pointing fingers at everyone else and looking for a way out. They want to separate themselves, but it can't be done. It is a big tent, it is a Great Society. And you can't win every time, you've got to do your best to understand contrary viewpoints, educate people on the facts and include them in progress.
But recently, that's become impossible to do. We planted seeds decades ago that are now sprouting and surprising us.
Come on, do you expect the poor to do the right thing when public education has been underfunded and people can't analyze the truth, never mind know where to find it?
Come on, do you expect the poor to do the right thing when public education has been underfunded and people can't analyze the truth, never mind know where to find it?
We're constantly told the United States is the greatest country in the world!
But in many ways it's not.
And if we can't look for the truth in ourselves, how are we gonna look for the truth in our country?
And if we can't look for the truth in ourselves, how are we gonna look for the truth in our country?
Krugman
False equivalence: news organizations, afraid of being attacked for bias, give evenhanded treatment to lies and truth. Way back in 2000 I suggested that if a Republican candidate said that the earth was flat, headlines would read, “Views differ on shape of planet.” That still happens.
Remember when The Associated Press suggested scandalous undue influence based on a meeting between Hillary Clinton and a donor who just happened to be both a Nobel Prize winner and an old personal friend?
Lefsetz
How is it that there are elites in every enterprise? Who think they're better than the rest?
And the media and the pollsters and the prognosticators are all out of touch with the people. They think their power is inviolate, that what they say goes, that they know better, and if you don't hate these people, you're one of them.
THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE IN THIS WORLD: STUPID PEOPLE AND THOSE WHO THINK THEY ARE SMARTER!