In addition to the excellent Fotheringay-Phipps post, and others, noting that the SDMB is not some extraordinary den of heroic fact-seekers, I will make one other salient point, perhaps repeating ground previously covered:
There’s this common pretense that all political disagreement is just at the level of facts. If all knew the facts, surely all would agree with me. We’ll all be on the same page in the voting booth if we just read the Voxsplanation beforehand. Etc.
This is myopic. A great number of issues are not primarily contested in or because of the facts. A great deal of disagreement has to do with different goals, different priorities, different ideals, different feelings. (“ideology”, as I often refer to it, though this is not a pejorative term.). Someone could well have voted for Trump because, get this, they genuinely preferred the policy direction he would act towards to the policy direction Clinton would act towards.
It’s not all facts, facts, facts, vs. “fake news”. (And I’ve seen plenty of fake news conspiracy theory fear-mongering from liberals post-election as well). Sure, Trump is a gigantic bullshitter, but it’s important to recognize how, uh, unimportant this is, in the grand scheme of things. What I mean is: If the reason someone disagrees with you is that they disagree with your goals, then recitations of facts are completely irrelevant to getting them to share your position. The messaging that converts them over is a different kind of argument.
Erroneously convincing ourselves that political conflict is primarily mediated through disagreement on the brute facts (as so many liberals have complacently done) causes us to waste our time and effort in irrelevant directions, and blunts our ability to effectively win.
If 100% acceptance of what your candidate says or does is the bar, even the stereotypical Leftist, liberal Doper wouldn’t have voted for HRC.
The only way I would support a candidate 100% is if I myself were the candidate.
However a lot of the company you have in that opinion were swayed by things like Benghazi and emails, when in the former she didn’t do anything wrong (as we’ve established many, many times) and the latter pales in comparison to any one of a huge number of trump’s many scandals and wilful lies.
And indeed, many people were swayed by the many fake stories that were circulating on FB and far outnumbered the fake stories about trump.
The hate for hillary is as irrational as voting for trump IMO. I don’t particularly like her as leader material, but there was really no contest here.
Yeah, I agree that we are not extraordinary, but I do think that the main idea is to learn new things and to become better at finding what is more accurate. What I have to say is that a lot of the ones that support most of what Trump and the Republicans are doing is nowadays opposed to that main idea.
I think this is not a good way to see this issue. IMHO one of the bigger points is that eventually politics has to yield to science and the facts. I think what you are missing is that being against ignorance nowadays does put one against many issues that are cherished by the ones allied politically to Trump. The thing is that currently a lot of issues Trump and the Republicans are about are also counter to science and the facts. So I’m not myopic, I’m only noticing that I agree with what Neil deGrasse Tyson essentially said, that the cumulative misguided efforts to dismiss science and the facts by the current republicans in power is bound to make the nation poorer.
And this shows that Fotheringay-Phipps and you are missing the point of sites like the ones we have here. IMHO the criticism is similar to what has been happening to Snopes. Politics is not their main mission, it is accuracy and debunking of erroneous or fake information. And the issue now is that they are **also **being accused to be unfair to conservatives.
While I can see is that a lot of liberals notice that most of the science and the facts are on their side; however, I can tell that several liberals in the SDMB are getting it grossly wrong about GMO’s, vaccines, nuclear power, guns, etc. (the complication is that I have also seen a lot of conservatives to get it also wrong about those subjects). Like Snopes we should make an effort to step on the toes of liberals too, but my experience so far is that, regarding Trump specially, there are even more reasons nowadays to step on the toes of Republicans and conservatives.
But, winning political contests is not (and should not be) the main point. Unfortunately, even sites like Snopes have been unfairly accused of being liberal sites by many on the right wing nowadays, and generally speaking it is because their Republican ox gets gored more often nowadays.
I know enough history to realize that this should not last forever, and that someday it will be the liberals the ones that will complain more about sites that at least try to be more accurate and factual.
No one has articulated my hopefulness of the Trump presidency better than this. Your words are better than mine here. People look at me sometimes like I kicked the dog when they are talking about Trump angrily and griping about the latest lie or dumbassery, and I tell them not to panic. Yet. They suddenly think I am a supporter, and, while I’m not, I am just being hopeful for his ability to fail upwards.
He may just screw up the right way and make things better for us all somehow.
I’m more of a wait and see guy. The lights were still on during the W. Bush Administration, the country was still together in the Obama Administration, I’ll see if Trump’s first term is something to take note about. I figured Trump would win even though I voted Clinton, and I’ve accepted the results as-is by 2AM on November 9th, 2016. I’m not going to burn stores and demand the president hung on a poll like some anarchists. I’m not going to block fucking free speech like UC Berkeley, I’m not going to cause CTA buses to be rerouted (unannounced) cause of this president’s tweets. Donald Trump is nowhere close to Adolf Hitler, in the terms of atrocities. He’s not committed genocide, put certain groups to labor camps and say that one race is superior.
I love the Straight Dope. The facts and data and the interesting articles about things we’ve wondered about but never could find an answer for it. I’m also supportive of Trump’s actions, but also willing to think deeply of said actions instead of throwing up and throwing down in a city. So yes, you can be a doper and like Trump. And I’ll drink beer and share a pizza at Vito & Nick’s Pizzeria at 8435 S Pulaski Rd (we’ll split the bill), Chicago, IL with a doper that disagrees with my opinion, but at least disagrees over actions anarchists have made to our cities.
Simply put, I’ll dine with someone that will debate with me civilly, but not with someone that wants a physical brawl or demands me censored or thrown out public locations. That’s not american.
But for a more fun take on what is going on, here is one of the latest from John Oliver:
**Trump vs. Truth **
The most worrisome thing is how Trump clearly continues to rely on anti-reality sites like Breitbart and Infowars to get his tweets and more worrisome: It is influencing and guiding his policies.
“We need to commit into defending the reality of facts”.
I agree that his actions wasn’t civil, but then again, so was the protesters at UC Berkeley that didn’t allow Milo Yiannopoulos to actually speak. Also the stories you posted were back when Trump was a candidate that the people had a chance to vote out, the Milo Y. incident I mentioned occurred days after Trump was inaugurated, where the people already made their mind and it’s not easy to turn back now.
It’s peace that people should be practicing, not war. The actions of the anarchists do little but cause destruction. The citizens has to pay for the vile violence. Nobody wins in a violent protest.
Milo was not part of the Trump administration (But with his Breitbart connections I wonder…), nor the protesters got support from congress Democrats.
And that is why I also posted what Trump is relying on after the election via John Oliver.
My cat’s breath smells like cat food.
Besides also not agreeing with those anarchists I do think that when Trump relies on fake sources of information it will lead to a lot of destruction at a larger scale.
No, politics does not have to yield to science and the facts. A whole hell of a lot of what is politics is not based on anything objectively factual. Do you acknowledge that? Look at what you were responding to:
*“A great deal of disagreement has to do with different goals, different priorities, different ideals, different feelings.”
*
Well, IIRC the origin of that line came from an interview with an expert on diseases at NPR regarding the unfounded quarantines politicians wanted to apply to nurses and doctors coming from Africa after fighting Ebola.
Do you agree with those politicians that were found to be grossly wrong about how to deal with the disease?
I have no idea how that’s related, or why if it is somehow related why you’d think one example would be able to render what is true in principle to be untrue. Seems like a non-sequitur. Did you want to address the substance?
I needed to add that I think you are also missing the point.
It is clear that many times there will be no science or facts involved in political decisions. The problem is to ignore when science is an important part of an issue and conservatives that are more serious choose to ignore how their leader politicians reach for ignorance when making policy.
What I have seen is that guys like Trump do miss a lot of what science is telling us, and IMHO when someone screws up that bad it is not strange or weird for people that do appreciate how science has warned us in the past to wonder aloud what else Trump and goons are going to get wrong.
To me the not scientifically related screw ups that Trump has come up are just the new version of Van Halen finding structures ready to collapse thanks to finding brown m&m’s in a requested bowl. Many thought Van Halen was crazy, but there was a method to their madness.
To me and many dopers it was not brown M&Ms but finding Trump being an idiot in scientific and factual issues, it was a big sign that told us that with a lot of other issues he was bound to screw up and waste a lot of resources in other ideas or goals. (like with his efforts against immigration and the wall.)
I’m still not following the point you’re trying to make. Did you respond to the question? It seems like you’re using the post you are responding to simply as a launching point for another link.
When you say, “eventually politics has to yield to science and the facts” - that may be true for those things that are objectively factual. I think most of politics isn’t. Most of politics is different values, goals, and priorities. This isn’t novel with Trump - it’s been true and will continue to be true as long as there is people and politics. You seem to acknowledge this when you say* “It is clear that many times there will be no science or facts involved in political decisions.”* - so I guess the task is to determine when there are objective facts that politics must yield to, and when there isn’t. Can you think of any issues that are contested today that meet that criteria?
