I don’t see it as a uniquely American phenomenon. Go anywhere and ask about the situation in Syria, say, and you’ll hear a plethora of conspiracy theories.
I’m sure many cynical people will say “Well maybe this time the CTs are true”. But that’s irrelevant to my point: the point is, people are happy to believe it with no evidence whatsoever.
I don’t think BLM is a good choice of example here. Most of the precipitating incidents have had accompanying video footage. So assuming the worst on that occasion, I wouldn’t take as meaning the whole movement is post facts.
As much as I hate to defend the Donald here, Hillary is a master (mistress?) at this. Seriously, if she actually believed half the positions she has taken over the last 25 years, she would have been as Sir Humprhrey said
That’s not a contradiction here - my point was that politicians have always lied, but in the past, they have always at least allowed some time to pass before they changed their positions - as I said earlier, “politicians gamble we will simply forget or not care about old lies, when they stand for re-election”. To be charitable (if one was so inclined), the passage of time allows the politician to argue that they aren’t really lying, they are “changing their position in light of new situations” or “they have changed their mind on an issue in light of cogent arguments” or some such.
Hillary is indeed a practitioner of this. Free trade? It was once good, now apparently it is bad!
But that’s exactly what I would characterize as old-school political lying.
What is different about the Donald isn’t that he often lies about stuff he’s just said. There is no “plausible deniability” at work. Birtherism? The Donald pushed it for years - then, one day, simply announces he never did. In fact, Hillary created Birtherism!
That’s not old school political lying. There is a world of difference between someone saying “I was once strongly in favor of this free trade agreement [or whatever], but on mature second thought, in light of cogent facts, I am now strongly against it”. We may well be of the opinion that this is a straight-up lie, that the politician simply and cynically takes whatever position is advantageous at the moment to him or her, but it is not the same thing as outright and publicly denying reality.
This is a good point. I think it highlights the only true difference of this age though. In the past people didn’t know what a politician said yesterday. It still amounts to the same thing, deniability. Politicians of yesterday didn’t always have the smooth redefinition of their statements to accompany their denials, but it amounts to the same thing, changing course, flip-flopping, waffling, and dishonesty. The form doesn’t matter that much, people have always had their distrust of politicians and increasing the resolution of the image may only be increasing the level of distrust. Your observation of factual information now isn’t going to affect those who see all information from politicians and media as fiction to start with. The new facts are just the politician’s conflicting statements, the underlying ‘facts’ presented in argument are no more reliable than they were in the past. What a candidate says about trade may be different than what they said yesterday, but clearing up the factual matter of the effects and future of trade agreements is not so easy, none of us have crystal balls and the arguments based on selective information supporting each side are just as questionable now as they have always been, and both sides can be equally wrong about their conclusions.
I think it’s a pendulum, like so much politics and society, rather than a permanent change. In the long run, we’re not going to be “post-truth,” for the simple reason that reality is based on reality. Denying climate change doesn’t prevent its consequences, for example. Denying evolution doesn’t keep resistant strains of diseases from developing. Giving tax breaks to people who merely accumulate wealth doesn’t actually create jobs or boost the economy. Protecting the health care “profit-grown is required at every step” system is fundamentally at odds with keeping health care costs down, no matter what unrelated legislation you wish to blame it on. People can hold strong, political, irrational views against reality for only so long before reality–always–wins.
This assumes the politicians who lie (a) actually believe their lies, and (b) act out on them in pursuing policies.
The cynical position is that politicians simply lie to get elected, and then once elected, pursue whatever polices appear expedient at the moment. This limits, to a certain extent at least, the “feedback from reality” holding lying in check. In short, from the cynical POV a politician is to a certain extent two animals in one: (1) a lying manipulator, who twists the truth to get elected; and (2) once elected, an anxious manager, who does not actually want to screw everything up. Hence, the impression that no matter what politicians say, once in office “they are all the same”.
Both Trump and Bernie presented themselves as the antidote to such cynicism.
The concern with Trump in the current election is that, behind his bluster and lies, there does not appear to be an actual manager capable of pursuing expedient policies: his business history is not encouraging in this respect. In short, there may be nothing more than the “lying manipulator”, and if he gets in office, reality may be unforgiving - which price we will pay collectively.
“Everybody knows” all kinds of things that aren’t true. And that does, in fact, go for liberals as well as for Limbaugh fans.
Everybody on the Left “knows” that Head Start pays for itself many times over, by increasing kids’ school performance. In reality, whatever advantage Head Start alumni gain disappears completely by the time they’re 11.
To be fair, Shodan has declared that racism and police bias against black people no longer exist and therefore, any claims that it still happens are lies.
To be even more fair, what about posting that “Poster X has declared Y …” and then posting a quote from Poster X which doesn’t actually say Y? Where does that fit in?
I agree that it’s a pendulum, but I disagree with the rest of what you’re saying.
Reality never has to win. You can say/believe one thing while you actually do another. It’s like Trump supporters who say “Hillary is disqualified because her husband assaults women. Trump assaults women, but this is just a distraction from the issues.”
As for things like climate change and antibiotics, those things are the realm of scientists and the common man doesn’t have to understand it. You only need about 1% of society to accept reality to develop vaccines and ban fossil fuels. The rest of society can go along being distrustful of the experts and the politicians.
That’s what the evidence suggests, yes. First graders who went through Head Start perform better than their classmates. Once they reach fourth grade, they don’t.
That’s also my understanding. And ties into why I’m a (mild, it’s not a huge issue to me) proponent of later school-starting ages for “real” classes. The advantages of learning those things at 4 instead of 6 or 7 just doesn’t seem to be long-term, and generally younger kids don’t have the same capabilities for learning certain things. Which was about to send me off onto a tangent on how the younger kids in classes are diagnosed with ADHD at higher rates than older kids in classes, so I’ll stop now.
Wait, so if we give somebody a 10 meter head start in the 100 meter dash, and it turns out that person finishes the race the same time as everyone else in the race, that’s somehow evidence that the head start is useless? Because it sounds like that’s the point you’re trying to make.
That’s far too literal a way to use the term “head start.” If you ask one runner to run 90 metres and another to run 100, clearly the first runner has an advantage. There’s no way around it. But you cannot assume that teaching kids things at a very young age results in long term retention of those skills. That’s a much more complex thing than “run a certain distance” - more complex by orders of magnitude.
Let’s assume that fourth graders who went through Head Start, and fourth graders who did not go through Head Start, perform equally. If the fourth graders who went through Head Start did not go through the program, would they still perform equally to the other group?
It is my understanding that Head Start is a program for children from low-income families. There is a positive correlation between good nutrition and learning ability. By providing better nutrition and other services, Head Start helps to level the playing field, so that low-income children Head Start kids are not lagging behind from the outset. Whether the effects last beyond fourth or sixth grade, is not relevant. What is relevant is the relative starting positions of Head Start kids and non-Head Start kids.
So my question is: Are you asserting that Head Start kids would be at the same place they would have been anyway, had they not been in the program, in 4th or 6th grade? Or do you think that Head Start allows the recipients to be in the same place as their classmates at that level, where they would be lagging behind at that level without the program?
You wouldn’t know it from the Heritage Foundation report, but the study itself states that:
[QUOTE=Head Start Impact Study]
Approximately 60 percent of the control group children participated in child care or early education programs during the first year of the study, with 13.8 percent of the 4-year-olds in the control group and 17.8 percent of the 3-year-olds in the control group finding their way into Head Start during this year. Preventing families from seeking out alternative care or programs for their children is both infeasible and unethical.
[/QUOTE]
The difference with the past is, IMO, that now it’s much easier to build an information bubble around oneself.
For example people that think climate change is a hoax can now easily go online and find a seemingly respectable source agreeing with them to validate their views and model their information input to reaffirm such beliefs.
The problem is that there’s no editorial control over the dissemination of information, in the past when news and information had to pass some form of standards to get published it was relatively much easier to asses the* truthines* of a media source, if you read something on a tabloid you’d know (at least most people) that you’d better take anything with a pinch of salt, biases in different sources of information would had been more noticeable and consistent. People would know a particular source of information biases or lack of.
This days anyone can cook up a seemingly legitimate source for whatever view or position imaginable, to say nothing of established sources ditching standards of journalism as they chase views.
Also now it’s also much easier to connect with like minded people; in the past a crank with some crazy notions would more likely than not face significant rejection by the people in his social circle and that could lead to reconsider whatever crazy ideas in his head or at least keep them to himself (and thus impeding the creation and spread of the crazy); now the same crank can find an entire community of fellow cranks a click away; boom, instant validation and a shortcut into the world of groupthink.