Isn’t a “Marxist Billionaire” a contradiction in terms?
So, ignoring the “facts have a liberal bias” thing, how exactly are those like the people discussed in the OP saying that Snopes is wrong or distorting anything? Every post has cites in it; is it those?
IMHO this is just thanks to historical happenstance, I always think that if we could magically bring the Teddy Roosevelt administration back to power he would not just think about defenestrating the robber barons, he would do it when confronted with guys like the Kochs.
I do think that liberals have a lot of science and social subjects on their side now, but this is bound to change some day, in the meantime we do have indeed to make efforts to wrestle the mostly idiot ball away from the Republicans because even I can see that we need more than one party with good ideas to be an effective democracy.
You can’t use reason against people who refuse to accept reason. You must resort to fear.
That’s really the main difference between Conservatives and Liberals. Liberals (like those on the SDMB) tend to try to use logic and reason to persuade the opposition to see their side. Conservatives just need to convince their potential supporters that you’re a Liberal.
What’s even better are the posts that have the link that directly contradicts the post.
The sad thing is that many of the ones spreading disinformation do expect that the readers will never check the cites, they are usually correct.
I have seen it happen in the SDMB too, so to me it is a very old sleazy tactic.
You’re never going to get it if you think about this this way. Most people don’t think about themselves as ignorant even when they are, and they don’t think about themselves as “afraid” of something like Ebola, they just think of themselves as “appropriately cautious”.
You can google for psychological studies on differences between left and right wing thinking. Such studies have their problems, but right wing people seem to have a greater disgust and fear response than left wingers.
Right wingers reacting more strongly to the threat of disease is to be expected, and right wingers correctly see those who don’t perceive the threat as being as strong as being more left wing.
Good work. Now you should move in for the kill.
Cheerfully. The problem with mockery is that it’s habit forming, so once you start using it, it tends to be overused. (Ok, admittedly I’m thinking about online interactions: there are very real limits to the amount that you want to be obnoxious with your acquaintances. That’s a pretty important red flag.) At any rate, followup is a good idea.
Maybe something like, “Snopes is really a pretty decent website. There are plenty of lefty and righty websites with axes to grind; Snopes shows that you can have a stance but still maintain the ability to weigh conflicting evidence. That’s what analysts do: it’s something of a lost art in a way*, but not every commentator sees their job as a process of scoring political points. Sorry, I’ll step off my soapbox for now.”
More generally, when using mockery it’s best to construct an alternative to ridicule. The standard method is to assure the target that conservatives can be fact-based as well. And if they can’t today, they did so in the past. Here’s another example. The National Center for Science Education stresses the importance of arguing that there are pious Christians who accept the scientific consensus on evolution. You don’t expect folks to change their views towards evidence in leaps.
Speaking of which, I understand that the science suggests that mockery shuts people down pretty much immediately: they stop listening. But rhetoric is a young field and I’m guessing that they haven’t investigated practice preparing a soft landing spot prior to applying the mock-hammer.
- that’s diplomacy: analysis is not a lost art.
Is this a French thing?
I’ve eaten a raw peach seed, once. It was sort of like the flavor of pistachio ice cream, and may have seemed more intense due to my apprehension. What is the toxic dose, anyway?