Good thing that Jesus saves -- we need saving
GOP douses Afghanistan withdrawal with misinformation:
The Afghanistan withdrawal has gone poorly enough for the Biden administration, and it did itself no favors with its faulty predictions about how it would be carried out.
But even in the midst of the worst stretch of the Biden presidency thus far, the lure of misinformation has proved irresistible to its GOP critics.
They’ve trafficked repeatedly in recent days in false, misleading or unproved allegations involving the Taliban hanging someone from an American helicopter, President Biden skipping a ceremony for 13 Americans killed last week, military dogs being left behind, and $80 billion in military equipment being left for use by the Taliban. With the assistance of some high-profile conservatives and even congressional Republicans, these reports have proliferated on social media.
The process really kicked into gear over the weekend when conservatives accused Biden of skipping the ceremony at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
The problem was that when the allegation was lodged, the plane bearing the service members’ remains had yet to land. And when the ceremony began the next day, Biden was there. But the likes of Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, former Trump administration acting director of national intelligence Ric Grenell, a California GOP congressional candidate and others promoted the claim that Biden had been absent. They have since deleted their tweets.
Note that they have since deleted their Tweets. That is called lies of omission. Hide the truth and the lie goes away. That is a standard FRP tactic when a lie(s) is too blatant to stand on its own.
In a related article, A legal setback for Donald Trump Jr. on false claims — as he spreads more of them, the WaPo writes:
It was a telling moment in the GOP’s continual descent into a post-truth party in the Donald Trump era. Even though multiple fact-checkers debunked a claim that the Taliban hanged a man from a U.S. helicopter left behind in Afghanistan, many Republicans who promoted the claim refused to back off it. And Donald Trump Jr. ultimately went so far as to replace the banner on his Twitter page with a mock Biden campaign logo featuring an illustration of the supposed helicopter hanging.
The same day, though, this same strategy landed Trump Jr. some legal problems — and earned him a rebuke from a judge.
For the past two years, a GOP Senate candidate in West Virginia has been suing Trump Jr. for defamation. At issue is Trump Jr. claiming during the 2018 campaign that Don Blankenship, whom Trump and his allies opposed in the primary, was a “felon.” Blankenship was charged with felonies related to an explosion at a mine he ran, but he was convicted only on a misdemeanor count.
Trump Jr.’s lawyers sought to have the case dismissed, but U.S. District Judge John Copenhaver Jr. rejected that Wednesday and said the case could move forward.
The reason? It’s because he believed there was substantial evidence that Trump Jr. might have known the claim to be false and said it anyway.
Given the mess that the withdrawal from Afghanistan turned out to be, there are plenty of things that the FRP could use against Biden and the Dems without resort to dark free speech (lies, deceit, irrational emotional manipulation, partisan motivated reasoning, etc.). Nonetheless, merely attacking Biden's misfortune with truth is not good enough for the FRP cause. The FRP feels a need to keep painting false realities that make a bad reality appear to be worse, so it does just that.
What cause does the FRP fight hard and dirty for? Attacking democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties, while advancing demagogic fascism, radical Christian nationalist fundamentalist theocracy and plutocratic kleptocracy. That is the FRP cause.
Questions:
Is the FRP cause really mostly anti-democratic or not? If not, why such heavy reliance on dark free speech, the forever tactic of choice for all or nearly all demagogues, tyrants, theocrats and kleptocrats?
Because minds don't change, is it pointless or even counter productive to keep pointing out FRP lies and deceit and arguing that the dark free speech is in service to some form of an anti-democratic kleptocratic tyranny-plutocracy-theocracy?
Are those brass knuckles in that
righteous glove of discipline?
No comments:
Post a Comment