Who’s facts are alternative?
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Who knew? David Letterman has come out of retirement with a new political show, monthly on Netflix “My next guest needs no introduction with David Letterman”. And one of his first guest was former President Barack Obama.
Letterman’s first question was to ask the former President “what he considers the more dangerous threat to a democracy, the president demeaning the press or a foreign power sabotaging the voting process.” To which part of Obama’s answer was, “One of the biggest challenges we have to our democracy is the degree to which we don’t share a common baseline of facts,” … “If you watch Fox News, you are living on a different planet than you are if you are listening to NPR.”
There is so much here, but I will limit my comments to two aspects, the real question and the real answer.
The real question from Letterman, translated was this: what Obama considers the more dangerous threat to a democracy, the president “not accepting a biased” press or “not getting a President out of office for a made up story of” sabotaging the voting process.
One of the major frustrations among the left is how Trump consistently exposes the bias and fake news of the mainstream media. Not that he doesn’t like a free media. Not that he doesn’t like it when you say negative things about him (who does). But that he should accept those attacks without comment or exposing the misrepresentations. Drives them nuts. Should scare the hell out of all of us as we witness this travesty of the national press on a daily basis.
The real answer from Obama translated was this:
If everyone would just accept our alternative facts and believe they are on the wrong side, without any public debate, it would be so much easier for us to redistribute wealth and fundamentally change the country.
Demonizing the opposition is a consistent political strategy of the left and Obama was and is a master of it. That is number one. Number two, re-stating the demonizing template is always useful; Fox is bad, Fox viewers are deplorable, they don’t have the facts, we do.
Why isn’t it that just maybe your facts are alternative or your news organizations are on another planet with you and your political ideology?
One way to find out, honestly debate issues instead of avoiding the issue and demonizing the person stating a position – with facts I might add. Sometimes both sides have facts and it is left to us to determine what is best among the opposing facts. Like, we don’t have any desire to punish innocent people is a good shared fact. The other side is, this illegal immigrant just shot my daughter. So let’s decide which is more important in that circumstance.
Obama, Letterman and others, just want us to accept their fact and their chosen PR firm that report it.
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