Owl For President

Monday, March 7, 2011

Being misinformed is a bonus

A lot of folks get confused as to why politicians are often wrong on the facts. From trees that pollute the atmosphere, to Presidents that haven't used a scanner, to McCain last week telling us, incorrectly, that iPads are made in the US, right wing politicians often make "misstatements."

It rarely occurs to their opponents that these mistakes are either deliberate or by design (in otherwords, the make up of the person is this way to start, and they don't even have to think about lying, as they do it congenitally). Reagan was constantly mistating statistics, as was Bush I and II, and they were being called on it. In fact, at least in Reagan's case, it would not be too much to suggest that the majority of news items about Reagan concerned his gaffs. And here is the rub: this is exactly what he wanted.

Many folks, especially those with less education, feel a direct kinship with a liar, since a liar uses false logic to elevate himself, something the less educated are not as prepared to withstand. More to the point, they feel more comfortable with folks that are often wrong, and demonstrably so, because it makes them feel superior, especially if that person is abstract, like a Sarah Palin or a Ronald Reagan, someone that can seem "like them" from afar, but they never have to meet.

because the less educated are entranced by ENDS not by reason, they are more likely to follow a person or persons who promise "the moon," without delivering complicated (and error riddled) solutions.

The zeitgeist is this for the Right: "follow a person that believes in a golden future, but is as uneducated as I am, because intelligent people can always explain to us why we are going to fail, and I don't want to hear that: I want the Golden Future. My lack of reason solves the conundrum of science repudiating my opinions."

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