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Notes -
Mitchel McConnell and the Collapse of Common Sense.
Before I start -
-Please don't feel personally attacked if you bought the FUD, you are not alone.
-It could totally turn out that the recent releases are doubling-down in which case whoops, and feel free to judge me later.
Anyway.
After weeks of speculation, Mitch McConnell appears to be alive (per CNN, Fox). This is good news (because death is bad, and also because he is one of the most competent people remaining in American government). It seems like he and his family wanted some privacy and that he was sick (probably held down by some pneumonia it seems?).
This was always the most likely outcome.
Despite that we've seen a crap-ton of conspiracy theories, and I think these are a microcosm of the decline in America and perhaps the modern world. On reddit and most of blue social media this was painted something that the evil Republicans were doing for evil Republican reasons (with a sidebar of his wife/handler immediately fleeing to China). The mainstream media bit into it as a tabloid chaser (...how far we've fallen) and as a cudgel to hit the Republicans with, and of course you can also blame the 24-hour news cycle.
Posters here and more moderate/right-leaning spaces did better but some still went in on conspiracy theories.
Lest we think it is online only I deliberately polled some people I know in real life.
This never really made sense though. The political hit from having been caught lying about this would be high (well for Republicans, anyway). The benefits on stalling are murky. The amount of family and other people you'd have to keep in the dark was high.
It was silly. Perhaps some people didn't mean it seriously, but that's the problem isn't it.
Too much of politics is low information, demanding people have an opinion, and that opinion is valueless and sometimes more of humor thing or as we talk about with woke a religious stance more than a policy position.
People being stupid and silly isn't a new invention but people are asked about or forced to state their opinions more often and can do so publicly and without later shame for saying something ridiculous. On the other hand the people we used to look to for information have fallen off the rails, and on the gripping hand people feel entirely comfortable completely throwing out experts because the experts have lost a step, not realizing random individuals or influencers really aren't doing any better.
And of course we have what we see anytime a Republican aligned figure is ill or dead - the grave dancing.
The whole thing has been tremendously gross but I can't help but think we'll get more of it.
The decline and fall of Joe Biden has essentially permanently broken any public trust that might have existed around the health of older politicians. Every news consumer and voter remembers when the entire establishment, including many Republicans, lied to us about the mental state of the president for years. There will be no charity for elderly politicians for some time.
What makes you say that? What politician has actually faced consequences for lying to the public in the Trump era? I guess Biden, but he mostly just aged out, and only a handful of his immediate Bidenworld cohort have been banished from public life. As Jung said Hitler was the incarnation of Wotan, Trump is the incarnation of Loki. We live under the reign of the trickster god and are surprised when people suspect dirty tricks. In the Iran discussion just one post away, we have Trump's defenders arguing that he was lying the whole time about his intentions and that the lies are what justify signing the MOU, which was just a dirty trick against Iran all along.
We live in a post-truth era. Why would any elderly politician have earned the benefit of the doubt?
Aren't you conflating different spheres here?
I want my military leaders to be good a keeping secrets, lying even. I'm very happy that nobody knew about the Maduro raid until it was over. Similarly, much of what's happening in Iran is being kept secret because it literally is top secret.
Politics is a different matter. We should desire maximum transparency from our elected leaders, since their actions are the basis on which we elect them and hold them accountable. In fairness though, much of what they do is also classified, or has effects that require deliberation before sharing information.
But I think op is actually more concerned with the media. We absolutely should, and largely don't, hold them to the highest standards for integrity.
Conflating these spheres just muddies the issue.
You certainly seem quite muddled, so I clearly didn't communicate clearly!
OP seems mainly concerned about the public, rather than the media, with specific call outs to social media and to real life. A public made up of people who just watched as Joe Biden fell apart publicly after years of being told he was fine.
I think we can play some motte and bailey games if we want to define what exactly is ok for the government to keep secret and what isn't, but I think we can all agree that the government has repeatedly been on the wrong side of that line. I don't think anyone can dispute in good faith that the American political class has routinely lied to the American public, in ways that were easily and publicly proven to be lies quickly enough for people to notice, and that people notice this. It matters that Trump tweets out extremely clear things that he later backs off on. People learn not to trust their government.
"People Think Lying Liars Might be Lying" is kind of a non-headline.
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