Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Truth and Fairness
In observing what’s going on down in Florida, I’m inclined to think of a certain Steven Segal movie, and I think it’s this one. There’s an unintentionally hilarious scene at the end where the Army helicopters are dusting the good citizens of…whatever town it is…with some kind of vaccine or innoculant. The citizens look up at the helicopters, obviously concerned about whether they are being poisoned. But not to worry, the helicopters have loudspeakers. Someone dutifully explains through the loudspeakers that the powder is harmless. No identification, nothing. The citizens look relieved. Oh, okay, well I’m glad that’s all cleared up.
The poorly-thought-out segment creates quite a few heady questions for anyone inclined to think about such things. What are governments supposed to do, anyway? Can we believe everything our government tells us? Should we?
Well, there’s this bizarre wrinkle in Florida law that says the ballots must be printed with Mark Foley’s name on them. Absentee ballots have already gone out…Foley was still in the running at the time they went out…everybody has to have the same ballot. So you can swap the candidates, but you can’t change the list.
In sum, the law compels the list of names, to lie.
On this, there is little disagreement. The disagreement concerns what to do…
The Washington Post is reporting as of yesterday, that supports of Foley’s replacement, Joe Negron, may post signs indicating that a vote for Foley is really a vote for Negron.
An e-mail from the State Division of Elections to election supervisors in counties that are part of Foley’s district said that “preferably, the notice would be placed in every voting booth” and in absentee ballot mailings. The suggestion angered some Democrats who said it gives Negron unfair help.
See the thing about “unfair help”? That has been a huge controversy up until now. There’s a school of thought that says you shouldn’t post any signs about a specific candidate, no matter what the tone, anywhere near the polling place. Several other states have that law. I wasn’t able to find where Florida has such a law, and apparently nobody else can find that out either…so a school-o-thought, is all it is. Certainly I can understand it.
But if “fairness” is what it’s all about, the dictum becomes self-contradictory. In a great big hurry, it does.
How fair is it to run for the House, and have some pervert’s name printed next to the hole voters are to punch to vote for you?
So those who object to the signs, are standing up for fairness but not universal fairness. They want the lying-ballot to be left unchallenged. No inserts handed out with the ballots, no signs in the voting booth, or within one hundred, two hundred, five hundred feet of the polling place. It’s all about fairness…fairness only for certain people. Democrats. Hey, give them some credit, they’re usually not lying. It’s pretty tough to find any of them claiming to stand up for fairness for everyone. It’s pretty tough to find any of them claiming they’d argue the same way, if the situation was reversed…or anyone pointedly asking them such a thing. No, overall, the people who argue that the lying ballots should be left unchallenged, are arguing that for the sake of “fairness” and they don’t say a whole lot else about what motivates them.
So we have a situation here, where “fairness” as interpreted by some, is the opposite of truth. I suspect the point I’m making here, is something everybody already understands intuitively: This situation comes up a lot more often than we know.
And that’s why real flesh-and-blood people, who don’t live in movies, are hardly inclined to stop worrying when a helicopter dumps powder on their heads and a loudspeaker intones that the powder is harmless. Real people aren’t going to stop worrying in that situation…they’re going to start worrying. Because real people understand, one man is inclined to tell another man the truth, if and when the two men are true peers, and have interests that are identical.
That set of circumstances simply doesn’t come up very often in real life. Everybody who’s ever made their mother something shitty in Arts and Crafts, and taken it home to her and asked her if she liked it, has been lied to…by their own mother. And we all know it. The simple fact of the matter is, people have to be forced to tell the truth; to be held to account. That used to be what having a free press is all about. Here we are, in 2006, having a fairly vicious debate about whether it’s okay, or even compulsory, to lie in a voting ballot. Mark Foley is not “on the ballot.” That’s simply a fact.
So look what we have going on here. Democrats perceive fairness — to them — to be antithetical to telling the truth. They want the ballot to be left in place, they want voters to believe the choice is between a Democrat and a pervert…which is a lie. And with the lie in place, they want a Democrat elected to that seat, so that Democrats can take over Congress, and next year the Democratic Congress will tell us terrorism isn’t a problem anymore. And since it will be a popularly-elected Congress, we’ll just have to believe them.
Don’t worry about the terrorists…just like, don’t worry about the powder. We’ll be coerced to believe that, so soon after being deceived about who the candidates are.
I dunno, guys. I’ll be the first to confess our relationship with government should be based on cynicism, rather than “trust.” I believe that, and it’s plain the Founding Fathers believed that too. We revere the opinions of the Founding Fathers, today, because they understood “fairness” was a subjective concept, decided by individuals — and “fairness” to one coterie, often stands in opposition to truth. That is the philosophy upon which our system of government is really based. But at the same time, it seems to me, it’s going a bit far to lobby the government into telling the electorate factually untrue things, and then lie by omission to support the untrue things.
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