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b_b  ·  2291 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: "The Decline of Anti-Trumpism" or "My pearls: let me clutch them" by David Brooks

Like with all things Brooks, he kind of has a point and then kind of misses his own point entirely.

For example:

    In every war, nations come to resemble their enemies...

Agreed. You and I were talking about the US/UK targeting civilians just the other day. But they did it in response to the Nazis. One could construct an argument that not targeting civilians would actually be more immoral, because Nazis and Japanese needed to know that there was a cost to doing business that way. But, Brooks being Brooks, he goes on to say:

    Or, are we going to restore the distinction between excellence and mediocrity, truth and a lie? Are we going to insist on the difference between a genuine expert and an ill-informed blow hard? Are we going to restore the distinction between those institutions like the Congressional Budget Office that operate by professional standards and speak with legitimate authority, and the propaganda mills that don’t?

Yes, dipshit. That's exactly what the fuck we're doing. The moral outrage on Twitter can be numbing, but it's normally stuff like "OMG look the administration is taking away health care from children so they can give tax breaks to billionaires, even though they're saying the opposite." The entire anti-Trump movement is about restoring truth to the world. Policy be damned at this point; let's settle for a hint of honesty.

What he's doing here, even though he doesn't realize it, it false equivalence, and that's the whole fucking problem to begin with. Fox has created a world in which it's patently ok to be patently false. The rest of the media are always playing catch up by constantly refuting their lies. Even refuting a lie is engaging with its veracity, and that is a win for the liar. We need some bomb throwing, and I, for one, am ok with some of the casualties that are inevitable.