Republicans using "alternative facts" for eight years plus, now waging war on truth

So I want to point out something, "alternative facts" (aka falsehoods/lies) have been a staple of the republican party for years. Republicans have been claiming some version of climate change not being real, lying about the real state of the economy, saying that Obama isn't a true citizen, etc.

However now they have turned to the next step in the war on truth. This is a more centralized form so they can refute anything at any time with little to no effort. Specifically they are trying to spread the idea that no one can really know what is true or what is fact because, according to them, the concepts and definitions of such terms are fuzzy at best. This is essentially the next step of the constant lies, if you can get people to question whether anyone actually knows the truth or even what the truth means then it becomes exceptionally easy to get people to just accept whatever you tell them regardless of what it is or how much evidence is backing it up.

This isn't really a question guys, but feel free to give me your thoughts.

8 years?

Not 55 or so?

I did say plus, but I have been personally observing it since before Obama stepped into office.

Has this not been clear since they started their sustained assault on mainstream media (ie anything we don't agree with)?

@mattbbpl: I think that clarification of what the goal of their actions are intending to accomplish is useful.

There's a lot of bullshit on the left too, but none of it is on the same level as denying climate change, denying evolution (which, to be fair, hasn't been an issue in a long time), claiming that Obama is a Muslim based on nothing, etc.

I guess the anti-vaxxers which tend to go left might be on a similar level.

Oh yeah there's bs on both sides, but I'm talking about a concerted effort to make it unclear what is even meant by terms like truth and fact.

You don' think the democrats are as guilty of doing this same exact thing, as the republicans? They use the exact same tactics, Hillary lost because she used every republican play in their playbook and it seems that roughly 40% of the democratic party stands with these people and want to continue these tactics. This is the exact tactic they use in response to the emails and corrupted DNC.

The problem is not democrats or republicans, its a broken, corrupted government that requires both of these parties to be fully corrupted and bought.

Exactly, there is nothing new about propaganda and Higalian Dialect, the left and the right use them to keep the masses divide, but more importantly confused.

@Serraph105: Sorry, not berating your thread, just being succinct. Pardon the brevity as I'm phone posting.

And yet more data to confirm my hypothesis that we've entered an era of anti-intellectualism.

Liberal professors have been peddling what you define as "alternative facts" for decades now. It's literally called postmodernism.

It's actually quite hilarious that you would make such a mental blunder.

Republicans routinely deny science in favor of religion. I would call that lies but they still can hide behind religious views to pretend they aren't lying. Is saying the earth is only 6000 years old a lie or just stupid?

When it comes to climate change its very convenient that their views align with the people in the energy sector who lobby them. They even get poor people who will see no profit from it to vote against their own ability to breath clean air. The saddest part is hearing the disadvantaged repeating the con and arguing it vehemently.

And yes Democrats can be bastards too. Mostly in lying about their liberal views and then helping the same special interests as the republicans do to the people's detriment.

Conspiracy theoreies and other crankpot ideas exist all across the spectrum. From homeopaths to climate change skeptics. Really, the left and right are little more than allegiences of various ideologies. And ideologies are very susceptible to dogma.

Unfortunately this sort of thing is not at all limited to the right, and the left has similar issues, just on different topics. And, while I would agree that the right has had, in my experience, the more dangerous denial-ism going on (climate change for instance), the left I would give the prize for the most insane stuff (biological sex doesn't exist... like seriously?!).

There was an article on MSN the nitpicked every instance of "alternate facts" . It gets way too specific like Trump said it was pouring rain when in fact it wasn't... so what.

The White House press meeting where they said the inauguration had the most people in history, 'period'. Now that's just silly.

Why would he tell such pointless, provable lies?

After everything we have been through I can't believe people still think Democrats are more honest than Republicans.

that's whats so stupid about the whole thing.

it doesn't matter one bit if there were 500K people there for 2M. there's still 300M+ people in the US and he's still the president. why the hell would you lead off the first official press event under the new administration throwing a tantrum about crowd sizes and stating figures that you know are going to be checked and shown to be wrong??

it's petty and weird.

I suspect they want to further undermine the mainstream media. With the MSM trust level pretty much tanked, the WH feels they can get away with saying pretty much anything that people can't easily confirm or refute themselves.

I think it's high time for both parties to ignite into flames.

The right denies science, tries to write policy based on religion, insists on burning gays at the stake, marriage is between a man and a woman, blah blah blah...

The left wants me to give up all of my money, bleed myself out for being white and successful, etc.

Some of this is slightly exaggerated, but damn, both of them can **** off.

I'm baffled that people see equivalence in this matter.

The meltdowns from the left are amazing to be honest.

"If you leap from a cliff, Gravity will ensure that you fall to your death"

"Uh no, There is the alternative fact that you will sprout wings and soar as majestic as the bald eagle"

Anti-vaxxing is an anti-establishment stance you will find on both far-left and far right. On a legislative level, a good mix of red and blue states have lenient exemptions:

You won't know for sure until you give it a chance.

Same here man.

No worries.

On average they are.

Compare the democrats,

http://www.politifact.com/personalities/hillary-clinton/
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/bernie-s/

To the republicans,

http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/ted-cruz/

Exceptions do exist of course,

http://www.politifact.com/personalities/john-kasich/

But on average, Democrats are more consistant with reality than Republicans.

Edit: And then there is this,

http://cmpa.gmu.edu/study-media-fact-checker-says-republicans-lie-more/

Since politifact itself is left leaning, you can't really use it as evidence of this. It could very easily be cherry picking which things it fact checks (even if we assume it's checks are 100% correct which we also can't).

The complaints about it being left leaning are cancelled out by the accusations of it being right leaning.

The way Politifact seems to work is check for things they suspect to be untrue.

The difference between the right and the left is that while all politicians on both sides play fast and loose with facts and ignore what is not convenient....the right currently is trying to silence the media......at the very least wanting to erode trust in the media.

@DerekLoffin: the mentality you are displaying here seems conducive to believing Trump's alternative truths. Every source that does not engage in spreading right wing talking points is not left leaning. The truth does tend to have a liberal bias though.

Ultimately it doesn't matter, they inherently have to cherry pick what they investigate, which means they are ultimately useless as an overall metric for this type of argument. Frankly I actually do believe the right is more often the user of BS, but that doesn't change the fact that using Politifact as evidence is inherently faulty as they aren't even trying to measure such. They work on topic by topic basis, without any even attempt at neutrality or randomness in the way they pick topics.

That or stuff that people are commonly asserting is untrue.

There was nothing wrong with Derek's post from what I saw.

Criticism and scrutiny towards methods is great.

I will also mention that a flaw with my methodology is that I used the two most prominent candidates on both sides. If you were willing to look at the following republicans after those... While still not as well performing as the democrats on average. Paint a much better picture for the GOP.

They are non partisan.

@LJS9502_basic:

Politifact are not NON PARTISAN. You can feel free to disagree but they have been known to alter the fact checking to their agenda.

https://www.google.com/amp/townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/2016/06/29/the-liberal-tilt-at-politifact-n2185076%3Famp%3Dtrue?

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/12/politics-and-lies

The alternative facts are fishy even to me.

So you post opinions. That's not facts dude.

These Trumpettes are the right-wing versions of SJWs. The truth hurts but alternative truths work to their advantage.

Politifact is actually pretty good. They've been fact checked before, in fact a couple months ago there was a good report on NPR about them and i believe it was Harvard doing a study on their information and how accurate it is.

Well, it was raining during his inauguration.

Literally and figuratively.

@kod: I know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_of_two_evils_principle

The Democrats aren't suddenly absolved of all wrongdoing just because Republicans are generally the worst.

This isn't some binary argument where 0 = good and 1 = bad. A simple 1-10 scale where Republicans score higher would be just as easy to understand and infinitely more logical.

I found the article: MSN: White House Pushes ‘Alternative Facts.’ Here Are the Real Ones.

Surprise, surprise, it's from The New York Times.

"3. Mr. Trump said that though he had been “hit by a couple of drops” of rain as he began his address on Inauguration Day, the sky soon cleared. “And the truth is, it stopped immediately, and then became sunny,” he said. “And I walked off, and it poured after I left. It poured.”

The truth is that it began to rain lightly almost exactly as Mr. Trump began to speak and continued to do so throughout his remarks, which lasted about 18 minutes, and after he finished."

From what I've seen recently, seems the MSM in general deals in the most falsehoods. Between WaPo, NYT, CNN, etc. I see nothing but retractions and mistakes being made week after week. Often contradictions between them all, and they often seem to leave important bits of information out of their stories.

Consider the fact that much of the MSM is pro-big government (left), and through expansion of government they are able to expand their power. It's fairly understandable why Republicans are skeptical of almost everything that's pushed to be a "hard fact" (take global warming for example) when the facts in question exclusively have democratic origins. And then there's a group-think dissent that goes on when new ideas or evidence is brought to the table. That sort of dissent is what leads me to believe that there's more of a ideology-based thinking going on among the left than what I'd consider healthy, rational, moderate thinking. The left seem to be in a bit of denial that people in high positions (such as media organizations) might not necessarily be serving the people's interest.

There's also a weird thing where rich people in Hollywood and people who own media organizations try to relate to common people as if their interests and position in societies are the same. They don't seem to think twice when people who live in mansions on islands (like George Clooney) tell regular working people that they need to accept mass immigration and amnesty and be happy about it.

@KHAndAnime: you'll surely get a kick out of the article I just posted. Talk about alternative facts, both sides have them. Those news outlets are good at using trendy hashtag buzzwords to rally people.

This is like Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell where language is used to control people. Newspeak, you take two words that are polar opposites and put them together. Like freedom fighters. Freedom is a good thing but fighting is bad. Instead of saying used we say preowned. Alternative-facts is the same concept. It's an oxymoron.

Why are people equating an administration's propensity to use "alternative facts" to a party not even in power as if that somehow makes it excusable or equal? The Right, the Left, the media bullshits.....big shocker. There's a difference here, however.

Trump and his administration are going to great lengths to destroy any credibility of the press while also holding no compunction whatsoever towards weaving their own false or self-serving narrative in its place. That's a textbook tactic to creating propaganda. The Left and Right are equally guilty of lying, I won't disagree there, but I've never seen the Left in power go after the media with such venomous, targeted efforts to discredit while at the same time not even attempting to hide the fact they're misleading. Sure, it could be argued the media leans mostly to the Left so it's not necessary, but there's Right-leaning media just as well to which no liberal administration has pursued with such vehemence as Trump is doing currently. That he's utilizing the government to discredit the press should be raising immediate red flags about his intentions. If anyone believes he's doing this for "the benefit of the people", "truth", or whatever new daily lie he dreams up for his puppets....then I have a bridge to sell you.

Regardless of affiliation, this should be very alarming to all and not brushed under the rug just because "the other side does/has done it". Has the Left (when in power) ever acted as this administration is right now? That's not rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious because I can't ever recall a time where our government actively went after the press so full-bore and then unashamedly and cavalierly lied in its place.

The Left and Right are equally as bad? Are they? As far as I'm aware, this is "unpresidented".