Comment by hleszek
9 hours ago
This is still so relevant now:
> This Orwellian preoccupation with the minutiae of 'historical proof' is typical of the political sectarian who is always quoting what has been said and done in the past to prove a point to someone on the other side who is always quoting something to the opposite effect that has been said and done. As any politician knows, no evidence of any kind is ever required. It is only necessary to make a statement - any statement - forcefully enough to have an audience believe it. No one will check the lie against the facts, and, if they do, they will disbelieve the facts.
Relevant because it's universal human nature, to only have domain over a narrow context in life, and assert what's good/bad based on that limited view with others who occupy a different one. We use justifications which make sense to us that others rightly disagree with. It's not left politics, it's not right politics, it's not just politics, it's everything. Anyone who asserts they are beyond it are full of it.
Orwell and Asimov are talking about something entirely different than drawing flawed conclusions due to inexperience—they’re talking about people with access to the facts and choosing not to believe them.
For instance, Alex Pretti’s murder was recorded from several angles and yet the American right still broadly claims that he attacked the agents, that he pulled his gun on them, etc. You don’t need to be an expert in policing or anything else to watch those videos and see that those narratives are plainly false. That’s of course only one example, but there are many others.
These Minessota videos are classic examples of what Scott Adamns used to call "two different movies being played on the same screen", in this case quite literally. From the point of view of a left leaning person, that movie shows a man being assassinated for no reason at all, nothing justify what happened. From the point of view of a right leaning person, Alex Pretti was actively interfering with law enforcement, and he entered a conflict situation while carrying a gun. If a cop is in the act of fighting you, and see a gun, you carry the risk of being shot, it's just reality. The right leaning person, just based on these facts, already reduces the charges from murder to manslaughter, max. Two movies on one screen, and there's NOTHING rational that can be said to change the mind of anyone. Everybody is watching the same damn screen, but the movies are completely different.
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Dictators are absolutely terrified of the paper trail. This is the entire reason for existence of the Great Firewall. The CCP invests heavily in sanitizing imported literature and curating the information supply to maintain cognitive capture over the populace.
We are seeing parallel mechanics from the Trump/GOP camp: look at the library purges in conservative states and the push to co-opt moderation on platforms like TikTok. Access to the historical record isn't just a detail; it is the fundamental substrate of free speech.
But Trump and his administration also prove what GP is saying. Few care about the truth.
Trump states obvious lies so blatant ("prices will go down 200%") that anyone who cares could tell they are untruth without needing to look up any paper trail, but it does not matter.
Mike Johnson just quoted St Paul as saying you should respect the authority forgetting that the Romans beheaded him. And it's not like the Bible isn't available widely.
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If you can’t tell the difference between the Republicans and Democrats on February 5th, 2026 then you are the problem.
When people loudly assert there's no difference between the left and right in this era, I don't know how to give them the benefit of the doubt. Is it more generous to assume they're being disingenuous and too smart to actually believe what they're saying? Or vice versa?
There is of course a huge difference between left and right, but the democratic party is actually center-right, so...
Previous poster didn't say there's no difference between left and right, they said both parties are bought and paid for by fascists, which is pretty much true, thanks to Citizens United v FEC which passed the last time democrats had control of Congress and the presidency. Congress could have responded, but didn't.
At this time, democrats had 60 (!) seats in the senate, enough to end a filibuster, and they had to negotiate with MODERATE DEMOCRATS to pass the ACA. Moderate democrats are, on the face of things, the reason the ACA doesn't have a public option.
Don't get me wrong, I still vote democrat any chance I get, and would encourage everyone to do the same, but unfortunately I have to do it despite the fact they're bought and paid by the donor class, which are, by and large, fascists.
Democrats should started Jan 7th by screaming for Trump's arrest and not stopping until he was rotting in jail, but all we got was 4 years of nothing, followed by "too bad, so sad, we did everything we could".
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No more relevant today than it was 5 or 10 or 20 years ago tbh
Gravity has always been an important factor in our lives, but I'd say it's even more relevant when we're actively being spaghettified by a black hole.