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| Me versus the World |
I don't get a lot of traffic on this blog, somewhere between 500 and 1,000 visits a day. If each of those visits is an actual person actual looking at something I posted, well, that's pretty cool. I don't get many comments, which just means I have even less information about these visits. But I keep posting because I am compelled to tell my small corner of the world what I think. I occasionally think about how I might increase those numbers, but they would require doing other stuff, and my get-things-done time is already full up with other obligations, so, yeah, that ain't happening.
Recently I noticed that my 'readership', if you can call it that, has fallen in half, and it pretty much coincides with Putin's invasion of Ukraine, which corresponds to the pro-Russia and anti-USA slant of several of my posts on the subject. Meanwhile, several bloggers I follow have started spouting pro-Ukraine nonsense, basically repeating the moronic press releases from the war hawks who seem to be bound and determined to turn Ukraine into another Syria. Probably lost another dozen followers with that comment. Which just means that if you dump enough propaganda on people, and you keep repeating the message endlessly, a lot of people are going to believe it, at least on a superficial level.
Today I encountered this quote on View From The Porch:
When I went on The Joe Rogan Experience in early December of 2020, he surprised me by veering way off-topic to do vaccine-skeptical takes.Since this is not what my book is about and isn’t something I had professional background covering, I was not prepared to rebut his talking points effectively. That’s especially true because, at the time, the Covid-19 vaccines were loosely Trump-branded, so I wasn’t really expecting this to be a controversial issue and hadn’t looked into it. Which is just to say that Rogan was actually much better informed about the vaccine issue than I was. He (correctly) said the common, non-severe side-effects were considerably worse than I realized. And he also correctly said that the Phase III clinical trials were not long enough to gauge how enduring the protection the vaccines offered was. He, as a vaccine skeptic, had sought out a lot of vaccine skeptic talking points, and many of those talking points were factually true.I, a normal sane individual who supports vaccination efforts, never bothered to look into anything about it other than when was I going to be able to get my shots.But this is actually the general pattern in life. A normal person can tell you lots of factual information about his life, his work, his neighborhood, and his hobbies but very little about the FDA clinical trial process or the moon landing. But do you know who knows a ton about the moon landing? Crazy people who think it’s fake. They don’t have crank opinions because they are misinformed, they have tons and tons of moon-related factual information because they’re cranks. If you can remember the number of the Kennedy administration executive order about reducing troop levels in Vietnam, then you’re probably a crank — that EO plays a big role in Kennedy-related conspiracy theories, so it’s conspiracy theorists who know all the details.
The quote is from The "misinformation problem" seems like misinformation by Matthew Yglesias. Like Tam says, it's worth reading the whole thing.
It's good that somebody is paying attention to what the experts are saying, but I ain't gonna do that. The 'experts' change their minds at the drop of a hat. I don't want to be that close. Let them duke it out for five or ten years and then I will take a closer look at whatever kind of nonsense they are spewing.
Matthew mentions that he read The Economist when he was a kid. I don't know whether he reads it now, but to me, The Economist is crap. He also calls Trump a huge liar. Well, that's what you get for listening to politicians. Don't listen to them, you won't hear any lies. It's not worth listening to anything that comes from a politician, well, unless you are deeply involved in the political game.
There were a couple names and terms in Matthew's post that were unfamiliar to me, so I looked 'em up:
- Kevin McCarthy - Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives
- DCCC - Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
- DSCC - Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
- Paul Ryan - Former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
I enjoy reading your blog. I agree that most politicians are dishonest. Also far to many people don't want to put in the effort to actually dig for factual information. So, yes, crazy obsesed have the best info.
ReplyDeleteI actually had an older gentleman tell me the economy was in great shape. Where he acquired that opinion is beyond me, but he was retired, and must be woefully unaware of how costs have risen in the last few months. If I had to guess, he's a fan of mainstream media and willing to believe the crap sandwich they're selling is the best item at the deli.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to align yourself with Putin on Ukraine, in his creating a massive refugee crisis, his indiscriminate shelling of cities and his forces slaughtering civilians, then that is your cross to bear.
ReplyDeleteA long time ago, I started reading The Economist because it was a fairly libertarian, free-market oriented rag, it provided pretty good second-opinion coverage of US issues, and I could afford it while I was still working. Later I split the cost with my also-retired brother-in-law and we shared it. But at some point, it started smelling pretty socialistic. The last time I read it, for free* at the library*, it was full-on 'all-government, all the time". As you said, "CRAP!".
ReplyDelete*Yeah, I get the irony.
Your pal,
Chris
The experts don't change their speil at the drop of a hat. They change it when new factual information becomes available, that's why they're experts. When Covid first appeared they didn't know anything about it except it was killing Chinese and through international air travel was moving fast. They fell back on what had worked in the past which was masks, social distancing, and avoiding crowds.
ReplyDeleteAs information became available, which is a slow process with diseases, they would change their approach as to standard procedure. In the meantime the lies were flying that Bill Gates put tiny transmitters in shots, and it was all a hoax, no worse than the flu, etc. Complete bullshit that people who wanted to be the smartest guy on the block would swallow hook line and sinker.
The personal attacks on the government official experts proves the naysayers are spouting bullshit.Cheap shots are a liars tactic. Come up with the most outrageous crap and some PhD will agree with it, that bunch has their share of whackos.
Now inflation is rampant, 7.9%. The white house spending and policy contributed 0.35% of that, the rest is mostly greed, jacking prices because they can at a time when corporate profits are setting records for the last 11 months.
I don't expect to change anyone's mind but I refuse not to add my 2¢.