The truth about fake news

I hate to upset my progressive friends and all that, but here’s the truth about the “fake news” stuff that all of the media have been talking about since Unpresident Trump “won” by getting three million fewer votes than his sane, competent and qualified opponent last month:

Fake news isn’t news.  We’ve always had fake news.

There. I put it in a block quote so you’d notice it.

Political parties, and political campaigns – and those who are trying to influence the outcome in elections – have always propagated “false news.”  Falsehoods, spin, lies, bullshit: the false news, you will always have with you, to mangle Jesus’ aphorism.

So, George H. W. Bush lied with “read my lips.”  Bill Clinton lied with “sexual relations with that woman.”  George W. Bush lied with “weapons of mass destruction.” Brian Mulroney lied about free trade – “we’ll have none of it.”  Pierre Trudeau lied about wage and price controls – “zap, you’re frozen.”  And so on.  Those are just the ones off the top of my head.  There are plenty more.

I don’t think most of those politicians thought they were in the false news business when they uttered those whoppers.  They probably hoped those things were true, or they believed those things were kind of true.  Spin is “hopeful persuasion,” Clinton guy George Stephanopoulos once said, and I always liked that characterization.  It reflects what I have observed with many political folks: they believe in subjective truth, not objective truth.  And they don’t actually believe there are any objective truths.

Let me give you a real life example, because I’m all about real.

I was near Union Station in my truck, waiting for my beautiful, amazing daughter to come home for Christmas. I was thumbing through Twitter, killing time.

I came across a tweet by the Unpresident, Donald Trump, in which he said: “We did it! We secured Nickelback for the inauguration.  Very pleased, a great American band.”

I laughed out loud.  Trump is an idiot, but this was idiotic even for him.  Nickelback are Canadian! Ha!

There weren’t any of Trump’s telltale spelling mistakes in the tweet – “unpresidented” being my all-time favourite – but it featured that little blue Twitter check mark, indicating it was real.  And the Twitter handle was authentic, too.  Sitting there in my truck, squinting  in the dark, it look real enough to me.

So I tweeted this:


People must’ve thought that was funny, because they retweeted it, and favourited it, about a zillion times in the succeeding days. Twitter itself said there have been about 180,000 “impressions” about the tweet (meaning, I’m told, a human being saw it) and nearly 2,000 retweets and twice as many likes or favourites or whatever. So, a lot.

I was pretty focussed on my daughter, you see, and not so much Twitter.  But, later on, when I again looked down on the screen, someone had tweeted back to me, saying the uneven spacing suggested to them that it was fake. So I looked at the tweet again and saw that they were right: the line spacing was off. Some mischief-maker had Photoshopped the thing and sucked in a ton of folks, me included.

And then I got to thinking. So it’s fake: so what?

Some other people – mainly Trump-lovers – starting objecting to the fake tweet. They wanted me to delete it, and tell everyone it was fake.  They started citing Snopes and stuff like that.  They were going bananas.

So I thought some more.

No, I thought, I’m not going to. Donald Trump is a lying sack of shit. He “won” the presidency on a mountain of lies. Lying was all he was any good at, in fact.  He is the Liar in Chief.

So, on Twitter, I started pushing back. Fake news for a fake president, I said to one.  True is false, I said to another, with Orwellian gusto.  Snopes lies, I told one or two, in the hope that their puny craniums would implode.  Embrace the new era, I tweeted to one woman, and stop clinging to the quaint notion that there is any truth left to be had.

The knuckle-draggers were going apeshit about all of this, naturally, and I always enjoy that. I love poking a stick between the bars of the conservative cage. But, in the midst of all the Twitter twaddle, I thought a useful point was being made, as well.

Namely, if the Right are going to tell lies about us, and get away with it, well – what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, I always say.  Let’s bombard them with false news, too.  Let’s make them suffocate in it.  Let’s destroy them with it.

If you are progressive, you will be possibly horrified by this, because you are a good person and you observe boundaries.  And, as a fellow progressive, I say to you: I endeavoured to be a good person, too. I tried to stay inside the lines, too.  And what did that get us, precisely?  It got us Donald Trump.

Hopeful persuasion, Stephanopoulos called it.  I like that.  Let’s persuade voters with what we hope to be true, but not what has been proven to be true, beyond a reasonable doubt.  Let’s just make it true on, say, a balance of probabilities.

If that standard is good enough for a civil court, it’s good enough for me.

Truth.


Merry Christmas

At Mass with my youngest son, my Mom, my cousin and her brood. Many others are missing, but they’re all going to Hell. 

Merry Christmas to those of you who believe in Christmas. And all the best to those of you who don’t. 


What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Washington 

This one:


There will be some schadenfreude, of course, as the slack-jawed fools who voted for Trump realize what they have wrought. But, by then, the missiles should be arcing overhead, and the church pews will all be full, too late. 


Five points about Trudeau

So. 

I’ve been reading some of the commentariat’s year-end stuff. Short version: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in trouble, blah blah blah. 

He isn’t. Five points:

• Trudeau has had the longest honeymoon of any Prime Minister in the history of polling. It is extraordinary, and it hasn’t ended. 

• Trudeau’s government has more support than both his principal opponents put together. After more than year, that too is extraordinary. 

• Trudeau – as seen in myriad polls and focus groups and such – is genuinely liked by Canadians, coast to coast. It isn’t Trudeaumania, but it also isn’t the sort of affection enjoyed by any other politician in the planet. Truly. 

• Trudeau has seen a bit of a dip in his party’s support, sure. But that’s more due to the high cost of electricity in Ontario, and the low cost of oil in Alberta. I don’t believe, not for a minute, that the “cash for access” and pipelines stuff have hurt him with real people. Newspaper editorial boards and people who never vote Liberal, maybe. But not real folks. 

• Trudeau, when contrasted with the fucking maniac who is about to become President of the United States, is going to continue to look good. He will be the anti-Trump, and he (and we) will benefit from that.

 


Awan v. Levant

My exceedingly-small role in this case, which has been going on for years: when I saw these young people being brutalized in print by Messrs. Whyte, Wells et al. – being repeatedly called “sock puppets” and worse – I got in touch with them.  I told them to forget about the human rights actions, and to get a real lawyer – my friend, Brian Shiller. They did. They sued, and they won.

And now, they have won again, this time at the Court of Appeal.

Worth reading. And congratulations to Khurrum and Brian and Angela. Big, big win.

Truth still matters.


Oil and hydro: the bane of Trudeau’s existence

Oil is way down in Alberta, hydro is way up in Ontario. Justin Trudeau isn’t responsible for either, but he’s apparently being blamed for both. 

From our buddies at Abacus:


And, in their words:

As 2016 winds down, approval of the performance of the Trudeau government sagged a bit to 50%, in line with the numbers achieved at this point last year, but down from the levels seen earlier in the year. 32% disapprove of how the government is doing.

The sliding approval rating is largely attributable to opinion shifts in Ontario and Alberta, and among Conservative voters. Liberal and NDP voters remain about as satisfied as they have been with the performance of Mr. Trudeau’s government. Quebec and BC show considerably less fluctuation.

Trudeau’s guys must be a bit frustrated by all this, because they don’t control how expensive hydro is or how inexpensive oil is. But he’s taking a hit for both, just the same. 

He needs oil to go up, which I think it will do in Q2 2017. He needs hydro rates in Ontario to go down, or some dramatic political changes, in Q1 2017. I think the latter is more likely than the former. 

We shall see. In the meantime, I – for one – feel for Justin Trudeau. He’s being blamed for crap that is in no way his fault. 

Politics is a cruel mistress, etc.