Sunday, September 19, 2010

Altered memories

In a conversation last night with my oldest daughter's boyfriend, we were talking about memories and how they are not really stored as "facts" but more along the lines of associations. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why people have an altered perception of how we each remember something.

However, it surprises me something as recent as the 2008 elections is being re-written by some as to how things really were. Perfect example, this piece by Jennifer Rubin -- LINK, specifically this one part:

After the across-the-board defeats in 2008, conservative pundits didn’t rail at the voters. You didn’t see the right blogosphere go after the voters as irrational (How could they elect someone so unqualified? They’ve gone bonkers!) with the venom that the left now displays


At first I wondered where Rubin was during the 2008 election, where the anger, angst, name calling and general insults began from the right side of the blogosphere during the primary and continued on into the general. I'm not going to play the revisionist game and pretend I was an Obama supporter, I wasn't. Nor am I going to pretend some of the left were any better behaved, they weren't.

However, voter bashing took place and is still continuing to this date, where the blame game is traded by both parties in the never ending game of trying to convince voters each party is the lessor of two evils.

Need some examples of how the right dissed Obama voters?

Here's a classic 2008 moment that the right blogosphere had all kinds of fun with.

Obama Voters = Mentally Stupid and similar post titles were rampant in the blogosphere. The right went after Obama voters with the same passion some on the left went after Palin as far as the insult train.

Part of the problem we face right now is the absence of truth. We are responsible for this because some of us don't want to know the truth, some of us only want to know the truth if it suits our own political philosophical agenda and some of us aren't sure what the truth even is anymore...

A great way to start towards a more truthful society is to stop the bullshit when it comes to pretending one side treats the other with more respect. Maybe some of us do, but there are extremes at both ends that at the end of the day really don't act very different at all.

The internet which could be the greatest tool to bring us forward at times becomes nothing more than a virtual playground. "They started it!" needs to be replaced with "Grow the hell up!"

No comments: