We laugh; we scoff; we sneer. Those poor rubes, being taken in by the Benghazi hysteria on Fox and in the right wing blogosphere. It is so very obvious that this is election year politics at its worst, trotting out old scandals which have been disproven over and over again.
But here is the problem. A friend posted this poster on Facebook:
A friend of hers responded:
there were no "stand down" orders given on those ... it's knowing and doing nothing that has Americans upset....
I don't usually engage with trolls, but that one was simple. Everyone knows that assertion has been discredited. So I Googled Benghazi stand down. And guess what?
There was not a single source I could use that a FOX fan would accept as credible:
Snopes? Left wing
Washington Post? Liberal
Media Matters? Don't make me laugh
Slate? Jonah Goldberg criticized it at their own request!!
Politfact? Now you are just messing with me. There is a whole website showing how messed up they are.
On every issue that so polarizes our political system, there are two completely separate realities. You truly can, in our current media world, have your own facts. the whole concept of fact checking is no longer valid. I cannot prove or disprove anything. That is scary.
10:15 AM PT: This really isn't about Benghazi. I could have done the same exercise on IRS scandals, death panels, Obama's birth certificate, anything the right believes is absolute truth and the left believes has been completely thoroughly debunked. My point is that we have come to a point where NOTHING can EVER be debunked, because there are no sources of truth accepted by everyone, nearly everyone or even most everyone.
1:32 PM PT: I am really frustrated. I am not talking here about GOP intransigence. I am talking about a real information crisis. The problem with there being on EVERY issue a completely different set of "facts" and no recognized source for factual information. That every discussion of any issue is crippled by the inability to provide information that will not be dismissed as biased.