GOP Debate Tactic Du Jour
[This was in response to someone who claimed to have witnessed Democratic volunteers "literally dragging people in vegetative states in the election booth", a day or two after someone else told me about something "an Obama supporter" had told him "yesterday".]
Yeah, that's a new tactic I've noticed from a number of right leaning people: take a (probably apocryphal) story that's flying around on the internets, and report (or significantly imply) that they themselves witnessed it.
Funny how this is so wide spread that so many people witnessed it happening, and yet there's zero substantiation for it anywhere.
I have one right leaning friend who fairly often takes to telling me what "I had an Obama supporter telling me, just this morning". Amazing how often he speaks to Obama supporters who happen to have just told him the exact thing Fox News reports Obama supporters believe, when not a single Obama supporter I know (and I know quite a lot of them) believes anything like that.
But of course, if you report that you've seen it, A) it's harder for us to disprove what you say, and B) you get to indignantly ask "Are you calling me a liar?" if we question what you're saying.
Well, I say, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... You really don't get to be indignant when you get called a liar if you actually ARE lying... and when you associate yourself with a group so willing to lie in exactly that fashion, I'm sorry if you're the ONE who actually DID witness what you say you witnessed, but as a group populated with many boys-who-cry-wolf, you'll have to excuse me if I have a hard time being willing to put a whole lot of effort into substantiating what seems like yet another in the series.
Plus, let's be honest, it's not like this wouldn't be easy to spot. Think about what this would entail. You're sitting at your polling place, and you watch someone literally carrying or wheeling in an unconscious or semi-conscious person to the polling place. You watch (in contrast to the laws in my state at least, don't know about yours) as someone OTHER than the person voting declares their identity, and then fills out a ballot for them... and not one person challenges that or reports it to the authorities... and yet so many people are willing to run out and report it to the (far less critical or likely to fact-check) right wing web sites?
C'mon.
posted by Liam at 11/09/2012 11:02:00 AM
1 Comments:
More of my comments from FB on the people "literally dragging people in vegetative states" in to vote
And again, I will say that while I can't speak to [the person who asserted it] specifically, I've noticed a significant increase recently in the number of right-wingers (possibly others as well, but I've noticed it with right wingers) who have begun to get past the "a friend of a friend" issue which everyone knows is of dubious credibility by claiming that they themselves have witnessed something that they've actually merely read alleged or reported in some other place.
If you say "one of my friend's friends saw..." or "I've read on line that...", it's fairly easy for someone to either dismiss (in the former case) or demand sourcing and vet that (in the second). But when someone says they witnessed something themselves, they put you in the position of having to call them a liar or accept their testimony unquestioned.
Eric, how often have we seen... a certain person on my wall... tell us what "the liberals I work with" or "the liberals I run into every day" were telling him "just the other day", and then asserting the caricature of liberal attitudes which in my experience ONLY exists on Fox News and similar propaganda outlets for the right?
Again, I simply do not believe that someone could "literally drag" someone who was unconscious or nearly so (to say nothing of multiple "people") into a polling place, violating the rules, in front of the numerous witnesses who would be present at a polling place, and not have a single person report that through official channels, or that those people COULD report it but that it would get ZERO notice in the news, and yet googling "vegetative people voting", I find NO reports in the first two pages of results.
Finally, let's just look at logic: If I were inclined to cast ballots in the name of people in a vegetative state, why would I "literally drag" them to the polling place, in front of witnesses, violate identification laws and be seen casting their vote for them when I could with much greater ease sign them up for an absentee ballot, fill it out for them and mail it back in?
Think of the logistics of taking someone in a persistent vegetative state (which generally also means they need to be on feeding apparatus and other medical equipment), removing all of their medical machinery, hauling them to a vehicle and to a polling place to cast ballots. How would it really work? And exactly how many could you manage in a day? Not that it wouldn't be illegal, but could you really do enough that way to statistically affect any but the absolutely closest elections?
No, given all of that, I am comfortable stating that I think [original asserter]... exaggerated something [they] heard alleged and changed it from third person to first person. I do not believe she witnessed even one person, certainly not PEOPLE, being "literally dragged" into a polling place. There are just too many holes in the story for it to be true.
The most charitable I can be is that [they're] guilty of hyperbole, and perhaps [they] saw ONE person wheeling in a disabled but not "vegetative" person in a wheelchair and assisting them in voting. "Literally dragging" I am confident is false. Multiple "people" is likely an exaggeration. "I saw" is as likely as not also a transition from third to first person to give the report more credibility.
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Saturday, November 10, 2012 10:07:00 AM
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