…who tell them. Not only that, but, more importantly, those who perpetuate them.
I’m not exaggerating or crazy when I say that John McCain is a liar and more so than Barack Obama. If you don’t believe it, then you obviously don’t even follow the mainstream media, because even they’re onto him and the Palin machine at this point.
However, reading the Slate article, I can’t help but think, as I’ve thought for much of this campaign, that if you believe in John McCain—in his policies, his empty rhetoric, his many flip-flops, and his many lies—are you not complicit in the lie? If you regurgitate his views and those of Sean Hannity and Papa Bear and the rest of those talking heads, have you not become part of this gigantic web of false promises and gross mischaracterizations?
What reason would anyone have to believe lies anyway?
The phenomenon that scholars call “media fragmentation”—the disintegration of the mass media into the many niches of the Web, cable news, and talk radio—lets us consume news that we like and avoid news that we don’t, leading people to perceive reality in a way that conforms to their long-held beliefs.
What I’m getting at here is, is it a stretch to say that a vote for John McCain is the vote of and for a bigot? This is simply approaching a vote for McCain in the same way that McCain’s campaign and party view the questioning of Sarah Palin: if you question Palin you’re a sexist, if you vote McCain you’re a bigot.
Strictly speaking: If you believe what John McCain implies about his opponent, does that in some way not follow from one’s own held beliefs? Or could it be that McCain is tapping into the deeply rooted racism in this country in order to “other” his non-white, wholly unconventional opponent—similarly to the way one would conduct a war?
And what would that imply about a McCain presidency?
