Dispatch #5\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Handling The Glenn Beck Believers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Jay Gilchrist\u00a0 GBVD\u00a0<\/p>\n
You mention Beck to most progressives and they make a face and a dismissive gesture.\u00a0 We never bother to listen to anything he says.<\/p>\n
You mention Beck to a progressive who has tried to debate a believer and they might say they confronted them with withering factual logic\u2026. and it had no effect whatsoever.<\/p>\n
The Jan 3rd<\/sup> Edition of The Nation Magazine has a column on How to be President in a Fact Free America.\u00a0 Gary Younge, a black journalist from England, says some people prefer the reality they want over the one they actually live in.\u00a0 These Fabrications grow when real change proves elusive.\u00a0 Most, though, faced with the option of believing falsehoods or gaining tangible benefits like a job or healthcare will forget their illusions.<\/p>\n False belief will eventually bump up against solid reality.\u00a0 Hopefully reality will come in a softer package than a battlefield.\u00a0 The recommendation that keeps popping up is that Democrats, especially the President, need to fight against falsehood by repetition of the facts.\u00a0<\/p>\n Door to door activities won\u2019t succeed if what is delivered is a point by point refutation of Glenn Beck.\u00a0 It might work to keep up a flow of facts from day to day reality.\u00a0 Dana Milbank just had his book on Beck published (Tears of a Clown<\/em>, Doubleday, 2010).<\/p>\n Milbank takes 257 pages busily refuting Beck\u2019s apparent Paranoid fantasies, often quoting exactly where Beck contradicts himself, occasionally even letting truth escape his mouth.\u00a0 In one example (pg 99), the Arizona victim of a dying liver who the state could not afford the quarter million dollar transplant costs serves Beck as a death panel kickoff rant.\u00a0 The grain of truth here should worry us.\u00a0 Transplants are so expensive and such life and death issues.\u00a0 Bankrupt states will have to draw a line on indigent patients. Insurance companies will continue to balk at big bills especially if they see their profits heading towards zero.\u00a0 Eventually believers will say, \u201c See \u2013 those death panel rumors were true\u201d<\/p>\n Beck is not crazy (but swimming in multimillion dollar wealth and privilege, he has probably already deluded himself into believing he is savior-like figure leading a mass movement).\u00a0 He does have power.\u00a0 His constant rants cost Van Jones his lower mid level job in the administration. With so many battles to fight, the administration finally caved on defending Van Jones with facts.<\/p>\n The dizzying gusher of untruths, like a fire, take little effort to start but hours to put out.\u00a0 Direct refutation seems too big a job for us in the Valley..\u00a0 University of Pennsylvania\u2019s FactCheck.org is kept busy.\u00a0 When the factual data is finally released Beck is long gone, onto more distortions.<\/p>\n Beck has a two wheeled strategy.\u00a0 One is his rapid fire distortions where the tactic is to constantly repeat that he cannot disprove something, or hasn\u2019t gotten a call to refute it.\u00a0 The other is his constant assertions of a negative hypothesis.\u00a0 He knows it is impossible logically to disprove a negative.\u00a0 Therein lies our challenge \u2013<\/p>\n Unless you\u2019re educated enough to know you can\u2019t disprove a negative you can be influenced by Beck.\u00a0 You may be suspicious, but may tend to be taken in.\u00a0 We need to have a gusher of factual truths available for voters to easily find and gradually trust.\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u2018Truthiness\u2019, Cobert\u2019s famous word invention, is enough to seal Beck\u2019s grasp on power but it\u2019s not enough for us to have to refute it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Educate and Communicate<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dispatch #5\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Handling The Glenn Beck Believers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Jay Gilchrist\u00a0 GBVD\u00a0 You mention Beck to most progressives and they make a face and a dismissive gesture.\u00a0 We never bother to listen to anything he says. You mention Beck to a progressive … Continue reading