A Tale Of Two Shitties

As the tears were still drying on Anthony Weiner's face, I posted a pox on both houses; they're all assholes, I said. But I also stated, because I believe it, that one party is not only assholes, but wrong about nearly everything. If I haven't demonstrated that enough already, a timely confluence of current events is a gentle reminder.

One theme around here has been the difference -- inborn, evidently -- between the way the brains of liberals and conservatives process information. That, unlike liberals, conservatives actively reject facts which counter their beliefs, clinging even harder to their falsehoods, has been demonstrated in several studies to which I've referred in the past and won't again. And now we're witness to a new level of denial, while the opposite trait is dramatically demonstrated by liberals. I refer to reactions to the respective noteworthies, Palin and Weiner.

In conversations with an acquaintance, I stated that I'd read expert opinion that Weiner's email, or twitter account, or whatever the hell it was, had indeed been hacked. I stated that I had no way of knowing if what they were saying was true, but that until it was proven otherwise, I'd accept their opinions. Partly because, to date, anything Andrew Breitbart has pushed has turned out to have been false; deliberately manipulated. I also made it clear that if I was wrong, I'd admit it, abjectly, which I did practically as Weiner's press conference was still unfolding. Clearly, honestly, apologetically, I acknowledged I was wrong and he was right. (Inexplicably, this seems to have enraged my acquaintance, leading to three of the most disturbing comments here I've ever had to reject -- which he acknowledged would end the relationship but chose to write them anyway. But that's not my point.)

I've revisited the blogs on which those opinions had appeared, and there's been uniform outrage by other readers that those self-described experts had been so wrong; like me, they felt foolish and ashamed, and gave no quarter to Weiner, while demanding explanations of the analytical errors that had been made. (The comment threads were enormously long, with virtually everyone saying the same thing; I haven't waded through them enough to be able to say if satisfactory explanations were forthcoming, but fury certainly was.) When facts appeared, in other words, to show they were wrong, they admitted it without exception, and felt horrible about it.

By comparison, consider Sarah Palin's barely intelligible response to what she later characterized as a "gotcha" question. (The question was, verbatim, "What have you seen so far today, and what are you going to take away from your visit?" Hard-hitting stuff, that.) And what did her supporters do as they saw her botchery? Well, they did what any respecter of veritas would do: they took immediately to Wikipedia and Conservapedia, and attempted to change history to comport with her flummox. The latter site gobbled it up like the latest theory on Obama's birth certificate; the former expunged the falsehoods. (And, yes, I'm aware of the historical uncertainties: but if anyone can listen to her verbiage and think she was making a thoughtful historical point, they, well, they must have been teabagging in history class.)

If that doesn't say all we need to know about Ds and Rs, I don't know what does. Other than, say, sticking to disproved beliefs about tax rates, tax cuts, vouchers, homosexuality, gay marriage, lying about death panels and screaming when Ds tell the truth about their medicare plans...

Or how about this: why do you suppose it is that when it comes to voting rights, Ds are always in favor of encouraging voting, and Rs are all about decertifying and preventing it?