Part 2 of The Left’s Racism Fixation Lacks Critical Thought

Ok, now that we have dealt with Cesca’s unfounded and illogical claims of racism against the tea party movement and those that participate in it, we can talk about the inherent lack of critical thought that runs rampant in the comments section of his articles. As I stated, I was not happy with Cesca’s mischaracterizations and outright misleading conclusions around claims of racism. So I decided to participate in the discussions that followed. JAC also waded into the same conversations. What I found was discouraging. Not because people disagreed with me. You all know I have no problem with people saying I am wrong. What was troubling was a two-fold problem. The first was a complete lack of respect, an outright hostility towards anyone that dared to challenge what they believed. They literally lacked the ability to have a civil conversation. The second was a lack of critical thinking on levels that I have not seen in quite some time. The absolute inability to coherently follow logical steps in deduction was appalling. Instead of attempting to cherry pick a comment that fits my claim, as Cesca did, I will offer a multitude of examples, and all of them from the comments in just the two Cesca articles in play here.

Since I broke it into two different problems with debate over there, I will do the same in discussing it down here in the article. And for the record, most of the pictures I will post with this article will instead be protesters that were out there against Bush, just so that we can see that these comments about how the signs of a few folks tell the whole story is a bunch of hogwash.

Nastiness, Disrespect, and Vitriol

To say that debating politics on the Huffington Post is a test of one’s willpower is a vast understatement. As I have always required of everyone on this site, I hold myself to a standard of respect for differing opinions. I believe that the debates can be had with a level of respect befitting adults. And I refuse to drop to the level of those that cannot do this. THAT, in my opinion, is what has made this site so great. Respect. There are a lot of differing opinions on this site, and while discussions can sometimes get a bit testy, there is always a level of respect that is severely lacking on so many other sites. But the Huffington Post doesn’t have any of those requirements. And once you get into the discussions there, it is difficult to remain above the fray. So if you know you struggle in that area, I don’t suggest going there. They are absolute experts at dragging you down to their level.

So a few examples of the comments from just the first few hours:

Keith1963: 50% reality and 50% denial is the total make-up of the DNA in a Tea Bagger/Partier.

Lyta: Exactly, frothing at the mouth hate. Lathered up and ready to rumble hate. And how can anyone deny racism is still alive unless they are dwb. Driving while black?……Unless you live it, you cannot judge it. Period.

MauricioC: Like I stated in a previous post, you cannot use logic with a tea bagger. Logic is kryptonite to a tea bagger.

Keith52: Not say that at all. He is saying the TEA PARTY movement is based in racism and I would add stupidity, which may be hand in hand with racism.

cinesimon: Obviously for many on the right, a sentence longer than the length of a bumper sticker is just TOO HARD, MOMMY!!

mcthfg: I’m amazed by the lack of comprehensions skills shown in the comments. Teabaggers can put the letters together to read the words, but they simply can’t understand them. I suppose that’s why it is easy to get them so riled up over non-existent issues.

johndab: THE KKK FINALLY TOOK THEIR DUNCE CAPS AND TABLECLOTHS OFF AND SUPRISE WE NOW HAVE THE TEA PARTIERS. THEY WOULD MAKE SAM ADAMS FLIP IN HIS GRAVE.

engchina: Very true and I would also add the word. lazy, since many of the tea party mix have no interest in exploring or researching the right wing diatribes that are served to them like hot soup on a cold winter’s day.
That is what Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh do, and like Goebbels in Hitler’s Nazi Germany they do it well, as they serve “their comfort food,” to the “low information white middle class,” who simply yearns to turn back the clock to their good ol days…

Coco Morgan: Of course it’s about race. But it’s also more than that. It’s about ignorance. Ignorance of how this country works via democracy. Ignorance of Facts. Etc.

Sheridan1: Of course it’s about race. But it’s also more than that. It’s about ignorance. Ignorance of how this country works via democracy. Ignorance of Facts. Etc.

ProfWagstaff: Wow Bob, you really must hit a nerve with the ra_cist teabaggers. Everytime you call them out, with the evidence to back it up, they all come crawling out from underneath their rock to shrilly scream their denial.

siecoban: Racism is just a manifestation of ignorance and plain stupidity. The tea party mob is just a mass of ignorant grunts and scared white ladies misled by sly self-serving evil people. Education is the only solution to the problem. And I’m not talking about bible school. The more people are indoctrinated into believing that God has chosen America to be the greatest country on earth, no matter what, the less great America will be.

Believe me when I tell you that I could literally sit here and copy and paste nastiness all day long. I could document entire parts of conversations where people offered some insight in a respectful way and were immediately attacked personally. I called one or two out for it, but to continue to do so would have taken all night. It is most interesting to watch as anyone, and I mean anyone, with a view even slightly different than the far left folks there was immediately attacked and marginalized.

Tactics ranged from re-stating what you say in a different way to make it mean what they wanted it to all the way to simply saying you are a liar. When several folks demanded proof that even one person had ever stated something like what I was saying on a public blog, I offered that I write a blog that gets as many as 5,000 page hits a day. cinesimon, one of my favorite nasties on there demanded a link. I posted one. 5 times. The moderators wouldn’t let it through. He followed me from comment to comment demanding proof, saying I was a liar, had no blog, and never said the things I have written on here. Finally someone in the moderators good graces posted a link to this site. cinesimon claimed to have come over here and read the site. He announced to the group that he could only find a single comment on this site from someone named USWeapon, and it had nothing to do with the topic. How bold of a lie is that? To claim that you came to SUFA and could only find one comment on the whole site by someone named USWeapon!

But you know what, I don’t even need to cover this part of the topic any longer. Almost all of you know this already. You are here precisely because you found a place where that nastiness and disrespect is not tolerated. You have been out there wanting to discuss things. You found out what it is like. And when you found something different you stayed. I thank you all for that. And I realize suddenly that I didn’t need to prove to anyone that most political sites get nasty.

Lack of Critical Thought

By far the most disturbing aspect of the comments that followed the articles was the complete lack of critical thought by those that wanted to post their comments. Of course, there were TONS of simple “Way to go Bob, you certainly nailed this topic. Right on target. You said what we all know.” comments. Of course given the sheer multitude of logical fallacies in Cesca’s articles, this points to a massive lack of critical thought. Simply agreeing with Cesca’s conclusions requires suspension of critical thought. But what was really evident was the number of comments that stated a “fact” or a version of “reality”, with absolutely ZERO evidence to back it up or with faulty logic as reasoning. These would inevitably be followed by several people saying “great point! The teabaggers have no answer to this!” Here are a few of those comments. See how many logical fallacies you can find. See how much evidence you can find. These all have one thing in common. They were ALL followed by people remarking how insightful or brilliant the thoughts were:

StillIRise: Whatever the Tea Parties were prior to the President’s election, they have become something else entirely in the last two years. Only four months after President Obama assumed office, Republican big wigs and talking heads, Fox News, birthers and other blatant racists recognized that the Tea Party gave them the platform they otherwise would not have, to orchestrate an uprising against America’s first black President. As such, it has become a well-disguised, politically-correct version of the Ku Klux Klan.

allincompassing: Wow…what a great article Bob! The denial of so many in their comments, only reinforces the validity of your argument. Please, please don’t let the vitriol of the wingnuts get you down(smile). We outside the beltway have long since determined that the Man we elected is doing about the best he can, when you consider all the resistence he has to deal with in the media.

cinesimon: “If I had my way I would get rid of every politician in D.C. and start fresh with real people who listen to their constiuents”
…yet you consider yourself educated? Believing that EVERY SINGLE POLITICIAN IN WASHINGTON doesn’t listen to their constituency suggests you are, in fact, a very low information voter.

BBinMT: Respect your position, but part of what the article was talking about was the contradictory positions the tea partiers take, such as the taxation issue. You may not be a racist, but the tea party stance on taxation has to have a racial subtext, given that the President lowered taxes for the tea partiers themselves and they are the ones eating up the southern strategy garbage.

lgilooly: Unfortunately, we can’t ignore this dangerous,powerful monopoly of talk radio any longer. Free speech is one thing, but an honest accurate media is also. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine opened the door. We have allowed 95 percent of media to be controlled by a handful of corporations. There is no accountability for what they say or incite. They have focused the anger and frustration of millions at Obama when the real culprits (Big 4) are protected and continue to do “business as usual”.

opinioned1: ROTFLMAO!!!  You really believe the drivel about no racism from the teabaggers? Might I suggest you google teabaggers and pay close attention to the signs they display over and over again.

mcthfg: Perhaps you should learn how to read. The article is full of examples. It hurts when someone points out your king is nekkid, huh?

BBinMT: All you have to do is view pictures or video of a tea party rally and look at the misspelled, racist signs.

Bgorden: There is an empirical test: the racist caricatures that you see at tea party rallies. There are other empirical tests, such as the Tea Partiers accuse Obama of raising their taxes when he has actually lowered them, or they accuse Obama of trying to take away their guns when he has done no such thing.

Today’s Illusion: They claim they are not racist, yet we all saw the signs, and no one marching pulled down any of those signs, they all marched along together, smiling and laughing.
If one is not racist, those signs are despicable. No non-racist would want to be seen in a crowd with such signs. Racism is not a soft idea, you are or you are not; yes it is that simple.

TBinNJ: Excellent point. With one of the worst Republican administrations in history in office, McCain was still leading the race 2 months before election day. This is all the more reason to think that alot of voters picked McCain because of race, especially after his erratic behavior on the economic meltdown and choice of an obviously unqualified running mate. With all that, he still got 47%!

dollyfedup: Cesca this is an issue you have to explain to whites, but blacks and other minorities knew the tea party thing was about race and we knew all the code language that is used by the pundits, the TV stations, and even other politicians in Congress. I instantly didn’t like Sarah Palin because I felt she was using coded language in her speech at the RNC convention. That’s why she attracts the kind of supporters she attracts because she uses coded language in such a way to let her supporters know she is for white people in the rural areas.

skepticapathy: For all of you Tea Party folks (and everyone else) out there, I have one question that’s the simple acid test:   If the Tea Party is truly driven by issues and NOT racism, why is it’s membership 99.999999% white? I exaggerate, but you see my point. I doubt the number is anything less than 95% white (and I’m being generous on saying 95%). Someone should do a demographics pole on TP membership, and throw it right back at the Tea Party. I dare any member of the Tea Party to give a plausible answer on the demographics skew that does not involve racism. I’m dead serious! It’s simply impossible, because the Tea Party is racist.

Again, I could do this all day. These comments were pulled from just the first 6 pages of comments from just one of the articles. The point is that there is a complete lack of logical thought. A complete lack of critical thinking being applied to the conclusions that they draw. For example, a tea party has 99.9999999% white participants, so the only conclusion is that it has to do with race. Complete lack of critical thought there. McCain was leading in polls two months before the election, therefore people are racists. No critical thought. How about this video? It seems to not only have a person of color speaking, but another person of color directly behind her. This must be a fake!

I could hammer that point home forever, but what I want to do is point out why it is dangerous and why you should all avoid falling into those traps. The thinking that appears to be prevalent in the HuffPo commenters shows us that those who are most vocal on these issues are not rational folks. They know little other than loose correlations and false conclusions. And they get angry and turn it into a personal attack very quickly. Why is this dangerous? Because until we can get people to think critically, we will never be able to have conversations between our differing sides that lead to any resolution. You simply cannot reason with someone who is unwilling and unable to think critically and challenge their own ideals and beliefs.

What I have grown to love about the people who frequent SUFA is that everyone, for the most part, is willing to hear out the other side of an issue, discuss it, explain why they believe it, and challenge their own ideas mentally. THAT is the only way to grow and learn and find solutions that work. What was evident in those comments was an ideological attachment. They believe what they believe so fervently, that they are unwilling to even consider any other thoughts. And you can clearly see where that leaves them. Full of contradictions, faulty conclusions, and with nowhere to go other than to attempt to force irrational ideas on rational people through the power of government intervention. And as well all know, that is dangerous for everyone.

So what is the point of this part of the article? Simple. I spent the first part showing the fallacies and failure of logic in Cesca’s assertion that the tea party movements are based primarily on race. That was what I intended to do. I decided to add this second part as a way to point out the dangers in failing to question and test our own beliefs. It isn’t about calling out commenters on the Huffington Post. We know where they stand. It is about using them as an example of what happens when you fail to challenge yourself. It was about charging each of you to challenge and test YOURSELVES. Seek out contradictions in your beliefs. Seek out where your arguments fail to follow logic. Refine and, where needed, abandon stances where those contradictions and fallacies exist.

There are tons of smart folks that populate this site. They come from the left, the right, the middle, and everywhere else in the spectrum. But we must ensure that we never reach a point where we fail to test what we believe. We must never reach a point where we fail to allow logic and reason to rule the day. With every article I write I have a thousand eyes testing my thoughts for logic and reason. A thousand eyes that question whether I am sticking to the values and principles that I espouse. A thousand eyes that look for contradictions (and a pirate’s eyes who seeks them out incessantly). I cherish that and value it. It is the only way to get myself better aligned with my core principles and values. I ask that each of you, in your own ways, seek that same scrutiny for what you believe. You will be better for it. I know that I am.