I was just listening to a conversation between Ezra Klein and Jake Tapper concerning the so-called "cover-up" of Joe Biden's cognitive abilities.
The implication of the conversation is that it was not a cover-up. A "cover-up" is a conspiracy and a conspiracy requires a number of people who understand that they are doing something underhanded and they intend to keep their participation secret.
What Tapper was talking about was "group think."
So, it was not that members of Biden's inner circle came together with the intention of deceiving the public, but that they came to believe what they were telling one another in the face of obvious truths to the contrary.
There was nothing nefarious about it and it was not due to personal stupidity. The truth is -- and I see this increasingly as the years go by -- that people believe what they want to believe. And generally what they want to believe is not just what is good for them personally, but what their families and friends believe.
It is a social imperative.
I think it is reasonable to say that what most people believe around politics has less to do with a thoughtful consideration of the issues over time, then it has to do with the tendency toward social conformity and deference to authority.
When it came to Biden's cognitive abilities they, most of them, probably believed that, yeah, he wasn't the Biden of ten years ago, but he's OK.
Everybody else around them thought he was OK and, for the most part, he was OK. Of course, then there were the times when it wasn't... but basically he was.
Or so they thought.
It wasn't so much that they were lying to us as they were lying to themselves.
Just like the rest of us do about any number of issues every damn day.
OT
ReplyDeleteThis will piss you off:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s7SomN5DLE
You make some mighty fine points, but I believe they were lying to us. They could plainly see he was having good and bad days. But they didn't tell us. So, while they might have been lying to themselves, they were certainly lying to us.
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one here? I'm hearing an echo. How do you propose driving traffic here? I'd love it if we could get it going like in the old days.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's the question.
DeleteAt this point I mainly think of this spot as my own little private space, but I would love to get a little traffic and open up conversation.
My intention was to use Reddit to do that, but now I cannot.
I think what really interests me, tho, and perhaps I will write on it in the future, is the transition from the “Golden Age of Blogdom” to the current shattered moment.
When I say “shattered moment” what I mean is the move from the long-form intimacy of the early blog years, and the communities that formed around them, to what we see now with the big social media monsters like X and Facebook.
Call me sentimental.
I am not sure just what to make of that transition… in fact, I am not even certain how worthy it is of consideration… but the on-line political social atmosphere is very different now and nobody has written on it.
For me it was Daily Kos, the Elder of Ziyon, My Left Wing, Israel Thrives and a few others like Docudharma and Political Flesh Feast.
With the exception of dKos, they are all gone.
What’s left, or so it seems to me, is much more alienated and fragmented, thus “shattered.”
In any case, all is well out here is the universe, my friend.
And, yeah, I think I will continue to tend this little place, this little garden.
Cheers!