belief, faith, and truth in electoral political Name Brands

A dozen years ago a friend who was teaching at a multi-disciplinary college (economics, philosophy, psychology, etc.) in Switzerland laughed about a study that demonstrated that people think that the things they believe...are true. Now run that my in your noggin for a few ticks...and see if you chuckle.

Now we all have cognitive biases, but sometimes we can tell that our opinions...are simply that.

Bingling, I hadn’t found a similar study, but one psychology site showed that we believe what we what to believe, as above. While The Truth is a moving target, especially scientific truths, there are also Facts at play in electoral political Brands, and my contention is that many of us tend to Trust The Brand, rather than dig deeper into it, or even discard annoying counterfactuals (past votes, Tweets, and other statements).

Where does Faith enter into the picture? I suppose I see it in the almost religious Fervor with which so many folks here at C99% promote their favorite candidates and already elected officials.

Case in point: I recall seeing one C99% denizen ask recently, ‘Are there any AOC doubters here?’ It almost made me cry, although I decided not to comment in this way: ‘I'm a Doubter, and if Barack Obomba hadn’t taught you to doubt first, then verify later with more facts, Tweets, and statements!’. And yet Gallup says that in Jan. 2017 Obomba’s approval rating was 59%, and among *blacks (however that was determined) was a whopping 84% in 2014!

That mind-boggling homage, while blacks were the most likely to have suffered financially under his rule post-meltdown and the subprime mortgage scandal...and few citizens among the 95% of any skin hue have ever recovered. Never mind that Obomba should be in the Hague Prison for his war crimes, as should Trump and the past four Presidents before them...

But onward: How many times have I heard here exclamations such as ‘But she has to keep her powder dry for now!’ or ‘He/she had to say that, vote that way or else not get elected or maybe even be be JFKed!’ as many used to say about Obomba. Me, I admire verisimilitude in candidates above all else, as in: ‘If ya can’t take the heat, stay the fuck outta of the kitchen’.

For instance, if I showed you a recent photo of one of the two putatively antiwar candidates here smiling alongside of some Syrian White Helmets, would you dismiss it, excuse it, or just not factor it in to your admiration and promotion? Should the candidate have known exactly who that egregious, head-chopping, staged ‘emergencies and gas attacks’ group is? What about ‘war by other means’, as in egregious sanctions in attempts to promote internal over-throws of a ‘regimes’ ruler for bad behavior?

Similarly, if your favorite progressives had signed a letter to Mafioso Thug Pompeo criminalizing the Maduro ‘regime’ by lies innuendo, and despicable smears, yet claimed ‘no regime change’, but actually setting up VZ up for another US-led R2P project (while claiming not to be), would that create any cognitive dissidence for you?

I should stop here and say that I totally understand that I may be an extreme outlier at C99%, as my top issue is Anti-imperialism, without which required US global hegemony™, capitalism would be hollowed out fairly quickly, or at least I’d hope.

If I demonstrated a Tweet by one of the DSA squad Reps showing her homage to Madeline Albright, and one from March 2019 of her horror at the 8 years of Assad’s repressive dictatorship, would that resonate or...not?

Or from another DSA Rep ‘s Tweet about John McCain: ‘John McCain’s legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service’, or her vote for Trump’s War Budget in 2019, or voting for ‘the Defense of NATO’ (thus Africom as well) bill (as if Nato needs any ‘defense’), while another anti-war Rep. just hadn’t voted, but a Senate Presidential candidate had voted for it.

On Iran? As of April, 2019, both ant-war candidates were very anti-Iranian, both echoing Pompeo and Trump in many ways: bad behavior, in search of a nuclear weapon, etc., one calling for ‘no military action, at least for now’.

Now whose campaign would have responded to questions to Presidential candidates posed by the NYT in these ways?

Question: Would you consider military force to pre-empt an Iranian or North Korean nuclear or missile test?
Answer: Yes.

Question: Would you consider military force for a humanitarian intervention?
Answer: Yes.

On the assassination of Quassem Soliemani:
Answer: Clearly there is evidence that Soleimani was involved in acts of terror. He also supported attacks on US troops in Iraq. But the right question isn’t ‘was this a bad guy,’ but rather ‘does assassinating him make Americans safer?’ The answer is clearly no.

Question: If Russia continues on its current course in Ukraine and other former Soviet states, should the United States regard it as an adversary, or even an enemy?
Answer: Yes.

Question: Should Russia be required to return Crimea to Ukraine before it is allowed back into the G-7?
Answer: Yes.

Question: President Trump’s national security strategy calls for shifting the focus of American foreign policy away from the Middle East and Afghanistan, and back to what it refers to as the ‘revisionist’ superpowers, Russia and China. Do you agree? Why or why not?
Answer: Despite its stated strategy, the Trump administration has never followed a coherent national security strategy. In fact, Trump has escalated tensions in the Middle East and put us on the brink of war with Iran, refused to hold Russia accountable for its interference in our elections and human rights abuses, has done nothing to address our unfair trade agreement with China that only benefits wealthy corporations, and has ignored China’s mass internment of Uighurs and its brutal repression of protesters in Hong Kong. Clearly, Trump is not a president we should be taking notes from.

Questions on Israel:
Answer: I support the continuation of the current level of US military and civilian aid and oppose the immediate return of the US embassy from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.

Would your faith in your favorite putatively anti-war candidates cause you any discomfort, or might you posit that as the responses came from the candidate’s campaign, and not the candidate him/herself, thus not probative in terms of policy positions? If I were to show you a photo of the leader of the Hong Kong resistance with one on the main Al Qaeda White Helmets, would that mean anything to you? It sure did open my eyes to the possibility that he’s CIA.

And again, I do understand that anti-war, anti-Imperialism are not the only factors for many in support for Presidential candidates, nor admiration for the DSA ‘squad’. For many, domestic issues are far more pressing.

My solipsistic evidence? I’d posted ‘Nuclear Madness Rising’ post-Iowa caucuses, and it had caused barely a blip in The Force. ; )

How much do Presidents matter? Would your choice/s be different than the last five? Isn't the next Presidential election always the most important one?

And by the way: Happy ♥ Valentine’s Day!

(cross-posted at Café Babylon)

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Comments

is akin to marketing response
or awareness of the product
being sold

if the airwaves try to sell brand x
oh well, another brain stamp

if the marketeers really want you to buy something
they will show you the evils of brand y

so, obviously brand x is superior to brand y
even if you have no clue what brand x is
you will still buy it, cause it's less evil

kinda sorta stupid
if you care to think about it

just the way of advertising
create a market and invent a
desirable commodity

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wendy davis's picture

@QMS

and if Brand Y is on sale this month/year only: so much the better!

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Alligator Ed's picture

@QMS And the insight. Well put, indeed.

Smile

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travelerxxx's picture

You asked, "Now whose campaign would have responded to questions to Presidential candidates posed by the NYT in these ways?"

Question: Would you consider military force to pre-empt an Iranian or North Korean nuclear or missile test?
Answer: Yes.

Question: Would you consider military force for a humanitarian intervention?
Answer: Yes.

Etc. ....

... snip ...

Okay, wd, I'll bite.

Whose answers are those? (I do have a bit of a suspicion who...)

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wendy davis's picture

@travelerxxx

campaign, whomsoever that is. did you guess correctly, buster keaton? ; )

but yee-crikey, i'd forgotten this meeting's photo op, but it's even chopped off at counterpunch:

#What.a.Brand.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@wendy davis AOC. Last year or late 18 I wrote somewhere in this estimable swamp, that I recognizes swamp critters when I sees 'em. If it weren't winter, with my blood congealing in the capillaries, I might just look it up. Love the phrase: "celebrity masquerading as a Representative).

Analysis of AOC: the Jennifer Lopez of Politics.

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wendy davis's picture

@Alligator Ed

I recognizes swamp critters when I sees 'em.

thanks for the chuckles.

As a local staffer (who declined to introduce himself) proudly informed us: “She refuses 99 percent of meeting requests from constituents.”

Meanwhile, she happily clears her schedule for interviews about her makeup routine, canned videos in which she postures as a fearless progressive, and closed-door meetings with regime-change sympathizers.

ouch. but i've seen a lot of that on her twit account, plus cooking in an instapot.
g' night; i'm out of juice.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@wendy davis The correct term, as authorized by the DNC Department of Morality (Acronym: DOGMA) is twat. Because twat is already appearing on the expurgated list of words, due to its genital implications, it follows, as surely as the night follows night, that the blatant similarity, homonymity if you will, renders twit as offensive but --[redacted]--as offensive as twat. In the interest of tolerance, I shall refrain from raining a slew of bad puns upon you. But, I don't wanna get upset

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@Alligator Ed

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Alligator Ed's picture

@JtC can be spared from your shoulders. Please, esteemed Site Operator, fear not. In this comfortable swamp, you, Joe, and others herein assembled, have never been a bastion of political correctness. If c99 were such, yours truly would not visit. My commentary provided an oblique reference to politically correct jargon which apparently was too oblique for many people.

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@Alligator Ed
of political correctness myself but the commentary need not sink to ZeroHedge or 4chan standards either.

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@Alligator Ed Twit will suffice.
One gets the point of ignorance across, the other suggest female.
Please, Dr. of both men and women.
Please don't say that.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Alligator Ed's picture

@on the cusp Sometimes my prose does exceed reasonability.

New russian

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wendy davis's picture

@on the cusp

account as shorthand for 'twitter account', as i'd have thought was quite obvious.

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travelerxxx's picture

@wendy davis

Sadly, sd, that was indeed my guess.

The way this nation treats the rest of the world is a really big deal to me. It is to the rest of the world too, me guesses.

This thing that keeps haunting me is Putin's reply to Oliver Stone during the interviews with him. (I know I've mentioned this before, but I will again now.)

It's 2016. Stone asks Putin – almost as an aside – if there's a candidate he prefers for US president in the then-current presidential election. Putin shrugs, doesn't even seem to want to answer. Stone insists. Putin say something quite like, "It doesn't matter." Stone asks for clarification. Putin replies, "It doesn't matter. Nothing changes. No matter who the president is, nothing changes." You can see the sadness in his face as he says it.

I think he'd probably have to answer the same way today.

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wendy davis's picture

@travelerxxx

were said to be from his campaign, whether matt duss or otherwise. fascinating that putin seemed sad positing that, but of course there's always the outside possibility that a US president won't be an anti-russia, anti-china Imperialist, but it seems that it's hard to go down the road less traveled.

thanks, buster keaton, for weighing in so soberly.

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wendy davis's picture

be matt duss as he claims on twitter, son of serge duss, some claim to have been CIA; i'm agnostic on that charge.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@wendy davis Whether he is sarcastic or sincere, I know not. At this stage when is anti-Russianism appropriate or inappropriate? Does this depend upon the day or the week?

Is this VZ evolving misadventure going to lead to more "silent war" of starvation and privation? If those quotes you imply came from Bernard Sanders, spineless "Independent", as you assert, then how could anyone say that he nothing but the tip of the longest branch of the Democratic Establishment tree. He's hanging down--easily pruned.

Dirty deeds done dirt cheap.

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why all the swipes at this site and its members?

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snoopydawg's picture

@JtC

I was wondering the same thing.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg I avoid "me, too," and "twat", because of connotations.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

wendy davis's picture

@JtC

and even understanding why you'd be sensitive, i wasn't taking swipes, etc. my purpose was to investigate the ingredients mentioned in my title, and how they affect our political choices. and of course i'd mentioned themes i'd seen here many times.

i will offer that i'd thought i'd applied a very deft hand to the subject while offering the several psychological and philosophical possibilities at play. do we not investigate a candidate (or elected official) fully, do we disregard counter-factuals in hopes that they don't matter?

as well: if you knew this or that, would it matter to you or not? and again, i know as an avowed anti-imperialist, i'm an outlier here. but i've run campaigns for dems every 2 yrs for decades, and have gotten taken in by too many i helped to elect. and thank the gods i didn't vote, nor work, for obomba, the biggest con of all.

i sincerely commend you for allowing the discussion, JtC; thank you. and allow me to remind you that nate silver's newest projection is that bernie sanders will sweep every state.

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@wendy davis @wendy davis
uhn huh, sure, whatever.

Oh, and let me add: I thank you for inferring that we here at c99 are imperialist.

and again, i know as an avowed anti-imperialist, i'm an outlier here.

If there's one thing that gets under my skin it's condescension, especially leftier than thou condescension.

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wendy davis's picture

@JtC

i'd written:

And again, I do understand that anti-war, anti-Imperialism are not the only factors for many in support for Presidential candidates, nor admiration for the DSA ‘squad’. For many, domestic issues are far more pressing.

and that was based on Pluto's earlier contention (to great applause)that what the authentic left wants is sanders' access to medicare for all, tax the rich, and other domestic issues, remember? and that's understandable, but not so much for me.

but i'm sorry you see it as implying i'm leftier-than-thou, but yes, i guess i do ballast the radical left, not that this nation has seen such a thing for a long, long, time. since the wobblies (IWW) and eugene debs, come to think of it, had caused FDR to create the original social safety net.

peace to all of us, when we can manage it.

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@wendy davis
control the condescension can you? Maybe you don't even realize you're doing it.

And yes, I noticed the swipes you've been taking at Pluto lately.

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wendy davis's picture

@JtC

i'm condescending, just trying to explain my meaning. but as to my 'swipes at pluto', i saw them as arguing my opinion against her contentions, adding to them, and so on. esp. as in adding the old saw that 'all dissident social movements get shepherded into the democratic party'. although in one thread she'd said that there is no left in the US, so that was indeed confusing.

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@wendy davis
I can see now that this will be an endless "who me?" loop with you.

I'm not in the mood for this bullshit today.

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snoopydawg's picture

@wendy davis

I should stop here and say that I totally understand that I may be an extreme outlier at C99%, as my top issue is Anti-imperialism

i know as an avowed anti-imperialist, i'm an outlier here

I along with many others are anti imperialist and have been long before we found this site. Many of us were called racists when we criticed Obama for continuing Bush's foreign policies and ....our history is long.

Maybe you haven''t read the many essays and comments here where we talked about it. The tweet you posted on Duff was one I posted a week ago and I again mentioned that and there was a discussion on it at the time. I have problems with Bernie's foreign policies. I did the last time he ran just as I do this time.

As for this:

Case in point: I recall seeing one C99% denizen ask recently, ‘Are there any AOC doubters here?’ It almost made me cry, although I decided not to comment in this way:

I answered the question for you.

I might have more to say later after the 'morning' thing ends.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

wendy davis's picture

@snoopydawg

answered, 'yes, i know one'. but again, this:

I should stop here and say that I totally understand that I may be an extreme outlier at C99%, as my top issue is Anti-imperialism/

on edit:

The tweet you posted on Duff was one I posted a week ago and I again mentioned that and there was a discussion on it at the time."

good oh you; i/m sure it went viral'

you often imply that i should have read, or did read, all that your write, including not knowing you'd written about 'the bethlehem doctrine'. it's not possible for me, snoopy dawg, given my many obligations in RL, my slow reading, not knowing how to type, and my RL chores being accomplished very slowly on one crutch indoors, two outdoors.

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snoopydawg's picture

@wendy davis

I should stop here and say that I totally understand that I may be an extreme outlier at C99%, as my top issue is Anti-imperialism/

and not that you don't have time to read what others write. I mentioned that tweet to explain how some of us had already expressed concerns about his FP. Again there are many of us here who have long been against our heinous global hegemonic goals, but you feel you are the only one here. You are not. But about that you don't have time to read others opinions, but made that statement anyway isn't honest. Now when you're called on it you could just offer an apology and move on.

my slow reading, not knowing how to type

You throw so much info in your essays and when I mentioned it you told me to read slower. Even poo'd my tbi and told me to work harder on getting over it. Others have mentioned their length also and yet you expect us to read and comprehend it. But when people post stuff in their comments in your essays you say that it's too long and you don't have time to read them. Kinda makes it a one sided conversation don't you think?

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

wendy davis's picture

@snoopydawg

i apologize for any infractions you believe i've committed.

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Shahryar's picture

I believe she is closer to what we need than Bernie is. I can disagree with her on stuff without thinking she's a put up job.

Bernie is good in enough ways that I'd prefer he be the President more than total frauds like Warren and Mayo. But yeah, his foreign policy statements are pretty awful.

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wendy davis's picture

@Shahryar

is the best of the lot, including bloomberg. and as far as aoc being closer to what we need than bernie, she is clearly being groomed to run for the presidency as soon as she's old enough. or will she run for a senate first?

i may have been too quick on the trigger to post that Tweet of her meeting with janine añez and the golpistas, but jacob levitch and his wife live in her district, and was the one who'd written the Hands Off Evo Morales petition that counterpunch had published, as well. and good on them, not that it seems to be helping much, as the pre-may elections in bolivia are producing arrests of pro-MAS organizers, journalists, and the whole nine yards.

but i'd been shocked to the core that i'd forgotten that event, and slammed it in, after having been careful to not name her name, nor ilhan omar's, et.al.'s.

best to you, Shahryar, and to all of us.

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Shahryar's picture

@wendy davis

and you might be right about AOC. My wife, shaharazade, worked for Obama until he voted for FISA. I stuck with him until he'd been in office for about a week, when it became clear that he wasn't going to do anything good and that his picks of Emanuel and Geithner weren't a clever ruse but were what he wanted.

So maybe I'm too trusting. At this point I think she's about the best Democrat we're gonna get.

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janis b's picture

@Shahryar

I stuck with him until he'd been in office for about a week, when it became clear that he wasn't going to do anything good and that his picks of Emanuel and Geithner weren't a clever ruse but were what he wanted.

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wendy davis's picture

@Shahryar

econ team vaguely, but it included joseph stiglitz, but when he moved into the oval, yes: bernanke, geithner, larry summers, paul volker... 'bailed out wall street, not main street' (to the tune of trillons) became the call. but then from 'nobel peace prize' recipient to war criminal didn't take long.

did you ever listen to his asshat choice for ed. secretary, arne duncan? not to say he was stupid, but boring and clueless, save for closing, then privatizing schools by way of Waiting for Superman (bill gates and friends).

i dunno, as i said, jacob levitch and other disenfranchised folks on Twitter who live in her district folks do watch her like a hawk, and somehow can come up with tweets she'd earlier scrubbed, such as recently, her alliances with bloomberg's gentrification schemes.

now i can't say if this is true or not, nor do i know the difference between the two, but this Tweet by 'lady reporter (?) ajaffe:

'AOC on likelihood of M4A getting passed: “The worst-case scenario? We compromise deeply and we end up getting a public option. Is that a nightmare? I don’t think so,” she said. (H/t @eschor)'

but in the end, i'll vote green again, as at least howie hawkins is anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, if not on fire. if he gets the nomination, that is; last i checked Wikipedia there were five others running. i groaned when an email came in yesterday featuring his UBI plan. i voted for stein's running mate last cycle, and he IS the real deal.

but i keep wondering rather than holding our noses and LOTE voting for a couple decades, registering U or Green might have gone in terms of breaking the duopoly.

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