American exceptionalism spreads!

MONDAY, JANUARY 9, 2023

Days of wonder reach Brazil: Was the girl from Ipanema there? 

The New York Times doesn't say, but it sounds like everyone else was:

NICAS AND SPIGARIOL (1/9/23): Thousands of supporters of Brazil’s ousted former president, Jair Bolsonaro, stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices on Sunday to protest what they falsely claim was a stolen election, the violent culmination of years of conspiracy theories advanced by Mr. Bolsonaro and his right-wing allies.

In scenes reminiscent of the Jan. 6 storming of the United States Capitol, protesters in Brasília, Brazil’s capital, draped in the yellow and green of Brazil’s flag surged into the seat of power, setting fires, repurposing barricades as weapons, knocking police officers from horseback and filming their crimes as they committed them.

“We always said we would not give up,” one protester declared as he filmed himself among hundreds of protesters pushing into the Capitol building. “Congress is ours. We are in power.”

For months, protesters had been demanding that the military prevent the newly elected president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, from taking office on Jan. 1. Many on the right in Brazil have become convinced, despite the lack of evidence, that October’s election was rigged.

"These are the days of miracle and wonder," Paul Simon hopefully declared in the opening song on his acclaimed album, Graceland

That was 1986. In Simon's estimation, the spread of world music was drawing the peoples of the planet closer together.

Several decades later, a different miracle has become all too clear. We refer to the remarkable ease with which people, in large numbers, can be convinced of the truth of claims which may not seem to make sense on their face or are at least wholly unfounded.

(The Times reporters refer to "false claims." On a journalistic basis, we'd prefer that reporters use terms like "wholly unfounded.")

Employing the power of new technologies, Donald J. Trump has displayed a remarkable skill at persuading people to believe claims which are easily shown to be false or are at least wholly unfounded. Our own tribe has tended to reply with sweeping denunciations involving matters of race.

Our own tribe's claims are often false and/or unfounded too! Beyond that, we often seem inclined to suggest that it's still 1955, or maybe something like 1840, or possibly 1619. It's terribly awful here!

It's easy to see why people may be so inclined. That said, in our view, this behavior by our own tribe tends to make matters worse.

Bogus claims are now big business, and we humans tend to believe the various things we hear. Given the wonders of modern communications, how does this miracle come to an end? What makes this miracle stop?

27 comments:


  1. "Employing the power of new technologies, Donald J. Trump has displayed a remarkable skill at persuading people to believe claims which are easily shown to be false or are at least wholly unfounded."

    Whoa, dear Bob. Is he the one spreading tails of wimmin trapped inside men's bodies? Of American president being Russian secret agent? Of doctors prescribing Oxy based on amount of melanin produced by one's glands?

    Oh noes, say it ain't so!..

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    1. That Republican doesn't mean "fascist".

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    2. You are a hopeless clod, and should keep your mouth shut.

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  2. It's easy to "persuade" people of things they want to be true. Every con man knows this.

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  3. Pathetic, thy name is Somerby. In an interesting contrast, Bill Maher claims the Trump supporters he knows actually hate Trump, may know he is lying, but are guided by the intensity of their hatred for “the others”, a hate Maher seems to find justified, even noble. The suspiciously ever gullible Somerby seems determined to believe Trump believed what he cannot prove, and his followers are actually concerned with his credibility.
    Not a lot is known by the average American about the legitimacy of election in Brazil, but the right’s objections have failed in the Courts. The massacre of Trump’s legal attempts to overthrow Biden’s victory are of zero interest to Bob, so it’s not surprising he snidely dismisses comparisons to the ugly criminality of Jan 6.
    Today Bob delivers his weakest opening joke ever and rushes downhill from there.

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    1. Of the things I'm certain of in this life, that Bill Maher knows absolutely zero Trump supporters outside his own circle of elites and near-elites is pretty high on the list. In other words, the Trump supporters Bill Maher knows aren't your average Trump supporters, the kind of people who show up at his rallies, buy his crap (literally and figuratively), donate small amounts of money to him, wear his hats, and all the rest.

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    2. You can look to the band Diamond Head for the rather obvious answer.

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  4. I'd prefer unproved to "wholly unfounded". Bob doesn't know that the claims are wholly unfounded. Neither do I. In fact, the Times might have left out the adjective altogether in a news article. After all, the strength of the claim is a matter of opinon, not fact.

    However. this is an example of the Times trying to control the narrative. Unfortunately, they're very good at controlling the narrative. Just look at how all news from the Twitter files has been suppressed.

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    1. Since it applies to you - consistently, I might add - I refer you to the comment at 4:26. You might also want to cut back on your Kool-Aid consumption, but I know you won't.

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  5. Hilariously childish post by Somerby, basically saying "hey, if you didn't already get the message, I'm a racist!"

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  6. "Beyond that, we often seem inclined to suggest that it's still 1955..."

    As far as abortion rights are concerned, that's where we are in much of our country.

    Notice how Somerby assumes the left only cares about racism. That's because he doesn't give a fig about women's issues.

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    1. He never mentions gay issues either.

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    2. or climate change, or income inequality or voter suppression or preserving wildlands or fighting covid or solving immigration problems or helping Ukraine defeat Russia or whatever is happening in China or any other issue except "white people should never ever ever be called racist, even when they are flashing white supremacist hand signals in Congress"

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    3. I kicked the bass like an NFL punter
      Then I scoped the booty like a big game hunter

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  7. "Donald J. Trump has displayed a remarkable skill at persuading people to believe claims which are easily shown to be false or are at least wholly unfounded. Our own tribe has tended to reply with sweeping denunciations involving matters of race."

    This is ridiculous. Matters of race are not any kind of response to Donald Trump. They are a response to the right wing's courtship of white supremacists. Why does Somerby accuse the left of being obsessed with race, when it is the right wing giving the secret hand signs to racists, including Santos, who knows what he has to do to stay in office?

    Trump and Bolsonaro are BFFs, that's why Bolsonaro is now at Mar a Lago, while his minions storm his own capitol in Brazil. But that isn't about race at all. Meanwhile, the left has been supporting the 1/6 Committee hearings and urging the DOJ to indict Trump for his crimes. That has nothing to do with race, but THAT is how we have been addressing Trump's malfeasance. Oh, and winning elections too, keeping Trump's nominees out of office. That is how the left has addressed Trump, not by calling him a racist (which is obvious and a selling point to Trump supporters).

    Somerby hears nothing but race, when the left talks about climate change and education and fighting inflation and dealing with immigration and a whole bunch of other issues. Why does Somerby only hear race? Because that's where his conscience is guilty. Somerby is the one who has given up on black kids. He is the one who lives in the South and says nothing when he hears racial slurs. Somerby is the one who lives in Baltimore but has no black friends and doesn't care about voter suppression. Somerby is the one who didn't vote for Hillary and got Trump elected by actively rooting for him here. Race is Somerby's telltale heart beating through the floor boards. That's why he doesn't admit that women beat back the red wave by registering and voting to keep abortion legal all over the country. But Somerby only cares about black women to call them underqualified for the Supreme Court and to spend two weeks criticizing a study (without ever mentioning the two main authors are female).

    Somerby is so worried and upset about race that he hears people calling him racist, even when the left hasn't mentioned it at all.

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  8. “Donald J. Trump has displayed a remarkable skill at persuading people to believe claims which are easily shown to be false or are at least wholly unfounded. Our own tribe has tended to reply with sweeping denunciations involving matters of race.”

    One example is the election fraud claim. The response from the left on that has had nothing to do with matters of race. It’s been about showing the fraudulence of the claims, and the transparent attempt by the Republican Party to use those false claims cynically to gain power.

    Um, Duh.

    Extra credit irony:

    Somerby says “Donald J. Trump has displayed a remarkable skill at persuading people to believe claims which are easily shown to be falsein the sentence immediately following this:

    ‘The Times reporters refer to "false claims." On a journalistic basis, we'd prefer that reporters use terms like "wholly unfounded."

    Oh, well.

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  9. It's easily shown that evidence of fraud large enough to have turned the election has NOT been found. IMO Biden's large margin makes it unlikely that there was enough fraud to have swung the election. OTOH IMO it's not possible to definitely say that such fraud didn't happen. AFAIK only one state, Arizona, has done a proper audit. And, it's not clear that an after-the-fact audit would necessarily discover whether extra fake ballots had been put in boxes.

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    1. David, you seem to be infected with Somerby’s “anything is possible” nonsense. There is a point where large-scale fraud becomes so difficult to accomplish (without immediate detection) that it is vanishingly improbable. One of the things protecting our voting system is the dispersion of voting into small precincts nationwide. The number of people who would have to collude is thus too large and records are duplicated at multiple levels making it not possible to simply rig one central computer. Mistakes get made affecting small numbers of ballots but the fantasies proposed by Trump haven’t happened because they are too difficult to accomplish.

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    2. You have hit on the kind of fairy stories people like David have to tell themselves to avoid the obvious truth that his party is now a criminal enterprise.

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    3. Anon @7:58 -- I pretty much agree with you. That's why I said it was unlikely. However, if any of my facts are wrong, I'd be grateful if you or someone else could point them out.
      1. Did states other than Arizona conduct a thorough audit?

      2. Do we know that an audit would have discovered if a substantial number of fake ballots had been deposited in ballot boxes?

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    4. there is a thing called google

      yes other states have done audits

      and yes! there was some fraud found...but it was done by REPUBLICANS.

      There is no such thing as right wing ideology, all David and his right wing cohort care about is dominance.

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    5. David, avoid conservative media. They damage your brain.

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    6. David -- are you channeling Rumsfeld here: the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence?

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  10. And to cap off the sorry subject of this post, Bob seems to totally miss the point of Paul Simon’s “Boy in the Bubble.” Bob goes O for everything today…..

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  11. I kicked the bass like an NFL punter
    Then I scoped the booty like a big game hunter

    ReplyDelete