Seeing is believing?
by Tom Sullivan
Rachel Maddow this morning has a Washington Post op-ed about the biennial fear fest that so conveniently comes on the heels of Halloween. This year's popular ghoulies: "Ebola, the Islamic State, vague but nefarious aspersions about stolen elections and a whole bunch of terrifying fantasies about our border with Mexico." Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), for example, claimed "at least 10 ISIS fighters" were captured sneaking into Texas from Mexico. No one has seen them, but that is no proof they don't exist.
About those "vague but nefarious aspersions":
And in the conservative media, there is even more to worry about. Conservative blogs lost their minds recently over a surveillance video showing a Latino man delivering completed ballots to an elections office in Maricopa County, Ariz. Ballot stuffing! Blatant fraud! Caught red-handed!
Actually, delivering other people’s ballots to elections offices is perfectly legal in Arizona. Even Republicans have asked Arizonans to bring their early ballots to campaign events this year, so they could be collected and dropped off at polling places. But when the person doing the same thing was Latino, the blogs made it seem like the guy was hiding under the bed, ready to grab your foot if you got up in the night.
The "voter fraud" fraud works like that, and from some of the same con artists who told repeated lies until two-thirds of the country believed Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 attacks and had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. Even after nothing was found, people believed. Because they'd become complicit in perpetuating the fraud. In the Arizona video, like James O'Keefe's videos, the eyes believe they saw something they didn't. It reminded me of this sleight-of-hand demonstration where Teller of Penn and Teller describes how people trying to read others' intentions "aid and abet the trick":
"Believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see." ― Benjamin Franklin
"People say believe half of what you see. Son, and none of what you hear." ― Marvin Gaye