Potential Truthiness

by Terry 6 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Terry

  POTENTIAL TRUTHINESS?

  The comedian Stephen Colbert wrote a book, "TRUTHINESS".
  
  Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.

  To me, this perfectly defines the term: POTENTIAL.
  As in "Potentially True" or "Potentially lying."

  Such labels poison relationships destroying reputations.
  Potential labels are subtle and also just under the radar of committing libel or defamation legally.

  That key word is "Potential" positing a shadowy inference, suspicion, propaganda point.
  Do you feel me?
  Do you understand the point I'm making?

  POTENTIAL is a dangerous concept because propagandists use potentials to create landmines, quicksand, and transitional traps for our mind to lure us away from TRUE toward FALSE.
  
  A Jehovah's Witness is first introduced to a new kind of Bible. (The NWT is filled with "cheats". Words with potential meanings which have been wedged in sideways and qualified.) The doctrine of the invisible "presence" is a replacement of historical theology using the "potential" substitute definition for "coming".
  
  "Truly I tell you today (comma) you will be with me in Paradise." A potential turned into an actual meaning through a non-existent comma.
  
  Everyday news events are re-engineered into subtle feats of transitional propaganda using wonky language.

  Are you a "potential" pedophile?
  Is your friend an "alleged"criminal?
  Those particular terms allow you to be slandered in the minds of others and you have no legal recourse.

  _________
  Read on...

  The C.I.A., F.B.I. and other so-called Security agencies have come up with a poisonous variation of this strategy.
  "Potential Terrorist"
  Let's break that down, shall we?

  NOT a terrorist...but... Might BECOME a terrorist.
  Say what??

  Reading minds and then casting suspicion led to destroying the reputation of Richard Jewell who saved hundreds of lives having discovered and warned others about a bomb.
  Jewell was made a monster by the F.B.I. and News media as a "potential terrorist" who "fit the profile" of a bomber.
  Even after he was exonerated - the smear - the stench remained till the day he died.
  AUTHORITY with POWER is most dangerous when proving their point using fuzzy language with poisonous potentials.
  
  

  Why am I telling you this?

  I keep hearing about "Q" as in "Anon-ymous". Q'ANON.
  
  I wanted to know what it is alleged to be. Fair enough?
  Apparently not!

  The more I read, the more I bump into efforts to poison my opinion IN ADVANCE.
  Actual definitions are rare in media.
  POTENTIAL tricky, poisonous definitions are now the rule of thumb. I have to climb over barbed wire wordy fences to explore.

  Somebody doesn't want me doing this. Their words make this much clear.

  I'm very cautious about "words".
  Words are seedlings.
  Words must be handled gingerly.
  
  I LEARNED MY LESSON with the Governing Body and the Watchtower for 20 years of my life.
  It is so easy to trust and be led toward one conclusion after another based on tiny steps of "potential truthiness". We can lose our way.
  I lost my way!
  
  Before Trump there was no possibility of FAKE news.
  And then ...?
  Now we definitely smash into it every minute of every day.
  
  It's going to take me a long research slog to penetrate the wall between fact and potential truthiness if I'm going to discover what - if anything - there really is to the "far-right conspiracy" (as Wikipedia defines it.)
  
  I actually (don't laugh) spent a week chasing down exactly WHY anybody in their right mind could believe Flat Earth ideas. It was frickin' amazing!
  Even I - almost - started wobbling because the narrative of subtle truthiness was so expertly strung together (with juicy music backgrounds and spectacular visuals) I was being seduced!!
  I LOVED IT!
  Bullshit as an artform. At least I now understand it without dismissing it.
  Intellectual honesty requires I must be willing to change my mind if facts and evidence contradict what I hold to be true.
  
  I'm 73, retired and killing time (until it returns the favor) so - why not?
  
  

  I'll let you know what I find out as I explore Q'Anon group's true nature and purposes.
  So far, I'm up to my neck in quicksand.
  ____
  Sidebar:
  Twitter in July banned thousands of accounts affiliated with QAnon and instituted policies meant to limit its spread. Facebook last month removed 900 groups and pages from its platform in a crackdown on QAnon and expanded its policy on violent extremism.

  These efforts have fallen short, however. A cursory search for terms associated with QAnon on either platform yields hundreds of results. The challenge of identifying and taking down these groups is made even harder when they’re international, given the comparatively limited number of content moderators that social media companies employee with native languages other than English.
  ___

  I wonder if I'll get down to the facts or just the rumors???

  
• 

  road to nowhere

  Interesting. fake news may be new, but yellow journalism is old. FB ( to me) is leftist. The bigger problem is low information consumers. There are few black and white issues, mostly we have to pick our favorites but then should think through the outcome. Example: welfare should be a safety net for all us, but has become a way of life, then the opposers call all welfare recipients lazy. Once upon a time the charity was the domain of churches. Now we have so much mobility there is no community
• 

  Terry

  All the social ills which might be rectified by spending "enough" money are always blocked with the question: "How will we pay for it?"
  And then the bailout came along and TRILLIONS of dollars magically appeared and went straight into the hands of the richest Banks and Corporations (and CEO's) the world has ever known.
  In politics, a "reason" against something is always an excuse.
  A promise is always a lie.
  A "gaffe" is when a politician accidentally tells the truth.
• 

  Mr.Finkelstein

  Interesting how fake news became synonymous with D Trump but certainly he wasn't the start of it to be sure.
  

  The internet has become an avenue or vehicle to dispel unproven facts, rogue ideologies, conspiracies and good old fashion sensationalized bullshit.

  Some religions are even using it now to dispel their theological self supporting propaganda !
  
• 

  Mr.Finkelstein

  Just to explain what is QAnon........

  QAnon[a] (/kjuːəˈnɒn/) is a far-right conspiracy theory[2][3][4][5][6][7] alleging that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles running a global child sex-trafficking ring is plotting against President Donald Trump, who is battling them,[8] leading to a "day of reckoning" involving the mass arrest of journalists and politicians.[9] No part of the theory is based on fact
• 

  truth_b_known

  Words are tokens of ideas. We often soften hard truths or deceive through carefully chosen words that misrepresent the truth like a magician uses slight of hand. Some common things most of us have done are things such as -

  1. "I can't..." When we say we can't do something what we are often really saying is "I don't want to." However, by using the word "can't" we are making it appear (to ourselves and others) that the situation is out of control. The next time you find yourself confronted with such a statement ask "Is it truly impossible for such a thing or are you just unwilling to do it?"

  2. "I need.." or "My needs..." Air, water, food, and protection from the elements in the form of clothing or shelter are the only things we need. Everything else is a want or desire.

  3. "?" End any sentence with a question mark and you can remove liability of liable or slander. People make accusations in the form of a question and then defend themselves with the statement "I was only asking a question. I didn't make any claims." However, when we hear a question we naturally draw a conclusion because the human brain hates mysteries.

  We also excuse behavior by the way we describe things - "We are not at war. We are simply using our military to conduct a peacekeeping action in a foreign nation." "These are undocumented immigrants."
• 

  Terry

  An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.
  • A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
  • A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
  • An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
  • Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
  • A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
  • Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
  • A question mark walks into a bar?
  • A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
  • Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."
  • A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
  • A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
  • Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
  • A synonym strolls into a tavern.
  • At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
  • A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
  • Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.
  • A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
  • An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
  • The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
  • A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
  • The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
  • A dyslexic walks into a bra.
  • A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
  • A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
  • A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
  • A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony

  - Jill Thomas Doyle