Can you clarify your second paragraph? I don’t think I get your meaning. Do you think the OP is misrepresenting the republicans, or is it something else?
I was being snarky. I suspect that the OP failed to present a perfectly factual account of the conversation. But her account did have a high level of truthiness.
I would also guess, based on even less evidence, that if her upstate teachers were to be interrogated by someone as snarky as myself, they would probably have to admit that their anti-Obama statements (whatever they were) were not perfectly factual either. But they would claim (in good faith) that their statements in that lunch-room conversation carried a sufficient level of truthiness to absolve them of any charge of misrepresentation. “The administration messed up the Gulf spill response somehow,” they would claim.
People tend to find facts boring these days. The important thing seems to be to fashion a narrative which makes it easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys.
Do you think the OP is misrepresenting the republicans, or is it something else?
Well, given that ‘conspiracy theory’ is a phrase that is much more commonly applied to one’s opponents’ ideas to discredit them then to one’s own, I strongly suspect ‘conspiracy’ is the OP’s word and not the Republicans’.
Good point, I haden’t paid much attention to that, but “conspiracy” is used much more often to describe “beliefs of one’s opponents” than one’s own beliefs. What other words are in that category? “hate”, probably.
Can you clarify your second paragraph? I don’t think I get your meaning. Do you think the OP is misrepresenting the republicans, or is it something else?
I was being snarky. I suspect that the OP failed to present a perfectly factual account of the conversation. But her account did have a high level of truthiness.
I would also guess, based on even less evidence, that if her upstate teachers were to be interrogated by someone as snarky as myself, they would probably have to admit that their anti-Obama statements (whatever they were) were not perfectly factual either. But they would claim (in good faith) that their statements in that lunch-room conversation carried a sufficient level of truthiness to absolve them of any charge of misrepresentation. “The administration messed up the Gulf spill response somehow,” they would claim.
People tend to find facts boring these days. The important thing seems to be to fashion a narrative which makes it easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys.
So it’s an Arguments as Soldiers thing. That makes sense. I’m trying to free myself of that problem currently.
Well, given that ‘conspiracy theory’ is a phrase that is much more commonly applied to one’s opponents’ ideas to discredit them then to one’s own, I strongly suspect ‘conspiracy’ is the OP’s word and not the Republicans’.
Good point, I haden’t paid much attention to that, but “conspiracy” is used much more often to describe “beliefs of one’s opponents” than one’s own beliefs. What other words are in that category? “hate”, probably.