Voter Education Important Purpose of J.I.P.

Anonymous Liberal, guest-blogging for Glenn Greenwald, compares consumer protections to political awareness. This is such an excellent (and important) post that I'm pulling vast chunks of it and pasting it here for you to read. Republican or Democrat or Independent, this post is hard to disagree with.

As a political junkie and a litigator who works primarily with large corporate clients, I’ve come to appreciate that there is a fundamental disconnect between the assumptions that underlie the prevailing approach to, and coverage of, political issues in this country and the assumptions that drive our policies in virtually every other context.

For example, within the context of commerce and the marketplace, we long ago realized that the average consumer is generally not in a position to tell whether or not she is being lied to or misled, whether by way of an advertisement or an overzealous sales pitch. That’s why, over the years, we have put in place a complex array of overlapping laws and regulations designed to protect consumers from being misled. If a company makes a claim which is even slightly misleading, it will quickly find itself up to its eyeballs in litigation, whether in the form of government enforcement actions, lawsuits by competitors, or consumer class actions (often all three). There are also any number of tort and quasi-contractual claims that aggrieved consumers can bring against the individuals and companies who deceived them.

As a result, companies take great care to ensure that their statements are truthful, and consumers can be reasonably confident that advertisers are not lying to them.

The same is not at all true in the realm of politics, where candidates and interest groups can pretty much say whatever they want and voters are generally left to fend for themselves. Lies and misleading claims are commonplace, if not the norm. The perverse result is that most Americans are far better informed (or at least far less misinformed) when they step into the mall than when they step into the voting booth.

To put it another way, our system attributes to people in their capacity as voters the very truth-detection skills that it assumes they do not have in their capacity as consumers. ...

As a believer in the First Amendment, I understand why this is the case and why the same approach we use to protect consumers from deceptive and misleading claims would be highly problematic if applied to political speech. What I don’t understand is why everyone seems to throw their understanding of human nature out the window when the conversation shifts from commerce to politics.

For reasons that I don’t understand, our mainstream journalists and media figures always seem to operate under the assumption that the average person is capable of sorting through all the political information they’re bombarded with and reaching an informed decision. This despite the fact that half of our laws are premised on the exact opposite assumption, i.e., that people are easily misinformed by those with an incentive to do so.

It is very true: The general public is terribly ill-served and ill-informed and poorly educated by a media who should be playing a "consumer protection service" to it's viewers. Blogs are slightly better in that liberal blogs will point out conservative lies, and conservative blogs will point out liberal lies (and if you read both, you almost can get an idea of what's going on), but even they are preaching to the choir, and truth in advertising does not apply to them any more than it does the candidates they either support or harangue.

The simple fact of the matter is that the American public is fed a constant stream of bullshit by politicians and their supporters, and your own Democrat or Republican bias determines which bullshit you choose to believe more of.

I spend many hours a day in a targeted search for bullshit in all its forms, and I don't differentiate between political parties when I find it, and I don't pull punches when I discuss it. It's the defining attribute of my political viewpoint: Find out the truth, ponder the facts, and come to a conclusion that is never hard and fast and is always subject to rethinking and open to contributions and persuasion from all over the political spectrum. My beliefs may not always be right, but they are truthfully derived, honestly held, and readily reconsidered.

This blog has a lot of facets, from Thai culture to comedy to baby and cat photos, and the political facet is based primarily on pointing out deceit and fabrication or just plain old ill-will. If you come here for the political content, that's what I'm trying to provide you: A consumer protection service from bullshit, free of charge. Hope you enjoy it.