Comments | tomsdisch: Say It Isn't So!

tomsdisch

Say It Isn't So!

Jun 23, 2008 08:27

One of my favorite hobbyhorses, which I like to ride a lot, is Denial and its special psychology. I've often waxed nostalgic for the time I had two Mormon missionaries as next door neighbors, and they both loved to argue about Darwin and Lyell (sp?) with special reference to the Grand Canyon. They had a book of photographs explaining how erosion ( Read more... )

Comments 16

autopope June 23 2008, 14:16:33 UTC

For a fun example of Denial, you might want to look at David Irving. As wikipedia drily remarks:Irving's reputation as a historian was widely discredited[2]after he brought an unsuccessful libel case against American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books in 1998. During the trial, an English court found that Irving was an "active Holocaust denier," as well as an antisemite and racist, and that he "associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism."[3] The judge also ruled that Irving had "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence."[3][4]

On a visit to Austria, Irving was apprehended, tried and convicted of "glorifying and identifying with the German Nazi Party", which is a crime in Austria under section 3g of the Verbotsgesetz law. He served a prison sentence from February to December 2006 on the charges.
(What really lost him the case during the Lipstadt libel trial was calling the judge "mein Fuhrer" and giving him a Nazi salute, as was widely ( ... )

aed_sawin June 23 2008, 18:16:45 UTC

Try the Japanese Government and the atrocities committed during WW2. Rape of Nanking didn't happen, and the comfort girls "Choose" to go service the Japanese army. Oh, and they didn't use slave labor to build the amazingly quickly crafted bunkers and roads. Nope. Not at all.

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/unko/tamezou/nankin/fiction/index.html

blackbyrd2 June 23 2008, 18:28:38 UTC

Pick just about any news article over on AOL.com, read the comments. Eventually you'll find someone stating something incredibly stupid, such as that we went to war in Iraq because it was infested with al-qaeda, or that Hussein had WMDs, or any of Bush's other crap that even HE has admitted weren't true.

I would stipulate that anyone who still supports Bush at all falls into this category of living in extreme denial, but apparently some of them just think that any other option is even worse.

Comic-book guy: "Most appropriate icon ... ever!" doaner19 June 23 2008, 20:03:27 UTC

The spin-meisters of this past week, both the high profile names in TV interviews and the unknown writers of blog posts, doing everything BUT admitting that The Chosen One broke a written promise regarding the financing of his campaign. The question of whether it was the smart thing to do, or the right thing to do becomes paramount to them -- and time may very well prove those aspects of the situation to be the most important; but, the denial of wrongdoing, the refusal to accept that the Messiah's integrity may have been tarnished by HIS own deliberate actions . . . they simply cannot admit that he is less than perfect ( ... )

For Those Who Care About Polls doaner19 June 24 2008, 10:30:24 UTC

Current polling has Obama winning 23 states plus Washington DC, for a total of 289 electoral votes; McCain is leading in 27 states with a total of 249 electoral votes. If Ohio, where Obama has a TINY lead, goes for McCain (they voted for Bush twice) they would end up tied: 269-269. [The tie would be broken by a vote in the House of Representatives, which would mean that Obama would win THE closest election in US history ( ... )

Hypocrisy of MSM? of McCain? Of somebody, surely. anonymous June 23 2008, 21:02:44 UTC

Funny discussion of MSM neglect of 1992 incident in which John McCain called his wife a cvnt in front of staff and reporters, demonstrating his anger-management problems, problems relevant to his qualifications to be President. His campaign organization pretends he doesn't have such problems.

http://gawker.com/tag/john-mccain/?i=396328&t=the-internet-totally-loves-that-mccain-called-his-wife-a-cnt

Actually, I wonder if they really intend to run him. This might be a [hypocritical] pretense. Maybe they'll come up with someone less crazy at the convention, citing health problems on McCain's part. If the polls look really dismal for them, they'd have nothing to lose.