FACT CHECKING THE FACT CHECKERS

  During the chaotic senate process of approving the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court a friend of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos and asked for her opinion of the upcoming hearing. She said “ When she shows up today, she will be completely cooperative and ready to tell her truth.” After Ford’s testimony Democrat Senator Cory Booker said he believed Ford’s story. He said “ She came forward. She sat here. She told her truth”. A Republican strategist, Suzette Martinez agreed, “I believe that’s her truth. And I believe her story….And I could see it on her face” She then said, however; “ But I could also see it on Judge Kavanaugh’s face that that is his truth.” Truth is not relative, everything else is opinion. One or the other, Ford or Kavanaugh, was lying. The left, however doesn’t believe in absolutes. They only believe in opinions or moral relativity. And their opinion is the truth. That is the only absolute that they believe in. 

  This is the way that I have come to see fact checking sites like Snopes, Politifact, Factcheck.org and many others. They specialize in printing their truths. Before I became aware of their existence I would be called to task by friends and relatives on Facebook. That is, if they thought that I was posting something that was an urban legend, or based on hearsay. Their attitude seemed to be if Snopes says it, theirs is the final word. They can’t be wrong. The last thing that I want to do is put out false information. On occasion I have found that I did not properly do my homework and I have been wrong. If I am wrong I will quickly make a public apology and stand corrected. On occasion though, I have found that much of what I read, on the so called fact checking sites, have been subjective, or someones opinion. 

  Over time I have become even more suspicious of the fact checkers and their political affiliations since Facebook has been using these sites as a tool to censure conservative posts. It can be verified that Facebook and other social media sites are not fact checking leftists or Muslims the way that they do conservatives. For example it can be shown that what Trump, and other Republicans are saying publicly are being questioned much more often that Democrat politicians. For example Trump was the dominant target in 2017 and 18 with 297 evaluations and he was only given a 69% rating for being truthful. By comparison, during the same period, Chuck Schumer was only evaluated nine times. He told the truth three times, lied four times, and told half truths twice. Nancy Pelosi was evaluated twelve times. She told the truth five times, lied six times, and told a half truth once. 

  An example of how subjective these sites are, PolitiFact evaluated Hillary Clinton’s book What Happened, which tried to explain away her loss in 2016 to Donald Trump. Incredibly they could not find one lie in the book. Not even when she blamed the news media for her loss. A news media, mind you, that on average can be verified statistically to be 91% anti-Trump. This has been the average since he has been in office. Laughably PolitiFact called Hillary “fundamentally honest” and they “ found I told the truth more than any other presidential candidate” and that Trump was “the most dishonest candidate ever measured”. When Trump told Lester Holt " This Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story. It's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should've won". PolitiFact called this statement their Lie Of The Year in 2017. They twisted Trump's words to mean that he was saying that the Russians did not try to interfere in our election. In reality all Trump was saying was that he had nothing to do with the Russians, which has since been proven. In my view the lie of the year in 2017 was when many in the mainstream media lied about what he actually said in regard to Charlottesville. They should have been given the Lie Of The Year Award.

  To further illustrate the incompetence of the fact checkers, Snopes once evaluated an article by the Babylon Bee that was written as a satire and not to be taken literally. The Babylon Bee posted the article in Facebook. It said that CNN purchased an Industrial – Sized Washing Machine to Spin News Before Publication. Adam Ford, the owner of the Babylon Bee, was warned by Facebook that Snopes had declared this information false and repeat offenders would see their distribution reduced. SNOPES declared that the story was false because CNN had not bought the washing machine. When challenged on it Snopes claimed that some people are so dumb, it was necessary to point this out. Facebook would later apologize to Mr. Ford but no apology was forthcoming from Snopes. 

  This fact checking by the left began as a result of the 1988 election of George H.W. Bush over Michael Dukakis. The Bush campaign ran some very effective campaign ads of Dukakis looking like an idiot riding around in a tank and the so-called Willie Horton ad that portrayed Dukakis, as weak on crime. As in the case of Hillary in 2016, the fact that Dukakis was a bad candidate, who held opinions unpopular with most American’s, could not be blamed by the left for his defeat. In the Democrat mind it had to be blamed on lies told by the Bush campaign. This was the motive for establishing the fact checkers. I wish the Republican’s had fact checkers when Lyndon Johnson ran his famous Daisy ad in 1964. 

  One thing that I have learned as a student of history. Much of what we hear is subjective and cannot always be verified. For example I have taken many historical tours of old homes and plantation houses over the years. For years I heard that the kitchens in antebellum homes were separate from the house because of the fire hazard. That made sense to me because it was logical. Recently a tour guide disputed this and said that that wasn’t true. It was because if the kitchen was in the house it would cause the house to be intolerably hot, especially in the summertime. This also made sense but I still wasn’t satisfied. On a recent trip to Mt. Vernon I asked this question again. Why was the kitchen separate from the house? The tour guide gave the best answer I have heard yet. To prevent the main house from burning down and to keep the temperature of the house more comfortable. If I live long enough some tour guide somewhere will probably come up with another good reason that I haven’t heard. It has been said that most people today are drowning in information but what they lack is wisdom. My goal is to strive for the latter.