Desperate and Afraid, Liberals Fall Back on Half-Truths

News of financial collapses around the world has me nervous lately. It isn’t just the United States any longer. Now Iceland, France, Tel-Aviv, and Italy are in the mix, with the United Kingdom only a few days away from a collapse of their own. Beyond the tangible trouble my country is in, there is another kind of storm brewing. Our military has been put on active duty inside our borders, the senate started a spending bill in direct violation of the constitution, and rumors are rampant that the presidential election is going to be stolen again. The doomsday scenario some people are spouting has President Bush’s administration refusing to step down after the election, and invoking martial law to keep his power structure in place. How credible any of these ideas are, I don’t know. Mostly I mention them to offer context, so anyone who reads this will know I understand the anxiety they are feeling. Things have gotten out of control, and all of us are afraid that nothing will ever be “normal” again.

Context is a recurring theme in American politics, and it is important we establish that it doesn’t excuse poor behavior. When we act out of fear or intolerance, we act incorrectly. There may be such a thing as people functioning at a high level under pressure, and there may even be some functioning that improves when one is in a state of fear. However, no one’s reasoning skills perform at a high level during times of crisis. Eight years ago, John McCain used a racial slur. He used it and attempted to justify it with context. Earlier this year, Barack Obama’s supporters attempted to revive the story, and today it showed up on news aggregators again. I would argue the context I described in the open of this post explains why.

First, here is an excerpt from the original story, courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle and dated February 18, 2000:

Arizona Sen. John McCain refused to apologize yesterday for his use of a racial slur to condemn the North Vietnamese prison guards who tortured and held him captive during the war.

“I hate the gooks,” McCain said yesterday in response to a question from reporters aboard his campaign bus. “I will hate them as long as I live.”

McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent five years in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp, was questioned about the language because of a story last month in the Nation magazine reporting his continued use of the slur.

Since then, reports of McCain’s language have been circulating on Internet chat sites and e-mails among Asian Americans, many of whom find the the term offensive and inappropriate for an elected official.

McCain’s appeal to voters has been as a wartime hero and a feisty politician who speaks his mind and damns the consequences. But his comments on the eve of the key South Carolina primary show the candidate’s vaunted “straight talk” in another light.

“The use of a racist slur can’t be acceptable for any national leader, regardless of his background,” said Diane Chin, executive director of the San Francisco-based Chinese for Affirmative Action. “For someone running for president not to recognize the power of words is a problem.”…

McCain made no apologies yesterday.

“I was referring to my prison guards,” McCain said, “and I will continue to refer to them in language that might offend some people because of the beating and torture of my friends.”

McCain made it clear that his anger extends only toward his captors. As a senator, he was one of the leaders of the postwar effort to normalize U.S. relations with Vietnam.

Campaign officials do not expect the controversy to hurt McCain, either in tomorrow’s South Carolina primary or later in the campaign.

“If people understood the context, they wouldn’t be upset,” Mike Murphy, a senior adviser to the campaign, said last night.

But the racial slur used by the senator has a long, painful history that is felt by many Asian Americans…

I agree with Mr. Murphy that some American’s would not be upset by what was said after hearing it in context. Unfortunately for him, whether or not Americans get upset is not an indicator of how true or correct one’s actions are. Still, this story is a nonstarter for a number of reasons. It’s eight years old, it isn’t big enough to change McCain supporters’ minds, it makes Democrats look petty to undecided voters, and it has already been resolved.

Any proponent of Barack Obama who supported this ridiculous attempt to revive a story nearly a decade gone, was speaking from a place of fear. Those who supported re-circulating the links to this story today were writing from a place that only makes sense in the context of being horrified at the state of their nation and terrified by the idea of John McCain staying the course four more years. However, this context no more ameliorates the pointless nature of this attack on John McCain, than being a POW excused the Senator’s attack on Asian Americans. Democrats claim to want an elevated discourse, and improved debate about issues that matter, but they regularly fall back on the very tactics they decry.

What is worse, not one person attempted to get all the information before they weighed in on this issue. A quick search on Google turns up the following story from asianweek.com, dated 6 days after the incident:

. . .after APIs [Asian and Pacific Islander] blasted his unabashed use of the highly derogatory term that has historically been used against Asians and Asian Americans, the campaign made an apology after announcing that McCain would no longer use the racial slur.

“I will continue to condemn those who unfairly mistreated us,” McCain said in a statement released Feb. 21. “But out of respect to a great number of people for whom I hold in very high regard, I will no longer use the term that has caused such discomfort… I apologize and renounce all language that is bigoted and offensive, which is contrary to all that I represent and believe.”

John McCain may be racially insensitive, and what he said was inappropriate, but he apologized, and leaving that detail out of your posts on reddit and dailykos is the worst kind of intellectual dishonesty. If you cannot even be bothered to check the facts of what has you outraged, you don’t deserve a forum.

One does not deserve to participate in the debate if he is not going to make an effort toward finding all relevant information before proceeding to rouse a rabble. It is politicking of this style that drives a wedge between Americans and undermines the objective conception of truth. Every time some liberal gets a hard-on to trash John McCain with petty half-truths, he makes it considerably easier for moderate Republicans and undecided voters to ignore his party’s legitimate positions on the grounds that they can’t be trusted. I understand that fear may cause one to leave his better judgment unused; however, If truly afraid of where our nation is headed, one may want to take an extra minute before posting eight year old garbage and consider the consequences of those actions on his social movement.

For a nice illustration of this principle at work, please watch the first minute or two of this video featuring McCain/Palin supporters spouting half-truths from right-wing media, and see how much it makes you want to vote for the other guy. By arguing with information that is so easily refuted, any good which could come from their platform is drowned in stupidity, and their cause is lost.

Embeded: