Let's act to call out hypocrisy NOW!
When I discovered DU a few months ago, I said to myself, hey, cool, here’s something I can get involved in. My first few posts were along the line of “let’s do something,” but I quickly realized that DU is basically a chat room and that, except for the occasional long drawn-out pointless argument, we’re all basically singing to the choir.
But this morning two items popped up that got me thinking. One was the reaction to Michelle Wolf‘s routine last night at the WHCD. The other was the tweet from the Parkland students about the gun ban at the NRA event. I’ve said before that talk is cheap and posting online is free, so here’s an idea for something we can do in prep for the upcoming elections.
I’m going to call it a “Hypocrisy Database.” It would be an online listing of documented specific instances where someone has said something and then done the opposite. For instance, I read here a couple of times that the NRA campus is a gun-free zone. If that’s correct (and I’m not certain it is), then their stance on people buying guns for protection is an example of hypocrisy. I can already see the arguments: “It’s an office building,” “No bad guys would go in there anyway,” “It’s their policy and they have the right to any policies they want,” yadda yadda. But it’s still hypocrisy. And if it turns out, and can be proven, that some of their top officers carry in the building, then it’s a double whammy.
A listing on the database would say, for instance: “On 5/6/17, so-and-so said he would ban first-class travel for federal officials in cases other than emergencies. On 12/5/17 he bought a first-class ticket on government money to go on vacation.” Links to contemporary media items would follow. Short and sweet and documented.
The tweet from the Parkland students, BTW, in my view, is not appropriate. The gun ban on the event is a Secret Service request because Pence will be there, not an NRA request. Even if the NRA had wanted to allow guns, the Secret Service would have nixed it.
The idea behind the database, of course, is to give people a place to look up specific stuff and tweet or otherwise send it out to others. In a short time, I believe the MSM would get wind of the database and mention it or add to it, increasing its visibility and status. And more people would see it.
The database, as I see it, would not be a chat room – we already have one or more of those. People would send specific documented examples to a team of moderators, who would review them for accuracy and then post them. This would also avoid repetition and drawn-out arguments, and keep trolls out.
From the post counts and visibility of some members here, I have to believe they’re retired or semi-retired and have time on their hands, and/or DU is a serious hobby or a passion and they’d probably be willing to put some time into it with help from other members. But the goal would be to get the word out to many people who might not otherwise be aware of how much hypocrisy there is out there.
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