Bourgeois Mouthpieces: No Evidence? No Problem.
May 16, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The people who run this country wouldn't recognize the truth if they had a head-on collision with it.
Bob Avakian,
BAsics 4:9
For those who uphold the crimes and interests of this PIG SYSTEM, truth and evidence go straight in the trash can. Two cases in point:
1. Chief Pig, James Comey, Director of the FBI, says there is a “viral video effect” going on—with cops wary of confronting suspects for fear of ending up on a video. He says this “could well be at the heart” of a spike in violent crime in some cities and that this is leading to less aggressive policing. Comey says he came to this conclusion after speaking with a number of police officials. But he also says he can offer no statistical proof for this. He claims “anecdotal evidence”—which is along the lines of “my cousin bought a bucket of chicken at Colonel Sanders and found a fried rat.” Yet Comey’s argument and whining about any kind of restraints being put on the police being able to do their job of murdering and brutalizing the people made headlines in newspapers all over the country and set the terms of debate for everyone. (We’ll leave aside here the point that this is like the defender of a serial killer complaining that people are making videos of the killer and making it harder for him to kill!)
2. Judith Shapiro, former president of Barnard College and currently on the faculty at American University in Washington, DC, recently reviewed Frank Dikotter’s new book, The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962-1976 (New York Times Book Review, May 6) The first 1,000+ words of Shapiro’s review of this latest attack on the Cultural Revolution in China is a thumbs up, and she provides the readers with a preview of how the book paints a “damning portrait” of Mao; how Dikotter chronicles murders, beatings, torture, hunger, suicide, and economic disaster that are all attributed to the Cultural Revolution.
Then, after all this, in one paragraph Shapiro admits that what’s in Dikotter’s book is most likely from unreliable, disparate sources; from memoirs where “pain and the desire for revenge” are “by their very nature subjective and selective.” And she says attributions are not only sparse but there are “questionable sources” and “it is difficult to evaluate the significance of the statistics about casualties.” And then, after having said that, she says that the book “is a significant event in our understanding of modern China.” WTF!! In other words: “There is NO EVIDENCE for Dikotter’s attacks on the Cultural Revolution. In fact, his book is unsubstantiated BULLSHIT, but it comports with my prejudices so I’m going to praise it.”
*****
Comey, Shapiro, and other defenders and mouthpieces of this system should take this methodology of “Who needs evidence? Who needs facts?” and shove it.
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