Posted by
Steve on Saturday, April 26, 2008 10:31:14 AM
A while back, I signed up for a contest that had a sponsor of the Democrat Party. As a result, I get emails from the Democrat party from time to time. That has been interesting over the past couple of years. Every now and then I get the idea that I should just call those emails, spam, but I stop because they give me an insight into the Democrat mind.
Since I know the Republican agenda and background, it is instructive on how the Democrat emails distort the Republican agenda. According to the emails, the Republicans are going to put blacks back into slavery by taking away all their benefits. Now, taking away all the benefits would be a good idea, but nobody has suggested any such thing. Also, the idea that we are trying to target blacks and make them second class citizens is also far from the truth. Republicans generally do not think of race at all. We are constantly surprised when someone calls us a racist for proposing that we free people to succeed or fail.
I also get emails from the Republican Party from the same type of source as the Democrat emails. The difference in tone is striking. The Republican emails do not suggest that the Democrat party is going to put any single group into bondage. The Republican emails generally hit the nail on the head when they suggest that the Democrat agenda will make us less safe and we will be fighting the terrorists on the streets of New York or Los Angeles, instead of Bagdad. It could be that my general agreement on the tone of the emails has clouded my judgment. I tend to doubt that as I am generally pretty objective in my thinking. I will poke holes in any argument whether from the left or right if they do not have their facts straight.
My training as a scientist has given me the ability to see how things are set up to make points. For example, there was a study on global warming recently published in the Arizona Republic. The authors of the study believe in global warming. The facts do not support their hypothesis that global warming is true. But, if you select a very narrow time period after 1998, you can prove that global warming exists. So, the authors chose a 5 year period after 1998 and then make the argument that it proves that global warming is worse in the west than in the rest of the US. When talking about global warming, you have to take the long view. A five year time period is much too small to prove anything when it comes to climate. Even selecting a 10 year period you are still working on something too narrow. If you go to a 30 year period, you can then make some judgments on trend. But the trend is only for short-term climate only. The best way to examine global warming is to look at data for hundreds of years or even thousands. Then you will know what the climate does on a regular basis. This 5 year study proves nothing and their analysis just muddies up the water for serious scientists.
So, looking at the emails from the Democrats and the Republicans one thing stands out loud and clear. The Democrat emails are designed to frighten the reader into some action. They are not meant to inform the reader on anything. The Republican emails are generally there to inform the reader on some topic. The author hopes that by informing the reader on the topic that the reader will be inspired to act. There is a huge difference in that approach. It shows the difference between the average voters in the two parties. The Democrat voter is not one that reads very much to inform. The Democrat voter is only interested in being scared into action. The Republican voter reads to inform. Then they act based on the information they have on hand. I like the Republican approach much better. It appeals to the intellectual in me.