Even the Doctor is rolling his eyes over all this political crap.
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No one who knows me could mistake me for caring what this or that political party says about itself or the other party. That is, unless it’s a talking point that’s an outright lie or at the very least misleading. More than a few Facebook friends have probably cursed me when I’ve fact-checked them (and yes, I just did it again … twice … as I was preparing this for the blog … I’m incorrigible … yes, word nerds, appreciate the irony in that word use).

Hey, it’s not my fault they listened to their confirmation bias!

Both major parties are guilty of this, though to be fair, one has a greater tendency to retreat to talking points when challenged. And right now, there are people from both those parties saying, “Yep, they sure do!”

Again, this is why I don’t belong to a party. I prefer reality, even when it’s no fun.

And it’s still not an infringement of your rights. You have the right to not follow advice from people who actually know what they’re talking about, but you have to take responsibility for that choice.
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Let’s look at the covid-19 pandemic to illustrate the partisan divide. If you thought that making face masks a political issue might increase cases, it seems you’d be right, especially considering Sturgis and Tulsa. According to Pew Research, wrote Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux of FiveThirtyEight in late July, “Republicans have consistently been less likely than Democrats to say that they fear being hospitalized because of covid-19 or that they might unknowingly spread the virus to others. … [T]hat partisan gap has widened significantly between April and June.

“It’s hard to find a more extreme test of our tribal political attachments than the current pandemic, where Trump continues to downplay the risks of the virus in the face of near-universal opposition from medical experts. It also raises a thorny issue: In the midst of a pandemic, partisanship appears to be shaping people’s perceptions of their risk and personal behaviors—to the point that our divided politics actually affects our health. For Americans, that might mean that questions of whether to stay home, wear a mask or to see friends and family without social distancing are filtered through a partisan lens.”

Sure, sounds accurate.
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If challenged on mask-wearing, for example, the usual talking points issue forth, these three among them, according to Reuters and FactCheck.org, both of which have done fact checks on the claims:

😷 Oxygen levels are adversely affected. (If you’re wearing an N95 mask all day, there might be some difference, but most people wear cloth masks. If you’re worried, you can always buy a bracket insert to allow more space between your face and the mask.)

😷 Waste buildup in the mask leads to hypercapnia from breathing too much carbon dioxide. (The CDC says the level in the mask is unlikely to cause this condition; you might get a headache if you’re sensitive to it, but that’s about it.)

😷 Wearing a mask can cause Legionnaires’ disease. (The bacteria that causes that disease festers mostly in warm standing water, according to Dr. Jane Stout of the Special Pathogens Laboratory in Pittsburgh, and you can get it by breathing in mist or drinking from an infected water source. The bacteria isn’t present in saliva.)

But ya know, science is obviously a conspiracy, and Facebook and your crazy Uncle Ted are far more reliable sources of information, whether it’s on masks and covid-19, or what members of political parties believe.

That about sums up the logic.
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According to the talking points I regularly see on Facebook and elsewhere, Democrats advocate infanticide and abortion up to just minutes before birth, are atheists if not Satanists, want to take away all guns, and want free everything because they don’t work (or they’re elitists who don’t care about the little guy … they’re never consistent on this). Republicans want every pregnant woman to give birth regardless of health or personal circumstance, are Bible-thumping religious lunatics, have a full arsenal in a secret bunker, and believe that the government shouldn’t require you to pay taxes.

Sure, maybe there are a few people who actually believe those things but, as I’ve said before, more Americans identify as independent than Democrat or Republican. Some are fully center in their beliefs, and some lean left or right depending on the issue.

It’s almost like I said I like the last season of Game of Thrones! I didn’t.
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I know of no person, Democrat or Republican, who advocates infanticide (for those memes that say it should be illegal … it already is) or abortions up to the moment of birth. The majority of Americans believe abortions, with some limits, should remain legal, and that it should be a decision made by a woman and her doctor, not politicians or other people with no medical knowledge. It’s bad enough when we have legislators dictating what terms a state medical board can use rather than accepted medical terminology. (And the way to keep abortions rare is to keep them legal and provide contraception and comprehensive sex education rather than abstinence-only instruction that doesn’t seem to work.)

One could convincingly argue that Jesus would be a Democrat (though I suspect he might be a left-leaning independent).
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There are Republican atheists, just as there are Democratic Christians. If Democrats want to take all the guns, they’ve done a pretty lousy job of it, maybe because more than Republicans buy guns. And while free would be great, most people understand that government must have revenue to provide the services it does, so we pay taxes and, if we live long enough, we are to receive benefits that we paid into throughout our working lives. Well, as long as the fund holds out, which may not be long enough for me to collect.

We’re more alike than some would like to think. Pamela B. Paresky wrote in Psychology Today, “Partisans on both sides of the aisle significantly overestimate the extent of extremism in the opposing party. The more partisan the thinker, the more distorted the other side appears. And when we see the opposition as extremists, we fear them. Our tribal thinking prepares us for battle.”

It’s the politically disengaged (shoutout to my independent peeps) who are more likely to be accurate in assessments of each side’s views, and they tend to be the ones on the sidelines of the battle offering fact-checks. No orange slices, though. Orange slices aren’t for battle.

Or is that cow poop? Yep, it’s cow poop.
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We do battle, it seems, with talking points, which further the idea that people can be easily divided and categorized, and that usually put forth misinformation. This is why I say just say no to talking points, don’t get your news from Facebook and memes, and think for yourself.

You’d think this wouldn’t be a hard thing to do, but when you have people who refuse to pay attention to anything that doesn’t square with their worldview … Paresky offered a suggestion for newspapers to try to foster a little more understanding: “Newspaper op-ed pages can make a difference by hiring — and fiercely protecting — opinion columnists whose views don’t square with those of the majority of their readers.” That wouldn’t fly with some of the more vociferous denouncers of John Brummett (the only regular liberal columnist on the Voices page) and Paul Krugman (the only regular liberal columnist on the editorial page) for our paper, and they’d do as they always do and respond with tired talking points.

Unfortunately, some people rely on those talking points for or against their party whenever they write a letter. That means I get a lot of letters that have to be tossed because inaccurate talking points form the basis of the rationale. Sometimes it may be something they thought they heard but wasn’t actually said, or something a party leader said that has little basis in reality.

That’s the thing about talking points. They might be red meat to hyperpartisans, but they’re really just empty calories.

I don’t even eat red meat anyway. If I’m gonna waste calories, it’s gonna be on chocolate. Lots. Of. Chocolate.

I’ll admit it. I still have Easter chocolate in the refrigerator. Emergency rations.
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