Supporting evidence

[neffernin]

One thing I really really really wish we did as a group (Democrats in general) is avoid exaggerating and sensationalizing to get our points across.

One example is a meme I saw posted here saying that this hedge fund manager makes what 80,000 times what your average family of four makes or what can feed 63 million people in Africa (so 20 Hedge Fund Managers could get together and cure world hunger?).

I am a logical person, and when I see a graphic like that I don't think "Wow, this is an unjust world" I think "Wow, are those figures accurate?" or "This can't be true". This is the same feeling I get when anyone mentions Benghazi or Fox News. Disbelief in the atrocities is what fuels curiosity for someone who is enlightened as it makes them want to read into it more to find out the truth behind it. Unfortunately the average person will just discount such things because they have no choice but to filter out information that is overly sensationalized.

ALL LOGIC should point toward the Democratic agenda being superior to that of the Republican one; and there's tons and tons of evidence to support this. Real, direct evidence has a much more powerful effect than anecdotal evidence because it is much harder to refute (though I suppose repubs refute the truth incessantly).

For example, a stronger argument for where the blame lays on this whole sequestration fiasco has been posted showing how little to no democrats voted for the act. A picture of crying Boehner may be amusing but it is the punchline that is most important, the fact that he voted for the measure; furthermore the evidence above could be used in conjunction to say he orchestrated the whole thing as he leads the house and pushed this through. The meme about the hedge fund manager to me would be more powerful if it said that the average hedge fund manager earns 100 times the normal household and had the actual source (US Census, etc.).

Maybe it is a flaw on my part for not understanding the meaning of forums (we aren't exactly CNN here). Maybe I don't understand that the emotional connection is more important than the factual one. Maybe this will get flagged because I don't have enough posts and I'm not part of the DU establishment enough to be critical of something that we all do. I don't care, if there's a possibility of it making us stronger I'm willing to take the risk.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. It would be good to have a link to the pot about the hedge fund manager.

In general, though, obviously most people here want to play it straight with the numbers, and let the chips fall where they may.

Sometimes the chips don't land where partisans would like them to be, but tough. It's far more important to retain our reality-based principles than it is to engage in any sort of unsupportable hype.