Topic: Politics
Aside from having ALL of my game time being wholy consumed by MGS4, I still have time for Politics..... but hey... give me some slack, I'm an old gamer.
Let me start off by saying that I love having the internet, and that I remember and was a member of the comunity when there were less than one million web pages in existance. What I want to rant about now is politics, as much as it is about Fact versus Asertion. My thesis is that the internet promotes Asertion over Fact in so many places, that there is no longer a difference. Wow!
In this day and age, blogs, and web sites are as common as Starbucks, they are everywhere. There are so many web sites saying "hey did you hear what Candidate X said today...." that there is no possibility to do proper fact checking! For all of you younger than generation X, each and every news paper had a "fact checking" department, and before paper x ran a story it went through the fact checking department to make sure that they "got it right." In the past, news papers were considered a real source of "news", but (and here is MY asertion in this rant) my buddy recently told me that "...national paper X and Y have gotten rid of their "fact checking" departments, because they are more concerned with getting the headline out in print First, than it being Accurate."
My greater point is that web sites all over are "presenting statements" as Fact all over the internet when they are really making Asertions! It is left up to the individual to determine if the information is fact or fiction... If you read something from a web site, how do you know that you can trust what they have printed is Fact, or just an Asertion? My fear is that the masses of Americans don't take the time to really find out the facts, and we could end up with the most liberal President ever, which is Not where Most Americans are, and will Not be Right for the country.
phew... ok Back to MGS4