When You Don't Like (or Don't Know) History....

One of the blogs I occasionally follow is DeSmogBlog. It's mostly deals with climate change matters, but it often strays into politics because that's where so much of the climate change thing is these days, especially since certain groups aren't happy with what the science is saying.

One of their more recent posts was (once again) about Fox News viewers and how studies show that they "...are the most misinformed about an array of factual - but politicized - issues."

The article goes on to mention that a Republican presidential hopeful (Michele Bachmann) was caught asserting that John Quincy Adams (the 6th American president) was one of the "Founding Fathers" of the newly emerging USA. This story wouldn't mean much to anyone outside the US, but JQA was only a child in 1776. OK, so just a little mistake. Easy to do. Very few Canadians could name Canada's first Prime Minister, after all. However, she refused to admit her mistake, and - here's the real issue - attempts were made to edit Wikipedia to prove that she was right.

The post concludes that we have "saturation levels" of misinformation these days and that Fox news and the rest of the political right are responsible for much of it. Reminds me of the noise some weeks ago where some Republicans seemed unable to figure out where Obama was born. Another presidential hopeful, Donald Trump, was partly behind that one. It's especially scary because these idiots are aiming to lead the most powerful country in the world.

We're not immune to this kind of nonsense here in Canada, it's just not as visible. Given the current Government's admiration of all things American, expect to see more of it. Spout your ideology and then rewrite the facts to suit your assertions.