This Twitter interchange with a Right Winger illustrates the kind of cognitive dissonance that their sources of information make vogue. This guy is likely unchangeable, but the battle isn’t about him at all. See what I mean below.
Yesterday I posted the blog titled “Dylan Ratigan embarrassed Conservative: Red States mooch off of Blue State (VIDEO)” where Dylan Ratigan quickly checked the justification many Republicans were using to justify first getting rid of Sales and Local Tax (SALT) deduction. They finally decided just to reduce its deductibility. They claimed that The Red States were subsidizing the Blue States high taxes. Ratigan put that lie to rest.
“It’s interesting that you would say that,” Ratigan said. “Actually the Blue States actually pay two times as much to the Red States than the Red states receive. So what you said was not actually correct. What you’re saying now is that in addition to taking money from the Blue States to pay for Indiana’s infrastructure, you’re also going to reduce the tax deduction for Blue State tax holders to pay for their own infrastructure while they still subsidize the Red States.”
Dylan Ratigan retweeted my post with the quote,
Red” states that pride themselves on low taxes take money from wealthy “Blue” states in order to subsidize their infrastructure. New tax bill raises taxes on “Blue” states further.
https://twitter.com/DylanRatigan/status/942007907494789120
Twitter exchange with an immutably deceptive Right Winger
@ChrisOnPolitics replied with the following tweet.
As it should. Blue States are heavily subsidized via SALT. This is why Blue States have social programs up the wazoo. Eliminating their SALT deductions brings more revenues for the Feds and pressures Blue States to no live outside their means. Blue States have major debt problems.
Followed by this tweet.
This myth “Red States are subsidized by Blue States” is exactly that a myth. There literally is no evidence to back up that claim. Fed Dollars go to States for a wide variety of reason from military bases to border security and yes to infrastructure. But hey why be honest.
To which I replied to him with this tweet.
Ur simply wrong. Red States manufacture less, are less educated, and take more per capita welfare. That’s not because of bad people but failed government adopting an ideology that is probably wrong.
And what was his responding tweet?
Thanks for the good laugh today. Are you unaware that when cost of living is taken into account California has the highest rate of poverty? Also if Liberal policies are so great why is every major city they run ripe w/poverty, crime, and failed schools?
Notice numbers mean nothing to him. I point out the absolutes that no form of spinning or bloviating can mitigate. So I replied to him with the following tweet(1of2) & tweet(2of3).
(1 of 2) The facts are absolute. (1) Red States depend on stuff from the government more than Blue States. (2) Red States level of education is less because with low taxes you made conscious decision not to invest in your people.
(2 of 2) (3) People in Red States are sicker because the GOP decided to murder its citizens by not accepting the Medicaid Expansion for Obamacare that would have cost them nothing for three years and then 3% thereafter. Not to speak about the economic boost. Not very smart.
I stated the following in the Ratigan post.
The numbers speak for themselves. The majority of the Red States are, in Romney’s parlance, takers, they live off of the government. And for good measure, the Red States even fail in their moral values experiment when compared to the Blue States.
Refuting these lies in Social Media is essential. Many let them go because they know that they are communicating with an immutably misinformed person. While that is true, we must remember that answering the misinformation is not necessarily for the person deceiving, the tweeter, but for the thousands who read the thread without commenting. It impacts many and mitigates leaving lies dangling.