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Notes -
To me it’s somewhat more dishonest. A lawyer lies by recasting the facts so that they tell the story that best serves his purpose, even when the clearest telling of the facts points in the exact opposite direction. They often do so by leaving out crucial context and details that would lead a neutral observer in the opposite direction, thus making people believe something is true that isn’t.
We’ve all been talking about the Lebanon pager explosions. Some people here have speculated on how it was done and how it might be detected or hidden. And on the political side, I would find it fair to say that the comments on this site have a lean towards conservative and neo-reaction. Now if someone who frequents this site is prosecuted, any good lawyer would have painted this site as a reactionary and even fascist site where terrorism was discussed pretty openly. Ripped from context, as lawyers tend to do, the discussion of how Israel blew up pagers juxtaposed with a bit of juicy reactionary or HBD talk paints a picture of this place as a Proud Boy type site. Left out is the crucial context. It’s against the rules to recruit for any cause, liberals post here fairly often, and the discussion of pager batteries was talking about a news story and discussed by people who work n tech.
Lying by recasting the facts is worse to me because it can cover itself with the veneer of truthfulness. You can cite a fact, and people who check will see that the actual facts cited are true. But stripped of context, the facts tell a very different story than the events they’re used to describe. A lie, on the other hand, is easy enough to sus out. You look it up, and it’s not true at all. And so it doesn’t get deep enough into the culture to affect how we see the world. But tell a sort-of-truth, and your fact-checking will help the narrative stick because it’s not obviously wrong. It’s just not an accurate and honest telling of the facts and designed to elicit a belief that isn’t accurate.
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