Joementum posted:

But nothing beats LBJ's amphibious car that he would drive wildly into the lake on his ranch while pretending the breaks had gone out to scare his guests.

Zeitgueist posted:

The average American is too busy trying to make ends meet to give a poo poo about politics. Knowing policy matters at more than a general level is a bourgeois affection for most.

People aren't stupid. They are busy, apathetic, and have been carefully groomed and lied to by one of the most effective propaganda machines in history.

Assuming you are smarter than the public is liberal as gently caress.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

Because I totally wasn't even a little facetious writing that.

SquadronROE posted:

I just really don't understand how football can be that overarching. I mean, it's a game. The team isn't even comprised of people who are local, as they are scholarships handed out to kids from other states.

I live in the South and the football culture here is massive, and baffling. There are people supporting teams for schools they didn't even go to.

KomradeX posted:

But onto some actual content. So Andrew Cumo won the primary last night which is sad to hear, though not unexpected. Especially since the day before the primary he said, "Belive it or not, being governor, being lieutenant governor, you need to know what you're doing. You're running one of the largest corporations on the planet. "

And this is the loving problem that people in government from both parties believe that government should be run like a business.

Zeitgueist posted:

The average American is too busy trying to make ends meet to give a poo poo about politics. Knowing policy matters at more than a general level is a bourgeois affection for most.

People aren't stupid. They are busy, apathetic, and have been carefully groomed and lied to by one of the most effective propaganda machines in history.

Assuming you are smarter than the public is liberal as gently caress.

PupsOfWar posted:

inbound, possible derail (but I don't think so), watch out

Zeitgueist posted:

The average American is too busy trying to make ends meet to give a poo poo about politics. Knowing policy matters at more than a general level is a bourgeois affection for most.

People aren't stupid. They are busy, apathetic, and have been carefully groomed and lied to by one of the most effective propaganda machines in history.

Assuming you are smarter than the public is liberal as gently caress.

PupsOfWar posted:

iirc didn't kerry run up big leads against bush on the economy issue? Republicans might have a weird lead on the economy right now, but I don't think it is irrevocable.

Dolash posted:

Dismissing knowing about politics as mere bourgeois affectation is pretty demeaning and patronizing to the average American. Would them getting informed be mere class-based posturing? Does expressing an interest in politics turn someone from that hard-working, just-trying-to-make-ends-meet American to a villainous and elitist liberal?

Jerry Manderbilt posted:

Didn't enough of the American electorate eventually go "Aw gently caress it, it's as Bush says, 'can't change a horse midstream'"?

Monkey Fracas posted:

To be fair to Joe Q. Public and his seemingly total lack of knowledge of how the world works, you really have to pay attention because vaguely somewhere over half of what gets yelled at you with regards to politics is a sly half-truth or a bald-faced lie.

Shear Modulus posted:

Woe unto anyone who tries to become more informed about politics by watching media that's available without extraordinary effort like cable and network news shows.

My Imaginary GF posted:

Just listen to NPR?

Trabisnikof posted:

That's a fine solution when both speakers have equal power and institutional privilege.

But then again, are you against US libel laws?

DeusExMachinima posted:

Nope. It's the only the solution regardless of whether it satisfies you because the alternative is never acceptable. Violence is only acceptable in kind.

Monkey Fracas posted:

Yeah, it's not like it's an impenetrable web of bullshit but there is more than enough bullshit to trip you up and make you mis or underinformed if you don't really care all that much.

And most people don't really care a whole lot if our voting percentages are anything to go by.

Nessus posted:

Violence in kind meaning what, here, exactly?

Monkey Fracas posted:

And most people don't really care a whole lot if our voting percentages are anything to go by.

JT Jag posted:

Make federal elections (both midterms and presidential) national holidays. Make voting mandatory, any registered voter who fails to vote without an excuse is levied a small fine.

At least do the first part.

JT Jag posted:

Make federal elections (both midterms and presidential) national holidays. Make voting mandatory, any registered voter who fails to vote without an excuse is levied a small fine.

At least do the first part.

DeusExMachinima posted:

Nope. It's the only the solution regardless of whether it satisfies you because the alternative is never acceptable. Violence is only acceptable in kind.

Not a fan of libel laws although they're totally irrelevant to hate speech against a demographic. Libel against private persons is too vague and should be folded into better defined laws such as fraud or threats. That would reduce the reach of libel as it stands of course.

JT Jag posted:

Make federal elections (both midterms and presidential) national holidays. Make voting mandatory, any registered voter who fails to vote without an excuse is levied a small fine.

At least do the first part.

JT Jag posted:

Make federal elections (both midterms and presidential) national holidays. Make voting mandatory, any registered voter who fails to vote without an excuse is levied a small fine.

At least do the first part.

Nessus posted:

Violence in kind meaning what, here, exactly?

quote:

Note that communication requires the initiation of force to gain access to another persons sensory organs.

Trabisnikof posted:

So in your mind, are the Patriot Guard Riders committing violence against the Westboro Baptist Church by limiting their speech?

computer parts posted:

Or you could just have a long period of voting. Which is the status quo now!

Trabisnikof posted:

Early voting isn't always as easy as voting. Besides...

PupsOfWar posted:

iirc didn't kerry run up big leads against bush on the economy issue? Republicans might have a weird lead on the economy right now, but I don't think it is irrevocable.


inbound, possible derail (but I don't think so), watch out

I dunno how many of y'all goons played high school football or anything like that, but I did, so I'll take a stab at explaining some of the phenomenon from a participant's perspective, particularly as it pertains to Bumfuck Small Town USA.

- First of all, this is a sport that a large percentage of people have experienced in a very direct manner. You're looking at 50-60 dudes per high school team, plus dudes who wanted to/whose dads wanted them to be on those teams but who couldn't for whatever reason, plus other people like the marching band, cheerleaders and such whose activities are generally subordinated to those of the football team. While on one of these teams, there is a "football isn't just a game: it's a way of life!" mindset that is encouraged by coaches, school faculty and fans (parents and former players). Participants are expected to gear their entire lives around football, which becomes an accepted justification for missing class, reneging on other commitments, and getting away with dumb poo poo. When I was in school, players would get up at 5:00 A.M so that we could get to school early and lift weights for an hour to an hour and a half before classes began. Practice (or after-school workout sessions, in the offseason) would be held every day and run until 6:30 or 7:00 in the evening, meaning that some kids wouldn't get home until after 8:00. An expectation of commitment that all-consuming naturally breeds fanaticism, even in cases where it hasn't been present since childhood.

- Kids flock to do this because (in some cases) they enjoy the sport, because it is the activity that most reliably confers a certain level of prestige, or because it is a family tradition. More generally some combination of all three.

- Most of these kids' athletic careers end the moment they play their last snap in high school. I think something like 5% of high-school football players ever get to see the field as part of a college team, of which many wash out, many never make it off the bench, and many are disillusioned because playing kickoff coverage for Blandsville Junior Technical College is not the glorious experience they grew up watching on Saturday teevee.

- This creates a large cast of disappointed young men (and women, when you look at girls who had been similarly invested) who devoted the best four years of their lives (a sobriquet commonly applied to high school rather than college, in Smalltownsville) to an institution that didn't actually do anything for them in the long run. These become disappointed middle-aged men, disappointed old men and so on. Romanticizing that institution is a much more comforting response than saying "wow, that was stupid, I probably shouldn't of spent literally all of my teenage years to that sport", so former players generally become the most fanatical of all fans, vicariously reliving their glory days by providing a zealous support base to their high-school alma mater and to any prominent professional or collegiate teams in the area. They induct their eventual children into this same behavior, so fandom becomes a generational practice.

- There is, therefor, a sort of feedback loop where fanatical participation breeds institutional fandom, which breeds fanatical participation, etc. I'm not sure how you'd go about solving the chicken/egg dynamic there, but that is the process.

Other factors:

- In impoverished and especially minority communities, sports have historically been seen as one of the few routes to success that is ~comparatively~ open to them. Becoming a famous sports hero, while highly unlikely, seems a lot more plausible to a poor kid than attending a top-10 college and becoming a Wall Street mogul or some other process that is a lot more demographically closed (the main reason I don't resent how massively overpaid pro athletes are is that a huge proportion of them come from genuinely impoverished backgrounds and I enjoy seeing them get rich more than I enjoy a lot of things). And even for those who don't have super ambitious dreams, there's still the hope that maybe you can get a half scholarship or financial aid kickback from your crappy local college that will allow you to afford school. There is a reason "I gotta impress the scouts so I can escape The Streets/The Mines/The Steel Mill" is such a common narrative trope in Americana. This kind of thing then contributes to the feedback loop mentioned above.

- High Schools and especially Colleges deliberately take advantage of sports fandom as a recruiting and community-building tool, and students (even ones without athletic backgrounds) love buying into this because it is nice to feel like you belong to a tradition.

- As alluded previously in this thread, local/regional ballteams are often the most prominent, long-lasting or successful public institutions in an area (the lattermost of these is especially important when you consider the perspective of otherwise-undistinguished locales. There's a lot of "Well maybe Somewhereburg is a better place to live than Nowhereville in almost all respects, but at least we have beat 'em at ball for the past six years running!" that goes on), so it makes sense for people to latch onto them as a source of pride.

It's a huge political and economic factor in Small Town USA, when you consider the massive cultural weight associated with it. There is usually a huge degree of social overlap between booster clubs, local business associations and city/county/magistrates' councils, for instance. I know that in my hometown, the composition of the school board would always fluctuate wildly according to our desperate desire for our ballteam to suck less.

Badger of Basra posted:

This, but also, gently caress A&M.

Nessus posted:

Violence in kind meaning what, here, exactly?

computer parts posted:

Badger of Basra posted:

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Is this another one of your dumb Traditions?

Munkeymon posted:

http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Aggression

E: for people who don't want to click on a Mises link