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Dr. Cogwerks posted:There was a definite undercurrent that every civilian somehow becomes subservient to the military command structure during a war, and the president is OUR GLORIOUS LEADER in wartime... so it's unpatriotic and anti-American and anti-troops to ever say anything bad about a war once it's going, or before it starts, or anytime really. I think a big part of that is good ol' chickenhawk bluster, trying to act like they're a critical part of the war effort when some fat millionaires sitting in a radio booth. The big phrases I remember were "Support the troops!", which was code for "support the war or else you are a morally horrible person for hating soldiers!", and "if you can't respect the President, respect the office of President", which was code for "stop pointing out that George Bush is a horrible person."
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Oct 28, 2012 09:10
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FlamingLiberal posted:Yeah, during the '04 election in particular, right-wingers were getting really pissy if anyone criticized Bush over the Iraq war. I'm still convinced that if the election had been a year later he would have lost, thanks to Katrina and the Iraq situation spiraling into civil war by then. Oh goodness yes he would have lost. Remember, in the '06 mid-terms the Dems ran the table and took control of the Senate and the House. There's no question that if Bush had actually been on the ballot post-Katrina he would have been out on his rear end.
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Oct 28, 2012 15:58
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BiggerBoat posted:You left out 4 divorces. Real pillar of traditional family values. Words speak louder than actions, apparently. Probably because it's a lot harder to lie with actions. cymbalrush posted:It may have already been mentioned, but didn't Chomsky talk about right-wing radio listeners in a somewhat sympathetic way? As in, if you try to remove yourself from your social awareness/education/etc. the stupid populism Limbaugh and his cohorts sell seems reasonable. Almost certainly most Rush listeners aren't "bad people," they're just reacting to various crises of capitalism within their own (flawed) framework. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2zYaKXeyXE Here you go. Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Oct 28, 2012 |
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Oct 28, 2012 17:19
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Dr. Cogwerks posted:There was a definite undercurrent that every civilian somehow becomes subservient to the military command structure during a war, and the president is OUR GLORIOUS LEADER in wartime... so it's unpatriotic and anti-American and anti-troops to ever say anything bad about a war once it's going, or before it starts, or anytime really. I think a big part of that is good ol' chickenhawk bluster, trying to act like they're a critical part of the war effort when they're some fat millionaires sitting in a radio booth. Look, nothing spreads diplomacy during wartime than sex tourism
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Oct 28, 2012 20:34
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FlamingLiberal posted:Yeah, during the '04 election in particular, right-wingers were getting really pissy if anyone criticized Bush over the Iraq war. I'm still convinced that if the election had been a year later he would have lost, thanks to Katrina and the Iraq situation spiraling into civil war by then. I'm still rather glad that Kerry lost that one. If he'd won, the democrats would've gotten the blame for the Iraq mess and the financial meltdown. We'd all be living in a right-wing "golden" age.
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Oct 28, 2012 20:53
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Zeroisanumber posted:I'm still rather glad that Kerry lost that one. If he'd won, the democrats would've gotten the blame for the Iraq mess and the financial meltdown. We'd all be living in a right-wing "golden" age. Why would we be in Iraq?
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Oct 29, 2012 02:38
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Super Joe posted:Why would we be in Iraq? The Iraq War started in 2003. And there are sources that say the Bush administration were planning something with Iraq even before the 9/11 attacks. So if Kerry had won in 2004, he would have owned all the eventual problems with Iraq.
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Oct 29, 2012 03:15
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Whoops. I don't know how I screwed that up.
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Oct 29, 2012 04:00
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quote:Rush Limbaugh: ...I had heard, actually, that Rush's listener base was grossly exaggerated by the laughably inaccurate listener diaries that were being used to track a show's exposure, and that the new automated monitoring thingies were showing that the 'shock jock' format actually had small audience (most of whom were only casual listeners). It was a couple of years ago that I'd read that story, though. Anyone know what (if anything) came of it? Also: Focus on the Family / James Dobson absolutely demands mention. FotF is a radical right wing Christian organization devoted to keeping the rigid structure of nuclear families & rigid gender roles in place at any cost. Unlike Rush or Fox News, Dobson is really in it for the ideology, not the money, which only makes him that much more venomous & frightening.
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Oct 29, 2012 05:05
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Dr. Cogwerks posted:I don't remember if it was specifically him, but there was a pretty widespread thing in right wing media that literally any criticism of OUR COMMANDER IN CHIEF during wartime was tantamount to treason. They went hog wild over that "you can't change horses in midstream" poo poo too. The most unsettling thing about tribalism is that it is absolutely unconcerned with coherent logic. The ends always justify the means, because the validity or your claim is predetermined.
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Oct 29, 2012 06:21
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I don't know, maybe I'm missing something but I don't fully buy this. While some of their grievances are sensible and meaningful, no-strings-attached bailouts, falling standards of living, etc, this ignores the social aspect of the Tea Party which pretty much lines up perfectly with modern religious conservatism. I find it hard to believe these are just people looking for an answer (and thus could be convinced/organized by the left) when so much of their ideology is wrapped up in racial resentment and the Moral Decline of America, and it's stuff they've basically been saying for decades. These people are being exploited, not bamboozled. Edit: Okay, I guess they are being bamboozled in the sense that they are being lied to by their authority figures, but they're not being convinced of anything they wouldn't be inclined to believe otherwise. Ah Pook fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Oct 29, 2012 |
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Oct 29, 2012 06:34
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Ah Pook posted:Edit: Okay, I guess they are being bamboozled in the sense that they are being lied to by their authority figures, but they're not being convinced of anything they wouldn't be inclined to believe otherwise. It's also that it's close to unthinkable (read: socially unacceptable) in some communities in this country to travel outside of the ideological constraints of religious conservatism. I think that's the aspect of it Chomsky is trying to emphasize. It's not like the left is loud enough to shout down the right wing media wholesale, anyway. But it can probably do a better job in courting some of them, and IMO did with something like OWS soon a year after the Tea Party thing. Bathtub Cheese fucked around with this message at 08:57 on Oct 29, 2012 |
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Oct 29, 2012 08:54
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The Ender posted:FotF is a radical right wing Christian organization devoted to keeping the rigid structure of nuclear families & rigid gender roles in place at any cost. Unlike Rush or Fox News, Dobson is really in it for the ideology, not the money, which only makes him that much more venomous & frightening. I don't know why some people insist on making a distinction between whether they mean or don't mean what they say. The net effect is the same. In a way, I even think not meaning the hate you peddle is even worse because on top of saying horrible things that inspire so much hate in people, you're also being inauthentic.
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Oct 29, 2012 12:02
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the jizz taxi posted:I don't know why some people insist on making a distinction between whether they mean or don't mean what they say. The net effect is the same. In a way, I even think not meaning the hate you peddle is even worse because on top of saying horrible things that inspire so much hate in people, you're also being inauthentic. Spreading hate and knowing better is probably worse, yeah. But they can at least be paid to abandon their crusades, which is a trait we value. On the other hand, the credit that is inexplicably lavished on terrible, terrible people for speaking their mind and swimming against the current, I think is just a reflection of awful postmodern, contrarian, nihilistic attitudes towards everything. Media figures who do this do not resemble humans enough to be reporting on human events.
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Oct 29, 2012 12:39
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Chomsky's off on that one. I grew up around these people and I'm back here now and when they were making plenty of money (many still are) and living comfortable lives they believed the exact same nonsense. The reason Limbaugh and this crowd are successful is that they tell these people how everything they do and think already is right and how everything that goes wrong is to be blamed on the government, on Democrats, on minorities, on foreigners or on hippies or some other group that doesn't happen to be mostly white, aging suburbanites and rural folks. The only difference after the financial crash is that they got out in the streets and blamed everything on government, Democrats, minorities, foreigners, hippies and so on. That's not a sea change. Notice when he talks about the bailouts, he focuses on their hatred of the bank bailouts. After the immediate event of the bailouts itself, the vast majority of the right wing rancor was about Fannie & Freddie and people who took out mortgages they couldn't afford (you know who they are). They didn't stop complaining about banks, but it was usually only when it was pointed out and always focused on "The Obama administration" blah blah blah "Bernanke" blah blah "banks." You'd never see them protesting for a return to Glass-Steagall or something. His talk about scapegoating from about 7:15 on is right on, but it rests on the false assumption that this happened among people who were disenfranchised and that is simply not my experience. These people made them feel disenfranchised when they were economically doing well by talking endlessly about taxes and welfare queens and affirmative action and America ceding its leadership in the world and that worked fine. It simply got easier once many more of them were actually disenfranchised. Still, look at video of a tea party rally - there are some clearly poor people there, but not many. It's mostly a bunch of rural and suburban people who look like staunch middle class folks from my neck of the woods that have a pot to piss in. What he is right about is that they're often very nice, salt of the Earth types when you remove them from the context of what is basically hate speech radio. My first encounter in America in the immigration line in San Francisco was with a big fat American who turned out (ugh) to be from Houston who started by complaining that ballots need to be printed in Chinese now, which morphed into a discussion on immigrants and eventually he was joking about Mexicans and how George Greanias (Houston political figure) was caught looking at GAY PORN on his work computer (I said, "Well, he is gay." and he said, "Yeah, but it tells you what the mindset is there."  ). This discussion went on about concealed weapons and immigrants and voter ID and so on. The guy, though, was essentially a nice guy who, if I'd have been gay and had reprimanded him, would've probably apologized and wasn't actually trying to hurt feelings, he just believes this right-wing poo poo he's fed, saw my appearance and was told where I was from and assumed I'd agree with him. That's how they do.
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Oct 29, 2012 13:13
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ReindeerF posted:His talk about scapegoating from about 7:15 on is right on, but it rests on the false assumption that this happened among people who were disenfranchised and that is simply not my experience. These people made them feel disenfranchised when they were economically doing well by talking endlessly about taxes and welfare queens and affirmative action and America ceding its leadership in the world and that worked fine. It simply got easier once many more of them were actually disenfranchised. Still, look at video of a tea party rally - there are some clearly poor people there, but not many. It's mostly a bunch of rural and suburban people who look like staunch middle class folks from my neck of the woods that have a pot to piss in. Well, he also refers to the erosion of the middle class's earnings and benefits in the past 30 years, which also coincides with the rise of this type of demagoguery. So -- economically -- this is where people really feel the disfranchisement, perhaps not relative to the poverty the poor live in (who are next to invisible in the discourse anyway), but the type of opportunities and earnings they had in the past. But you're correct that they do make a very powerful voting bloc and do a lot to ruin it for the rest of us. I'd also add that they don't really have any excuses to be as misinformed as they are, but that's sort of tangential I guess.
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Oct 29, 2012 15:32
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I can walk you into the chemical plants in Baytown, where the men are making 80K a year with benefits and pensions, into the $5MM dollar homes of Memorial with executives making seven figures and into the gun ranges of very blue collar low-wage earners and you're gonna hear the same thing. I'm not sure if Aliquid, Sub Par and Sir Tonk are around, but I'd be interested to hear their thoughts on this, because we're all pretty much from the same area.
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Oct 29, 2012 16:46
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ReindeerF posted:His talk about scapegoating from about 7:15 on is right on, but it rests on the false assumption that this happened among people who were disenfranchised and that is simply not my experience. These people made them feel disenfranchised when they were economically doing well by talking endlessly about taxes and welfare queens and affirmative action and America ceding its leadership in the world and that worked fine. It simply got easier once many more of them were actually disenfranchised. Still, look at video of a tea party rally - there are some clearly poor people there, but not many. It's mostly a bunch of rural and suburban people who look like staunch middle class folks from my neck of the woods that have a pot to piss in. What? How are you able to determine these people's economic status and why are you assuming that suburban or rural people can't be poor? Middle class people have lost jobs, lost money in stocks or retirement investments, and are hurt by rising prices. You can't assume they aren't suffering just because you don't like them.
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Oct 29, 2012 18:49
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Super Joe posted:What? How are you able to determine these people's economic status and why are you assuming that suburban or rural people can't be poor? Middle class people have lost jobs, lost money in stocks or retirement investments, and are hurt by rising prices. You can't assume they aren't suffering just because you don't like them. Very true. Way to many of these seemingly well off suburbanites were only well off so long as their houses would always increase substantial in value so they could borrow against them, easy credit cards to afford toys, and a booming stock market that would take care of their retirement. They felt the crash as much as other people, and conservative pundits where quick to frame the problems. The funniest part is, for all their howling about "entitlement" programs, these people have their own overblown sense of entitlement and have no issue with government stepping in to protect those entitlements. Their house shouldn't go down in value. Gasoline should never get too expensive. Stocks and their 401(k) should always go up. They should always be able to find work so long as they put in a modicum of effort. They went to the streets when they stopped getting what they thought they were entitled too, and conservative media brought the feedback loop to reinforce the existing beliefs into blaming the government for all the problems. But no where in this framing were they going to be the ones who bought more house than they could afford. They were not to blame for how they allocated their 401(k). They were not to blame for using easy credit to live bigger than their income. They were not to blame for live so far from work and buying inefficient cars. I do have sympathy for Tea Party types who honestly fell on hard times. But they refuse to honestly analyze their own part in all this and refuse to accept any changes in their lifestyle to reflect the economic realities. So my sympathy only goes so far.
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Oct 29, 2012 19:51
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The Ender posted:...I had heard, actually, that Rush's listener base was grossly exaggerated by the laughably inaccurate listener diaries that were being used to track a show's exposure, and that the new automated monitoring thingies were showing that the 'shock jock' format actually had small audience (most of whom were only casual listeners). Arbitron has been pretty tight-lipped about how they do things. But I would not be surprised if Rush's business model, of giving away his show so that failing AM stations could fill in the dead air, ends up skewing the statistics to make more listeners than their really is. If they find that x% of people are listening to him in a given market, than suppose that the same x% are listening on every far flung AM broadcaster that plays Rush 2 or 3 times a day because they got nothing else, than that could produce way bigger numbers. I remember hearing about some one who tracked down how much Rush is re-broadcast around the country, and it came out to some ridiculous 100 hours a days or something. At any time of day, anywhere in the country, you could find Rush on the radio, including re-plays in the dead of night and all weekend long.
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Oct 29, 2012 20:03
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Pope Guilty posted:The big phrases I remember were "Support the troops!", which was code for "support the war or else you are a morally horrible person for hating soldiers!", and "if you can't respect the President, respect the office of President", which was code for "stop pointing out that George Bush is a horrible person." Along with a whole bunch of "liberal Democrats are trying to take down the President, a democratic congress is hoping we'll lose the war, etc" even though Congress gave Bush everything he ever wanted except for social security privatization. Rush's boys had 6 years to run the country and look what they did. Conservative media never took ownership of any of it, blamed non-existent, voiceless and powerless left wingers for every gently caress up and then turned around in 2010 and wondered why Obama didn't work miracles in his first two years.
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Oct 29, 2012 22:37
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Super Joe posted:What? How are you able to determine these people's economic status and why are you assuming that suburban or rural people can't be poor?
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Oct 30, 2012 01:57
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ReindeerF posted:Apparently everyone who holds a different opinion than mine is quite the expert on these people's economic status, unchallenged. Still, since some of them are my close friends who I grew up with, went to school with, went to university with or have worked with, I'm going to assume I have a little insight. Far be it from me to poke the hive mind with a stick, though. I read here an admission that your observations are totally anecdotal, and I'd agree that this is an effective defense of their veracity. However, if you are attempting to take your anecdotal, tiny sampling and bridge it to the universal, this is exactly the wrong way to go about it. The nastily passive-aggressive, disproportionately defensive tone is kind of off-putting as well. Tone arguments are boring as hell but in this case yours is... noteworthy.
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Oct 30, 2012 03:33
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Beowulfs_Ghost posted:Arbitron has been pretty tight-lipped about how they do things. But I would not be surprised if Rush's business model, of giving away his show so that failing AM stations could fill in the dead air, ends up skewing the statistics to make more listeners than their really is. The old Arbitron Diary system (which is still used in smaller markets) relied on people recalling what they had listened to in a given week. This is why stations used to rely on gimmicks like "W Ennnnnnnnnnn B C" and the like, so they would be top of mind when you sat down to fill out your diary. This is also why radio contests would give bigger prizes on Thursdays, the day most people filled out their diary, in an attempt to game the system. It's a hilariously bad system since nobody ever filled out their dairy in real time, and not many can accurately recall what they listened to for every 5 minute chunk of the week. I've seen diaries that claimed to have listened to stations that went off the air, or changed format/names years ago. My favorite story was one mom that filled out the diary for her family (Which happened way too often, it's why so many stations targeted middle aged women.) and reported that her 2 sons had combined to listen to 100+ hours of religious radio. A consultant friend of mine disputed the diary with Arbitron so they called and asked her if her sons actually listened that much. She said she didn't know, but hoped that's what they were listening to- Arbitron accepted the numbers. What ended up happening all too often for shows like Rush is that people would simply write down they had listened to him from 11:00-2:00 Monday through Friday, then Hannity 2-5 and so on greatly inflating the numbers. Talk stations showed huge ratings from this, and the fact that AM listeners tend to station flip less than FM. The new system Arbitron uses a pager like device that picks up an embedded signal each station has. What this means is that nobody gets credit for listening from 9-5 anymore, people go to meetings, the can, or lunch- Where the pager picks up and records the station playing Today's Hits Without The Rap Rap Rap! There are ways to game the new system (Like drive by listening in malls etc.) but what it's shown is that Talk Radio listening is nothing like the diary system used to show. The guy that used to credit Rush with 15 hours of listening a week now only gives him 1/3 or 1/4 of that and so far nobody has figured out how to adjust to that. Rush/Hannity/Beck/Huckabee and the like will always have homes on the radio since they're syndicated by the same companies that own their affiliates but in reality their true reach and influence is far smaller than we think. At this point it's more a matter of perception. On a side note the People Meter also shows far more people tune into Katy Perry/Gangnam Style top 40 stations than were willing to admit it.
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Oct 30, 2012 05:05
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So a bunch of people I know on FB have been posting that Gen. Carter Ham, the general in charge of AFRICOM (which would have put Libya/Benghazi under his purview) has been "arrested" for "refusing" to "stand down" because he was "going" to "order" "troops" into Libya and "rescue" the people at the consulate. I search the Internet and all I can find is the guy is retiring after forty years in the military. Now, granted, all the links (to obvious right-wing blogs and news sites, natch) claim that nobody in the LAMESTREAM MEDIA will report this story because they're all "in the bag" for "Obummer" (note: to be fair, I have yet to see if this story has made Fox News at this time. It all seems to be coming from sites like "the Tea Party Tribune" and so forth). Part of me knows it is the height of folly to engage these people on any topic that's remotely political/religious in nature...but part of me seriously wants to post that even the meanest intelligence can see that a news organization, no matter how "in the bag" they are for Obama, would absolutely jump on a juicy news story like this if it were true. Even more so in this day and age of 24-hour news cycles. To me, this is just another example of the corrosive effect the modern-day conservative media is having on dialogue and communications. They've had to go through at least three or four conspiracy theories about Benghazi; and when one gets roundly disproved, instead of slinking away into the dark, never to be trusted again, they just invent some new poo poo and hope it sticks.
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Oct 30, 2012 05:37
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Save yourself the trouble and don't bother getting into that poo poo. Of course it's obvious that the media would jump on something like that. It doesn't matter.
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Oct 30, 2012 05:50
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Sydney Bottocks posted:They've had to go through at least three or four conspiracy theories about Benghazi; and when one gets roundly disproved, instead of slinking away into the dark, never to be trusted again, they just invent some new poo poo and hope it sticks. Because they just know Obama let those four Americans die in Benghazi. They feel it. They've prayed about it, and God has made them feel it is true. Perhaps they practice "free-hand prayer" or whatever it is called, where you pray about something and then write whatever comes to mind. "Obama... gave the order... to stand down," praise God! If the truth is already a certainty, then the goal is not to find the truth, but to find the divinely inspired combination of unnamed sources and baseless accusations that confirm what you already know. It doesn't matter if each new conspiracy theory you latch on to is debunked by your godless liberal nephew. You feel that Obama wanted those Americans to die, and what you feel is the same as what God tells you, and God can't be wrong.
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Oct 30, 2012 05:59
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Vertigus posted:Save yourself the trouble and don't bother getting into that poo poo. Of course it's obvious that the media would jump on something like that. It doesn't matter. Oh I agree, and I do avoid discussions like that like the plague. I know that no good can come from them. It's just frustrating at times to see people that should really know better posting obvious bullshit. And even more frustrating to see the media "sources" that dream up these outrageous things getting away with it, instead of being thoroughly discredited and denounced. Typical Pubbie posted:Because they just know Obama let those four Americans die in Benghazi. They feel it. They've prayed about it, and God has made them feel it is true. Perhaps they practice "free-hand prayer" or whatever it is called, where you pray about something and then write whatever comes to mind. "Obama... gave the order... to stand down," praise God! It just goes back to my theory that they want something, anything to not just cost Obama the White House, but to find some way to invalidate his entire presidency. The birther poo poo has been roundly debunked (and even then, there are still a lot of people who believe it to be true), and it no longer has any weight or impact on the election beyond Obama himself making jokes about it, so they're probably latching on to Benghazi as something they can pin their hopes for an impeachment on.
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Oct 30, 2012 06:03
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Just a thing I feel also gets overlooked frequently: we tend to rationalize and analyze why people hold certain opinions or beliefs, or how they grow more extreme, etc., but I think what we can't underestimate as a powerful motivating force is quite simply spite and cruelty. I'm not out and out saying that everyone who listens to Rush or votes Republican is pathologically cruel, but that feeling is definitely there. The excesses of public lynching and KKK raids may be gone, but that doesn't mean that that dark side of human nature is gone. I realize that that sounds simplistic to a lot of you, but consider that we tend to be the sort of people who've been taught to restrain impulses like that or channel our natural anger and spite into more constructive things (building a career, working out, or even something als relatively harmless as trolling internet message boards). Many people never had that option and weren't raised to think this way.
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Oct 30, 2012 08:59
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the jizz taxi posted:Just a thing I feel also gets overlooked frequently: we tend to rationalize and analyze why people hold certain opinions or beliefs, or how they grow more extreme, etc., but I think what we can't underestimate as a powerful motivating force is quite simply spite and cruelty. I would say that's a fair point. Wasn't there a study done that showed how a majority of the respondents would rather have been the only person to have $100,000 even if it meant that everyone else was subjected to poverty, as opposed to themselves and everyone else all having $90,000 apiece (admittedly I may have the details mixed up a bit)? If so, it certainly sums up the FYGM attitude pretty well. After all, if everyone has a fair shake and equal footing, it obviously means nobody can be exceptional or successful! 
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Oct 30, 2012 09:24
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There's a study that found that people prefer having 50,000 in a world where everyone else has 20,000 over having 100,000 in a world where everyone else has 200,000. I don't think it made mention of political persuasion or ideology, just straight up people want to be on top of the pile type poo poo.
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Oct 30, 2012 13:10
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Sydney Bottocks posted:To me, this is just another example of the corrosive effect the modern-day conservative media is having on dialogue and communications. They've had to go through at least three or four conspiracy theories about Benghazi; and when one gets roundly disproved, instead of slinking away into the dark, never to be trusted again, they just invent some new poo poo and hope it sticks. Amongst all the "God bless our troops!"/"So inspiring!"/"We need a president who respects these fine men!" comments there are, rightfully, occasional people pointing out that it's not a genuine photo. The interesting part is instead of going "Oh haha well I've been fooled, still a neat photo," a lot of folks are doubling down and getting legitimately angry at the fact-checkers, calling them un-American, or ignorant, or just plain stupid. quote:For all those who dispute the *date/time* of this photo, does it REALLY matter? When you are either *willing* to stand with these soldiers or take their place, you have a right to complain. Until then, hush! GOD BLESS these men and their dedication to the USA! quote:It amazes me at the sheer lack of respect of our fallen soldiers in some of these posts. That spot is guarded in respect for your right to post stupid remarks. His bless our troops and country. quote:For those of you complaining about the date of this picture, learn respect. Our Heros stand there 24/7. If you cannot support them and stand behind them, feel free to stand in their spot!!! (Also funny are the people talking about how bayonets are on the rifles therefore Obama is dumb)
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Oct 30, 2012 14:58
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Beowulfs_Ghost posted:But no where in this framing were they going to be the ones who bought more house than they could afford. They were not to blame for how they allocated their 401(k). They were not to blame for using easy credit to live bigger than their income. They were not to blame for live so far from work and buying inefficient cars. But no where in this framing were they going to be the ones who bought more house than they could afford. They were not to blame for how many kids they had. They were not to blame for not trying to get good grades so they could go to college. They were not to blame for resorting to drugs or alcoholism to take their mind off their miserable lives. Do you see the kind of slippery slope that exists here when you start holding people - anyone - to painfully high standards of personal responsibility? I'm what the right wing folks would call "far left," but holy poo poo, while we're having sympathy for people below the poverty line, folks in the war-torn countries of the Middle East, etc, can we not also have sympathy for a bunch of rural/suburban folks who, while they essentially mean well, were brought up on a bunch of socially conservative, "gently caress yeah America, capitalism is inherently good, always!" type horseshit all their lives, don't really know any better due to the echo chamber nature of their communities, and have now been thrown into the same crisis of capitalism that all the rest of us have?
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Oct 30, 2012 15:57
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I sometimes bring up that the mainstream Republican voter base / party is fascist and I'm often met with doubt and resistance to this idea, but really, if this isn't an example of a totalitarian mindset, I don't know what is. At some point you've got to call a spade a spade and stop arguing about semantic minutiae. The current US right-wing checks off all 14 checkboxes of Umberto Eco's definition of Ur-Fascism. A counter-argument against the fascist nature of American right wing media is often "well, they're in it for the money and this is the easiest way", but one doesn't exclude the other. It's not because the primary goal of the Kochs, Murdoch and other sociopathic billionaires is to make (even more) money that they can't sympathize with a hateful ideology, or at least tolerate it suspiciously well. There's also the counter-argument that hysteria about new fascism is moot because an armed revolt, second civil war, etc is unlikely due to most of its supporters being old and the US armed forces outclassing every possible militia in terms of strategy and organization. That's a good point, but not only do old people live considerably longer than they did, and hoard all positions of power (so they consequently have more time to spread the hate), most fascist movements didn't come to power through violence or violence only.
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Oct 30, 2012 16:07
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Your Sledgehammer posted:But no where in this framing were they going to be the ones who bought more house than they could afford. They were not to blame for how many kids they had. They were not to blame for not trying to get good grades so they could go to college. They were not to blame for resorting to drugs or alcoholism to take their mind off their miserable lives. People can still be both victims (in this case one of socialization in a stridently conservative and authoritarian context) and victimizers. It's not a painfully high standard of personal responsibility to expect people to differentiate fact from falsehood when it's readily available to them. Nor is it to an unreasonable standard to expect them to have the personal integrity to at least tolerate and not oppress other human beings. We still do live in a society with a considerable amount of leisure time and economic privilege relative to the rest of the world, and the availability of information has never been better. In this case the comparison with fascism is apt since going down your road is edging pretty close to some kind of cultural Nuremberg defense. That said, the current political process can do next to nothing about the right wing media or its values without bringing back something like the fairness doctrine. I think it's going to amount to a waiting game for the boomers to die. Bathtub Cheese fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Oct 30, 2012 |
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Oct 30, 2012 16:25
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How do you argue or debate with someone who will dismiss any contrary evidence as being liberal media? This person keeps telling me that I "believe anything I read on the internet" when I point things out to them about Glenn Beck's shock jock past and all the lovely things he said, while they only accept Fox News as the only legitimate and unbiased source. Debating with this person has just gotten to a brick wall, no matter how much evidence I put forth contrary from the New York Times or anything like that, they simply won't believe anything that is not written at foxnews.com or broadcast over the local talk radio stations.
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Oct 30, 2012 16:57
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eshen posted:How do you argue or debate with someone who will dismiss any contrary evidence as being liberal media? This person keeps telling me that I "believe anything I read on the internet" when I point things out to them about Glenn Beck's shock jock past and all the lovely things he said, while they only accept Fox News as the only legitimate and unbiased source. Are you asking how you debate with someone who will fight to hold on their beliefs in spite of all evidence to the contrary? Sounds crass, but you don't. If you're polite and defer in the end, to them it's a sign of their superior knowledge/sources/Great Americaness and if you get exasperated it's simply a sign that liberals are every bit the big babies that Rush said they were! Hopefully over time being polite but forceful can infiltrate the bubble they're comfortable in, but don't forget that you probably will never have the 2-3+ hours a day to talk to them that your average talk host does. I know it's probably counter productive and based in schadenfreude but in my experience the only thing that can infiltrate that bubble short term is outright mockery. Treat them the way an AM host talks to a "Big Lib", if you're talking to a resident of GlennBeckistan bring up the Doom Rooms, ask about their survival seed bank, or what a deep seated hatred of white people really looks like. Maybe ask why his BFF David Barton had his latest book disowned by his own publisher. With any luck that might seed enough doubt that the bubble isn't quite as comfortable as they thing, but it's not likely.
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Oct 30, 2012 17:17
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the jizz taxi posted:I sometimes bring up that the mainstream Republican voter base / party is fascist and I'm often met with doubt and resistance to this idea, but really, if this isn't an example of a totalitarian mindset, I don't know what is. At some point you've got to call a spade a spade and stop arguing about semantic minutiae. The current US right-wing checks off all 14 checkboxes of Umberto Eco's definition of Ur-Fascism. http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc
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Oct 30, 2012 17:30
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eshen posted:How do you argue or debate with someone who will dismiss any contrary evidence as being liberal media? This person keeps telling me that I "believe anything I read on the internet" when I point things out to them about Glenn Beck's shock jock past and all the lovely things he said, while they only accept Fox News as the only legitimate and unbiased source. I think a lot of us here have come to the conclusion that the only way to get through to people like this is to be be polite, but plant seeds of doubt over a long period of time. This way, the person can come to the conclusion themselves that they are being lied to and reject the conditioning they've received. There's no magic word or any amount of facts that will instantly convince any essentially brainwashed person that they are being manipulated, so it becomes a long, likely frustrating process. In some cases the person may be so far gone that this approach may be impossible, because they've come to depend on that feedback loop like an addict to a drug. In that case probably the only thing that can possibly break them out is a life shattering event in which they are forced to question everything they believe in. Whether the person in question is actually worth the effort it would take to help them up of the right wing media pit trap is up to you, though. Mercury_Storm fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Oct 30, 2012 |
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Oct 30, 2012 18:53
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Your Sledgehammer posted:Do you see the kind of slippery slope that exists here when you start holding people - anyone - to painfully high standards of personal responsibility? Like I said, I do have some sympathy for these guys. A lot of them where just doing what they had always been told was the right thing. The point I was getting across was that right-wing media doesn't ultimately help these people with these problems, or even believe they exist. They would have been better off tuning into Bob Brinker or Dave Ramsey to get a handle on their money problems. Instead, they kept listening to Rush and friends, and they just keep going with the blame-government mantra. But I can be as sympathetic as Gandhi, it still doesn't change the fact that these people have completely bought into the right-wing narrative. And as others have pointed out, trying to argue them out of that mindset is drat near impossible. The right-wing media has built of surprisingly solid foundation of circular reasoning, begging the question, and other a priori facts. Or as Chomsky put it, it is at least internally consistent.
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Oct 30, 2012 19:26
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