Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:EA thinks stuff just happens spontaneously. Causality is a mystery to him.
- Doc
Still, there’s a valid point in there. Given the relatively casual and near-nonexistent conversation over the existence of PB&J racism - or of any actual impact (or not) from it - it just isn’t the call to arms that Prager U types want to believe it is. Their imaginative conclusion that this is such dangerous ammo in the Left’s unstoppable and purposeful quest to Destroy ‘Murica speaks to the Prager cohort’s much greater descent into hysteria than any PB&J-eschewing teacher could ever compare to.
We handled Nazis with rockets just fine 75 years ago. A teacher pondering the idea of ‘PB&J racism’ is not the more difficult threat to our democracy.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:EAllusion thinks stuff just happens spontaneously. Causality is a mystery to him.
- Doc
Still, there’s a valid point in there. Given the relatively casual and near-nonexistent conversation over the existence of PB&J racism - or of any actual impact (or not) from it - it just isn’t the call to arms that Prager U types want to believe it is. Their imaginative conclusion that this is such dangerous ammo in the Left’s unstoppable and purposeful quest to Destroy ‘Murica speaks to the Prager cohort’s much greater descent into hysteria than any PB&J-eschewing teacher could ever compare to.
We handled Nazis with rockets just fine 75 years ago. A teacher pondering the idea of ‘PB&J racism’ is not the more difficult threat to our democracy.
It's not a mystery where Prager U comes from. It started with Rush Limbaugh and reached it's culmination of Fox News. Rush learned that he could make a buck off of folks on the right using outrage as the primary dynamic. He created millions of outrage junkies. Advertisers were happy to pay money to sell their products to the junkies. Rush, Murdoch, Ailes, Hannity, O'Reilly and lots of their clones made bank and continue to do so.
The formula is pretty simple:
Pick an extreme example of speech or behavior by someone on the left. Push it as a significant news story. Have the talking heads communicate that the viewer should be outraged. Attribute the extreme example to the entire left.
Ignore or downplay examples of extreme speech or behavior by anyone on the right. Claim that the bad behavior isn't representative of the the right. Suggest or hint that the bad behavior is the fault of the left. Suggest or hint that the bad behavior was a false flag operation by the left.
And that's how you make outrage junkies. It's an old recipe, but Rush recognized the potential and Fox maximized the effect. Accurate reporting took a back seat to generating the outrage. And once the guys that bankroll this stuff understood that the junkies will believe almost anything as long as they get their fix, things like Prager U are inevitable.
Blaming the left for the right losing it's mind is all party of the strategy. It absolves the right from taking any responsibility at all for their actions. Bill O'Reilly demonizes a doctor who performs abortions for weeks on end. Tiller the killer, remember. If only the left would agree to make abortions illegal...
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Where did the Rush Limbaughs come from, RI?
- Doc
Turtles. All the way down.
Rush himself was an entertainer who spotted a way to make bank.
Where did the crazy left come from? Must be the right’s fault, right? After all, bad behavior is alway someone else’s fault, amirite?
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
I think all political thought is recursive and inherently reactive.
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
Uncreative or not, Rush Limbaugh and his ilk have filled a massive psychological niche created by Leftists and their relentless attacks on the perceived American hierarchy.
Imma ramble a bit.
Conservatives understand we're a capitalitic nation with socialist policies. That does not make us Socialist; government running/direct control of industry does. They kinda understand this because they want certain socialist policies they feel benefit them while rejecting what they perceive as wasteful handouts.
The reason why they hedge against unsustainable socialist programs is because they believe they're the main driver of our current debt spiral. 18% of GDP was spent on Medicare and Medicaid alone in 2017; some measurements put it as high as 51%. Those are only 2 of the myriad of socialist programs which are bereft with waste and which seek to support rather than shame those who are willfully idle and which increase the burden on the rest of us. The military gets a pass because “F” it.
Additionally, government handouts do not encoruage due dilligence because they are endless and blind. If people had to consistently beg off family and friends and members of the community it would certainly encourage them to support themselves in a more fervent fashion than endless free handouts would. Welfare is gutting the American ideals of self-sufficiency and economic participation.
So, socialist Democrats are thieves who vote first. Socialism strips the liberties of the individual under the guise of maintaining what's best for the collective.
Democratic policies are nuanced and convoluted because what they're pushing is usually bad. They misdirect and reflect back criticisms over infanticide by calling it late-term abortion for instance. They use language to obfuscate their agenda, and half the country is sick to death of their BS. So, when a psychopath finally shows up ready for a fight, OF COURSE they're going to make him their champion. They've been crap on for so long it feels good someone punches back, rather than capitulate with socialist compromises.
Leftists have villainized Whites for something like 40 years and have totally endorsed degenerate sexual cultures, demonized Christianity while elevating objectively oppressive religions, bestowed patronizing passes to non-White ethnicities with varying degrees of privilege based on assigned victim status; it's a a party of tribalism and hatred. Former Veep and current Presidential candidate Joe Biden just said and was enthusiastically supported in stating:
“It’s an English jurisprudential culture,” Biden explained this week, “a white man’s culture. It’s got to change.”
Identity politics at its worst. He is demanding the destruction of our American culture because it was started by White people. Guys like Ajax are crap on with the hatred of a thousand Malcom X's for feeling pride in their Whiteness, while everyone else gets a pat the back. Rather than elevating everyone, Democrats have carried on a sustained campaign of hate, rhetoric, and divisiveness and it hasn't gone unnoticed. To act like either side is just a reaction to the other ecuses culpability. There's a constant ideological push and pull.
Anyway. Everyone gets a pass except Whites and Christians. Prager and Trump are the natural result and reaction to Leftist propaganda levied at them.
- Doc
eta since I'm in the midst of insomnia and food poisoning...
I do agree that the Overton Window has shifted left, BUT not as much as Leftists like to think it has. Conservative cultural values are rooted in tradition, and tradition is rooted firmly in naturally emergent paradigms. Human nature plays a huge role in a sort of natural order, while Progressive ideals are always looking to push past this order. At the end of the day Progressivism is very pricey, as evidenced by the latest Leftist policy being pushed of UBI (tacking on something like $2.5T/year to an already out of control deficit). Add in all the other things Progressives want to do and you're either going to blow out the value of the dollar and thus crash our economy or you're going to tax our wealth into economic stagnation.
This is a huge sell to the taxpayer and requires a complex understanding of economic systems that can't really be reduced to soundbites and quotes. Thus the Left has resorted to attacking the current various institutions that exist with charges that feels very personal to people that are trying to pay a mortgage or rent or whatever. The producing segment of this country, which is shrinking, is terrified that Leftists will blow up the system they're contributing to, and on top of that they're constantly bombarded with messages they're evil incarnate, privileged, and guilty.
And here's the thing. The Left believes that. Fully. Of COURSE there's a divide, and of COURSE the Silent Majority (now minority?) knows it's all slipping away from them. Of COURSE they're going to get people into office who play hardball politics, stack the courts, gerrymander, and crap all over the government because the government, in their view, has taken an adversarial relationship to them. They're not as dumb as Leftists think they are. They know virtually everyone that crosses the border is going to eventually put a vote in a Democrat's pocket. They know the universities and media are full of Leftists pushing a Leftist narrative. They see the their political demise if they DON'T fight hard and dirty. They're resisting just like the Left is resisting. Prager, and talk radio, and FOX, and blogs, and social media are just a levelling out of the playing field. I don't see how supposedly smart people on the Left don't see that.
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
Res Ipsa wrote:Where did the crazy left come from? Must be the right’s fault, right? After all, bad behavior is alway someone else’s fault, amirite?
Nicely put.
Maybe we can now move out of the endless loop of pseudo-explanations? There are more interesting matters to discuss.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
The intellectual history of American white supremacist movements like the one Ajax belongs to goes back to 1979, when white males became fed up with leftist propaganda levied at white people - a brain genius.