the Kommisariat's Kontinuing Kronicles: more right-wingery in the USA, 2k11-12

He's a guerrilla fighting to save Christmas, as it turns out. White motherfuckers.

the war on christmas is right up there with the war on drugs and the war on terrorism in the bullshit trifecta, ay

Terrorism is unnecessarily specific, it's the war on terror you want, third door on the left.

ach, of course!

wtf @ that N.M. thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hS1SMMxvGY

man how big a scumbag do you have to be to be down w/this shit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UMUlWbO1rhk

That woman looks nothing like Obamas mom, who would have been around 12 at the time of that photoshoot.

i know there have been nitwit contingents of the left in our not so distant past. but has there ever been such a seemingly large number of lefties so paranoid and so unmoored from reality? or this just a result of timing? i.e., a polarizing president & political climate in general coupled with the hyper-interconnectedness of the 00s? like, if the internet had been a thing in the 80s would it have been riddled with anti-Reagan fever swamps and so many people willing to buy into crazy?

and of course i realize that Obama/ Reagan, 80s/2010s political climate isn't a perfect analogy but

Read John Dean's _Conservatives Without Conscience_ for an explanation. Chris Mooney's _The Republican Brain_ helps too.

Or Dr Bob Altemeyer's _The Authoritarians_ which is free online and covers the same material.

Epistemic closure from folks far more interested in reinforcing and reaffirming tribal slogans, norms, and ideology than accuracy.

Left-leaning folks tend to be far, far more concerned with accuracy and will scold like-minded members publicly for it.

Conservatives(or the rightwing authoritarian followers that comprise the group) will never do that, and in fact will attack and eject members who try, which is how you get guys like David Frum.

Also, there's a load of people who are basically victims of modernity, you could say, and are shitscared and angry about it.

Far left authoritarianism could be found back in the day, but it usually had its roots in Stalinism and Stalinism is now a spent force, just as much as the divine right of kings.

i know there have been nitwit contingents of the left in our not so distant past. but has there ever been such a seemingly large number of lefties so paranoid and so unmoored from reality?

The Lefties in the 30s who defended the Soviet Union against all evidence were as unhinged as any Michelle Bachmann, even if they went to better schools, wrote great novels, etc.

Casual lefty truthers show the same symptoms as casual righty birthers.

The entire New Left descended into paranoia in the early 70s, though not without good reason.

9/11 Truthers are much more diverse politically than Birthers

btw I knew a lefty dude who was talking about truther shit literally 2 hours after the towers fell

truther shit is like anti-vaxxer shit. you get a weird mix of people agin' it for various reasons, usually those that match up with their personal ideologies but that differ from each others

alex jones pretends to believe in both birther AND truther shit, so surely some of his listeners are coming along for the ride?

i think it's fair to place anti-vax shit as a phenomenon of the left, at least culturally.

9/11 Truthers are much more diverse politically than Birthers

Of course, Trutherism infects a bunch of different political types.

This is why I specified "casual truthers" because I've met tons of lefties who say stuff like "Yeah, Bush probably let the Twin Towers go down so he could invade Iraq" which always feels to me like Holocaust denial.

Teeny mentioned encountering anti-vaxxer shit from both sides.

Remember, lefties don't tend to have an emotional involvement in the anti-HPV vax as they might others. Bachmann was the one repping that shit on a national stage

A blogger at Balloon Juice notices a bit in an Ezra Klein WaPo piece on calorie labeling at McDonald's that sums up modern Republicanism:

I did find one customer who had noticed the calorie labels: Dick Nigon of Sterling, Va. He and his wife, Lea, had stopped by McDonald’s after seeing an exhibit at the Renwick Gallery. Dick had ordered for the couple, noticed the calorie labels and liked them.

“I like that you have the information before you order,” he told me, when I asked about the labels. “It’s better than some kind of government health mandate in Obamacare.”

I told him that the calorie labels were, in fact, a government health mandate in Obamacare.

“Well that changes things a bit,” he responded. “I thought this was more of a voluntary sort of thing. Now I’m not quite sure how I feel about it.”

hahaha

That Wonkbook post is by Sarah Kliff, not Klein. (There's a consistency in style among the five Wonkbook posters, achieved in the editing process maybe, that makes it one of my favorite daily checks. I usually read the posts then have to go back to see who wrote them.)

at least culturally.

Really? It's crazy and paranoid but that surely exists on both sides of the American political spectrum.

There seems to be no difference between the parties on this issue, but I would have characterized it as more of a left-wing problem before. "What environmental harm are these big corporations wreaking inside of my child's body?" etc.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/04/27/more-polling-data-on-the-politics-of-vaccine-resistance/

Yeah, but it's related to the religious ppl who eschew modern medecine and who fear an overreaching govmt telling them what to put in their children's bodies.

Exactly, you have both the government and big business telling you what to do.

Also, you can at least change some minds on one side the more science you bring to into it.

Holding an incorrect belief is one thing, but not being able to do error-correction quite another.

^^agreed.

thanks for those suggestions, Kingfish. I've been meaning to delve into the Republican Brain for a while

the right wing anti-vac thing is about sluttiness

Also, you can at least change some minds on one side the more science you bring to into it.

I think this is unfair. I know a fair amount of Republicans, selfish libertarian types who are not anti-science and if they're too sceptical about climate change, they're mostly not about medecine and pharmaceuticals. The 'modern medicine is insufficiently holistic, blah, blah, blah' types tend to otherwise be lefties, though.

It's not nec being anti-science; it's being against science when it starting running against your core beliefs or whatever is declared by the Authorities. Because, say, petroleum exploration and distillation processing are a Good Thing, so the science backing that up is accepted without question.

In other words, the Vatican had no problem with Galileo mucking about with optics until he pointed his scope at the Moon.

But all people believe Weird Things for one reason or another. Our brains evolved from off-the-shelf parts, if you will. Conspiracy theory and superstition is natural; rational thought takes concerted effort and ain't.

The important thing is to be able to do mid-course corrections.

Lest you sail off the edge of the world

Right, or crash into the moon.

On a somewhat related note: http://www.desmogblog.com/are-conservatives-inherently-more-biased-liberals-scientific-debate-rages

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rw1ioJ99vk

youtube comment for Mick Jagger's "Let's Work" video

I want to send it to Ryan to add to his list and have him send it to Mitt. I put this tape in the other day while doing things and the lyrics came to life. I've heard the song a 1000 x and really heard the words after watching Ryan. It should be their theme song. If "O"hoMao used it, I'd hate it because he has no intention of any one working again and proves it with his failed policies. Roughly 24 million people out of work, almost 4 yrs as prez and he still blames Bush. "O" is a loser.

marto880 in reply to lakebay972 (Show the comment) 3 weeks ago

your right chuck do you want communist or freedom i'm voting for mitt
MrCarricrl 3 minutes ago

"If "O"hoMao used it, I'd hate it "

I could read that all day long.

Fun fact: comment was written while marto880 was AT WORK!

If "O"hoMao used it

sub-Morbsian at best

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/09/just-how-racist-obama-phone-video/57353/

oh cool

D’Souza argues that part of the reason Ann Dunham sent Obama to live with her parents in Hawaii was so she could pursue affairs with Indonesian men. “Ann’s sexual adventuring may seem a little surprising in view of the fact that she was a large woman who kept getting larger,” he writes. On the next page, he continues, “Learning about Ann’s sexual adventures in Indonesia, I realized how wrong I had been to consider Barack Obama Sr. the playboy … Ann … was the real playgirl, and despite all her reservations about power, she was using her American background and economic and social power to purchase the romantic attention of third-world men.”

Dinesh D'Souza, former boyfriend of Ann Coulter. And Laura Ingraham.

Yep, he's an idiot

i didn't think the phrase 'argues that' could be demeaned any further, but there you go

the continuing semantic convergence of the words "argue" and "insinuate" is one of the great tragedies of our time

i always think i couldn't possibly hate dinesh d'souza anymore; he always proves me wrong. he's the worst ever.