first bit, second bit, third bit.
Here's the good news. That Great Wall that separates our little reality-based community from The Fantasyland Next Door is not a monolith. Nor are the inmates of that Otherworld necessarily locked in there for all time and eternity. There's evidence -- from scientists, from experience, from history -- that there are cracks in that wall.
So first bittake a gander, and see what you think. At least at the first part. Hell, we've even had one ILXor two years ago who changed her mind on voting for the GOP from just exposure to us. Of course, she went back into lurk mode, but it was a start.
We live in an oversaturated age of media where the language used matters more than actually being correct , and it's only been in the last coupla years or so that some folks have actually realized this.
― kingfish prætor (kingfish 2.0), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 18:14 (6 years ago) Permalink
― Mr. Que (Mr.Que), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 18:18 (6 years ago) Permalink
No. We live in a society ruled by language where that has always been the case - accuracy being more important to some is a really recent development - and folks have known this for centuries and been writing about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics
― TOMBOT (TOMBOT), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 18:23 (6 years ago) Permalink
― kingfish prætor (kingfish 2.0), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 18:26 (6 years ago) Permalink
― gabbneb (gabbneb), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 18:26 (6 years ago) Permalink
― gabbneb (gabbneb), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 18:44 (6 years ago) Permalink
― The Bearnaise-Stain Bears (Rock Hardy), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 18:46 (6 years ago) Permalink
― kingfish prætor (kingfish 2.0), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 18:48 (6 years ago) Permalink
― TOMBOT (TOMBOT), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 18:53 (6 years ago) Permalink
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/09/tunnels-and-bridges-short-detour.html
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/09/dr-bob-has-map.html
― kingfish prætor (kingfish 2.0), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 18:55 (6 years ago) Permalink
Hell, they're even trying to crucify Rosie oDonnell now.
― kingfish prætor (kingfish 2.0), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 19:05 (6 years ago) Permalink
― Thermo Thinwall (Thermo Thinwall), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 19:31 (6 years ago) Permalink
― kingfish prætor (kingfish 2.0), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 19:36 (6 years ago) Permalink
I think that's why the show & his character is so perfect in summarizing up what's going on right now. His instincts on american authoritarian & political culture is sharper than Jon's. In thinking of this, i remembered his interview with the Onion back in January, where he talked about how the authoritarian drive has supplanted mere authority, which explained why folks in the press are being attacked.
And I'd offer that this is one reason why ignant-ass loudmouth pundits are given a bigger megaphone than authoritative types, since the latter are the folks who actually know their shit and can bullshit on the fools in charge.
― kingfish prætor (kingfish 2.0), Wednesday, 27 September 2006 20:17 (6 years ago) Permalink
My own belief is that anyone who desires to rule over others (i.e. gain legal authority to coerce others), no matter their political beliefs, should be considered unfit for public office.
― aswert (aaiken), Sunday, 1 October 2006 19:39 (6 years ago) Permalink
Still, there's a great anecdote that begins the book, about G. Gordon Liddy giving out Dean's unlisted home phone # out on an rightwing talk show and inviting folks to call.
― kingfish prætor (kingfish 2.0), Sunday, 1 October 2006 19:48 (6 years ago) Permalink
HI DERE STUPID FUCKER
― Leopold Boom! (noodle vague), Sunday, 1 October 2006 19:49 (6 years ago) Permalink
― Leopold Boom! (noodle vague), Sunday, 1 October 2006 19:52 (6 years ago) Permalink
yes, but also that not everybody is the hardcore RWA type. there are those who can be helped get over that wall.
― kingfish prætor (kingfish 2.0), Sunday, 1 October 2006 20:21 (6 years ago) Permalink
Thanks for thred.
― Laurel (Laurel), Monday, 2 October 2006 13:13 (6 years ago) Permalink
― The Bearnaise-Stain Bears (Rock Hardy), Monday, 2 October 2006 14:02 (6 years ago) Permalink
These guys put it best:Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behaviour? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification?Tyrone: Hadn't thought about it. Let's split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification -- either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy.John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US?Tyrone: Does that seem wrong?John: ... a bit low, actually.
Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behaviour? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification?Tyrone: Hadn't thought about it. Let's split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification -- either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy.John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US?Tyrone: Does that seem wrong?John: ... a bit low, actually.
John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behaviour? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification?
Tyrone: Hadn't thought about it. Let's split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification -- either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy.
John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US?
Tyrone: Does that seem wrong?
John: ... a bit low, actually.
― kingfish prætor (kingfish 2.0), Monday, 2 October 2006 14:20 (6 years ago) Permalink
― kingfish prætor (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 6 October 2006 17:29 (6 years ago) Permalink
Paul Krugman references it in his latest column:
Paul Krugman: The Paranoid Style Last week Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, explained the real cause of the Foley scandal. “The people who want to see this thing blow up,” he said, “are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros.”Most news reports, to the extent they mentioned Mr. Hastert’s claim at all, seemed to treat it as a momentary aberration. But it wasn’t his first outburst along these lines. Back in 2004, Mr. Hastert said: “You know, I don’t know where George Soros gets his money. I don’t know where — if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from.”Does Mr. Hastert really believe that George Soros and his operatives, conspiring with the evil news media, are responsible for the Foley scandal? Yes, he probably does. For one thing, demonization of Mr. Soros is widespread in right-wing circles. One can only imagine what people like Mr. Hastert or Tony Blankley, the editorial page editor of The Washington Times, who once described Mr. Soros as “a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust,” say behind closed doors.More generally, Mr. Hastert is a leading figure in a political movement that exemplifies what the historian Richard Hofstadter famously called “the paranoid style in American politics.”Hofstadter’s essay introducing the term was inspired by his observations of the radical right-wingers who seized control of the Republican Party in 1964. Today, the movement that nominated Barry Goldwater controls both Congress and the White House.As a result, political paranoia — the “sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” Hofstadter described — has gone mainstream. To read Hofstadter’s essay today is to be struck by the extent to which he seems to be describing the state of mind not of a lunatic fringe, but of key figures in our political and media establishment.The “paranoid spokesman,” wrote Hofstadter, sees things “in apocalyptic terms. ... He is always manning the barricades of civilization.” Sure enough, Dick Cheney says that “the war on terror is a battle for the future of civilization.”According to Hofstadter, for the paranoids, “what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil,” and because “the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated.” Three days after 9/11, President Bush promised to “rid the world of evil.”The paranoid “demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals” — instead of focusing on Al Qaeda, we’ll try to remake the Middle East and eliminate a vast “axis of evil” — “and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration.” Iraq, anyone?The current right-wing explanation for what went wrong in Iraq closely echoes Joseph McCarthy’s explanation for the Communist victory in China, which he said was “the product of a great conspiracy” at home. According to the right, things didn’t go wrong because the invasion was a mistake, or because Donald Rumsfeld didn’t send enough troops, or because the occupation was riddled with cronyism and corruption. No, it’s all because the good guys were stabbed in the back. Democrats, who undermined morale with their negative talk, and the liberal media, which refused to report the good news from Iraq, are responsible for the quagmire.You might think it would be harder to claim that traitors are aiding our foreign enemies today than it was during the McCarthy era, when domestic liberals and Communist regimes could be portrayed as part of a vast left-wing conspiracy. What does the domestic enemy, which Bill O’Reilly identifies as the “secular-progressive movement,” have to do with the religious fanatics who attacked America five years ago?But that’s easy: according to Mr. O’Reilly, “Osama bin Laden and his cohorts have got to be cheering on the S-P movement,” because “both outfits believe that the United States of America is fundamentally a bad place.”Which brings us back to the Foley affair. The immediate response by nearly everyone in the Republican establishment — wild claims, without a shred of evidence behind them, that the whole thing is a Democratic conspiracy — may sound crazy. But that response is completely in character for a movement that from the beginning has been dominated by the paranoid style. And here’s the scary part: that movement runs our government.
Last week Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, explained the real cause of the Foley scandal. “The people who want to see this thing blow up,” he said, “are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros.”
Most news reports, to the extent they mentioned Mr. Hastert’s claim at all, seemed to treat it as a momentary aberration. But it wasn’t his first outburst along these lines. Back in 2004, Mr. Hastert said: “You know, I don’t know where George Soros gets his money. I don’t know where — if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from.”
Does Mr. Hastert really believe that George Soros and his operatives, conspiring with the evil news media, are responsible for the Foley scandal? Yes, he probably does. For one thing, demonization of Mr. Soros is widespread in right-wing circles. One can only imagine what people like Mr. Hastert or Tony Blankley, the editorial page editor of The Washington Times, who once described Mr. Soros as “a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust,” say behind closed doors.
More generally, Mr. Hastert is a leading figure in a political movement that exemplifies what the historian Richard Hofstadter famously called “the paranoid style in American politics.”
Hofstadter’s essay introducing the term was inspired by his observations of the radical right-wingers who seized control of the Republican Party in 1964. Today, the movement that nominated Barry Goldwater controls both Congress and the White House.
As a result, political paranoia — the “sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” Hofstadter described — has gone mainstream. To read Hofstadter’s essay today is to be struck by the extent to which he seems to be describing the state of mind not of a lunatic fringe, but of key figures in our political and media establishment.
The “paranoid spokesman,” wrote Hofstadter, sees things “in apocalyptic terms. ... He is always manning the barricades of civilization.” Sure enough, Dick Cheney says that “the war on terror is a battle for the future of civilization.”
According to Hofstadter, for the paranoids, “what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil,” and because “the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated.” Three days after 9/11, President Bush promised to “rid the world of evil.”
The paranoid “demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals” — instead of focusing on Al Qaeda, we’ll try to remake the Middle East and eliminate a vast “axis of evil” — “and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration.” Iraq, anyone?
The current right-wing explanation for what went wrong in Iraq closely echoes Joseph McCarthy’s explanation for the Communist victory in China, which he said was “the product of a great conspiracy” at home. According to the right, things didn’t go wrong because the invasion was a mistake, or because Donald Rumsfeld didn’t send enough troops, or because the occupation was riddled with cronyism and corruption. No, it’s all because the good guys were stabbed in the back. Democrats, who undermined morale with their negative talk, and the liberal media, which refused to report the good news from Iraq, are responsible for the quagmire.
You might think it would be harder to claim that traitors are aiding our foreign enemies today than it was during the McCarthy era, when domestic liberals and Communist regimes could be portrayed as part of a vast left-wing conspiracy. What does the domestic enemy, which Bill O’Reilly identifies as the “secular-progressive movement,” have to do with the religious fanatics who attacked America five years ago?
But that’s easy: according to Mr. O’Reilly, “Osama bin Laden and his cohorts have got to be cheering on the S-P movement,” because “both outfits believe that the United States of America is fundamentally a bad place.”
Which brings us back to the Foley affair. The immediate response by nearly everyone in the Republican establishment — wild claims, without a shred of evidence behind them, that the whole thing is a Democratic conspiracy — may sound crazy. But that response is completely in character for a movement that from the beginning has been dominated by the paranoid style. And here’s the scary part: that movement runs our government.
― kingfish prætor (kingfish 2.0), Monday, 9 October 2006 21:25 (6 years ago) Permalink
― kingfish prætor (kingfish 2.0), Tuesday, 24 October 2006 21:53 (6 years ago) Permalink
― kingfish, Friday, 2 March 2007 20:14 (6 years ago) Permalink
― kingfish, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 23:18 (6 years ago) Permalink
― moley, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 03:58 (6 years ago) Permalink
Palin's reaction to the finding that she abused her power was met with precisely this response - that it was a partisan witchhunt. Everybody has heard this reponse. It's in every story about this case.
Funny - the council that voted unanimously to release the 263-page file documenting this abuse is composed of 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats.
How many news reports have actually mentioned this latter fact?
― Tracer Hand, Monday, 13 October 2008 15:04 (4 years ago) Permalink
A number, but not enough. But I have the increasing feeling that Alaskans are going to have some fun with all this.
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 13 October 2008 15:06 (4 years ago) Permalink
Ah, what do you know, they already are:
http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/stapleton-this-town-aint-big-enough
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 13 October 2008 15:07 (4 years ago) Permalink
This looks like a great thread, bookmarking it. Unfortunately I'm going to be doing nothing but sleeping and working for the next 72+ hours. Spent half my night off bored dumb, and then find something of interest just minutes before I need to crash. Bummer.
― ^^^ (RabiesAngentleman), Monday, 13 October 2008 15:20 (4 years ago) Permalink
is it anyone who isn't actively left wing that's an evil fundie idiot, or is it only those that are actively right wing?
― darraghmac, Monday, 13 October 2008 15:47 (4 years ago) Permalink
For the Phuquetard Buddhist there is also no “past”.
hopefully I am the only one who read this as a creative spelling of fucktard
― Edward III, Tuesday, 14 October 2008 15:42 (4 years ago) Permalink
Sara Robinson has written a new great piece about education, and what happens when you cede the argument to rightwing idiots:
http://www.alternet.org/story/155469/how_the_conservative_worldview_quashes_critical_thinking_--_and_what_that_means_for_our_kids%27_future/
― Choad of Choad Hall (kingfish), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:52 (11 months ago) Permalink