The two ends of the political spectrum are killing us

[Curried Goats]

Does anyone else see the irony and humor in Mac1958 starting a thread about how to avoid political push back, receiving political push back and then promptly bitching out while agreeing with post?

 

[Curried Goats]

The establishment media holds much of the blame for the division in the country. Those watching Fox News thinks it’s truthful and those watching CNN/MSNBC think it’s truthful. The fact is of course these media outlets are propaganda machines run by oligarchs with the obvious goal of dividing Americans.

That's bullshit. Maybe wealthy elite Democrats fall for the bullshit on MSNBC but most voters on the left don't watch MSNBC or CNN unlike rightwingers who are glued to Fox news and the likes of Tucker Carlson. I couldn't even name a host on MSNBC.

 

[Mac1958]

Does anyone else see the irony and humor in Mac1958 starting a thread about how to avoid political push back, receiving political push back and then promptly bitching out while agreeing with post?

Yikes, I really got in your head. I'm used to that here.

Communicate with me like you're an intelligent adult, and I'll respond. Conservative Doug1943 has no trouble doing that, and we're having an interesting conversation.

 

[Curried Goats]

Yikes, I really got in your head. I'm used to that here.

Seems like I got into yours.... I thought you weren't responding anymore.

Communicate with me like you're an intelligent adult, and I'll respond. Conservative Doug1943 has no trouble doing that, and we're having an interesting conversation.

Where you agree with one another. The point of your thread was to avoid pushback from people who disagree with you.

 

[Mac1958]

Seems like I got into yours.... I thought you weren't responding anymore.

Where you agree with one another. The point of your thread was to avoid pushback from people who disagree with you.

If you say so.

I'll next respond when you have something interesting to say to me.

 

[Curried Goats]

If you say so.

I'll next respond when you have something interesting to say to me.

I don't care if you respond or not Mac, you not responding and not being able to handle disagreement proves the failure at the heart of your premise.

 

[Mac1958]

Ranked Choice Voting would go a long way toward rewarding consensus seekers. And it would do away with lesser-of-two-evils as a partisan scare tactic. Over time, I think it would walk us back from the brink. But I don't know how much time we have.

That's definitely one. Congressional term limits is another. Bipartisan redistricting commissions are another. Getting money as far away from politics as possible is another.

Even if a person disagrees with one of the above, they're worth discussing. And who knows what that discussion might yield -- NEW IDEAS, maybe?

America used to be pretty good at new ideas, before partisan politics calcified us.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Political overcompensation is the new Great American Pastime.

A few years ago, some of us were warning the Left: You're going too far with Political Correctness and Identity Politics. You're going too far screaming RACIST at every last fucking thing that moves. You're going too far lowering standards and expectations for people based solely on their skin color. You're going too far in normalizing sexual disorders such as gender dysphoria. You're going too far in putting your agenda in schools. You're going too far in disallowing conservative voices on college campuses. And most of all, you're going too far in attacking, intimidating and penalizing people in everyday life for saying things you don't like.

There's going to be pushback, we said. You're overcompensating, we said. This stuff is not right, we said. I only said that a few thousand times here, to be met with attacks from the Left. (By the way, a zillion examples of that available upon request via the search function)

So now we see the pushback, with this Neanderthal, middle school bully-approach to the culture from the Right. This is the pushback we warned about -- although, admittedly, even worse than I imagined. And this sucker has legs, just like your weaponized PC and Identity Politics did. They're making laws and attacking and intimidating. Gee, what a coincidence. What Deja Vu we're seeing, huh? Go figure!

And most amazing of all, this pushback included the election of a petulant child, an obvious con man, an orange buffoon, in 2016, and all the fucking unbelievable madness that has followed.

No doubt there will be pushback to this, too. Back and forth. Back and forth. More and more damage.

Ideological politics poisons everything it touches. Now it's putting this country at risk of falling apart. Great job, gang. You're BOTH so much like those you hate, and you just won't stop.

Young Republicans Are Begging Party Elders To Stop Saying 'Woke'

The next generation of conservatives support their party's culture wars. But they hate the way they describe them

www.rollingstone.com

If only everyone thought the exact same thing like all good Progressive boy and girls and others

 

[Mac1958]

If only everyone thought the exact same thing like all good Progressive boy and girls and others

Is that what you got out of the OP?

Are you really THAT far down the paranoid rabbit hole?

 

[CrusaderFrank]

That's definitely one. Congressional term limits is another. Bipartisan redistricting commissions are another. Getting money as far away from politics as possible is another.

Even if a person disagrees with one of the above, they're worth discussing. And who knows what that discussion might yield -- NEW IDEAS, maybe?

America used to be pretty good at new ideas, before partisan politics calcified us.

Getting money away from an organization that overspends trillion now annually is a good idea.

The Buffett Rule (modified): No sitting Congressperson shall be allowed to run for reelection if there is a budget deficit anytime during his/her/they/them/whatever's tenure. No Congressperson shall serve more than 2 terms

 

[Harry Dresden]

Doug1943 I’m pretty sure that’s what Harry means when he says “far right” but he knows he can’t really say that. It’s safer for him to say “it’s someone like you”.

your not sure?....we have discussed this many a time here....you know exactly what i fucking mean...

 

[Doug1943]

Thanks. So I have a question on that.

Here's what concerns me: Whether it's the examples you provide there, or Europe of the 30's and 40's, there is one huge difference today. The citizenry of those days didn't have a propaganda machine literally in their ears 24/7/365. Cable TV, podcasts, the internet. Pounding away at them, no matter where they are. At the gym. Taking a walk. At work. Driving to the store. In bed.

Every day at my gym, I see people on treadmills with teevee screens in front of them. All the screens are on Fox, and the people are staring up at them as they exercise.

These people are absolutely saturated with this stuff, and my guess is recovering from it will take much, much longer. If ever. Your thoughts?

Yes, you are 100% right on that.

Peasants have been revolting since the 14th Century at least, but the invention of the printing press allowed a popular discontent to spread 'horizontally', and 'vertically' since potential leaders could now more easily work out rationales for changing the social order.
Where would our Founders have been, without Tom Paine's, and others', pamphlets?

The rise of popular newspapers plus the telegraph changed the political scene a lot over a hundred years ago. The "Hearst Press" was a popular devil-figure for progressives ... he was, perhaps unfairly, charged with getting us to go to war with Spain. (He had started out on the Left, but became quite rightwing later.) [ William Randolph Hearst - Wikipedia ] Fox News are angels by comparision

Then came radio.

On 18 August 1933, Goebbels opened the 10th International Radio Show, in Berlin, with a speech declaring “Radio as the Eighth Great Power"—a nod to Napoleon's notion that the press was the seventh great power. Goebbels argued that “the radio will be for the twentieth century what the press was for the nineteenth century." He noted the failure of the Weimar Republic to embrace radio and claimed that the National Socialists would not have been able to take power without it.

[ Inside the Third Reich’s Radio ]

Even before television, Lenin understood the importance of 'movies' for reaching the masses.

Lenin on theMost Important of the Arts​

Vladimir Lenin, Directives on the Film Business. January 17, 1922​

[ Lenin on the Most Important of the Arts ]

And then came television! You could fill several shelves with books warning about the dire effects of television (not so much for causing political polarization, but for dumbing down the next generation).

And then the World Wide Web!

And the irony is, each of these technical advances had and has huge potential for the advancement of mankind. (If some billionaire would hire a couple of dozen bright college grads with a range of the most-spoken foreign languages among them, they could look at the syllabuses of the K-12 education systems of most of the countries of the world, match YouTube videos to them so that, say, a fifth-grade teacher in Bolivia who needs to teach how to add fractions could just click on the right link ... and we'd make the core of world knowledge accessible to any kid speaking one of the 20 or so major languages. See the 'One Laptop Per Child' project, a good idea that didn't get off the ground.
[ One Laptop per Child - Wikipedia ]) [ Ignore the connection to the educational theory of 'constructivism'. One laptop for each child is a good idea, even if you believe, as we rightwingers do, in mindless drill and rote learning, reinforced with the strap. ] )

Well, we'll just have to live with it. I'm sure when Gutenberg came up with the idea of movable type, someone said, "This won't end well."

​

 

[Doug1943]

Getting money away from an organization that overspends trillion now annually is a good idea.

The Buffett Rule (modified): No sitting Congressperson shall be allowed to run for reelection if there is a budget deficit anytime during his/her/they/them/whatever's tenure. No Congressperson shall serve more than 2 terms

Add that to my proposed rule: any Congressperson voting to go to war will have the honor of being immedately transferred to a front-line infantry unit, and put in the first wave of attackers.

 

[Mac1958]

Well, we'll just have to live with it. I'm sure when Gutenberg came up with the idea of movable type, someone said, "This won't end well."

It preys on the worst impulses of many. It enables the best of the best, and the worst of the worst.

It feels like a race: Will we be able to constructively adapt to it, before it destroys us.

 

[JoeB131]

Vichy Mac, still whining about that time HR reprimanded him for that dirty joke.

Political overcompensation is the new Great American Pastime.

A few years ago, some of us were warning the Left: You're going too far with Political Correctness and Identity Politics. You're going too far screaming RACIST at every last fucking thing that moves. You're going too far lowering standards and expectations for people based solely on their skin color. You're going too far in normalizing sexual disorders such as gender dysphoria. You're going too far in putting your agenda in schools. You're going too far in disallowing conservative voices on college campuses. And most of all, you're going too far in attacking, intimidating and penalizing people in everyday life for saying things you don't like.

Um, yeah, you've been whining about this for 10 years, Mac. If left up to wishy-washy, please don't hurt me types like you, blacks would still be riding on the back of the bus, women would still be in the kitchen and gays would still be in the closet.

There's going to be pushback, we said. You're overcompensating, we said. This stuff is not right, we said. I only said that a few thousand times here, to be met with attacks from the Left. (By the way, a zillion examples of that available upon request via the search function)

Again, we've been fighting the culture wars since Tricky Dick, this is nothing new. There will ALWAYS be the right winger who will use your racial, sexual and religious fears to get you to vote against your own economic interests.

So now we see the pushback, with this Neanderthal, middle school bully-approach to the culture from the Right. This is the pushback we warned about -- although, admittedly, even worse than I imagined. And this sucker has legs, just like your weaponized PC and Identity Politics did. They're making laws and attacking and intimidating. Gee, what a coincidence. What Deja Vu we're seeing, huh? Go figure!

Wait... so, um your argument here is that young Republicans who grew up with gay kids and black kids are telling the old bigots to knock it off with bullshit like "woke"? I'd actually consider this a positive development if they'd follow through.

 

[JoeB131]

I'll just keep asking, to both ends:

How do you intellectually reconcile the fact that half the country disagrees with you, as you push so hard to shove your agenda down their throat?

Is it that you just know what's best for them?

What is your inner justification for that?

But... that's kind of always been the case.

My justification on it is that at the end of the day, most of these social issues are bullshit, and you can't find a middle ground with bullshit

Let's take an easy one. Abortion. The Zealots are absolutely convinced that fetuses should have all the rights that people have. This is a crazy idea in principle, but it would be absolutely fucking insane in practice.

You'd have to investigate every miscarriage as a potential homicide. You'd have to outlaw in-vitro fertilization as embryos are created to be destroyed. You'd have to charge women for their lifestyle choices if it had any bad effect on their pregnancy.

 

[JoeB131]

Does anyone else see the irony and humor in Mac1958 starting a thread about how to avoid political push back, receiving political push back and then promptly bitching out while agreeing with post?

No, Mac's pomposity and self-importance is always there.

He's right, the rest of us are all partisan meanyheads.

 

[j-mac]

Of course, anyone who criticizes dumb Don is automatically defined by Trumpers as a D Party water carrier. Just as anyone who criticizes dumb Joe is defined as a Trump cultist. It’s the way of the duopoly.

Not at all gipper….there’s plenty to criticize about Trump, mostly in the way his ego drives him. But, objectively he did a better job as POTUS than Biden by leaps and bounds.
We can’t help that dems are emotion driven, and are triggered by the slightest things.

 

[Harpy Eagle]

But, objectively he did a better job as POTUS than Biden by leaps and bounds.

That is such a low bar it should tell you something that it is the bar that you have to use

 

[dblack]

That's definitely one. Congressional term limits is another. Bipartisan redistricting commissions are another. Getting money as far away from politics as possible is another.

Even if a person disagrees with one of the above, they're worth discussing. And who knows what that discussion might yield -- NEW IDEAS, maybe?

America used to be pretty good at new ideas, before partisan politics calcified us.

Multi-rep districts would solve the gerrymandering problem better than "Bipartisan" (just two?) commissions.

The biggest dysfunction, in my view, is that we're trying to use government to shape society - government has become the coach rather than the referee. Instead of government that keeps the peace and protects our freedom to live as we want, we have government that tries to push and prod people toward someone's vision of the "good life". Naturally, everyone wants to control that process, and/or is terrified that someone they don't trust will control it.