Cipheron on 17/9/2021 at 01:14
Quote Posted by heywood
I'm not surprised that Fox News, as an organization, still has one foot in reality. They are a big multi-national media company.
But we have no idea what the percentage is among the on-air "talent" and their producers.
There would probably be tiers of indoctrinated belief that change as you go up the hierarchy, and each tier looks down condesendingly on the lower tiers as useful idiots, not realizing that their own bosses look at them as the same useful idiots.
Anyway, today's best headline for sure:
(
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/barr-trump-gop-voters-think-youre-a-fucking-asshole-book-2021-9?r=US&IR=T)
Quote:
Barr warned Trump that he would lose the election because suburban voters ‘just think you're a fucking asshole,' book says
Starker on 17/9/2021 at 05:57
Quote Posted by Cipheron
There would probably be tiers of indoctrinated belief that change as you go up the hierarchy, and each tier looks down condesendingly on the lower tiers as useful idiots, not realizing that their own bosses look at them as the same useful idiots.
Quote:
A mixture of gullibility and cynicism had been an outstanding characteristic of mob mentality before it became an everyday phenomenon of masses. In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. The mixture in itself was remarkable enough, because it spelled the end of the illusion that gullibility was a weakness of unsuspecting primitive souls and cynicism the vice of superior and refined minds. Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.
What had been a demonstrable reaction of mass audiences became an important hierarchical principle for mass organizations. A mixture of gullibility and cynicism is prevalent in all ranks of totalitarian movements, and the higher the rank the more cynicism weighs down gullibility. The essential conviction shared by all ranks, from fellow-traveler to leader, is that politics is a game of cheating and that the "first commandment" of the movement: "The Fuehrer is always right," is as necessary for the purposes of world politics, i.e., world-wide cheating, as the rules of military discipline are for the purposes of war.
[...]
Without the organizational division of the movement into elite formations, membership, and sympathizers, the lies of the Leader would not work. The graduation of cynicism expressed in a hierarchy of contempt is at least as necessary in the face of constant refutation as plain gullibility. The point is that the sympathizers in front organizations despise their fellow-citizens' complete lack of initiation, the party members despise the fellow-travelers' gullibility and lack of radicalism, the elite formations despise for similar reasons the party membership, and within the elite formations a similar hierarchy of contempt accompanies every new foundation and development.109 The result of this system is that the gullibility of sympathizers makes lies credible to the outside world, while at the same time the graduated cynicism of membership and elite formations eliminates the danger that the Leader will ever be forced by the weight of his own propaganda to make good his own statements and feigned respectability. It has been one of the chief handicaps of the outside world in dealing with totalitarian systems that it ignored this system and therefore trusted that, on one hand, the very enormity of totalitarian lies would be their undoing and that, on the other, it would be possible to take the Leader at his word and force him, regardless of his original intentions, to make it good. The totalitarian system, unfortunately, is foolproof against such normal consequences; its ingeniousness rests precisely on the elimination of that reality which either unmasks the liar or forces him to live up to his pretense.
-- Hannah Arendt
The Origins of Totalitarianism
lowenz on 17/9/2021 at 07:30
Gullibility or easy victimhood strategy to WILLINGLY deflect every responsability so let the deus ex machina solve the problems for ourselves?
When I was young I thought the first. Now the second.
People HATE personal proper responsability/accountability, that's the main problem. Not ignorance.
Or, if you prefer, there's a total ignorance about the benefits of a responsability-oriented education.
People KNOW the "real" truth (there's no conspiracies and vaccines are good), they simply hate it and reject, preferring the delirium because it's an irrational unlimited unconstrained expression of the persona. It's why science can't do nothing by itself (and it's stupid to dream it can).
Cipheron on 18/9/2021 at 14:07
BTW i wanted to innoculate you guys against something you might come across in the media, and that's how they're now using "critical race theory" as a canard to mean "liberal wrong thinkers".
Firstly, what Critical Race Theory actually is, is a subdiscipline of Critical Legal Studies that looks at how "neutrally worded" legislation can actually be discriminatory. It's actually a critique of the classical liberal consensus. For example say you write a law that requires you to show a driver's license to vote. One the surface level, you can claim this law is non-discriminatory, since it is the same exact law for every person, however it fails to address socioeconomic disadvantage as well as geographic reasons some areas might not have as many cars. And since those areas may be correlated with race, then this law may indirectly discriminate against people on the basis of race.
So the bulk of Critical Race Theory is looking at how the liberal consensus (mainstream, centrist) in law purged racist language from legislation and now heralds that racism is over (at least in "the system"), and how certain procedures of the courtroom/legal system which aren't racist on their surface level can be discriminatory in practice. CRT looks at the actual data and says that this language purge effectively just swept actual discrimination under the rug. It's almost exclusively taught in law schools, because it is basically a framework for looking at the wording of legislation and related social outcomes. That's it's scope: the argument of CRT is basically that "politically correct" language in legislation didn't actually do a damn thing to help underprivileged groups, and in fact the process made it harder to talk about real issues suffered by real people. So CRT is critical of whether just cleaning up language actually helps, and says to look at the actual situation. So it's not synonymous with "PC".
However, since most people don't have the damned first idea what CRT is or what it's about, and it sounds scary, some of the rightwing media outlets have taken to labeling anyone concerned with racism in any way to be "adherents of critical race theory" along with the insinuation that such people are infiltrating schools, universities, the government, the media. So if someone wants PC language used in their workplace, they're clearly one of these "critical race theory" hivemind pod-people infiltrators. This is despite the very *concept* of "PC language" basically being the same claptrap that critical race theory was formulated to critique.
So it's actually a very narrow discipline within legal studies, with a specific framework and goals, however it's now been weaponized in an attempt to turn it into the new "communist conspiracy" ala McCarthyism. It's the new "Reds under the Bed" thing.
Nicker on 18/9/2021 at 14:33
Sort of the same way that "wear a mask and get vaccinated" secretly means "baby eating democrats are coming to steal your guns and burn your churches".
Cipheron on 18/9/2021 at 15:21
Well it's in the same sphere, with the fearmongering. Here's a good source:
(
https://news.columbia.edu/news/what-critical-race-theory-and-why-everyone-talking-about-it-0)
Quote:
"Critical race theory views race law and policy as tools of power," Thomas said. "Its focus on the politics of race has helped break the stranglehold of 'racial moralism' by challenging the egocentric belief that racism is always only about personal fault, private prejudice, and invidious individual intent. Critical race theory tells a story about institutionalized racial disadvantage and systemic racial inequality. It highlights the structural harms of the ‘colorblind racism' we see at work in laws that don't mention race per se."
So CRT challenges the notion that individuals being big meanies is the main racism problem. However
Quote:
Speaking at a conference held by the Faith and Freedom Coalition on June 18, former Vice President Mike Pence said that “critical race theory is racism.” Senator Ted Cruz, at the same gathering, compared the theory to the Ku Klux Klan saying the curriculum is “every bit as racist” as the white supremacist hate group.
“Critical race theory,” the senator said, “says every white person is a racist.”No, it actually says that even if everyone's not a racist, and acting in good faith, individually, then outcomes can still be racially/historically unfair: you don't need a "racist" to come along and upset the applecart. That's what CRT says. However, CRT challenges institutions of power, both liberal and conservative, so that may be why people in those institutions of power want it taken down, and they're using the canard to their grass-roots base: they're calling
you a racist and saying it's your fault. Which is basically the opposite of what it says.
Quote:
For parents or educators who, according to G.O.P. lawmakers, say that white children are being made to feel guilty and being taught that white people are oppressors, Thomas replied, that this “is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an idea or tenet behind critical race theory."
Quote:
“This hysteria is just that. It has nothing to do with a legal theory that has been around for decades, and that you may never have heard of until now,”
So it's basically some fairly common sense and pretty old legal perspectives, but it's been dusted off because they needed a bogeyman to wrap up all the stuff like BLM etc under a mantle of a conspiracy theory, and the phrase "critical race theory" was just a handy thing they could lump everything under to create this sense of an ominous conspiracy / hive mind that's out to subjugate, individually, every white person.
lowenz on 18/9/2021 at 16:38
For parents or educators who, according to G.O.P. lawmakers, say that white children are being made to feel guilty and being taught that white people are oppressorsSee? VICTIMHOOD ;) "
They want me to feel guilty!!111 I'm the VICTIM OF THE SYSTEM!!1111 -> I NEED VENGEANCE!!!1111 -> WHITEPOWAAA!!11111 MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!1111" (being the "System" the Moldbug infamous "Cathedral").
That's how it works, the real manipulation behind the "
They tell you're a racist!!111" leit-motif when none say nothing at all! And all this to gain autovictimization-prone individuals
to vote Right ('cause they got no other argument, being the Left as capitalistic as they are)
That's the one and only real goal.
Quote:
the phrase "critical race theory" was just a handy thing they could lump everything under to create this sense of an ominous conspiracy / hive mind that's out to subjugate, individually, every white person.
That's precisely that, like in Germany - well, all Europe - 100 years ago.
Cipheron on 19/9/2021 at 01:47
I was just reading some conspiracy people baying for the blood of General Mark Milley, saying he was a traitor who armed up America's enemies - the Taliban, BLM and the CCP. So i went and read up on the guy, and that guy's actually the true patriot loyalist, if anything: military family, lifetime of service to the Republic, and the little no-name fascists are baying for his blood because he *didn't* overthrow the Republic on Jan 20.
(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Milley)
Quote:
According to I Alone Can Fix It, a July 2021 book by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, Milley became concerned Trump was preparing to stage a coup, and held informal discussions with his deputies about possible ways to thwart it, telling associates, "They may try, but they're not going to fucking succeed. You can't do this without the military. You can't do this without the CIA and the FBI. We're the guys with the guns." The book also quoted Milley saying "this is a Reichstag moment," comparing Trump's attempts to overturn the election to the event used to cement Nazi rule in Germany and referring to Trump's false statements about electoral fraud as "the gospel of the Führer." Milley reportedly told police and military officials preparing to secure Joe Biden's presidential inauguration, "Everyone in this room, whether you're a cop, whether you're a soldier, we're going to stop these guys to make sure we have a peaceful transfer of power. We're going to put a ring of steel around this city and the Nazis aren't getting in."
The guy actually sounds pretty awesome for an army guy.
Starker on 19/9/2021 at 06:18
I don't think that's the reason for the animosity, actually. I'd say it's more his public criticism of Lord Dampnut and taking a stance against the sedition caucus (Matt Gaetz and co) afterwards, like for example standing up for critical race theory in a public hearing a few months ago. This all started about a half a year ago when the Republicans were still desperate to find something, anything to talk about other than the attack on the Capitol and were thus bringing out all their favourite culture war topics and of course hammering in on the the big lie. And it works, apparently, since people are still talking about it 6 months later. Republicans have always been the masters at steering public discourse and Democrats have still not learned to counter that.
Cipheron on 19/9/2021 at 13:28
Quote Posted by Starker
I don't think that's the reason for the animosity, actually. I'd say it's more his public criticism of Lord Dampnut and taking a stance against the sedition caucus (Matt Gaetz and co) afterwards, like for example standing up for critical race theory in a public hearing a few months ago. This all started about a half a year ago when the Republicans were still desperate to find something, anything to talk about other than the attack on the Capitol and were thus bringing out all their favourite culture war topics and of course hammering in on the the big lie. And it works, apparently, since people are still talking about it 6 months later. Republicans have always been the masters at steering public discourse and Democrats have still not learned to counter that.
Yeah you're right there. They took a dislike to him and now they're retroactively making up reasons not to like the guy. The biggest criticism that could actually stick is that he was the commander during the Afghanistan withdrawal so they want his head now, but that's mostly scapegoating. He was never a proponent of the withdrawal so blaming its failures right at his feet from the party who actually engineered the withdrawal scenario is a bit disingenious.
Apparently, Trump loyalists tried to end-run around the military command and push through orders to withdraw by Jan 15th, so that it would fall within Trump's term and he could get credit for it, which would have been even more of a disaster: an even more rushed withdrawal just to get politics points. So the entire exercise was in fact so that Trump could claim that as something he actually achieved in his term that was a concrete thing, and now we know how it turned out. Afghanistan did really turn into the new generations Vietnam in a big way. This push to point out that everything's gone wrong in Afghanistan now and it's entirely the fault of the Democrats and career military men, and in no way the responsibility of the Republican administration who started the war, or the Republican administration who signed the agreement to withdraw, is nauseating. Basically, the Bush administration primed a live grenade, then tossed it to Trump (via Obama, who managed to keep it in the air), then Trump fumbled it, and Biden tried to catch it before it hit the ground and exploded, but he missed. And now the entire thing is Biden's fault.