Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label rhetoric. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rhetoric. Show all posts

Thursday, August 03, 2023

Thinking

  1. There
  2. are
  3. no
  4. simple
  5. 10-word
  6. answers
  7. to
  8. the
  9. important
  10. questions

There's a floor to how simply the truth can be stated, and still be the truth.
Falsehoods don't have that. There is no limit to how simple an idea can be when it doesn't have to conform to reality.

Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Teddy Roosevelt, POTUS #26

On April 23, 1910 - a year after leaving office - Theodore Roosevelt gave what would become one of his greatest rhetorical triumphs.

The most famous section of his speech still resonates and inspires.

It is not the critic who counts.

Saturday, October 27, 2018

When A Cigar Is Just A Cigar


Tim Wise at Medium:

For several days conservative commentators suggested or even outright insisted that the bombs were likely hoaxes sent by liberals or antifa so as to discredit the right in time for the mid-terms.

Among the right-wing pundits pushing this line were Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Mike Flynn Jr., Frank Gaffney, Kurt Schlichter, Candace Owens, Lou Dobbs, Laura Loomer and Dinesh D’Souza, among others.

Limbaugh, for his part, went further than merely denying the conservative provenance of the recent bombs, actually suggesting that bombings and terrorism are things that right-wingers simply don’t do. Which is totally true, except for:

Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols

Or Eric Rudolph

Or Joe Stack

Or Lawrence Michael Lombardi

Or anti-abortion extremists like Michael F. Griffin, Paul Hill, John Salvi, Robert Dear, James Kopp, Justin Carl Moose, Scott Roeder, Shelley Shannon, Paul Ross Evans, Matt Goldsby, Jimmy Simmons, Kathy Simmons, Kaye Wiggins, Patricia Hughes, Jeremy Dunahoe, Bobby Joe Rogers, Francis Gradyand Ralph Lang among others

Or anti-Muslim arsonists like Bruce and Joshua Turnidge

Or James David Adkisson

Or neo-Nazi Wade Michael Page

Or Byron Williams

Or the right-wingers involved in at least 60 bombing, shooting and/or terror plots in the ten years following Okahoma City, including:

Charles Ray Polk

Willie Ray Lampley
Cecilia Lampley
John Dare Baird
Joseph Martin Bailie
Ray Hamblin
Robert Edward Starr III
William James McCranie Jr.
John Pitner
Charles Barbee
Robert Berry
Jay Merrell
Brendon Blasz
Carl Jay Waskom Jr.
Shawn and Catherine Adams
Edward Taylor Jr.
Todd Vanbiber
William Robert Goehler
James Cleaver
Jack Dowell
Bradley Playford Glover
Ken Carter
Randy Graham

and the list goes on.

The problem is not “angry rhetoric on both sides.” It is not a generic “incivility.” And no, being spoken too harshly or made to feel unwelcome in a restaurant is not remotely equivalent to receiving a bomb from someone who wants to kill you.

The problem is a president who has normalized a rhetoric of demonization and dehumanization since the day he launched his campaign.

When you start your political career generalizing about Mexican migrants being rapists and drug dealers, and you say during that campaign that you wish to shut down all immigration by Muslims, and you suggest your opponent should be jailed for using an unsecured e-mail server (even as you have continued to use an unsecured cell phone), and you refer to the media as the enemy of the people such that your most loyal fans verbally assault reporters at your rallies, you are the problem.

You, and all who empower you and embolden you.

It is time to put an end to this foolishness, beginning on election day and every day afterwards.

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Rerun

One from way back - Jay Smooth explains the difference:


Slightly more recent - Jay offers up the proposition that when we're trying to have the Race Conversation, we need to move away from the Tonsils Paradigm towards the Dental Hygiene Paradigm.

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Fact Averse Knotheads

My morality starts with my commitment to care about what's true and what's not true.

Michael Shermer in American Scientific
Have you ever noticed that when you present people with facts that are contrary to their deepest held beliefs they always change their minds? Me neither. In fact, people seem to double down on their beliefs in the teeth of overwhelming evidence against them. The reason is related to the worldview perceived to be under threat by the conflicting data.

Creationists, for example, dispute the evidence for evolution in fossils and DNA because they are concerned about secular forces encroaching on religious faith. Anti-vaxxers distrust big pharma and think that money corrupts medicine, which leads them to believe that vaccines cause autism despite the inconvenient truth that the one and only study claiming such a link was retracted and its lead author accused of fraud. The 9/11 truthers focus on minutiae like the melting point of steel in the World Trade Center buildings that caused their collapse because they think the government lies and conducts “false flag” operations to create a New World Order. Climate deniers study tree rings, ice cores and the ppm of greenhouse gases because they are passionate about freedom, especially that of markets and industries to operate unencumbered by restrictive government regulations. Obama birthers desperately dissected the president's long-form birth certificate in search of fraud because they believe that the nation's first African-American president is a socialist bent on destroying the country.
In these examples, proponents' deepest held worldviews were perceived to be threatened by skeptics, making facts the enemy to be slayed. This power of belief over evidence is the result of two factors: cognitive dissonance and the backfire effect. In the classic 1956 book When Prophecy Fails, psychologist Leon Festinger and his co-authors described what happened to a UFO cult when the mother ship failed to arrive at the appointed time. Instead of admitting error, “members of the group sought frantically to convince the world of their beliefs,” and they made “a series of desperate attempts to erase their rankling dissonance by making prediction after prediction in the hope that one would come true.” Festinger called this cognitive dissonance, or the uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts simultaneously.
Two social psychologists, Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson (a former student of Festinger), in their 2007 book Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) document thousands of experiments demonstrating how people spin-doctor facts to fit preconceived beliefs to reduce dissonance. Their metaphor of the “pyramid of choice” places two individuals side by side at the apex of the pyramid and shows how quickly they diverge and end up at the bottom opposite corners of the base as they each stake out a position to defend.
In a series of experiments by Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan and University of Exeter professor Jason Reifler, the researchers identify a related factor they call the backfire effect “in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.” Why? “Because it threatens their worldview or self-concept.” For example, subjects were given fake newspaper articles that confirmed widespread misconceptions, such as that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. When subjects were then given a corrective article that WMD were never found, liberals who opposed the war accepted the new article and rejected the old, whereas conservatives who supported the war did the opposite ... and more: they reported being even more convinced there were WMD after the correction, arguing that this only proved that Saddam Hussein hid or destroyed them. In fact, Nyhan and Reifler note, among many conservatives “the belief that Iraq possessed WMD immediately before the U.S. invasion persisted long after the Bush administration itself concluded otherwise.”
If corrective facts only make matters worse, what can we do to convince people of the error of their beliefs? From my experience, 1. keep emotions out of the exchange, 2. discuss, don't attack (no ad hominem and no ad Hitlerum), 3. listen carefully and try to articulate the other position accurately, 4. show respect, 5. acknowledge that you understand why someone might hold that opinion, and 6. try to show how changing facts does not necessarily mean changing worldviews. These strategies may not always work to change people's minds, but now that the nation has just been put through a political fact-check wringer, they may help reduce unnecessary divisiveness.
And here's the formula again:

The probability for a TRUE argument goes up in the presence of confirming evidence and the absence of conflicting evidence.

The probability for a FALSE argument goes up in the absence of confirming evidence or the presence of conflicting evidence.

All that said, there's practically no point arguing anything with somebody who demonstrates he doesn't care about what's true or real or factual.

hat tip = Facebooker Gretchen Lynn Demarah

Monday, August 29, 2016

On Paul Le Page

I'm not saying I know for sure, but I don't think I'm willing to take Google Translate's word for it.

I typed in this: "LePage"
And got this: "unashamed and hateful asshole."

Friday, December 04, 2015

He Tries So Hard


I'm not wondering where Trump gets his ideas.  It seems obvious these "position statements" are the products of Policy Formulation By Lynch Mob.  You do a quick little poll or (more likely) a focus group of "regular people", and you get ideas that reflect the shallowest thinking, fueled by the darkest fears of the biggest paranoiac in the room at the time.  Whoever imagines the worst of all possible worsts holds sway, and drives the discussion.

I'm only wondering why it seems like Lil Donny of the Mega-Brain just runs with it every time.  In this latest instance, I have great difficulty believing he truly thinks Killing Your Way To Lasting Peace And Security is the way to go.  Maybe, but no - prob'ly not.

So I am not moved off of my position that he's looking for his exit.  If he can find that one thing that's just too fuckin' much - say the thing that makes enough of us turn away - then he can claim we don't deserve him and blah blah blah, and he can go back to being just another leech on the national nutsack.

In light of the San Bernardino Blood Fest, I can't help but wonder if the Trumpkins will hook anything up between that and the crap Trump always throws into the pile about "beautiful Kate - murdered by an immigrant."  It'll be interesting to watch; to see if they fold that into the mix, or if they Etch-A-Sketch it away.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Another Winner

From Balloon Juice:

Betteridge's Law tells us to answer 'no' to any headline (or chyron or crawl) that editors and/or producers end with a question mark.

But a commenter on that post at Balloon Juice said it best, and so he has the winning intertoobz thingie (Amateur Division) for today:
"Donald Trump transzendiert die Wahrheit, wie Scheiße Sauberkeit transzendiert"
It's worth the trip over to Google Translate, BTW.

Saturday, June 20, 2015

The Manifesto

No idea if this is the real deal, but I'm betting on a coupla things here -

1) it sounds to me like Roof didn't expect to survive; this is as much a suicide note as anything else.

2) I think we can expect the False Flaggers to go more than a little nuts because if this thing is real, Roof is confirming an awful lot of what lotsa people have been assuming all along; plus it confirms what lots of us have been trying to warn the wingnuts about when it comes to the extreme-ness of the rhetoric coming from certain rather large pockets of the "conservative" end of the spectrum.

This shit doesn't happen in a vacuum for no fucking reason.

Reportedly from Dylann Roof per Raw Story:
I was not raised in a racist home or environment. Living in the South, almost every White person has a small amount of racial awareness, simply beause of the numbers of negroes in this part of the country. But it is a superficial awareness. Growing up, in school, the White and black kids would make racial jokes toward each other, but all they were were jokes. Me and White friends would sometimes would watch things that would make us think that “blacks were the real racists” and other elementary thoughts like this, but there was no real understanding behind it.
The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case. I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up. I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words “black on White crime” into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders. I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on White murders got ignored?
From this point I researched deeper and found out what was happening in Europe. I saw that the same things were happening in England and France, and in all the other Western European countries. Again I found myself in disbelief. As an American we are taught to accept living in the melting pot, and black and other minorities have just as much right to be here as we do, since we are all immigrants. But Europe is the homeland of White people, and in many ways the situation is even worse there. From here I found out about the Jewish problem and other issues facing our race, and I can say today that I am completely racially aware.
Blacks
I think it is is fitting to start off with the group I have the most real life experience with, and the group that is the biggest problem for Americans.
Niggers are stupid and violent. At the same time they have the capacity to be very slick. Black people view everything through a racial lense. Thats what racial awareness is, its viewing everything that happens through a racial lense. They are always thinking about the fact that they are black. This is part of the reason they get offended so easily, and think that some thing are intended to be racist towards them, even when a White person wouldnt be thinking about race. The other reason is the Jewish agitation of the black race.
Black people are racially aware almost from birth, but White people on average dont think about race in their daily lives. And this is our problem. We need to and have to.
Say you were to witness a dog being beat by a man. You are almost surely going to feel very sorry for that dog. But then say you were to witness a dog biting a man. You will most likely not feel the same pity you felt for the dog for the man. Why? Because dogs are lower than men.
This same analogy applies to black and White relations. Even today, blacks are subconsciously viewed by White people are lower beings. They are held to a lower standard in general. This is why they are able to get away with things like obnoxious behavior in public. Because it is expected of them.
Modern history classes instill a subconscious White superiority complex in Whites and an inferiority complex in blacks. This White superiority complex that comes from learning of how we dominated other peoples is also part of the problem I have just mentioned. But of course I dont deny that we are in fact superior.
I wish with a passion that niggers were treated terribly throughout history by Whites, that every White person had an ancestor who owned slaves, that segregation was an evil an oppressive institution, and so on. Because if it was all it true, it would make it so much easier for me to accept our current situation. But it isnt true. None of it is. We are told to accept what is happening to us because of ancestors wrong doing, but it is all based on historical lies, exaggerations and myths. I have tried endlessly to think of reasons we deserve this, and I have only came back more irritated because there are no reasons.
Only a fourth to a third of people in the South owned even one slave. Yet every White person is treated as if they had a slave owning ancestor. This applies to in the states where slavery never existed, as well as people whose families immigrated after slavery was abolished. I have read hundreds of slaves narratives from my state. And almost all of them were positive. One sticks out in my mind where an old ex-slave recounted how the day his mistress died was one of the saddest days of his life. And in many of these narratives the slaves told of how their masters didnt even allowing whipping on his plantation.
Segregation was not a bad thing. It was a defensive measure. Segregation did not exist to hold back negroes. It existed to protect us from them. And I mean that in multiple ways. Not only did it protect us from having to interact with them, and from being physically harmed by them, but it protected us from being brought down to their level. Integration has done nothing but bring Whites down to level of brute animals. The best example of this is obviously our school system.
Now White parents are forced to move to the suburbs to send their children to “good schools”. But what constitutes a “good school”? The fact is that how good a school is considered directly corresponds to how White it is. I hate with a passion the whole idea of the suburbs. To me it represents nothing but scared White people running. Running because they are too weak, scared, and brainwashed to fight. Why should we have to flee the cities we created for the security of the suburbs? Why are the suburbs secure in the first place? Because they are White. The pathetic part is that these White people dont even admit to themselves why they are moving. They tell themselves it is for better schools or simply to live in a nicer neighborhood. But it is honestly just a way to escape niggers and other minorities.
But what about the White people that are left behind? What about the White children who, because of school zoning laws, are forced to go to a school that is 90 percent black? Do we really think that that White kid will be able to go one day without being picked on for being White, or called a “white boy”? And who is fighting for him? Who is fighting for these White people forced by economic circumstances to live among negroes? No one, but someone has to.
Here I would also like to touch on the idea of a Norhtwest Front. I think this idea is beyond stupid. Why should I for example, give up the beauty and history of my state to go to the Norhthwest? To me the whole idea just parralells the concept of White people running to the suburbs. The whole idea is pathetic and just another way to run from the problem without facing it.
Some people feel as though the South is beyond saving, that we have too many blacks here. To this I say look at history. The South had a higher ratio of blacks when we were holding them as slaves. Look at South Africa, and how such a small minority held the black in apartheid for years and years. Speaking of South Africa, if anyone thinks that think will eventually just change for the better, consider how in South Africa they have affirmative action for the black population that makes up 80 percent of the population.
It is far from being too late for America or Europe. I believe that even if we made up only 30 percent of the population we could take it back completely. But by no means should we wait any longer to take drastic action.
Anyone who thinks that White and black people look as different as we do on the outside, but are somehow magically the same on the inside, is delusional. How could our faces, skin, hair, and body structure all be different, but our brains be exactly the same? This is the nonsense we are led to believe.
Negroes have lower Iqs, lower impulse control, and higher testosterone levels in generals. These three things alone are a recipe for violent behavior. If a scientist publishes a paper on the differences between the races in Western Europe or Americans, he can expect to lose his job. There are personality traits within human families, and within different breeds of cats or dogs, so why not within the races?
A horse and a donkey can breed and make a mule, but they are still two completely different animals. Just because we can breed with the other races doesnt make us the same.
In a modern history class it is always emphasized that, when talking about “bad” things Whites have done in history, they were White. But when we lern about the numerous, almost countless wonderful things Whites have done, it is never pointed out that these people were White. Yet when we learn about anything important done by a black person in history, it is always pointed out repeatedly that they were black. For example when we learn about how George Washington carver was the first nigger smart enough to open a peanut.
On another subject I want to say this. Many White people feel as though they dont have a unique culture. The reason for this is that White culture is world culture. I dont mean that our culture is made up of other cultures, I mean that our culture has been adopted by everyone in the world. This makes us feel as though our culture isnt special or unique. Say for example that every business man in the world wore a kimono, that every skyscraper was in the shape of a pagoda, that every door was a sliding one, and that everyone ate every meal with chopsticks. This would probably make a Japanese man feel as though he had no unique traditional culture.
I have noticed a great disdain for race mixing White women within the White nationalists community, bordering on insanity it. These women are victims, and they can be saved. Stop.
Jews
Unlike many White naitonalists, I am of the opinion that the majority of American and European jews are White. In my opinion the issues with jews is not their blood, but their identity. I think that if we could somehow destroy the jewish identity, then they wouldnt cause much of a problem. The problem is that Jews look White, and in many cases are White, yet they see themselves as minorities. Just like niggers, most jews are always thinking about the fact that they are jewish. The other issue is that they network. If we could somehow turn every jew blue for 24 hours, I think there would be a mass awakening, because people would be able to see plainly what is going on.
I dont pretend to understand why jews do what they do. They are enigma.
Hispanics
Hispanics are obviously a huge problem for Americans. But there are good hispanics and bad hispanics. I remember while watching hispanic television stations, the shows and even the commercials were more White than our own. They have respect for White beauty, and a good portion of hispanics are White. It is a well known fact that White hispanics make up the elite of most hispanics countries. There is good White blood worht saving in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and even Brasil.
But they are still our enemies.
East Asians
I have great respent for the East Asian races. Even if we were to go extinct they could carry something on. They are by nature very racist and could be great allies of the White race. I am not opposed at all to allies with the Northeast Asian races.
Patriotism
I hate the sight of the American flag. Modern American patriotism is an absolute joke. People pretending like they have something to be proud while White people are being murdered daily in the streets. Many veterans believe we owe them something for “protecting our way of life” or “protecting our freedom”. But im not sure what way of life they are talking about. How about we protect the White race and stop fighting for the jews. I will say this though, I myself would have rather lived in 1940’s American than Nazi Germany, and no this is not ignorance speaking, it is just my opinion. So I dont blame the veterans of any wars up until after Vietnam, because at least they had an American to be proud of and fight for.
An Explanation
To take a saying from a film, “I see all this stuff going on, and I dont see anyone doing anything about it. And it pisses me off.”. To take a saying from my favorite film, “Even if my life is worth less than a speck of dirt, I want to use it for the good of society.”.
I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.
Unfortunately at the time of writing I am in a great hurry and some of my best thoughts, actually many of them have been to be left out and lost forever. But I believe enough great White minds are out there already.
Please forgive any typos, I didnt have time to check it.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Today's Eternal Sadness

9 dead church-goers in Charleston SC.
Nine people were shot to death by a white man at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday night, the Charleston Police Department confirmed at a news conference early Thursday.
Calling it "the worst night of my career," Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen said the gunman entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church during a prayer meeting and opened fire. Eight people were found dead at the scene. Two others were transported to a hospital, where one later died.
None of the victims has been named by police. However, State House Minority leader Todd Rutherford said the church's pastor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, was among those killed, according to the Associated Press.
-and-
Can you say, "tone-deaf, Guv"?
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) also issued a statement, and urged people to pray for the victims and their families.
“While we do not yet know all of the details, we do know that we’ll never understand what motivates anyone to enter one of our places of worship and take the life of another,” she said. “Please join us in lifting up the victims and their families with our love and prayers.”
I'll now indulge myself in a little speculation while insisting on calling it an attempt to think a little more generally: We don't know what moved this one asshole to do this one incredibly shitty thing, but I'm thinking maybe part of that motivation has something to do with "conservatives" almost constantly setting Americans against one another by promoting policies that require Us-vs-Them choices (ie: "We don't have the money to take care of all those veterans because your Democrat neighbor is giving it all to The Welfare Moochers".  -or-  "Teachers are just a bunch of elitist union thugs with college diplomas, and they're teaching the children of hard-working patriotic Americans to hate Jesus."), and then shrugging it all off when something bad happens because of all that, saying, "Whoa - who coulda knowed?"

And then this:
A new study attempts to debunk the claim that gun owners rely on their firearms for self-defense.
The left-leaning Violence Policy Center released a study Wednesday that finds people are much more likely to use a gun to kill someone without cause than to protect themselves.

According to the study, gun owners committed 259 justifiable homicides compared to 8,342 criminal homicides in 2012, the most recent year data was available.

That means gun owners are 32 times more likely to kill someone without cause than to act in self-defense, the study reasoned.
First, I really don't know why this comes as any kinda news to anybody at this point.

But anyway, secondly, the American Civil War didn't end in 1865 - partly because it started a long time before 1861.  We just take breaks once in a while.  The shit is never very far below the surface, and it bubbles up in an amazing variety of ways.

And third - as kind of a recap - I just have to wonder about a certain brand of politics that  advocates violence (in a subtle plausibly deniable way of course) while refusing to limit the principle means of violence, and then pretends to be confused as to the connections that seem so obvious between the two.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Look At Yerself

Here's a bit from Scabrous Joe and Mika The Attack Bunny - along with other MSNBC Meat Puppets - saying how can we expect these fine innocent teenagers not to behave like racist assholes when it's so obvious that all those rotten hip-hopsters are putting out all those horrible rap songs that use the n-word and kill this muthuhfuckuh and bang that bitch and blah blah blah.


Aside from the standard bullshit trying to make this all about Respectability Politics (tell it, Brother Jay - from way back when)...


...and aside from more of the standard bullshit trying to make some stoopid point about 'reverse racism', maybe we could look at why all the white folk gettin' all bent outa shape.

I think I hear something along the lines of "well, if black people can call each other nigger, then why can't we call 'em niggers?"

That's a question that comes from way down deep in the bottomless well of White Privilege.

Look, guys - I'm not likely to be brutalized and/or murdered by the cops just because I was driving at night in a nice neighborhood.  I'm not gonna get Red-Lined by the mortgage companies; I'm not gonna be the suspect in a string of crimes because my facial features and my skin tone fit some artificial profile manufactured by a "justice system" that's become cynical and corrupt.  And there's a shitload more examples of built-in prejudice once you start thinking about it.

Secondly, the use of any of the words available to us has to be subject to scrutiny from a standpoint of what relationship we have with the people we're trying to communicate with.  If you sidle up beside your wife, and you give her a little squeeze on the buns and a peck on the cheek, and you say, "Hey babe - wanna get laid tonite?", you're just trying to be playful or romantic or provocative or whatever.  If you do that with somebody's teenaged daughter, you don't get to be all huffy and indignant when they take exception to it and start pounding you down into a greasy spot with a piano leg.

So after all that; knowing what Privilege allows for The Privileged, and what it does not allow for those Un-Privileged, can't we let up on the idiot notion of being so fucking privileged that we insist on "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too"?

Can't we give black folk one lousy word that they get to own and the rest of us just get to stay the fuck away from it?

Wednesday, March 04, 2015

About CPAC


There is some common cause to be made - it's just ridiculously difficult to get anybody to drop their guard long enough to hear what "our side" is saying.

Monday, February 02, 2015

The Prophet Charlie Pierce

I posted something a while back that said I wanted to hear more from Jim Webb.  I haven't completely changed my mind on that one, but I'll say straight out this ain't what nobody needs to hear nobody say no how.  
"I think they could do better with white, working people and I think this last election showed that," Webb said, referencing the 2014 midterms where Republicans took control of the Senate and added more power in the House. "The Democratic Party could do very well to return to its Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Andrew Jackson roots where the focus of the party was making sure that all people who lack a voice in the corridors of power could have one through the elected represented...You are not going to have a situation again where you have 96% of the African American vote turning out for one presidential candidate. ... We need to get back to the principles of the Democratic Party that we are going to give everyone who needs access to the corridors of power that access regardless of any of your antecedents. I think that is a fair concept." --Jim Webb
Take it, Charles:
There is no question that the Democratic party has done a god-awful job of explaining to white working people who's screwing them and why. Most of the people who have tried that have found themselves marginalized, and not always by Republicans, either. Senator Professor Warren is one of the few of them who has managed to explain these matters in such a way that they are both easily understood, and in such a way that she doesn't sound like she's talking down to anyone. And she still has a long push up a dirt road before she moves the political dialogue to the point where white working class voters actually act on what she's saying to them. Sooner or later, it's up to the voters to decide to stop being stupid about their own self-interest, and to stop falling for scams about how the Poors and Browns are the ones stealing all their money.
It's hard to say some of the things Webb is trying to say, and to make it all understandable in a way that prevents about half of the audience from immediately putting buckets on their heads and running around crashing into walls and shit.  

We gotta find candidates who don't just have the guts to say the things that are hard to say; but candidates we can count on to figure out how to say those things in ways that let us understand the core truth while not making us feel threatened or guilty or lied to; and who aren't just pandering to one group or another, trying to manipulate the crowds, etc etc etc.

One of the first things Webb's team has to figure out is that no matter what he says, he's speaking from a position deep inside the Dominant and Over-Privileged power structure.  

So say what you're saying, Mr Webb, but I gotta call that shit strike one - you're not going anywhere if you don't say it way better'n that.

Friday, October 05, 2012

A Voice Of Reason

Repubs have Frank Luntz to teach them how to fuck people over by using the language of resentment and victimhood and entitlement.

The rest of us have George Lakoff to reveal what guys like Luntz are trying to pull, and to explain how we can resist the noxious effects of (mostly GOP) rhetoric.
All politics is based on moral values, with strict conservatives and progressives having different moral values.
There are also morally complex voters — moderates, independents, swing voters — who are progressive on some issues and conservative on others.
All issues are conceptually “framed” — that is, they have a mental structure that fits one’s moral system.
Facts matter, but only when they clearly fit one’s morally-based frames. Facts and figures, when used, should create a moral point in a memorable way. And if the facts don’t fit your frames, the frames stay and the facts are ignored or ridiculed.
--and--
A number to remember: Most people may not be aware of it, but 96% of all Americans make use of what other citizens provide through our government: 96 percent of us have received tax deductions for mortgages, education, and dependent children, business subsidies, unemployment insurance, veterans’ benefits, as well as all the other benefits that we all enjoy because of what we give and have given each other. This applies to almost all Americans, rich or not, Republican or Democrat. If your work contributed, or will contribute, to our country, you have earned, or will earn, whatever you have gotten. You are the 96 deserving percent. The other 4 percent are youngsters — too young to have benefitted yet, but they will inevitably join the 96 percent soon.

Thursday, September 06, 2012

The Turnaround

This is what I'm talkin' about.

The Turnaround is one of the great power tools in selling.  This is what it looks like when you apply it to politics:



Tuesday, September 04, 2012

Without Apology

Here's what I've been thinking:  "Conservatives" have had a field day with the Clever Turnaround that says it all when it comes to convincing the 30-40% of people who really don't wanna think much more deeply than your basic bumper sticker.  They need to categorize the issue, and file away something that's easy to recall, and sounds more or less like it fits with the standard bullshit that "all we really need is some good ol' fashioned common sense up in here".

We've heard it a thousand times.  In response to mountains of facts and miles of perfectly cogent reasoning about the honest-to-god, real-life need for sensible Gun Control, they say, "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns".

So how 'bout we fight fire with fire?  I've been having a lot of fun trolling the facebook posts of my Radical Right friends, and it's a little weird, but it's almost like they just don't expect to get any push back on anything - like they can say any bullshit thing, and nobody's gonna call 'em on it.  It shocks the hell out of 'em sometimes when all I do is hit 'em with the kind of crap they usually come up with.  One guy put up something about how things had gotten so bad under Obama, so I posted a comment saying he sounded like he was being very critical, and then I asked him why he hated America.  I could almost feel the heat when he posted his next comment, which came in very short order, and of course, ended in ALL CAPS!!!!!!!

But here's what I've boiled it down to - this is what I'm gonna try.  Whenever somebody says some wacky crap about repealing ObamaCare (eg), I'm gonna turn it around and just say:
--"When healthcare coverage is outlawed, only outlaws will have healthcare coverage".

--or--

("All taxation is theft")
-- "When taxes are outlawed, only outlaws will collect taxes"

--or--

("Churches and good neighbors should care for the less fortunate")
("The Government has no business trying to force me to look after poor people")
-- "When charity is outlawed, only outlaws will get charity"

--or--

("Government Workers and Retirement Obligations are bankrupting state and local governments.")
--"When law enforcement is outlawed, the outlaws will be law enforcement."
--"When clean water is outlawed, only outlaws will have clean water."
--"When safe streets are outlawed, only outlaws will be safe on the streets."
--"When pensions are outlawed, only outlaws will have pensions."

What else?  Must be a gajillion of 'em.  Roll with me.