Supremacism and Priority: Republicans and the American Right Wing

[Tiassa]

It's So Easy to Lie to Them

Mr. Fish, 2014↱​

Sometimes, some folks will pretend that Republicans and conservatives are, somehow, perpetual victims of American history. The underlying thesis↗ "has something to do with being consistently and repeatedly fed a whole bunch of lies, and coming to believe them". But this is also a formulation in which American conservatives have no individual agency; they are↗ "largely live in a self-imposed media bubble, constantly fed misinformation by well-funded networks that are happy to keep supplying them". And it's one thing to blame "conservative billionaires who are willing to tell lies to make even more billions", but this reduces conservatives to parrots and poodles, refusing the free will with which they have long demanded what have come to be known, over time, as alternative facts.

"In an ideal world, people would be rational about this," as the saying goes, but that sort of easy platitude only goes so far. How many will object when the rational assessment before us says we're looking at racism, misogyny, or even simply uneducated tinfoil? The defense of conservatives often speaks against being rational: Liberals should "think a little more deeply about the enduring sources of his appeal" says the conservative columnist who would prefer we look away from rational assessment of supremacism in rhetoric, policy, and history. Another version clucks that liberals "shouldn't be merely dismissing the views of people who voted for [Trump] as obviously crazy, or motivated by racism or sexism or any of those other bad things". Such defenses of conservative thought and behavior are easy enough to utter, but insist on irrational results. If people were rational about it, i.e., in that "ideal world", these arguments would be dismissed for their apparent ignorance. The columnist, as such, has no excuse; the other critic, well, it's an easy enough utterance from half a world away specifically because it is ignorant and irrational. But this sort of dismissal is also lamented as a "paternalism and condescenscion" that somehow forces people to vote for bigotry and authoritarianism.

The thing about an ideal world is that it is easy enough to invoke even when defending irrationality. And if, for instance, Ja'han Jones↱ says, "quite literally befitting the Ku Klux Klan", perhaps that rankles certain sensitivities, but he is not wrong about how the Republican vice presidential candidate is behaving.

But let's back up for a moment, because precedent and repetition matter. Steve Benen↱, mulling Jones' report, recalls a late-term interview in which President Obama was asked if he had a favorite conspiracy theory among Republican fever dreams: "Obama didn't hesitate: The first thing that came to mind was Jade Helm."

Every few years, the U.S. Army gathers up a bunch of soldiers and gear, and because we have massive amounts of open land available for such exercises, marches them through the middle of nowhere in order to know that they can. In 2015, this exercise was called "Jade Helm". But a black man was in office, so conservatives suddenly forgot this was a normal thing. And while it's tempting to suggest people would have reacted poorly simply because Obama was a Democrat, the simmering whitist resentment of his election so permeated conservative rhetoric we could find it even here, in our own community↗: "But imagine that it was an urban warfare exercise, conducted during the George W. Bush administration, set to take place in black neighborhoods. Or imagine that this Jade Helm exercise was planned by Republicans for predominantly Hispanic communities along the Mexican border." It's nonsense, comparing two different circumstances only linked by the asserted racepolitik.

Benen recalls:

The far-right fears never made any sense, and the then-president apparently found all of this rather amusing. But one of the underappreciated parts of the story was that a variety of Republican officials — including senators, governors and U.S. House members — at least pretended to take the conspiracy theories seriously. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott even felt the need to order the Texas Guard to "monitor" the military exercises — just in case Obama was up to something nefarious.

When GOP officials were pressed to explain their interest in claims that were transparently ridiculous, they invariably said the same thing: Their supporters and constituents took the nonsense seriously, so they were compelled to do the same.​

Which brings us back to Ja'han Jones:

On Monday, JD Vance dived face-first into a racist and xenophobic conspiracy theory when the GOP vice presidential nominee promoted a false allegation that Haitian immigrants in Ohio have been eating people's pets. This aligns with other "fear the brown people" rhetoric pushed by Donald Trump and his cringe-inducing running mate.

In the lead-up to Election Day, the Trump-Vance campaign has ramped up its anti-immigrant bigotry by using rhetoric and imagery quite literally befitting the Ku Klux Klan. The former president, for example, has spread lies about armed immigrant gangs taking over apartment complexes in Aurora, Colorado — a claim he doubled down on Friday even after it was debunked by local police.

For his part, Vance last week spread the grotesque lie that Kamala Harris is allowing cartels to engage in child sex trafficking in the U.S. The Ohio senator's post on X about Haitian immigrants fit this sickening trend.

"Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio," Vance wrote.

"Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country. Where is our border czar?"​

Nor is it just Vance; the racist conspiracism is also pushed by Charlie Kirk, Elon Musk, multiple House Republicans, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

"Truth", Jones reminds, "is a mere inconvenience for the Republican Party, whose members have shown a disturbing willingness to portray immigrants of color as uncivilized beasts unfit to walk among us."

Benen observes:

And why, pray tell, did a candidate for national office decide to lend his voice to a conspiracy theory that's racist and ridiculous in equal measure? NBC News asked Vance's team.

After NBC News asked the Vance campaign about the lack of evidence for his claim, a spokesperson said that the senator had received "a high volume of calls and emails over the past several weeks from concerned citizens in Springfield" and that "his tweet is based on what he is hearing from them." The spokesperson did not say, however, whether any of those calls or emails had included evidence of violence against pets, and did not offer proof of Vance's statements.​

It was, in other words, the Jade Helm dynamic all over again: A bunch of hysterical people told the senator that the ludicrous theory might be true, so Vance, instead of relying on facts, proceeded as if the preposterous claims had merit and deserved to be amplified.

Whether he fell for a scam or cynically went along with the absurdities is irrelevant: Vance was told to take ugly nonsense seriously, so he did.

The idea of applying critical thinking skills never entered the picture. The vice presidential hopeful isn't a leader so much as he's a follower of frenzied conservatives who saw some racist garbage on Facebook.​

It's one thing↗ to moralize: "Were they all crazy, motivated by racism or sexism, etc., or is there more to it than that?" And it's easy enough to speculate after "other reasons" to vote for Trump, but look at the pitch. Republicans think this is a winning argument. Republicans think this is what the base wants. Republicans think they can pick off the frightened and win a few votes with this.

Trump, Vance, their team, Congressional Republicans, conservative media and internet celebrities—whether funded by billionaires or subscriptions and tip jars—think this is what conservatives want. Are they all motivated by supremacism and crazy stuff, or there more to it?

It was never about "merely dismissing" the views of Trump voters. But, the "enduring sources of his appeal", as the allegedly anti-Trump conservative columnist suggests?

Let's try this: 1992, '94, '96, '98, 2000, '02, '04, '08, '10, '12, '16, '20, '22, '24. To the one, supremacism has been an integral part of the conservative pitch, its most durable appeal, pretty much the whole time I've been voting. To the other, if I leave the 2006 midterm off the list it's simply because I can't recall the specific issue without looking it up. Needless to say, some days, you toss a coin to decide between attending the will of the people and demonstrating civic leadership. For over thirty years, Republicans have refused the latter. They have their reasons.
____________________

Notes:

Benen, Steve. "Vance offers the wrong defense for promoting ugly misinformation". MSNBC. 10 September 2024. MSNBC.com. 10 September 2024. https://bit.ly/3zdMH9O

Jones, Ja'han. "JD Vance spreads a xenophobic, racist conspiracy theory about Haitian immigrants eating pets". MSNBC. 9 September 2024. MSNBC.com. 10 September 2024. https://bit.ly/3XGEq80

 

[Tiassa]

The Unsurprising Surprise

Look, we kind of knew, so the only surprise is that Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review, let his guard down. From a recent interview with Megyn Kelly:

Lowry: I love, I think it was in that interview, where Dana Bash says police have gone through eleven months of recordings of calls and they've only found two Springfield residents calling to complain about Haitian nigger―m-m-uh―migrants taking geese from ponds. Only two calls, and I think one lesson of this whole story, people don't care about geese. People really hate geese. [(laughs)) You know, they, all things considered, I think people would prefer Haitian migrants to come and take the geese off the golf course, right? So it's pets, it's the cats and dogs that's become the standard; geese clearly don't, don't matter.​

Since we have the moment, we ought to make the point: It's not really about the fake indignance in defense of Trump supporters. It's not so much, as the rightist complaint goes↗, that liberals "shouldn't be merely dismissing the views of people who voted for him as obviously crazy, or motivated by racism or sexism or any of those other bad things", but the fact that the racism is present.

But think back, for a moment, to 2008, when Sarah Palin debated Joe Biden for the vice presidency. Even then↗, Lowry's only justification for Palin was her sex appeal. That the inheritor of Buckley's National Review might be racist as well was not any sort of mystery. But it's true, in the long line of complaining that everyone who disagrees gets called racist, no, not really, and sometimes it's just impossible to ignore the racism.

Supremacism really has been a durable appeal of American conservatism. Near or far, that is, even from half a world away, one cannot purport any serious analysis of the American political situation that would omit or minimize supremacism. "Were they all crazy, motivated by racism or sexism, etc.," such mitigating wags↗ might run, "or is there more to it than that?" And the answer is that the racism has been there the entire time; the sexism has been there the entire time. And if, for some reason, "liberals" should be expected to pass over and say nothing, it cannot possibly be that, yet again, the only fair response to supremacism is to just shut up and give the supremacists what they want. It's hard to tell which time we were supposed to let what supremacism pass in order to not be paternalistic and condescending, because it's supremacism.

Rich Lowry said what? Well, come on, we ought not be surprised. He's been this way the whole time.
____________________

Notes:

@Esqueer. "The editor in chief of the National Review just said the N word in regards to Haitians and Megyn Kelly ignores it." 16 September 2024. X.com. 16 September 2024. status/1835748826310983792

Spoiler

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

When I was a kid the June Klavern was held in our three car garage. I was required to be there, be quiet and not get in the way. I wasn't allowed to read a book during that shit. So I'd try to recall the last book I'd read word for word. Stranger in a Strange Land save me from opening fire on that load of cretins with a Flammenwerfer 35.

Oddly, I think, many of my contemporaries didn't get challenged in their thinking during their school years. I'd "ask" Micheal Valentine what would be a good response to something the Grand Dragon said. Sometimes he'd tell me.

Kinda kept me sanish.

 

[James R]

At one level, I suppose, it's flattering to know that something I wrote back in 2016 still rents a lot of space in Tiassa's head. It's a pity that what sticks is so selective, though. In the same posts that Tiassa quotes, I also gave reasons why I thought as I thought, back then. Those, Tiassa selectively ignored at the time and continues to ignore 8 years down the track.

Sometimes, some folks will pretend that Republicans and conservatives are, somehow, perpetual victims of American history. The underlying thesis↗ "has something to do with being consistently and repeatedly fed a whole bunch of lies, and coming to believe them".

Well, it's hard to generalise about "Republicans and conservatives" throughout history, isn't it? At the same time, it's easy to generalise if you avoid ever digging down into individual motivations and actions.

Lots of people, over the years, have called themselves Republicans or conservatives. But dig down a bit and you might find that those labels mean different things to different people. For instance, there are self-described "Never Trump Republicans". There are even self-described conservatives who are planning on voting for Kamala this time around.

In other words, one can always say "not all conservatives" or "not all Republicans", but generalisation is never about nuance, especially when one's aim is propaganda.

But this is also a formulation in which American conservatives have no individual agency; they are↗ "largely live in a self-imposed media bubble, constantly fed misinformation by well-funded networks that are happy to keep supplying them".

A self-imposed media bubble clearly implies a level of individual agency, to my mind. Nobody forces a person to watch only the "conservative" media. That's a personal choice.

And it's one thing to blame "conservative billionaires who are willing to tell lies to make even more billions", but this reduces conservatives to parrots and poodles, refusing the free will with which they have long demanded what have come to be known, over time, as alternative facts.

It looks like Tiassa is trying to set up a straw man here. Who, exactly, has put all the blame on conservative billionaires? Anybody?

There's definitely a problem with propaganda that pretends to be news. Perhaps we could talk about that some time.

"In an ideal world, people would be rational about this," as the saying goes, but that sort of easy platitude only goes so far. How many will object when the rational assessment before us says we're looking at racism, misogyny, or even simply uneducated tinfoil?

I suppose the racists, misogynists and the uneducated might object, for starters. Not all of them, of course.

The defense of conservatives often speaks against being rational: Liberals should "think a little more deeply about the enduring sources of his appeal" says the conservative columnist who would prefer we look away from rational assessment of supremacism in rhetoric, policy, and history.

What does said conservative columnist suggest are the enduring sources of Trump's appeal? Could we discuss that, maybe? Then we'd be in a better position to make an informed judgment about this terrible conservative columnist (whoever it is).

Another version clucks that liberals "shouldn't be merely dismissing the views of people who voted for [Trump] as obviously crazy, or motivated by racism or sexism or any of those other bad things".

Wise words from whoever that was.

Such defenses of conservative thought and behavior are easy enough to utter, but insist on irrational results.

How so?

If people were rational about it, i.e., in that "ideal world", these arguments would be dismissed for their apparent ignorance.

Is Tiassa claiming that everybody who votes for Trump must be crazy, motivated by racism or sexism, etc.? Seriously? That should be dismissed for its apparent ignorance.

For instance, what of the people who plan to vote for Trump because they believe he will manage the economy better than the Biden administration? Crazy? Maybe, but you'd need to at least make a little effort to draw the connecting lines there.

The columnist, as such, has no excuse; the other critic, well, it's an easy enough utterance from half a world away specifically because it is ignorant and irrational.

Or maybe the "other critic" has a point, but somebody has a chip on his shoulder about some stuff that has nothing to do with what the critic wrote.

But this sort of dismissal is also lamented as a "paternalism and condescenscion" that somehow forces people to vote for bigotry and authoritarianism.

Is it, though? By whom?

The thing about an ideal world is that it is easy enough to invoke even when defending irrationality.

In an ideal world, things would be easy. In Tiassa's ideal world, all conservatives would be batshit crazy people who were obviously in the wrong about history, about morality, about economics, about everything. The ideal is to have an easy label you can slap on a hundred million people without thinking too hard. Unfortunately, we don't live in that kind of ideal world. Some more thinking is required in the real world.

It's one thing↗ to moralize: "Were they all crazy, motivated by racism or sexism, etc., or is there more to it than that?" And it's easy enough to speculate after "other reasons" to vote for Trump, but look at the pitch. Republicans think this is a winning argument. Republicans think this is what the base wants. Republicans think they can pick off the frightened and win a few votes with this.

History demonstrates that campaigns based on stoking fears can get a person elected, or re-elected. Certainly this is a big part of the Trump playbook. Look at his obsessive, racist, focus on illegal immigrants in his current election pitch, for example.

Current polls have Trump and Harris neck and neck. It's line ball as to who will win the election. Clearly, Republicans are going to win more than a few votes by going on doing exactly what they are doing right now. Never mind the lies; their voters certainly don't.

Trump, Vance, their team, Congressional Republicans, conservative media and internet celebrities—whether funded by billionaires or subscriptions and tip jars—think this is what conservatives want. Are they all motivated by supremacism and crazy stuff, or there more to it?

It is a big mistake to assume that what Trump wants, or what Congressional Republicans want, are the same things that their grass roots supporters want. A lot of people are making that mistake, of course, so Tiassa is hardly out on a limb with that. Sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees.

 

[parmalee]

Is Tiassa claiming that everybody who votes for Trump must be crazy, motivated by racism or sexism, etc.? Seriously? That should be dismissed for its apparent ignorance.

For instance, what of the people who plan to vote for Trump because they believe he will manage the economy better than the Biden administration? Crazy? Maybe, but you'd need to at least make a little effort to draw the connecting lines there.

Not surprisingly, plenty of people have delved into these matters quite deeply over the previous decade. The overwhelming consensus--by sane and rational sorts, at least; there are of course some opposing viewpoints from apologists, sympathizers and those who (understandably) simply do not wish to acknowledge what's right in front of their faces--is that Trump supporters are, by and large, motivated by bigotry and/or ignorance/stupidity/insanity. Sounds weird, sure, but keep in mind: a sizable portion of the eligible populace do not vote--we're talking some 60 million people here, out of a population of 300 million plus; America has a long history of racism, misogyny, etc.--it's systemic, it's deeply "embedded in our genes", in a manner of speaking; Americans go out of their way to ignore, deny, overlook their roles in historic wrongs--some states still "celebrate" Victory over Japan day, for instance, and just take a gander at the so-called "history" textbooks used in many of the Bible Belt states.

If you've got some credible sources that convincingly claim otherwise, I'm all ears.

 

[parmalee]

Not surprisingly, plenty of people have delved into these matters quite deeply over the previous decade. The overwhelming consensus--by sane and rational sorts, at least; there are of course some opposing viewpoints from apologists, sympathizers and those who (understandably) simply do not wish to acknowledge what's right in front of their faces--is that Trump supporters are, by and large, motivated by bigotry and/or ignorance/stupidity/insanity. Sounds weird, sure, but keep in mind: a sizable portion of the eligible populace do not vote--we're talking some 60 million people here, out of a population of 300 million plus; America has a long history of racism, misogyny, etc.--it's systemic, it's deeply "embedded in our genes", in a manner of speaking; Americans go out of their way to ignore, deny, overlook their roles in historic wrongs--some states still "celebrate" Victory over Japan day, for instance, and just take a gander at the so-called "history" textbooks used in many of the Bible Belt states.

If you've got some credible sources that convincingly claim otherwise, I'm all ears.

Of course, no one is saying every single last one of them--just almost. For instance, Slavoj Zizek, who couldn't vote because he isn't American, said he would have voted for Trump. He's neither bigoted nor crazy; rather, as I understood it, his rationale was more from an accelerationist perspective: Why not simply hasten the demise of this fascistic/capitalistic abomination? I, too, am often sympathetic to this position; however, it's a bit like so-called "long-termerism": The end of this is ultimately a "good thing", but bringing it about would undoubtedly cause a whole lot of unnecessary suffering in the meantime.

 

[Tiassa]

Is Tiassa claiming that everybody who votes for Trump must be crazy, motivated by racism or sexism, etc.?

No, James, that's your own straw man.

Here, look at you pretending someone else wrote it:

That somebody - whoever it was - strikes me as somebody who was on the ball back in 2016.

And that's after acknowledging your own words↗.

†​

At one level, I suppose, it's flattering to know that something I wrote back in 2016 still rents a lot of space in Tiassa's head.

Well, James, we should remind that originated as a discussion about how you run this site, and why supremacism needs to be shielded from direct criticism. In our moment, what your narrative lacks, what makes your point and argument not credible, is something you have also already acknowledged↗, that you are "watching it all unfold from half a world away". And the thing about that, James, is you're still pushing the basic, apparently uninformed case, and apparently haven't figured out the problem with that. To wit, it's one thing to argue, "it's easy to generalise if you avoid ever digging down into individual motivations and actions", but you're not new, James. You're not really supporting your generalizations made from half a world away, just insisting without attending the detail; and if it is sometimes difficult to discern the detail from half a world away, you're also very selective about what details you will accept.

… it's easy to generalise if you avoid ever digging down into individual motivations and actions.

Well, that's the thing, isn't it, James? You're not seeing the detail from half a world away, but you reject details you disagree with. And I understand that generalizing on someone else's behalf↗ feels different, but even then, the devil is in the detail.

But let's try a basic juxtaposition. To the one, your indignant generalization on behalf of Trump voters: "There are clues to be found, if you put in a little effort in trying to find out the truth, rather than just making assumptions that make you feel comfortable"; "But probably not the majority. The majority has other reasons"; "But I guess it's simpler for some to try to blame all the Trump supporters for being bad people to the core. Because that requires less thinking, I guess. It also means you're free to demonise people and misrepresent (some of) them. And some people just can't help themselves when it comes to trying to demonise other people." To the other, an applicable reality: 1992, '94, '96, '98, 2000, '02, '04, '08, '10, '12, '16, '20, '22, '24. To the one, supremacism has been an integral part of the conservative pitch, its most durable appeal, pretty much the whole time I've been voting.

Now, toward that contrast, consider your proposition:

For instance, what of the people who plan to vote for Trump because they believe he will manage the economy better than the Biden administration? Crazy? Maybe, but you'd need to at least make a little effort to draw the connecting lines there.

We can consider two general groups of voters who will back Trump because they think he will manage the economy better than the Biden administration. First are the Trump voters you've been defending for years. They never had any reason to believe he would, and his track record tells him they won't. And while the Trump experience is pretty severe, the track record of these voters is that it doesn't really matter; the racists, for instance, will just blame immigrants and liberals for anything that doesn't work out. The misogynists will continue to blame women. Conservative Christians will continue to blame pretty much everybody who isn't them. And so on.

The other group of voters who will back Trump on the economy are rich people who think they get either wealth or power out of the rightist circumstance; history already has a record on this sort of supporter. And in the current circumstance, some of these people are informed by magic-school fan fiction. (No, James, that's not a joke.)

Part of what you're looking at in questions of Trump's handling of the economy is that much economic discontent in midwestern and southern states is inflicted by voters in those states. It's easy to miss that detail from a distance; the American discourse overlooks this point like its nose. To translate back to the question: Working- and middle-class voters who back Republicans on the economy have been wrong about their expectations for over forty years.

Crazy? Well, that depends on which connecting lines you want; this is, after all, your own fallacious standard of crazy. As I already told you↗, the bit about "merely dismissing the views of people who voted for him as obviously crazy, or motivated by racism or sexism or any of those other bad things" not only overlooked years of discourse and political dispute about other issues ("merely dismissing"), it also pretends ignorance of how those discussions went.

And I also told you: It never really was about "merely dismissing the views of people who voted for him as obviously crazy, or motivated by racism or sexism or any of those other bad things"; that was thin political hyperbole, a non-narrative pretense disconnected from history—the line was a tell, its manner of misrepresentation neither subtle nor uncommon.

And as I already pointed out↑ in this thread, it's easy enough to speculate after "other reasons" to vote for Trump, but look at the pitch, because Republicans think this is a winning argument that the base wants.

Notice how your response to that goes nowhere:

History demonstrates that campaigns based on stoking fears can get a person elected, or re-elected. Certainly this is a big part of the Trump playbook. Look at his obsessive, racist, focus on illegal immigrants in his current election pitch, for example.

Current polls have Trump and Harris neck and neck. It's line ball as to who will win the election. Clearly, Republicans are going to win more than a few votes by going on doing exactly what they are doing right now. Never mind the lies; their voters certainly don't.

Am I supposed to speculate for you? The way in which those two paragraphs don't completely fall over is if you are somehow unaware that what you're describing is not new or unusual or unique to the Trump experience. As I've told you directly↗, the question of Trumpism is a brand issue, and what it represents existed before, and will continue in the marketplace even after the last trumpence is spent.

Well, otherwise you seem to be making my point form me: "Never mind the lies; their voters certainly don't." Right. It's kind of been this way for a long time. It wasn't new in 2016, either. You've been around long enough to have heard of the Southern Strategy; y'know, what conservatives have thought was a winning argument for fifty years.

So, consider what happens to the NeverTrump Republicans after Trump is finished. How quickly will the Bill Kristol conservatives reconcile with the Lindsey Graham conservatives? The thing is, the NeverTrump faction was always okay with disparate impact and discriminatory outcomes as long as they were able to pretend it was all just an accident. A certain portion of Republican discomfort with the Trump experience is what has come to be described as saying the quiet part out loud.

It's the uncertainty, though, that stands out about your fourth-wall performance: "Well, it's hard to generalise about 'Republicans and conservatives' throughout history, isn't it?" Actually, there is history, and inasmuch as you somehow haven't noticed, yet, I'm uncertain what to tell you. I can point out↗ fifty, sixty, even seventy years ago, and the best you can do is that it's hard to generalize. You might talk about "other reasons", but they're not evident in the historical record. Your bit on the self-imposed media bubble is a fine point if you're new, but think back to where that starts.

And, really: "Who, exactly, has put all the blame on conservative billionaires? Anybody?" Well, the linked post is by James R, discussing well-funded misinformation networks and "who benefits from amassing a huge following of willing dupes who will do their bidding". The quoted text about "conservative billionaires" is from a clarification↗ by James R. Sure, I might miss a link from time to time, but do you just not recognize your own posts?

And, come on:

What does said conservative columnist suggest are the enduring sources of Trump's appeal? Could we discuss that, maybe? Then we'd be in a better position to make an informed judgment about this terrible conservative columnist (whoever it is).

Really? It took you this long to think of that one?

We can take a moment for that, later. Short form: The enduring sources of Donald Trump's appeal are not in Donald Trump, but his supporters. But highlighting your ignorance about the American political discourse about which you pretend to know so much is not the brilliant pitch you think it is.

 

[James R]

Tiassa:

No, James, that's your own straw man.

Here, look at you pretending someone else wrote it...

I did not pretend anything. In contrast, you constantly make oblique references to things I have written, while being rude enough to pretend that I don't have a name. You like to snidely call me out in your posts. You crave my attention, but you write things that you know I will recognise as my words, which you know that other people won't necessarily recognise as my words.

I know all your games, Tiassa.

If you want my attention, be man enough to address me directly. Stop being mealy mouthed about it.

Well, James, we should remind that originated as a discussion about how you run this site, and why supremacism needs to be shielded from direct criticism.

As you know, I have never argued that supremacism should be shielded from direct criticism. That's a fantasy that you have concocted. Perhaps you've even come to believe it. Wake up, Tiassa. Join the real world.

In our moment, what your narrative lacks, what makes your point and argument not credible, is something you have also already acknowledged↗, that you are "watching it all unfold from half a world away".

Your constant refrain that I'm unqualified to comment on US politics is empty. I'm doing it. Get used to it. You're not going to shut me down by pretending you're more informed than I am, therefore giving you some kind of license to play the bully.

And the thing about that, James, is you're still pushing the basic, apparently uninformed case, and apparently haven't figured out the problem with that.

You're completely off base about what I'm "pushing". You have been for years. You just have no idea. You've constructed a straw man version of me that you like to batter around. You stopped taking in anything I actually write years ago.

When it comes to discerning anything I might be "pushing", you're cluelessly lost at sea. You should fix that.

Well, that's the thing, isn't it, James? You're not seeing the detail from half a world away, but you reject details you disagree with.

You're not even talking about anything. Can't you see that? Your complaints about what I've written are empty. They don't actually refer to anything real. You should fix that.

We can consider two general groups of voters who will back Trump because they think he will manage the economy better than the Biden administration. First are the Trump voters you've been defending for years.

Can you find a single example from me of one time when I made excuses on behalf of Trump voters?

Is ignorance an excuse? If so, then I plead guilty to saying that Trump voters are ignorant.
Is wanting a Strong Man an excuse? If so, then I plead guilt to saying that Trump voters want a Strong Man.
Is being racist an excuse? If so, then I plead guilty to saying that some Trump voters (not to mention Trump himself) are racist.
etc.

Have I ever once encouraged anybody to vote for Trump? No. On the contrary, I have been outspokenly against him since before he was elected President. This is all on the record on this forum.

Yet still you want to push this fantasy, this straw man. You have a problem, Tiassa. You should fix that.

As I already told you↗, the bit about "merely dismissing the views of people who voted for him as obviously crazy, or motivated by racism or sexism or any of those other bad things" not only overlooked years of discourse and political dispute about other issues ("merely dismissing"), it also pretends ignorance of how those discussions went.

You're talking about stuff that I wrote eight years ago, here. Since then, we have all seen what a Trump presidency actually looks like. But in the context of the 2016 election, the reasons why people back then voted for Trump were many and varied. Apparently, you didn't take any time to inform yourself of what voters actually said, back then. And now, here you are, Tiassa, eight years down the track, still stuck in an imaginary version of 2016 in your mind. Your should fix that. Move on. Get yourself up to date. Read some of my recent posts if you want to know what I think about those who plan to vote Trump this time. You might find that a few things have changed in 8 years.

And I also told you: It never really was about "merely dismissing the views of people who voted for him as obviously crazy, or motivated by racism or sexism or any of those other bad things"; that was thin political hyperbole, a non-narrative pretense disconnected from history—the line was a tell, its manner of misrepresentation neither subtle nor uncommon.

That was an insightful warning. If these kinds of warnings had been heeded back in 2016, the 2024 election might not be shaping up to be the line-ball event that it's looking likely to be.

Half of your problem, Tiassa, is that you don't know who your political friends are. You spend a lot your time attacking people you should be politically aligned with, which is a tragic waste of time and effort. But then again, you're not very good at maintaining relationships, across the board, are you? You should work on that.

Am I supposed to speculate for you?

What are you talking about? You're no better equipped or able than I am to predict the election result.

The way in which those two paragraphs don't completely fall over is if you are somehow unaware that what you're describing is not new or unusual or unique to the Trump experience.

You should stop trying to guess what I am or am not aware of it. You almost always get it wrong, and you inevitably make yourself look silly when you just make stuff up.

Well, otherwise you seem to be making my point form me: "Never mind the lies; their voters certainly don't." Right.

Why would I make your point for you, if I disagreed with you? It's a mystery wrapped in an enigma, isn't it?

Figure it out, Tiassa. You've been making a very basic mistake for years now. You should fix that.

And, really: "Who, exactly, has put all the blame on conservative billionaires? Anybody?" Well, the linked post is by James R, discussing well-funded misinformation networks and "who benefits from amassing a huge following of willing dupes who will do their bidding".

Did you notice the word 'all'? You didn't. Right? Too busy struggling to keep the straw man up.
---

There was also some commentary in your post that might have been on-topic. Unfortunately, the personal bullshit you chose to pepper into your post means that I have no interest in engaging in discussion of the ostensible topic with you.

Run along, Tiassa.

 

[parmalee]

Back in 2017, Trump famously said that there were "some very fine people on both sides", referring to the White Nationalists carrying tiki torches and chanting, "Jews will not replace us." I found this quite repugnant, as did, supposedly, a lot of other people. Now the reason I say "supposedly" here is because I've always been baffled by the fact that many of these people who supposedly objected to these remarks have also remarked that Trump supporters may well be decent people, as well. Huh?!

“One-third of Americans (34%) say that immigrants entering the country illegally today are ‘poisoning the blood of our country’, including six in 10 Republicans (61%), 30% of independents, and only 13% of Democrats,” a summary of the annual poll stated, which surveyed more than 5,000 individuals from 16 August to 4 September.

A third of Americans agree with Trump that immigrants ‘poison the blood’ of US

Founder of polling firm that conducted survey says: ‘That language is straight out of Mein Kampf … it’s Nazi rhetoric’

www.theguardian.com

(emphasis mine)

So how exactly does that work? I have always insisted that Trump supporters are overwhelmingly bad people. I stand by this claim, and I have supported it in the past. But for anyone here who might think differently, would you mind explaining your reasoning for such? Yeah, I've asked this question, or very similar questions, at least a thousand times over the previous decades, it's just that I've never gotten a satisfactory answer. Or one that, frankly, makes any kind of sense to me.

 

[Tiassa]

Intersectional Time-Out

It's not entirely a departure:

… rationale was more from an accelerationist perspective …

I hadn't made certain comment on accelerationism, because, well, the cross-reference is probably obscure to most.

But then ...

... a 2023 thread↱ turned up in a social media feed, Caroline Orr Bueno discussing her journal article on evidence of foreign influence targeting the Candian "Freedom Convoy" movement in 2022.

Anyway, along the way↱, she mentioned, "There was also a clear theme associated with 'replacement' — some of which was white supremacist/Great Replacement content, but there was also a recurring theme of claims about people being replaced by body doubles, clones, robots, etc."

We're real close to that other accelerationism. In fact, the only substantial difference is to remember the subpopulation we're describing: Body doubles for politicians? Conspiracist, largely speculative. Clones? Extraordinarily conspiracist, but within the emerging mythography of the last thirty years. Robots? Inevitable adaptation. But it's not actually the politicians to be replaced by robots, and it is in that underlying fear that we find our intersection with the other accelerationism.

So, yeah—

… however, it's a bit like so-called "long-termerism" …

—I was thinking of leaving all that alone, because it's such a messy discussion, but then a social media bit from over a year ago reappeared amid the noise. It's like trying to write a "Tesc, tesc" scold, but reality just isn't accommodating. Well, that and it somehow sounds like a particularly annoying anime character. Timing really is everything, especially in a room where ... er, right, never mind.

And in the time since I started this post, Seth Abramson↱ did an X-thread that eventually gets around↱ to this part, too.

Maybe it's time for that discussion.

But it's not just hard to explain how crazy it is; we actually have to take it seriously at some point. To the one, sure, there's this thing, and some people, even influential people, believe it. To the other, ¿We're supposed to take this seriously?

And, yeah, actually, we are. I'm not so worried about a red-black accelerationist confluence, for instance, but, rather, unsurprised at the apparent (¡ahem!) coincidence between the fancy of godless-gatekeeper musings among tech industry imagineers who cannot see beyond themselves, and the traditionalist populism driving American conservatives in a post-policy phase. A union of rightist-populist and industrial accelerationism would be extraordinarily dangerous, and that would seem to be the intersection coming into view.
____________________

Notes:

@SethAbramson. "THREAD: Donald Trump is clearly fading mentally and physically. His running mate was handpicked by a Kremlin-agent white supremacist (Tucker Carlson) and two creepy far-right billionaire techno-authoritarians (Peter Thiel and Elon Musk). This is not the election you think." (thread) X. 19 October 2024. 21 October 2024. status/1847705710206857270

@RVAwonk. "Ok, so now that my study has caught the attention of Russian propagandists, let's take a closer look at what I found in this analysis of the information environment around the 2022 truck convoy in Canada." (thread) X. 3 February 2023. X.com. 21 October 2024. status/1621590974320332800

Spoiler

 

[James R]

Back in 2017, Trump famously said that there were "some very fine people on both sides", referring to the White Nationalists carrying tiki torches and chanting, "Jews will not replace us." I found this quite repugnant, as did, supposedly, a lot of other people.

I certainly did. Violent white nationalists are certainly not "very fine people". That was the context.

Now the reason I say "supposedly" here is because I've always been baffled by the fact that many of these people who supposedly objected to these remarks have also remarked that Trump supporters may well be decent people, as well. Huh?!

It's very easy to lump "Trump supporters" into one big basket, then to start stereotyping based on the worst examples of the kind. But you can do that with any group of people. It's fundamentally lazy and it lacks any nuance. It also demonises some people who might be able to be argued around to a more sensible political alignment.

Yes, there are hard-core Trump suppporters who are despicable excuses for human beings. But there are also people who are going to vote for Trump because they have been misled sufficient to think, mistakenly, for various reasons, that Trump is the best of two bad choices.

The problem, most of the time, is not that people are inherently evil. Some people don't know how to distinguish reliable sources of information from those who want to lie to them. Some of them actually have trouble distinguishing relevant and truthful information from entertainment. A lot of people are simply disengaged from politics, but not quite enough to prevent them from voting. Instead, they make their choice of who to vote for based on minimal information, which might well be misleading.

So how exactly does that work? I have always insisted that Trump supporters are overwhelmingly bad people.

That's not a view that will ever allow you to have a useful political conversation with anybody on the "other side". You're just closing off all dialogue with that.

If you want to just write people off, that's on you and you have every right to take that attitude. But I don't know how you plan to convince a swinging voter to join your side. And your side needs those people.

 

[exchemist]

Back in 2017, Trump famously said that there were "some very fine people on both sides", referring to the White Nationalists carrying tiki torches and chanting, "Jews will not replace us." I found this quite repugnant, as did, supposedly, a lot of other people. Now the reason I say "supposedly" here is because I've always been baffled by the fact that many of these people who supposedly objected to these remarks have also remarked that Trump supporters may well be decent people, as well. Huh?!

A third of Americans agree with Trump that immigrants ‘poison the blood’ of US

Founder of polling firm that conducted survey says: ‘That language is straight out of Mein Kampf … it’s Nazi rhetoric’

www.theguardian.com

(emphasis mine)

So how exactly does that work? I have always insisted that Trump supporters are overwhelmingly bad people. I stand by this claim, and I have supported it in the past. But for anyone here who might think differently, would you mind explaining your reasoning for such? Yeah, I've asked this question, or very similar questions, at least a thousand times over the previous decades, it's just that I've never gotten a satisfactory answer. Or one that, frankly, makes any kind of sense to me.

It seems to me you are falling into the simplistic Manichaean trap that I've often come across with Americans: classifying fellow citizens as "good" or "bad" people, when almost everyone is a complex mixture of the two.

Most people have only a hazy or superficial grasp of politics or what it takes to run a country and are frankly not much interested in these subjects. They just want to get on with their own lives and not have them disrupted. Regarding those that do take an interest, and I suppose by "Trump supporters" you must mean them, rather than the entire half of the country that seems minded to vote for Trump in November, it seems to me you are not taking into account the fragmentation of the media landscape and the rise of social media. It is all too easy nowadays to get fed a diet of partial news, selected by social media algorithms that are programmed to offer more and more of what they think you may like. It is the computerised version of what Murdoch's channels have been doing for yers: news as entertainment, rather than as a public information service.

This is the polar opposite of what you need to come to a balanced view on any subject, which is to be exposed to both sides of a story. (I myself have been shocked by the way YouTube has tried to feed me a diet of shallow and hysterical rubbish poking fun at Trump, merely because I have watched a few podcasts of the US edition of "The Rest Is Politics".)

So my contention would be that, for the most part, these Trumpies will be mugs who have let their prejudices be reinforced by media channels and media algorithms and have come to believe a load of garbage. I think it is more reasonable to see these people as misinformed victims (they do mostly seem fairly inarticulate and dim when they are interviewed) than as "bad".

And, quite apart from anything else, stigmatising them as "bad" suggests a preference for civil war (against the bad guys) to democracy (i.e. making the effort of persuasion to change people's minds and voting intentions).

 

[parmalee]

@ JamesR and exchemist:

I'm not gonna do a line by line here, as both of your posts cover similar territory, so...

To start:

But there are also people who are going to vote for Trump because they have been misled sufficient to think, mistakenly, for various reasons, that Trump is the best of two bad choices.

... Some people don't know how to distinguish reliable sources of information from those who want to lie to them. Some of them actually have trouble distinguishing relevant and truthful information from entertainment. A lot of people are simply disengaged from politics, but not quite enough to prevent them from voting. Instead, they make their choice of who to vote for based on minimal information, which might well be misleading.

Most people have only a hazy or superficial grasp of politics or what it takes to run a country and are frankly not much interested in these subjects. They just want to get on with their own lives and not have them disrupted. ...

So my contention would be that, for the most part, these Trumpies will be mugs who have let their prejudices be reinforced by media channels and media algorithms and have come to believe a load of garbage. I think it is more reasonable to see these people as misinformed victims (they do mostly seem fairly inarticulate and dim when they are interviewed) than as "bad".

IOW, they're stupid, no? Let me rephrase that: If that is not stupid, then what is? I mean, we got the word, might as well find a use for it.

This, in part, is what people like John Gray and, really, most Continental thinkers are getting at when they point out that Christian thought (and Islamic thought, to an extant, but not so much Judaic thinking) and Humanistic thought are much the same thing. Or, rather, this is a very particular aspect of that commonality. You are both acting as though Morgan's Canon somehow does not apply to humans--cuz people are animals, but, well, really, not really. But, yeah, really they are. (It's really only funny funny when you've got secular humanist atheist types railing against Abrahamists or whomever using the exact same arguments, but that's another topic.) When you go looking for alternate, and increasingly complex and convoluted, explanations for why people don't know how to think, and you come up with nothing, well... What? They get their information from Fox news cuz they don't get any other channels? No newspapers or internet? They're all shut-ins or live in a cave? When none of these things are true, you gotta start considering the simplest and most obvious explanation: They lack the cognitive faculties and ability to discern--or, they're stupid.

(And algorithms. Yeah, they're annoying and frustrating, but also kind of a godsend, at times. No one knows how to use a VPN or open a private browser window which is available on every web browser software in existence? Porn is immensely popular, I hear. A lot of people take measures to hide their porn addictions from whomever else might be using their computer. Are you telling me they know how to do that, but they don't know how to circumvent the guidance of algorithms?)

They don't know how to do this, they don't how to do that, they've got a very dim grasp of this, and they can't seem to articulate their positions for shit. Yeah, that's stupidity. Feel free to use whatever euphemism makes you feel better about yourself for not calling people stupid when they are in fact stupid; or, simply acknowledge that describing people, accurately, as stupid isn't necessarily a blanket condemnation--they may well be better at other things that do not involve critical thinking, for instance.

Ages ago I knew a guy who was truly an extraordinary musician, but he was profoundly stupid (OK, not really--it's more that he just wasn't terribly clever and it's like I had to moderate, or even censor, my snark around him cuz he never got it and it annoyed the hell out of me). I couldn't play with the guy because of this. People who knew me well understood that I wasn't condemning the guy, while everyone else just thought I was an asshole.

I said this:

Trump supporters are, by and large, motivated by bigotry and/or ignorance/stupidity/insanity.

and you have both, pretty much, simply reiterated what I just said there.

I also asked for some evidence to the contrary, and even provided one instance of such: Slavoj Zizek. I could provide others, of course, but I did say overwhelmingly and not entirely or exclusively. Neither of you have given me any plausible alternate explanations.

And, yeah, i also said--in my subsequent post--that they are "overwhelmingly bad (or maybe "bad" I don't recall) people" which, I guess, is a bit different. But, frankly, bigoted idiots are kinda useless to me and I'm not in politics and I don't host a late show and have to please a network, so I'm fine with that. I've certainly attempted dialogue, but when it gets nowhere I've got better things to do with my time. Even when you are mostly playing music with someone, say, you've still gotta talk sometimes, and when some dumb guy doesn't get my jokes or snark, I don't wanna play with him no matter how good a musician he is.


Edit: I don't know if that came across as kinda hostile, but if it did, that was unintended. I just noticed that it's like 48 degrees (F, that is) in my house, and I've just been sitting here doing nothing about it.

 

[parmalee]

@ JamesR and exchemist:

How would you define "stupidity"? How would you define "bigoted"? What constitutes a "bad person"?

From what I can discern, it seems that you both agree that Trump voters are overwhelmingly bigoted and/or lack the capacity for critical thinking and discernment (or, what I call stupidity). Am I correct in that assessment?

Where you disagree is with my characterization of them as "overwhelmingly bad people"? Is this correct?

If so, then what do you consider a bad person? Just to clarify something, I referenced that 2017 Charlottesville incident: It's somewhat pertinent here that Trump was, in fact, referring to the tiki torch-bearing antisemites, not the perpetrators of violence the following day (see Snopes, for instance). Not that it really matters, he's obviously praised perpetrators of violence and advocated for violence on many other occassions, of course; but it is somewhat relevant here.

What is the opposite of a "fine person"? A "bad person"? You both seem to be saying that a bunch of unthinking bigots are not necessarily bad people, so, then, are they fine people? Are they a "complex mixture" of bad and fine people?

Let's say they are this complex mixture. Are their "finer" qualities in any way relevant when it comes to addressing racism, misogyny, homophobia, and acknowledgement of America's genocidal and imperialistic past/nature? How so?

And then there's the potential meaningful dialogue aspect, and the remote possibility for persuading people to stop being such bigoted fucking idiots. Yeah, that's great--I'm all for that. But surely you must recognize that there's an aspect of privilege here, yes? For instance, as a spastic kike (in the epileptic sense, not ms), I a bit reluctant to give people the benefit of the doubt here--at least, in certain contexts. IOW it's kinda nearly gotten me killed in the past. When I am reasonably certain that a certain group of people are apt to be bigoted in certain respects, say, I've learned simply to [stay the fuck away from said people. I do not have the privilege of, uh, "testing the waters" in these situations--and I'm a fuckin white dude. That goes double/triple/exponential for women/non-whites/non-hets/et al.

 

[exchemist]

@ JamesR and exchemist:

I'm not gonna do a line by line here, as both of your posts cover similar territory, so...

To start:


IOW, they're stupid, no? Let me rephrase that: If that is not stupid, then what is? I mean, we got the word, might as well find a use for it.

This, in part, is what people like John Gray and, really, most Continental thinkers are getting at when they point out that Christian thought (and Islamic thought, to an extant, but not so much Judaic thinking) and Humanistic thought are much the same thing. Or, rather, this is a very particular aspect of that commonality. You are both acting as though Morgan's Canon somehow does not apply to humans--cuz people are animals, but, well, really, not really. But, yeah, really they are. (It's really only funny funny when you've got secular humanist atheist types railing against Abrahamists or whomever using the exact same arguments, but that's another topic.) When you go looking for alternate, and increasingly complex and convoluted, explanations for why people don't know how to think, and you come up with nothing, well... What? They get their information from Fox news cuz they don't get any other channels? No newspapers or internet? They're all shut-ins or live in a cave? When none of these things are true, you gotta start considering the simplest and most obvious explanation: They lack the cognitive faculties and ability to discern--or, they're stupid.

(And algorithms. Yeah, they're annoying and frustrating, but also kind of a godsend, at times. No one knows how to use a VPN or open a private browser window which is available on every web browser software in existence? Porn is immensely popular, I hear. A lot of people take measures to hide their porn addictions from whomever else might be using their computer. Are you telling me they know how to do that, but they don't know how to circumvent the guidance of algorithms?)

They don't know how to do this, they don't how to do that, they've got a very dim grasp of this, and they can't seem to articulate their positions for shit. Yeah, that's stupidity. Feel free to use whatever euphemism makes you feel better about yourself for not calling people stupid when they are in fact stupid; or, simply acknowledge that describing people, accurately, as stupid isn't necessarily a blanket condemnation--they may well be better at other things that do not involve critical thinking, for instance.

Ages ago I knew a guy who was truly an extraordinary musician, but he was profoundly stupid (OK, not really--it's more that he just wasn't terribly clever and it's like I had to moderate, or even censor, my snark around him cuz he never got it and it annoyed the hell out of me). I couldn't play with the guy because of this. People who knew me well understood that I wasn't condemning the guy, while everyone else just thought I was an asshole.

I said this:

and you have both, pretty much, simply reiterated what I just said there.

I also asked for some evidence to the contrary, and even provided one instance of such: Slavoj Zizek. I could provide others, of course, but I did say overwhelmingly and not entirely or exclusively. Neither of you have given me any plausible alternate explanations.

And, yeah, i also said--in my subsequent post--that they are "overwhelmingly bad (or maybe "bad" I don't recall) people" which, I guess, is a bit different. But, frankly, bigoted idiots are kinda useless to me and I'm not in politics and I don't host a late show and have to please a network, so I'm fine with that. I've certainly attempted dialogue, but when it gets nowhere I've got better things to do with my time. Even when you are mostly playing music with someone, say, you've still gotta talk sometimes, and when some dumb guy doesn't get my jokes or snark, I don't wanna play with him no matter how good a musician he is.


Edit: I don't know if that came across as kinda hostile, but if it did, that was unintended. I just noticed that it's like 48 degrees (F, that is) in my house, and I've just been sitting here doing nothing about it.

Being a bit dim, or poorly informed does not make people bad, though. That's what I was trying to get across. The average IQ is 100, after all, so there are a lot of dim people about. Not their fault, it's just the way they are. But it may make them susceptible to misinformation.

The people who really are objectively "bad", in my estimation, are those politicians and owners of media channels who exploit these people to engineer political outcomes to suit themselves as squillionaires. Guys like Musk and Theil (who I believe is actually on record as saying he has no time for democracy), Trumpy Republican senators, the authors of Project 2025 etc.

There is a reason why political leadership is required, even in democracies. I fear one of the problems today is too many of our political class just react to opinion polls instead of trying to do the hard yards of changing minds. The only ones that do at present seem to be the populist Right.

 

[foghorn]

The old shoot first ask questions later... I see where you're going...
Put all Trump supporters up against a wall and shoot.

 

[parmalee]

Being a bit dim, or poorly informed does not make people bad, though. That's what I was trying to get across. The average IQ is 100, after all, so there are a lot of dim people about. Not their fault, it's just the way they are. But it may make them susceptible to misinformation.

See my subsequent post here. But, yeah, the "bad" part is more to do with their bigotries than stupidity.

The people who really are objectively "bad", in my estimation, are those politicians and owners of media channels who exploit these people to engineer political outcomes to suit themselves as squillionaires. Guys like Musk and Theil (who I believe is actually on record as saying he has no time for democracy), Trumpy Republican senators, the authors of Project 2025 etc.

I agree, but I do find it a bit problematic at times that people are so willing to cut everyone else slack here. While "the man" is indeed the bigger problem--they've got the power, the means, etc.--this doesn't let everyone else off the hook. The US is ostensibly a democratic machine, to a degree, and even if we account for all the ways in which it is very much not, i.e. the electoral college, etc., all participants are still accountable for their actions. And for their beliefs, to the extent that they impact the lives of others.

 

[exchemist]

See my subsequent post here. But, yeah, the "bad" part is more to do with their bigotries than stupidity.


I agree, but I do find it a bit problematic at times that people are so willing to cut everyone else slack here. While "the man" is indeed the bigger problem--they've got the power, the means, etc.--this doesn't let everyone else off the hook. The US is ostensibly a democratic machine, to a degree, and even if we account for all the ways in which it is very much not, i.e. the electoral college, etc., all participants are still accountable for their actions. And for their beliefs, to the extent that they impact the lives of others.

OK I'll meet you half way there. I do agree that in a democracy one does in the end have to hold the electorate responsible for the choices it makes.

But the polarisation in the USA today frightens me. Two tribes seem to be just talking past one another. My big fear for liberal democracies in general is that the internet will wreck them, due to the amplification and thereby the hardening of political positions, and the coarsening of what passes for political debate.

 

[parmalee]

OK I'll meet you half way there. I do agree that in a democracy one does in the end have to hold the electorate responsible for the choices it makes.

But the polarisation in the USA today frightens me. Two tribes seem to be just talking past one another. My big fear for liberal democracies in general is that the internet will wreck them, due to the amplification and thereby the hardening of political positions, and the coarsening of what passes for political debate.

It seems that very few people contemplated the potential for mishap in the early days of the internet. When I was a kid, I played around with BBSs and the like a fair bit. I saw a lot of potential there for nefarious doings, but then I was also reading a lot of PK Dick, JG Ballard, et al. Those guys were truly prophetic. But even outside of conventional speculative fiction, there were a fair number of people in other disciplines who explored these possibilities: a few episodes of The Prisoner, both Robert Calvert's work with Hawkwind and his solo stuff--a lot of music, really. A lot of this stuff was relatively obscure, I guess, but the point is that there were in fact people who almost uncannily predicted some of these outcomes.

The relationship between stupidity (and/or ignorance, to an extent) and bigotry is complicated. That's a rather underwhelming understatement, sure, but it's important to at least make the effort to parse the differences. It's not hard to provide examples wherein stupidity and/or ignorance simply cannot account for certain bigotries--like virtually no one is sufficiently stupid enough to think that a person might transition to a woman in order to rape women in public restrooms, for instance. When the right exploit the most preposterous of scenarios they're simply muddying the waters and, however weakly, offering up some sort of plausible deniability. And with a media motivated purely by profit motive, their disingenuous efforts are almost guaranteed to go unchecked: "hard hitting" is seldom lucrative.

As much as the internet is a haven for obsessives to pore over the minutiae of just about anything and everything, it's also home for some of the most superficial, uncritical "analysis" anyone could ever have conceived.

 

[exchemist]

It seems that very few people contemplated the potential for mishap in the early days of the internet. When I was a kid, I played around with BBSs and the like a fair bit. I saw a lot of potential there for nefarious doings, but then I was also reading a lot of PK Dick, JG Ballard, et al. Those guys were truly prophetic. But even outside of conventional speculative fiction, there were a fair number of people in other disciplines who explored these possibilities: a few episodes of The Prisoner, both Robert Calvert's work with Hawkwind and his solo stuff--a lot of music, really. A lot of this stuff was relatively obscure, I guess, but the point is that there were in fact people who almost uncannily predicted some of these outcomes.

The relationship between stupidity (and/or ignorance, to an extent) and bigotry is complicated. That's a rather underwhelming understatement, sure, but it's important to at least make the effort to parse the differences. It's not hard to provide examples wherein stupidity and/or ignorance simply cannot account for certain bigotries--like virtually no one is sufficiently stupid enough to think that a person might transition to a woman in order to rape women in public restrooms, for instance. When the right exploit the most preposterous of scenarios they're simply muddying the waters and, however weakly, offering up some sort of plausible deniability. And with a media motivated purely by profit motive, their disingenuous efforts are almost guaranteed to go unchecked: "hard hitting" is seldom lucrative.

As much as the internet is a haven for obsessives to pore over the minutiae of just about anything and everything, it's also home for some of the most superficial, uncritical "analysis" anyone could ever have conceived.

Haha, yes Orwell's 1984 with its surveillance society and the rewriting of history, was onto something. The Prisoner, one of my favourite 1960s series, was also, in a different and rather drug-inspired way.

But the damage done, to both individuals and to society, by social media is something nobody foresaw, I think. I read a report in the FT last week that 25% of British teenage girls have had some kind of contact with medical services over mental health issues by the time they are 21.

I would not be surprised if, 20 years from now, social media are treated like cigarettes today: addictive, bad for your health and requiring close control over who can consume them and how they are promoted.