I wrote: I think he believes they (the white christian, upper/middle class) are strategically the best target as they are according to him apparently the only political/cultural force capable of opposing the ptb.
No
He's not saying that?
Apparently not.
Yes, you are. Apparently you don't even know what you're saying.
eyeno wrote: The strongest remaining wall and barrier against complete subjugation resides within the middle and upper middle class because it still has some assets to fight back with. It also stubbornly clings to its religion and institutions. It is mostly but not completely comprised of white Republican Christians ... When they fall the game is finished because there will be nobody with any assets left to put up a fight.
eyeno wrote:Right wing christians are simply a good place for ptb to expend the resources considering that they make up such a huge portion of the demographic known as the middle and upper middle class.
As in, "they (the white christian, upper/middle class) are strategically the best target as they are according to him apparently the only political/cultural force capable of opposing the ptb."
eyeno wrote:When they fall the game is finished because there will be nobody with any assets left to put up a fight.
"they" being the white christian upper/middle classes, as in, "they are according to him apparently the only political/cultural force capable of opposing the ptb".
My summation fits what you are saying perfectly.
Now that we have that cleared up, I call bullshitty on so many grounds I hardly know where to start.
The antagonistic rhetorical device you are using, even though useful at times, do not speak for me and are designed to change context. I see no need in wasting my time on it.
I don't have any brilliant synopsis as of yet. But this thread reminded me of this site I was checking out today. You really can get the feel for where and when the propaganda arose into what we recognize it as today -- along with an easily accessible timeline as to its increasing sophistication/sophistry. Much of this was before the right wing AM radio juggernaut of announcing the existence of a "liberal media" and continue flogging a horse the right had already killed, yet continued to animate it by their talking points of nothing more than FUD so the rubes would continue to believe in issues in which there never was any issue to begin with.
Here's the site. Call it a time machine into televised presidential political ads going back to 1952.
It's really worth checking out. Just go through time and see the bullshit people were made to believe and be divided over. It's still the same goddamn formula, however the right's (and the left's) older canards are easily quaint.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
I remember watching the 1968 Nixon ads when I was a kid. They consisted of montages of Americana still-photo imagery with music and Nixon voicing over. They were very evocative. Maybe even a little bit hypnotizing? The quite interesting story of their creation is described in The Selling of the President 1968 by Joe McGinniss. Check 'em out:
I'm going to watch every damn ad on that site. Thanks again!
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
Eyeno, I hope this is relevant to your topic. If someone made you feel like it's right wing to think the media is brainwashing, it might have been Roger Ailes. He didn't produce the 1968 TV ads for Nixon, though he did direct some '68 "town hall" campaign TV shows for Nixon. A guy named Gene Jones* created the 1968 ads for right-winger Nixon, using, you might say, the creative means of the left--the quick-cut (for then) montage (sort of acid-trippy), the sometimes hip music etc.
82, it's a pity but that site doesn't have all the '68 Nixon spots, but there's more on YouTube; some ran four minutes; this one is just bizarre:
I can't find my favorite one, which I have on VHS somewhere but lack the technology to get it onto my computer; it reminded of the scene below in The Parallax View (1974). The closest I could find to it is also below, from 1972, not involving Gene Jones but obviously borrowing his techniques. The '68 one I'm thinking of never showed Nixon, only still photos and his voice, and had wistful oboe music or some such. The masterpiece of the campaign. For this comparison, the '72 ad will do (and I do apologize for the dreadful song, sung by the Mike Curb Congregation).
Watch these two videos one after the other ("and be sure to place each one of your hands in the boxes on either side of the chair"):
Videos at link:
Selling It Short
Richard Byrne
August 1, 2008
Joe McGinniss' classic text on presidential campaign ads is almost 40 years old now. But it still has valuable lessons for candidates and the public alike.
The original dust jacket of Joe McGinniss' The Selling of the President 1968 has Richard Nixon's face emblazoned on a package of cigarettes.
To value that image at a thousand words is parsimonious. It elicits a multiplicity of responses to Nixon and to his 1968 campaign: clever, slick, amoral, dangerous, familiar, branded, and addictive. (Yes, addictive. How long was Nixon in American political life?)
In sum, Richard Nixon was very, very bad for America -- and some very skilled men persuaded voters to buy him anyway.
As an eight-year-old caught up in Watergate in the summer of 1974, that dust jacket induced me to pluck The Selling of the President 1968 from my parents' bookshelf. I didn't understand everything McGinniss was peddling on that first read, of course, but his brisk, energetic prose did let me get at some of what the book was about even then.
It has become fashionable to dismiss The Selling of the President 1968 as a shallow and cynical book written in the breezy New Journalism of its moment. In the November 2006 issue of Smithsonian magazine, Jonathan Yardley took just this tack, arguing that the book's pivotal role in stoking American political cynicism "helps explain why the book remains in print today, for the truth is that otherwise it doesn't hold up very well."
Yardley's right about one thing. The book's strengths do not lie in its analysis. The book's second chapter -- which functions as the literary equivalent of the journalistic "nut graf" -- is rife with glib formulations. Politics is a "con." The voter is a "willing victim" of advertising persuasion.
Yet there's much that's incorrect and ungenerous in Yardley's assessment. It seems almost absurd to assert that the work of a 26-year-old journalist, written in a few months directly after the 1968 election, had as much of a catalytic effect on public cynicism as the events of that tumultuous year and the campaigns themselves.
More ungenerous, however, is to assert that the book's continued longevity is rooted largely in that cynicism. Whatever its deficiencies, The Selling of the President 1968 remains a vital cultural and historical document -- and a playbook of sorts with lessons for our current presidential campaigns.
Mad Men and Ad Men
The cultural impact and historical value of The Selling of the President 1968 is immense. It's still being mined in venues including Rick Perlstein's widely discussed history Nixonland and America's most buzzed-about TV drama of the moment: AMC's Mad Men. Though the first season features vignettes of an ad agency's work on Nixon's 1960 campaign, the dialogue often seems to be plucked directly from McGinniss' 1968 account.
In one scene from the show's first season, ad executives watch an inanely ebullient jingle advertisement for John F. Kennedy and compare it favorably ("Light, fun, doesn't cloud the mind with issues") to a dry advertisement of an inert Nixon perched on the edge of a desk, droning on about the economy.
"Message received -- and forgotten," says one ad man.
"The president is a product," says another. "Don't forget that."
[two videos]
McGinnis' book isn't just fodder for snappy TV dialogue, however. Much of the power of The Selling of the President 1968 is found in the raw strategic campaign documents (which one would rarely see today unless they were somehow leaked) from which the winning Nixon campaign was built.
The memos included by McGinniss in the book show that the 1968 campaign's masterstroke -- marketing Nixon to voters with as little actual Nixon as possible -- was devised largely to neutralize that unappealing loser of 1960 shown on Mad Men.
Carefully orchestrated town halls aired in key TV markets aimed to show Nixon as an engaged and vigorous figure. The campaign's remarkably effective TV ads -- which use short Nixon soliloquies as the soundtrack to dizzying montages that seemed clipped from popular magazines of the day (Life and Look) -- are still studied today.
McGinnis quotes a memo written by Nixon ad director Harry Treleaven, who rose to prominence by engineering George H.W. Bush's 1966 election as U.S. congressman in Texas:
"Still photographs can be effectively used on TV. Interesting cropping, artful editing and juxtaposition of scenes, an arresting soundtrack, can all combine to make an unusual presentation."
Nixon's 1968 TV ads, created by director Gene Jones, follow that basic formula to the letter. Whether the topic is Vietnam:
[video]
Or youth culture:
[video]
Nixon's ads are vigorous, energized, and Nixon-free, save for the candidate's voice, which in this context emerges as vaguely Oz-like and oracular. (And the youth ad even manages to feature Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, beardless and in an Uncle Sam hat, about 13 seconds in.)
McGinnis also offers a vivid snapshot of today's key political players in their youth. In the book, Kevin Phillips is a 27-year-old "ethnic specialist" with the campaign, already busily tracking an "emerging Republican majority" that he'd write about in his influential 1969 book with that title. Pat Buchanan is already a key Nixon adviser at 30, penning memos advising that Nixon be photographed "on a golf course or something that is legitimate feature [sic] without being cornball or contrived." And Fox News Channel president Roger Ailes is a 27-year-old producer hired away from crooner Mike Douglas' daytime variety/talk show in Philadelphia to supervise Nixon's carefully choreographed televised town halls.
As depicted by McGinniss, Ailes' tantrums and his admission that many Americans thought Nixon was a "bore" and "a pain in the ass" are part of his legacy. But his canny ability to marry politics to entertainment (as he has done at Fox News) is apparent -- he complains to the author about interference from Nixon's political advisers in selecting questioners for the town halls.
"This is the trouble with all these political people horning in," Ailes tells McGinniss. "Fine, they get all their lousy little groups represented but we wind up with a horseshit show."
Simplicity Fear and Aggression
Forty years on, McGinniss and the prominent Nixon staffers of his generation are in their late 60s. But The Selling of the President 1968 holds valuable lessons for the present generation of presidential campaign staffers, who are already trying to define Barack Obama and John McCain.
The fact that these lessons continue to be so relevant also hints at an uncomfortable fact: There is little true innovation in American political discourse, and its purveyors recycle key language and concepts to a disturbing degree.
In a campaign where Obama's mastery of political oratory has been applauded, it may be difficult to remember that words can clutter or bog down the total impact of a televised campaign message. Nixon's 1968 campaign ads are notable for their willingness to set a simple and forthright proposition and then let music and images do the heavy lifting to evoke a host of conflicting moods. That tempest of sound and image is then resolved succinctly with a carefully modulated statement from the candidate -- tough, but not mean.
For John McCain, a similar approach might be the most effective against Obama in the fall. In fact, his first TV ads are already doing it: Obama as celebrity. Obama as cheap politician using troops as campaign fodder. Particularly on Iraq, look for McCain to set forth simple propositions like "the surge worked" -- and pluck heartstrings with patriotic pictures and music.
Snatching the mantle of change however you can is another valuable lesson that McGinniss' book teaches. One of the starkest moments of déjà vu in The Selling of the President 1968 is the language that Harry Treleaven uses when arguing that Nixon should make his campaign about change.
Treleaven lays out the suggested narrative in a November 1967 memo: "There's an uneasiness in the land. A feeling that things aren't right. That we're moving in the wrong direction. That none of the solutions to our problems are working. That we're not being told the truth about what's going on. The trouble is in Washington. Fix that and we're on our way to fixing everything. Step one: move LBJ out, move a Republican president in."
Sound familiar? In tough and turbulent times, change works, even if the candidate carries the negative baggage that Nixon carried in 1968, or that Ronald Reagan carried in 1980, or that Bill Clinton carried in 1992. It's a lesson that Obama's campaign learned in the primary. The question is whether or not they can keep to that course -- and keep it fresh.
The upside of fear is another key lesson that the book imparts. Nixon's 1968 campaign ads are also notable for their exploitation of Americans' fears of crime, disorder, and international conflict. At times, that fear was used blatantly, with a campaign ad in which an announcer intoned statistics about violent crime as a middle-aged woman walks alone down a dark, damp city street.
[video]
At times, the Nixon campaign was (slightly) more subtle, using an ad on the preparedness of candidates to speak to the world on America's behalf with images of hotline phones and no less than four dramatic shifts in music cued to evoke hopes, martial fears, attentiveness, and crisis.
[video]
The most notable use of the fear and readiness in 2008 primary advertising was Hillary Clinton's 3 a.m. White House telephone call ad. Despite the controversy, it helped her cut deep into Obama's lead. Fear is too handy a tool to be ignored in a general election. Voters will see it again.
Recent talk of Obama's presumption and victory lap in July summons up a final lesson from McGinniss' book: Don't ever sit on a lead.
The greatest moments of angst in The Selling of the President 1968 emerge not in discussions of the ethics of advertising or the creation of Nixon's "new image" but rather as the Nixon campaign watches its lead slip away in October. The ad men blame Nixon's political team for encouraging his disdain for media and urging him to play it safe. McGinniss blames it on "months of staleness" and his steadfast refusal to do shows such as Meet the Press. (Humphrey and Nixon had no formal debates.)
Panic finally forced Nixon to emerge from behind his carefully constructed image at the very end. It just may have saved him. As former Humphrey ad person consulted by Nixon's ad people tells them: "If the advertising is too slick it's not the communication of the man but the communication of the communication." By Election Day, that was the essence of Nixon's campaign.
The chaos that was Hollywood in the early '70's spawned a strong streak of liberal filmmaking: Medium Cool, The Candidate, Hearts and Minds. Producer / star Warren Beatty, who previously had imparted a French New Wave flavor to Bonnie and Clyde, gave Parallax a remote, Antonioni-like sense of alienation. Characters fail to relate and then disturbingly disappear. In an extension of earlier Film Noir effects the Panavision image is splintered into an endless succession of fragmented spaces. Long lenses and shallow focus isolate protagonist reporter Beatty in corners of the frame, wedged between unrecognizable blocks of foreground architecture. And for the film's centerpiece, Beatty commissioned a freestanding film-within-a-film, one of the most remarkable montages ever cut for a Hollywood feature.
In The Parallax View reporter Beatty penetrates the mysterious Parallax Corporation, and when he enters their recruiting process finds himself being shown (subjected to?) a 'special' short film in a theater wired to measure his emotional reactions. He's already taken a multiple-choice psychological test (right out of Psych 101) designed to identify violent, volatile applicants. Now he is the sole occupant of a huge auditorium, and the house lights dim while a voice calmly instructs him to keep his hands on the wired armrests. We see no close-ups of Beatty. The instructions might as well be directed at us, because we too are sitting in a darkening theater, with no idea what we are about to be shown.
It's a bizarre moment that is remindful of a number of 'interactive' precedents. The rigged chairs for the 'Percepto' effect of William Castle's The Tingler come to mind. Also, on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood was a theater called The Preview House where each seat had buttons in the armrests to measure viewer responses to movies and commercials. Beatty's Guinea Pig situation might also remind us of the mindbending torture endured by agent Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File,, or the involuntary reprogramming undergone by Droog Alex in A Clockwork Orange.
The insidious crimes Parallax has already committed give the viewer an ominous feeling. Will Beatty be tortured by some unknown kind of Ipcress or Ludovico process? What horrible things is this movie going to contain? Like Peeping Tom, the line between voyeur / participant is blurred when we realize we are to experience the film exactly as Beatty experiences it. There is an unspoken cinematic tension, an element of danger. Remember those Red Asphalt - style gore movies we were shown (subjected to?) for our own good in High School? Remember the dread / thrill of anticipating what we might see?
What we experience in Parallax is a short film constructed of still images and printed text titles, cut to music in a montage style not unlike experimental films of the 1960s. Together with the fads of split-screen and shallow-focus lyricism, by 1970 the form had worked its way into TV commercials. Indeed, no film-school screening was without its 'message' montage cut to rock music and, depending on the artiste, compelling or insulting in its use of images. Not exactly Eisenstein kinema-dialectics, not exactly Godard agit-prop, a typical example is Wipe Out, where the surf guitar song becomes sinister when accompanied by rapid-fire images of everything presumed bad in American life, from consumer greed to Levittown housing.
At first, Parallax's montage seems like one of these. Soothing music is heard behind harmonious iconographic images familiar from Life Magazine - style photo layouts. Pictures of sweet old ladies and hardworking farmers accompany the titles 'MOM' and 'DAD.' Similiar stereotypical images follow title cards for 'GOD', 'LOVE', 'HAPPINESS', and so forth. The music starts to become more upbeat and dynamic, and the visual pace quickens as the same categories are revisited with new visuals and repeats of the old ones. This is going somewhere, we can tell . . . odd cuts slip in that don't seem to fit the categories, either because they are too fast to 'read' or contain disturbing content - lynchings, children in peril, the blurred, frightful face of a terrorized woman.
Soon the images are coming too fast for easy categorization. Each image has its own emotional reaction, some of which raise the hair on one's neck - Nazis, for instance, next to the Pope. Confusion sets in as images are repeated in contexts which change their meanings. Photos of people having sex, and stacks of coins are pleasing against the title 'HAPPINESS' but become unsettling when juxtaposed with images of what seem to be torture victims and political oppression.
Also, identical pictures appear to change 'without changing.' The impression made by a sweet rural mother shifts radically when placed before shots of filthy, impoverished children. When placed in a context of persecution, her very expression seems to change too. A sensitive viewer knows his reactions are being manipulated, sculpted by the cutting. A portrait of George Washington is distastefully inter-cut with Nazi iconography. The image seems artificially crude until the portrait is revealed as being displayed on a wall side-by-side with a Swastika (of a Klan member?).
Just when chaos seems total, the montage maker brings a unifying theme to the forefront. Each wave of buzzword concepts has ended with the title 'ME.' 'ME' has been evolving from a happy baby. to an abused boy, to the imprisoned victims of tyrants and racists. Increasingly disturbing groupings equate the American flag, Hitler, MacArthur, the Pope, and a comic-book demon. Images of poverty, sex, and racial murder tumble forward. Repeated flags and patriotic icons drive home the message that "America is in trouble, the family is in trouble." Only when 'ME' becomes a hammer-swinging Nordic avenger (the comic-book character Thor) does the ANSWER arrive to end the ideological trauma.
The Parallax Audition film is presented as a psychological litmus test for potential assassins. What it really is, is an extremely well-made propaganda film that functions the same way as the most infamous examples, like Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. Through emotional intimidation, the receptive viewer moves through confusion and a desire to a position of conformity, to accept the premise of the film. George Orwell understood this completely in the 'Five Minute Hate' propaganda rallies in his 1984. Modern ad marketers understand it too.
Consider our reactions to today's political television campaigns. Sensitive people are alarmed by the appalling attack ads with their ugly false charges and provocative, 'loaded' imagery. Confusion, hostility, and apathy are engendered. One's own viewpoint seems worthless in the suspicion that 'less sophisticated' votes are being warped wholesale by the lies in these ads. The Parallax film is frightening because we sense that in our violence-worshipping society, this audition film certainly could inspire killer - volunteers for a 'righteous' cause.
Our reaction to the film-within-a-film in Parallax is powerlessness - if the evil Parallax Corporation is this advanced technologically, the forces of good haven't a prayer. And the political attack ads resemble a 'conspiracy' as well: to convince us that the power of their campaign is too big and too well organized to be effectively opposed. It's like a Polanski movie, where the forces of Evil are so potent, Good just quietly gives up. The aggregate effect of modern political advertising is to make us so sick of the electoral process that we stop participating, leaving the field to the ruthless and cynical opposition.
So this is the power and meaning of the bizarre montage in The Parallax View. Back in the 1970s occasional mainstream movies were unafraid to tackle difficult, even dangerous issues. Network's vision of a society dehumanized by television can arguably be said to have come almost 100% true. Parallax's unseen conspiracies also have come to pass, depending on one's point of view. We now believe that those who control access to 'reality' can create any 'truth' they desire. Since the lines between news and editorial content and pure fiction are now completely blurred, who can tell? The Parallax Corporation controls the minds of men through the persuasion of cinema propaganda. Are we really affected by the barrage of images in our daily lives? Perhaps the lesson of the 'Audition Film' of Parallax should be that EVERY SHOW and every image we see has the potential to affect us, and that none of us is immune.
*I was perusing various articles about all this, and for a minute while reading the above description of The Parallax View scene, I thought I was reading about Gene Jone's Nixon ads. Jones himself has the perfect close to this post, as told to Joe McGinniss and used by this blogger to close his post:
...for now I want to leave you with a conversation between McGinniss and Eugene Jones, the film-maker who was hired to make Nixon look like the answer to America's troubles 40 years ago.
Joe McGinniss:
One night, toward the end of the campaign, as he sat in his office, Gene Jones said, "Look, I get it from my friends, too. I go to a party and the first thing everybody wants to know is, how can you work for that fascist bastard."
He shrugged.
"I'm a professional. This is a professional job. I was neutral towards Nixon when I started. Now I happen to be for him. But that's not the point. The point is, for the money I'd do it for almost anybody."
"My one qualm about Nixon," Gene Jones said, "is that I'm not sure he's got the sensitivity he should. To Appalachia, to the slums, to the poverty and destitution that reside there. I don't know whether as a human being he's actually got that sensitivity.
"I hope he has, because it's really awful, when you think of all the things wrong inside this country now. The hatred, the violence, the cities gone to hell. And the war. All our kids getting killed in that goddamned war."
He stood, ready to go upstairs, to the third-floor production room, to touch up one of the final spots.
"What are you going to do when this is all over?" I said.
"Move out."
"Yes, I know you're leaving this studio, but I mean where are you going to work next, what are you going to do?"
"No, I didn't mean move out of the studio," he said. "I mean move out of the country. I'm not going to live here anymore."
"What?"
"I've bought myself some land in the Caribbean -- on the island of Montsarrat -- and that's where I'm going as soon as this is over."
"Permanently?"
"Yes, permanently," he said. And then he talked about the direct plane service from Montsarrat to New York, Toronto, and London, and how America was no place to bring up kids anymore. And all this against the background of the commercials he had made: with the laughing, playing children and the green green grass and the sunsets and Richard Nixon saying over and over again what wonderful people we all were and what a wonderful place we lived in.
"... I really don't see any choice," Gene Jones said. "I mean, I don't want my kids growing up in an atmosphere like this."
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
'right wing' pundits saying the media has been aggressively fanning and stoking the flames of racial divide and tension with the case.
Only don't forget the "right wing pundits" are the media, too, and it serves their interests to have a divided citizenry (a la Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Savage, etc.) just as much as anyone else's.
That's why I listen to none of it. It's so insane these days that there isn't anyone who can make heads or tails out of the stream of excrement coming out of "the media."
Sorry to have offended thee, oh Socrates and Plato.
The reason I got involved in this thread is that I tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to right-wing christians' claims that they are persecuted, I automatically get irritated and find my self wanting to take the opposite side of whatever argument they are trying to make. I believe this is a conditioned response that has little to do with my personal experience with these people, and a lot to do with how they are portrayed in the media. My involvement in this thread has been a misguided attempt to try to correct this type of response.
Last edited by beeblebrox on Thu May 03, 2012 12:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The "lib'rul" media thing always made me snicker. To these folks, I ask how can the media be "liberal" if we have thousands of dead soldiers and a countless amount of wounded/dead Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere?
I think that's why the smarmy 'left' bugs me more than the GOP. The GOP have to by now know they are clowns. A self parody. I mean it's so far beyond the scope of reason for me to believe otherwise with the twilight zone they spout.
There's something even more insidious to me about the "humanitarian/drone" crusaders. I wanted to vomit hearing Obama with another "remember 9/11 and al Qaeda" speech yesterday, or when Obama said something like "thankfully the drone casualties have been low".
But the GOP idiots will NEVER criticize Obama for mass murder, anti pot crusade, keeping gitmo and expanding black sites, persecuting bradley manning, bending over for wall street, gutting health care for them, giving Christian fascist Uganda a ton of money and troops, etc
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
8bitagent wrote:I was agreeing with the idea that everyone is being manipulated.
Well yah. That's no great insight and pretty uncontroversial around here. In fact I'd venture to say that we all believe that there are powers which are trying to manipulate everyone to their advantage.
You really are sort of naive. The devil is in the datails. Who is doing the manipulating? Who are they targeting? What is their purpose? Might they also target the internet?
Why shouldn't RI be a place where ideas are debated? Can't we do that here? Doesn't that involve going beyond, "Oh I couldnt agree more.", and maybe asking questions where elaboration is needed and disagreeing where we disagree? Or is that too impolite?
And yeah, the ol "well the GOP wants to have imminent domain on my womb...therefore Obama is my savior" sentiment going around is working wonders
Working wonders How? Yes, abortion is one of those wedge issues that will drive a portion of the left to support the democrats because the alternative is despicable and in the process overlook all the evil perpetrated by the democrats. Yes. We get that. That also is no great insight, despite the fact that you say some version of that in practically every other post you've ever written here.
It's eminent domain 8bit. That may seem like pedantic nitpicking, but really, can't you use a dictionary every once in a while? You'd possibly be taken more seriously.
Well if we're going uncensored here, and want unfiltered thoughts...
I think the media is being used to pave the way for a race war, or at least a 1968 climate.
I think it's sickening how "Justice for Trayvon" is being used to justify a host of terrible things. I feel a lot of white people feel they have to go on the extreme in their ultra PC mindset to avoid being seen as 'racist', to the point where it becomes a witch hunt to sniff out the faintest whiff of "racism" even when there is none. I absolutely do agree with Glenn Beck and others saying how the media and once great but now foolish civil rights leaders have gone out of their way to use the Trayvon case to create a dangerous climate, yet also find it ironic because these are the same right wingers who fostered for years a hatred of minorities and could give a crap about anything relating to civil rights (destroying ACORN, throwing Van Jones under a bus, all the endless racist rants by Rush and Fox, etc)
The situation has been set up to where if you don't like Obama, you somehow must be one of those ignorant racists who think he's "a secret Kenyan commie Muslim". The aim to me is to stir up and re-channel genuine anger within black youth communities as well as gun toting paranoid right wingers for what may be a tinderbox moment up ahead needing the right catalyst.
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
8bitagent wrote:I think that's why the smarmy 'left' bugs me more than the GOP. The GOP have to by now know they are clowns. A self parody. I mean it's so far beyond the scope of reason for me to believe otherwise with the twilight zone they spout.
I agree, I watched the press conference last night with a 'smarmy left' type individual. Afterwards I asked him what he thought about it, he responded something like "I guess I kind of agree, I mean, we can't just leave (Afghanistan)."
8bitagent wrote:I think that's why the smarmy 'left' bugs me more than the GOP. The GOP have to by now know they are clowns. A self parody. I mean it's so far beyond the scope of reason for me to believe otherwise with the twilight zone they spout.
I agree, I watched the press conference last night with a 'smarmy left' type individual. Afterwards I asked him what he thought about it, he responded something like "I guess I kind of agree, I mean, we can't just leave (Afghanistan)."
Actually that's a much 'progressive' stance. I can't tell you how many Obama bots Ive encountered on and offline who outright will defend the drone programs, saying "would you rather we send boots on the ground". I respond by saying "Well Obama already sent tens of thousands of young fresh faces to Afghanistan...but to me the problem isnt just soldiers dying in war, Im more upset about innocents being blown to bits". The "we got bin Laden" propaganda worked wonders for the propaganda machine in holding the left in place. The mainstream left can easily be sold war. Just tell them there's some guy who dresses weird who is a bad man, or "al Qaeda" is buried there.
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
This is only complicated for those that do not pay attention, or pay with their attention, or intentionally seek to complicate the situation., and those that have no clue. Which of course includes just about everybody except a few astute RI readers.
Ever heard of the "Holy Land" where Jesus came from? Why, pray tell, do you think, that this god forsaken piece of shit rock land is the hottest property on the planet?
Answer: Bible Lore Value
We are building a new religion in which the Jews will be worshiped as Gods. Being an authentic Jewish person is not a criteria for being worshiped. Oh the contrary...Real Judaism is being destroyed as we speak and so is Christianity. The only criteria for being jewish in the future will be this >>>"being in the know"...and all other features will be erased. Same for Christians.
A new religion is being built right in front of your eyes. Behold its power. It is the religion of the future. Christianity has been bastardized into Israel worship. The future religion will be a whole world worshiping Israel and the chosen ones, which ironically, will have absolutely nothing at all to do with real actual Judaism at it's root form from thousands of years ago.
Sit back, relax, and watch it form on the wall all like a spider web because this is the plan.
eyeno wrote:This is only complicated for those that do not pay attention, or pay with their attention, or intentionally seek to complicate the situation., and those that have no clue. Which of course includes just about everybody except a few astute RI readers.
Ever heard of the "Holy Land" where Jesus came from? Why, pray tell, do you think, that this god forsaken piece of shit rock land is the hottest property on the planet?
Answer: Bible Lore Value
We are building a new religion in which the Jews will be worshiped as Gods. Being an authentic Jewish person is not a criteria for being worshiped. Oh the contrary...Real Judaism is being destroyed as we speak and so is Christianity. The only criteria for being jewish in the future will be this >>>"being in the know"...and all other features will be erased. Same for Christians.
A new religion is being built right in front of your eyes. Behold its power. It is the religion of the future. Christianity has been bastardized into Israel worship. The future religion will be a whole world worshiping Israel and the chosen ones, which ironically, will have absolutely nothing at all to do with real actual Judaism at it's root form from thousands of years ago.
Sit back, relax, and watch it form on the wall all like a spider web because this is the plan.
eyeno wrote:This is only complicated for those that do not pay attention, or pay with their attention, or intentionally seek to complicate the situation., and those that have no clue. Which of course includes just about everybody except a few astute RI readers.
Ever heard of the "Holy Land" where Jesus came from? Why, pray tell, do you think, that this god forsaken piece of shit rock land is the hottest property on the planet?
Answer: Bible Lore Value
We are building a new religion in which the Jews will be worshiped as Gods. Being an authentic Jewish person is not a criteria for being worshiped. Oh the contrary...Real Judaism is being destroyed as we speak and so is Christianity. The only criteria for being jewish in the future will be this >>>"being in the know"...and all other features will be erased. Same for Christians.
A new religion is being built right in front of your eyes. Behold its power. It is the religion of the future. Christianity has been bastardized into Israel worship. The future religion will be a whole world worshiping Israel and the chosen ones, which ironically, will have absolutely nothing at all to do with real actual Judaism at it's root form from thousands of years ago.
Sit back, relax, and watch it form on the wall all like a spider web because this is the plan.
Uh .... okay. Sure.
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
