a little reminder... on differences...

[JackRiddler]

What is wrong with you people?!

C'mon, it's halftime in America! Go team!

Eastwood: "We get right back up again, and when we do, the world's gonna hear the roar of our engines."

That occupied one of the two most important spots in yesterday's show. The other was the first commercial after the coin flip, for "The Dictator," which opens with images of Saddam, Gaddafi and Kim Jong Il, then asks, "Who's next?" Or as Eastwood-Chrysler might say, "The best killing is yet to come."

[Simulist]

99% of the people on either "side" are being played.

It happens all the time — most especially during election fundraising years.

[Luther Blissett]

Sorry but the OP is election year divide/conquer bullshit.

It's true to a point but so what? Its trying to push peoples' buttons and ratchet up the hate.

"They" write the exact same things about us. "They hate you because you go to church and believe in the word of God". You know. "Those liberals fucking hate you."

Its easy to fall for this stuff, and I've fallen for it myself, repeatedly, over the years.

Bullshit.

Especially the third paragraph, according to which I'm supposed to put "their" imagination on a par with reality. When did liberals ever call for the banning of churches, or make it illegal for Catholics and fundamentalists to marry?

The exercise of power, the physical abuse and state bias in each case is almost exclusively one-way: Against that perceived as left. Against that perceived as other. Against the have-nots.

I'm talking about the real state, not the stated ideals or the state as imagined by the right wing. Where do you see the billyclubs swinging, the tasers and tear-gas grenades firing, the LRAD trucks releasing sonic attacks, the stop-and-frisks en masse? Not at the Tea Party rally, even when they brandish automatic weapons. Not at the Chamber of Commerce. Not in rich white neighborhoods. Did you see what just happened to several hundred OWS occupations around the country? How can you sustain an equivalence argument after that?

And no, I'm not going to put hating some people because they ACT a certain way on the same plane as hating people because they ARE a certain way. The unconditional identity-based hate in this country has always come almost exclusively from people who identify politically to the right, and more from the top than the bottom.

Easy equivalence arguments are pernicious. Also a stock in trade of the right. They learned the lingo of revolution and tried to reverse every critique of them. The primary way they express their racism in discourse nowadays is to complain about "reverse racism."

.

I'm with you. We don't even need to use "left vs. right" dichotomies, we're going to arrive at a certain set of foregone conclusions if we let hatred dictate our directions no matter what you call it.

[sunny]

So yeah, there is a lot of common ground and much of the differences have been manufactured.

This is more bait that encourages it's own kind of passive aggressive and sublimated form of hate.

But hey, ain't it great to wake up in the morning knowing you are not some Neanderthal conservative and are so able to hide your own hate, well of course at least until AGW or racism come up. Then; Fuck it-- it's time to pile on and show those polluter loving elitist wang suckers that we mean business.

Most people are not intrinsically ideological except that they are manipulated in these directions because of evil folk that make their living by stoking insecurities of their target audiences. (Well that and a split model of reality, but apparently that is a story for another day.) They try to make their victims feel special while the other is being knocked down. This manufactured tripe is playing leftists just as surely as David Duke Plays his targets.

Oh, but that's right, lefties are smarter than that, so that must not be the case here.

I'm sorry I can't follow your logic so perhaps you should clarify this for me. Are you saying that because I think many of our differences are largely manufactured--yes, even racism--that I am sublimating my hate for tea baggers? Or is it that I am encouraging disdain and disregard for them, many of whom are my friends and family?

I won't be shamed into hating my neighbors, even when they ARE evident racists. Maybe I should I have disowned my grandfather because he often said the 'N' word even though it was more of a conditioned reflex than an expression of his true feelings. Since he was too old to teach maybe I should have set him adrift on a raft in the Gulf of Mexico.

The people are not our enemies, it's the leaders who are driving them over a cliff and should be dealt with. I feel it is our duty to reach out and tell them it doesn't have to be this way, cut the leaders off where they really live, in the minds of people who are most susceptible to thought manipulation.

[Sounder]

Dear me, not you sunny.

I refer to folk that naively accept the article as a non contrived and objective observation of conservatives, rather than being the manufactured trigger tripe that it in fact is. Even if much of what it asserts is true, the design and context of the article is one that promotes divisiveness.

You know, sort of like articles that AD posts that points heaps of blame at some folk that are marginal players while ignoring the activities of some real hateful people that have an advantage of dressing up their rhetoric up in a fancy suit and tie and hand out Nobel prizes for peace or some such thing.

Like you I also consider that trading hate for hate seems like an odd way to do good.

[sunny]

Oh! so sorry I misread you Sounder.

But what I said still stands in general opposition to those who advocate making enemies of our neighbors. It's gone quite far enough as it is.

[Nordic]

Jack I think you're not seeing the trees for the forest here.

This article isn't about how the right wing control and militaristic forces are being consolidated into a state-run security apparatus or anything remotely about that rather broad picture, rather it is about one slice of our reality, on short, that a good many people do hate a good many other people.

Its nothing more than that.

And the entire unspoken message of the article is "you'd better hate these people right back because you're better than they are".

Do you not see that, or am I not understanding you?

There's no such thing as a true "false equivalancy" thing going on because the entire thing is manufactured. The article is propaganda, a type of agitprop.

Its way too easy to get sucked into that because, yes, a lot of people DO hate you and me and would gladly bash our heads in with clubs if they knew they could get away with it. But that's not the point, or rather it should be the point, that people who don't even know you have been so manipulated that they would be happy to kill you without even getting to know so much as your name.

And the article is urging us to feel the same way about them, and that's fucked up.

[Simulist]

It is fucked up. But what's just as fucked up are the many, many people who fall for this crap — every "election" cycle — like clockwork.

(And who don't even seem to notice that the same thing happened the last time!)

"Divide and conquer," indeed. Americans have already been conquered by team loyalty and their own towering gullibility.

[Searcher08]

Sorry but the OP is election year divide/conquer bullshit.

It's true to a point but so what? Its trying to push peoples' buttons and ratchet up the hate.

"They" write the exact same things about us. "They hate you because you go to church and believe in the word of God". You know. "Those liberals fucking hate you."

Its easy to fall for this stuff, and I've fallen for it myself, repeatedly, over the years.

Bullshit.

Especially the third paragraph, according to which I'm supposed to put "their" imagination on a par with reality. When did liberals ever call for the banning of churches, or make it illegal for Catholics and fundamentalists to marry?

The exercise of power, the physical abuse and state bias in each case is almost exclusively one-way: Against that perceived as left. Against that perceived as other. Against the have-nots.

I'm talking about the real state, not the stated ideals or the state as imagined by the right wing. Where do you see the billyclubs swinging, the tasers and tear-gas grenades firing, the LRAD trucks releasing sonic attacks, the stop-and-frisks en masse? Not at the Tea Party rally, even when they brandish automatic weapons. Not at the Chamber of Commerce. Not in rich white neighborhoods. Did you see what just happened to several hundred OWS occupations around the country? How can you sustain an equivalence argument after that?

And no, I'm not going to put hating some people because they ACT a certain way on the same plane as hating people because they ARE a certain way. The unconditional identity-based hate in this country has always come almost exclusively from people who identify politically to the right, and more from the top than the bottom.

Easy equivalence arguments are pernicious. Also a stock in trade of the right. They learned the lingo of revolution and tried to reverse every critique of them. The primary way they express their racism in discourse nowadays is to complain about "reverse racism."

.

Utter divisive shite, like the O.P.

Variations on a theme of "well they would say that, wouldn't they"

Since when did you learn to mind read?
How do you know what another persons imagination is capable of?
How many of these people (ie humans, who bleed red like you) have you actually TALKED with?
By talk I don't mean attempting to do a home run in the World Liberal Argumentation Series of 2012, I mean to listen to them?

What your saying lands with me as you hate nearly half of the US and have nothing to say to them except they are wrong. It's all reasons 'why not' why you shouldn't engage with them, how it will somehow contaminate you, that they are 'wrong' and you are 'right'.

If you want to see where 'liberal' IS, never mind is GOING, 11 out of 15 of the wealthiest members of the Congress and Senate are fucking Democrats!

Your concepts are EXACTLY the same thinking that the Tories had about the IRA - right down to the violence arguments of the UK government not setting off bombs in shopping centres and were not about to speak to people who did.

Eventually they talked.


People who don't get listened to will eventually escalate as far as necessary to be heard.
This isn't a process that gets stopped by others saying they are wrong and refusing to speak.

[justdrew]

I think a lot of you are imagining what you think the "unstated message" in the OP is.

There is no suggestion of meeting hate with hate. Rather, be vigilant, wary, organized and prepared. Do not 'misunderestimate' the opposition. The opposition isn't ultimately about being against "us" - "we" are just a scape-goat used to organize "them" in furtherance of standard Strategy of Tension protocols. A goal held dear overwhelmingly BY ONE political PARTY. Dissatisfaction with "our democracy" (and where it's been pushed, by monopolistic media forces overwhelmingly supporting ONE political party) must not lead to reasonable people failing to participate, or it's already over. This situation is dire, but it's not over yet.

---

there you go again... Of course calls to organize intensify before elections. Elections do matter, and the lesser evil is LESS EVIL. (any 'evil' is in part the result of making common cause across a broad spectrum of people, we don't have the luxury of getting exactly what we want. Maybe in time if things keep moving in the direction of lesser evil)

[justdrew]

what's more, "they" the rightwing patriot christian republican theocrats already divided themselves, and DEFINE themselves by their hated of "librulism" - and now you want to pretend any call for fucking self-defense is somehow equivalent hatred?

searcher08, are you saying that just being wealthy automatically makes them "bad" ? I think I see some knee-jerk 'hatred' there The deciding factor is what is done with it. And ANYWAY, of course there are some democrats who should be thrown out of the party, but it doesn't work that way in America.

[JackRiddler]

Since when did you learn to mind read?
How do you know what another persons imagination is capable of?
How many of these people (ie humans, who bleed red like you) have you actually TALKED with?
By talk I don't mean attempting to do a home run in the World Liberal Argumentation Series of 2012, I mean to listen to them?

Give me a break. My exposure to right-wing thinking has occurred daily and over a lifetime, including in my own family from childhood, and I've had ample occasion to listen and sometimes even to feel it myself. Maybe you're the one who hasn't TALKED with?

.

[JackRiddler]

I think a lot of you are imagining what you think the "unstated message" in the OP is.

There is no suggestion of meeting hate with hate. Rather, be vigilant, wary, organized and prepared. Do not 'misunderestimate' the opposition. The opposition isn't ultimately about being against "us" - "we" are just a scape-goat used to organize "them" in furtherance of standard Strategy of Tension protocols. A goal held dear overwhelmingly BY ONE political PARTY. Dissatisfaction with "our democracy" (and where it's been pushed, by monopolistic media forces overwhelmingly supporting ONE political party) must not lead to reasonable people failing to participate, or it's already over. This situation is dire, but it's not over yet.

---

there you go again... Of course calls to organize intensify before elections. Elections do matter, and the lesser evil is LESS EVIL. (any 'evil' is in part the result of making common cause across a broad spectrum of people, we don't have the luxury of getting exactly what we want. Maybe in time if things keep moving in the direction of lesser evil)

Pretty much. You'd think people would respond to the scam of two essentially right-wing corporate parties -- one of which radically pushes the program forward and the other of which consolidates the gains of the radicals -- by wanting to make room on the left, rather than giving the whole game away to the rightmost wing. The Republican Party must be consigned to history's ashcan. That's the only way you'll see room form for a genuine 3rd party in this country. I'll take the hypocrite-technocrat imperialists over the proud-yahoo ones, who would have started a full war on Iran by now. The latest NDAA is one of many consolidations of the Post-9/11 agenda. The OP posed the right question: Who do you think would stage the Reichstag Fire? Here's mine: Why do you think the media go to such lengths to prop up the Republicans? Why did the Bush mob go to such lengths to steal the 2000 election, if it was so meaningless? The problem with Obama is that he is the continuation of the Bush regime, but the Republican to follow (based on experience) is not going to be a continuation of Obama, but a whole new frontier of hurt.

.

[NeonLX]

The problem with Obama is that he is the continuation of the Bush regime, but the Republican to follow (based on experience) is not going to be a continuation of Obama, but a whole new frontier of hurt.

.

Oh boy. That rings rock-solid true. And it scares the whee out of me.

[Simulist]

The problem with Obama is that he is the continuation of the Bush regime, but the Republican to follow (based on experience) is not going to be a continuation of Obama, but a whole new frontier of hurt.

Well, that's the booga-booga the same-old-shit is going to go by this time.

So, you see, that's why it's SO IMPORTANT that you vote for Obama — again!

Uh huh.