Re: Tea Party Racism
The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed. -- Adolf Hitler This is happening all the time; this approach is not a privilege of right-wing politicians. Of course we don't have a single dictator nowadays, we have quite a variety of lobbyists with a major influence on politics (the Fifth Estate). Has anyone noticed yet that the anti-terror laws issued after 9/11 are most beneficial primarily for the music and movie industry? Luckily, for most U.S. citizens freedom boils simply down to the right to carry and fire a gun. No need to worry about other aspects of freedom! Best regards, Klaus ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Tea Party Racism
Bruce Bostwick wrote: So this is a complex question, because while the Tea Party does technically have a leadership of sorts, it's a weak one, and there's a lot of leaderless-cell activity underneath the surface that's not at all like the public face of the party. And I'm not sure whether that's a feature of the design, or an emergent property of its population and the methods they use to communicate. I'm leaning toward the latter, although the leadership certainly doesn't seem to be too serious about doing anything other than enabling it and diverting outside attention away from what's going on. Bottom line: you don't think it's Intelligent Design, you think it's Natural Selection. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Tea Party Racism
On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 9:58 AM, zwil...@zwilnik.com zwil...@zwilnik.comwrote: Don't overlook what is called dog whistle political statements. This names comes from the well-known phenomenon that a highly-pitched whistle will be heard by dogs, but not by people. And in polictics there is a similar phenomenon whereby you can say something that cannot explicitly be criticized when you you say it, but the people who are supposed to hear it will understand what you really mean. In other words, passive aggressive. Nick ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Tea Party Racism
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 4:45 AM, Alberto Monteiro albm...@centroin.com.brwrote: Bottom line: you don't think it's Intelligent Design, you think it's Natural Selection. Too funny! Because it's true, I think. Politics red in tooth and claw. Or truth and clues. Or something. Nick ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Tea Party Racism
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 5:00 AM, Bruce Bostwick lihan161...@sbcglobal.net wrote: On Jul 26, 2010, at 11:58 AM, zwil...@zwilnik.com wrote: snip Don't overlook what is called dog whistle political statements. This names comes from the well-known phenomenon that a highly- pitched whistle will be heard by dogs, but not by people. And in polictics there is a similar phenomenon whereby you can say something that cannot explicitly be criticized when you you say it, but the people who are supposed to hear it will understand what you really mean. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics One important thing to note related to covertly targeted communication is that the right wing in general is not in the habit of making broadcast public statements all that frequently to the general public, for various reasons, not the least of which is that they tend not to be well prepared for or tolerant of the inevitable criticism from more moderate or progressive-minded audiences. The far more common practice in the right-wing community is to communicate through viral chain emails, which can usually be counted on to travel only to sympthetic readers and whose targeting leverages interpersonal relationships as a filter to keep the communication from reaching people inclined to question the content. This bears some serious consideration. The Tea Party leadersip doesn't seem to be authoring a lot of the viral content, but the rank and file membership use that back channel almost exclusively, and given that the people in those channels tend to be a vector for both Tea Party and neopentecostal theocratic agitprop, among many other (and sometimes many much, much nastier) subjects, there's no small amount of cross-pollination and conflation. I have at least two ore three separate taps into that vector, thanks to certain oddities about my family relationships and my political leanings, and I can say confidently that about 90% or more of what the Tea Party rank and file are saying isn't making the news because it's targeted tightly enough that the media don't see it. And it's being mixed with a lot of theocratic and Christian- nationalist messages, and various flavors of racist and/or white supremacist content as well, and because it's largely viral, it's nearly impossible to trace to a given origin, or stop in any meaningful fashion. And I'm only getting a tiny fraction of the full stream of it, and I get a lot. So this is a complex question, because while the Tea Party does technically have a leadership of sorts, it's a weak one, and there's a lot of leaderless-cell activity underneath the surface that's not at all like the public face of the party. And I'm not sure whether that's a feature of the design, or an emergent property Emergent property. Email is taking the place of beer halls. Fascinating. of its population and the methods they use to communicate. I'm leaning toward the latter, although the leadership certainly doesn't seem to be too serious about doing anything other than enabling it and diverting outside attention away from what's going on. From an evolutionary psychology viewpoint what is driving the expansions of these as yet poorly focused xenophobic memes is the relatively bleak outlook for a substantial part of what used to be the US middle class. The outlook isn't bad in absolute terms, but humans are sensitive to relative changes. In the long run, the xenophobia may focus or the whole movement could fizzle out if and when economics improves or something else distracts attention. Or if we were really unlucky, it could develop into a social spasm of the Cambodia/Rwanda type. Or it might be focused outward as support for a war. For a theory model on where these psychological mechanisms come from Google for evolutionary psychology, memes and the origin of war. Keith ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Tea Party Racism
On Jul 27, 2010, at 2:42 AM, wp49284-ks wrote: Luckily, for most U.S. citizens freedom boils simply down to the right to carry and fire a gun. No need to worry about other aspects of freedom! As long as you want a country that aspires merely to imitate the animal world, as Nick notes: Politics red in tooth and claw. Or truth and clues. Or something. There is a meme, beloved by Tea Partiers, that only the possession of a gun ensures your freedom. I believe that a billion people in India found their way to freedom from Great Britain without resorting to such brutality. Dave ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Tea Party Racism
On July 25, 2010 at 7:57 PM Bruce Bostwick lihan161...@sbcglobal.net wrote: On Jul 25, 2010, at 1:06 PM, Doug Pensinger wrote: Is the Tea Party fundamentally racist? Or is it just coincidental that it formed as a black man was taking office? For years, Republicans were in office busting the budget and passing bills like Medicare D which was completely unfunded and will cost us something like $72 B a year. Where was the outrage then? Doug I wouldn't say it was fundamentally racist as a matter of actual policy, or at least not overtly stated policy. Most of the time, they carefully avoid using racist language or imagery in their public statements. Most of the time. Don't overlook what is called dog whistle political statements. This names comes from the well-known phenomenon that a highly-pitched whistle will be heard by dogs, but not by people. And in polictics there is a similar phenomenon whereby you can say something that cannot explicitly be criticized when you you say it, but the people who are supposed to hear it will understand what you really mean. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics -- Kevin B. O'Brien zwil...@zwilnik.com A damsel with a dulcimer in a vision once I saw...___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Tea Party Racism
On Jul 26, 2010, at 11:58 AM, zwil...@zwilnik.com wrote: On July 25, 2010 at 7:57 PM Bruce Bostwick lihan161...@sbcglobal.net wrote: On Jul 25, 2010, at 1:06 PM, Doug Pensinger wrote: Is the Tea Party fundamentally racist? Or is it just coincidental that it formed as a black man was taking office? For years, Republicans were in office busting the budget and passing bills like Medicare D which was completely unfunded and will cost us something like $72 B a year. Where was the outrage then? Doug I wouldn't say it was fundamentally racist as a matter of actual policy, or at least not overtly stated policy. Most of the time, they carefully avoid using racist language or imagery in their public statements. Most of the time. Don't overlook what is called dog whistle political statements. This names comes from the well-known phenomenon that a highly- pitched whistle will be heard by dogs, but not by people. And in polictics there is a similar phenomenon whereby you can say something that cannot explicitly be criticized when you you say it, but the people who are supposed to hear it will understand what you really mean. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics I'm not overlooking it, hence my qualifying statement about overtly stated policy. Covert communication is an entirely different matter. There is almost certainly some degree of dog-whistle codespeak in what comes out of the Tea Party. It's clear that they're occasionally (or even often) using specific wording that's somewhat unusual for what they appear to be saying at face value, and in my experience that's a sign that the words they're using are intended to mean something very different than what most people understand them to mean. So I wouldn't rule that out, at all. (And I'd love to get my hands on a fairly complete codebook., and would love even more to see live real- time de-obfuscated transcripts of such statements.) You wanna tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing? -- Toby Ziegler ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Tea Party Racism
On Jul 26, 2010, at 11:58 AM, zwil...@zwilnik.com wrote: On July 25, 2010 at 7:57 PM Bruce Bostwick lihan161...@sbcglobal.net wrote: On Jul 25, 2010, at 1:06 PM, Doug Pensinger wrote: Is the Tea Party fundamentally racist? Or is it just coincidental that it formed as a black man was taking office? For years, Republicans were in office busting the budget and passing bills like Medicare D which was completely unfunded and will cost us something like $72 B a year. Where was the outrage then? Doug I wouldn't say it was fundamentally racist as a matter of actual policy, or at least not overtly stated policy. Most of the time, they carefully avoid using racist language or imagery in their public statements. Most of the time. Don't overlook what is called dog whistle political statements. This names comes from the well-known phenomenon that a highly- pitched whistle will be heard by dogs, but not by people. And in polictics there is a similar phenomenon whereby you can say something that cannot explicitly be criticized when you you say it, but the people who are supposed to hear it will understand what you really mean. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics One important thing to note related to covertly targeted communication is that the right wing in general is not in the habit of making broadcast public statements all that frequently to the general public, for various reasons, not the least of which is that they tend not to be well prepared for or tolerant of the inevitable criticism from more moderate or progressive-minded audiences. The far more common practice in the right-wing community is to communicate through viral chain emails, which can usually be counted on to travel only to sympthetic readers and whose targeting leverages interpersonal relationships as a filter to keep the communication from reaching people inclined to question the content. This bears some serious consideration. The Tea Party leadersip doesn't seem to be authoring a lot of the viral content, but the rank and file membership use that back channel almost exclusively, and given that the people in those channels tend to be a vector for both Tea Party and neopentecostal theocratic agitprop, among many other (and sometimes many much, much nastier) subjects, there's no small amount of cross-pollination and conflation. I have at least two ore three separate taps into that vector, thanks to certain oddities about my family relationships and my political leanings, and I can say confidently that about 90% or more of what the Tea Party rank and file are saying isn't making the news because it's targeted tightly enough that the media don't see it. And it's being mixed with a lot of theocratic and Christian- nationalist messages, and various flavors of racist and/or white supremacist content as well, and because it's largely viral, it's nearly impossible to trace to a given origin, or stop in any meaningful fashion. And I'm only getting a tiny fraction of the full stream of it, and I get a lot. So this is a complex question, because while the Tea Party does technically have a leadership of sorts, it's a weak one, and there's a lot of leaderless-cell activity underneath the surface that's not at all like the public face of the party. And I'm not sure whether that's a feature of the design, or an emergent property of its population and the methods they use to communicate. I'm leaning toward the latter, although the leadership certainly doesn't seem to be too serious about doing anything other than enabling it and diverting outside attention away from what's going on. The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed. -- Adolf Hitler ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Tea Party Racism
Is the Tea Party fundamentally racist? Or is it just coincidental that it formed as a black man was taking office? For years, Republicans were in office busting the budget and passing bills like Medicare D which was completely unfunded and will cost us something like $72 B a year. Where was the outrage then? Doug ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Tea Party Racism
On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 11:06 AM, Doug Pensinger brig...@zo.com wrote: Is the Tea Party fundamentally racist? Or is it just coincidental that it formed as a black man was taking office? I think you will find haters in just about any large group of people. Groups that have been around a while and have ways of filtering out the shriller voices (or at least muting them), while newer groups like the Tea Party seem to lack those filters. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Tea Party Racism
On Jul 25, 2010, at 1:06 PM, Doug Pensinger wrote: Is the Tea Party fundamentally racist? Or is it just coincidental that it formed as a black man was taking office? For years, Republicans were in office busting the budget and passing bills like Medicare D which was completely unfunded and will cost us something like $72 B a year. Where was the outrage then? Doug I wouldn't say it was fundamentally racist as a matter of actual policy, or at least not overtly stated policy. Most of the time, they carefully avoid using racist language or imagery in their public statements. Most of the time. But the party also seems to leave very carefully parsed loopholes in their public statements, in general, that one could figuratively drive a Mack truck through, in terms of allowing, and one might say even enabling, racist ideology and behavior among their rank and file membership, and it's an absolute certainty to me that the party has some very racist followers, *and* that the party seems to do little if anything to discourage those followers from overtly racist behavior. And the thing that makes this a really hard question is that if you were to ask any of those hardcore racist folks in the Tea Party whether the party stands for what they believe in, the majority would probably enthusiastically say yes. And might even specifically extend that to support for their racist beliefs and ideology. It depends on who you ask, and some of the answers you might get from the leadership would be rather interestingly uninformative if past behavior is any guide. The best I'd be able to say overall is that they are very good at claiming they aren't what they seem in practice to be. Sort of like the Nigerian scam emails that start off with This is not spam .. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. -- Thomas Jefferson ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
