Do you get this? Conservatives you know put you on their mailing list and send you out every ridiculous thing that comes along? Today I got, “Bernie Sanders, the Bum Who Wants Your Money” — by those bastions of elite thought, the editors at Investor’s Business Daily. It came with the headline, “MUST READ scoop on Bernie….” It’s not what you are probably thinking: an article about how his policies would result in more wealth redistribution. No. It’s an attack on Sanders’ character, talking about how he didn’t get a “steady paycheck” until he was 40 — and you know what that was: a government paycheck! (For the record: Sanders, like many people in the years after college, had many jobs; that’s what they mean by him not having a “steady paycheck.”)
But I’m not here to respond to the article. It is idiotic — that why I’m not even linking to it. But I got the link from someone I’m in business with — a once hippy, now Tea Party Republican who is addicted to hate radio. She is convinced (despite the fact that he has less than a year left in office) that Obama is going to start a race war. Blah, blah, blah. As I’ve said many times: I don’t mind if you disagree with me, but please don’t bore me to death by repeating the same talking points I hear everywhere.
It’s particularly bad because we have a professional relationship. She sends the email out through her business website address. It’s the same address she sends out announcements about conferences and other business related material. And given her business, I assume most of the people on the list are liberal like me. She certainly knows that I’m at least a liberal. Yet I constantly get my mail box filled with this kind of garbage — much of it conspiracy oriented.
Conservatives Are Attacking!
This is not the only such person in my life. It’s always the same: it’s always conservatives. I don’t have liberals constantly forwarding stuff to me. And you would think I would! After all, I write about it. But these conservatives are not sending stuff out to me; they are sending it out to everyone they know! That’s the main thing: liberals don’t seem to be in the habit of creating mailing lists and then thinking that their divisive opinions are something all the world needs to know about.
I think it shows the distinct immaturity of the conservative mind. I’ve especially run into this with libertarians, who believe that if I just read this one thing and had this one thought experiment, I would be a convert! What these people find, usually very starkly, is that I’ve thought about the issue in much greater depth than they have. Conservatives make the mistake of thinking that liberalism has no intellectual basis because most liberals aren’t intellectuals. That is, in fact, true. Most liberals I know have not thought through liberal policy very deeply. However, as Matt Bruenig has pointed out, just because most liberals are mistaken about why the minimum wage is a good idea, does not mean they are wrong about the fact that it is a good idea.
I believe the reason there are so many conservatives around forwarding all of this nonsense is because of hate radio and the related conservative infrastructure. People listen to Rush Limbaugh and think that they are getting educated. I’ve seen this especially with Fox News viewers who are convinced that since they watch a lot of political “news,” they are informed. This is like someone in Moscow in 1970 who read Pravda every day and thought they were well informed.
Interestingly enough, the word “pravda” (“Правда”) means “true” or “the truth.” And that is what the conservative media echo chamber has brought us: a bunch of propagandized ignoramuses who are certain that they know The Truth™. And so I get placed on email lists with links to really vile things rather than actually cool things like Henri: the Existential Cat.
And this is why I don’t do Facebook.
Last year, I got an e-mail from people I knew 35 years ago. As a kid, I played superheroes with their kid. We talked about which superpowers were best and why girls were gross. That’s the extent of my friendship. It ended before I was 10.
So the dad of this family became a Portland police cop. And got fired in one day. No joke, one day. His first day as a cop, he’s faced with a guy waving a plastic Taco Bell spork. Half-spoon, half-fork. He shoots the guy. That’s the end of his police career (if he’d been more of a veteran, and the spork-waver had been less white, things would be different.) One day as a cop. Lots of training, one day as a cop.
As said, I got an e-mail from these people last year. “Police Lives Matter.” WTF? How am I on their e-mail list? Why on Earth are they contacting me? Why is the guy who spent one day as a cop getting behind the “cops are threatened” mantra?
The Internet is truly bizarre.
Good story. What I don’t understand about the “blue lives matter” pseudo-movement is who ever said that the lives of police didn’t matter. As far as I can tell, we hold them up in much higher esteem than they deserve. What these people are really saying is that blue lives matter more. That if a woman waves a vegetable peeler at an officer, the infinitesimal risk to his life trumps her life.
Too many Americans are authoritarians. How we’ve managed not to turn total fascist by now I cannot say.
“It Can’t Happen Here” ;)
More like Trump, I’m afraid. I just don’t see Sanders leading his own secret police.
But it does give me an excuse to offer up this wonderful bit of Mothers madness:
Zappa quote, “Help, I’m a cop.” Thought you would cite that song instead. Wink.
I wasn’t just embedding any video. But since you mention it:
When I was reading that book I thought “no, it can’t because that was too fast too soon.”
It could happen if there was a much longer timeline on it-say about fifty to a hundred years. And it depends on Americans stop being rugged individualists at their core or at least anti-government at our core. I always remember being unable to answer the question of why hospitals shouldn’t be owned and operated by the government. I realised later it was because I have that same problem other Americans have, there is only so much the government should be allowed to do.
Those vegetable peelers can really hurt your fingers if you peel too fast.
We’re not fascist, I’m guessing, because traditional fascism included help for the poor. You can’t do that now. Everyone knows what “the poor” means.
When anybody in America says, “I hate government,” what they’re really saying is “my taxes subsidize shiftless Negroes.” Their taxes don’t hardly help any Black people — they subsidize defense contractors — but nobody knows this.
Since the entire GOP is built on race hate, how can a fascist movement that promises benefits to poor people exist?
Yeah, my understanding has been that Joseph Goebbels was mostly attracted to Nazism because of its socialism. This caused problems as the party became more and more aligned with industry. And it led to his having less power. But true believer that he was, he killed himself for the purity of the party. I’ve always found him a particularly fascinating Nazi. Most of the others were just thugs. I’m not saying that he wasn’t vile, but I can at least understand his evolution.
If the GOP were just based on race hatred, it wouldn’t be a problem. The issue is that the actual party insiders don’t care about race. It’s just a tactic to get power for what they do care about: more money for the rich and powerful. That’s what makes it such a bizarre party. Just the same, they keep it up, and the elites will be only the thugs that the Nazi hierarchy was. You know, the ones who later claimed they were just following orders.
Excerpt of actual email sent me by conservative neighbor on SSI for 20 years: “hey man i see you have an obama sticker on your car that’s appropriate for you considering he wants to redistribute money from the rich and give it to the poor. not to mention the high rise of people getting food stamps and welfare. do you even vote? iv’e never seen you at the polls, but the big question is after all these years youv’e had your hand out to the goverment will you ever give something back to society? it’s a good feeling when you get your paycheck but then you see the taxes you have paid which alot will go to welfare programs food stamps and such. just a thought! Rick”
Unbelievable. And it’s what a vast number of Americans think to be true.
There’s an amazing moment in the documentary “Inequality For All,” featuring Robert Reich. Reich is trying to convince workers at an energy plant to unionize. And one responds, it’s immoral to increase our wages. The owners went to college, I didn’t, I have no right to take their money. They deserve it.
How can we answer a right-wing movement that has such self-hatred ensconced in it?
I should point out that Will is one of the most entrepreneurial people I know, who literally started his IT company by dragging computers out of dumpsters and repairing them.
The Grumpy Cat memes write themselves actually:
“I had a steady paycheck once. It was awful.”
That’s interesting, now that I think about it. In Sanders’ early days, he was more like the rugged individualist that Republicans all flatter themselves as being. But what they really honor is having a cushy job in the corner office.
You are correct-the only reason they like someone like Bundy is because he is a rich rancher, not because he is a rancher in the fabled west.
Oh yeah! All that mythology is just garbage. But if you look at the first ever “western” novel, it was basically a modernized story of the greatness of royalty. No, conservatives like “rich” because it is a hierarchy and they are authoritarians.
I’m no cat person; don’t get me wrong. But I dig Henri. Thanks.
Those videos show how just one good idea can trump all else. Great production is something people do in lieu of brilliance.