Right America Feeling Wronged

[Jenne]

Rata, you described my mom to a T.  My dad's less of a Bible Thumper, but damn he can put it on when it suits.

Strangely enough, they grew up in So Cal.  But my mom's Southern roots go down deep.  Even stranger, her folks are Dixiecrats and Reagan Republicans.  So they have a more rounded-out view of politics at times...less mouth-frothing than Rush Limbaugh and Michael Medved(sp?) seems to evoke in their listeners.

35% seems a low average to me, personally.  But then I also have relatives who are hardcore Clintonites who also campaigned for him in Paducah, KY.  I think you have both sets on the wheel at all times, it's the moderates with no show-voice who are drowned out by the echoes of the insane on the Right and in the insane on the Left.

[Cain]

The moderates have almost all jumped ship.

And to be honest, I wouldn't blame them, since the religious right, the wartards, torture enthusiasts et al are the biggest bunch of fucking crybabies in existence.  As this video shows.  Oh, save me from teh muslims, teh socialists, teh gheys, teh atheists, etc etc  How do people live in such abject fear of imaginary enemies? 

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

The moderates have almost all jumped ship.

And to be honest, I wouldn't blame them, since the religious right, the wartards, torture enthusiasts et al are the biggest bunch of fucking crybabies in existence.  As this video shows.  Oh, save me from teh muslims, teh socialists, teh gheys, teh atheists, etc etc  How do people live in such abject fear of imaginary enemies? 

Its the only way to keep them in line, Cain... you know that

[Cramulus]

I'd like to blame it on the media, which is certainly fanning the "two americas" flames.

But I think this is the inevitable outcome of any two party system.

If we were making a choice about whether to eat mushroom or pepperoni pizza every 4 years for three centuries, the pepperoni eaters would think the mushroom eaters were total hillbillies. What they're making a choice about is almost arbitrary. In a two party system it's "us" and "them". Then there are layers and layers of branding and identity politics. Then nobody recognizes each other anymore.

[Jenne]

Well, except it's not that arbitrary according to the history of both movements.  There's a lovely agenda on both sides that's been worked over by the powers-that-be.  Manipulating small government politics to shape the larger government issues.  So the truth to the rumor and innuendo is always there, lurking in the shadows.

Plus, someone SAYING they believe these things makes it true to them, no matter how much education and response they get to the contrary.  That's the truly scary thing about it, really.  What scares me, anyway.

[Cain]

I'd like to blame it on the media, which is certainly fanning the "two americas" flames.

But I think this is the inevitable outcome of any two party system.

If we were making a choice about whether to eat mushroom or pepperoni pizza every 4 years for three centuries, the pepperoni eaters would think the mushroom eaters were total hillbillies. What they're making a choice about is almost arbitrary. In a two party system it's "us" and "them". Then there are layers and layers of branding and identity politics. Then nobody recognizes each other anymore.

Britain is a two-party system though, and its not this bad here.  Nowhere near.

[That One Guy]

How do people live in such abject fear of imaginary enemies? 

Conditioning, via two fronts. First, their world-view is reinforced as being divinely ordained (and is the only "authorized" way to avoid the fear) through religious and social structures (isolation from other opinions being the prime factor in bulwarking this reinforcement), and second being conditioned that anything that doesn't comply with or support that reinforced world-view is de facto directly threatening that world-view (via internet/radio/social contacts using fear as the primary rallying point).

It doesn't matter if the individuals are actually threatened or not - they've been conditioned to fear that which they are told to fear, and look for solutions to that fear solely from those avenues that tell them what to fear, and to ignore (even in the face of blatant hypocrisies) any position, opinion or evidence that disagrees with what they are told they should fear.  It's a feedback loop and concentrates a LOT of power into the leaders from their constituents.

This shift to using peoples' fear as a tool of political control came to the fore in the 60s with the race riots. The GOP switched from a fiscally conservative force to a socially conservative force (see Nixon and Reagan) and showed just how effective the use of social issues was to rally the base around non-social agendas, and in the subsequent years the techniques to reinforce this system have only been improved (see Karl Rove, Limbaugh and Cheney). The Dems vacilate between following the GOP's lead (which never works as they don't have the solid core of religious right to reliably follow the party line homogenously - the Dem base is too ideologically varied to lock-step in sufficient numbers like the GOP can motivate the hard-right) and ignoring it (which only tends to work in times of economic stress when social issues take a back seat to economic ones in the national climate).

Cram's mention of the two-party system as escalating factor is definitely true - the worst situation historically for either GOP or Dems has been viable 3rd-party candidates such as Wallace  or Perot, as it undermines the ability of either side's ideologues to dominate the public debate by introducing options outside the control of the feedback loops put in place to reinforce the "us vs. them" atmosphere most conducive to control by either the GOP or Dems.

Britain is a two-party system though, and its not this bad here.  Nowhere near.

True to an extent - while the UK has two dominant parties, the other parties are at least seen as potentially viable - as horrible as, say, the BNP is, they're treated as a legitemate faction in the UK - in the US they'd be (and already really are) subsumed in the GOP and not be allowed to exist outside of the GOP infrastructure and control systems. The two-party system has been taken to an extreme in the US compared to any other country I can think of, mostly for the purposes of maintaining power in the hands of the two parties.

For example, look at the Green party in the US in 2000. Nader was used as a scapegoat by BOTH parties as to why Gore lost Florida, conveniently avoiding all of the ballot mess and other legal and social factors that gave the state (and the election) to Bush. Even the remote specter of a 3rd party altering the outcome away from either the GOP or Dems was enough to make both parties offer the Green party as a political scapegoat to the underlying causes, since the potential of a strong 3rd party causes too many problems for both the GOP and the Dems.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I think its a identity issue overall. I really dig RAW's model of psychology where humans are tribal in nature. That our tribes are called 'Dem' and "GOP' instead of Ichiguwanla Tribe and Tribe of the Moon Lake makes little difference. Our society has no cohesive set of rituals, no inclusive part of 'joining the tribe'. Indeed, the main purpose of the tribe (bio-survival according to Bob), has been replaced by bio-survival tickets, aka money.

In some countries, perhaps there is a history or a identity that still draws people together... here in the US, we're a nation of tribes that came from all over... and no one bothered to come up with a way for them to all identify together. So instead of identifying first as part of the American Tribe, they identify as the Dem or GOP or Libertarian or Catholic or Atheist etc first and (as shown in the video) THINK that is the American Tribe and everything else is horse shit.

[Cainad (dec.)]

I just watched this. Now I want to go cry.

[Doktor Howl]

So, so much horrormirth. And I'm also kind of amused that the guy with the flag on his truck is disrespecting the flag. You're not supposed to let the end get frayed like that.

I live with people like this. My parents aren't really the flag waving type, or so extreme/extra extra crazy, really, but most of this was and is their views. They claim to be kidding when they talk about baseball bats and homosexuals, and the evils of all middle easterners, but they're really not. I have Middle Eastern friends and my parents were initially displeased, especially about my Persian friend.

Also, I love that these people are the same demographic as my customers who buy Grand Theft Auto. And can I shoot the guy around 29:00 and then everybody after that except the guy around 38:00? They has the dumb and they has it bad.
Ugh, Roger is right - America deserves everything it gets.

And nobody ever listens.