Re: Tea Party Racism

[Dave Land]

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


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Re: Tea Party Racism

[Keith Henson]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 5:00 AM,  Bruce Bostwick
 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

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Re: Tea Party Racism

[Nick Arnett]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 4:45 AM, Alberto Monteiro
wrote:

>
> 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
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Re: Tea Party Racism

[Nick Arnett]

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 9:58 AM, zwil...@zwilnik.com wrote:

>
> 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
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Brin: Article: Are Jedi Knights Libertarian or Socialist?

[Nick Arnett]

Article from the Atlantic -
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/features/view/feature/Are-Jedi-Knights-Libertarian-or-Socialist-1668

This
came up when the Canadian government announced that the upcoming census
would be optional, noting that 21,000 respondents identified their
occupation as "Jedi Knight."  Further research revealed that there are even
greater numbers of Jedis in England/Wales and Australia.  The highest
percentage was in New Zealand.

Nick
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Re: Tea Party Racism

[Alberto Monteiro]

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




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Re: Tea Party Racism

[wp49284-ks]

> "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



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