The fact of the matter is, the GOP/Far Right always accuse us of doing something they are about to do. This has multiple effects, such as neutralizing our opposition on a national scale when we complain about their actions and signaling to their followers what to do next. They may change some details, like saying China interfered in the election instead of Russia, when the latter is too revealing. But this has been in their playbook for ages, and always puts us on the defensive in the minds of their own people. But it is not our fault. We always blame ourselves for not neutralizing them, instead of putting the blame where it belongs: on them.
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Useful. Thanks much.
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Stupidity needs to be called out. Shamed. Humiliated. Crushed. It can’t be coddled. Your ignorant opinion on epidemiology is not of equal value to Dr. Fauci, even if you’ve got a million Youtube subscribers.
That would be the lesson.
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Federal agents arrested and charged three North Carolina men with conspiracy after they stockpiled weaponry to combat what they somehow stupidly imagined was an impending military takeover.
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I remember Alex Jones on regular TV, claiming he’d heard the sound of looters to try and drive the public crazy over Y2K.
The more human truth is that isolation makes people fearful, and charismatic sociopaths have a main line into that population through the internet, church-financed AM radio, and the rest.
Nothing a few years of being a New Yorker wouldn’t fix. Or, you know, them actually having met a so-called liberal and finding out they too like: baseball, golf, ponies, weed, Brahms, who the fuck knows.
We live in an America where the media is allowed to shout FIRE all day long. That has to change. That should never have been allowed.
We might need to see the ignorant and violent result to know it in our hearts. There is no benefit of the doubt anymore.
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There’s nothing we the jaded newsreading public were to have done differently. But, we the people, through our government, should have done more. This is justified Biden-shaming; the Obama administration in his footsteps he’s to follow did nothing and let the Russians escalate.
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Damn, you’re even more paranoid than I am. And paranoia may be the right response, this is Trump we’re talking about. I thought Trump would indict Biden or at least (after Tena pointed out that they’d need a grand jury for that) have DOJ file a criminal complaint against him. That would only require Barr to be corrupt, for which we had ample evidence.
Your scenario requires the military to obey a bigly illegal order. I’m skeptical. Instead, what I worry about is him giving the military a not quite so illegal military order, such as nuking Tehran. I worry, too, how much he can compromise our national defenses. My only consolation is that the top brass does not seem to be favorably disposed toward Trump, and I hope they are planning for scenarios like these.
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I remember thinking that since Republicans are masters of projection, we would eventually see a threat from a Republican President that mirrored the invented threat they laid onto Barack Obama. It’s the Republican two-step.
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It’s not paranoia if they are out to get you.
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“after they got caught”. It was public knowledge ahead of time. You were paranoid then and are paranoid now.
That’s a rather broad brush, but I do appreciate the general idea.
I think Trump got a fair number of ideas from liberals, who helped him work out details for his kooky ideas.
Example. Donald announces he isn’t leaving office. Suddenly, media is flooded with pundits fleshing out how exactly one could do it. I’d bet real money that boy genius had no idea about herd immunity until a pundit mentioned it.
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Right Wing media was originally bought and paid for, but has now developed into an out and out business model for hundreds of thousands of Americans. There is money in shouting FIRE.
When it pays to call for a revolution, when it pays to destroy democracy, then ‘a rather broad brush’ is naivete at best, and sophistry at worst.
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But they didn’t “start the fire”*, the MSM did …
*with apologies to Billy Joel.
Hear, hear!
My 20 year-old son is a stereotypical young, male denizen of the YouTube/InstaSnapFace/blogosphere and has been (and still may be) absolutely convinced the Dems are coming for the gunz. Over the past several years my wife and I have alternately explained, mocked, shown exasperation about, ignored, and discussed the extreme unlikelihood of this ever happening. Still, he persists.
It is virtually impossible to screen the willfully-produced misinformation out of the infotainment that our society spews into the ether. We have seen him move away from conspiracy and toward reality, but the nature and ubiquity of “anyone can say anything” to our credulous children (parents, grandparents, congresscritters) dooms us to this crap for the foreseeable future.
To paraphrase Kathy Bates, “Social media is de devil!”
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It is a bit disingenuous to act like disinformation, propaganda, mendacious advertising of bogus information and so on are something new. They have certainly been part of the landscape for a long time. In the US these practices are the ugly step sisters of the 1st amendment. Certainly the, if I can be forgiven an oxymoron, “real” fake news purveyors lawyers will hasten to seek the shade of this enlightenment induced appeal to sweet reason if their “rights” are questioned. But it seems to me that the best way to avoid being sucked into these specious arguments about “free speech” is to focus on the damages caused by fake news and disinformation. The recent volte face of the fake news outfits who I shall not name faced with legal measures centering on the damages done is a case in point. I have to say that the picture of Alex Jones which graced the top of the article is almost triggering to me and certainly must be for all the families this vile man has damaged. The fact that this man can now be busy plotting to end democracy is a bit like saying that the thug who mugged your grandmother has the right to walk the streets because freedom. The weaponization and monetization of disinformation in the modern era is to be laid at the feet of the self styled “libertarians” and the really rather ineffectual, if they appear at all, arguments that are ever made in opposition to their utterly self interested and superficial bleating about “liberty” and so on. What they actually want is to make the world safe for sociopaths and rather than be sucked into self defeating arguments with respect to nebulous concepts perhaps we should hold them accountable for the damage they do and introduce those measures into law which will hasten the day when a thug like Jones is either in jail or so poor he can’t say boo to a goose.
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Before social media, I think part of what helped defuse the Bullshit Brigade was the telephone game effect - but the time it hit the third tier of people it was mutated enough that it was hard to sync it up with the original disseminators.
Now, the meme about Joe Biden being a creepy perv (along with attached photo) is literally exactly the same in Grandma’s inbox as it was when it was created on Alex Jones’s semen-spattered keyboard.
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What the…?
You don’t know about the Fairness Doctrine, eh? Ignorant, then.
I guess I should have known. Your cogent thoughts and all that.