Swearing In of Biden/Harris
- Thread starter HuckFinn
- Start date
Luftgekuehlt67
Well-Known Member
Crowds will be down, security will be up, I think it will be ok.
Besides, making themselves inconspicuous is kind of the opposite of what Vanilla ISIS tends to do anyway, so it's not like they will be particularly hard to thwart if they do get up to something.
Besides, making themselves inconspicuous is kind of the opposite of what Vanilla ISIS tends to do anyway, so it's not like they will be particularly hard to thwart if they do get up to something.
Northside Hawk
Well-Known Member
Its possible. You are old enough to remember 1968. While I was a toddler then this feels like a lot of the same elements. Only difference is we didn't have social media then.
Northside Hawk
Well-Known Member
I think ISIS style attacks on our own soil committed by our own citizens are legitimate threats. Hell, look at how many times police officers go overboard. If unstable people see officers of the law doing it....?
That brings up an interesting point concerning forum posters. People frequently reveal their general field of work in their posts. We have teachers, medical employees, financial planners, school administrators.
Has any poster ever come on here and said they worked in law enforcement?
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kicker22
Well-Known Member
I'm just amazed most of us have jobs lol let alone lives.
Scott Leclair
Well-Known Member
Turn off the news and social media and i guarantee your won’t have any fear as you won’t be seeing or reading the medias fear mongering.
HuckFinn
Well-Known Member
Thanks. However, I have a brain and a conscience so I will stay alert and active in the political world. In the meantime, you can take the easy way out and simply blame the media. Common escape clause these days.
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
Have you ever read a book called Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky? I presume not since you were "terrified of violence," but I highly recommend it. Chomsky is hardcore left wing and outlines something called "The Propaganda Model" in that book. He has refined it over time, but his "fifth filter" is fear, namely that media seeks to create fear. You, unfortunately, have likely been brainwashed so you can't understand how this operates, so let me give you an example from Trump in the hopes that you can see what I mean. Trump and his allies played on significant fear of Biden and the "radical Democrats" enacting "socialism" or "communism" (which coincidentally were the original fear driver's in Chomsky's model but have been replaced by "terror"). I like Trump, but these fears are wholly unfounded and are classical propaganda, but millions of people believe them, even reasonably smart people. Biden isn't a communist, the guy is bought and paid for by huge business interests. If he was actually a communist the media and huge companies would have undertaken a massive smear campaign of him well before the primaries so he wouldn't have even bothered running. The elites have a way of weeding out actual communists because the last thing they want is their property confiscated.
Anyway, buddy, I think you're retired. See if your library has that book. Again, it's by Chomsky, who is a massive left wing guy (but an actual left winger and not one of the corporatist left wingers who yells at controlled opposition mouthpieces in carefully controlled 8 minute pieces for TV audiences). The two wings of corporate run propaganda have attempted to cause the competing groups of right and left in this country to be absolutely terrified of each other and it is disgusting.
Anyone want to take bets on if HuckFinn blocks me after this post?
HuckFinn
Well-Known Member
I certainly would not block you due to this post. I have consistently blocked posters who make repeated personal attacks on others, or trolls who threaten to bore me to death. I only have one block at this time.
I am on the library board where I live so I am sure I can access the book you reference. However, I will say that nearly every book I have read in recent years has been fiction, simply because I find novels and poetry to be more honest than the non-fiction junk that now dominates the shelves.
As to my familiarity with propaganda, I actually taught a course on that topic in the past. Your problem with zeroing in on the media and fear is that
strategy typically follows authoritarian leaderships when they effectively control the media. Other than Fox, Trump, for example, failed in that attempt. He primarily focus on “us vs them” as a strategy. “Them” has been defined by Donny and his minions as people of color, immigrants, and the so called main stream media. That is how he promoted fear.
I am truly amused that you think I have been brainwashed Indeed a great conclusion drawn by a Trump supporter. Oh, the irony.
BTW, are you aware that the DHS has warned of credible threats from domestic terrorists, well into the future? Did you view the recent unpleasantness at the Capitol? So, I am retired from work but not from life. At this point, I am really not personally scared of much of anything. But violence itself terrifies me because I have seen it’s results too many times to count. The murders of millions of Jews, the slaughter of the Native Americans to the point of genocide, the assassinations of thousands of black Americans, the deaths of many of our brave soldiers from Korea to Viet Nam, to the current useless wars in the Middle East. Have a good day and stay safe.
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okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
Well if you taught a class on propaganda you must be intimately familiar with the works of Chomsky and his seminal text on the matter, Manufacturing Consent. Do you disagree with the propaganda model that he created in the book? What are your critiques of it?
How did you teach the class?
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
Give this a watch when you have time, bruh. Better than anything I've seen on linear TV in years. Fast forward past first 3.5 minutes. Weinstein is a crazy smart liberal and the discussion rather than the yelling that linear TV "news" has devolved into is amazing.
Why Eric Weinstein Is Finally Talking to Glenn Beck | The Glenn Beck Podcast | Ep 93
Eric Weinstein is not a conservative, but he talks to conservatives because he says, more often, they’re the ones who let him speak his mind without branding...
youtu.be
HuckFinn
Well-Known Member
No. I have not read Chomsky’s book. I am sure he has stated a reasonable approach to the topic, since he is well respected. At the same time, there are tons of sources on this topic and I have explored a wide variety of them. I stand by my analysis of this topic based on the circumstances currently in place. Obviously I cannot debate the details of Chomsky’s arguments since I have not read his book. As to how I taught the lessons on this topic, I overviewed the examples of historic uses of propaganda, including Hitler, Mussolini, Russian dictators. Then we worked as a group to enumerate the list of commonalities among our historical examples. Trump was not around at that point, but I certainly have the ability to compare his efforts to historic examples. In the meantime, I would add that you failed to address a number of my positions. We are not likely to change our views on this topic. As Kurt Vonnegut was fond of saying, “So it goes.” Ever read “Cat’s Cradle”? Beats the hell out of Chomsky, I would guess...
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
I've read Cat's Cradle. I've got a set of red hardbound books with all of his novels and short stories. I still have to get through Breakfast of Champions, but I think I've read all the other novels of his. All are thoroughly enjoyable, but IMHO his best work is his short story titled Harrison Bergeron. I don't just read fiction, however, because I enjoy reading history and economics. My favorite book is probably "Class" by Paul Fussell.
You are correct that you and I would unlikely ever agree on propaganda, but I suspect that is because you likely approach it from what I would consider an antiquated, simplistic view predominantly based on examples derived from failed Western totalitarian nations and I approach it from the Chomsky model from the '80's that I learned in college that takes into account the vast biases introduced by oligarchic corporate ownership stakes and the necessity of comporting with the desires of the 10 dozen or so multinational corporations that drive the overwhelming majority of ad spend.
At the end of the day, if a person such as yourself is unable to see even a scintilla of propaganda or, to steal a term from Orwell, "doublethink" in the large corporate owned media in existence today, there's really not much to discuss. So it goes.
Luftgekuehlt67
Well-Known Member
I don't think ignoring the news or "the media" has ever been (or will ever be) good advice. I think it's important to be a critical consumer of information - something that, in this age of information, has become increasingly more challenging. Intelligence really has nothing to do with it, because I've heard plenty of dumb people saying they know something is true because "they seen it on Facebook" but, likewise, I've seen plenty of smart, educated people perform all manner of mental gymnastics to bend reality into a shape fitting their worldview.
I'm not immune to either and have been guilty of both, but one tool I've found to be very helpful is the Ad Fontres interactive media bias chart (Google it, it's very easy to find).
They take a huge sampling from across just about every media outlet you can imagine, from large to small, left to right, and rate them on two scales:
Overall Source Reliability, which runs from "Fact Reporting" (e.g. the UPI) to "Contains Inaccurate/Fabricated Info" (e.g. National Enquirer).
Political Bias, which of course runs from extreme left, to extreme right.
Looking at the chart in aggregate is really interesting (and instructive), but it's also a handy tool for deep diving an individual source. Looking at individual sources like that lets you see that even media boogeymen like CNN and Fox News do some really quality reporting (albeit with slight left/right bias, which I think is ok), but both sources indulge in "analysis" that becomes progressively less fact based (and further left/right biased) as they move into full-on "opinion". But, here's the thing: even CNN and Fox News do a very good job of labeling their articles as "analysis" or "opinion" where appropriate. You have to know what you're reading even within a given source.
Myself, I'm an AP guy. They actually do a really good job and have lots of interesting exclusives. Absolute "safest" if you are really allergic to any bias or anything resembling analysis or opinion is the UPI. It's *extremely* dry, though. I hear a lot of people say that they want the media to tell them just the facts...in my opinion, most people who say that don't really mean it, otherwise UPI.com would be much more popular. It's extremely boring.
I'm not immune to either and have been guilty of both, but one tool I've found to be very helpful is the Ad Fontres interactive media bias chart (Google it, it's very easy to find).
They take a huge sampling from across just about every media outlet you can imagine, from large to small, left to right, and rate them on two scales:
Overall Source Reliability, which runs from "Fact Reporting" (e.g. the UPI) to "Contains Inaccurate/Fabricated Info" (e.g. National Enquirer).
Political Bias, which of course runs from extreme left, to extreme right.
Looking at the chart in aggregate is really interesting (and instructive), but it's also a handy tool for deep diving an individual source. Looking at individual sources like that lets you see that even media boogeymen like CNN and Fox News do some really quality reporting (albeit with slight left/right bias, which I think is ok), but both sources indulge in "analysis" that becomes progressively less fact based (and further left/right biased) as they move into full-on "opinion". But, here's the thing: even CNN and Fox News do a very good job of labeling their articles as "analysis" or "opinion" where appropriate. You have to know what you're reading even within a given source.
Myself, I'm an AP guy. They actually do a really good job and have lots of interesting exclusives. Absolute "safest" if you are really allergic to any bias or anything resembling analysis or opinion is the UPI. It's *extremely* dry, though. I hear a lot of people say that they want the media to tell them just the facts...in my opinion, most people who say that don't really mean it, otherwise UPI.com would be much more popular. It's extremely boring.
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HuckFinn
Well-Known Member
Good stuff. Thanks.
