Worldview, not Racism

Aw, it's no problem doing a digression here, Miss Olga. I'd say the reaction of Tories in Australia in 1972 and that of conservatives here in America in 2008 is very similar.

No problem! I'd never heard that story before.

Obama is not a liberal. He is centerist. He isent as business orentated as bush but he isent a true liberal. And neither is the so called liberal congress anything but centerist.

Thank you for your tolerance & understanding, engineer. (I gave you a thumbs up for that. )
Please excuse my typos, too. This seems to happen when I try to condense a ton-load of information (which I feel very passionately about) to a workable size.
I'm afraid this is one of those "trigger" subjects with me.

Now, where were we?
The reason I brought up the Whitlam dismissal in the first place, because (weirdly enough!) I can almost identify with the current sense of disenfranchisement of the far right in the US. Their reaction to Bush losing office is not all that different (minus the media support, guns at town hall meetings, etc) to what much of the left & far left in Australia felt after the Whitlam dismissal. In Bush, they had probably the closest reflection of their own political beliefs in office & to have the nation reject Bush at the ballot box (& replace him with Obama, who in their eyes, stands for everything they don't) would feel like a huge rejection by fellow Americans. I'd imagine their reaction is not only political, but also quite personal. I know I, & many others, felt very a very similar sense of alienation when Australian voters rejected Whitlam at the ballot box, after the dismissal. It took many of us a long time to engage in mainstream political activity again.
I agree with you, Setanta, that left Australians at that time definitely had more valid reasons for our anger & our sense of betrayal & alienation, but I suspect the ultra right in the US feel pretty much the same as we did, anyway. Their dream is over. It is most unlikely that they'll ever see a government that they so closely identify with again.

I was wondering, in an earlier post, if this extreme response to Obama's election by the US far right could be more a transitional response to the Republicans losing office, or something more permanent. Yes, I know they are just a small, extremely vocal minority, but while their minority perspective receives support & validation through their influential ( it seems) spokespeople in the mainstream media, they could be an extremely destructive & disruptive minority. I'm wondering if they'll do more harm to their own party, in trying to exert their influence on future directions & policies there, than they will to the Democrats. (From a long way away) I see the right wing US media as the real opposition to the Democrats at the moment. In a sense they are using the anger & frustration of a small, angry minority of voters for their own ends. What I'm trying to figure out is what those "ends" actually are.

This is the crux of the biscuit--and why i suggest that there is no leadership among the Republicans at present, since Miss Palin doesn't represent all Republicans, and the broadcast demagogues are the only voice of the far right.

The Democrats will do themselves the most harm in the long run--the media rabble-rousers have far less power than they like to claim. Any party in power accretes a baggage of resentments and mistrust over time, and that is more likely what will hurt the Democrats in the long run.

As for the ends of media demagogues, i can't see that they have any beyond the obvious--to make a lot of money and to continue to cultivate a loyal following so that they can continue to make a lot of money.

I see it differently to you, Setanta. It isn't just the Glenn Becks, the Rush Limbaughs, Fox News folk & what comes out of their mouths .... it's the media owners & controllers who decide that what political line will be pushed by their outlets & who they want to influence & for what purpose. The "media demagogues" are just their puppets.
What percentage of Americans watch these programs? If you repeat an outlandish idea often enough (especially if there's bugger-all in the mass media to counter it) it can come to appear like "the truth" to the audience. In this case, they appear to be using & manipulating a relatively small number of disgruntled right wing voters to present a picture of much broader opposition to Obama's policies. In fact, I'd argue that they are fermenting dissent via these broadcasts. Deliberately undermining the Obama's position.

I think we need to look at who actually controls the media outlets which are pushing this line. And why this particular political line is being pushed. If we're talking Rupert Murdoch (Fox News), well I wouldn't be at all surprised. We in Oz had a lot of Rupert experience of this sort of activity when he was smaller time, long before he decided to take over the media of the whole planet! Just let me say that political influence, via his media outlets for his own ends, is not exactly a new thing!

Uh-huh . . . and just how effective was Mr. Murdoch in manipulating the political choices of Australians? Comments such as you have made (i'm sure, in innocence and good faith) inferentially assume that a significant portion of the population of the United States is credulous and ill-informed, incapable of judging the value of someone's opinion, or of distinguishing opinion from fact. As surprising as it may be to you, Americans are no worse (and no better) at detecting and discounting bullshit than is any other population.

No, that's not what I said, or meant. I said that if a particular line is presented again & again in the popular media, with little or no material to counter it, it definitely can be influential.

I don't imagine people in the US are that much different to people in like cultures.

I think Rupert was more interested in influencing Australian governments, regarding his media interests, really, than the Australian people. Though the barrage of bad press for say, Whitlam, in the last days of his government, certainly did have an impact on opinion. It made the dismissal more acceptable & "respectable" in the eyes of some Australians, I think. But that wasn't just Murdoch's papers.

I wouldn't be to sure of setanta, after all a good deal of American viewers still believed Iraq had WMD well after it was known there was none.

Half of Americans Still Believe In WMDs - They Saw Them on TV

Yes, and of course, in the case of Whitlam, the CIA was funding a media campaign against him.

What i'm getting at is this. People around the world rage at Americans for electing Mr. Bush, and then re-electing him. If an Australian were to throw that up in my face, i'd ask him or her how long Howard was PM. Americans have also elected Mr. Obama. You win some, you lose some.

I think what is appropriate here is a quote of Mr. Lincoln:

"You can fool all of the people some of the time; you can fool some of the people all of time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

Golly, Setanta, I don't think I've been arguing that ordinary Australians are somehow politically superior to the ordinary people of the US at all.

I think I've been talking about about the nature & the validity of the grievances of the extreme right voters in the US, following Obama's victory at the polls. Then we got side-tracked (for which I apologised) by the dismissal/coup in Oz in 1975.

Then I brought up the influence of particular elements of the US media in relation to the "grievances" of the right wing folk we've been talking about on this thread & how their issues were being presented in the media. I suggested that their "protests" were being used or manipulated by the media & questioned the motives of the the network proprietors responsible for Fox News, etc, for doing so.

In relation to Howard's years in power in Oz, well ... we haven't discussed that till on this thread till now. I think you might have some idea about what my thoughts about that might be. The left of Oz politics was as relieved to see the last of his government as liberals in the US were to when Bush lost office. I'm pretty pleased to see the last of Bush's government, too.

Jesus, Miss Olga, i'm not trying to beat up on you.

Tell ya what . . . let's just not discuss this subject at all, since it seems to upset you so easily.

I was thinking the same of you, Setanta. I'm not upset at all. Really. My comments were pretty tame, I think.

No worries. Let's leave it here.

Well, for whomever might care to comment, on this topic, i refer you to Mr. Lincoln's comment:

"You can fool all of the people some of the time; you can fool some of the people all of time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."