@Lash,
Lash wrote:
Double dog dares used to compel good ole boys in rural South Georgia, so I had hopes.
Double dog dares are recognized as far North as New York, maybe even farther.
Now I'm completely depressed.
@glitterbag,
I can't ever recall hearing double dog dare before up here in Canada.
@glitterbag,
Quote:Now I'm completely depressed.
Artie getting on in years?
Here's a very interesting piece of data I just learned (don't have the source data but speaker is credible)
Quote:Belief in Capital Punishment is the biggest predictor of someone voting Leave.
This makes perfect sense to me. Some people, way too many, are frightened by or uneasy with complexity. It's the crowd that believed Sarah Palin had it right with her rejection of expertise and knowledge and complexity and her replacement of it with "common sense".
John Dean, in Conservatives Without Conscience, quoted extensively from the the studies of authoritarianism by Robert Altemeyer from the U of Manitoba. One observation/finding in Altemeyer's work is that authoritarianism has two facets: the authoritarian figure himself and the portion of a population who prefer to have such a figure as their leader. they prefer it simple. Easy. Black and white.
Just saw video from Trump at CPAC. At one point, he used a southern accent to mock Jeff Sessions.
Imagine all the young people whose first impressions of the US Presidency is this truly ugly man.
It looks like the Republicans are going to push these things pre-election
1) "witchhunt" - the way this is formulated, any investigation of Trump or any charges/penalties laid against him will be, axiomatically, the devices of an illegitimate coup. No other possibility is available here. Also, this carries a fundamental right wing notion - "We are being victimized again!"
2) "the communists are coming!". Big push on this one already. AOC = Stalin, Sanders -> Venezuela, etc And the base, being who they are, hop right on board yelling "Please save us Donald, you representative of God and Jesus here on earth"
3) "infanticide!" Yes folks, women are bringing their babies home and aborting them so they can get back to their dirty sex, drugs, food stamps, arugala and liberal arts propaganda. You can walk around any university campus and find women who've aborted a young, innocent fetus then plasticized it and then hung it like jewelry from a piercing.
4) "Immigrants with dirty bombs, STDs, drugs, and really stinky feet are moving at night into American towns across the nation to get free stuff, to piss in alleys, to **** on the constitution and to create the United States of Mexica"
I think that covers the top four.
Oops - one more big one
5) On everything above, the Mainstream Media is working hand in hand with the left elitists. Don't attend to them. They lie, lie, lie. They are working as part of the Deep State to bring Trump down and to erase Christ from America.
Addicted to Contempt
Quote:(...) Political scientists have found that our nation is more polarized than it has been at any time since the Civil War. One in six Americans has stopped talking to a family member or close friend because of the 2016 election. Millions of people organize their social lives and their news exposure along ideological lines to avoid people with opposing viewpoints. What’s our problem?
A 2014 article in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on “motive attribution asymmetry” — the assumption that your ideology is based in love, while your opponent’s is based in hate — suggests an answer. The researchers found that the average Republican and the average Democrat today suffer from a level of motive attribution asymmetry that is comparable with that of Palestinians and Israelis. Each side thinks it is driven by benevolence, while the other is evil and motivated by hatred — and is therefore an enemy with whom one cannot negotiate or compromise.
People often say that our problem in America today is incivility or intolerance. This is incorrect. Motive attribution asymmetry leads to something far worse: contempt, which is a noxious brew of anger and disgust. And not just contempt for other people’s ideas, but also for other people. In the words of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, contempt is “the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.”
The sources of motive attribution asymmetry are easy to identify: divisive politicians, screaming heads on television, hateful columnists, angry campus activists and seemingly everything on the contempt machines of social media. This “outrage industrial complex” works by catering to just one ideological side, creating a species of addiction by feeding our desire to believe that we are completely right and that the other side is made up of knaves and fools. It strokes our own biases while affirming our worst assumptions about those who disagree with us.
(...)
nyt
Despite the soothing, almost hopeful, conclusion at the end of Arthur Brooks's piece somehow I don't see his prescription being adopted by a critical mass of people. "Responding with warm-heartedness and good humor", from what I've seen, seems to lead to irrelevance at best but more likely prompts further contempt. Might as well just drop out of the game completely.
@hightor,
Quote:(...) Political scientists have found that our nation is more polarized than it has been at any time since the Civil War.
As I've said many times, future historians will place "people who hated Trump" and "people who hated Lincoln" in the same box.
@hightor,
Quote:Might as well just drop out of the game completely.
If any one of us does, it means pretty much nothing. If too many do, it can mean a lot.
This is a tricky one because some acts and the people who commit them are contemptible. Opinions on which acts and which people will inevitably differ. But I don't think it is wise or prudent to give up one's moral agency because conflict has risen to an acute level.
My personal notion here is that we ought to attempt discovery of what societal features are promoting or leading to such acute disagreement. If we can get a good handle on that, we have at least some chance of turning things in a better direction. Mind you, I'm a big fan of Walt Disney's construction of the world.
@glitterbag,
I was doubting you, but then I remembered the classic Christmas Story, wherein Ralphie’s friend compelled friend, Flick, to touch his tongue to the frozen flagpole with the devastating triple dog dare. Jean Shepard’s memoir was set in Indiana.
Henry Thibault shared a post to the group: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Progressives.
·
AOC isn't the only person in America with her qualities. I hope a dozen or so get into Congress in 2020 and shock the bullshit out of the old power structure. Pelosi is a canny politician who may already be starting to sense which way the wind is blowing.
Best headline we'll read today (WP)
Quote:Watch a giant Amazon spider kill an opossum. Or don’t. Totally your call.
I'm going with "don't"
@blatham,
blatham wrote:
Best headline we'll read today (WP)
Quote:Watch a giant Amazon spider kill an opossum. Or don’t. Totally your call.
I'm going with "don't"
I saw a portion of that video. Just enough to realize I had to turn it off. I acknowledge that the universe works like that, but I don't need to see it.
@edgarblythe,
Indeed. And in cases where spiders are involved in any way, I will not be on board.
@blatham,
I actually like spiders, but my arachnophobia prevents my hobnobbing.
