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This isn't the same country I was born into and in which I grew up. I'm the son of immigrants, who came to this country because their own countries had gone to or were shit. It seems there is no place to go / no place to hide. The shit comes for us all. Keep the powder dry - other than that?
What would make them lose their trust in the lies?
But I'm not a conservative.
Patrick saysWhat would make them lose their trust in the lies?
Consider Seth Rich's parents. Their choice is believing their son was killed in a robbery, or be forced to accept he was murdered by Dem minions for passing on those files. To believe Seth was murdered, the parents would have to accept that the Dem party they had devoted their lives to had done criminal acts foul enough for equally devout Seth to feel he had to expose it. The parents would also have to believe the Dems would murder their son, and their son was a traitor. Much easier on the psyche to believe a robbery where Seth was killed but nothing was actually taken. The parents even did a press conference to push the robbery explanation and absolve Hillary. Or, shudder to think, the parents knew what happened but think Seth was a traitor who got what he deserved,
richwicks saysBut I'm not a conservative.
Perhaps you're a libertarian?
Or is it one of those "The only true religion is mine" parties.
So our first small step toward doubt is easy: we simply allow ourselves to suspect that the institutions which progressives trust are fallible in the same way.
To be a progressive, you have to have trust, because you believe that your worldview accurately reflects the real world—
I've seen Left-wingers go Right wing, but I've never seen the reverse except in rare cases when someone leaves oppressive religion and swings the pendulum too far the other way.
I’ve only seen Republican to Dem, never a true conservative to liberal.
Patrick saysto drive down wages for the benefit of the oligarchy.
Someone should tell Joe that. Because he's trying to raise wages by paying ppl to not work or work as much.
Onvacation saysrichwicks saysBut I'm not a conservative.
Perhaps you're a libertarian?
Or is it one of those "The only true religion is mine" parties.
No. Classifications are used to pigeonhole you. It's a way to enforce a conformity that can be controlled.
No ideology works. What's even worse is if you assign yourself to a group which has a constantly changing ideology. The "left" was strictly anti-war and freedom of speech just 30 years ago.
In a libertarian system there's this crazy idea of "natural law" you "can't violates somebody's rights" - well who the fuck is going to stop me? If you're a business competitor and I calculate it's to my long term benefit to have you murdered - who is going to stop me? There's no police in a libertarian system.
The truth is EVERY system...
There's nothing wrong with aligning yourself with a party
You're endorsing EVERYTHING the party does.
richwicks saysYou're endorsing EVERYTHING the party does.
This does seem to be true.
I looked into signing up to become a Republican precinct captain or whatever it is, and what put me off it was the demand that I support every Republican candidate for office, every time.
Loyalty should be to principles and not to parties.
I agree that both parties are suboptimal, but the Republican party is light-years better than the leftoids right now, even if you account for all the rings, there are plenty, say 100 of ok or even decent politicians in that party.
I've seen Left-wingers go Right wing
A Progressive Guide to Ending the Coronavirus Pandemic
Toby Rogers
I spend a lot of my time yelling at my former progressive comrades hoping that they will come to their senses. But it also occurs to me that I speak the language and I could just explain how progressives should be responding to this crisis — if they were still progressive. And then they can chose to uphold their purported values or confess that they’ve embraced a new ideology. Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, I believe that the points below about framing are useful and important.
Background
George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist at UC Berkeley, is the intellectual godfather of progressive messaging. Lakoff’s books, Moral Politics, Metaphors We Live By, and Don’t Think of an Elephant are the sacred texts of progressive framing and are read and used by nearly all Democratic political strategists. I took a class in graduate school from Dr. Lakoff and I use his work a lot in designing messaging campaigns.
The guy is a genius who just happens to be wrong about the most important issue in the world right now — the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. We’ll return to that in a moment.
What is framing?
Lakoff’s key insight is that “understanding is inherently metaphorical. We process complex ideas in terms of other, simpler, more primal experiences (spatial and tactile sensations, pictures, basic family relations).” Choosing the most advantageous metaphor to describe a problem and its solutions is the art of framing.
Four principles of proper framing
1. Every word evokes a frame.
So for example, arguments are often described in terms of war. Choosing that metaphor will lead one to think of attacks and defenses, winners and losers, domination and surrender.
Her criticisms were right on target.
I shot down all of his arguments.
He exploited the vulnerabilities in their defenses.
But there is nothing inherent in arguing that leads us to liken it to war. It’s just a metaphor that people use to understand it. But “imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way.” (Metaphors We Live By, p. 5).
2: Words defined within a frame evoke the frame.
In the example above, the words target, shot down, and vulnerabilities all evoke the war metaphor.
3. Negating a frame evokes the frame.
This is the most important rule of all. Every time you try to debunk your opponent’s frame you just end up evoking it which activates the neurological circuits associated with that frame in people’s minds. So it is always better to reframe and go on offense.
4. Evoking a frame reinforces that frame.
“Every frame is realized in the brain by neural circuitry. Every time a neural circuit is activated, it is strengthened.” At the most fundamental level, messaging is an attempt to literally build certain neural pathways in the brain. As Lakoff writes,
Framing is the process of choosing words and phrases to communicate an idea in a way that invokes certain metaphorical associations and rules out others. Frames set the vocabulary and metaphors through which an issue can be comprehended and discussed. By consistently invoking a resonant frame, the framing party sets the terms of the debate, shapes the perceptions of the issue, and provides a narrative for possible solutions.
Two Primary Frames in Politics: Nurturant Parent Model vs. Strict Father Model
Lakoff argues that most of us think metaphorically of the nation as family.
But what kind of family?
Progressives and conservatives think differently:
Progressives tend to invoke a nurturant parent frame.
The nurturant parent model is gender-neutral and envisions a family where both parents are equally responsible for raising the children.
“The assumption is that children are born good and can be made better.
The world can be made a better place, and our job is to work on that.
The parents’ job is to nurture their children and to raise their children to be nurturers of others.”
Children develop best through their positive relationships to others. The obedience of children comes out of their love and respect for their parents, not out of the fear of punishment.
If you empathize with your child, you will provide protection. This comes into politics in many ways. What do you protect your child from? Crime and drugs, certainly. You also protect your child from cars without seat belts, pollution, lead paint, pesticides in food, unscrupulous businessmen, and so on. So progressive politics focuses on environmental protection, worker protection, consumer protection, etc. —Don’t Think of An Elephant, p.12.
Okay, cool, let’s apply that to the vaccine debate
This is where it all falls apart. Lakoff is on record as supporting Pharma fascism — because (this is what I see at least) he’s never read a vaccine safety study in his life and has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. But if we lived in a sane world, the progressive response to vaccines would look like this:
✅ Nurturant parents do NOT allow felons to perform genetic experiments on their kids.
✅ Nurturant parents do NOT allow regulators who are captured by industry to make decisions about their family’s health.
✅ Nurturant parents do NOT allow school officials to deprive their children of oxygen and require toxic injections as a conditions of school entry.
✅ Nurturant parents do NOT gaslight other parents for their medical decisions.
✅ Nurturant parents do NOT get their medical information from news sources that are captured by industry.
✅ Nurturant parents have a responsibility to read vaccine safety inserts and vaccine safety studies for themselves.
✅ Nurturant parents have a responsibility to read the Nuremberg Code and understand the reasons why “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”
✅ Nurturant parents have a responsibility to listen to the mothers and fathers of vaccine-injured children and learn from their experience.
✅ Nurturant parents have a responsibility to engage in critical thinking and unbiased due diligence and have realized that independent doctors understand prevention and treatment of Covid better than captured regulators.
✅ Nurturant parents have a responsibility to oppose show-me-your-papers and vaccine passports because they do not want their children to grow up in a fascist country.
See that’s not difficult. If progressives were still progressives they would be fighting Pharma fascism with every cell in their body. Some are, but most are not.
The takeaway
Here’s the very real problem and I’m not sure what to do about it — there is no such thing as progressivism anymore. It has evaporated over the last two years. It’s now a memory carried by the elders but it does not exist in the real world anymore. Pharma started pumping out the propaganda and the 24/7/365 fear campaign and progressivism switched instantly to fascism. Adherents of the ideology became robots, embraced censorship and cancel culture, and mindlessly repeat and obey the diktats of Pharma. So I write this article as a bedside whisper to a friend who is in a coma hoping that the remembrance of the old ways might help him to wake up.
I only joined the Republican party to cast a primary vote for Ron Paul, then they cancelled the vote when he was going to win in 2008.
The young left is becoming even more rigid than the old. David Leonhardt of the New York Times noted that according to Kaiser Family Foundation data, “young Democrats are more worried about getting sick from Covid than old Democrats, even though the science says the opposite should be true.” He extends too much credit in assuming they actually care about “science.” Science is a process for obtaining and refining information about the natural world. Sensibly applied, it should tell you things like you don’t have to wear masks outdoors, or that children ought to be in school since the risk to them is much lower than to adults. Applied as a civic religion, it leads to huddling into confined plywood boxes on the sidewalks of restaurants so as to avoid the risk of being inside.
We are not really that divided. We just get that impression because of the media control by the left.
We are not really that divided. We just get that impression because of the media control by the left
richwicks saysI only joined the Republican party to cast a primary vote for Ron Paul, then they cancelled the vote when he was going to win in 2008.
@richwicks, are you able to explain what, exactly, happened to Ron Paul when he was about to win? I've never seen an explanation I understood.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/19/america-is-not-divided-its-being-hijacked/?source=patrick.net
We are not really that divided. We just get that impression because of the media control by the left.
the candidates aren't picked by individual supporters. They are picked by the parties.
Ron Paul supporters walked in (dinner wasn't mandatory to vote), and the vote was simply cancelled. That was in 2008.
richwicks saysthe candidates aren't picked by individual supporters. They are picked by the parties.
@Richwicks
That brings up a logical question..."How/why, then, was Trump allowed to get the nomination"?
richwicks saysRon Paul supporters walked in (dinner wasn't mandatory to vote), and the vote was simply cancelled. That was in 2008.
He was redistricted out of his safe R district in TX. R's in TX made it swing district to get rid of him. Strange until you understand that it is uniparty
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The left still mistakenly trusts Biden and the corporate-woke authoritarian ideology. They cannot accept that they are merely being used by large corporations to divide and weaken the voting public and to drive down wages for the benefit of the oligarchy. They cannot even think that thought. It creates anxiety in them.
What would make them lose their trust in the lies? Gas prices, inflation, shortages, humiliating chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan? I'm not sure that those made a difference yet. Maybe when they have a relative or friend die from the mandated vaxx - that might do it. Especially when children die, as many will when Newsom's order to inject children is implemented.
It's important to understand that the left has to get over a big hill of pain in realizing how wrong they've been. So they don't want to think those thoughts.
They think they have to "join the evil other tribe" in order to question to question their own, and that would be an unacceptable humiliation. But there is no need for humiliation. There is only the need to step outside that false dichotomy.
https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/04/open-letter-to-open-minded-progressives/?source=patrick.net