The sanitized NRA version of a militias being citizen soldiers is pure historical dreck. The 2nd Amendment was about one thing - southern slave owners killing and exploiting blacks. Your narrative is nonsense.
— Landru Guide Us
Ah, so a controversial issue and it's entire history can be boiled down to just one thing.
The best scholarship shows that
— Landru Guide Us
By best, you mean the scholarship that boils it down to one thing. — Marchesk
Jesus man, this is not promoting a healthy democracy. I get it that the other side decided to play mean and dirty in their interest of power, but this kind of framing doesn't help. It divides people. It polarizes. The problem with your average conservative is that they hear too much of that crap on their radio and TVs. Then they end up thinking liberals are their enemies, and an evil amongst them that needs to be dealt with somehow. That goes nowhere good. — Marchesk
No, I'm arguing that you call them that for the same reason conservatives call you evil. — Marchesk
Apparently you find it difficult to make that distinction. I kind of feel sorry for you that you are unable to commit to an emancipatory view of the world, and are stuck on some abstract rules of debate as if politics were a game. — Landru Guide Us
The way to nudge them to vote on the issue is to use the meme that the other side is totally illegitimate and freakish. It happens to be true, but that doesn't matter. Political memes don't work because they're factual, they work because the frame the issue in terms that people resonate with. — Landru Guide Us
I just think the kind of rhetoric you're using is very divisive. The other side using the same tactic. The result is to polarize people. But hey, if it wins elections, right? — Marchesk
We either defeat them completely or we'll all be in the Hand Maiden's Tale. — Landru Guide Us
Give me an example of what isn't true here — Landru Guide Us
I can say something true in a manner, or use a conversational tone, that makes me sound hysterical. You can fight memes with memes, sure, and propaganda with propaganda - but if you sound like you're using propaganda, then you're not an effective propagandist. — Pneumenon
I really don't think propaganda works that way, and I would invoke George Lakoff in that regard, and the fact that conservatives continue to win elections and policy decision saying absolutely crazy things. Gun policy is a case in point. — Landru Guide Us
Since the archaic rational debate method doesn't work, and since we even know why it doesn't work, to continue to engage in it seems almost cowardly to me, or even worse, unimaginative. — Landru Guide Us
Do you think that this statement is going to help or hurt your credibility (and, by extension, that of your movement) with people here? — Pneumenon
Sorry, Pneu, but credibility is an archaic term in the world of modern politics in the digital age. — Landru Guide Us
I'm just doing my little part to delegitimize the conservative freakazoids who have used their usual memes on this thread and elsewhere. — Landru Guide Us
A demagogue is a political leader in a democracy who appeals to the emotions, fears, prejudices, and ignorance of the lower socio-economic classes to gain power and promote political motives. Demagogues usually oppose deliberation and advocate immediate, violent action to address a national crisis; they accuse moderate and thoughtful opponents of weakness. Demagogues have appeared in democracies since ancient Athens. They exploit a fundamental weakness in democracy: because ultimate power is held by the people, nothing stops the people from giving that power to someone who appeals to the lowest common denominator of a large segment of the population.
So, attempting to win MEME VS. MEME, is not very different than trying to win by slinging sticky, stinky, slimy mud at one's opponent. — Bitter Crank
Donald Trump isn't merely babbling nonsense. In his person and in what he has to say he represents something particular to a certain aggrieved strata of white, losing-class Republican. He represents a hope to several million of these people because he is uttering statements which resonate with the aggrieved Republican's frustrations. These aggrieved people have real aspirations, real desires, preferences, and so on, and they feel like they are really getting stepped on left and right. I may not feel like they feel, you may not feel like they feel, but neither of us is one of them. — Bitter Crank
I attribute the rise of the rightwing agenda in this country ... to progressives who fail to oppose that agenda with passion and vehemence and even with white-hot hate. — Landru Guide Us
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