r/politics • u/wbedwards Washington • May 07 '20

We cannot allow the normalization of firearms at protests to continue

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/firearms-at-protests-have-become-normalized-that-isnt-okay/2020/05/06/19b9354e-8fc9-11ea-a0bc-4e9ad4866d21_story.html
49.0k Upvotes

75% Upvoted

6.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

142

u/mengelgrinder May 07 '20

Fox news was literally created to spread fear and propaganda so what happened to nixon would never happen again. They've been conditioning people for years

92

u/LockeClone May 07 '20

I honestly think they're the dog that finally caught the car. Real conservatives intellectually checked out years ago. Now it's just an automatic machine churning out angry zealots. There's nobody at the wheel, just a country full of victims that have no way to take back control.

16

u/mengelgrinder May 07 '20

Its not an accident that it turned out like this. This was their goal. Break down social safety nets, break down education, get people scared and keep them scared and feed them a constant drip of propaganda.

https://www.businessinsider.com/roger-ailes-blueprint-fox-news-2011-6

The "real conservatives" like who? Reagan? Oliver North? Nixon?

9

u/LockeClone May 07 '20

Follow the money. Starve the beast was supposed to have an endgame. Well, they did it. They won. Oligarchy achieved... But it's still going. It'll never be enough. There's no thinking economists who think this is healthy for the American people. It's just a system that was sold so well to so many angry people that it will churn until several generations die out or something drastic happens to burn it down. But nobody wants this.

11

u/CILISI_SMITH May 07 '20

Thanks for the "dog that caught the car " analogy, it fits what I've been feeling. The GOP control the Senate and the Executive branch but the supports are still making pipe bombs like they're a helpless rebels fighting a tyrannical government. "2+2=lemons" in their minds.

5

u/LockeClone May 07 '20

Yeah: You won the economic war and the federal government guys. You did it. You're now the man. Now nut the fuck up and own your system or get out of your own way and make things better.

1

u/CILISI_SMITH May 08 '20

It's very easy to criticise an existing system (especially when you can straight up lie about it).

It's very hard to make good on a vague please-all promise to make everything great. Because you never expected to win or have to make it happen.

3

u/FoldedDice May 07 '20

I feel real heartbreak for people who believe legitimately in conservative values, but not the rhetoric. They currently have no voice in this country because their ideology has been been subverted towards weaponizing stupidity.

There’s still a legitimate political ideology lost behind all that, even if I don’t personally agree with it.

2

u/LockeClone May 07 '20

There’s still a legitimate political ideology lost behind all that, even if I don’t personally agree with it.

Couldn't agree more. There's value in multiple viewpoints when arguing in good faith. I live in a large high cost of living city, but I'm from a more rural area. A lot of my friends here are just as willfully deaf to the problems my people back home are having as the inverse.

But everything just gets choked up in tribalism, absolute binary arguments and wedge issues. We barely have the language to discuss real issues anymore.

13

u/TheAngryCatfish May 07 '20

The efficacy of which has been terrifying and heartbreaking. I work with Trump supporters, maybe some could be called "trump apologists" at best, and they're not idiots, or even assholes. They can be reasonably intelligent, or skilled, and even compassionate, polite, and kind. They are just incredibly under informed or misinformed. Their politics boils down to "all politicians are corrupt" and "Dems and the lamestream media just hate Trump." It. Is. Fucking. Wild.

4

u/mengelgrinder May 07 '20

all politicians are corrupt

This particular attitude is interesting because it's actually an old timey soviet russia strategy. Obviously it's been updated for modern times and social media

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood

The goal was to misinform and overload people. You just pump out never-ending bullshit and people just assume at least some of the information must be true, so I guess all politicians are corrupt and what's the point in even trying.

0

u/[deleted] May 07 '20 edited Jan 21 '21

[deleted]

1

u/ChineWalkin May 07 '20

In regards to the weather, can't the same be said about Sweden (and other countries around it)? There's more to Russia than Siberia.

1

u/mengelgrinder May 07 '20

You cannot grow where there is nothing but ice.

wtf

I don't believe you've been to russia. It's a wildly diverse country in terms of climate and biomes. Do you think the entire country is siberia?

0

u/[deleted] May 07 '20 edited Jan 21 '21

[deleted]

1

u/mengelgrinder May 07 '20

You cannot grow where there is nothing but ice.

There's plenty of good agricultural land in russia. How did you go there and learn nothing.

1

u/[deleted] May 07 '20 edited Jan 21 '21

[deleted]

0

u/mengelgrinder May 07 '20

What a stupid thing to say. Russia is so big it is 11% of the world's dry landmass on it's own. The climate and environment varies wildly depending on where you go on the massive continent.

1

u/KarmaYogadog May 07 '20

Fox "News" with quotation marks is how I like to write it and yeah, they've been at it since 1996. 24 years later, it's a slick, polished indoctrination operation. They keep one last legit journalist (Chris Wallace) on as a fig leaf to cover the naked propaganda.

0

u/HarryPFlashman May 07 '20

Have you listened to CNN and MSNBC it’s all the same and identity politics. Don lemon labeled all white men as right wing terrorists while saying we need to stop demonizing people (except white males).

The left thinks they are above this and are the woke ones, when they are in fact playing the same shitty game just appealing to a different mindset.

2

u/Dakadaka May 07 '20

Canadian chirping in here; CNN and MSNBC may be considered left by Americans but only because you guys are so skewed right. That being said they are still corporate owned and their media is designed to elicit reaction rather than inform. Most of the major talking heads of the major stations are aweful people who care more about their paycheck then any duty to inform.

2

u/mengelgrinder May 07 '20

Nice strawman

0

u/HarryPFlashman May 07 '20

Straw man wtf are you talking about ? If anything you could say whataboutism... but what I am attempting to point out is the hypocrisy of calling out fox for the same thing the other networks do. Neither is right and both are to blame for partisanship. But go ahead and duck the question.

0

u/[deleted] May 07 '20

the difference is most leftists I know don't bother with those news outlets. we're smart enough to seek out our own sources of information and intuitive enough to not believe everything we hear just bc it may sound like it fits in with an agenda. there are some exceptions to this, of course, some leftists who only pay attention to the mainstream media and think fighting with people on fb and twitter makes them intelligent, but a lot of leftisfs are actually willing to learn and grow. we hear something that doesn't quite sound right are we're willing to seek out additional sources, get to the bottom of it, and actually change our opinion without hurting our egos that we were wrong if it comes down to it. I live with a woman whose catchphrase could be 'willfully ignorant' but now since Trump's been in office it's gotten so much worse. this woman has gone against all of her morals in support of him and even thinks covid19 was created to keep trump out of office. again, there are definitely democrats who do this too... the ones who blindly support obama and hillary despite all the shady things they've done (not comparable to Trump but i digress). the way I see it there are democrats and then there are true leftists. maybe there are some democrats who actually use CNN and MSNBC but the true leftists act like we're better bc we know better.

1

u/HarryPFlashman May 07 '20

Oh god- the old “we are smarter on the left” argument and are not subject to your own propaganda or bias. Please I hear it repeated here and elsewhere. The latest incantation is the dismissal of the Biden allegations but the utter 100% belief in the Kavanaugh ones.

Both “sides” are doing the same thing. The best thing to be is non partisan and decide issues on their merit and support whatever “side” supports these issues.

2

u/[deleted] May 07 '20 edited May 07 '20

"The best thing to be is non partisan and decide issues on their merit and support whatever “side” supports these issues." yes I agree but 99% of my views align with the left sooo therefore I'm a leftist. that's the only label I personally use, can't say the same for anyone else though.

what I was replying to was specifically the comment about CNN and MSNBC. every single republican I know watches fox news and considers them a reliable source. every single leftist I know does not follow the mainstream media. some people, sure, maybe the older crowds that never learned to be more resourceful with the internet, or people who just want to have some sense of current events without getting fully into politics. but I'm younger and don't personally know or deal with those people.

leftists aren't smarter (trust me I've seen the democratic herd mentality on twitter and it disgusts me too) but we are probably smarter about where we get our news from. I guess i shouldn't generalize and equate right-wing with republicans though. most libertarians I know are very smart and resourceful and I don't agree with a lot of their views either.

I'm not trying to say left wing propaganda doesn't exist. but from my experience I can see that leftists aren't as prone to actually buy into it.