Mindless partisanship.
Mindless Partisanship
- Thread starter Oneuli
- Start date
Mindless partisanship.
Based Chad
Was it me?
is that it? that's your witty rejoinder?
No.
You're just disingenuous and insincere.
Just because you're like that doesn't mean there's a polar opposite that exists. There is no balance for your intellectual dishonesty; it exists in a vacuum.
What -- did you have someone else in mind?
Graphs and charts are not as strong of an indicator as a simple discussion. It does not take very long to see if somebody is bound to the dogma of their ideology, or if they triangulate the most likely truth from a broad selection of media and propaganda. One of the most important indicators is if they exhibit the interest and ability to evaluate the political landscape objectively. Graphs and charts that were created for subjective purposes do not offer the same insight as direct firsthand experience.
Can you give an objective evaluation of the quote and response of post 121? I am curious about your ability to operate outside of your own ideology. Post 121 is not between us, so it should be a good sample.
PoliTalker
Diversity Makes Greatness
Hello Jack,
Having a large Ignore List and Ban List is required for any individual who wishes to avoid being harassed with online abuse from trolling. Wide open chat rooms with few rules like this will logically attract those abusers who are not allowed in the strongly moderated sites. A chat room like this ends up with a disproportionately large number of trolls.
What most people here do is simply harden their psyche to accept the abuse as what they consider normal. They are completely desensitized to it, have accepted it as unavoidable. That is also in alignment with the view that messing with other people's heads is not only normal, but those who do not wish to partake in such mind games are somehow lacking in character.
The reality is: online abuse is avoidable, and some people will choose to avoid it. The way to avoid it is through the use of the given features. There is nothing wrong with availing oneself of the various features and options provided as a part of the chat site. That is simply exercising one's freedom to personalize their own chat room experience for their preference.
It makes sense. If you're trying to actually have a conversation with others about a timely or interesting topic, you don't want the asinine to disrupt the whole flow of conversation with the name calling and silliness. I think Oneuli made her point, many here are just partisan hacks regurgitating the Party Line.
You've always seemed a little more serious and rational with your Postings. I hope you never go 'Legina' with your bannings and end up with 50 people on your Ban List.
I hope TD doesn't get too wound up and he realizes I'm just teasing him in a 'playful' way. A lot of this is just playful banter to amuse each other, no harm intended. I'll log off now.
Having a large Ignore List and Ban List is required for any individual who wishes to avoid being harassed with online abuse from trolling. Wide open chat rooms with few rules like this will logically attract those abusers who are not allowed in the strongly moderated sites. A chat room like this ends up with a disproportionately large number of trolls.
What most people here do is simply harden their psyche to accept the abuse as what they consider normal. They are completely desensitized to it, have accepted it as unavoidable. That is also in alignment with the view that messing with other people's heads is not only normal, but those who do not wish to partake in such mind games are somehow lacking in character.
The reality is: online abuse is avoidable, and some people will choose to avoid it. The way to avoid it is through the use of the given features. There is nothing wrong with availing oneself of the various features and options provided as a part of the chat site. That is simply exercising one's freedom to personalize their own chat room experience for their preference.
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PoliTalker
Diversity Makes Greatness
Hello Evmetro,
You've moved the goalposts. You're talking about analyzing one person at a time. Oneuli presented data comprised from multiple responses to given questions. Individual perception rarely tracks polling precisely. That's why polls are conducted.
You've moved the goalposts. You're talking about analyzing one person at a time. Oneuli presented data comprised from multiple responses to given questions. Individual perception rarely tracks polling precisely. That's why polls are conducted.
Agreed. However, my simple discussions have produced a lot of anecdotal evidence that my liberal friends and family are far more likely to be principled and informed in their ideology, while my conservative friends and family are far more likely to simply be regurgitating whatever talking points Fox News has handed them at any given moment. I think the value of graphs like the one I presented is that it's a test on whether my personal experience is atypical or not. Maybe I just happen to be running into a vastly disproportionate share of drone-like wingnuts and open-minded lefties. Or maybe my experience reflects a wider reality. Graphs like what I posted can be a clue about which is the case. Personal experience is worthless for telling you whether your little keyhole view of the world is representative of a broader reality, or unusual.
I think that's the wrong approach. Let me tell you about an experiment I was involved with in grad school. It was basically an illustration of a well-understood concept called "anchoring." For example, let's say I ask a bunch of people "when was Queen Elizabeth I" born? And then what if I ask a second group of people "was Queen Elizabeth born before or after 1850?" and only then asked for their guess of when she was born.
What experiments like that produce is a consistent pattern of data. People do a lot better guessing without the prompt than with a bad prompt like that. The first group is likely to guess both above and below the actual date (1558), with an average that's not too far off the mark. By comparison, the second group is going to gravitate towards the 1850 date. They probably will tend to realize that's too late of a date, but they'll figure it can't be much too late, and they'll tend to guess 1800 or even 1700, but nowhere near early enough (unless they're educated enough on the topic to have a high degree of confidence to overwhelm that anchoring effect).
I bring that up because I think that's what happens when people come to political questions from a triangulating mindset. They just assume the truth must be somewhere in between the "two sides" handed to them in the media. And that anchors their opinion to that artificial mean. The smart ones will err a bit in the correct direction, but not as far as they would have if they hadn't been drawn to that false mid-point in the first place. They'd have done better coming to an informed conclusion if they'd stuck to researching the underlying policy questions than if they'd come at it with the desire to be a "centrist" when confronted with "the two sides."
I see that, for example, with climate change. The IPCC position is already a mid-point. It's an attempt to reach a consensus position among scientists who think the IPCC is too conservative and those who think it's too alarmist. Many scientists think things will get worse faster than the IPCC is saying, many that it'll be slower, but for a non-expert, the IPCC provides a good "reasonable best guess." But that's where the political goggles come in. The US media essentially presents the question as one where the IPCC position sits on one side of the spectrum and the Republican/denialist position sits on the other side. That leads those who think in terms of "triangulating the likely truth" assuming that the reality must fall about halfway between the two (when in reality, it's as likely to be worse than the IPCC position as to be better).
I think the GOP takes advantage of this. They know that the more aggressively they push out to the extreme right, the more the center-seeker will move right, in response to the new center point. Take tax policy as an example. There was a time when the debate was between those who thought the top bracket should pay around 90% (the FDR-Eisenhower rate) and those who thought it should pay something like 50%.... and so for a few decades we got a middle ground of 70%. But by always pushing for a lower and lower top bracket, the Republicans keep shifting the rhetorical midpoint downward, and unthinking "centrists" will let themselves be led by their noses that way, any place the Republicans choose to take them..... all the while, imagining themselves to be demonstrating independence.
Post 121 isn't an argument. It's not even a sentence. It just says "Mindless partisanship." As for LV426's statement, I think I'd want to understand it better in context. However, it sounds like it may be somewhat in line with some of my own criticisms of "both sides" rhetoric. I think there is a bad tendency, especially among the mainstream corporate press, to try to reserve bipartisan bragging rights by offering up plenty of criticisms in both directions, even in scenarios where almost all the wrong is on one side. For example, if the truth is $1 million, and one side claims it's $900,000 while the other claims it's $10 billion, the mainstream press will have a tendency to report simply that "both sides" are taking liberties with the truth. While that may be literally correct, in that case, it obscures the fact that one side is nearly spot-on, while the other is making a bizarre claim that is utterly un-moored from reality.
I think that's increasingly what we see with the left and right in this country. The right is charging headlong off the deep end, while the left is behaving more or less the way normal political parties always have, and yet the "Very Serious People," guarding their personal credentials through the dance of centrism, have to act like both sides are equally at fault and equally correct in all things.
PoliTalker
Diversity Makes Greatness
Hello Oneuli,
Would be interesting to see similar graphs conducted over the question of American's views of Russia. What if the polling question were: "How strongly do you believe Russia is our friend?" 5 possible answers, Strongly disagree, Disagree, Not sure, Agree, and Strongly agree.
I would expect Dem/Left leaning views to say 'Disagree,' and change very little, and Rep/Right leaning views to swing from 'Disagree' to 'Agree,' with the advent of the Trump era.
One way to figure out whether someone's policy preferences are based on considered principles, or if they're just a symptom of partisan loyalty, is to see if those preferences swing with the partisan winds.
So, what about Republicans in general -- are they principled citizens whose agendas have been developed over a long period of thinking through the facts? Or are they gullible dupes who just embrace whatever position their favorite propagandists are pushing at the moment? And how about Democrats?
Here's a telling set of graphs:
As you can see, among those who lean Democrat, there's been a gradual evolution of opinion regarding free trade deals. Back in 2009, most people on that end of the spectrum thought free trade agreements tend to be a good thing for the US. Gradually, over the following years, that majority grew. But there were no sudden reversals.
The real action is on the Republican side. At first, Republicans thought free trade agreements have generally been a good thing for the US -- around 57% in 2009. Then Obama signed three trade deals, with South Korea, Panama, and Columbia, and pushed for a few others. Immediately, a slight majority of Republicans thought free trade agreements have generally been bad for the US. Then, over the next few years, Republican sentiment return to its historically pro-free-trade position.... until Trump became the leading Republican figure and took the opposite position, with most right-wing propaganda outlets taking their cues from him.
At that point, the Republicans moved dramatically against free trade. By the start of 2017, only 29% of Republicans thought free trade agreements have tended to be good for the US -- down from a majority just three years earlier. But then Trump started negotiating trade deals himself, culminating in signing a deal with Canada and Mexico. Republican opinion about trade deals obediently improved -- moving 14 points and it's now closing in on being a majority again.
That's not to say the Democrats are totally free of the partisan impulse on the topic. Maybe somewhere on that Democratic graph is a little hiccup that could be attributed to a politician they like or dislike having taken a particular position. But it's nothing like the crazed swings among the Republicans, most of whom seem completely untethered to any principle other than liking the Republican leadership and disliking the Democratic leadership.
Would be interesting to see similar graphs conducted over the question of American's views of Russia. What if the polling question were: "How strongly do you believe Russia is our friend?" 5 possible answers, Strongly disagree, Disagree, Not sure, Agree, and Strongly agree.
I would expect Dem/Left leaning views to say 'Disagree,' and change very little, and Rep/Right leaning views to swing from 'Disagree' to 'Agree,' with the advent of the Trump era.
PoliTalker
Diversity Makes Greatness
Climate change is a great example of how the right has swung in their views in response to big money attempting to sway opinion. Before the big money entered the debate, before climate change became a partisan left-right issue, many on the right believed industrial activity is causing our climate to change. Enter the big money PR campaigns and POOF! There went any such belief on the right. And the whole time, liberals have been consistently for taking wise measures to reduce human-caused climate change.
PoliTalker
Diversity Makes Greatness
How about the debt? During the Obama administration, Republicans were very concerned that the debt was too high, very concerned about keeping the deficit low.
Switch to the Trump administration, and all of that concern has all but evaporated. I guess Fox News stopped making it an issue, so the right stopped being concerned about it.
Just like a light switch.
Switch to the Trump administration, and all of that concern has all but evaporated. I guess Fox News stopped making it an issue, so the right stopped being concerned about it.
Just like a light switch.
PoliTalker
Diversity Makes Greatness
Health care. Democrats have consistently been supportive of Obamacare. Republicans have changed. During the big Fox News coverage of the beginning of the law, Republicans thought there were going to be death panels. They were very much against the idea of Obamacare. Now that the law is in place and there are no death panels, and more people can get insurance, the law is more popular. Democrats have not changed. Republicans did. That's why the law is more popular now.
And this shows how they will obediently rework their opinions for the money men, even when it flies in the face of their natural ideology. If you think of conservatism in the most old-fashioned and traditional of senses of the word, it's supposed to be about conserving what is good, in the face of pressures for change. Environmentalism is fundamentally conservative. It's the notion that we ought not to be conducting a giant, uncontrolled chemistry experiment with the only environment we have. A genuine conservative would err on the side of caution -- not wanting to radically change our weather systems and ecosystems when we have so little understanding of what the consequences could be. Yet, when it comes down to genuinely conservative principles and the siren song of big donors like the Koch brothers, the principles go out the window in a heartbeat.
Yep. Debt has been rising much faster in the last year than it was at the end of the Obama years, yet, like a light-switch, that concern has been extinguished. The moment a Democrat is in the White House, though, these same concern-trolls on the right will again pretend to care deeply.
Yep. And go back a little further and recall that Obamacare is basically just Romneycare rolled out at the national level. It's the Republican solution to the healthcare problem. They were supportive of it until Obama embraced it, then it became anathema.
PoliTalker
Diversity Makes Greatness
Hello Oneuli,
People like the Koch brothers take advantage of, co-opt, conservatives to service their own greed.
People like the Koch brothers take advantage of, co-opt, conservatives to service their own greed.
PoliTalker
Diversity Makes Greatness
PoliTalker
Diversity Makes Greatness
Hello Oneuli,
Great point.
And the idea of requiring everyone to purchase insurance, the so-called 'personal mandate,' was actually a Republican idea. It came out of John McCain's office during the time that Hillary was FLOTUS and was trying to institute universal health care.
Personal mandate - Republican idea.
Great point.
And the idea of requiring everyone to purchase insurance, the so-called 'personal mandate,' was actually a Republican idea. It came out of John McCain's office during the time that Hillary was FLOTUS and was trying to institute universal health care.
Personal mandate - Republican idea.