A Sociological Experiment
We have three stories rattling around the brain today. First, we have Dan Patrick spouting some interesting statistics about African American voters. According to tale, half of the African American population in Texas doesn’t own a car. Therefore, we shouldn’t have drive in voting. That story was already blown up capably by JJ, so I’ll make an overall point here.
The second story involves our very own governor Greg Abbott and other conservatives. It seems Joe Biden wants us all to become vegetarians. A story circulated that he wanted beef consumption to be cut by 90 percent and wanted every American to be limited to four pounds of beef a year. Again, that story was successfully tackled earlier this week.
Finally, you get Larry Kudlow and his complaints about Biden forcing us to drink “plant based beer.” What’s next? Fruit based orange juice? Naturally, I’m sure most of you knew that beer was made from plants even before El Jefe and social media blew that all to bits. Yet, it is amazing how many folks on social media and the interwebs were ready with their pitchforks.
What do these three stories all have in common? They are three easily disprovable mistruths that are being propagated by prominent politicians. Why? Because they can. It’s part of the paradox for a public that has millions if not billions of pieces of information at their fingertips and yet bumbles on with ignorance of a serf during feudal times.
The sociological portion of it is fascinating. We see these periods in history at different points. The invention of the printing press made books affordable for the masses. It can be no coincidence that the period immediately following brought about much strife and lasting change.
We’ve had similar periods throughout history where access to knowledge expanded for one reason or another. The internet was designed originally as a way for academics to exchange ideas more freely. It really wasn’t designed with you and me in mind. Slowly but surely that evolved. We used to pay 20 dollars a month for America Online. Now, we can all access the internet from our smartphones.
It always takes society longer to adjust to technology than it takes for that technology to develop. We increasingly have access to the internet and most people now have high speed internet. That doesn’t mean we are any smarter or wiser about what we read. In fact, you could make the argument that we are collectively less informed even though we have increased access.
It’s a paradox I’m sure we share with those other important points in history when everything changed. It will take time for us to adjust as a society. Maybe someday the common man will have the wherewithal to double check these things. For now, we just have to hope there are enough people with common sense.
Kudlow thinks hops come from rabbits.
1This reminds me of the story of the person who approached Adlai Stevenson at a rally to breathlessly inform him that “every thinking person in America will vote for (him).”
His reply? “It’s going to take a lot more than that.”
2A corrupt senator dies and goes up to heaven. St. Peter tells him that he must go to both heaven and hell and make his selection official before he permanently goes anywhere. The senator agrees and begins his first day in heaven. It’s nice, everyone is hanging out on clouds, getting whatever they want, and going wherever they want. He told St. Peter I’m ready to go to heaven. Peter said he has to go to hell for a day first.
He goes down to hell and sees all his former senator friends and all the lobbyists that stuffed his politics. They played golf, drank beer, wine, and mixed drinks and had a lobster and stead dinner afterwards. He immediately went back to St. Peter and said, “I never thought I would say this, but I think I belong in hell.” Instantly, he was transported.
He came down and saw trash everywhere, flames, and burning bags of dog feces. His buddies that were playing golf the day before we locked in chains and forced to do hard labor. He approached Satan and plaintively asked, “what gives? Yesterday this was a championship golf course with booze, lobster, and steak?” Satan said, “yesterday we needed your vote.”
3Perfect for that late night snack!
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/08fc345e131222f33a06833e89cd39ed317125605823d496b6992240825e99c6.jpg
4I was just reading the Lt. Dan article about Black people and no cars. It struck me that report about GOP pols would be more properly classified in the Sports section than Politics. The Hail Mary passes, end runs around voters and the pre-game bragging – they have to see this as a game so why not call it that?
5We already have proof that A-Butt is gullible. Remember the Jade Helm hoax he fell for?
6Good comparison to past advances in information technology. Politicians, and anybody else selling something, wanting to influence the people they’re targeting is as old as civilization. But IMHO the development of social media is orders of magnitude more significant in it’s effectiveness as a tool for these folks than any past development. I know I’ve said it before, but I can’t recommend enough The Social Dilemma as showing how social media companies have developed algorithms and A.I. tools to connect like minded people. Not for nefarious purposes, but expand their customer base.
7But political operatives couldn’t have asked for a better system for pushing tribalism. Us vs. them.
And Democrats really need to get better at utilizing it.
I don’t think Fox News talking heads evaluate the stories they’re going to be angry about, nor do their viewers care what makes their blood boil. Outrage is simply the preferred activator and the desired response.
Take The Fox War On Christmas. It’s probably gone on longer than the war in Afghanistan. Yet trees are still cut each December, nativity scenes erected in front of churches, and carols sung. Every year with the bombast and precision of a helicopter formation overseen by Lt. Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, Fox News launches the smell of pine scented indignation in the morning.
8Only an academic would point out such a nit-picking item, but the Internet was originally designed as the basis for a survivable communications network in case of nuclear war. When that war did not occur it was used instead for professors and students to send jokes and nude pictures (in ASCII, of course, since jpeg et al did not yet exist) and occasionally to share ideas and papers.
This in no way detracts from Nick’s analysis. Now I will exit my professorial “well actually” mode. [Yes, I am older than dirt. And yes, I was on one of the seven original sites that milnet (the internet’s great-grandpappy) connected.]
9Good stuff today, Thanks to you all.
10There is really no comparison in history to the way social media today constantly and instantaneously reinforces the ideas of like minded people. This is especially true for people that do not fact check, believe in science or listen to anything except their own, and those that get there “news” only from far right propaganda networks like Fox News or worse, like OANN (where Foxers went when they left Fox News). Their “news” sources only reinforce their beliefs. All this is the perfect storm for growing a cult of massive dimensions which now dominates the repugnantican party base. Politicians like abbott, Patrick, cruz and others are taking full advantage of these cultists that eat up false narratives that fit their views. Anymore, almost nothing is too absurd for them to believe. It’s hard to imagine how this will get better.
11Wot? No news, Nick? Perhaps so in American ‘english.’ For us the beauty of the internet is receiving newspapers in French, German and Spanish.
Mama, excuse me, but as President Biden might say “we’re a big fucking deal again.” Negotiations with Iran, a return to the Paris Accords, and a return to the WHO. Biden/Harris are a “hit” in deep contrast to the former hitman, the twice impeached ***king moron with our allies.
The foreign press still has journalists. Albeit there are conservatives rags everywhere equal to Fox Not the News in lying. “Best” lie from those alternate fact dog piles is that under the Biden administration the US is not sharing vaccines, when the truth is if/when the AstraZeneca vaccine passes its safety hurdle, millions of doses will be sent as with the J&J vaccine.
We received our second dose of the Pfizer vaccine today. Like seriously wow, President Biden, thank you! We were prepared to wait our turn until sometime in July or later. In January we were concerned about vaccinations for our grandparents. So in President Biden’s first 100 days we see government can work when the man in charge wants it to work.
12Nick says: “What do these three stories all have in common? They are three easily disprovable mistruths that are being propagated by prominent politicians.” [good stuff].
There is a fourth major example of this current Rethug “Big Lie” kick out there [not limited to Texass of course] , that has been around a few weeks. I’ve been waiting for somebody to mention it, but zip, so far, sooo–:
It’s an immigration-related issue that Abbott has expanded his ‘Big Lies’ about recently.
The city of San Antonio and Bexar County recently made the Freeman Coliseum available to one of the DHS/CBP migrant programs to house certain young male detainees [and a JB Lackland dorm].
Within days of the first detainees arriving, Abbott [and the whole Texass Rethug chorus] began yowling about a whole slew of trumped up heinous things going on there, iinnncluuding graphic secckshuaal stuff, [like they have ever gave a shit about migrant conditions, excepting a few months ago to gig Biden over the border].
They supposedly even sicced a Texas Ranger task force onto to it.
So far, not a shred of evidence of Abbott’s allegations has emerged.
But you can bet that every last stinkin’ Texass MAGAot swallowed every nasty morsel of Abbott’s BigLie sandwich. It was a massive propaganda effort, heavily covered in local media.
After a couple of weeks of politely disagreeing with Abbott over this issue and allegations, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff [et al] finally stated that Abbott is a goddamn effing LIAR [in nicer words of course].
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2021/04/27/bexar-county-judge-calls-abbotts-allegations-of-abuse-understaffing-at-migrant-facility-completely-false/
.
BTW, previously in another thread I mentioned some RWNJ media jerkoffs getting exposure on staid old PBS teevee.
Another one that I wanted to mention, but had a devil of a time referencing, was good ol’ Tucker Carlson. He appeared on several PBS shows as a panelist or interviewee, like the McLaughlin Group, and he was even given his own PBS show, “Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered “.
It was a very short running series, beginning in 2004.
So, we can blame PBS, in it’s Bush-era Rethug takeover, for helping bring us some of the worst RW media ‘stars’
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0465358/
https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/pbss-new-weekly-standard-tucker-carlson-unfiltered-media-matters-america-analysis
13The Surly Professor @9, I was going to mention that about the “internet” too, BYBMTI. [I even predate that, barely].
14Rick @ 8,
15My first impulse to your last sentence was “Smells like ratings!”
But I think Kilgore’s own line “Smells like victory!” would probably be closer to how the Fair and Balanced crew have it running in their heads.
Scored prominently by The Ride of the Valkyries of course.
Hell I’m surprised f**ker carlson doesn’t use that as a theme song for opening credits.
The Surly Professor @9 my grandfather worked on what was coded as “the salty net buffer” in the 70s. That was the military precursor to the internet. The military investment was to enable the branches of the military to communicate among themselves. I’m proud of my Grandpa and his contributions. Saved my damn ass as a pilot from the old days of “shoot ’em down and sort ’em down on the ground.”
Sandridge @ 12 Yeah, buddy. When a worthless toaster boi like the frozen meal mutt appears on PBS, Congress needs to investigate “public” communications and snuff out any and all tentacles of Koch money and every other vile POS Libertarian seditionist idiot.
16Thanks for the history lesson on the internet. I came of age right around when it was becoming a thing for the masses. So, I was not privy to its beginnings and went based on what little research I had done. Suffice it to say, I doubt the pioneers had all of this in mind, but maybe they did.
17