Dumbing Down
We all saw it. In the midst of tragedy, even as law enforcement was gathering evidence from the Santa Fe High School shooting, some idiot shows up wearing a Trump MAGA cap, carrying an American flag and openly carrying a semi-auto handgun. When asked by the press what he was doing, his answer was, “Making America Great Again,” and that, “‘God bless y’all’ goes a long way.” Somehow, in the face of crisis and indescribable grief, this tone-deaf goofball actually believed that bringing a gun and American flag to the scene of massive violence was somehow “comforting” to the families of murder victims. Normal people reacted to his actions as you’d expect, with “WTF are you thinking?”
It’s easy to dismiss this guy as just another ignorant and supremely insensitive Trumpist jerk who has no common sense upon which to draw. While those descriptors are certainly understandable, it’s actually worse than that; by openly carrying a firearm and an American flag at the scene of a tragedy, he actually believed he was helping. He lives in that upside-down world where common sense has been displaced with idiotic dogma bred from long exposure to brainwashing. The echo chamber in which people like this fellow live pumps out so much bullshit in a continuous stream that it actually bends reality for them. Down is up, up is down, the sky is green, and the sun rises in the west. Pouring mining waste into streams and spewing carbon dioxide into the air is “freedom”. Cutting taxes increases revenue and strengthens the nation. Money equals speech; corporations are people. Climate scientists are conspiring against American business to help China. Googling nonsense about vaccines invalidates decades of immunology research. The tsunami of guns in America increases safety even though EVERY objective peer-reviewed study concludes the opposite. Consensus conclusions by the ENTIRE international intelligence community are dismissed as anti-Trump conspiracy; eliminating voting rights protects democracy; frolicking with prostitutes and porn stars is forgivable if you’re a member of the correct tribe. Israel must be protected from the Palestinians so it can rebuild the Temple Mount and Jesus can come back.
This clown’s behavior in public is a textbook example of the shocking result of brainwashing. Relying purely on the bullshit poured into his head, he engaged in behavior that jarred normal people. I’m reminded of another example of this behavior, the goofy “Ride for the Constitution” in 2013, whipped up by talk radio screamers using birtherism as its basis during the Cruz-induced government shutdown where over the road truckers were encouraged to drive their rigs all the way to Washington to drive around the beltway. The premise was that said truckers would somehow bring DC to a standstill and inspire Americans to stand up and “remove” Barack Obama, John McCain, and other prominent politicians from office. In the end, all the truckers accomplished was raising the profile of the talk radio screamers and burning a lot of expensive diesel fuel for nothing. After a weekend of driving in the rain, they all declared victory and went back to working for subsistence wages to pay the fuel bill and try to feed their families.
It’s really easy to mock people like the MAGA guy and the truckers burning expensive fuel for nothing, but their beliefs and actions are alarming. We have an entire segment of our society who believe that bullshit is filet mignon. They act, AND VOTE, against their own interests. They vote for carnival barkers like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. They are the classic “useful idiots” who are so ignorant of actual facts that they threaten our democracy by supporting anti-democratic oligarchies, voting away their own rights to those who spent billions to seize and maintain an iron grip on our democracy. Democracy dies in darkness? Certainly, but that darkness is created by institutionalized ignorance.
Fabulous,sharing.
1And that’s exactly how Adolf Hitler and the Nazis destroyed Germany. But who will save us?
2Hippy Cowboy…nobody but ourselves. Superheroes are only in the movies.
3AK Lynne you are correct we have to save ourselves. Mr. Comey in an interview said not impeachment ,WE voted him in WE have to fix this by voting him out, sadly he is correct. Maybe you didn’t vote for trump but also I know some people who didn’t vote for any candidate now there lies the problem! We were so sure trump would not be elected…we can never be that complacent again.
4This phenomenon isn’t new so much as that it has arrived at the stage wherein we take notice, but also reached a level at which the time to counter is getting away from us.
We took the boys to see an animated movie last week and while we were waiting to purchase tickets, they engaged a charming elderly woman in conversation. She really did appear quite normal. While I kept an eye on the boys with the lady, Jane read billboards taking note of what movies we might to rent, watch on Netflix or see on a date night. When Jane mentioned to me that she’d like to see one that included Jane Fonda in the cast, the “nice” lady went from 0-60 in the crazy lane ranting about Hanoi Jane and commie liberals. We politely extricated the boys.
Point is crazy has always been with us in politics and won’t simply die in the natural aging of our species. The old goats have infected their spawn who in turn are producing their own bleaters. What to do?
Vote. Of course. And resist. We missed opportunity #1 when some politicos paved the way for Rupert Murdoch to obtain special immigration status, become a naturalized American circa 1985 and create a media empire culminating in the creation of his propaganda outlet, Fox ‘news.’
Then there’s the changes in law that have allowed 6 corporations to acquire too large a proportion of our media outlets. With the latest great threat coming from Sinclair with the intention of setting up a right wing propaganda network while Congress either sits on its hands or actively aids & abets the process.
70+% of gun owners support background checks, yet we get nothing. Etc., etc, etc., as on most of the issues 70 or more percent of us agree, yet we ain’t getting what we want.
So? Contact the Congress varmints who are failing us in so many ways. Replace them with better candidates. And vote.
5One point: corporations are people until it comes to paying taxes, and then they are special snowflakes.
6If you read Thucydides you will confirm your suspicions that demagogues who rile up the people to vote their ignorance have been around since the birth of democracy. That’s why the authors of the Constitution had the state legislatures choose the US senators, one step removed from the grass roots. We can believe that the cure for ignorance is knowledge, and try to present the facts more loudly and slowly, but it won’t help the people who’ve been convinced already that every word we speak is going to be wrong including “and” and “the.”
The democracy in classical Athens also had a practice called ostracism, from “ostrakon,” meaning a cracked piece of pottery. They’d take a vote, of names scratched on these potsherds, and whoever got the most votes got exiled from the city for ten years for being a troublemaker. As you’d guess, some pretty good people got their butts kicked out along with the real jerkwads.
Another thing about Greek history: they had a dark age between the Minoan-Mycenean period and the Classical period. Don’t forget there’s been more than one Dark Age. Could be another one, too.
7djw, speaking of our corporate “citizens,” it appears Mark Zuckerberg wants to become a “good” corporate citizen by offering a new, improved more responsible version of Facebook. Or, so his recent ads would imply. Fine. Maybe he and others who offer various apps for our consumption could also utilize a version of the bot protection available through one, maybe more, of the internet service providers. Again, Congress has failed us on this one, too. But we can advocate for ourselves as consumers.
8This is one of the best El Jefe has written since I have been coming here.
9Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo:
“I will continue to speak up and will stand up for what my heart and my God commands me to do, and I assure you he hasn’t instructed me to believe that gun rights are bestowed by him,” he wrote. “The hatred being spewed in our country and the new norms we, so-called people of faith, are accepting, is as much to blame for so much of the violence in our once pragmatic Nation.”
Amen.
10The jerk wads are everywhere, in every country, no matter what the type of government. Always was, always will be no matter what you do to prove to them that things are exactly otherwise. I do remember when guys like the MAGA flag waver/gun toter in Santa Fe were actually so marginalized that they were very little trouble. Of course, that was before the pervasion of automatic weapons. It could be that not everyone’s actions and speech is equal to all other others. I am thinking right now of the Jade Helm shriekers of awhile ago. When their fantasies did not pan out, and they looked totally nuts, they kind of disappeared. However, at that time they did not have a psychopathic big mouth to rally around. And thats where we have to focus. Not just the one in D.C. but all the rest of such spawn everywhere. Vote them out. Also, never let them get anywhere near elected office, especially an office where in they have the power to call out the National Guard or declare war and call out the entire Army, Navy, Air Force and so on. We can start work NOW cuz the mid-terms are coming, sure as frost as gonna be on the pumpkin. Yes, its a lot of work to keep the thyroid pumping big time and even going without sleep but raising the Big Blue Wave is a good fit for the occasion.
11Rhea, you are the philosopher of the day! Bet you can better quote than I as to what Plato said about “kids today” as now pertains to we millennials and the generation nipping at our heels. Will pass on your history repeats thought & philosophy to the Congress varmints to be thanked for being on the correct side of issues, while using them sparingly on the snacilbupeR in Congress to baffle them. Poor babies are flailing at legislating in step with technology. Dayum and what Bill Gates shared about Donnie, HIV and HPV. Where dealing with some serious st00pid there.
Maggie, yes! Let’s vote them out.
12Go Beto 2018! Onward Iron Stache! Jackie Rosen for NV 2018! (our 20118 “pick 3” to support)
I am in a constant state of disbelief, listening to people who claim to be religious spewing hate against women and minorities and refusing to condemn a president who is a pathological liar and adulterer, seeing people who claim to be uber patriotic unfazed by a president who has obviously conspired with members of Russian intelligence in order to gain power and who accuses the FBI and Justice Department of conspiracies against him. The graft and corruption of this administration in staggering and still, those “low-information voters” sing his praises.
13Given the facts already uncovered by the Press, how can anyone with a normal IQ deny what he’s done? It makes me doubt the premise of democracy. All people are not created equally in terms of judgment and integrity, and those are the
ones who may ultimately bring down our democracy. Those who refuse to see.
Rhea, I am old and will possibly manage OK, but I worry terribly about my 3/12 year old grandson (whose mother is from Mexico but a citizen here.)
14This is the usual liberal’s lament, which is valid but misses the critical point: framing. Mr MAGA believes he is on the side of Truth and Justice, because the right has framed itself as the defenders of America against Abortion, Birth Control, Moral Relativism, Atheism, etc. etc.
Did no one else read George Lakoff during the Dubya administration? If so, those insights seems to have been forgotten.
Until liberal candidates can frame their causes in moral terms that make sense and appeal to morals voters, they don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. There’s a golden opportunity here to do that with school gun violence, but I’m afraid I’m not optimistic about the Dems at this point.
15I’ve read a lot of Lakoff’s work and it is solid. However, the problem today is not simple framing. It’s massive propaganda selling hate, and dissatisfaction. You’ll notice that virtually ALL right wing framing involves victimization and fear. From everything like the “death tax” to “sanctuary cities” to “gun free zones”; the list is endless. Progressives aren’t as good at messaging because it’s much harder to whip up positives like it is to whip up base hatred and fear. Protecting children doesn’t play as well as arming yourself to fight off rampaging gunmen invading your home.
16I think maymoon said this: “WE voted him in WE have to fix this by voting him out,” quoting someone else.
We didn’t vote him in. The electoral college, Russia, several Mideast gulf nations and Diebold did. Second, if we elect a Democratic Congress and Senate and they impeach pres Animal Shithole, we ARE voting him out just as surely as if his name had been on the ballot.
Even if you disagree with my first contention, I hope you agree with the second.
17Alas, you’re right about that, Jefe. And since that seems to be an immutable truth about American politics now, it means we probably ARE seeing the end stages of decadent capitalism. Don’t mind me, I’ll just be weeping over here in the corner.
18Yes, these people have been around forever. They didn’t multiply exponentially in the last few years. They just found other like minded people in the last few years. The internet has allowed folks who used to be and feel fairly isolated to connect with folks with the same repugnant worldviews and think they’re in the majority. These cretins reinforce each other’s ideas on social media in a manner that was unavailable before the internet. In the dark. Without pesky things like the light of day. Lakoff’s framing is fantastic, but it isn’t heard by douchebags like the guy in front of the mass shooting with his flag and side-holster cod-piece.
19Dump does not believe he is on the side of right and morality, although he may spout all the buzzwords. He doesn’t give a crap about those things. Dump’s god is expediency, whatever works for his own profit and power is what he eventually does.
20That has become the real Repug agenda as well and America is lost if we cannot rid ourselves of these grifters ASAP.
Maggie: Jade Helm was fomented by Russian bots in a practice run for the 2016 election.
https://thinkprogress.org/russian-bots-amplified-jade-helm-conspiracies-6caa41073c08/
21E J, I think you give this guy too much credit. I believe he was not there in some misguided effort to give comfort to the victims. I believe he was there to make the point, “I’m right and you’re wrong, you pansies! If you’d all had guns you’d be just fine right now!”
The reason I think so is the fact that, when approached by reporters asking, in essence, “Just wtf do you think you are doing?” [they were more polite than I’m being, but the gist was unmistakable] the guy blathered about “Make America Great Again!” and hot-footed it down the street away from the microphones.
He knew he was engaging in boorish behavior at the highest extreme and was embarrassed at being called on it. Or why run away?
22