Blog is started...
Dec. 24th, 2016 11:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnpalmerhttp://longhairedweirdo.dreamwidth.org is up.
One warning: back when I was young and stupid - by which I mean, "in my 30s and still thinking that we had time" - I was hoping for a warm, friendly loving set of ideas to help knit things back together.
But we don't have time. And love, while powerful, isn't very fast. You can love your enemy, and still realize that the best end to a particular incident is a solid jab to the nose, to stop the fight, and then, you can try to figure out what's most loving.
(I was using a boxing metaphor in another discussion yesterday, and "jab" is, in fact, precisely the right term. A jab is a defensive sort of punch - fast, hard-enough, and often intended to stop a rush, or break up an attack.)
I do have some limits: While I'll speculate, I won't slander. While I'll poke at every weak spot, I'm not a dirty fighter. (Dan Vitter is known to have visited prostitutes. I don't mind pointing out the massive hypocrisy of his being in the party that claims "family values". But I won't mention *why* it's suggested he visited prostitutes. One's kinks are one's own business, and exploration of kink is a *fine* reason to visit pros, if you can't play with your spouse.)
And I am trying to maintain a friendly manner to many of the people. I'm not angry that people voted for Trump. I do think many of them made a mistake - a perfectly reasonable mistake. And sure, many of them have been told I'm an evil bastard because I voted for Hillary Clinton... but I'm not going to blame them for what they've been told, nor even for believing it. In a sick society, where truth isn't valued, people will believe things that are wrong.
Side note: Yes, Trump was widely supported by white supremecists. Those people are nasty, but I'm not angry that they voted for Trump - I'm angry that they're such evil people. There are a lot of ugly myths out there that I'm also angry about - but I'm not angry at people who've been given an ugly, hateful mythology from which to work; does that makes sense? Also: I'm not criticizing you - whoever you are - if you are angry at every single Trump voter. I'd like to here why, and I might well disagree. But I'm not talking about *you* here - I'm talking only about me, and how I'm choosing to write in a particular blog.
My goal is to hit real, living, meaningful issues. I don't want to talk about how a Trump SCOTUS pick might impact Roe v. Wade - but I will talk about the importance of birth control and abortion access. And I might point out how GOP picks tend to say "it's okay if a company rips you off whenever and however they like, so long as it's always just below the threshold of making it worthwhile to go into the mandated arbitration, where you couldn't prove they cheated you, so you lose anyway."
I'd love advice on:
Presentation: how can I kick up my posting a bit, include some graphics or other text-wall breakers? (Side note: I've seen some *horrible* animated gifs that are jerky and fast moving and so distracting I can't read the surrounding post. None of that! But a few simple animations won't scare me off, if they don't detract from text.
Writing style: are my jokes really old or too far out to be understood? Is one of the shots I took excessively cheap? Am I being too wordy or rambling too long? Am I being my overpedantic self, and getting too deep into explicit and careful meanings, repeatedly pointing out things that are technical, and of little use? How about redundancy, and repetition? Any of that? Is the passive voice being avoided?
Links: Any good links? I don't read a lot of blogs. I'm looking for generally honest, lefty blogs.
Setting up a not-totally-super-boring blog-like page. Links on the side board, both to important posts (rules for commenting, for example); user pics - me, or something where something else is dominant (see my catrider default!)?
When it comes to setting up the page, or helping "kick up" my presentation - in some cases, these are professional services, and I'm more than willing to pay for them. If you think you can help, let me know your rates and estimates on hours.)
One warning: back when I was young and stupid - by which I mean, "in my 30s and still thinking that we had time" - I was hoping for a warm, friendly loving set of ideas to help knit things back together.
But we don't have time. And love, while powerful, isn't very fast. You can love your enemy, and still realize that the best end to a particular incident is a solid jab to the nose, to stop the fight, and then, you can try to figure out what's most loving.
(I was using a boxing metaphor in another discussion yesterday, and "jab" is, in fact, precisely the right term. A jab is a defensive sort of punch - fast, hard-enough, and often intended to stop a rush, or break up an attack.)
I do have some limits: While I'll speculate, I won't slander. While I'll poke at every weak spot, I'm not a dirty fighter. (Dan Vitter is known to have visited prostitutes. I don't mind pointing out the massive hypocrisy of his being in the party that claims "family values". But I won't mention *why* it's suggested he visited prostitutes. One's kinks are one's own business, and exploration of kink is a *fine* reason to visit pros, if you can't play with your spouse.)
And I am trying to maintain a friendly manner to many of the people. I'm not angry that people voted for Trump. I do think many of them made a mistake - a perfectly reasonable mistake. And sure, many of them have been told I'm an evil bastard because I voted for Hillary Clinton... but I'm not going to blame them for what they've been told, nor even for believing it. In a sick society, where truth isn't valued, people will believe things that are wrong.
Side note: Yes, Trump was widely supported by white supremecists. Those people are nasty, but I'm not angry that they voted for Trump - I'm angry that they're such evil people. There are a lot of ugly myths out there that I'm also angry about - but I'm not angry at people who've been given an ugly, hateful mythology from which to work; does that makes sense? Also: I'm not criticizing you - whoever you are - if you are angry at every single Trump voter. I'd like to here why, and I might well disagree. But I'm not talking about *you* here - I'm talking only about me, and how I'm choosing to write in a particular blog.
My goal is to hit real, living, meaningful issues. I don't want to talk about how a Trump SCOTUS pick might impact Roe v. Wade - but I will talk about the importance of birth control and abortion access. And I might point out how GOP picks tend to say "it's okay if a company rips you off whenever and however they like, so long as it's always just below the threshold of making it worthwhile to go into the mandated arbitration, where you couldn't prove they cheated you, so you lose anyway."
I'd love advice on:
Presentation: how can I kick up my posting a bit, include some graphics or other text-wall breakers? (Side note: I've seen some *horrible* animated gifs that are jerky and fast moving and so distracting I can't read the surrounding post. None of that! But a few simple animations won't scare me off, if they don't detract from text.
Writing style: are my jokes really old or too far out to be understood? Is one of the shots I took excessively cheap? Am I being too wordy or rambling too long? Am I being my overpedantic self, and getting too deep into explicit and careful meanings, repeatedly pointing out things that are technical, and of little use? How about redundancy, and repetition? Any of that? Is the passive voice being avoided?
Links: Any good links? I don't read a lot of blogs. I'm looking for generally honest, lefty blogs.
Setting up a not-totally-super-boring blog-like page. Links on the side board, both to important posts (rules for commenting, for example); user pics - me, or something where something else is dominant (see my catrider default!)?
When it comes to setting up the page, or helping "kick up" my presentation - in some cases, these are professional services, and I'm more than willing to pay for them. If you think you can help, let me know your rates and estimates on hours.)
no subject
Date: 2016-12-24 10:10 pm (UTC)That said, it looks good, from what I've seen.
As for links: Stonekettle station is frequently good. Jim Wright's a retired Navy CWO, who's worked with various intelligence agencies in the past. He can be blunt, and...I believe the word is "passionate," but he frequently makes very salient points. He's an ex-Conservative, of the type who proclaims that he didn't leave the party, the party left him. I don't always agree with Jim, but he frequently has good points, and occasionally makes me think, even if I don't agree with him.
One of the things about all the things you're writing about, is that none of it is particularly new. People treat neo-Conservatism as if it's something recently sprung from the head of Zeus during a particularly bad migraine. But when I was a kid, there was always some petulant old fart, bitching about how Roosevelt screwed the country, and how we needed to repeal the New Deal and get the nation back onto the "right" track. Because, then we'd have a shot at repealing "the god-DAMMED income tax!" Which is, essentially, what the rich folks funding and promoting the whole neo-Conservative movement view as an end-goal. They've been told by their folks how good their grand-folks had it during the gilded age, and how great it would be to take the country back to then, when there were no pesky taxes, and people of lesser means "knew their place." Thing is, they knew they weren't going to get anywhere with that, because both the income tax and the New Deal, overall, benefited both the country and most of its people to a great degree. So they reached-out to the folks who were easily led - basically the folks who'd've been members of the John Birch society, if it weren't such a pariah at the time. Then they went about dismantling anything and everything they viewed as an impediment: The public school system (Liberal indoctrination! The school voucher system, charter schools, and endless unfunded mandates and red tape took care of that.) Public Broadcasting (which has gotten much more commercially friendly, much slicker, and much more terrified of offending potential donors now that it doesn't get government subsidies.) The FCC (They had to get rid of those pesky ownership restrictions and the equal time requirements.) and so on (government funding for the arts was also a big one for them.)
Once they'd done that, they were free to start propagandizing (and I'm not engaging in hyperbole — they do use propaganda and its associated tactics to get their message across.) And they did.
Thing is, that being focused upon their goal, insulated from common reality by their wealth (I've had a taste of that insulation, and it's...remarkable, BTW,) they figured that their new, recently-fired-up base was stupid and easily controlled. What they didn't realize is that "easily led" doesn't really translate all that well into "easily controlled." Once they'd gotten these folks fired-up by telling them what said folks wanted to hear, and what the rich folks driving the bus wanted them to believe, they tried to steer their base along the road they wanted said base to take. And...the base, largely, knocked the drivers out and started steering the bus themselves (it's a really badly worded metaphor, but you'll get what I mean.) The GOP has, ever since, been engaged in a battle royale to regain control of the bus and get it back on the road to their gilded-age utopia. So the bus lurches hither and thither, and the rich folks gain some measure of what they wanted, but meanhwile the bus just keeps careening, more and more erratically, as now everyone is fighting for control of its wheel. And because the Internet lets us attenuate our relationships and our news feeds to the point where they become echo chambers and everyone and everything disagreeing with us in the slightest is blocked, the traditional reality-checking function of having to interact and discuss events with folks who don't necessarily agree with us simply doesn't exist anymore. Add to that the fact that the news isn't required to be objective anymore (no equal time requirement) and that the GOP uses Madison Avenue "Branding" and marketing techniques to "sell" their candidates and their platform, and truth becomes "message," and message becomes truth to these folks.
It's funny: The Left is screaming that everyone who voted for Trump is a racist and a misogynist. What I'm hearing from folks who voted for him, is that they voted because he promised to bring more jobs, and job opportunities, to punish the folks everyone was telling them were responsible for the economy being in such a bad state (whatever statistics one quotes, it's what they believe,) and prevent the U.S. from sliding further into a state where every child gets a trophy for participating (which renders trophies meaningless and nullifies the entire concept of achievement in the first place,) where people are encouraged to not try and better themselves and work to support themselves, but simply sit upon their arses and collect a welfare check from the government — paid for by the taxes of people who have to work for a living (again, this isn't the reality, but it's what they're told it is by the people they get their news from,) &c. ad nauseam. The GOP insists that truth is irrelevant, and narrative is all that matters. Which, from their viewpoint, is utterly correct. Their base is so wrapped-up in the narrative that the GOP has been spinning them since 1980, that they can't see truth anymore. And they're voting to protect the nation and its people from a looming disaster that doesn't actually exist. Take the guns out of it, they're voting for God and America, and all the things we who were schooled to revere before the GOP's war on public education. They're told all those things are imperiled by godless Liberals, who want to eliminate and spit upon the military, have perverted sex with our nation's children, outlaw Christianity and all other religion, teach children to have promiscuous sex — preferably with their own gender, destroy the concept of traditional gender roles and of family, and create a socialist nanny-state which regulates every aspect of everyone's life and dictates every detail of that life (forcing people to engage in perverted and ungodly actions and activities.) They believe this, just as they believe that Obama and Clinton were planning to come for their guns and put them in internment camps, that there is a war on Christmas and Christians, that Christians are actually a persecuted minority, and that same-sex couples are actually adopting children for the purposes of pedophilia.
Racism and misogyny are actually secondary or perhaps tertiary issues in all of this, which isn't to say that they're trivial. But the Left views "racist" and "misogynist" as about the worst epithets it can imagine, and so it dwells upon them, rather than actually dealing with the real, big problem here, which is the GOP narrative and the increasing attenuation in sources of opinion and information which is effecting both Conservatives and Progressives in this nation. (As evidenced in the fact that most Progressives think they know why Trump won, but in actuality don't have a freaking clue about it.) Which, unfortunately, is making the Left start to resemble the Right more and more, over time as this becomes true for the Left as well.
I've gone on far too long, and I apologize, but...yeah. None of this is new, and neither of the groups (it goes beyond parties) involved have a single clue regarding what the other thinks and believes, but both are more than happy to stereotype everyone belonging to the other.
no subject
Date: 2016-12-25 11:20 pm (UTC)It's to improve my writing and writing style - my first entries look bad and I'm trying to think of how to do them better. (I think today's Christmas post was good - not *great* but solid, tight, on message.)
It's to help develop a theme - "Why don't we call them out for being the protectors of big business? Political correctness, my friend - no one wants to tell the plain truth and be offensive."
It's to give a target for anger - when the Republicans screw up (and with Trump running things, that's all-but assured), here are some more things to be angry about".
It's to plant the "sucker" seed. No one is going to listen to me tell them that the GOP plays the truly reverent evangelicals for suckers. But if I can plant that seed, they might realize it on their own.
It's to help people think, as you say, "message" and "narrative." A powerful narrative right now is "Democrats have to fight for the Trump voters" and since they can't out-racist, out-bigot, and out-promise him, "give it up, try to win bigger margins among those we *can* win."
Well, right now, it would be hopeless to try to campaign liberally in many parts of the country. But again, the Republicans are going to muck up. They always do in the modern age. And I want to give people ideas about cracks they might be able to slip in through.
The Democrats won't promise coal jobs are coming back. But if the Democrats all started saying "well, look, Trump lied about bringing back coal jobs, and everyone knows it. Sure, Hillary said a lot of coal jobs are going away, but that we need to find ways to bring new, good, jobs to replace them because that's something we can do!" - well, coal jobs aren't coming back - not in great numbers, not for very long. And then the coal workers would feel real betrayal. Because didn't those awful people say that Trump was bullshitting them over coal jobs? And say EVERYONE knows it? And... damn it, weren't they right, just this once?
I don't know. I really don't. But if that *can't* work - then we're already dead, we just don't know it yet. There are lots of military people, and lots of law enforcement people, who instinctively support Republicans. This election, that loyalty of law enforcement was used to swing an election (even it didn't change the result - and remember, the win was within something like 100,000 votes - it swung the election from "almost certainly Hillary" to "Trump has a chance).
And... damn it, I know law enforcement isn't perfect. But "Look, dude, it's not a crime," should make people back off. And it didn't. I'm not scared, like, "my car is spinning out of control" but I am scared like "the roads are really icy, and there's not even a guard rail to keep me from going over the cliff, and this is a switchback, with sharp turns (oh, yeah, and "steep enough hill/mountain to need a switchback!"). With a good set of chains, and a lot of care, you'll probably make it. But one mistake, and you'll probably live plenty long enough to realize how utterly screwed you are.
Anyway. Oh, yeah, and you're right - liberal folks do see misogyny and racism as terrible things. So do a lot of conservative folks. But they don't see it as "racist" when a lot of cops, just coincidentally, see a black man as much more dangerous than a white man. Hit them just right, and it might get through. But tell them it's racist to disagree, and they won't listen.
Now: I won't tell people *not* to call it out as racist. But *I* will see if I can "hit them just right", without.