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The board is boring now

  • Thread starter Thread starter superrific
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  • Replies: 164
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  • Politics 
superrific said:
This doesn't explain the dramatic decrease in the civic comprehension of Americans in the last fifteen years. There was a time, I think, that Trump's lying would have been disqualifying (along with many other issues with his conduct). There was a time when Americans could keep two thoughts in their head at once. Heck, people do that in non-political settings all the time, and then act like fucking morons when it comes time to ponder the future of the country.

So what changed? Why does the electorate suck so much more now? I think it points to the centrality of the conspiratorial element -- which you expressly point to, and I would argue that it should be even more centered in our public discourse. The wide availability and general acceptance of a conspiratorial mindset is both such an important part of what ails us, and what connects our experience to the rest of the world, where right-wingers are on the rise. And that's because social media puts out an infinite quantity of that bullshit.
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I think what happened ~15 years ago is the emergence of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party/conservative ecosphere. Or, as I think of it, "The Rise of the Idiots".

We tend to think of conservative media telling conservative listeners what to do and the listeners doing so, and that happens a lot, but it's not fully accurate. If something rises to a position of prominence within the conservative movement, conservative media (and the power brokers behind it) will certainly accept and co-opt whatever the niche movement is. (They did this with Trump's rise within the primaries in 2015.) And so when the Tea Party emerged and took shape out of the 2008 election, conservative media jumped right in to support it. However, the Tea Party movement was already well versed in creating an "alternative reality" to shape its beliefs as many of the adherents had long ago openly rejected provable reality as a basis for belief. And so as the Tea Party gained traction, along with it came a more broad-based rejection of facts and data in favor of "truthiness" and "ideas that feel right" as major foundations of conservative thought.

Of course, you can't ignore the rise of social media (namely Facebook) in that same period and the introduction of algorithms within a couple of years. If the Tea Party was lighted match of non-factual discourse, Facebook became an enormous gas tank just waiting to explode. With the rise of Facebook (and later other social media sites), it wasn't long before non-factual discourse took over the Republican Party to the extent that the legacy conservative media (Fox News, Newsmax, Rush, etc) were forced to adapt this mode of belief. Of course, it wasn't as if the majority had to be forced into it kicking and screaming, but it was a significant adaptation when conservative media learned that the more they lied, the better their numbers and the more they were believed.

So, to answer your question, I think the major change ~15 years ago was the rise of the Tea Party as a first wave of the "stupid Republicans" wresting control from the party leadership and what we've had since then has been a continuation and completion of that effort.
 
SnoopRob said:
So, to answer your question, I think the major change ~15 years ago was the rise of the Tea Party as a first wave of the "stupid Republicans" wresting control from the party leadership and what we've had since then has been a continuation and completion of that effort.
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Fair enough. I agree with you mostly. As a technical matter, I recall the Tea Party being more astroturf. It was organized by Glenn Beck IIRC. That doesn't really affect your overall point though, which is well-taken.

You can't get to where we are today with a few sudden jolts. You're right that it has been building up for a long time, and that was before the Tea Party. The Tea Party was an extension or outgrowth of the party of stupid approach that Gingrich set in motion. And that was itself an extension of previous trends. The paranoid style has been around for a long time.

But we also like to point to discrete events because it makes conversation and comprehension a bit easier. And if we're going to do that, Tea Party (which could also be called Palinism) is a good candidate.
 
finesse said:
HeelTalk. It spun off when ZZL first split. It's mostly been a decent place to go but literally everyone is a couple of decades younger than me. I still drop by but it has gotten pretty slow and pretty predictable.
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Looks like HT is having an issue right now. Anyone able to access it?
 
superrific said:
Fair enough. I agree with you mostly. As a technical matter, I recall the Tea Party being more astroturf. It was organized by Glenn Beck IIRC. That doesn't really affect your overall point though, which is well-taken.
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Something like a proto-Tea Party had been around earlier, since at least 2002 (my first experience with them) although I think they went back further than that. They’d been active in libertarian Republican circles until they broke through to the mainstream.

I understand the charges of astroturfing via Beck & others, but that was the Republican mainstream co-opting the previously niche movement. But you’re correct that is what pushed it into the mainstream from the sidelines.
 
Tea Party was when I noticed the first of the fringe intelligent #DeepChathamites beginning to careen off into the bizarro universe.

Something also makes the name Grover Norquist stick out from those ugly birthings too.
 
finesse said:
HeelTalk. It spun off when ZZL first split. It's mostly been a decent place to go but literally everyone is a couple of decades younger than me. I still drop by but it has gotten pretty slow and pretty predictable.
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I just can't participate on a board where Sandi is accepted and lauded. It's totally cool that those folks apparently like and understand him, but I just don't. He strikes me as completely mean spirited in a very personal and dangerous way.
 
I haven't been by IC lately either... today I went there (for some unknown reason) and got hit with some sort of Ad Blocker thingy. Couldn't get past the paywall



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finesse said:
HeelTalk. It spun off when ZZL first split. It's mostly been a decent place to go but literally everyone is a couple of decades younger than me. I still drop by but it has gotten pretty slow and pretty predictable.
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I’ve seen that place referenced periodically and just looked it up for the first time. When I click on the site link it gives me a “this account has been suspended” error message lol. Is the entire site defunct or what?
 
Peppers49 said:
I’ve seen that place referenced periodically and just looked it up for the first time. When I click on the site link it gives me a “this account has been suspended” error message lol. Is the entire site defunct or what?
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Just happened this afternoon. Don't know what happened.
 
wmheel1287 said:
I just can't participate on a board where Sandi is accepted and lauded. It's totally cool that those folks apparently like and understand him, but I just don't. He strikes me as completely mean spirited in a very personal and dangerous way.
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He's not everyone's cup of tea. I do think a commonality among HT regulars is we don't take him seriously. Deep down he's a big teddy bear. A big fat coked out teddy bear.
 
Centerpiece said:
I haven't been by IC lately either... today I went there (for some unknown reason) and got hit with some sort of Ad Blocker thingy. Couldn't get past the paywall



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Normally I get that if I am logged out. I hit escape and it goes away, then I log in.

Interesting is that I get the add blocker message from several sites. I try escape and it goes away, but some it will not. I don't actually have an add blocker, so there is nothing to turn off. And I don't understand how ads work anyway, I've never and will never buy anything because I got a stupid popup that blocked the article I was trying to read.
 
McAdooSmackinYou said:
He's not everyone's cup of tea. I do think a commonality among HT regulars is we don't take him seriously. Deep down he's a big teddy bear. A big fat coked out teddy bear.
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If he would share his coke, it would be easier to not take him seriously. 😁

Seriously, I don't really have any issue with him. I just know not to respond.
 
UNCatTech said:
Normally I get that if I am logged out. I hit escape and it goes away, then I log in.

Interesting is that I get the add blocker message from several sites. I try escape and it goes away, but some it will not. I don't actually have an add blocker, so there is nothing to turn off. And I don't understand how ads work anyway, I've never and will never buy anything because I got a stupid popup that blocked the article I was trying to read.
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Sorry. I can't read your reply. Ad block and paywall keep popping up.
 
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