Our ex-so-called president

Hey, NCIS is perfect accidental propaganda. Soooo, watchable, with that seductive worldview slid gently in there, underpinning everything.

(In truth, I don’t think Bellisario is doing anything other than skewing to his targeted audience - look at his list of priors, he’s good at that. But the effect’s the same.)

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Everything you mentioned is inextricably intertwined with the reasons in my comment.

We’re talking about the same folks; marks who subconsciously wanted to be duped.

They are ‘frustrated’ because that American Fallacy I mentioned? That long con was only directed at White people; everyone else inherently knew that they were never even considered a part of the equation.

They are ‘scared’ because all many of them have ever had was the ‘cold comfort’ of not being Black (or Brown, or Gay… etc.) Take away that unofficial privilege, that automatic assumption of being the ‘normative’ archetype, and what do such people have left?

To quote a line from Mississippi Burning;

"If you ain't better than a nigger, than who ARE you better than?"

Lastly, the aforementioned ‘relentless insistence’ is a symptom of entrenched cognitive dissonance which stems from decades of psychological manipulation by big business… people who are complacent, insecure and poorly educated are easy to control and manipulate…

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When I read your comment LBJ’s quote “If you can convince the lowest white man that he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll even empty his pockets for you” blinks brightly and furiously in my head.

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As much as I hate to admit it’s true, he was right.

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Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman would certainly argue in that direction. TV is a very passive medium compared to reading or even radio. It requires far less thought and imagination than the others to consume.

I would also throw in the argument that plot and character complexity also plays a role – older TV didn’t have complicated plots or characters. Single storylines with relatively flat characters was the norm. There were no Hannibals or Luthors. There were sharp delineations between the good guys (“coincidentally”, us) and the bad guys (“coincidentally”, them). Simple, non-challenging narratives that don’t require a lot of imagination. I do think you’ll find a major difference on that front when it comes to the kind of person who would cast a vote for Trump and his ilk.*

*In general, of course. People are complicated when you get down to the individual level, and there are always outliers.

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And yet the talk shows of forty, fifty, sixty years ago were more cerebral. Even comparing the loopiness of a live Steve Allen “Tonight Show” to Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show.” I’m finally at the age where I can enjoy Dick Cavett show reruns or period pieces as fascinating snapshots of history.

There were Republicans back then, but they seemed like they’d be less dogmatic (except for the KKK, John Birch Society, etc.) and easier to get along with. Even Woody Allen and William F. Buckley could thrust and parry jokingly, if with some discomfort. I can’t see such debates taking place now on TV: debaters have only their prepared talking points, talking over people, and as a last resort putdowns.

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Within the first few episodes [1], they had a plotline based on a murderous secret lesbian enviro-terrorist hijacking the nuclear sub she was crew on.

NCIS was extreme-right propaganda from the very beginning.

As you suggest, it might be purely motivated by apolitical greed, but I doubt it.

[1] Sub Rosa, episode 1-7

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There are some really interesting results in this ABC/Washington Post Poll:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ahead-of-midterms-voters-prefer-democrats-even-as-republicans-appear-more-motivated-to-vote/2017/07/19/470441d6-6c01-11e7-96ab-5f38140b38cc_story.html



I’m having a really hard time accounting for how the left isn’t more enthusiastic about 2018, and why Trump isn’t more of a factor. Maybe we’re in a bubble that’s causing us to overestimate how outraged people are. That having been said:

  • “The survey also suggests that a shifting electorate could end up propelling Democrats to major gains if voters who have skipped previous midterm elections show up to cast ballots in 2018.”
  • People who strongly disapprove of Trump vastly outnumber those who strongly approve of him.
  • This poll was conducted prior to the (apparent) collapse of healthcare reform.

Regression analysis of the generic ballot puts Democrats in easy striking distance of he House:

…but Democrats aren’t doing much to counter voter surpression:

And, as always, we don’t know what will happen between now and November 2018.

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The real bubble is being around people that give a fuck, because the lion’s share of the US’ eligible voters do not vote and will use just about any excuse possible for why they don’t. Religious people always vote because they have a national social community devoted to getting their members to vote Republican, and the majority doesn’t sway from that message.

The Democrats would win by simply making voting and healthcare their top political issues, forcing the GOP to reveal their hand at voting suppression efforts instead of letting them hide behind a noble cause. The GOP is hurting badly with the healthcare debacle, they failed in 2015 and blamed the Democrats and failed again with a majority and tried to blame the Democrats and that didn’t work nearly as well. It’s easy pickings.

As is, this poll says things will be business as usual.

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Excuses such as:

  • They live in a gerrymandered red state, and their vote is functionally pointless.
  • They are a working class person who risks unemployment and destitution if they dare to ask for the day off required to vote at an urban precinct in a red state.
  • They’re a person of colour who is justifiably wary of the police intimidation common at Confederate polling booths.
  • They’re a part of the shocking percentage of African-American men officially disenfranchised by a blatantly racist “justice” system.
  • They’re an ordinary American who refuses to continue endorsing the decades-old effort by both major parties to return the American working class to serfdom.

Upper- and middle-class America needs to stop blaming the poor for their problems. The shockingly low turnout at American elections didn’t just happen; it is deliberately manufactured and maintained.

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I probably know more conservatives than you do. Here are my anecdotal general categories of Trump voters:

  1. They always vote Republican because abortion. Or small business or bathrooms or boys kissing, but mostly abortion.
  2. They are racists, and are damned proud of it.
  3. They are racists, and were not particularly proud of it, but then Trump came along, and now they know they have company, even though some of their new friends are a bit rough on the edges, see 2 above
  4. They are assholes who engage in wage theft and shady dealings, and are basically Trumps but on a smaller scale, and see themselves justified by Trump.

ETA: Not that this makes any difference

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In order:

  • This is a boring excuse. “My vote is meaningless” is the standard excuse of the non-voter and has been for centuries. Things are Gerrymandered, but leaving yourself out of the data pool means you will never be seen as any value by the numbers-based politicians people hate.
  • Extremely real issue that is a massive problem in the US, and we can simply look to Puerto Rico at what election day can turn into. This is absolutely engineered this way.
  • Also a problem.
  • This is also an excuse. Apathy is never the solution to disenfranchisement, and while the police direct intimidation at polls that are also turned into the single way to vote just giving up is not a solution. Understanding why someone is not voting is important, and so is someone trying to encourage them to vote - and voting is never going to be a good carrot.
  • This is also an excuse. Not voting is dramatically worse than voting for yourself, let alone voting for the many, many candidates that don’t have corporate backing and support their issues. Not voting because the purity of your vote is inexcusable.

Also, I’m not blaming the poor because the middle and upper class of America also doesn’t vote. The recent (in my lifetime) changes in voting patterns are probably mostly due to suppression tactics that promote an unfair advantage to the religious right, and conservative suburbanites. However, the US has never had a good voter turnout even among the lilliest white people without financial problems. Those are the people I am speaking directly about when I say they don’t have an excuse, especially since there have been increases in poor and minority voters in the past decade.

We have a sub-20% level of voter participation off presidential elections.

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I didn’t say I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t vote, I said apathy doesn’t work and anything that boils down to the logic of ‘nothing is going to change anyways’ is an excuse. I support the hard work many groups do delivering this message to black communities - especially in places like NC where the effort is most obviously targeting minority groups.

Direct police intimidation at the polls is an entirely different beast, and that I feel is a big problem.

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Prior post withdrawn because I wasn’t sure about my statistics, BTW.

I agree that citizen action is required for improvement in the US. I disagree with the idea that voting is still a practical means of achieving that.

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I think your message was fine, even if it wasn’t accurate. Politicians in several states have openly bragged about their suppression efforts, and anyone denying the injustice targeting minorities in the US is an idiot. And I understand that you think it’s gotten past the tipping point for voting alone to work, and that might be true - but I live here and would not like to flee the country with my family and that’s where that prediction gets to.

Historically, the voting drives in the 50s, 60s, and 70s in the Civil Rights movement made a massive, immediate difference. The constitution hasn’t been rewritten (yet), so a few years can completely flip things around still. So I hold onto hope.

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I don’t want you to flee the country; if you do, we’re all doomed. Americans themselves have by far the best chance of stopping this; the rest of the world are very literally forced to rely upon the decency of ordinary Americans to save their lives.

It isn’t too late; the situation can still be saved. Non-fascist Americans outnumber the Trumpeters three to one. With numbers like that, even a peaceful movement can overthrow a bent government. Argentina is the most recent demonstration of that.

But if you wait for the courts and the midterms, we’re all fucked. You need to be in the streets, and it needs to be now.

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