Sure, and, on top of all that, if he didn’t knock down the twin towers, he’d probably still be alive today.
I think most people hold beliefs that, if taken to radical extremes, could result in some pretty bad shit. That’s why extremism has kind of a bad connotation.
I think this is spot on. Democrats predictably lost strength in the South as a result of their support for for Civil Rights, but they were competitive in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. Not anymore. As you adroitly point out, the Democrats took civil rights beyond boundaries that rural folks were comfortable with and people in rural white America perceived it as an attack on the social structure. Their getting into bed with corporate America didn’t necessarily help either.
On some level, I think rural Trump supporters understand that Trump is a deeply flawed person, but he’s forgiven because he’s doing things that ‘nicer’ conservatives wouldn’t have dared: he’s channeling their frustrations and there’s a certain level of catharsis that comes with that. It sometimes reminds me of how people where I grew up scream at the tops of their lungs when their favorite professional wrestler body slams or suplexes an opponent they can’t stand.
Umm… I think it’s obvious that bin Laden was a conservative in many senses.(If you’re trying to approximate a progressive-conservative divide in the Middle East. Their politics aren’t the same as ours. For instance, a Royalist in the UK would likely be on the conservative side of the spectrum, while a Royalist in Saudi Arabia might not… or they might be. Trying to push our political spectrum on Saudi Arabian politics is difficult. Bin Laden as an example was an environmentalist, maybe for its own sake and maybe because environmentalism would weaken the Saudi monarchy, who knows? He was also a wealth redistributionist, but not in favor of democracy, so liberal, but not classically liberal?)
Much of the global south though is ‘community’ in its social structure though. It’s one of the big differences between the industrialized west and the more agrarian south. We conceive of our social structures very differently and I think that that is one of the major issues that we have had there. We’re busy setting up ‘society’ style laws and systems and the global south largely doesn’t relate to social structures that way and rather than understanding how they do relate to social structures, we just think that if we set up the right ‘society’ things will fall into place and I think that is an error.
I don’t know what this means.
Was it really that extreme? His way of life was under threat. What was he going to do, write an op-ed for the New York Times? The liberals would never be able to understand his suffering because they lack the moral foundation. So he acted out of a cri de coeur. His methods were flawed, but what choice did he have?
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I daresay part of that is your death grip on religion (likely the most divisive concept in history) but I’m not sure it’s a specifically American thing. If you took the population of Europe and said “okay, you’re all one country now”, I can imagine getting the same kind of internal antipathy.
I think we are agreeing here.
I wasn’t trying to map Osama to our political spectrum. The community vs society model seems to work pretty well to explain both his motivations and the American political divide.
But my concern is that we find ourselves unable to choose between two moral frameworks. If the community-based social structure and moral framework leads (at least in the context in which Osama bin Laden lived) to 9/11, we should be able to say there’s a problem with it. If it leads (in the context of America) to homophobia, racism, and misogyny then we should be able to call it wrong there too.
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I don’t think it has to do with religion. People hate the other people that go to their church too. There’s reason that ‘Sister Better-than-you’ and ‘Holier-than-thou’ are expressions. We tend to dislike people of our own religion. That’s why we have a billion denominations. To be honest, I’m not sure what it is. I think that part of it is that we’re really, really big. China has the same issues where people from Shanghai hate people from Beijing and they all hate people from Henan. People from New York and people from Mississippi just don’t have a ton in common.
We’re also very different from one another on much smaller scales. We don’t have much of a shared cultural history and what history we do have in common tends to paint us all as individualistic risk takers which is hardly a trait that breeds comity. We’re also a nation that really, really cares about material things and that breeds jealousy. We have big houses, big cars and the best stuff. Being ‘the best’ is a national obsession and that means that everyone else is by definition ‘not the best.’ And if you do admit that they are ‘better’ than you, it’s much better to blame that on some sort of shady advantage they have rather than a defect that you have. Again, these aren’t positions that tend to foster togetherness. I think that we have a very ‘zero sum’ cultural personality where someone else doing well necessarily means that you aren’t. I’m sure if I thought on it more than just offering the comment off-handedly I might be able to come up with a better theory, but there are my thoughts of the moment.
Sure, but ‘society’ based frameworks lead to communism and Nazism. It’s not really the social framework that is a problem. There are pros and cons to both and you can certainly have a wonderful ‘society’ just as easily as a wonderful ‘community.’ I don’t think pointing fingers at ‘community’ is particularly helpful anymore than them pointing fingers at ‘society.’
I’d like to know what this means.
Here’s a particularly good example. Welcome to the Twilight Zone:
"CBS’s Dean Reynolds tells us the victim is described as a mentally-challenged teenager.
In the video he is choked and repeatedly called the n-word. His clothes are slashed and he is terrorized with a knife. His alleged captors repeatedly reference Donald Trump. Police are holding four people in connection with the attack."
Now read the unspinning:
I would divide Trump supporters into roughly four categories:
1.) People who think he’s going to restore the coal fields, bring back jobs in the Rust Belt, and restore rural America. I don’t think all of these people are motivated by hate; they want the jobs back or they want the good old days rural America. I agree with much of Senoy’s analysis of rural America and would make these observations. A while back I read an Associated Press article that claimed about 25 percent of rural America is dying, and I believe it. I live in southwest Indiana and I can take you to towns that ain’t going to be here in 20-50 years. The rural voters want Trump to reverse this, some because they like the rural way of life, some because they don’t want to move to the cities where they have to work with minorities and/or homosexuals and/or take orders from women. Many of these people do not want to be told that coal isn’t coming back because natural gas is cleaner and cheaper, that automation and computerization are going to continue to reduce jobs even if Trump’s tariffs work (and I don’t think they will), and that large parts of rural America aren’t coming back. I think the Democrats will be able to reason with some of these people in the next year or two and make them realize the extent of their folly.
2.) Religious fundamentalists. Trump does lie like a Persian rug, but in general he has kept his promises to this group. He has nominated two conservative justices who will likely do everything they can to eliminate legal abortion; he has moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; and he is pulling out of the Iran deal. Most of these are comfortable with his push against the LBGT community. Many of these people do hate. They hate gays, Muslims, blacks, anyone who is different from them. (For some of the conservatives on this board, don’t bother to argue. As I said above, I live in Indiana and I’ve met too many fundamentalists.)
3.) The haters. These are not only the racists and Nazis, but people I’ve met who hate the Clintons or Obama. These are the ones who wear shirts with mottos like “Fuck your feelings.” These are definitely tied to Trump by hate.
4.) Republicans. I think many know that Trump is dumber than a block of sandstone, but they support him anyway because they’re getting what they want: judges who will rule against environmental protection and unionization and destruction of some federal agencies. They aren’t bothered by Trump’s treason because many of them would like to turn this country into a kleptocracy like Russia.
So, in summary, I would that hatred is what binds Trump to many of his supporters.
You know, at first, I was ready to congratulate you on finding an example, but the more I looked into it, the less sure I was. So, since we agree that fake news is an issue and checking sources is important, let’s check the facts together.
The website you linked, Mediaite, is the source of this story, as far as I can tell. I clicked through a few other sites (mostly small-time right-wing blog – interesting that Mediaite, a pretty small website, is the largest to report this… Hm…) and they all reference the story as originating there. You’ll also note that while the article appears to be chock full of links to citations, none of the links actually work.
The first hyperlink, on the words “A CBS Radio News report” takes me to entercom.com/. When I hover over the link, it references www.cbsradio.com – which means that CBSRadio.com is NOT A REAL WEBSITE. Entercom is the company that owns the domain. Their actual website is cbsnews.com/radio because they are just one part of CBS News. Why might he have linked a fake page? Perhaps it was an accident. (And perhaps, if the audio is even real, it was an accident on the reporter’s part to leave out the race of the attackers?)
The next link, on the words “torturing a mentally disabled man”, links to Mediaite’s own coverage of the original event. Fine, at least this one works.
Next up, the words “posted the clip on Reddit” link to an invalid link on the website Clyp, which does allow you to load audio clips. Going to their main page and selecting a random clip, we see a valid URL format:https://clyp.it/grdibbk3
Compared to the one from Mediaite:
["][URL="https://clyp.it/slitsuox"]]([URL="https://clyp.it/slitsuox)
I initially thought that the url “slitsuox” reminds me of a number of other file sharing websites where the URL address of each file is a collection of random words, but every other link I could find on their main page was just a collection of random letters and numbers. Is it possible that this was once a real link? Sure, it is. If I go through enough Clyp files maybe I’ll find that they sometimes use words. But I doubt it.
Also, I went on Reddit, and searched for various keywords involving “CBS”, “Torture”, “Radio”, “Race”, “Mediaite”. I couldn’t find this supposed leak to Reddit the website mentioned; but I know my searches were looking for the right thing, because they all brought me to the only page referencing this event, a giant list of supposed “fake news” on /r/the_donald. All it says is:
So – the only reference to this incident on Reddit, where the incident supposedly occurred, is a link to the article describing it. Reminds one of the XKCD article showing how a falsehood posted on Wikipedia can be referenced by a “legitimate” source, which will then be referenced by Wikipedia as proof that the falsehood is true.
The next link is inside a quote box, apparently “how CBS characterized the attack” with no reference for where they did this. However, copying the entire first sentence and pasting it into Google, yields only Mediaite, other right-wing blogs that reference Mediaite as a source, and the Wikipedia page “CBS News controversies and criticism” under the header Misrepresentation of 2017 Chicago torture incident. The source on Wikipedia’s article is… Drumroll… Mediaite’s initial article! As well as a link that supposedly shows that Armstrong and Getty, radio hosts on KGO-810, also criticized what happened. Unsurprisingly, if you’re paying attention, the link is broken.
The next hyperlink on the text “CBS’s Dean Reynolds” takes us to Dean Reynolds profile. I’m not sure how that’s supposed to be useful, or if we’re meant to believe that the hyperlink was included in Dean Reynolds’ message somehow, but whatever.
[hey, wait a minute! Why would the way that “CBS characterized the attack” involve them speaking about themselves in the third person? CBS news is Donald Trump, confirmed!]
The last link, on the words “attackers yelled “F*** white people.””, just takes us back to the original Mediaite article about the event. So it’s been linked twice now.
Also, the last sentence - “Listen above, via CBS Radio” - is a total lie. The video is hosted by Mediaite and has their logo on the top.
Meanwhile, if we go to CBS News’ website and the article on the event, we can see that the very first line begins:
Emphasis mine.
So… yeah. Is this story total bullshit? Don’t ask me. Check for yourself.
This video appears to have the recording you couldn’t find:
The Youtuber here is quite high profile. If it were all a hoax, I would think it would have been taken down by now.
And 48 Senators. You guys were close though. If it were a game of horseshoes, you’d have definitely earned a point.
I actually was checking the sources too and I agree with your research.
Regardless, if some avoidance of informing about the race of the perpetrators took place, CBS also later reported on how those perpetrators got 8, 3 years of prison or probation for 2 of them. With the most years going to the ringleader and yes; Hate crime charges were also in the law book they threw at them.
Point being that CBS did not hide the race of the perpetrators in the follow ups, even if one accepts the Mediate spin, CBS corrected the reporting.
What I noticed is that nowhere in those articles from alt-media they give their readers or viewers the whole picture or point at the “corrections”/real news/ or followups that CBS made.
On Edit:
Oh, That is Mark Dice. Whom I showed before that he is usually an unreliable narrator. As pointed before, using the fallacy of popularity does not help in an argument.
You’re already misrepresenting my point. I didn’t have any issue finding the recording; it was right there at the top of the page.
I’m not saying that the audio itself is necessarily faked, but presenting this as “fake news” is ridiculous, considering how CBS, the same organization that you’re claiming is in on this conspiracy to cover up the race of the perpetrators, posted this on their website the very same day:
Two more thoughts on your video…
He doesn’t provide any sources for his claims, not even in his description. That’s automatically a red flag.
Holy crap, what is with the tirade about the N word he goes off on halfway through the video? What a deranged individual.
Sorry, I know it’s something of a hijack but someone has to respond to Bullitt’s long post earlier in the thread.
Firstly I’m not sure in what sense you can say “majority”.
But anyway, people consider him a racist pig (among other things) because of his actual words an actions. The central park 5 thing. The way he calls any black critic of his “low IQ”. Mexican immigrants are rapists (and some, I assume, are good people). Refusing to rent apartments to black people, muslim ban, and on and on.
If my own mother talked this way I’d have to concede she is a racist. It’s breathtaking that people are capable of handwaving all this.
I would not paint all trump supporters are racists, but you don’t get to say you’re all decent people either.
Once more: it’s not the vulgar language that’s the problem, it’s admitting to sexual assault. If I had heard such a thing in a locker room I would have found it disturbing. At the very least I wouldn’t socialize with that person again.
Yeah, he’s a monster, what’s your point?
Oh, it’s whataboutism. I get it.
Right, so you’re saying Trump really has no excuse.
And, if you want to follow many of the principles that I presume your church espouses, you will regularly denounce trump’s behaviour WRT e.g. scamming people out of money, his many affairs and cover ups, committing fraud, etc as well as obviously his constant lying.
Certainly not already pledging to vote for the guy.
Any chance you can speak for yourself, using your own words, instead of linking to shitty trolls on YouTube? No? cool, didn’t think so.