Violent rhetoric

[Huckleman2000]

[...]
In the post I responded to, you said this: "Most Americans are clueless idiots. Our task as enlightened citizens is to raise awareness, not accept ignorance as the norm."

Can you honestly say that is not an extremely elitist statement?

Actually, I would say it's an extremely egalitarian statement. It's based on the idea that the citizens of a society, given truthful knowledge of political realities, will collectively arrive at good decisions.

You're the one who's advocating for political leaders to use rhetoric that inflames fears and deceives people in order to further their own goals. Believing that your own goals are so superior that you can lie about them in order to gain support strikes me as "extremely elitist".

 

[Boxlicker101]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Boxlicker101
[...]
In the post I responded to, you said this: "Most Americans are clueless idiots. Our task as enlightened citizens is to raise awareness, not accept ignorance as the norm."

Can you honestly say that is not an extremely elitist statement?

Actually, I would say it's an extremely egalitarian statement. It's based on the idea that the citizens of a society, given truthful knowledge of political realities, will collectively arrive at good decisions.

You're the one who's advocating for political leaders to use rhetoric that inflames fears and deceives people in order to further their own goals. Believing that your own goals are so superior that you can lie about them in order to gain support strikes me as "extremely elitist".

How can you possibly call that an egalitarian statement? The speaker or writer is saying he and others like him, being enlightened and superior to everybody else, should be in control and tell others what to think and what to do. How much more elitist than that can you get?

You can also say what you said here: It's based on the idea that the citizens of a society, given truthful knowledge of political realities, will collectively arrive at good decisions. However, you are failing to include that the "truthful knowledge of political realities" will be what you say it is.

I'm not advocating anything, except for being supportive of the First Amendment and saying people should be free to speak their minds, whether I agree with them or not.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Boxlicker101
[...]
In the post I responded to, you said this: "Most Americans are clueless idiots. Our task as enlightened citizens is to raise awareness, not accept ignorance as the norm."

Can you honestly say that is not an extremely elitist statement?



How can you possibly call that an egalitarian statement? The speaker or writer is saying he and others like him, being enlightened and superior to everybody else, should be in control and tell others what to think and what to do. How much more elitist than that can you get?

You can also say what you said here: It's based on the idea that the citizens of a society, given truthful knowledge of political realities, will collectively arrive at good decisions. However, you are failing to include that the "truthful knowledge of political realities" will be what you say it is.

I'm not advocating anything, except for being supportive of the First Amendment and saying people should be free to speak their minds, whether I agree with them or not.

Well, luckily for you, people are free to speak their minds.

Including those of us who worry about the quality of mind thus disclosed-- we are free to speak about that, too.

Sure, I think it's "elitist," before you ask. It shouldn't be. Education should not be "elite."

"Truthful knowledge of political realities" is somewhat problematic, way to put it, I agree. But it's far better to argue with someone who knows what they are talking about-- I am willing to be convinced by good argument that makes sense to me.

 

[DeeZire]

Here's an interesting opinion piece looking at hate speech in the context of American history. The writer surmises that there has always been a direct correlation between hate speech and the homicide rate. Hate speech goes up, the homicide rate goes up. Hate speech goes down, the homicide rate goes down. The author closes his piece with this statistic: If homicide rates remain as they are today, 1 out of every 147 American children will die a violent, non-accidental death. Let's hope it's not one of your children.

http://azstarnet.com/news/opinion/article_58196d67-379c-5ec0-b898-62189c3a154d.html

Box - my point about the poll showing that 70% of Americans connected Saddam to 9/11 was to illustrate how public opinion can facilitate evil deeds committed by their government. If the public had been 90% against going after Saddam, (in other words, if the public hadn't been tricked by propaganda) I doubt that Bush/Cheney would have proceeded with their war of choice. Remember Box, hundreds of thousands of innocent people died in that war, and are still dying today. If this isn't a good enough example of the dangers of reckless (but free) speech, I'd suggest you're remaining willfully ignorant. The question is, what is motivating this willful ignorance? Is it pride? Partisan politics? Are you a less skilled Amicus, trolling forums for your own entertainment?

If ever there was a time for someone to seriously consider "thinking outside the Box," this would be it, my friend.

 

[Weird Harold]

The author closes his piece with this statistic: If homicide rates remain as they are today, 1 out of every 147 American children will die a violent, non-accidental death. Let's hope it's not one of your children.

http://azstarnet.com/news/opinion/article_58196d67-379c-5ec0-b898-62189c3a154d.html

An interesting opinon piece -- long on history and statistics, short on even vague source for those statistics. I would dearly love to know who (and how) derived the 1:142 (not 147) statistic in that throwaway scare line at the end.

I would note that the period he cites as "in some places as low as 1:100,000" encompasses a time when a large fraction of US citizens/residents were headed west of the mississippi and often didn't see another human for months at a time -- death, let alone cause of death was often unrecorded on the frontier.

 

[xssve]

Actually, I would say it's an extremely egalitarian statement. It's based on the idea that the citizens of a society, given truthful knowledge of political realities, will collectively arrive at good decisions.

You're the one who's advocating for political leaders to use rhetoric that inflames fears and deceives people in order to further their own goals. Believing that your own goals are so superior that you can lie about them in order to gain support strikes me as "extremely elitist".

It's true that Americans are basically yahoos, rather than intellectuals, there is in fact a great deal of native suspicion of intellectual activity, and it seems somehow "foreign" to Americans, who like to "keep things simple", thus the attraction of ideology, which is typically a gross oversimplification of some sort, but easy to remember, and it tends to promise to resolve various moral ambiguities, though all it does at best, is mask them behind a wall of justification.

Ayn Rand, religion, these are similar ideologies, Adam Smith is intellectual, but you can read Adam Smith with Sixth grade education, it' s pretty straightforward stuff, he argues from evidence instead of making shit up, you just need the attention span of an adult, cause short and sweet it ain't.

Ideology requires very little in the way of attentions span, in fact, it tends to discourage attention span development, since if you do pay attention, as the logical inconsistencies are going to start piling up, and if you ask questions, you're gonna be told simply shut up, and repeat what we tell you to repeat, i.e., rhetoric.

Empirical logic works the other way around, first you look at the evidence to discern how something works, then you apply logic to describe why it works that way - logic is just a tool, a means to an end, not the end in itself.

Ideology is the crack of the intellectual world, Rand is an ideologue, Smith is an empiricist, but only through use of the intellect can the difference be discerned and demonstrated.

 

[xssve]

The debate has spilled over into comics.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

For all intents and purposes the generalizations construed in the cited article are mostly bullshit. In 1861 Florida had a white male population of about 25,000 so the number of killed by violence woulda been 21-22 men. There were zero lynchings of blacks before the Civil War cuz Negroes were property and confined to plantations. Runaways were jailed until redeemed. No one made a dime off a dead slave.

After the war GOP controlled state governments refused to build prisons in the South, so convicts were leased to farmers and companies for labor. Fees were split between sheriff, judge, and state; few asked for conviction orders, and few convicts were processed thru courts of law. Escapees were dealt with ex parte by locals paid a bounty, dead or alive, for return of a convict.

The convict lease system was a scandal because of the money made by GOP politicians, and its intimidating effect on political opponents. After Reconstruction Democrat judges went the other way in their dispositions of convicts. Mercy and leniency was the ticket. So local folks took care of the problems ex officio, usually with ropes.

The mercy and leniency was the result of more conspiracies among politicians and local officials. Plenty of politicians hired whites and blacks for crimes like murder, arson, cattle rustling, moonshining, etc. The people got fed up with the exploitation and hanged whomever they caught.

In my family papers is an account of a lynching perpetrated by my kinsmen at Tallahassee. One of the Old Timers fathered a biracial girl at New Orleans, and after the old man died she came to Tallahassee to collect her share of the inheritance. In town she met a prosperous guy and married him. They had a daughter. Sometime later the woman and child were murdered by a white man who raped the woman, first.

The husband went to the sheriff, and when nothing happened, went to my family (his wifes kin) for help. All the uncles and cousins caught the suspect and made him vanish forever. All of them (white and black) were prosecuted but nothing came of it, cuz there was no body and no witnesses. Thats how it was handled when the law was unavailable.

 

[DeeZire]

I noticed the author citing the calm during the Eisenhower years. That seems to be the era conservatives wish to return to. Two things the conservatives would have to change if they really wanted to "go back": no more violent rhetoric, and a tax rate of over 90% for the super rich. Yeah, I'm with the conservatives on this one. Let's return to the 50s (but without the segregation.)

Didn't the author mention the end of the Fairness Doctrine as a turning point in public discourse? Hmmm. It does appear that if we absolve the media of any responsibility, they will act irresponsibly.

 

[squarejohn]

Hate speech always occurs when a conservative disagrees with a liberal. So, to eliminate hate speech, all conservatives should always agree with liberals.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Hate speech always occurs when a conservative disagrees with a liberal. So, to eliminate hate speech, all conservatives should always agree with liberals.

Almost always.

Liberals understand, more often than conservatives, that absolutes don't get us very far (if you're wondering why liberals do indulge in absolutes, it's because conservative don't usually hear any statement that isn't absolute).

 

[squarejohn]

Almost always.

Liberals understand, more often than conservatives, that absolutes don't get us very far (if you're wondering why liberals do indulge in absolutes, it's because conservative don't usually hear any statement that isn't absolute).

Yes, I quite agree. That was easy. Now we're all pals again.

 

[stephen55]

An interesting opinon piece -- long on history and statistics, short on even vague source for those statistics. I would dearly love to know who (and how) derived the 1:142 (not 147) statistic in that throwaway scare line at the end.

I would note that the period he cites as "in some places as low as 1:100,000" encompasses a time when a large fraction of US citizens/residents were headed west of the mississippi and often didn't see another human for months at a time -- death, let alone cause of death was often unrecorded on the frontier.

The author of that opinion piece is Dr. Jack D. Marietta, Professor of History at the University of Arizona. It was published in The Arizona Daily Star newspaper, not in a scholarly journal. However, I'm sure the guy got his facts straight.

Thirty to 40 years earlier, Americans could hardly have predicted the hatred that divided sections, government, political parties, churches, families and skulls. In the "Era of Good Feelings" political partisanship almost disappeared and, moreover, Americans acted civilly toward one another in everyday interchanges. It was a time when the homicide rate reached its lowest point in all of U.S. history - lower than one per 100,000 population in some areas.

As for "Era of Good Feelings", he's referring to the era 1815-1825. The great expansion of settlers west of the Mississippi took place decades after that.

 

[Weird Harold]

The author of that opinion piece is Dr. Jack D. Marietta, Professor of History at the University of Arizona. It was published in The Arizona Daily Star newspaper, not in a scholarly journal. However, I'm sure the guy got his facts straight.

Oh I'm sure that no professer of anything has ever made shit up to fit an agenda.

It is nice that he is a Professor and has a "Piled Higher and Deeper degree" but one big problem with public discourse today is typified byt he Dr Pepper ad Campaign -- "Trust Me I'm a Doctor." The good professor may well have a point in there somewhere, but I'd like just something more than "Trust Me I'm a Doctor" to cross-check with.

I'd still like to know who came up with that 1:142 bit of fear mongering and how it was derived.

[/I]As for "Era of Good Feelings", he's referring to the era 1815-1825. The great expansion of settlers west of the Mississippi took place decades after that.

The same point applies to the expansion to the Mississippi as I made about expansion past the Mississippi -- "Some areas less than 1:100,000" is easy to achieve when you have a population density of 1 person for every ten square miles or less -- although finding 100,000 people might be a problem.

 

[stephen55]

Why don't you e-mail the guy and find out.

jack-marietta@ns.arizona.edu

 

[Boxlicker101]

The author of that opinion piece is Dr. Jack D. Marietta, Professor of History at the University of Arizona. It was published in The Arizona Daily Star newspaper, not in a scholarly journal. However, I'm sure the guy got his facts straight.

Thirty to 40 years earlier, Americans could hardly have predicted the hatred that divided sections, government, political parties, churches, families and skulls. In the "Era of Good Feelings" political partisanship almost disappeared and, moreover, Americans acted civilly toward one another in everyday interchanges. It was a time when the homicide rate reached its lowest point in all of U.S. history - lower than one per 100,000 population in some areas.

As for "Era of Good Feelings", he's referring to the era 1815-1825. The great expansion of settlers west of the Mississippi took place decades after that.

That was from 1817 through 1824, and coincided with the collapse of the Federalist Party. There was no partisan bickering, and that continued through the two terms of Monroe. http://www.historycentral.com/NN/Era.html

After that, the one party that survived split into Whigs and Democrats, and partisanship reigned again.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Okay, look... Once again. The problem is NOT about the name calling among private citizens. You want to call Obama a dumb-ass cocksucker or Palin a political whore, and we should all be fine with that. That's an expression of opinion.

And it's certainly not about violent metaphor in political speech. Crushing an opponent or eviscerated his programs or going at legislation tooth and claw isn't the problem. Figures of speech are not the problem.

It's not even about name-calling among politicians. They can rant and rave and smear each other all they want, or at least up to the point where one of them can prove libel in a court of law. Nor is it about which side calls which the worst names, or the most names, or any of that petty playground bullshit.

What it's about is about political leaders advocating or even suggesting they're advocating the use of violence against the other side. That's not name-calling. That's threat and intimidation, and anyone who says they support freedom should be up in arms whenever they hear that occur. And that's what's different about things today. As Stella's examples show, we have threats and intimidation by political leaders becoming an acceptable, even normal, part of political discourse.

Politics and the roles of political leaders have changed completely in the era of mass communication. We all swim in a sea of politics and opinion these days, and the things politicians say don't just influence the political atmosphere, they define it. And if you think a politician's blatherings don't influence public behavior, just look at what Hitler achieved, or Marx, or Pol Pot, or Castro, or Kim Jong Il, or even Obama in 2008.