The left is heading in the same opposite direction of the right
 

I read a story recently about a woman who lost her father to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh... I can't find it now, but if you google "lost my father to fox news," you will find a dozen such articles about formerly reasonable men and women who become radicalized and insane after decades of being in the right-wing hatosphere.

I wonder if people can read these and worry without reflecting on how the left is running in the same direction. There are a number of highly biased news aggregators that basically steal news from real news organizations and rewrite it while amplifying the outrage; the left-wing never mounted a serious challenge to right-wing TV and radio but the Internet has provided that same echo chamber, the same us vs. them.

I sense a similar trend in preferring ideological premise to facts, resentment of mainstream media, and essential myth-building, the constant use of outrage to keep people... well, outraged, and outrage isn't good for the gray matter. The petty selection of test cases to represent the larger narrative, the demonization of anyone presenting a counter-narrative.

[Deleted a bunch of stuff because it was getting into TLDR territory].

I'm not here to prove that the left is drifting in that direction. I suspect if you are frequently reading sites like BuzzFeed and AddictingInfo and have a coterie of like-minded Twitter friends you are not going to see it that way precisely because you're in the echo chamber.

But I do think the left isn't just radicalizing, it is moving toward the intellectual flatness and incuriousness that has led the right from Reagan to Gingrich to the tea party to Trump. With 20 years of further radicalization and stupefication I wonder where the left will be.

Outrage and rage make you stupid. Truly, the dumbest choices are made while enraged. And yet "we" seem to prefer our leaders to be in that perpetual state.

IMO, anger is a drug--not quite the opiate of the masses, given its destructive powers, but it is certainly addicting. Look at recreational outrage and the dismissiveness of other people's problem and troubles. The utter lack of compassion or considering of another's POV is what turned me away from the Dope. All the pile-ons because someone had a honest moment of weakness or poor judgement or was just trying to relay one of the odd moments life brings us all etc.; it all got to be too much. And sadly, The Dope is one of the SANER and more civil places online. I have zero time for Reddit or the Snackpit or places like that. Life is too short to spend it dissing other people. Which is not to say I am not snarky, judgmental and outraged at times. Of course I am, as are we all.

Taking this mindset to politics, it's a short hop to the dumbing down of the message to fit a TV segment (and let's be honest here: most Americans neither know their history or care about it. America, and probably all nations, are all about ME ME ME NOW) or to appease (and appeal) to an emotional faction/factor.

The anti-intellectuals have America in thrall right now, mostly (IMO) because careful, cautious consideration takes time and deliberation. And issues are complex: most times there is not a simple solution or even one correct solution to anything that confronts us. We truly are an interesting species: we can build and create stuff that we cannot handle psychologically, emotionally, physically or intellectually en masse.

I consider myself a leftwing liberal, and I agree with you 100% that liberals and the Democratic party as a whole is suffering from intellectual flatness and lack of curiousness. I think many liberals are basically echo chambers, incapable of independent thought, just like the Fox News viewers. They will absolutely shut you down in a conversation if they disagree with you, even if you have facts on your side, if it conflicts with their worldview. They will also often just dismiss you as a racist, misogynist, or some other epithet if you do not tow the party line exactly on all issues related to race, women's rights, etc.

Some examples from my own personal life. Black Lives Matter as a whole has a worthy goal and some very admirable people in it. But some of the tactics they use are divisive, and some of the language they apply is racist. If you stand up and say anything negative about Black Lives Matter, or do not agree with them 100%, I have several friends who will call you a racist and won't discuss it at all.

If you aren't totally 100% against gun ownership, you are a 'gun-nut'. There is no room for compromise here. All guns must be banned. When I have tried to point out that even countries with very strict gun control often allow for hunting rifles, shotguns, and even sometimes handguns, they don't care.

If you against abortion at any time during pregnancy for any reason, you are a misogynist in the eyes of many in the feminist movement. You want to restrict a woman's choice. They simply cannot accept that a fetus is a human being at all until after birth.


Now personally on most of these issues (and others) I tend to side more with the liberals in philosophy if not in tactics and attitude. The difference being that I am always willing to consider new arguments, new evidence, and have level-headed discussions about these topics without getting upset, angry, and resorting to pejoratives. Many, many liberals today simply cannot abide any differences of belief.

I'm seeing constant parallels between the left and right wings, with similar behavior -- most notably an insistence of ideological purity at all points in a politician's career.

It not anger, though. It's fear. American's are not only constantly afraid, but they revel and brag about it. It's a badge of honor to say how something gives you nightmares.

The left desperately needs to go the way of the Tea Party and be as obstructionist to coporate Democrats as possible.

The Republic needs this.

TTP and TTIP are about to sell our national sovereignty out for good.

Hillary Clinton is the most dangerous candidate to ever run for US President. She will complete Bush's work.

Funny, I think the dumbest choices are made through allegiance to the status quo.

But it's a funny kind of stupid, because it's genteel, filled with myths, but those myths are not questioned because they are largely believed by the wider society.

Like Hillary voters outraged by Donald Trump saying we should kill the innocent families of Isis members. I mean Hillary has already ordered the deaths of many innocent families. But Donald Trump is evil for doing exactly what she has done.

That we hear that 'pragmatic realist' is someone who is for wars that will bankrupt us, send our best and brightest off to a world of death, misery, missing limbs, and PTSD suicide is beyond disturbing to me.

That we have people in their bourgeois fear and complacency asking for a world where we will eventually be policed by robots operated by a bureaucracy that is increasingly remote over which we have less and less recourse, is just scary.

I mean, I accept that in Orwellian terms, I am a member of the Outer party, and likely will remain as such the rest of my life and the party of war and killer robots and trade deals that decide major issues in secret international arbitration continues to rule us.

Flint Michigan demonstrates that American citizens are just as much the indigenous population standing in the way of industrial progress who can be poisoned or moved out of their homes in the name of progress just like any native in Brazil or Pashtun in the SWAT valley.

This is what we are heading toward. Hillary Clinton more than Donald Trump will bring the third world to American citizens.

Those at the bottom of the global pile will see a pretty significant increase in their standard of living. Meanwhile, the Democratic powers left to the people will be slowly eroded beyond where they currently are.

If you want to see the future of the United States in a post-Clinton world, look to China. An elite technocratic party that makes decisions behind closed doors with little input from the populace.

That is where we are headed.

I am increasingly convinced that trying to be a political activist is pointless. Hell even voting is mostly pointless.

What I really need to do is knuckle down and make a lot of money so that I can buy political outcomes. This is the future. Time to accept it. Luckily for me, I am embedded in the tech world, and actually understand something about how to build a tech company that can reap these disproportionate returns by building the infrastructure that is bringing out about the greatest job destruction in the history of the world.

Mr. Plumbean The analyses of time covered by candidate in the media is irrefutable. You can't just make fun of conspiracy theory. It matters, and leads to outcomes. Bernie Sanders may very well have done better if he got more even coverage.

Like the time CNN covered an empty podium waiting for Trump to speak while Bernie was speaking live.

It's not a conspiracy theory if it's actually true.

You can look up the data if you want. it's out there and it's stark.

Measuring Donald Trump's Mammoth Advantage in Free Coverage (NYTimes)

Obviously it's not simply a matter of being captured by the establishment as much as it is the ethos of sensationalist infotainment and celebrity worship.

It's more about focus than truth. The tendency is to seek out those details that amplify your own outrage and sense of being treated unfairly, and moreover to find "stories" about those outrages that already inflamed and pandering to your own bias. There's a tendency away from considering the business model that creates those insanifying articles, the hack jobs about the trivialities.

Well, the Democratic party has been unresponsive to the sorts of values I hold dear for my entire life.

Hillary just represents the final nail in the coffin. But more than that it's not about the candidate, it's about her supporters. I recognize that her supporters and I do not have any common cause.

So it's not about personal victimization. Despite not being represented in government except by the fringe, I am not a victim, I have plenty of privilege from being a white male of above average intelligence in one of the wealthiest job markets in the world.

So I see it very differently from 'trivialities'. And that's a big part of where the outrage comes in. When being anti-war, anti-private prisons, and anti-global trade agreements that erode national and local sovereignty are considered 'trivialities'. Too trivial to talk about on the news, and trivial differences between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, well...I recognize that my views are not shared by the mainstream of the Democratic party.

It is not that I am discouraged from voting. I have probably done more to encourage voter participation than the vast majority of posters on this forum. It's just that at this point, not voting at all is a stronger signifier of what I believe than voting for the Democratic candidate. I am better represented by not voting at all, than I am by voting.

Now, there are plenty of candidates who I admire who have a good shot at winning high office. Zephyr Teachout and Tim Canova for instance. But, they aren't running in my district.

So...I am probably going to leave the Democratic Party. Which Democrats tend to think, "So what.", which is baffling considering they are seeing record low turnouts in Democratic Primaries in midterms. They really should care quite a bit about the hemorrhaging of support. Especially when it's a superprime voter like me who has gotten Democratic candidates on the allot for office and registered many voters and who influences a couple of dozen votes in any given election cycle. But the Democrats don't. They continue their sense of privileged entitlement, they expect me to just vote for Hillary Clinton, who I have never voted for despite being an eligible voter in every single election she has ever run in.

So, it's more about that. It's more about compromise meaning, "Give up on everything you want and vote for the candidate we hand you, because the Republican is worse."

Well...I don't think Donald Trump is worse. He is awful, yes, but Hillary Clinton is worse. At least Trump is against these free trade agreements that erode national sovereignty.

So just in case you actually care about where my side is coming from. I thought I'd share. If you wanted to just deride people who won't get in line with the mainstream Democratic opinion, well...let's just say that's the status quo to me, and I am used to it.

To my view, the mainstream Democrats are political extremists voting for endless war.

In short. The Democratic party needs to actually try representing its constituents more. Because the base is walking out the door.

You're making a real go at not comprehending what I'm actually talking about.

I understand what you are saying. I guess I think it's a cliche used to shout down people who aren't fitting into a mainstream narrative saying that if they are angry then there isn't any point to what they are saying.

I mean since you are talking purely about emotion, I apologize for getting into the weeds of the actual details.

In short I disagree with your premise. There is nothing particularly changed about the way people engage in political discourse. People are not any flatter intellectually than they have ever been. They are not more outraged than they have ever been.

The only thing that is really changing is we are seeing an ideological shift in who sees each other as an ally.

So I guess all I have to say is. No, I don't think there is any merit to your premise. I refer everyone to the history of the election of 1800 if they think this is something new or different or belongs to the right and is infecting the left, or any of that. Same old shit.

LOL.

I think this narrative that people are becoming more ignorant and narrow minded because of social media is really trendy.

In any context I've always thought it was silly.

You are the very example that proves my point.

My feeling is that the RNC and DNC are two sides of the same coin, merely being offered to give the illusion of choice. I do think that there are significant differences in their platforms, but that those are offered only to entice a voting bloc rather than from any particular sense of principles. To wit: Sanders' strong showing is pulling Clinton to the left; otherwise I feel (and I am not alone) that she would have blissfully drifted right to pick up centrists.

The real similarity is that the two parties are vying for their individuals to be in positions of control and power. Debra Wasserman Shultz and the rest of the DNC and super-delegates know that if HRC wins they will be safe and comfortable. No one knows who Sanders may select for his team, and that scares them.

The same for the RNC; if their party is in power, everyone will be comfortable. Lindsey Graham once joked ""If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you." And yet they will want him to be the nominee because Trump is the wild card (SWIDT?).

The big problem is that both machines are fueled by truckloads of cash, and the independents threaten the whole process. Sure, you can point to JEB! and say that a legacy name and a Super PAC did nothing for him, but everything tells me that status quo is what both parties want. Should Sanders win, he may well ask the FEC to appeal the Citizen's United SCOTUS ruling, and would likely try to appoint a justice that would favor overruling that decision. I don't see HRC doing that (let alone the GOP*) because the process works so well for them. And I think that some of the public see the rigged deck and are trying to shake things up.

*Although I don't think that Trump really cares one way or the other.

Excellent post Nonny.

But I would say this: on gay rights and women's issues alone, and especially as they are impacted by SCOTUS appointments, the Democrats cause way less pain than the Republicans.

As a gay atheist, I have to say that I see absolutely immense differences between the two parties. And that's not to mention the fact that the GOP is anti-science and batshit insane.

And the rest of us are so frustrated and/or overwhelmed by this that we've become numb and apathetic to the entire political process. This is a grave danger to democracy.

And then there's this. Now I remember why the political process is important.

I would agree, but it would seem that many on the right feel that the Democrats cause way more pain.Oh, no question. And let's not forget that Clinton was (and most Democrats were) opposed to same sex marriage until popular opinion changed and it became expedient to say that they were always for it. Just like everyone in the GOP espouses "Christian values" irrespective of carrying on affairs and having their hand in the cookie jar. Whatever you think will attract the most voters in your state.

That's why so many are attracted to Sanders - he has (to the best of my knowledge) been steadfast in his views throughout his career. And that's why so many are attracted to Trump - he has had affairs, screwed people out of money and publicly spouted racist, sexist and bigoted remarks instead of hiding under the guise of "morality".

My former girlfriend of 20 years (I'm female) thought gay marriage was the stupidest idea ever dreamed up. My Mom, who is a bit older than the Clintons, was also opposed to gay marriage even though she had one gay and one bi kid. They're both firmly in favor now.

Times change, attitudes change and people change. For fucks sake, I couldn't defend half the stupid crap I said when I was 30, can you?

Judging anyone on things they said 20-30 years ago is counterproductive. We are SUPPOSED to get wiser as we get older, right?

20 years old, yeah maybe. Those are college years, trying on different personae to see what fits. And then we get to the real world. I'm pretty consistent in my views from when I was 30.

Fair enough. But we're not talking about the Bill Clinton years and "Don't ask. Don't Tell." How about what she said back in 2002? 2004? 2010?
Remember that same sex marriage was first legalized in Massachusetts in 2004, with a bunch of states soon following. How much do we attribute to getting wiser, and how much to naked ambition?

Why can't it be both? Maybe her views evolved exactly when it became politically expedient to announce her new beliefs. :science:

Headline on every news site: Sanders sweeps Saturday caucuses.

Facebook friend: Sanders sweeps Saturday caucuses and the media is BURYING the story.

Hahah it's funny because it's true, Mr. Plumbean. Otherwise it's sad. Bernie fans live in a totally disconnected reality. It's a totally different reality than my conservative family and friends, but as is the point of this thread, being disconnected from reality is a bipartisan affliction.

As of today, Clinton has 1712 and Sanders has 1004 delegates with 2383 needed to clinch the nomination. There are 2049 delegates left to be chosen. Sanders would need 1379 of those or 67.3%. But with the proportional representation system the Democrats use, that is extremely unlikely. If Sanders wins a mild majority on all the remaining states, Clinton still gets it on the first ballot.

Clinton has a narrower lead when you omit unpledged delegates, but once you get to NY and California Sanders is toast anyway. I like how Sanders fans think anybody voting for Clinton is "the system" that REAL people are fighting against, not men and women with, you know, a different preference. It's another sign of the teapartification of the left. The tea party had "real americans", the Occupy-style left has "the other 99%" even though nothing like 99% of people are actually voting for Sanders.

Oddly, I don't have the same FB experience as you do...it's almost like everyone's FB is reinforcing views they already hold! :rolleyes:

There's the old joke that when the left forms a firing squad, they stand in a circle.

I would disagree. It's not a disconnect, it's carryover resentment at the way the media had managed to bury an alternative narrative when it was important, and only started to acknowledge Sanders when it was too late and when Hillary and the DNC had pretty much sewed up the nomination. I listen to NPR a lot, and it is amazing how much they managed to marginalize Sanders as a novelty candidate. How they would get commentators with no economic background to disparage Sanders' economic policies, ignoring the 170 economists including professor and noted commentator (gasp!) Robert Reich who evaluated those policies and found them eminently feasible and hardly unicorns and rainbows. How the NYT chose to ignore Sanders for fear of alienating their Wall Street base. How polls are ignored that consistently show that Sanders could beat any Republican candidate (past or present) by a far wider margin than Clinton; in fact, some polls show Clinton losing to Republicans.

It's too late now; I think that it seems clear that Clinton will get the nomination. That's the way it goes. But as a commentator stated the other day, she will stumble to the finish line rather than finishing in triumph. There is extraordinary resentment against Clinton and the abandonment of Democratic ideals. Whether this leads to '60s activism or '80s apathy I can't predict. For an analysis of the downfall of the Democratic party, this is a reasoned and thoughtful discussion including a surprisingly reasonable Pat Buchanan. And it made me realize that Sanders is really just carrying forward the nascent protests of Ralph Nader, which made me lose a lot of the resentment I felt at him for being the spoiler candidate in 2000.

I listen to NPR a lot as well, and read all kinds of media. And I'm not fan of Hillary Clinton compared to Bernie. But if you think that the media conspired to marginalize Sanders then you are living in a different reality than the one I am in. The reality I'm in is continuing to report on the Democratic race as if it's close or at least competetive, and they've been reporting it that way from the beginning. If anything, the media has been much harder on Clinton than they have been on Bernie.

They have consistently reported on Sanders victories, and even reported Clinton victories as Sanders "scaring" Clinton, etc. Just this week every source had that story about the fucking bird landing on his shoulder.

Meanwhile I've seen his supporters whining that the media accurately report that Clinton is winning. I remember in 1992 when the right complained about media bias because the media kept reporting that (Bill) Clinton was ahead in the polls.

That's how it begins. You stop paying attention to what the media is actually reporting, stop believing there are any actual facts to report. It's the entrance to the tunnel.

Here's an example of the kind of brutal treatment Sanders gets from the media.

Yup. I've seen article after article all throughout this campaign about what a positive effect Bernie has had, how it's a horse race, blah blah blah. I love Bernie. I think it'd be awesome if he won the nomination and won the presidency. He'd probably be the most decent human being to ever hold the office. However, just like in 2004 when the liberals claimed the election was stolen by the republican political machine in Ohio, and Nader "spoiled" the election in 2000, liberals and democrats cannot fathom that a democrat could lose in an honest, fair, election. Or in the case of a primary, the most liberal candidate a la Bernie Sanders. We live in a center-right country, like it or not (I don't like it at all). Republicans and conservative and mainstream democrats win because that's what our population prefers. Chalk it up to rugged individualism and the pioneering spirit of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, or whatever, that makes us American.

But it's really as simple as this. More people like Clinton and prefer her over Bernie to be the democratic nominee. Bernie wasn't robbed of anything. It's hard to admit that a majority or large plurality disagree with you, but that's really as simple as it is. If anything, the media as a whole was incredibly positive toward Bernie, both by liberal/central networks to promote the idea of a horse race and produce high ratings, and also by right-wing outlets who thought that positive coverage of Bernie would hurt Hillary, who they saw as the bigger threat.

Clinton has been raked through the mud. Bernie has not. It's really just that simple.

Well, I guess we could just go with confirmation bias by not looking beyond our Facebook feed. But, who you going to believe? Me, or your own lying eyes? ;) Or CNN?

I guess it would be fair for Clinton to get 14 times the coverage that Sanders got if she got 14 times the voters that Sanders got.

And some other random stuff to explain the anger.


When you look into the tunnel, the tunnel looks into you. :eek:

One fallacy in OP's argument is that the right-wing echo chamber is deliberately financed by rich vested interests. Yes, there is a left-wing echo chamber, but it's much weaker and is not financed by rich interests.

Not a fallacy per se, but an interesting point, Swami. Same direction, different players.

Yeah, that's true but it doesn't compromise the validity of my thread-starter. And I don't think it limits how far this shit can go.

I think the reason I haven't popped up in this thread until now is that I'm not seeing any news here. "Excessive people" have always been with us, and that malady is no respecter of political ideology. Leftist "nutjobs" have always been with us. (SDS, anyone?) Maybe the Internet has made such folks a bit more visible, but that's it.


(If it helps, substitute radicals for nutjobs above.)

Hm, I feel like it's different. I've always been a liberal democrat and although my own positions have largely stayed the same or even nudged leftwards I find the left less tolerable than before. I don't remember being so irritated by people I essentially agree with until recently. I think there's a huge difference even between 2008 and 2016 in the moral certainty/recreational outrage market on the side of the left. The rise of Buzzfeed and Twitter and Tumblr has fostered a mentality that wasn't there before. And I swear I daily see things that people thumbs up that would have been considered fucking insane even ten years ago even by other liberals. In particular I don't see this strain of liberalism especially progressive, and it has less to do with extreme positions as how they are expressed.

Yeah, to BJMoose's point, it's always a tough call for me when I feel like something has changed, or is it just my understanding/recognition that has changed? Is the republican party really more batshit insane than it was when I was a kid, or is my memory of it from that time more moderate than it deserves? Are leftists more insufferable than they have ever been, or am I just now recognizing it for the first time?

I've always been WAY more leftward leaning than the people around me but I have never seen this level of vitriol towards others of the same leanings. Ferchrisake, I voted for Jackson in the 1988 primary...in Texas. We are on the SAME SIDE.

It feels very much like the left's version of the Tea Party. Ideological purity or ELSE! :axe:

I see your point but I also think that this has changed. It's silly to whine and say the media hasn't noticed Bernie these days, but there was a time, maybe back in September or so, when pretty much every news story either completely ignored him or wrote him off as a non-starter and/or joke candidate. I think a lot of lingering complaints are just repeating the complaint from then, which I also think was somewhat valid. This is a legitimate handicap early in the race, which has an impact on how he's doing today, and it kind of sucks. That's not to say it's any sort of conspiracy, but I do think it's a real effect. And while I'm saying "I think" a lot, I think it's possible that this bias could ultimately help him, as it makes his current popularity surge all the more dramatic. After this past weekend, I'm not so sure he isn't going to win. He's kind of on a tear, and at this point in 2008, Hillary had a ton of pledged superdelegates that didn't end up panning out. Shit ain't over. Vote, bitches.

You're not dumb enough to actually believe this. Are you under the impression that there's someone tallying up everyone's reasons for not voting and putting you in the "protest non-vote" column while the other 75% of the population who just didn't bother go in the "non-voting slacker" column? Not voting is not voting, it's not a protest.

Actually it is. And I say this as a right-wing gun nut. The GOP of the 1960's vintage used to be broadly pro-science and somewhat religiously tolerant. The current hysteria about gays and abortion and rejection of evolution only came after it got hijacked by the evangelicals. Hell, Barry Goldwater was for gays in the military and against Jerry Falwell. What has moderated some is that the party isn't as militarily bellicose as it used to be.

I keep looking for a party that is fiscally conservative and socially moderate, but ain't finding much.

Yeah, the way to be represented as having beliefs, as caring what happens, is to vote. It need not, in a general election, be for a major-party candidate, if you cannot stomach them. A third-party or independent vote gets you into the actual record of the people's will; staying home doesn't.

Another reason I wish they'd add a "None of the above" option and make voting compulsory. It's tough to work out the wishes of the silent majority.

Not voting is an abstention, an abdication of your power, minuscule as that may be. If you stay home on Election Day, no vote tally will record the reason why, and you will be noticed only in aggregate, a nameless fraction of a statistic.

Agreed. As disgusted as I am with Hillary, I will still vote for her because the alternative will be far worse. My only regret is that she will view that as a mandate instead of my voting for the lesser of two evils

And then I will have four years ahead of hard drinking to bury the cognitive dissonance.