Why Are We So Angry?

Started by Retribution, July 16, 2013, 03:16:17 PM

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Cyrano Johnson

#25
Quote from: ValthazarElite on July 17, 2013, 01:05:41 AMI still don't understand why I should feel uncomfortable, or what "movement" you are referring to?

You don't understand what "movement" I'm referring to? I'll let Austin Bramwell of the American Conservative take that one.

QuoteWith regard to the Fox News comment, I do try to keep statements of overt bias out of a discussion.

Yeah, that's not honest if the entity in question exists to purvey overt bias, which Fox News extremely clearly does. I don't think it's healthy to pretend that an entity founded to serve partisan interests isn't doing so, or that its premeditated, canned responses are anything other than what they are. What we need, as I said earlier, is fewer lies. Pretending that Fox News is an actual non-partisan news outlet is a lie. So you shouldn't do that.
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Ephiral

Basically, Valthazar, if your economic policies are indistinguishable from those of the Republicans, then an attack on Republican economic policies is an attack on your ideology - regardless of what you call yourself or what other positions you hold.

gaggedLouise

#27
Quote from: Oniya on July 16, 2013, 05:33:20 PM
It's not just the anonymity, but the permanency and persistance.  Right now, I can look back through my post history and find things I wrote years ago - things that if I had merely verbalized them would have been well and truly forgotten by now.  There were (and are) certain threads that I wish I'd never posted in, because they keep showing up in my new replies.  True, most of them are Forum Games, but I'm sure you can see how a PROC topic might go the same way.

Someone trying to bow out of a topic is going to be hit with the reminder that the argument is still going on every time they hit up their new replies.  It's like that telemarketer that keeps calling at dinner:  You see the number on the Caller ID, and you ignore it five or ten times, but it doesn't go away.  Then, if you actually answer it (and confirm they have a 'live' number) you get even more calls, no matter what you say to them - including 'don't call anymore!'

*nods in agreement* Stuff that's been posted on the internet has a way of looking like it's there for ever, for all to see, written in stone. And the feeling that as soon as you've typed your bit, "everyone can see what I said, forever" is a real quick fix for certain kinds of people. The medium really has that kind of appeal for a new brand of loud, angry narcissism, one that we used to hear only in private talk, or when one is talking to oneself in the heat of the moment, but not in public discussion.

It's a lot easier to keep up trolling or half-trolling in an online discussion than it would be in any kind of formalized (or semi-formal) eye-to-eye discussion where the time and the number of people that joined in are limited. If there are limits on how much time and how many got to join in, it tends to put a choker on how long a certain kind of bullshit can keep filling up the disussion without getting called out on its grounding. Inversely, it's harder to communicate online (in an open discussion, where anyone can join for as long as they like, as opposed to a panel-style debate or a talk over the dinner table) that "hey man, I'm not posing these questions the same way you do, can't you accept this and be fair when most of the others here seem to get that this is so?" Even if several of the others did get that you're not talking within the same frame as those two loud guys in the corner - for instance, you don't buy that X has to be a zero-sum game or that quality always reflects in mass sales - those two certainly won't, and they're gonna keep up talking and winning new spectators and converts for their side as long as the discussion is live.

And if you walk out and say "Okay, I rest my case" and that side keeps up posting and beating its chest, after a while it could look (to casual observers who just walked in, or who had been following the thread) like "they won, they were left unchallenged in the end".

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Valthazar

Quote from: Cyrano Johnson on July 17, 2013, 01:14:14 AM
You don't understand what "movement" I'm referring to? I'll let Austin Bramwell of the American Conservative take that one.

Yeah, that's not honest if the entity in question exists to purvey overt bias, which Fox News extremely clearly does.

I am not a part of the "Conservative Movement."  I simply see merit in a conservative economic approach - as opposed to Keynesian economics.  This article you have linked discusses foreign policy and a host of other issues which I have not discussed here on E - nor necessarily agree with.

Quote from: Ephiral on July 17, 2013, 01:20:18 AM
Basically, Valthazar, if your economic policies are indistinguishable from those of the Republicans, then an attack on Republican economic policies is an attack on your ideology - regardless of what you call yourself or what other positions you hold.

In all honesty, you probably know more than I do on the nuances between the current Democratic and Republican platforms.  I did notice some inherent biases in Cyrano Johnson's post, but I don't feel it accomplishes any productive good for me to get into an ideological duel here, especially when there isn't an issue/topic at hand.  Statements like, "Fox news exists to purvey overt bias" are blanket statements, completely ignoring the fact that bias exists in almost every media outlet.  I realize that the vast majority of people on E agree with the above statement (and do not feel the same applies to other media outlets) which is perhaps why assertions using this as an underlying premise are not subject to equal scrutiny.  I'm always interested in discussing specific issues, but I'm not a fan of debating when responses are premised on opinions conveyed as facts.

Ephiral

Your countercharge... isn't really a rebuttal. "X contains bias" (true for all X) is not an equal charge to "X exists to spread bias" (demonstrably true of Fox News, much more questionable elsewhere). The fact that you frequently leap to the defense of Fox News with this same non-rebuttal does not help your image as someone who is not part of the movement Fox exists to advance.

Valthazar

And I think this answers the original question of this thread.  We subconsciously try to categorize people into one team or the other, and any discussion of political issues then turns into a sporting event - one side versus the other.  We all know that issues are far more complex than that, but it's difficult for people to accept that an individual might have a unique perspective that combines several schools of thought.  I compare it to someone having religious beliefs of a more 'individualized' nature that incorporates many different aspects, while the people around him/her may be disconcerted by the fact that he/she is not being definitive in using a term to describe his or her faith.

Ephiral

#31
I don't feel a particular need to pigeonhole you into a team. I am not and cannot be on either one of your teams, and two important maxims I bring to these discussions are "Politics is the mind-killer" and "The other side of a disagreement is not comprised of evil mutants". What I was saying was that, if you want to distance yourself from the movement, which you appear to, you might want to reconsider constantly leaping to the defense of its propaganda arm using blatantly false equivalences. Why are you even remotely concerned with the image of the PR section of a movement you don't identify with? Why not direct people to sources that actually exist to present conservative economic policies, rather than shout team rallying cries?

(I'll note that you don't actually address the key point of what I said, ie you are presenting a blatantly and transparently false eqiuivalence.)

gaggedLouise

#32
Not taking sides here, but there are times when I think people should be able to be more evenhanded as they look over a debate, or be more honest in separating the ends and the means. When Wendy Davis was filibustering in the Texas senate a few weeks ago, it went viral and she was lionized by lots of people far outside of the U.S. for her fighting spirit, probably many of those peoiple had only seen a couple minutes or read a few tweets on what she did and what it was about. Now, if she had been using the exact same means to help block a proposed law, or a procedural court rule, that would have made it more difficult to sentence convicted people to death, or to finalize an execution, then she would have been stoned by much of the foreign media, and by the same persons in that sphere who embraced her for her pro-choice marathon.

Why? Because a big majority of people in Europe, and especially in the media and politics, are hard against the death penalty, many tend to see its presence, its survival in the U.S. as a bit of an American quirk - and think the rights to unlimited, formal minority filibustering are almost a joke as a method of democracy. Filibustering in support of the death penalty, or for pro-life policies or restrictions on contraceptives, would have made anybody a villain in the eyes of a big part of the media around here, and there are lots of people in both of the two major U.S. parties who support the death penalty, and for whom it's an honest conviction. I'm personally pro-choice and against capital punishment (abolished in peacetime a hundred years ago where I'm from) but I still think it was daft that many people around here, this side of the pond, who have never seen their fervent hopes for something busted by endless filibustering and who would not accept it if it happened in their own parliament, wrote long anthemic pieces in support not just of Davis' position, but of the means she chose.

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Kythia

Excellent point, Louise.  The republicans are criticised for being intransigent and refusing to discuss issues but what else is a filibuster other than a gigantic sulk until you get your own way?  Sure, one side may do it more than another, but if its objectionable its objectionable and its not a fake desire for balance to criticise it when it happens.

Filibusters, and riders for that matter, confuse me no end though, I must admit.  I simply don't see the benefit.
242037

gaggedLouise

I learnt at some point that you can actually filibuster without having to begin a speech; the move is achieved nowadays simply by gathering sufficient number of senators or house members (40, in the U.S. senate) who join together and petition that "We are filibustering" and that stops the debate on whatever it is. Efficiency.... ::)

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Cyrano Johnson

Quote from: ValthazarElite on July 17, 2013, 01:48:01 AMI am not a part of the "Conservative Movement."

You don't have to keep telling me that, Val. I believed you the first time.

As Ephiral points out, you therefore need not be defensive of it, or when it is mentioned. And it really should be no skin off your nose that Fox News has, and deserves, a poorer reputation than other media outlets. So:

QuoteStatements like, "Fox news exists to purvey overt bias" are blanket statements, completely ignoring the fact that bias exists in almost every media outlet.

This is something you don't need to do. The statement "Fox News exists to purvey overt bias" is a fact. Its viewership is measurably less informed than either the viewship of other media or the viewership of no media at all not because the network is bad at its job, but because it is designed to promote a parallel reality. People well-schooled in that parallel reality fare worse when confronted by real world facts than other people do. (Of course the movement justifies this behaviour to itself and to its constituents by claiming the "liberal media" was a party organ of the Dems all along and they're just fighting back. But that is, in fact, a myth... and one of the central myths of that same parallel reality.)

Now, the rest of the American media is not necessarily all that impressive and does show a real bias... toward conservatism, as noted here. Nevertheless, bias does not exist "in almost every media outlet" in the overtly partisan way that it exists on Fox. It will not do to pretend that it does. We need fewer lies.

All of that is not to say similar patterns cannot develop: MSNBC has in recent years worked out that there's money to be made promoting a Fox News-style shouting-head format on the liberal side of the spectrum. But MSNBC has the advantage of not having had to build its own parallel reality for its viewers yet in the way the conservative movement has; they're still from different political cultures which are not on equivalent footing WRT to the facts. Nevertheless, as its constituency gets increasingly angry, the temptation to resort to falsehood and myth-making to feed the beast -- and line one's pockets -- could well grow. What happened on the far right could still happen to the progressives. The network of progressive think-tanks that has recently begun to rise to counter and deconstruct the output of the conservative movement's organs could develop into a parallel universe in the same way.

It just hasn't happened yet.

(This, by the way, is something that surely contributes to the "we're so angry" image of modern politics: the fact that just straightforwardly describing the world around us has become a politicized act that is necessarily biased against a large sector of the North American political culture. I don't think this necessarily involves anger, but it does certainly involve insistence, doggedness, the breaking of some long-accustomed rules of discourse, and ruffling some feathers. There are a lot of polite fictions that North American political culture has been accustomed to living with -- "balance" was a big one -- that are so far out of touch with reality by now that we just can no longer afford them. And as to those movementarians who chose to bias pretty much their entire movement against reality... well, they made their bed. Now they have to lie in it.)
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Cyrano Johnson

Quote from: gaggedLouise on July 17, 2013, 03:15:18 AMWhen Wendy Davis was filibustering in the Texas senate a few weeks ago, it went viral and she was lionized by lots of people far outside of the U.S. for her fighting spirit, probably many of those peoiple had only seen a couple minutes or read a few tweets on what she did and what it was about. Now, if she had been using the exact same means to help block a proposed law, or a procedural court rule, that would have made it more difficult to sentence convicted people to death, or to finalize an execution, then she would have been stoned by much of the foreign media, and by the same persons in that sphere who embraced her for her pro-choice marathon.

Yes, and I can remember not long ago when the filibuster was evil and was supposed to be got rid of because the Republicans were using it to block progress in Congress. This really is something that is generally true of political factionalism: a weapon that looked Evil in the enemy's hands yesterday suddenly starts to look good when it's being wielded in your behalf today. And I'm sure it will make the switch back at some point.

But precisely because this and similar partisan hypocrisies are such a long-standing part of political culture, I don't think it can be cited as a particular cause and effect of today's angrier political culture in North America, except perhaps that the intensity of each news cycle has ramped up a bit. (The Internet also affects that intensity. Prior to the age of "going viral," nobody outside of Texas would likely have heard anything about Wendy Davis' filibuster.) That's why I focused my brief description on where, so far as I can see, the genuine ruptures and differences in the culture lie.
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Retribution

Very valid points Kythia and Gagged and if you read this link http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/nsa-leak_n_3421415.html

I think anyone who reads it will see how both sides of the aisle jump back and forth on sides of an issue depending on who is in control. My general impression hell after reading this thread I started is similar to the lyrics from a song “mostly saying hooray for our side” Having said that those who have a lean will say it is all the other sides fault. To offer another quote Rodney King in this case “can’t we all just get along?”

Apparently not and at this point I am inclined to agree with what others have posted here. That is that this is the digital age and we cannot seem to tolerate others having a differing view than ours. And with the 24 news cycle and things posted on the net always being there right in our face it continues to needle us. I think the general anger at Fox News is pretty obvious on E and then on the other side of the coin is the argument that say CNN is biased, but I think this will show that a lot of that is perception http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/03/18/pew-study-finds-msnbc-the-most-opinionated-cable-news-channel-by-far/

And I am sure those who do not agree with me will soon be attacking my sources or putting their own personnel spin on the information contained therein.  I just find it telling that when I ask why we have so much intolerance and anger it dissolves into a lot of intolerance and anger.

Cyrano Johnson

#38
Quote from: Retribution on July 17, 2013, 12:17:26 PMThat is that this is the digital age and we cannot seem to tolerate others having a differing view than ours.

I don't think this is true at all, actually. There are a lot of people with very different views who get along and cooperate quite well, or at least tolerably well. I know a lot of people far more conservative than I am with whom I get along just fine. The problem is not inability to tolerate different views; it's simply that because of the dynamic I described earlier, that kind of cooperation no longer crosses the aisle of the American two-party system in the way that it used to do, since one side of that system has decided to stop participating.

(Yes, of course it is impolite to acknowledge this, because the polite thing used to be to talk about "balance" and how "both sides are at fault." Both sides of the American party system of course still get to talk as if the other side is to blame. It's just that they don't both get to be right. Sometimes one side really is more wrong than another. That's life.)

Partisan hypocrisy of course does still happen on both sides, as I noted above. (Especially dangerous when it comes to things like surveillance. Hypocrisy about the filibuster is a relatively minor procedural question; hypocrisy about the ability to spy on opponents will tempt each side to use dirty tricks today that it denounced yesterday.) But that's a separate question from overall responsibility for the breakdown of the two-party system's ability to function.
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Ephiral

Quote from: Retribution on July 17, 2013, 12:17:26 PMAnd I am sure those who do not agree with me will soon be attacking my sources or putting their own personnel spin on the information contained therein.  I just find it telling that when I ask why we have so much intolerance and anger it dissolves into a lot of intolerance and anger.
This right here is a huge part of the problem on a tactical level. When you preemptively dismiss any and all dissent as partisan spin, then of course you can't ever see that you could possibly be wrong in any way. After all, everybody who says that is The Enemy, and therefore an evil mutant who wants to destroy all that is good, right?

Retribution

#40
Ephiral -> I am not saying you are wrong but I am curious when and where did I pick a side in this thread? If I did I can assure you it was not with intent because for example in the links I cited I did my best to pick topics and studies that showed both sides in a rather poor light IMHO. I have done my level best to name no enemy or call anyone evil.

I simply asked why such anger in honest disagreement. Perhaps I did not word it well but that was the simple question. I have seen a lot of in essence because whoever I do not agree with is the problem. But I have done  my honest best effort to be neutral and just ask why are we angry? I see nothing there to have dissent over. What am I missing here?

EDIT: perhaps the misunderstanding was when I said do not agree with me. So some clarification there my intent with that statement was the inference that both sides of any issue tend to point a finger and say "their fault!" Hell, I have gone out of my way here to not name an issue or side but simply to observe the conflict that results from disagreement.

Neysha

I think you got your answer Retribution. Even here, bereft of Fox News and talk radio and MSNBC, somehow, possibly through magic, people in this thread are labeling and pigeonholing each other... or rather one group is pigeonholing another while the second group is clearly puzzled at being defined by someone else. If you want to see why there is so much angry discourse, just review the latent adversarial discussion going on here. :(
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Ephiral

Quote from: Retribution on July 17, 2013, 02:24:16 PM
Ephiral -> I am not saying you are wrong but I am curious when and where did I pick a side in this thread? If I did I can assure you it was not with intent because for example in the links I cited I did my best to pick topics and studies that showed both sides in a rather poor light IMHO. I have done my level best to name no enemy or call anyone evil.

I simply asked why such anger in honest disagreement. Perhaps I did not word it well but that was the simple question. I have seen a lot of in essence because whoever I do not agree with is the problem. But I have done  my honest best effort to be neutral and just ask why are we angry? I see nothing there to have dissent over. What am I missing here?
The part where you dismiss anybody who disagrees with your post (in which the sources do not say what you think they do, leading you to faulty conclusions) as attacking you or putting a spin on things. No, sometimes you're just factually wrong, and it is of vital importance to be able to recognise and accept this.

Cyrano Johnson

Quote from: Neysha on July 17, 2013, 02:57:40 PMEven here, bereft of Fox News and talk radio and MSNBC, somehow, possibly through magic, people in this thread are labeling and pigeonholing each other...

Um, no-one on this thread has "labeled" or "pigeonholed" another person participating in this thread that I've seen.
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Retribution

Thank you all for your answers they were enlightening.

But I think this thread has outlived its useful life if someone from admin would be so kind to please lock it.

Oniya

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