Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Finding joy where we can, and muddling through where we can’t.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

When we show up, we win.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / The Hate Machine (Open Thread)

The Hate Machine (Open Thread)

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This morning I did a Twitter rant that I think is worth sharing.

This week we’re seeing more of those advice articles for liberals on how to interact with the special snowflakes who voted for Trump.

Some of the articles come from conservatives who don’t know how to win gracefully.

Some come from well-intentioned liberals, like this one.

There may be some truth in all of them. The Vox article may be useful for dealing with your Trumpist uncle at Thanksgiving.

But turning people around one by one? Not a strategy for reaching voters, sorry.

So I have some advice for conservatives. SHUT OFF THE HATE MACHINE

By Hate Machine, I mean

  • Fox News
  • Sinclair Broadcasting
  • talk radio

The Hate Machine teaches that liberals are evil, and other lies. Listeners to Fox are poorly informed on factual matter, studies show.

The Hate Machine also models victim behavior. A poor snowflake commentator on Fox broke down in tears because people are so JUDGEMENTAL.

You can empathize with your Trumpist uncle on Thanksgiving and he will be back to Fox hate on Friday.

SHUT OFF THE HATE MACHINE Then we’ll be able to talk.

Coda: I’m willing to be civil with Trumpies, but I also point out the damage they’ve done.

 

And open thread!

Reader Interactions

165Comments

  1. 1.

    Elizabelle

    I agree. Fox News Channel and Rush Limbaugh are the vector. Now Sinclair Broadcasting too.

    They spread poison to vulnerable minds, and endanger our democracy. You cannot combat them with “better information”, because their viewers/listeners are pretty much brainwashed.

    We need to find a way to carve away their First Amendment protections, or take down their influence, however we can.

  4. 4.

    Major Major Major Major

    Thanks for posting this as a blog post and not linking to/screenshotting all your tweets. People who have the power to blog and tweetstorm should do just that.

    Good luck getting a Trumpist to leave their safe space and give up their binky, though.

    @Elizabelle: why should we carve away their first amendment protections?

  5. 5.

    Jeffro

    That Harvard study some of us were talking about yesterday noted that Breitbart is a new center of conservative media, if not ‘the’ major one. Conservatives need to quit Breitbart as much as they need to turn off Fox News.

  6. 6.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    Like black women keep asking – why were they immune to Russian propaganda and white women weren’t? Forget about the men – it’s patriarchy and white supremacy – but white women falling for the hateful misogyny? What the fuck is that deal about? The white tribe?

  7. 7.

    MattF

    My former condo neighbors, Bill and Mary, moved to a ‘retirement community’ last year. I liked them both; I’d get into discussions with Bill about whether Trump was worse than Cruz. Anyhow, I got a call from Bill shortly after the move– he was astonished by the level of Trump support from their new neighbors. I’m guessing that Fox News is the main source of information for the people in the retirement community.

  8. 8.

    p.a.

    Tell them thak they’re un or illinformed (as I have) and they say (currently) ‘fake news’ and in the past ‘liberal bias’ (fake news v 1.0). Anyone still supporting them as this point is in the black hole of conservapedia reality.

  13. 13.

    Ares Akritas

    Read this Guardian article about the town in Louisiana that voted 90% for the shitgibbon and you’ll realize that there is no way we can communicate with these people, let alone convert them. Their reality is so different from ours that it’s like we’re different species.

    You know, the problem is not the shitgibbon. If he just stayed an asshole reality star, you gives a f-ck? The problem is the imbecilic racist morons who voted to make him president. They gave us the shitgibbon and they’re dead to me. I don’t want to talk to them or know them.

  14. 14.

    bluehill

    I get a little less optimistic that these people are reachable when each dumb, offensive thing Trump says or does is met with silence by repubs. Cville has elicited some visible condemnation, which is a start I guess. Younger Murdoch’s rebuke is the most positive sign to date IMO.

    At this point, it may be easier to change Fox than to change Trump supporters. Advertiser boycotts seem to work with them. Rather than focusing on a particular show focus on the entire network and their tacit and explicit support of the alt right. We are seeing how quickly other companies/CEOs are distancing themselves from anything to with Nazis which includes Trump.

  15. 15.

    Ohio Mom

    @Elizabelle: I don’t know how it would work in the internet age but the Fairness Doctrine seemed to work. Probably not possible to resurrect it.

  16. 16.

    dww44

    Tangentially related is to back off and imagine how conservatives would have been reacting had the Obama Presidency been such a source of daily drama and chaos for its first 7 months (Chyron on cable tv just now says that Bannon probably being fired)? We, all of us liberals, would have been pilloried without cease and Obama himself would probably already have been impeached.

    To Cheryl, there is a Sinclair station in my small city. I’ve noticed that the local Sinclair and Fox stations both rely on feeder video and audio from their network owners, since they’ve little money and resources to devote to actual local reporting. Most of those little gems are entirely political in nature. Thank goodness for the local CBS affiliate and MSNBC. We liberals need a few more deep pocketed George Soros’s.

  17. 17.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I’m reading a book about the women prisoners and matrons in the Nazi camps, and the experiments. It’s mind blowing how in group out group tribalism sets up so fast.

  18. 18.

    different-church-lady

    So I have some advice for conservatives. SHUT OFF THE HATE MACHINE

    That’s like telling a junkie to just stop shooting up.

  19. 19.

    Elizabelle

    @Major Major Major Major: What would you suggest?

    They are propaganda, they displace their viewers’ ability to reason, they eventually help isolate their viewers into a cocoon of fake news.

    It’s interesting to me that families report their Fox-addled relative experiences a behavior change — for the better — once the Fox programming is removed.

    Rightwing media, funded by the plutocrats/oligarchs, is tearing this country apart. They are the polarizing force.

    How do we combat them? They are very effective and powerful; they appeal to people’s worst instincts, and we are seeing too much of the ugly behavior now.

    No Fox News, no Trump in the Oval Office. It is a direct line.

  23. 23.

    different-church-lady

    @Jeffro: Yes, it’s a deeply troubling sign that Fox is no longer a strong enough flavor of crazy for the Orcs. Breitbart is analogous to the kinds of super-heroin that’s killing people now.

  24. 24.

    different-church-lady

    @Yarrow: I’m not sure how far we can take the metaphor, but we know one thing about addiction recovery; it doesn’t work unless the victim wants to break the addiction.

  25. 25.

    Yarrow

    @dww44:

    (Chyron on cable tv just now says that Bannon probably being fired)?

    If that happens he’s running straight to Breitbart to stir up more hatred. Going to make Trump’s life very difficult.

  27. 27.

    different-church-lady

    @Ares Akritas:

    You know, the problem is not the shitgibbon.

    As I’ve said a few times here in the past: Trump is only the symptom. The voters have the disease.

  28. 28.

    Yarrow

    @different-church-lady: That’s exactly right. Unless they want to stop watching and listening to that crap they won’t. Using the addiction metaphor, families and friends can stage an intervention. That might be an idea. “We are concerned that you are taking in too much rightwing propaganda, it’s destroying your relationships and we’re here to help you get the help you need.”

  29. 29.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ohio Mom: Yeah, the Fairness Doctrine was entirely dependent on the idea that broadcast TV spectrum was a finite resource, and being awarded a piece of it carried social obligations. Much of the country was getting their news from three commercial TV networks. Today we have essentially all the bandwidth you can eat and a million media outlets. There’s no lever aside from some sort of tyrannical enforcement of balance that we really don’t want.

  30. 30.

    HaroldPaul

    It’s almost as if we are being asked to show Trump supporters some political correctness –

  31. 31.

    Yarrow

    @different-church-lady:

    As I’ve said a few times here in the past: Trump is only the symptom. The voters have the disease.

    QFT. If Trump goes away those that voted for him–and there are a lot of them–are still here and we have to deal with them.

  32. 32.

    JPL

    Bannon is not on Air Force one with the President. The White House is stilled filled white nationalists, and since Trump is racist, I don’t expect big changes.

  35. 35.

    germy

    @FlipYrWhig:

    If there’s a right-wing media outlet strong enough to kill its viewers, I say we get as many of them to watch it as possible.

    Videodrome

  36. 36.

    Eljai

    The traditional media enables racism by not being willing to call it out – like it’s not polite or something. Joy Reid was one of the few to be aghast at Bannon joining a presidential campaign. After the election, a number of pundits said you could not be racist if you voted for Obama last time, but trump this time. Bullshit.

  37. 37.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @SatanicPanic: Vox has gotten steadily more annoying lately. They’re almost on the my Slate list.

    I don’t read them regularly, but Matt Yglesias– both Hispanic and Jewish– has been pretty good on calling out “identity politics” over-Reasonableness among the overwhelmingly pale Chuck Todds of the world. He also pointed out yesterday– in response to some apparent chatter that trump isn’t a racist, just an old white guy from Queens– that both his mother and grandmother are old white people from Queens, and they are not racists. And that even Archie Bunker knew Nazis were bad guys.

  38. 38.

    randy khan

    The right-wing outlets are going to be there for a long time (and they’ve actually been around in various forms forever – if you don’t know the names, do a search on Father Coughlin and Westbrook Pegler), so we have to deal with their existence. One way is to put pressure on advertisers, which was effective in the end with Bill O’Reilly. There may be other methods as well.

    But engagement with other people is important in the meantime. The bubble is as much a symptom as a cause and if people don’t hear other points of view, they’re likely to assume those points of view are wrong. You have to pick your spots, of course, but there are lots of opportunities, and it’s worth the trouble.

  39. 39.

    Elizabelle

    Well, well. Jennifer Rubin got to our subject today, full shrill strength. WTG J Rubin.
    To curtail hate, James Murdoch must clean house at Fox News

    … [James Murdoch’s] sentiment is lovely, and the money [$1 million to the ADL] is certainly appreciated by those fighting anti-Semitism and bigotry, but the email reeks of hypocrisy, to be blunt. Murdoch seems blissfully unaware of — or in denial about — his family’s role in creating the Trump phenomenon, fueling the rise of a xenophobic, racist demagogue and continuing to fan the flames of his noxious populism, which has brought us to where we are.

    In April, I suggested that Murdoch, his brother and father might do the country a great service by revamping Fox’s news operation:

    Fox News could cease being the unofficial mouthpiece of the Trump administration, offering the president softball interviews and an echo chamber for his worldview (e.g., illegal immigrants are all criminals, America is out to get Christians). When President Trump makes 180-degree turns on a slew of issues, the Fox News hosts shouldn’t be darting and dashing to catch up or denying that the president has reversed himself. Fox News should treat the president’s invented conspiracy theories as, well, invented conspiracy theories. In short, it need not be a right-wing, populist echo chamber in service of the administration, regurgitating the same themes and vilifying the same figures night after night.

    James Murdoch, whose father might be the most successful American immigrant ever, can lay off the hysteria about illegal immigration and massive voter fraud (another Trump fictional story line). It’s irresponsible, racist and false to portray native-born Americans as victims of a tidal wave of immigration.

    …. Instead of giving the ADL what amounts to pocket change for James Murdoch, why doesn’t he clean up his own news operation? Fox News has, more than any other outlet, popularized birtherism, Trumpism and white grievance-mongering, creating an alternative universe for white, older, working-class voters whom Trump whipped into a frenzy. That might cost more than $1 million, but at least Murdoch could sleep well at night, look at himself in the mirror and tell his family that he is a patriot, not a guy who’s making a mint tearing apart the country.

    Have to appreciate Jennifer Rubin for not resorting to the fig leaf that the rest of MSM throws up everytime they foot around this topic — “both sides; who can know? crickets, crickets, cricket …

  40. 40.

    Betty Cracker

    @bluehill: Did you see Jennifer Rubin’s column calling out Murdoch?

    PS: I don’t like this bizarro world where I agree with Jennifer Fucking Rubin so often.

  41. 41.

    trollhattan

    Speaking of the Moron in Chief, he’s fired up the Twitter machine. Let’s help him with a minor edit.

    Radical Islamic Christian Terrorism must be stopped by whatever means necessary! The courts must give us back our protective rights. Have to be tough!

  43. 43.

    nonynony

    @dww44:

    Tangentially related is to back off and imagine how conservatives would have been reacting had the Obama Presidency been such a source of daily drama and chaos for its first 7 months

    I literally can’t imagine it because he would have been impeached within the first six months.

    Immediately upon firing Comey for obstruction of justice if not before.

  44. 44.

    trollhattan

    @Betty Cracker:
    Going with the theme of strange bedfellows, James Murdoch everybody.

    James Murdoch, chief executive of 21st Century Fox and son of conservative media titan Rupert Murdoch, became the latest in a string of executives to criticize President Trump for his reaction to Charlottesville, saying that it concerns “all of us as Americans and free people.”

    Murdoch, like Apple CEO Tim Cook, said he and his wife would donate $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League, which battles hate groups across the country.

    While just one of scores of executives who have denounced Trump for his equivocating and fluctuating statements about the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who descended on Charlottesville last weekend, Murdoch’s position at the apex of the media empire that owns Fox News made his statement particularly noteworthy.

    ETA See I done got beat to the punch. Moar coffee!

  46. 46.

    eclare

    @Yarrow: Didn’t someone here post that he/she simply told Grandma that the cable company stopped carrying Fox, blocked it, and now Grandma watches Animal Planet and is back to normal?

  47. 47.

    Elizabelle

    @Major Major Major Major: OK, what do you suggest? I agree, the First Amendment idea may not fly.

    But what do we do? We saw what happened in Rwanda with Radio Mille Collines (hate radio that exhorted Hutus to kill the Tutsis; granted there was a more complicated history than that …)

    Kay told us yesterday how the fourth graders she visited in their classroom take Facebook for an acceptable news source.

    It’s gonna be a long, long slog, and those benefiting from the polarization and having Trumps and his ilk in office have a LOT of money.

  48. 48.

    JEC

    But without the Hate Machine, who are they? What makes them Better Than Other People ™? Until Hate Machine consumers have some alternative identity to subscribe to, I can’t see many of them abandoning the one they already have. What that alternative identity might be, and who might do the work of constructing it, I honestly can’t fathom. But until somebody crafts a good ego-preserving path for these folks to abandon RWNJ-dom, I think most of them are psychologically stuck there.

  49. 49.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Yeah, the Fairness Doctrine was entirely dependent on the idea that broadcast TV spectrum was a finite resource, and being awarded a piece of it carried social obligations. Much of the country was getting their news from three commercial TV networks. Today we have essentially all the bandwidth you can eat and a million media outlets. There’s no lever aside from some sort of tyrannical enforcement of balance that we really don’t want.

    Yep.

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t read them regularly either, but they can have some good content, and I certainly haven’t found them to be more annoying lately, just the standard baseline somewhat annoying.

  50. 50.

    oatler.

    The only stations in AZ I can pick up with my antenna are Sinclair (Comet, Moviesnetwork and a new one as of this week, Charge).

  53. 53.

    different-church-lady

    @Annie: This pretty much guarantees (a) the invitation won’t come and (b) Trump twitter-shoots himself in the ass talking about how blacks won’t come to the White House, unlike those white sports that love him.

  54. 54.

    Betty Cracker

    @eclare: That was me. We went behind my gran’s back and programmed her TV to block Fox News, then lied and said the cable company dropped it. She was always a conservative, but sitting around watching Fox News all day turned her into a fuming rage-bot. She’s happier now, and so are we.

  55. 55.

    nonynony

    @Elizabelle:

    Have to appreciate Jennifer Rubin for not resorting to the fig leaf that the rest of MSM throws up everytime they foot around this topic — “both sides; who can know? crickets, crickets, cricket …

    Jennifer Rubin has the righteous anger of the convert. Her eyes have been opened and what has been seen cannot be unseen.

    I suspect that kind of clarity is hard for tolerant liberals who weren’t raised conservative. The sudden shock of realization of what the people around you actually believe (rather than profess to believe) is pretty visceral. I still remember going through it when I was an idiot kid during the Clinton years and the impression sticks around.

  56. 56.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @SatanicPanic: Bouie is fantastic. When the Pod Save America bros said they were looking to diversify their podcasts, I was hoping they’d get him. Slate also still has Michelle Goldberg and Dahlia Lithwick, right? I see good stuff there, but it’s so hard to sift through the chaff and the over crowded front page to get to the good stuff.

  58. 58.

    germy

    TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Marion Lambert is unapologetic about the abundance of Confederate flags that surround him.

    A faded pillow with the flag’s print sits on the porch chair of his quirky urban farm in South Tampa, an area known more for craft beers and gluten-free brunch. He’s got a sticker with the red-and-blue battle flag and the words “I ain’t coming down” affixed near the shopworn light switch in the building that holds his farm’s free-range eggs. And in his barn, there’s a cloth flag near a sign that says, “COW COUNTRY watch your step.”

    But the flag he’s proudest of sits about 17 miles (25 kilometers) away, at the corners of Interstates 4 and 75, main arteries for tourists headed to and from the state’s theme parks and pretty beaches.

    The flag is the centerpiece of the Confederate Memorial Park, a small sliver of privately owned land.

    It’s been a thorn in the side of local officials and a source of puzzlement and anger to many residents and visitors. A day after last weekend’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, someone splashed red paint around the park. It’s since been cleaned up.

    Lambert says he tricked the county — his words — when he bought the land, knowing full well they wouldn’t be in favor of one of the nation’s largest Confederate flags flying over one of the state’s most heavily trafficked areas.

    But more on Lambert’s championing of the flag in a bit. First, he has something to say about those who associate it with the neo-Nazi violence that flared in Charlottesville.

    “It seems like we’re heading toward bad times — Armageddon,” said Lambert, who took a dip of snuff while talking with a reporter.

    Reading about the deadly violence in Virginia depressed him, he said, adding that the neo-Nazis are “fringe nutcases.”

    The 69-year-old’s biggest worry, though, is that it will push well-meaning people who want to preserve their Southern heritage toward extremism.

    “You’re marginalizing the entire group of people,” said Lambert, who sells eggs and honey on the honor system from a roadside stand at his house.

    Lambert first started championing the flag back in 1991, when someone from the NAACP called it “an odious blight on the universe.” Lambert, a descendant of three Confederate soldiers, took offense and planted his flags around Florida and joined Sons of Confederate Veterans. He sued his home county, Hillsborough, for taking the flag out of the county seal, and lost.

  59. 59.

    GregB

    @germy:

    Which is why modern day conservatives want to revere those racists by honoring their flags, and their leaders with statues and songs and emotional words about their honor.

    Fuck you Sean Hannity.

  61. 61.

    MarkK

    @Matt McIrvin: what’s this “we” crap?
    You obviously have no idea how the Fairness Doctrine worked, and it did work, preventing totalitarian propaganda. You give up without even trying? Weak!
    The OP is correct, without a FD shuttering the Hate Machine, we are fighting the fascists with one arm behind our back.

  62. 62.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Mitt Romney getting hosannas and hallelujahs from Andrea and Chuck right now for a Facebook post against trump, calling on trump to apologize. Did I miss Willard’s apology for bringing Birtherman in as a surrogate in 2012?

  64. 64.

    SatanicPanic

    @germy: I was just thinking about this- all the twist and turns the right has to take in their arguments would be really upsetting to normal minds. One year the left are the fascists, and the next, we’re mean because we’re anti-fascists. The left are the confederates, but we’re being mean to the right by insisting we take these statues down. Again, normal minds would be bothered by all this, and if they were honest with themselves, they’d admit that they wouldn’t have to come up with all this pretzel logic if they weren’t defending the indefensible. Clearly they are not normal minds.

  65. 65.

    JPL

    Why hasn’t Melania been marched out to explain that her husband isn’t a racist? Since he made his statements in public, the locker room talk excuse won’t work though.

  66. 66.

    Felonius Monk

    @trollhattan: James Murdoch donating chump change to the ADL is pretty much non-responsive and a cop-out. If he was really serious, he would clean house at Fox and promulgate some reasonable standards of journalistic integrity. So fuck James Murdoch.

  67. 67.

    trollhattan

    @Major Major Major Major:
    Not only that, the airwaves and frequency spectrum are a public resource, licensed to the users and the licenses once carried with them a set of obligations ensuring the public benefited from that use. Now they’re simply income and profit-generating capital investments that can be sold and resold to the highest bidder with effectively no restrictions.

  68. 68.

    germy

    @SatanicPanic:

    all the twist and turns the right has to take in their arguments would be really upsetting to normal minds.

    Try debating an online RW troll. It’s like trying to staple jello to a wall.

  69. 69.

    Felonius Monk

    @germy:

    He sued his home county, Hillsborough, for taking the flag out of the county seal, and lost.

    Loser. So sad.

  71. 71.

    trollhattan

    @Felonius Monk:
    I’d like to know what hand the Murdoch spawn had in the Ailes, O’Reilly and Bolling actions, and whether it’s some kind of house-cleaning and not just legal firewall-building.

  73. 73.

    Elizabelle

    @trollhattan: I wish we could get back the “public” frequency spectrum. An early case of the megacorps changing the laws to their favor. It has hurt our civil life. Tremendously.

  74. 74.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Elizabelle:

    Sinclair and other conservative broadcasters have a huge demographic problem looming:

    Streaming services and satellite radio

    Unless I actually want to watch news or hear pundits, I don’t have to. A lot of phone plans (like mine) offer unlimited data, so we can now run pandora or Spotify and avoid broadcast radio and the firehose of talk derp and political ads. Through Netflix, Hulu and iTunes, I watch whatever series or movie I want, and never have to see a single issue commercial or news chyron.

    Olds (like my RWNJ mom) tend to stick to cable and am radio. As they fall off, even their RWNJ kids won’t be getting the reinforcement of the bullshit, and may well soften.

  75. 75.

    The Moar You Know

    Oddly enough, Hate Machine is the name of a now-defunct white supremacist, pretty musically talented heavy metal band.

    Drummer (best player in the band) went to prison for assaulting some Hispanic folks with a bat.

    You can hand these people a ticket to a better life and they’d still rather fuck it up and beat on brown people. I honestly don’t think you can fix these folks.

  76. 76.

    Elizabelle

    @nonynony:

    Jennifer Rubin has the righteous anger of the convert. Her eyes have been opened and what has been seen cannot be unseen.

    Her John Cole moment. I hope we see more people waking up.

    J Rubin still can’t stand the Democrats, but at least she sees the Republicans for what they have become, and what they have wrought. Baby steps.

    How long was it between John Cole’s wake up moment and his proudly identifying as a Democrat? I don’t recall …. twas before my time here …

  77. 77.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Elizabelle: I don’t know. But a lot of this (media illiteracy & lack of critical thinking among consumers, not just children; lack of critical thinking; millions of racist idiots; etc.) has been around for a while. However, willful siloing of sources/ideas is easier than ever, and accelerating as auto-curating tools become ever more important. We barely have an established framework to think and talk about these things, much less combat them… :-/

  78. 78.

    schrodingers_cat

    I am not interested in engaging people who deny my humanity or worse tell me that I am the good kinda immigrant that they like not like the Messican or Muslin ones. My ex-friend actually said that to me in an e-mail. Besides she loves Indian food so she is totally not a racist, you guys.

  79. 79.

    SatanicPanic

    @germy: Yup. Instead of arguing facts or reason, we can just substitute “You’re confusing me and that makes me angry! I don’t like you!” for what they’re saying and it tends to make more sense.

  80. 80.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    From my dealings with Conservatards it’s pretty clear the model they being taught is; “you are the wise parent who must teach your kids these hard truth”

    So what I find works is

    * Reverse it on them, refuse to be upset or moved no matter how much they rage or whine.

    * Systematically tear down their arguments logically and refuse to let them play “what about this” on you.

    * When they say something ludicrous refuse to accept it as anything than as a bad joke. “You have to be pulling my leg, the world isn’t flat/ Jews don’t control all the worlds governments just to marry my sister/ they build dinosaur fossiles in a factory in China/ Hillary is a serial killer. You’re not that dumb so cut it out.”

    * Rephrase their more idiocy statements as questions and demand they clarify and defend it “Am I right, you are saying Bill Gates, who created one of the largest companies in American history, is socialist because of Microsoft’s HR policies?”

    * Make it abundantly clear they have no moral authority with you and it’s because of their failings. “In all your years Uncle Dan; you mean all that time with your drinking problem and unemployed? I see…”

    It’s also worth figuring out if your dealing with some Blinded by The Right idiot or someone who is simply conservative. The later you can communicate with, the former is just only worth contempt and mockery for their childish thinking.

  81. 81.

    FlipYrWhig

    @trollhattan: What courts is he talking about and what rights are they taking away? Is this a reference the Muslim ban again, which he seems to thinks can stop people from killing other people in Barcelona? Christ is this dumbass a dumbass.

  82. 82.

    Major Major Major Major

    @trollhattan:

    Not only that, the airwaves and frequency spectrum are a public resource, licensed to the users and the licenses once carried with them a set of obligations ensuring the public benefited from that use. Now they’re simply income and profit-generating capital investments that can be sold and resold to the highest bidder with effectively no restrictions.

    Yep. Genie, bottle, etc.

    @MarkK: So you’re pro-tyrannical-enforcement-of-balance-across-all-spectrums?

  83. 83.

    trollhattan

    @Elizabelle:
    Precisely. Limitless corporate ownership ruined the A.M. band completely and most of F.M., which is kept on life support solely by college and public radio stations and comprise a sliver of the bandwidth. .

  84. 84.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    How am I coping (you didn’t ask)?

    I brought a friend for hand surgery at a storefront clinic in National Harbor, and I just parked myself at a table at Sauciety overlooking the Potomac (but inside—humidity). I’m sipping a Killian’s Red and waiting on an Asian tuna roll that I hope will be delicious.

    I don’t retrieve my friends until 2:30 or 3:00, so I’m going to dawdle over lunch and then look at some of the shops around here. This is my first visit.

    And I will try to get caught up with Balloon Juice, which has been an impossible task this week.

    P.S. It was a tough choice between Sauciety and Succotash down the street, but I opted for the river view.

  85. 85.

    different-church-lady

    @Elizabelle:

    How long was it between John Cole’s wake up moment and his proudly identifying as a Democrat? I don’t recall …. twas before my time here …

    If I remember correctly there was a post that said in essence, “I went to remove republican from my registration, and I said hey I should just commit, so instead of being independent I’m now a democrat.” His bargaining phase was pretty short.

  87. 87.

    Arcnor

    3800 refugees running from the US to Canada since August 1. 7000 since June 1. (CBC News)

    The number of asylum seekers tripled between June and July alone. (Independent.co.uk)

    The Canadian military is having to build refugee camps to house people fleeing the United States. (BBC News)

    The Olympic Stadium in Montreal is being used as a temporary shelter for asylum seekers fleeing the US. A STADIUM. (Montreal Gazette)

    If you’re going to shut down the Pretty Red Hate Machine, please hurry.

  90. 90.

    The Moar You Know

    That was me. We went behind my gran’s back and programmed her TV to block Fox News, then lied and said the cable company dropped it. She was always a conservative, but sitting around watching Fox News all day turned her into a fuming rage-bot. She’s happier now, and so are we.

    @Betty Cracker: I did that to my mother, but she had internet and had found Breitbart after about a month of no rage fix. She’s now twenty times worse.

    We should have left her with Fox.

  92. 92.

    trollhattan

    @FlipYrWhig:
    Pesky 9th District? Anything that happens around the globesolar system can be wrangled into either support for his perverted desires or evidence of the YUGE plot against him.

  97. 97.

    The Moar You Know

    You obviously have no idea how the Fairness Doctrine worked, and it did work, preventing totalitarian propaganda.

    @MarkK: You obviously were not alive when we had it, because it did no such thing. I was.

  99. 99.

    trollhattan

    @JoeSo:
    Read somewhere today that Bannon’s the only one in the WH staunchly against using the military against North Korea. Slightly conflicted here, but just a teensy bit. If he takes Gorka with him, then yee-haw!

  100. 100.

    Mike in NC

    Peeling shrimp with MSNBC playing in the background. Saying that pigfucker Bannon is going down…

  103. 103.

    SatanicPanic

    @JoeSo: I’ll believe it when I see it.

    ETA- “Trump is still debating the time and manner of Bannon’s exit and may still change his mind, the Times reported, citing two administration officials.”

    Not betting on old wishy-washy Trump sticking to this, yet.

  104. 104.

    germy

    drUMP AGENDA: Sources: Bannon feels like he’s on safe ground

    From NBC’s Kristen Welker and Adam Edelman: “People close to Steve Bannon tell NBC News he feels on safe ground amid White House infighting stemming from President Donald Trump’s divisive response to the violence in Charlottesville. Bannon, who has rarely given on-the-record interviews since assuming his position as Trump’s chief White House strategist, reached out to speak with three news outlets in the past 48 hours, using those conversations to criticize colleagues, threaten to fire others and appearing to relish the ongoing national racial tensions. His comments signal that Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, is digging in for the long haul amid the turmoil and turnover that has roiled Trump’s cohort of top advisers in recent weeks.”

  105. 105.

    bluehill

    @Betty Cracker:

    @bluehill: Did you see Jennifer Rubin’s column calling out Murdoch?

    PS: I don’t like this bizarro world where I agree with Jennifer Fucking Rubin so often.

    No. I didn’t. Thanks. I agree about Rubin. To her credit, she has been against Trump for a while and it seems like its mostly based on his character and fitness to be president. She hasn’t rationalized his behavior just because she agrees with some of his policies although I think she has some differences there too.

  108. 108.

    trollhattan

    @Major Major Major Major:
    I’m envisioning Bar cracking the Bush boys on the noggin with her thimble any time they tried to hang out with the Kennebunkport Nazis. “We have standards, you little twit!”

  109. 109.

    different-church-lady

    @germy:

    Bannon, who has rarely given on-the-record interviews since assuming his position as Trump’s chief White House strategist, reached out to speak with three news outlets in the past 48 hours

    Exit strategy: setting up his next career as a cable news pundit.

  110. 110.

    Paula

    @Yarrow: I’ve often thought people need to stage interventions with parents/grandparents who watch FOX. Seriously. It is mental poison and we see the results.

  112. 112.

    lgerard

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    My first question to these people is always

    Where did you hear/read/learn that?

    If you are persistent and drill down enough you can eventually get them to concede quite frequently.

    Of course, there are a few who have no problem claiming that Infowars and the Gateway Pundit are reliable sources

  114. 114.

    MattF

    @Elizabelle: Rubin’s been quoting Democrats on Trump for a while now. Sometimes, I can feel the cognitive dissonance radiating from the computer screen and igniting small fires in the bookcase behind me.

  115. 115.

    Elizabelle

    From Village scribe Maggie Haberman, FTF NYTimes. Long, long article to have just come up as “breaking news”:

    President Trump has told senior aides that he has decided to remove Stephen K. Bannon, the embattled White House chief strategist who helped Mr. Trump win the 2016 election, according to two administration officials briefed on the discussion.

    The president and senior White House officials were debating when and how to dismiss Mr. Bannon. The two administration officials cautioned that Mr. Trump is known to be averse to confrontation within his inner circle, and could decide to keep on Mr. Bannon for some time.

    As of Friday morning, the two men were still discussing Mr. Bannon’s future, the officials said. A person close to Mr. Bannon insisted the parting of ways was his idea, and that he had submitted his resignation to the president on Aug. 7, to be announced at the start of this week, but it was delayed in the wake of the racial unrest in Charlottesville, Va.

    Mr. Bannon had clashed for months with other senior West Wing advisers and members of the president’s family.

    But the loss of Mr. Bannon, the right-wing nationalist who helped propel some of Mr. Trump’s campaign promises into policy reality, raises the potential for the president to face criticism from the conservative news media base that supported him over the past year.

    Mr. Bannon’s many critics bore down after the violence in Charlottesville. Outraged over Mr. Trump’s insistence that “both sides” were to blame for the violence that erupted at a white nationalist rally, leaving one woman dead, human rights activists demanded that the president fire so-called nationalists working in the West Wing. That group of hard-right populists in the White House is led by Mr. Bannon.

    On Tuesday at Trump Tower in New York, Mr. Trump refused to guarantee Mr. Bannon’s job security but defended him as “not a racist” and “a friend.”

    “We’ll see what happens with Mr. Bannon,” Mr. Trump said.

    Mr. Bannon’s dismissal followed an Aug. 16 interview he initiated with a writer with whom he had never spoken, with the progressive publication The American Prospect. In it, Mr. Bannon mockingly played down the American military threat to North Korea as nonsensical: “Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”

    He also bad-mouthed his colleagues in the Trump administration, vowed to oust a female diplomat at the State Department and mocked officials as “wetting themselves” over the consequences of radically changing trade policy.

    Of the far right, he said, “These guys are a collection of clowns,” and he called it a “fringe element” of “losers.”

    “We gotta help crush it,” he said in the interview, which people close to Mr. Bannon said he believed was off the record.

    Mr. Bannon’s departure was long rumored in Washington. The president’s new chief of staff, John F. Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general who was brought on for his ability to organize a chaotic staff, was said to have grown weary of the chief strategist’s long-running feud with Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser.

    Mr. Bannon had been aligned with Mr. Kelly’s predecessor, Reince Priebus, who was forced out in late July. More significantly, Mr. Bannon has been in a battle with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, since the spring.

    Mr. Bannon, whose campaign against “globalists” was a hallmark of his tenure steering the right-wing website Breitbart.com, and Mr. Kushner had been allies throughout the transition process and through the beginning of the administration.

    But their alliance ruptured as Mr. Trump elevated the roles of Gary D. Cohn, his top economic policy adviser and a former official at Goldman Sachs, and Dina Powell, a former Bush administration official who also worked on Wall Street.

    Mr. Cohn is a registered Democrat, and both he and Ms. Powell have been denounced by conservative media outlets as being antithetical to Mr. Trump’s populist message.

  116. 116.

    The Moar You Know

    I don’t get why these people want to be mad all the time. It’s weird.

    @SatanicPanic: Sigh. Mom was a rage addict well before cable, never mind Fox. Oddly enough, never to her kids, which I am very grateful for – could have easily gone that way. Back then it was a lot harder to get. Now they hand out rage for free, on every corner.

  118. 118.

    Timurid

    @JoeSo:

    This is bad news.
    Bannon is an asshole who would be underqualified as an assistant manager at Taco Bell, but now the MSM and Village will be crooning about The Pivot for weeks…

  122. 122.

    germy

    The New York Times is reporting that Trump made the decision to oust Bannon on Friday — but he’s still debating when and how to give the former Breitbart boss the boot.

    “The president and senior White House officials were debating when and how to dismiss Mr. Bannon,” the Times reports. “The two administration officials cautioned that Mr. Trump is known to be averse to confrontation within his inner circle, and could decide to keep on Mr. Bannon for some time.”

    Meanwhile, Bannon himself has told reporter Sara Carter that he issued his resignation to the White House “two weeks ago.”

    “You can’t fire me! I quit! (two weeks ago)”

    Let the wild rumpus start.

  125. 125.

    different-church-lady

    @Elizabelle:

    Of the far right, he said, “These guys are a collection of clowns,” and he called it a “fringe element” of “losers.”

    “We gotta help crush it,” he said in the interview….

    That right there is the true reason he’s getting fired.

  129. 129.

    different-church-lady

    @Timurid:

    but now the MSM and Village will be crooning about The Pivot for weeks…

    a) Let ’em. Nobody’s buying it anymore
    b) From my view, the MSM is now having more fun with “WH in Chaos!” than they are with “Brilliant comeback!”

    Trump ripped the hood off his own head, ain’t no putting it back in now.

  133. 133.

    A Ghost To Most

    @schrodingers_cat: I don’t miss the weather in the DC area one bit.

    From Jason Isbell’s “Tupelo”, but fits DC perfectly:

    “There’s about a week of spring
    then the summers are blistering
    And there ain’t no one from here
    that would follow me there”

  135. 135.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MarkK: you want this blog to have to give equal time to the Republicans?

    Even if it’s just mainstream media — we complain a lot about news outlets acting as if, say, the pro- and anti- sides on whether the Earth is flat deserve equal treatment. That’s an instinct derived from the same general notion of balance. If totalitarianism is one side, they’d have to give it equal time.

  137. 137.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Is lying covered by the First Amendment? Views seem to differ. I think we need some re-adjustment to our libel and slander laws, because it’s way too hard to prove “actual malice.”

  138. 138.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Timurid: How long did the Kelly pivot last? None of these pivots last more than a day or two because the problem is at the top. He can’t help himself.

  139. 139.

    A Ghost To Most

    @schrodingers_cat: Denver weather is magnificent. I’ve lived in 8 states, all 4 borders, and all the time zones, and I’ve never lived in a place with weather as good as Denver, or as nasty as DC.

  140. 140.

    Mnemosyne

    @Betty Cracker:

    PS: I don’t like this bizarro world where I agree with Jennifer Fucking Rubin so often.

    FWIW, Rubin seems to be on the verge of a full Cole-style scales falling from her eyes conversion experience. I hope the trend continues.

  142. 142.

    Amir Khalid

    @The Moar You Know:
    I have an off-topic guitar-related question for you. I am considering getting a cheap multi-effects pedal like this one a few months down the road. Its effects won’t quite match the sound of the best discrete pedals, but I figure it will do adequately what a full complement of those pedals do,superbly, but at far less cost. What do you think?

  143. 143.

    Mnemosyne

    @nonynony:

    The sudden shock of realization of what the people around you actually believe (rather than profess to believe) is pretty visceral.

    I feel like I’ve been getting those shocks every time a Democratic president gets elected. I’ve always tried to be as non-racist and open-minded as I could given my white suburban upbringing, but boy howdy was Obama’s election an eye opener for me. Again.

  144. 144.

    frosty

    @Ohio Mom: on vacation out here in Rural America: I’m changing my mind about the Fairness Doctrine. With no cell service and no internet, broadcast news is more important. Bringing the FD back, especially for talk radio, could work to turn off the Hate Machine here.

  146. 146.

    Elizabelle

    @frosty:

    I think so, too.

    Bring back the Fairness Doctrine.

    It is what rightwing world fears. We have heard Rush scoffing at it.

    ETA: And change the ownership structure of major media. No way it should have been allowed to become so concentrated. Break big media up.

  147. 147.

    frosty

    @germy: This crap again. I’m forever grateful to Dennis Green who pointed out that there are three parties in America: Democrats, Republicans, and Confederates. Nixon moved the Cs from the Ds to the Rs. Any Republican who talks about racism, support for slavery, or the Civil War without explaining this is a demogogue. Or an idiot.

  151. 151.

    Mom Says I*m Handsome

    @Amir Khalid: You’re buying your first effects pedal, not your last effects pedal. Buy it, see what parts you like, and then buy the second. And the third. And the fourth…

  152. 152.

    Elizabelle

    @frosty: Would be great to find and link that Dennis Green column. He is right re the Confederates.

    My brother in law is one of them, sadly.

  153. 153.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Elizabelle: I think that rather than “carve away their 1st Amendment protections” we need to find ways to socially contain the 25-30% of the population that is completely brainwashed right now and find ways to shrink its presence in cultural and political life. What’s happening right now in America is actually a good example of that: the most loyal and ardent defenders of Trump/Confederate monuments are literally being forced to endure history lessons that undo their facts, and are being publicly outed and shamed into shutting their fricking pie holes.

    The last few days I’ve witnessed FB posts of friends and family members with responses and back and forths that were numbering in the 100’s, and where even completely non-political folks were commenting, and pushing back against these idiots trying to provoke another Civil War with their newly gained permission to be completely wrong. I really think ostracization and shaming are better ways to push these jerks out of the powerful spotlight that they’ve been given recently.

    One thing I am noting is that when these self described “conservatives” start losing the fact argument on any topic, they ALL immediately pivot back to “Benghazi, Killary, Obummer” s soon as possible. Like literally change the subject of the thread to spread old conspiracy theories or lies and try to provoke people to argue about those issues. Right when they start running out of substantive things to say– It’s like they need to get re-energized with a little taste of just how much they hated those two to keep going.

    These kinds of Republicans are quickly turning themselves into the party of “Worship Trum and Piss Off Liberals” and somehow think think they’re gonna get long term changes enshrining their anger. It’s not gonna happen, and it’ll be best facilitated by “shame, contain, and marginalize”as the most American approach, both socially and legislatively.

  155. 155.

    Mom Says I*m Handsome

    @Mom Says I*m Handsome: To follow up on what I said a bit curtly: As a musician, your ear is going to develop as you play, and practice, and listen. In the future you will literally hear things that your ears cannot hear today — differences in tonality, timbre, sonic quality. As those sounds become available to you, your gear needs will change.

    A few years ago I started playing bass with a guitarist who had an incredibly refined ear. He would prattle on about the difference between vacuum tubes in his amplifiers — and not just tube vs. solid state, but how his Mesa Boogie had a tube that was nearing its end of life, and he could hear the difference with that. I never got to that level of sophistication with his gear, but I am now able to pick out a Gibson vs. a Strat vs. a PRS in a blind test. That happened over three years.

    So, dear Amir, appreciate where you are on the journey. Today, a mass-market Tele and a solid-state multi-effect stomp box are plenty of universe to explore; tomorrow, you’ll know in your bones why five guitars and eight pedals and three amps are barely enough.

  156. 156.

    The Moar You Know

    I have an off-topic guitar-related question for you. I am considering getting a cheap multi-effects pedal like this one a few months down the road. Its effects won’t quite match the sound of the best discrete pedals, but I figure it will do adequately what a full complement of those pedals do,superbly, but at far less cost. What do you think?

    @Amir Khalid: I have no issue with multi-effects pedals. Mooer’s not bad. They release stuff under a bunch of names. Personally, I would go with anything Boss for pedals, myself. They make some great multi-effects units at all price points.

  158. 158.

    Jeffro

    @different-church-lady:

    Yes, it’s a deeply troubling sign that Fox is no longer a strong enough flavor of crazy for the Orcs. Breitbart is analogous to the kinds of super-heroin that’s killing people now.

    Yup. That OAN or OANN or whatever is like Fox on steroids too.

  159. 159.

    john carter

    One thing I am noting is that when these self described “conservatives” start losing the fact argument on any topic, they ALL immediately pivot back to “Benghazi, Killary, Obummer” s soon as possible. Like literally change the subject of the thread to spread old conspiracy theories or lies and try to provoke people to argue about those issues. Right when they start running out of substantive things to say– It’s like they need to get re-energized with a little taste of just how much they hated those two to keep going.

    You need to immediately remind them of the Bush years , the Iraq War, the trillion dollar debt, the 4000+ dead American Boys, the thousands maimed, none of whom are getting decent care and you don’t back off til they admit to supporting Bush’s War.

    And WHEN lack of medical care, food and freedom to move around starts afftecting them, just smile and ask to see their “I Voted” buttons.

  162. 162.

    Bill Arnold

    @Paula:

    I’ve often thought people need to stage interventions with parents/grandparents who watch FOX.

    There needs to be a runbook/cheatsheet for RW-media-proofing the elderly, that covers phones and computers as well.
    I informed my father more than once that his TV would break if he started watching Fox News. Not sure he believed me, but I was serious. He was a PBS snooze-hour fan, for which he was forgiven. (There are … hard to detect techie ways to make faults more likely. That don’t involve alpha emitters or EMP-lite.)
    Also, TV-B-Gone devices work. (image of packaging).
    I’d prefer (as in would pay for) one that knew the local channel lineup and changed the channel to animal planet or the travel channel.

  163. 163.

    Mnemosyne

    @Bill Arnold:

    Apparently in a public place, it’s almost always acceptable to ask the keeper of the TV remote to switch it to “the game.” It doesn’t really matter which sportsball game it is, but even the most vocal Fox News fans are reluctant to protest since it would call their manliness into question.

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