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That's exactly what I am talking about Foam, though we need to probably reestablish the distinction in this thread between KKK members and David Brooks type Republicans.

Foam wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:07 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 1:46 pm Brian -- Research has shown that present-day American hard-core conservatives usually cannot be swayed from their beliefs by facts (no matter how solid these may be). How does one even attempt to persuade people who live in a fact-impermeable bubble of false reality?

Maybe we should be looking to people like Daryl Davis, a black bluesman who has spent the last 30 years befriending Klansmen and getting them to give up their robes.
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/54486193 ... heir-robes

How many reviews have I seen of American History X from woke Letterboxd reviewers alleging that the film is stupid since it's naive to think that a a Neo-Nazi and a black guy could ever realistically become friends? Maybe not so naive after all.

I think this points out an area where many liberals are inconsistent in their views. Most liberals are in favour of reforming people convicted on crimes and reforming/intergrating them back into society without prejudice, but a number of those same liberals will call for people to lose their jobs when someone shares a viewpoint that goes against their values or is racist/sexist/homophobic etc.

Seems many people have an easier time wrapping their heads around giving second chances to people who have committed more extreme actions (murder, joining the KKK) than those who hold discriminatory views.

I will echo Bill Maher when he said that the first amendment might be under threat not from the right but from the left. He said, "Everyone gets to speak."

And I think Hollywood should support that paradigm too. Because as has been expressed earlier in the thread - nothing is to be achieved by driving out conservatives from the media and the entertainment industry. Liberals have managed to completely take over media, Hollywood, and universities in the attempt to have their worldview become the dominant worldview. They have succeeded to a large degree but against all odds, conservatism still persists. For every 5 liberal networks, there springs up 1 Fox news to counterbalance them.

If art is realism that simply for the sake of reality I think the media and Hollywood should represent and capture America as it exists, and not how it should be.

That is why I think driving out conservatives from the media and Hollywood might be problematic.

But it is largely a private enterprise so they are not obligated to anything.

knives wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:17 pm That's exactly what I am talking about Foam, though we need to probably reestablish the distinction in this thread between KKK members and David Brooks type Republicans.

It is hard to fathom that David Brook could be a part of the GOP today.

As noted, the parties have shifted.

For many, there might be no distinction between the KKK and the GOP.

For many, there might be no distinction between gays and pedophiles.

How did that statement make you feel? Did it make you want to change your mind about anything?

Nasir007 wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:33 pm Liberals have managed to completely take over media, Hollywood, and universities in the attempt to have their worldview become the dominant worldview.

Any proof of this?

Fiery Angel wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:51 pm

Nasir007 wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:33 pm Liberals have managed to completely take over media, Hollywood, and universities in the attempt to have their worldview become the dominant worldview.

Any proof of this?

It is an inference. If you anything you should have questioned the first part of the sentence not the second part. If you think the first part is true, where you essentially have control of the mike and there is only one mike, then if you take it to the logical end, the side which controls the mike will necessarily set the tone and establish the dominant worldview. Again, the status quo establishes this to be the case - the media, hollywood and campuses are by and large largely liberal and represent and promote the liberal worldview. Surely nobody would dispute that.

It’s probably true that the humanities departments in most universities in the US are dominated by the left side of the political spectrum.

Law and business schools are by and large the opposite, however. Hence the recent revival by conservatives of movements to kneecap humanities departments at public universities.

Nasir007 wrote:Surely nobody would dispute that.

Lots of people dispute it, and with good reason.

Has anyone here called for firing people because they have conservative views? Is there any real world issue with significant numbers of people being fired (in Hollywood or outside) for conservative views (as opposed to vicious acts or highly inflammatory hate speech)? We seem to be having open season on liberals here for things that _might_ (conceivably) happen some day.

Nasir007 wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:57 pm

Fiery Angel wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:51 pm

Nasir007 wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:33 pm Liberals have managed to completely take over media, Hollywood, and universities in the attempt to have their worldview become the dominant worldview.

Any proof of this?

It is an inference. If you anything you should have questioned the first part of the sentence not the second part. If you think the first part is true, where you essentially have control of the mike and there is only one mike, then if you take it to the logical end, the side which controls the mike will necessarily set the tone and establish the dominant worldview. Again, the status quo establishes this to be the case - the media, hollywood and campuses are by and large largely liberal and represent and promote the liberal worldview. Surely nobody would dispute that.

I found the entire sentence absurd, but only highlighted the most absurd part.

Nasir007 wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:38 pm

knives wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:17 pm That's exactly what I am talking about Foam, though we need to probably reestablish the distinction in this thread between KKK members and David Brooks type Republicans.

It is hard to fathom that David Brook could be a part of the GOP today.

As noted, the parties have shifted.

For many, there might be no distinction between the KKK and the GOP.

I think the distinctions and connections between David Brooks, the GOP, Trump, the “alt-right” and the KKK are exceptionally cloudy right now - which isn’t to say they do or don’t exist, but that they’re hard to delineate.

An analysis of reasons to have voted for Trump doesn’t clear it up - some Trump voters had previously voted for Obama, some were also Sanders supporters, meaning social issues were a factor, some likely held their noses for two Supreme Court seats and the belief a Republican demon was better than a Democratic saint.. and the liberal impulse is reductive, to collapse all of that into racist dumbf*ckery.

There’s fear and fantasy in the liberal reaction, a kind of Manichaean arrogance - Steve Bannon is worried about barbarian Muslim hordes and immigrant hordes, Rachel Maddow is in permanent disbelief of the ignorant hordes who listen to Steve Bannon.

Michael Kerpan wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 4:38 pm Has anyone here called for firing people because they have conservative views? Is there any real world issue with significant numbers of people being fired (in Hollywood or outside) for conservative views (as opposed to vicious acts or highly inflammatory hate speech)? We seem to be having open season on liberals here for things that _might_ (conceivably) happen some day.

People are fired, in high profile positions for less than “highly inflammatory hate speech”, and I’d be curious which acts by which people you characterize as vicious, since there seems to be some of that on the vice squad of choirboys and girls, too.

Fiery Angel wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:51 pm

Nasir007 wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:33 pm Liberals have managed to completely take over media, Hollywood, and universities in the attempt to have their worldview become the dominant worldview.

Any proof of this?

Hegemony is a genuine aspiration on parts of the left.. I don’t think it’s a conscious goal for the majority. I’m not sure I want to, but I could make an argument in support of that claim..

Michael Kerpan wrote:Brian -- Research has shown that present-day American hard-core conservatives usually cannot be swayed from their beliefs by facts (no matter how solid these may be). How does one even attempt to persuade people who live in a fact-impermeable bubble of false reality?

By talking to them not with facts but with moral persuasion and arguing from emotional sincerity not righteous indignation. Specifics and anecdotes never generalizations and never ever not once in your life ever using ten dollar words with no argumentative value like “existential.”

Intellectual “fact” fellating lectures from progressives just makes peoples brains turn off.

People want to agree with their peer groups, our brains are wired and evolved for small communities, work within those parameters, don’t try to universalize the fight, make it about one person, one family at a time.

*** slight derail riffing off the above comment on “existential”***

every time a progressive says “climate change is an existential threat to humanity” that progressive has further entrenched climate change and made it worse.

It’s much more effective to say “climate change is a clear and present danger” for example, and if you do you might actually be able to communicate about it with a conservative.

Nasir007 wrote:I will echo Bill Maher when he said that the first amendment might be under threat not from the right but from the left. He said, "Everyone gets to speak."

And I think Hollywood should support that paradigm too. Because as has been expressed earlier in the thread - nothing is to be achieved by driving out conservatives from the media and the entertainment industry. Liberals have managed to completely take over media, Hollywood, and universities in the attempt to have their worldview become the dominant worldview. They have succeeded to a large degree but against all odds, conservatism still persists. For every 5 liberal networks, there springs up 1 Fox news to counterbalance them.

If art is realism that simply for the sake of reality I think the media and Hollywood should represent and capture America as it exists, and not how it should be.

That is why I think driving out conservatives from the media and Hollywood might be problematic.

But it is largely a private enterprise so they are not obligated to anything.

There are five liberal networks?!!!! I am so excited, what are they? I’ve never encountered one in my life and I’d like to learn more about the five liberal networks.

Not certain I have ever used "existential" in a conversation with anyone.... (or would ever be likely to -- present circumstance excepted).

Also not certain that "existential" is even properly used in a phrase like "existential threat to humanity". This seems to be a sloppy but high-faluting way of saying "a threat to the existence of all human life".

onedimension wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 5:10 pm

Fiery Angel wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:51 pm

Nasir007 wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:33 pm Liberals have managed to completely take over media, Hollywood, and universities in the attempt to have their worldview become the dominant worldview.

Any proof of this?

Hegemony is a genuine aspiration on parts of the left.. I don’t think it’s a conscious goal for the majority. I’m not sure I want to, but I could make an argument in support of that claim..

So go ahead. I'd love to hear a plausible one.

Actual climate change denialism is a bit of a red herring anyway; the climate change debate is pretty close to 100% posturing on all sides. Granted, it's disturbing watching the Trump administration trying to roll back progress that's already been made, but at the same time, it's almost certainly the case that both of the following are true:

1) We're way past the point where some token reductions in emissions (e.g., a handful of fewer coal plants, better gas mileage in cars, etc.) are going to make much of a difference; we need short-term strategies to get to something close to zero emissions.

2) On the whole, liberals aren't really all that much better than conservatives when it comes to being willing to make drastic changes in their lifestyles in the name of fighting climate change, so if we're going to get close to zero emissions, we need to do it in a way that isn't disruptive to people's lifestyles.

We need game-changing technology developments in clean energy and carbon sequestration, and we need them to happen fairly quickly, and those developments will either happen or they won't.

It'd be nice if governments were more interested in financially supporting the development of the technology we need, to maximize our odds of success. But that's not a discussion that's occurring on the left, either, where focus is still on worthy-but-inadequate subjects like "energy efficiency" on good days and relative trivia like plastic straw bans on bad days.

Is this a general purpose politics thread now? It seems the thread has drifted far from what it was discussing - essentially what ought to be done with conservatives like Allen who still want to work in media.

Nasir007 wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 7:08 pm Is this a general purpose politics thread now? It seems the thread has drifted far from what it was discussing - essentially what ought to be done with conservatives like Allen who still want to work in media.

Disregarding his political views for a moment, but the dude is working. He has a show that is entering it's 5th or 6th season (I could care less about the accuracy of what season he's on). He is the voice of Buzz Lightyear again. If he's sad that he doesn't get big movie roles anymore, well boohoo, his brand of humor is outdated and most of his last films were box-office bombs. This happens to plenty of actors and actresses later in their career regardless of political stance.

Fiery Angel wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 5:50 pm

onedimension wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 5:10 pm

Fiery Angel wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:51 pm
Any proof of this?

Hegemony is a genuine aspiration on parts of the left.. I don’t think it’s a conscious goal for the majority. I’m not sure I want to, but I could make an argument in support of that claim..

So go ahead. I'd love to hear a plausible one.

I'm not sure it was entirely intentional, but because of the socioeconomic power universities now have to determine status and career trajectories, they've become very symbolically important in the popular imagination as the gatekeepers of a certain kind of middle class life. That means people are going to pay attention to, and maybe unconsciously defer to, the ideas and practices of college campuses. Universities are, in terms of what they teach about culture, very very liberal, and that's almost inevitably going to have some kind of influence on how people think and speak in a "deep" way, underneath what we even consciously apprehend.

The enforcement of "p.c." standards on campuses, including the linking of Title IX to speech, like Twitter outrage mobbing, connects discipline, disemployment and disrepute to verbal or behavioral transgressions which would have previously been dismissed as mild - and that's likely to breed a kind of conformity - a reluctance to break ranks, or temper other people's outrage, which is usually about something difficult to defend, and can only be criticized for being disproportionate, or too unsympathetic to the "perpetrator".. The MeToo movement has the same effect - and there were forms of professional protest by women in media that were unethical and comprising of anything like journalistic objectivity or responsibility.

And Hollywood skews liberal in content - though it's very comfortable with violence, including nationalistic/patriotic violence. It's always been sexually liberal - apart from the Hays era - but they don't try to reach a niche market with morality tales or Biblical epics (I'm not counting, like, Aronofsky's Noah movie) - so we get hacky "Kevin Sorbo is an alcoholic atheist who secretly believes in but hates God because his wife died" D-list stuff. The "airwaves" that roll over the country as entertainment are very liberal.

The national media also have some cultural class dynamics they don't like to acknowledge - I don't think most of them are going hunting on their vacations.

The overall effect is of a kind of active, continual social pressure to adopt liberal values and assumptions... and principled, fair conservative arguments are sometimes deprived of a fair shake. They call them culture wars for a reason.. Liberals may not want peace through diplomacy, they might believe they know best and want to forcibly convert conservatives to a liberal worldview.

That would be the argument, anyway - those phenomena do seem real to me, but it's hard to tell how much they're countered by the sort of passive power held by conservatism - there's a lot of stonewalling on the right, a lot of blind eyes and deaf ears... and there are plenty of enduring bigoted sentiments, attitudes, laws or absent legal protections.. but getting cultural power on the left and abusing it isn't going to win people over, neither is broad-brushing conservatives as thoroughly racist and evil, or "canceling" people, or making moral mountains out of molehills, or withholding forgiveness or compassion for "offenders"..

Glowingwabbit wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 7:30 pm

Nasir007 wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 7:08 pm Is this a general purpose politics thread now? It seems the thread has drifted far from what it was discussing - essentially what ought to be done with conservatives like Allen who still want to work in media.

Disregarding his political views for a moment, but the dude is working. He has a show that is entering it's 5th or 6th season (I could care less about the accuracy of what season he's on). He is the voice of Buzz Lightyear again. If he's sad that he doesn't get big movie roles anymore, well boohoo, his brand of humor is outdated and most of his last films were box-office bombs. This happens to plenty of actors and actresses later in their career regardless of political stance.

James Woods, though - hit on a teenage Amber Tamblyn one time, you'll never work in that town again..

onedimension -- Sexual harrassment/abuse is committed by persons of all political persuasions. Any evidence that conservatives abusers are treated worse than liberal ones?

onedimension wrote:

Fiery Angel wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 5:50 pm

onedimension wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 5:10 pm

Hegemony is a genuine aspiration on parts of the left.. I don’t think it’s a conscious goal for the majority. I’m not sure I want to, but I could make an argument in support of that claim..

So go ahead. I'd love to hear a plausible one.

I'm not sure it was entirely intentional, but because of the socioeconomic power universities now have to determine status and career trajectories, they've become very symbolically important in the popular imagination as the gatekeepers of a certain kind of middle class life. That means people are going to pay attention to, and maybe unconsciously defer to, the ideas and practices of college campuses. Universities are, in terms of what they teach about culture, very very liberal, and that's almost inevitably going to have some kind of influence on how people think and speak in a "deep" way, underneath what we even consciously apprehend.

The enforcement of "p.c." standards on campuses, including the linking of Title IX to speech, like Twitter outrage mobbing, connects discipline, disemployment and disrepute to verbal or behavioral transgressions which would have previously been dismissed as mild - and that's likely to breed a kind of conformity - a reluctance to break ranks, or temper other people's outrage, which is usually about something difficult to defend, and can only be criticized for being disproportionate, or too unsympathetic to the "perpetrator".. The MeToo movement has the same effect - and there were forms of professional protest by women in media that were unethical and comprising of anything like journalistic objectivity or responsibility.

And Hollywood skews liberal in content - though it's very comfortable with violence, including nationalistic/patriotic violence. It's always been sexually liberal - apart from the Hays era - but they don't try to reach a niche market with morality tales or Biblical epics (I'm not counting, like, Aronofsky's Noah movie) - so we get hacky "Kevin Sorbo is an alcoholic atheist who secretly believes in but hates God because his wife died" D-list stuff. The "airwaves" that roll over the country as entertainment are very liberal.

The national media also have some cultural class dynamics they don't like to acknowledge - I don't think most of them are going hunting on their vacations.

The overall effect is of a kind of active, continual social pressure to adopt liberal values and assumptions... and principled, fair conservative arguments are sometimes deprived of a fair shake. They call them culture wars for a reason.. Liberals may not want peace through diplomacy, they might believe they know best and want to forcibly convert conservatives to a liberal worldview.

That would be the argument, anyway - those phenomena do seem real to me, but it's hard to tell how much they're countered by the sort of passive power held by conservatism - there's a lot of stonewalling on the right, a lot of blind eyes and deaf ears... and there are plenty of enduring bigoted sentiments, attitudes, laws or absent legal protections.. but getting cultural power on the left and abusing it isn't going to win people over, neither is broad-brushing conservatives as thoroughly racist and evil, or "canceling" people, or making moral mountains out of molehills, or withholding forgiveness or compassion for "offenders"..

My own experience getting a humanities degree during the run up and launch into the forever war was that most professors were not political in class, those that were tended towards bland sarcastic comments more than anything else. The only explicitly political elective was designed to question the assumptions of both left and right, it was called “the perils of common sense”

But the STUDENT BODY was very political, there was a lot of energy and activism by student groups, but not institutionally, perhaps this student led liberalism is what conservatives mean when they talk about professors or buildings of bricks pursuing liberal brainwashing conspiracy agendas?

There was also a robust and enthusiastic counterpart in the student body of relentlessly mocking and denigrating their fellow outraged and activist students. They were fond of protesting the protesters, for example.

What’s interesting is that the composition of these two groups was generally that scholarship students were the activists and legacies were the mockers.

This indicates that these divisions broke down along class lines more than anything else, which since politics generally is determined by class means that the two groups featured a correlation of poor, liberal scholarship activists and wealthy, conservative, monied opposition.

And scholarship students had disproportionately many more persons of color while the legacies were over 95% white. Which would be expected as well based on the above mentioned class divisions.

So perhaps the global conspiracy of liberal indoctrination that universally automagically is oppressively implemented at every institution of higher learning (according to conservatives) is reflective of nothing more than this: rich conservative white kids who have never interacted with any peer not a rich conservative white kid all get uncomfortable when they encounter “others” for the first time at college, and worse, the others don’t always defer to them and horrors, professors treat all students as equals and professors allow them to express opinions! “This is a liberal indoctrination nightmare! The hordes are invading and running wild and I don’t like it!”