Comment by kevin_thibedeau
5 days ago
There is a straight line through 70s Falwell, 90s Limbaugh, tea party, to MAGA. All fueled by a self-reinforcing rage machine.
5 days ago
There is a straight line through 70s Falwell, 90s Limbaugh, tea party, to MAGA. All fueled by a self-reinforcing rage machine.
Reminds me of this quote: "The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way." -They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45[0] [0] https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.htm
Reminds me of the Ukraine war. The original intent was clearly a very short intense “operation” and then a quick annexation. Nobody planned to grind hundreds of thousands of bodies through a war machine, but “here we are” and now everyone is “forced” to go through the motions.
Left leaning folks are swept up in rage machines too.
Leaf through the BoingBoing BBS sometime to get a sense for it.
I find the right goes into rage machines and sees their way of life changing and double down on keeping things the way they have been.
I find the left goes into anger machines and ends up suggesting overzealous steps for necessary changes that take many people aback.
But that’s not new. What’s not new is that now we have social media and mainstream media that wants to fan the flames by giving voices to the most extreme.
They aren't obstructing Congress. That has been ongoing since 1994 when rational negotiation by civic minded leaders was replaced with hostage taking to suit an ideology without regard for public benefit.
One only needs to observe societies response to Covid to see how “left leaning folks get swept up into rage machines”. People were cheering on cars getting towed from popular hiking spots, skate parks getting filled with sand, crazy people “protesting” beachgoers, etc. if you dared to suggest schools should open you were a grandma killing MAGA hat wearing pariah. Don’t forget the level of censorship, vaccine passes, wishing death upon those who didn’t get vaccinated, etc.
No sir, people of all tribes are fully capable of getting swept into rage machines. At the end of the day we are animals operating on animal instinct. No tribe gets to claim otherwise.
And the internet hijacks our brains so effectively; since it became ubiquitous, it is almost impossible for regular users to see how they are being conditioned.
I mean, some people reacted how you describe, but the vast majority did not regardless of political leanings. Are you going to pretend that was the dominant reaction among left-leaning people just so you can be mad about it?
1 reply →
[flagged]
I wasn't suggesting an equivalence, just that the phenomena of the rage machine exists on both sides.
As an exercise, try coming up with some metric to measure it. Could be inflammatory posts, or the comment count on inflammatory posts. Compare BB BBS with some rough equivalent right-leaning place. You'll find it's worse in the right-leaning forum, no doubt.
But the phenomena exists on both sides of the political spectrum.
Many trends among one side of the political spectrum are mirrored to a lesser extent on the other side as well, and that's interesting don't you think?
24 replies →
BoingBoing is still very much made in Doctorow's image. Michael Moore is an earlier example.
Not suggesting equivalence, in fact I would be really interested to hear theories as to why right-wing polemicists are so much more popular (and numerous) than left-wing polemicists. On the face of it, there are a lot of left-wing things to be justifiably outraged about (especially right now). So why isn't left-wing outrage reliably bankable?
I don't think it's a pattern tied to the zeitgeist, because you see it in talk radio too, which predates social media's Skinner box algorithms by decades.
Side-question: why are there more left-wing political comedians than right-wing ones?
12 replies →
The murder of the united healthcare CEO, or more specifically, the positive reaction towards it, seems rather associated with the left, doesn't it?
People who want a certain party to be in power should hold that party to a higher standard. Independent of the party. Being "better than the others" is not good enough.
13 replies →
>There are actual [people that I label with bad labels] just one or two hops away from the President!
My latest understanding of the US political landscape is that 2008-2024 the left got very adept at defining things as bad and then attacking those things. In 2016 the right started to learn to counter that, and in 2024 that finally died. In other words, you'll need to try harder than just calling people nazis.
You're getting downvoted because people don't buy that 1) tens of millions of their fellow Americans are lunatics and 2) that the left doesn't have their own moral failings.
9 replies →
Wait, in my media bubble the American left is the one consumed by rage.
The right is stupid or craven or greedy or just evil, but true righteous fury is reserved for those who saw a woman's rights not getting respected one time.
I don’t think you understand these groups and their motivations very well. Fear and concern for the future are much more significant than “rage”.
[dead]