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Arguing politics with right wingers is like arguing with creationists
Everything they say is based on beliefs, not evidence. They seem to have no interest in an honest discussion of the facts. Instead they hang on to their naive ideologies like "Freedom" and "govt is incapable and corrupt". I hate taxes as much as the next guy, but sometimes the best solution is a public solution.
For right wingers, the only solution is a capitalistic solution - everything else is "socialist".
Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on tactics that might get these people to open thier minds just a little bit?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by LarryL on -
Besides a greater willingness to lie, I'd suggest that they also have a louder microphone.
While we love to dismiss Rush, Fox and co as willfull liers, they do have an extraordinary reach of very devouted followers. "We" is a very small number of people with a limited audience. I'm not suggesting we give up, but the challenge is great.
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Permalink Reply by LarryL on
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Yes, but that core demographic is getting larger and louder everyday. Where will it end? Will Fox put CNN out of business?
I'd also like to know where all these rational people are (besides on the Nexus). I sure don't find many in my town of St. Louis. I'm literally surrounded by FoxZombies everywhere. I hope my network isn't representative of the rest of the country, or else we are all in a heap or trouble.
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Permalink Reply by Joseph P on -
The midwest is a bit more conservative, yes. I figured St. Louis would be better than the rest of Missouri, though. I dunno.
The east coast is definitely not Fox country, at least in the cities. The Raleigh/Durham area, Charlotte, and the Triad (Winston-Salem, Greensboro, High Point) are so liberal that we brought the state over for Obama. Jesse Helms is gone, and more importantly, his Republican replacement is gone. Once you get out into the rural areas though, yes, North Carolina is Southern Baptist everywhere.
And of course you know how liberal the New England area is. Same with the west coast.
I really thought Missouri would be more similar, considering it was the closest to 50/50 out of all of the states, in 2008.
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Permalink Reply by Jason Spicer on -
Another thing to keep in mind is that Fox News has no competition. They own the market of propagandizing the wack-job right. The center and left are served (and that's using the term loosely) by multiple news outlets, so that market is splintered. This gives Fox News much larger ratings than any one of the real news outlets, but in aggregate, the mainstream news outlets get massively more viewers than Fox.
I disagree that ignoring demagogues is the way to get them to go away. That doesn't really work. They just continue demagogueing their nutjob followers. Having it underground is bad. Media Matters, FactCheck.org, and PolitiFact.org are important watchdogs. Because the mainstream media aren't pointing out the lies like they should.
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Permalink Reply by Joseph P on
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Do liberals eschew tv so much that they don't watch it so a large demographic isn't counted?
I don't watch TV. My roommate and I don't even have cable. We watch all of our TV online. Everything I want to watch is streamed off of the shows' websites, now.
Of course I think online viewing is taken into account. It's easier to track online viewing than actual TV viewing. The TV ratings system is broken, useless crap. It's been shown, on several shows, that the viewers are not reflected properly somehow. There seems to be some flaw in their algorithm.
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Permalink Reply by Joseph P on
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Yeah, I had digital cable, back when I had cable.
I was thinking more along the lines of the Arbitron rating system, and Nielsen ratings. Those have been shown to be unreliable as hell, for several types of shows. -
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Permalink Reply by LarryL on
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Okay, these are the specific recommendations that I've gathered from the discussion:
a: call bullshit when you see it
b: make them look stupid when they deserve it
c: move to Australia when "a" and "b" fails
Did I miss anything?
re "deep framing", the suggestion is that we challenge the very premise of the argument - the foundation that the argument lies upon, and suggest a more honest, fact based, framing of the issues
Examples:
-the "War on Terror" is in reality an "Illegal Occupation" by US forces
-the "illegal Immigrant Problem" is really a "problem of Illegal Hiring Practices"
While this seems like a relatively simple solution, the fact is that the right has most of the microphones. They have Fox plus right wing radio, while we only have a few islands in an ocean of conservative mouthpieces. How to get the "alternative" framing out "there" remains the challenge.
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Permalink Reply by Terry McCoy on -
I read this entire threat tonight from start to finish, and I must say it was everything I thought it could be a more. Thank you atheist nexus community!
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Permalink Reply by Terry McCoy on
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this implies that it was painful. I actually found it very enjoyable.
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Permalink Reply by Terry McCoy on
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I found it freshing. Growing up in IN has skiewed my political vision. Well it did until I over heard some liberals in college talking about how clinton was actually a decent president. I looked up the facts on the interwebs and thought to myself... well $hit, he is a democrat. Just goes to show the more you know... the uglier and more twisted the truth can be. I am quickly learning that voting isn't voluntary, it should be a civic duty.
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