Media Bias

[pErvinalia]

Building a stupid wall while complaining about a non-existent crisis is the smart way to appeal to both camps (xenophobes, and your regular selfish conservatives who want strong border security as they don't like sharing with others). If he outed himself as an actual xenophobe, he'd lose a lot of the other camp. Not that I'm convinced that much of the other camp aren't xenophobes as well as being selfish. They are conservatives, after all..

[Cunt]

I get it. Everyone who doesn't agree with you should be ground up for fertilizer.

And you don't even seem to care what their N-P-K ratios are...

SAD!

[pErvinalia]

We can supplement the grindings with other fertiliser to achieve the correct NPK ratios. Tero will be consultant on this project.

[Joe]

I suggest that some posters output of fertilizer over time far exceeds what could be obtained by grinding them up, so they should be preserved as "renewable resources."

[pErvinalia]

[Brian Peacock]

The fact that the FBI coordinated with CNN on this should concern everyone. Hate Trump all you want, but that's bullshit right there.

I don't mind it as long as they do the same to Democrat villains.

I'm waiting...didn't a bunch of Dems recently lie to Congress like Stone is accused of? Will we get their perp-walks via CNN? Or is there really something sinister going on?

The FBI's job should have nothing to do with politics, and it's not the job of the cops to be garnering publicity for arrests. They aren't the judge, the jury or the executioner. They think they have a case. Prove it. It's not ethical in the least to call up and tip off news outlets so they can be there to record an arrest.

I agree. Policing shouldn't be political, but when one has a system of political appointment and public elections for policing positions how can it not be. The problem lies in an attitude which assumes that those who appoint the police, political or public, own the police and/or the justice system and are therefore entitled to mandate their scope and activity.

[Brian Peacock]

If you say that it appeals to xenophobes, then you can identify xenophobes by seeing who it appeals to!

Brilliant. Or a trap set for, and capturing yourself.

If he says he is appealing to xenophobes, then I'll agree. Until then, I'll just think you want to see xenophobia.

You're forgetting that people's attitudes can be nudged if they are frequently exposed to certain kinds of messages, the more emotive the better. This is how much advertising works. The most emotive messages are those that inculcate or raise people's level of fear and discomfort. When this is bound to a specific stimulus, or idea, the subject becomes primed to respond to the trigger. It's called fear-conditioning. It works when it comes to toothpaste, and it works when it comes to politics.




Other research shows how human stress hormones interrupt the brain circuitry that normally allows our frontal cortex to mitigate the fear response to stimuli, in effect sidestepping a system of rational evaluation and decision-making.

Now consider the messages which might sway people to worry, and yes, fear immigration: the hordes, armies, tidal wave, tsunami, invader, criminal, crimigrant, rapist, terrorist, security threat, national emergency, not good people. Once primed the mere thought of an immigrant can produce the conditioned response and raise the level of stress hormones - those hormones that flood the brain when one needs to fight for your life or run away - and which trigger aggressive or defensive behaviour. The only difference between us and other animals is that we can express our aggressive and defensive responses verbally rather than simply fighting or running, and we can induce higher levels of stress in ourselves just by thinking about stuff.

The upshot is: we should be very wary when politicians expending a lot of energy telling what, and more importantly who, we should worry about and fear.

Hermit posted a terse explication of the facts of immigration across the US Southern border. This appears to have had no impact on the debate, where in fact such information is fundamental to the matter at hand. Though Trump et al would like us to think that immigration at the Southern border is out of control, such that it might be categorised as a state of war against an invading army or a security threat or a national emergency, the figures hardly bear this out. The US is not unique in this regard: every nation has to address immigration issues. However, a political operative that spends a lot of time categorising immigrants in the terms listed above (invaders, hordes, rapists etc) in order to instil concern, worry and fear in the voting public, fear which the political operative will then offer to assuage, is less interested in actually instituting robust and practical policies and instead is prepared to demonise 'the outsider' as to means of promoting their virtues as a demon hunter.

Those who believe in the power and virtue of the demon hunter consider the hunter's measures to banish the demonised 'other' as noble and worthy, and things like building walls or separating children from the guardians and putting them in cages, handcuffing women in labour to hospital beds, or deporting people who've lived in the country all their lives etc become good, noble, and worthy fear-assuaging actions which make those primed for fear feel better.

Now, if your first response to this is to undertake a robust justification for the demonisation of immigrants, or to justify the merits of the types of state action mentioned above, or to accuse me of wanting free and open boarders, or being a Democrat stooge and an acolyte of Pelosi (all of which you have fallen to before btw) then you've probably been primed into a stress-inducing conditioned fear response by nothing more than the use of language and imagery - which is something which is difficult for all of use to spot and deal with. It against this background that challenging ideas and messages, analysis and factual accounts are seen a bias, for they are things which do not reward the stimulus of 'immigration' with the stress response one has become habituated into.

[pErvinalia]

SOCIALIST!!

[Brian Peacock]

Cuba!

[Cunt]

Nah, I like brown people just fine. Well, it doesn't hurt that my family is brown, but I wouldn't mind them anyway.

As to this notion that you should be careful when politicians promote fear, yup. That's what they are selling with their 'sky is falling' global warming claims. It's why I am so suspicious.

Back to the border issue, the wall is ONLY meant to stop illegal crossings, so it is clearly not about xenophobia, but about law and order.

And why won't someone look into that McKnew/IRA thing? I thought there were some here who really did want to know about Russian interference in US elections...

[Brian Peacock]

You need to check out the science of global warming rather than looking to the politics. As Peterson said, the politics of climate change is far more divisive and confusing than the science.

[Seabass]

As to this notion that you should be careful when politicians promote fear, yup. That's what they are selling with their 'sky is falling' global warming claims. It's why I am so suspicious.

Oh, FFS.

Humanity is doomed. Doomed by stupidity.

[pErvinalia]

Nah, I like brown people just fine. Well, it doesn't hurt that my family is brown, but I wouldn't mind them anyway.

As to this notion that you should be careful when politicians promote fear, yup. That's what they are selling with their 'sky is falling' global warming claims. It's why I am so suspicious.

Do you even science, bro?

And why won't someone look into that McKnew/IRA thing? I thought there were some here who really did want to know about Russian interference in US elections...

Why don't you actually make your argument yourself, instead of requesting us to make it for you?

[Brian Peacock]

The objective of the pathological contrarian is to oppose your views and opinions not to offer their own up for examination.

I think the problem for people like Cunt is that they associate global warming as an issue with 'them dang libruls' - and as they oppose 'them dang libruls' they fall quickly into opposing climate science or downright science denailism. The scientific consensus on atmospheric chemistry is solid and supported by a humongous amount of evidence. However, what we might do with that information is a political matter - but one that can only be addressed successfully on the basis of the data.

[pErvinalia]

Cunt seems prone to favouring conspiracy theories over more reasoned analysis. He really seems wedded to this idea of all governments being utterly corrupt and unworkable. While they probably all are to varying degrees, the only alternative is individualism, and amongst the grown ups we all know how juvenile an idea that is.