The tragedy of all of this is that if the GB crowd got what they think they want they would be terribly unhappy. I said a long, long, long time ago that the problem with (at the time) the Bush crowd was that they are listening to a fairy tale that they want to be told. That's why reason doesn't work, why facts and spreadsheats don't work, and they worship their "role models", Coulter, Beck, Limbaugh.
My father is a huge fan of Beck and used to mention ole Rush all the time. It has nothing to do with reality. It's a fantasy world and they will only accept people who keep feeding them their fantasy. Logic is not a part of the equation, only the bits that fit what they already want to believe. It's sort of a mass self hypnosis.
This guy will get massive points with people who have never seen and will never see New York City. It doesn't matter if it made sense to say it.
I've tried to cut back on things that seem like I'm bashing my own country. I recognize that we aren't the worst country in the world while at the same desperately wanting to see us all strive to be a better country. We're actually more of C+ at the moment but the scales seem to be at a point where they could tip either way.
But people like Beck are a problem not because he's a yahoo himself (one day ask me how much I loathe Anne Coulter) but because he's an exaggeration of a core of people who are living in a made up reality and who like to play white hat, black hat. I'm absolutely certain that Beck is just one head of a nasty hydra and even as his star fades two or three more just like him will pop up in his place.
The real question then becomes how do we wake up a group of people who don't want to awoken. Now that is a question that does make me ponder should I stay or should I go.
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chiming
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Date: 2011-01-27 06:56 pm (UTC)From:My father is a huge fan of Beck and used to mention ole Rush all the time. It has nothing to do with reality. It's a fantasy world and they will only accept people who keep feeding them their fantasy. Logic is not a part of the equation, only the bits that fit what they already want to believe. It's sort of a mass self hypnosis.
This guy will get massive points with people who have never seen and will never see New York City. It doesn't matter if it made sense to say it.
I've tried to cut back on things that seem like I'm bashing my own country. I recognize that we aren't the worst country in the world while at the same desperately wanting to see us all strive to be a better country. We're actually more of C+ at the moment but the scales seem to be at a point where they could tip either way.
But people like Beck are a problem not because he's a yahoo himself (one day ask me how much I loathe Anne Coulter) but because he's an exaggeration of a core of people who are living in a made up reality and who like to play white hat, black hat. I'm absolutely certain that Beck is just one head of a nasty hydra and even as his star fades two or three more just like him will pop up in his place.
The real question then becomes how do we wake up a group of people who don't want to awoken. Now that is a question that does make me ponder should I stay or should I go.