Hate Sells category archive
“But I’m the Victim Here” 0
Right-wingers, racists, and, especially these days, evangelical they-call-themselves Christians often claim that they are being persecuted for their beliefs, they they are, to quote the cliche, “the real victims here.” Their definition of “persecution,” match, is not getting everyone else bend to their will.
At Psychology Today Blogs, Araya Baker explores why these folks portray themselves as–indeed, can convince themselves that they are–victims. It is a complex and timely article and well worth the few minutes it will take you to read it.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Yet another “responsible gun owner” discharges his responsibility, to (no surprises here) his detriment.
Meanwhile, at the Orlando Sentinel, Cindy Sawyer tries to make sense of gun nuts’ rationales for gunnuttery and concludes that, well, they just don’t make sense.
Nazis for Neighbors 0
A little girl leaves her house to go to school and finds Nazi swastikas strewn over her front yard.
We are a broken society.
Critique of Poor Reason, Disinformation Superhighway Dept. 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Armin Zadel explores why so many persons seem to be abandoning reason for ideology. It does not surprise me that he points one finger towards the Disinformation Superhighway and “social” media (emphasis added).
This dramatically changed with the advent of the internet, particularly social media. Suddenly, folks around the world found others who shared their obscure ideas, which not only allowed nonsense to propagate but also emboldened many silent supporters to join. The result is a delusion pandemic, with ideas mutating and becoming increasingly hostile toward academics and the “elite” who try to expose and disparage illogical thoughts and theories.
I commend the entire article to your attention.
The American Demean 0
Robert Reich offers some thoughts about why some persons are so fascinated with Elon Musk and Donald Trump, two personalities who seem to dominate (or pollute) the discourse in this new Gilded Age. An excerpt:
People who have been bullied their whole lives want to identify with super bullies who give the finger to the establishment, answerable to no one but their own ravenous egos.
Their arrogance and certitude attract millions of followers, fans and cultish devotees, along with a fair number of goons and thugs who want to vicariously feel superior.But they are not leaders. They are bullies who demean America.
Manufactured Malice 0
David Roth is fed up with the mongers of the phony non-existent “War on Christmas.” Here’s a bit from his article at the Idaho State Journal:
A Notion of Immigrants, 0
Thom suggests that Republicans are trading on a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Afterthought:
Methinks Thom is onto something.
I doubt that this is some sort of conservative conspiracy. Frankly, I don’t think the American right is capable of thinking that far ahead. (Indeed, their preference is to look back, not forward.)
Nevertheless, given the pervasiveness of “social” media (and I think Americans tend to forget that other countries have are plagued by it too), I think he makes a strong case that one society’s rhetoric could affect other societies’ perception of reality.
Save Just What, Exactly? 0
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I have found that those who trumpet most loudly their own patriotism, those most likely to wrap their bodies in the stars and stripes (in violation of the Flag Code, by the way, but that is quite another issue) while waving the Stars and Bars–the flag of treason, for Pete’s sake–are also those most likely to reject the idea that “all men are created equal,” however imperfectly it might have been practiced at the time of the Founding.
Rather, they would will restore if they could can America’s original sin of chattel slavery.
I say this as one whose ancestors wore the grey.
I’m a Southern Boy who grew up under Jim Crow.
I know racism when I see it.
