Intermarkets' Privacy Policy Support
Donate to Ace of Spades HQ! Recent Entries
Daily Tech News 7 October 2024
Sunday Overnight Open Thread (10/6/24) Gun Thread: It's October Edition! Food Thread: Braising...It's not just fancy welding! First-World Problems... Free Speech Is Under Attack, And There Is No Accommodation With The Attackers Sunday Morning Book Thread - 10-06-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel] Daily Tech News 6 October 2024 Saturday Overnight Open Thread (10/5/24) Music Thread: The Unbearable Lightness Of Messenger Bags Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024 Captain Hate 2023 moon_over_vermont 2023 westminsterdogshow 2023 Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022 Dave In Texas 2022 Jesse in D.C. 2022 OregonMuse 2022 redc1c4 2021 Tami 2021 Chavez the Hugo 2020 Ibguy 2020 Rickl 2019 Joffen 2014 AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups
|
« More #FakeNews: Over Weekend, Lefty Reporters When Apeshit Retweeting Iraqi War Vet Who Claimed His Mom Died Due to Trump's Travel Ban. He Lied. | Main | 'Let Those Cowards Come' » February 01, 2017
Did Facebook Win Donald Trump the Presidency? [Warden]I stumbled across a rarity yesterday--a leftist who is curious enough about how the right thinks to read and study us. Someone pointed this series of tweets to me after the writer linked my article, How Losing My Political Values Helped Me Gain My Freedom, as an example of the emotional state of the reactionary right.
It's a thoughtful series of tweets that I encourage you to read. The author has his finger on the emotional state of the reactionary right more than any other leftist I've encountered. He didn't rely on a bunch of tropes and stereotypes to reach his conclusions. He paid attention to what we've been saying. I had a courteous exchange with the author, so if you respond to him please keep it cordial. Polite and thoughtful discussion deserves courtesy in return. At any rate, our exchange gave me cause to think a little bit more deeply about what I'd written previously, particularly on the matter of reactionary politics. Let me start by saying that Donald Trump is a reactionary phenomenon and most of us who voted for him are, by definition, reactionaries. And I would argue that most of this is due to social media. When one looks at the left wing, you can basically separate the institutional left from what I call the soft left. The institutional left consists of the political players and their lackeys, media, academics, street agitators and the like. These are the people that shape the direction, agenda, strategy and tactics of the left. The soft left are the voters. They don't give much thought to anything other than their preferences, which the Democrat party caters to very effectively. They are, traditionally, passive players. Now I've understood since the Clinton years that the institutional left was actively seeking to harm me. Historically they've primarily done this through policy while other tactics such as demonization, othering, character assassination and lawfare were generally reserved for powerful political players and institutions on the right. During the Obama years, we saw a radical shift. No longer were the Tom Delays and the Rush Limbaughs of the world the exclusive targets of what Bill Clinton labeled "the politics of personal destruction." Your average citizen was now in the cross hairs as well. I first became aware of this during the Joe the Plumber episode when the media relentlessly attacked a citizen simply for asking, on his own property where Barack Obama was a guest, a question that happened to make their Boy-King look silly. I thought it was a one-off due to the threat that Plumber's inquiry posed, but soon after the examples piled up--the slandering of the Tea Party movement, targeting of Christian wedding photographers, the harassment of the Memories Pizza owners, etc... Which leads me to social media, Facebook specifically. As this dramatic shift occurred, we began to see another shift within social media, one that reached its apex during the 2016 presidential election. That was the politicization of everything, not just by the institutional left, but by the soft left as well. Where before the voters on the left were mostly passive receivers of Cultural Marxism, they had now become active participants via propaganda, slander, social shaming, and otherizing. This meant that conservatives were now being assaulted on two fronts, both from the institutional left and the soft left. Every conservative who is active on Facebook knows what I'm talking about. After decades of Americans keeping their politics mostly to themselves, suddenly our feeds were jammed up with political invective. It wasn't just directed at politicians. It was personal--a relentless litany of insults and abuse, first at the Tea Party and then Trump supporters. Most of it was generalized, but the message was clear. They held our kind in contempt and didn't care who knew it. In fact, they seemed to be in a contest to see who could broadcast it the loudest. Most conservatives were hurt by this. We tend to keep our politics relatively private, both out of decorum and respect for our relationships with people whose politics differ from ours. The message that these public posts sent to us was that our "friends" on the left didn't respect or value us enough to avoid giving offense. As someone who has been following politics since high school, I tend not to trust my own instincts what the average voter thinks. I'm simply to close to the subject. My wife, however, is a fairly low-key traditionalist who doesn't care to immerse herself in that world and so I use her as my political weather vane. And so I knew that there was a storm brewing when she snapped down her phone over breakfast one day after reading Facebook and told me how sick and tired she was of her friends' political posts. "When they say those things," she fumed, "they're talking about our family." "I'm so sick and tired of being told that I'm a bad person because I disagree with someone's position on abortion or transgender bathrooms. Who do they think they are to tell everyone what they're required to believe?" The hurt had turned to anger and quiet resolve. The left sought to reprimand the right. What they did was alienate it. Their social media echo chamber only served to steel conservative misgivings about Donald Trump, if for no other reason than we simply couldn't abide by being pushed around for another 4-8 years. It's one thing to know that your friends disagree with you. It's another to realize that they think you're stupid, uneducated, a bigot, bully, sexist, jerk and everything that's wrong with the world. It's then that you realize that it's not just the institutional left that yearns to place its boot on your neck, it's your left-wing neighbors, friends, coworkers and even family. When you see attacks on regular citizens cheered and reinforced by people on Facebook, your worldview changes radically. You can no longer believe that they don't really understand what they're voting for. It becomes clear that they do--they're voting to turn you into a second class citizen, an "other" who is not due the same rights and courtesies as their exhalted tribe of Right Thinkers.
Donald Trump had exposed the press for the lying, shameless partisan hacks that they are. But social media exposed the soft left, the formerly passive Democrat party support. This is why the left never saw it coming. They took over public spaces and shouted down the opposition with personal attacks. Horrified conservatives withdrew from engagement, but we didn't disappear. We seethed with resentment and contempt. And it drove us to the polls, quietly and without fanfare, like assassins in the night. The left still doesn't know what hit him. They're still too busy screeching, insulting, protesting, rioting, and trying to manipulate the rules to ask the simple question: Why? I'll tell you why. We see you. We see what you've become. And we're not having what you've been dishing out any longer. | Recent Comments
SFGoth:
"Wolfus - or take more. ;-> ..."
Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere [/i] [/b]: "I don't want to be up either, Skip. But I took of ..." Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere [/i] [/b]: "Stateless, as regards THC capsules: Earlier this ..." Buzz Adrenaline: "John Boozman Is Senator from Arkansas ..." Skip : "I don't want to get up ..." Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere [/i] [/b]: "Morining, fellow insomaniacals! You know what the ..." Adriane the Brevity Challenged Critic . . .: "[i] The GOP delegation, led by Sen. Jerry Moran (K ..." Recorded Webcams: "However, that's successfully the identical as sayi ..." SFGoth: "I have been getting edibles and capsules. Do you h ..." Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, : "[i]She seems professional and friendly to boot. No ..." togel online: "Good respond in return of this matter with firm ..." Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, : "A lion bit my dad once. Posted by: jim (in Kalifo ..." Recent Entries
Daily Tech News 7 October 2024
Sunday Overnight Open Thread (10/6/24) Gun Thread: It's October Edition! Food Thread: Braising...It's not just fancy welding! First-World Problems... Free Speech Is Under Attack, And There Is No Accommodation With The Attackers Sunday Morning Book Thread - 10-06-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel] Daily Tech News 6 October 2024 Saturday Overnight Open Thread (10/5/24) Music Thread: The Unbearable Lightness Of Messenger Bags Search
Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Primary Document: The Audio
Paul Anka Haiku Contest Announcement Integrity SAT's: Entrance Exam for Paul Anka's Band AllahPundit's Paul Anka 45's Collection AnkaPundit: Paul Anka Takes Over the Site for a Weekend (Continues through to Monday's postings) George Bush Slices Don Rumsfeld Like an F*ckin' Hammer Top Top Tens
Democratic Forays into Erotica New Shows On Gore's DNC/MTV Network Nicknames for Potatoes, By People Who Really Hate Potatoes Star Wars Euphemisms for Self-Abuse Signs You're at an Iraqi "Wedding Party" Signs Your Clown Has Gone Bad Signs That You, Geroge Michael, Should Probably Just Give It Up Signs of Hip-Hop Influence on John Kerry NYT Headlines Spinning Bush's Jobs Boom Things People Are More Likely to Say Than "Did You Hear What Al Franken Said Yesterday?" Signs that Paul Krugman Has Lost His Frickin' Mind All-Time Best NBA Players, According to Senator Robert Byrd Other Bad Things About the Jews, According to the Koran Signs That David Letterman Just Doesn't Care Anymore Examples of Bob Kerrey's Insufferable Racial Jackassery Signs Andy Rooney Is Going Senile Other Judgments Dick Clarke Made About Condi Rice Based on Her Appearance Collective Names for Groups of People John Kerry's Other Vietnam Super-Pets Cool Things About the XM8 Assault Rifle Media-Approved Facts About the Democrat Spy Changes to Make Christianity More "Inclusive" Secret John Kerry Senatorial Accomplishments John Edwards Campaign Excuses John Kerry Pick-Up Lines Changes Liberal Senator George Michell Will Make at Disney Torments in Dog-Hell Greatest Hitjobs
The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny More Margaret Cho Abuse Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed" Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means Wonkette's Stand-Up Act Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report! Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet The House of Love: Paul Krugman A Michael Moore Mystery (TM) The Dowd-O-Matic! Liberal Consistency and Other Myths Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate "Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long) The Donkey ("The Raven" parody) |