I really wonder what is going on in politics these days. The late Harry Reid once said that politics has a feral side to it. This is not only feral, this is downright destructive. Education has gone downhill in this country since the 80’s resulting in the dumbing down of America. The people at Turning Point USA seek to exploit this downhill trend with an actively subversive attack on teachers, involving surveillance, and then turning the surveillance in to get them fired. This is George Orwell’s Youth Patrol in training. to spy on the adults and report. This is sick.
Unearthed Video: TPUSA Senior Manager Driena Sixto training students to secretly record professors and administrators that disagree with their message and “edge them on” in hopes of getting them fired. pic.twitter.com/40k5VJXipx
— PatriotTakes ?? (@patriottakes) December 31, 2021
This woman leading this seminar is quite a piece of work.
She makes no bones about her subversive intentions. She’s advocating overthrowing the government. I don’t know if she’s on the FBI’s radar but she should be.
Driena Sixto says her full time job at TPUSA “is saving America.”
However, Driena told her followers fired over vaccine mandates to:
? “F**k shit up before leaving”
? “Sabotage everything”
? “Cut cables and get creative”
? “Pop a tire or two or four” on the “boss’s car.” pic.twitter.com/l6HRoqJCZg— PatriotTakes ?? (@patriottakes) December 31, 2021
Now here is the central problem: This level of toxic misinformation goes out regularly not only on college campuses or at conventions, but on right-wing talk radio, which is a pernicious and insidious organ of untruth. Rush Limbaugh got that ball rolling in the 1980’s, the same decade when the dumbing down of America was also becoming an obvious trend, with the deteriorating educational system.
Limbaugh exploited the fact that Reagan had eliminated the Fairness In Broadcasting Doctrine, which was a horrific error on his part. We have been suffering ever since he did that. Meanwhile, Limbaugh and his cohorts have been getting rich off of belligerent put downs of Democrats and we lost the ability back then to demand equal time and correct the record. And so the discourse only got more fantastic and out of touch with reality.
That went on for 15 years and then Fox News came into the picture. 20 years later we ended up with Donald Trump. As horrified as those of us on the left are, it was not only reasonably foreseeable, it was predictable.
Political discourse is now toxic and the country is divided into warring tribes.
The problem is, that the Democrats aren’t fighting back hard enough disinformation and right-wing propaganda. We’re under attack in a war of words and ideas and we need to fight back. While I respect Michelle Obama enormously and understand what she meant when she said, “When they go low, we go high,” we have no choice other than to dig a trench when they go low and hold our ground. We have to meet the enemy on its own level and not fly above the fray, not wanting to dirty out hands, while down below the right-wing disinformation machine is actively poisoning the political groundwaters.
Here is a sterling example of what I’m talking about.
What can they do:
1. Identify when these are first posted to attack them quickly before they get traction.
2. Put out the correct, contextual version.
3. Have a team of people attach the unedited version to every one of their posts.
4. Demand to go on every right-wing show
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 29, 2021
This 5-second deceptively-edited clip was featured on every single right wing show today on Fox, OAN and Newsmax. “If Biden says there is no federal solution, why should we have mandates?” Still not a single response from WH or DNC to point out the clip is BS. Narrative lost.
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 29, 2021
We make no response to this because we’re “going high.” We can’t do that anymore. To do so is suicidal. The misinformation is too widespread and too much damage is being done.
The MAGA movement in this country — and definitely the QAnon movement, which overlaps — is a group of subversives. We need to fight fire with fire.
I intend to revise the mission statement of this blog when my techie is back from a short vacation next week. The new mission of PolitiZoom is to combat right-wing disinformation and get out the truth.
We are at war here and it is a war of words and images. We are fighting propaganda.
Let me give you an example from my personal experience. I used to share a house in Southern California before I moved here to Nevada. The son of my roommate and his girlfriend wanted to discuss the upcoming 2020 election with me. They hated Donald Trump, as do I, but they also hated Joe Biden. The girlfriend said to me, almost in tears, “there’s nobody to vote for. So I’m not going to vote.”
Then the son told me that Joe Biden was a pedophile, and the girlfriend chimed in, “all the world leaders are.” Pure QAnon. We are talking about two young people aged 21 and 24 with one high school diploma and one GED between them. One installs security cameras, the other tends horses at a ranch. We’re not talking big money here or career path jobs. They both come from broken homes and the single parent that raised each of them is a mess. They fell right into the arms of QAnon.
And they didn’t want to listen to me, it goes without saying, debunk QAnon or tout Joe Biden’s exemplary record as a public servant. They put Biden in the same category as Hillary, and there was no choice in that election either, they felt. What Hillary called the “vast right-wing conspiracy” had done a number on her after 20 years, alienating the children. If you never saw those propaganda tapes on You Tube, I did. Hillary was depicted as a reptilian space alien, and also as an international drug dealer. I saw a photo of the airstrip that she and Bill purportedly had in Arkansas, back in the day.
The deadly influence of QAnon is its ugly, emotional attacks and imagery, which grab these people where they live and suck them in. I’m not sure I understand the phenomenon but I have witnessed it first hand. The closest I can come to understanding it, is that it’s simply easier to buy into an emotional attack, especially if it is disguised as revelatory information, not known to people at large, then it is to read a normal newspaper. It’s the same mentality that motivates the climate deniers and the flat earthers (and the father of the young man I’m talking about here is both. The mother of the young woman is a Fox News aficionado who thinks that Tucker Carlson is a “beautiful man.” Need I say more?) The mentality is simply that it’s easier to buy into sensationalist crap and believe it than to investigate an issue rationally. They lack the critical thinking skills for that and that is where we.are.screwed as a nation.
And even though these two young people know that I make my living in this field and that I know quite a bit more than the average person about politics because I am glued to it every day, they didn’t want to hear what I had to say. They told me I was wrong. They wouldn’t listen to my defense of Joe Biden. The videos they saw, of Biden sniffing a little girl’s hair and the context in which it was put, the right-wing propaganda, they swallowed whole. The son’s final words to me were “Joe Biden’s a piece of shit,” and those were the last words we exchanged. I wrote them both off then and there.
The problem is that the yous and mes with some education know the difference between tabloidesque nonsense and real news. These people do not. What they know is what they see on the internet. They don’t read a newspaper or listen to a normal newscast in addition. That’s for the world of intellectuals and has nothing to do with them. Apparently. I can only conjecture here.
Another frightening development is that these people believe that all media outlets are biased, it’s just a question of right or left. I was appalled when I heard this. I said, “Listen, there are outlets like Reuter’s and the Associated Press, which report the news. They’re not doing editorials, or very rarely, they’re strictly fact gathering. This was brand new information to them.
We are literally turning into two nations, one informed and one populated by know-nothings with rings in their noses, being led by right-wing propaganda sites. I saw two more souls fall down the QAnon rabbit hole right before my very eyes. And the sad fact of the matter is that at one point I used to hang out and chat with these kids. I cooked them chile. I taught them about wine. They respected me. But QAnon won.
This is the hill we die on friends. We have to combat misinformation and disinformation. There is no other issue. This is black and white. This is Truth v. Lies, Good v. Evil. It really is that simple.
? “F**k shit up before leaving”
? “Sabotage everything”
? “Cut cables and get creative”
? “Pop a tire or two or four” on the “boss’s car.”
I certainly hope someone pays attention not only to their former, disgruntled, employees but also to what this twat is telling her…whatever the fuck these fuckwads are…to do. I should think she bears some responsibility for any and all damages. And injuries and deaths should the actions of the fuckwads result in such things.
What she’s telling them to do is vandalism. Which is a crime, and can put them in jail for a few years and f*ck up the rest of their lives. So is trying to sabotage professors because you don’t agree with them.
Two things. I’m of the belief that Reagan and his gang knew EXACTLY what they were doing by eliminating The Fairness Doctrine. And their bet paid off beyond even what they expected.
As for your commentary on Michelle Obama I’ve long agreed with your contention that that’s a recipe for losing any chance of stopping the demise of this country as we knew it. In the past I’ve often used the analogy of a bar fight. (Yes, I’ve had experience when I was young and even dumber than I am now) You might not have started it, or even know any of the people involved. Whether you do or don’t if you get caught up in it the only rules are there are NO rules. The best you can hope for is to get out of there, into your car and out of the parking lot with minimal injury and before the cops show up. And if you have to kick and gouge and bite, use beer bottles or broken chair/table legs or whatever as a weapon you do so.
What’s going on isn’t a mere bar fight. It’s a biker bar fight and yes, there’s a difference and the latter is more serious by quite a lot. If you were a big fan of the TV show China Beach you might remember an episode where the Gunny was giving an orientation lecture including of course “Ten Rules.” Most were what you expect, but at the end he describes an incident from when he was in the field and had to make a gut wrenching choice to save most of his platoon – at the expense of a guy just a few days away from going home but who was injured and had taken shelter under the firing slot of the enemy bunker that had the rest pinned down as they could hear other gomers on their flanks about to surround them. He fired the LAW rocket that blew up the bunker and “Dog Man” but saved the rest of the platoon that hadn’t already been killed. With tears running down his face he says, Which brings me to rule number ten – Do what you have to do.
That’s where things are. Time (actually, it’s long past time) to do what we have to do and fight the way we have to.
delliott, you are absolutely correct. Reagan and the entire group knew PRECISELY what they were doing. It has all been surgically engineered for the past forty years to lead directly into an autocratic “Xian theocracy”, the “Xian taliban”. The worst enemy the United States of America has ever faced has been the “Republican party”.
Compelling article, Ursula! I worked as a counselor in higher education (Minnesota’s two-year college system) for just shy of 30 years before retiring. I had a front row seat to watch the “dumbing down of America” all those years. The educational prowess among young college students made a steady decline over the years I worked in the field. By the time I retired, many (but not all) of our students came to the college experience less prepared academically and emotionally. Their critical thinking skills and their problem solving ability was lower and lower throughout my career. It was sad to watch, but it has clearly contributed to the divisions we see in our society today. So sad. But they want their “free-dumb!”
The thing that bothers me the most is the general abuses that Reagan was responsible for. I know now that Reagan was responsible for probably as much destruction of America as trump. Now trump was stupid and relied on the general animosity of his maga idiots and his twisted thinking that he was the sharpest knife in the drawer. And let’s face it. I’ve seen butter knives that would be razor sharp compared to him. But Reagan now, even though he was beginning to suffer Alzheimer’s disease was one smart sonofabitch and the havoc he created is still coming out thirty years later. He smiled politely to everyone while he stuck a knife in America and twisted it all around. The Reagan years sucked then and they suck now.