I have a problem with your ideas. Not the same thing.
I think you're prejudiced against people critical of American foreign policy. In fact I detect a case of 'clear prejudice' filled with a repulsive hatred of said critics of American foreign policy. I know prejudice when I see it.
And the issue I am talking about is much larger than just one or two people.
I have a problem with your ideas. Not the same thing.
I think you're prejudiced against people critical of American foreign policy. In fact I detect a case of 'clear prejudice' filled with a repulsive hatred of said critics of American foreign policy. I know prejudice when I see it.
And the issue I am talking about is much larger than just one or two people.
truthfully i dislike probably 75-95% of american politics & same percentage goes for my dislike of american culture which is practically inexistent. i also believe america is candy ass bullshit at least 50% of the time and that the usa is a trend for bullshit.
if we erect a clothesline chances are it will cause a panic throughout the neighborhood. in schools children are teased and beat if they wear none popular brand clothing. shallow anyone? but we eat & have cell phones by 12 years old. we have spell check on the computers & a mcdonald's down the way in almost every frickin neighborhood.
many believe we deserve a cushiony life & many are appalled by those who live the opposite of a cushiony lifestyle. we are the furthest thing from free. we are trapped like ravenous beasts
well... some of us are trapped a little more so than others.
I have a problem with your ideas. Not the same thing.
I think you're prejudiced against people critical of American foreign policy. In fact I detect a case of 'clear prejudice' filled with a repulsive hatred of said critics of American foreign policy. I know prejudice when I see it.
And the issue I am talking about is much larger than just one or two people.
I think you're prejudiced against people critical of American foreign policy. In fact I detect a case of 'clear prejudice' filled with a repulsive hatred of said critics of American foreign policy. I know prejudice when I see it.
And the issue I am talking about is much larger than just one or two people.
Funny what you did there.
I don't find Prejudice to be a laughing matter.
On that we agree. I do find mocking as a debate tactic to be laughable.
Interesting article. Stalin would be proud of you, Jimmy V. By the way, I've criticized Australians on this board more than I've ever criticized Americans - my criticisms in the direction of America are mostly confined to the U.S government; so does that make me 'prejudiced' towards Australians too? Also, I've criticized the Israeli government, the Chinese government, and the British government, on countless occasions, so does that also make me prejudiced towards Israeli's, Chinese, and British? Am I prejudiced against myself? A self-hating Brit? Really, I'd like some further clarification regarding this personal fantasy of yours.
The more one dissents from political orthodoxies, the more the attacks focus on personality, style and character
Glenn Greenwald
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 23 March 2013
One very common tactic for enforcing political orthodoxies is to malign the character, "style" and even mental health of those who challenge them. The most extreme version of this was an old Soviet favorite: to declare political dissidents mentally ill and put them in hospitals. In the US, those who take even the tiniest steps outside of political convention are instantly decreed "crazy", as happened to the 2002 anti-war version of Howard Dean and the current iteration of Ron Paul (in most cases, what is actually "crazy" are the political orthodoxies this tactic seeks to shield from challenge).
This method is applied with particular aggression to those who engage in any meaningful dissent against the society's most powerful factions and their institutions. Nixon White House officials sought to steal the files from Daniel Ellsberg's psychoanalyst's office precisely because they knew they could best discredit his disclosures with irrelevant attacks on his psyche. Identically, the New York Times and partisan Obama supporters have led the way in depicting both Bradley Manning and Julian Assange as mentally unstable outcasts with serious personality deficiencies. The lesson is clear: only someone plagued by mental afflictions would take such extreme steps to subvert the power of the US government.
A subtler version of this technique is to attack the so-called "style" of the critic as a means of impugning, really avoiding, the substance of the critique. Although Paul Krugman is comfortably within mainstream political thought as a loyal Democrat and a New York Times columnist, his relentless attack against the austerity mindset is threatening to many. As a result, he is barraged with endless, substance-free complaints about his "tone": he is too abrasive, he does not treat opponents with respect, he demonizes those who disagree with him, etc. The complaints are usually devoid of specifics to prevent meaningful refutation; one typical example: "[Krugman] often cloaks his claims in professional authority, overstates them, omits arguments that undermine his case, and is a bit of a bully." All of that enables the substance of the critique to be avoided in lieu of alleged personality flaws.
Nobody has been subjected to these vapid discrediting techniques more than Noam Chomsky. The book on which I'm currently working explores how establishment media systems restrict the range of acceptable debate in US political discourse, and I'm using Chomsky's treatment by (and ultimate exclusion from) establishment US media outlets as a window for understanding how that works. As a result, I've read a huge quantity of media discussions about Chomsky over the past year. And what is so striking is that virtually every mainstream discussion of him at some point inevitably recites the same set of personality and stylistic attacks designed to malign his advocacy without having to do the work of engaging the substance of his claims. Notably, these attacks come most frequently and viciously from establishment liberal venues, such as when the American Prospect's 2005 foreign policy issue compared him to Dick Cheney on its cover (a cover he had framed and now proudly hangs on his office wall).
Last week, Chomsky was in London to give the annual Edward W. Said lecture, and as always happens when he speaks, the large auditorium was filled to the brim, having sold out shortly after it was announced. The Guardian's Aida Edemariam interviewed him in London and produced an article, published Saturday morning, that features virtually all of those standard stylistic and personality critiques:
"When he starts speaking, it is in a monotone that makes no particular rhetorical claim on the audience's attention; in fact, it's almost soporific . . . . Within five minutes many of the hallmarks of Chomsky's political writing, and speaking, are displayed: his anger, his extraordinary range of reference and experience . . . . . Fact upon fact upon fact, but also a withering, sweeping sarcasm – the atrocities are 'tolerated politely by Europe as usual'. Harsh, vivid phrases – the 'hideously charred corpses of murdered infants'; bodies 'writhing in agony' – unspool until they become almost a form of punctuation.
"You could argue that the latter is necessary, simply a description of atrocities that must be reported, but it is also a method that has diminishing returns. The facts speak for themselves; the adjectives and the sarcasm have the counterintuitive effect of cheapening them, of imposing on the world a disappointingly crude and simplistic argument. 'The sentences,' wrote Larissa MacFarquhar in a brilliant New Yorker profile of Chomsky 10 years ago, 'are accusations of guilt, but not from a position of innocence or hope for something better: Chomsky's sarcasm is the scowl of a fallen world, the sneer of hell's veteran to its appalled naifs' – and thus, in an odd way, static and ungenerative. . . .
"But he answers questions warmly, and seriously, if not always directly – a surprise, in a way, from someone who has earned a reputation for brutality of argument, and a need to win at all costs. 'There really is an alpha-male dominance psychology at work there,' a colleague once said of him. 'He has some of the primate dominance moves. The staring down. The withering tone of voice." Students have been known to visit him in pairs, so that one can defend the other. . . .
"Chomsky, the son of Hebrew teachers who emigrated from Ukraine and Russia at the turn of the last century, began as a Zionist – but the sort of Zionist who wanted a socialist state in which Jews and Arabs worked together as equals. Since then he has been accused of antisemitism (due to defending the right to free speech of a French professor who espoused such views, some 35 years ago), and been called, by the Nation, 'America's most prominent self-hating Jew'. These days he argues tirelessly for the rights of Palestinians. . . . . Does he think that in all these years of talking and arguing and writing, he has ever changed one specific thing?"
So to recap: Chomsky is a sarcastic, angry, soporific, scowling, sneering self-hating Jew, devoid of hope and speaking from hell, whose alpha-male brutality drives him to win at all costs, and who imposes on the world disappointingly crude and simplistic arguments to the point where he is so inconsequential that one wonders whether he has ever changed even a single thing in his 60 years of political work.
Edemariam includes several other passages more balanced and even complimentary. She notes his academic accolades ("One study of the most frequently cited academic sources of all time found that he ranked eighth, just below Plato and Freud"), his mastery of facts, his willingness to speak to hostile audiences, his touching life-long relationship with his now-deceased wife, and his remarkable commitment, even at the age of 84, to personally answering emails from people around the world whom he does not know (when I spoke at a college near Rochester two weeks ago, one of the students, a college senior studying to be a high school social studies teacher, gushed as he told me that he had emailed Chomsky and quickly received a very generous personal reply). She also includes Chomsky's answer to her question about whether he has ever changed anything: a characteristically humble explanation that no one person - not even Martin Luther King - can or ever has by themselves changed anything.
But the entire piece is infused with these standard personality caricatures that offer the reader an easy means of mocking, deriding and scorning Chomsky without having to confront a single fact he presents.
...Like any person with a significant political platform, Chomsky is fair game for all sorts of criticisms. Like anyone else, he should be subjected to intense critical and adversarial scrutiny. Even admirers should listen to his (and everyone else's) pronouncements with a critical ear. Like anyone who makes prolific political arguments over the course of many years, he's made mistakes.
But what is at play here is this destructive dynamic that the more one dissents from political orthodoxies, the more personalized, style-focused and substance-free the attacks become. That's because once someone becomes sufficiently critical of establishment pieties, the goal is not merely to dispute their claims but to silence them. That's accomplished by demonizing the person on personality and style grounds to the point where huge numbers of people decide that nothing they say should even be considered, let alone accepted. It's a sorry and anti-intellectual tactic, to be sure, but a brutally effective one.
Interesting article. Stalin would be proud of you, Jimmy V. By the way, I've criticized Australians on this board more than I've ever criticized Americans - my criticisms in the direction of America are mostly confined to the U.S government; so does that make me 'prejudiced' towards Australians too? Also, I've criticized the Israeli government, the Chinese government, and the British government, on countless occasions, so does that also make me prejudiced towards Israeli's, Chinese, and British?
Byrnzie attacks every country but Canada. We rock.
Interesting article. Stalin would be proud of you, Jimmy V. By the way, I've criticized Australians on this board more than I've ever criticized Americans - my criticisms in the direction of America are mostly confined to the U.S government; so does that make me 'prejudiced' towards Australians too? Also, I've criticized the Israeli government, the Chinese government, and the British government, on countless occasions, so does that also make me prejudiced towards Israeli's, Chinese, and British?
Byrnzie attacks every country but Canada. We rock.
Oh Canada...
Can-a-da Can-a-da
I think of all the national anthems I've heard, Canada's is high on the list for most beautiful.
Interesting article. Stalin would be proud of you, Jimmy V. By the way, I've criticized Australians on this board more than I've ever criticized Americans - my criticisms in the direction of America are mostly confined to the U.S government; so does that make me 'prejudiced' towards Australians too? Also, I've criticized the Israeli government, the Chinese government, and the British government, on countless occasions, so does that also make me prejudiced towards Israeli's, Chinese, and British?
Byrnzie attacks every country but Canada. We rock.
Oh Canada...
Can-a-da Can-a-da
I think of all the national anthems I've heard, Canada's is high on the list for most beautiful.
A nice thing to say. Trust me when I say I was kidding around with my post: truth be known... I am happy with Canada- but am not what most would consider a patriot.
Although we would need a control-alt-delete to make it happen... if borders and religion disappeared... the world would be a nicer place. Of course, if we ever did localize into a subsistence based societies... eventually aggressive leaders of some groups would venture outwards and into someone else's locale to satisfy their cravings for 'more' (whatever 'more' might be). The cycle would start all over- it's human nature.
Interesting article. Stalin would be proud of you, Jimmy V. By the way, I've criticized Australians on this board more than I've ever criticized Americans - my criticisms in the direction of America are mostly confined to the U.S government; so does that make me 'prejudiced' towards Australians too? Also, I've criticized the Israeli government, the Chinese government, and the British government, on countless occasions, so does that also make me prejudiced towards Israeli's, Chinese, and British?
Byrnzie attacks every country but Canada. We rock.
Oh Canada...
Can-a-da Can-a-da
If only it were true. Our record with our First Nations is pretty deplorable. Recent changes to the Navigable Water Protection Act would also suggest that Canada is no saint when it comes to the environment. On the whole, Canada's a pretty nice place but we're hardly perfect.
Although we would need a control-alt-delete to make it happen... if borders and religion disappeared... the world would be a nicer place. Of course, if we ever did localize into a subsistence based societies... eventually aggressive leaders of some groups would venture outwards and into someone else's locale to satisfy their cravings for 'more' (whatever 'more' might be). The cycle would start all over- it's human nature.
Agreed. I always joke that the only thing that can bring the world together is space aliens invading. An external threat to prove once and for all how ridiculous some of the divisions we cling to are.
On the whole, Canada's a pretty nice place but we're hardly perfect.
I think just about every country has its pluses and minuses...or at least many do. Being pretty nice on the whole, which I agree Canada is, ain't that bad.
Comments
just fuckin w/ ya, man
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
And that's why I enjoy you.
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
I think you're prejudiced against people critical of American foreign policy. In fact I detect a case of 'clear prejudice' filled with a repulsive hatred of said critics of American foreign policy. I know prejudice when I see it.
And the issue I am talking about is much larger than just one or two people.
No offence, but I hope you never say that to me. I think it would effect my ability to get a good nights sleep.
Funny what you did there.
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
Good to know. And no offense taken.
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
if we erect a clothesline chances are it will cause a panic throughout the neighborhood. in schools children are teased and beat if they wear none popular brand clothing. shallow anyone? but we eat & have cell phones by 12 years old. we have spell check on the computers & a mcdonald's down the way in almost every frickin neighborhood.
many believe we deserve a cushiony life & many are appalled by those who live the opposite of a cushiony lifestyle. we are the furthest thing from free. we are trapped like ravenous beasts
well... some of us are trapped a little more so than others.
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
I don't find Prejudice to be a laughing matter.
On that we agree. I do find mocking as a debate tactic to be laughable.
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
fixed as requested
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
Don't forget Aerial
Gone forever :( :evil:
Same here.
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
both of them??
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
In the meantime, read on:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... ersonality
How Noam Chomsky is discussed
The more one dissents from political orthodoxies, the more the attacks focus on personality, style and character
Glenn Greenwald
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 23 March 2013
One very common tactic for enforcing political orthodoxies is to malign the character, "style" and even mental health of those who challenge them. The most extreme version of this was an old Soviet favorite: to declare political dissidents mentally ill and put them in hospitals. In the US, those who take even the tiniest steps outside of political convention are instantly decreed "crazy", as happened to the 2002 anti-war version of Howard Dean and the current iteration of Ron Paul (in most cases, what is actually "crazy" are the political orthodoxies this tactic seeks to shield from challenge).
This method is applied with particular aggression to those who engage in any meaningful dissent against the society's most powerful factions and their institutions. Nixon White House officials sought to steal the files from Daniel Ellsberg's psychoanalyst's office precisely because they knew they could best discredit his disclosures with irrelevant attacks on his psyche. Identically, the New York Times and partisan Obama supporters have led the way in depicting both Bradley Manning and Julian Assange as mentally unstable outcasts with serious personality deficiencies. The lesson is clear: only someone plagued by mental afflictions would take such extreme steps to subvert the power of the US government.
A subtler version of this technique is to attack the so-called "style" of the critic as a means of impugning, really avoiding, the substance of the critique. Although Paul Krugman is comfortably within mainstream political thought as a loyal Democrat and a New York Times columnist, his relentless attack against the austerity mindset is threatening to many. As a result, he is barraged with endless, substance-free complaints about his "tone": he is too abrasive, he does not treat opponents with respect, he demonizes those who disagree with him, etc. The complaints are usually devoid of specifics to prevent meaningful refutation; one typical example: "[Krugman] often cloaks his claims in professional authority, overstates them, omits arguments that undermine his case, and is a bit of a bully." All of that enables the substance of the critique to be avoided in lieu of alleged personality flaws.
Nobody has been subjected to these vapid discrediting techniques more than Noam Chomsky. The book on which I'm currently working explores how establishment media systems restrict the range of acceptable debate in US political discourse, and I'm using Chomsky's treatment by (and ultimate exclusion from) establishment US media outlets as a window for understanding how that works. As a result, I've read a huge quantity of media discussions about Chomsky over the past year. And what is so striking is that virtually every mainstream discussion of him at some point inevitably recites the same set of personality and stylistic attacks designed to malign his advocacy without having to do the work of engaging the substance of his claims. Notably, these attacks come most frequently and viciously from establishment liberal venues, such as when the American Prospect's 2005 foreign policy issue compared him to Dick Cheney on its cover (a cover he had framed and now proudly hangs on his office wall).
Last week, Chomsky was in London to give the annual Edward W. Said lecture, and as always happens when he speaks, the large auditorium was filled to the brim, having sold out shortly after it was announced. The Guardian's Aida Edemariam interviewed him in London and produced an article, published Saturday morning, that features virtually all of those standard stylistic and personality critiques:
"When he starts speaking, it is in a monotone that makes no particular rhetorical claim on the audience's attention; in fact, it's almost soporific . . . . Within five minutes many of the hallmarks of Chomsky's political writing, and speaking, are displayed: his anger, his extraordinary range of reference and experience . . . . . Fact upon fact upon fact, but also a withering, sweeping sarcasm – the atrocities are 'tolerated politely by Europe as usual'. Harsh, vivid phrases – the 'hideously charred corpses of murdered infants'; bodies 'writhing in agony' – unspool until they become almost a form of punctuation.
"You could argue that the latter is necessary, simply a description of atrocities that must be reported, but it is also a method that has diminishing returns. The facts speak for themselves; the adjectives and the sarcasm have the counterintuitive effect of cheapening them, of imposing on the world a disappointingly crude and simplistic argument. 'The sentences,' wrote Larissa MacFarquhar in a brilliant New Yorker profile of Chomsky 10 years ago, 'are accusations of guilt, but not from a position of innocence or hope for something better: Chomsky's sarcasm is the scowl of a fallen world, the sneer of hell's veteran to its appalled naifs' – and thus, in an odd way, static and ungenerative. . . .
"But he answers questions warmly, and seriously, if not always directly – a surprise, in a way, from someone who has earned a reputation for brutality of argument, and a need to win at all costs. 'There really is an alpha-male dominance psychology at work there,' a colleague once said of him. 'He has some of the primate dominance moves. The staring down. The withering tone of voice." Students have been known to visit him in pairs, so that one can defend the other. . . .
"Chomsky, the son of Hebrew teachers who emigrated from Ukraine and Russia at the turn of the last century, began as a Zionist – but the sort of Zionist who wanted a socialist state in which Jews and Arabs worked together as equals. Since then he has been accused of antisemitism (due to defending the right to free speech of a French professor who espoused such views, some 35 years ago), and been called, by the Nation, 'America's most prominent self-hating Jew'. These days he argues tirelessly for the rights of Palestinians. . . . . Does he think that in all these years of talking and arguing and writing, he has ever changed one specific thing?"
So to recap: Chomsky is a sarcastic, angry, soporific, scowling, sneering self-hating Jew, devoid of hope and speaking from hell, whose alpha-male brutality drives him to win at all costs, and who imposes on the world disappointingly crude and simplistic arguments to the point where he is so inconsequential that one wonders whether he has ever changed even a single thing in his 60 years of political work.
Edemariam includes several other passages more balanced and even complimentary. She notes his academic accolades ("One study of the most frequently cited academic sources of all time found that he ranked eighth, just below Plato and Freud"), his mastery of facts, his willingness to speak to hostile audiences, his touching life-long relationship with his now-deceased wife, and his remarkable commitment, even at the age of 84, to personally answering emails from people around the world whom he does not know (when I spoke at a college near Rochester two weeks ago, one of the students, a college senior studying to be a high school social studies teacher, gushed as he told me that he had emailed Chomsky and quickly received a very generous personal reply). She also includes Chomsky's answer to her question about whether he has ever changed anything: a characteristically humble explanation that no one person - not even Martin Luther King - can or ever has by themselves changed anything.
But the entire piece is infused with these standard personality caricatures that offer the reader an easy means of mocking, deriding and scorning Chomsky without having to confront a single fact he presents.
...Like any person with a significant political platform, Chomsky is fair game for all sorts of criticisms. Like anyone else, he should be subjected to intense critical and adversarial scrutiny. Even admirers should listen to his (and everyone else's) pronouncements with a critical ear. Like anyone who makes prolific political arguments over the course of many years, he's made mistakes.
But what is at play here is this destructive dynamic that the more one dissents from political orthodoxies, the more personalized, style-focused and substance-free the attacks become. That's because once someone becomes sufficiently critical of establishment pieties, the goal is not merely to dispute their claims but to silence them. That's accomplished by demonizing the person on personality and style grounds to the point where huge numbers of people decide that nothing they say should even be considered, let alone accepted. It's a sorry and anti-intellectual tactic, to be sure, but a brutally effective one.
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
Byrnzie attacks every country but Canada. We rock.
Oh Canada...
Can-a-da Can-a-da
I think of all the national anthems I've heard, Canada's is high on the list for most beautiful.
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
A nice thing to say. Trust me when I say I was kidding around with my post: truth be known... I am happy with Canada- but am not what most would consider a patriot.
Although we would need a control-alt-delete to make it happen... if borders and religion disappeared... the world would be a nicer place. Of course, if we ever did localize into a subsistence based societies... eventually aggressive leaders of some groups would venture outwards and into someone else's locale to satisfy their cravings for 'more' (whatever 'more' might be). The cycle would start all over- it's human nature.
If only it were true. Our record with our First Nations is pretty deplorable. Recent changes to the Navigable Water Protection Act would also suggest that Canada is no saint when it comes to the environment. On the whole, Canada's a pretty nice place but we're hardly perfect.
Agreed. I always joke that the only thing that can bring the world together is space aliens invading. An external threat to prove once and for all how ridiculous some of the divisions we cling to are.
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
this is what i've been told. :evil:
wow.
Still holding out hope that the bans will not be permanent. I guess we'll see.
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
I think just about every country has its pluses and minuses...or at least many do. Being pretty nice on the whole, which I agree Canada is, ain't that bad.
"...I changed by not changing at all..."