Strange anger at Obama for Tuesday speech to schools

[Sean]

Originally Posted by Strangelet

I'm pretty sure we disagree on this, but I'm convinced America is fucked. I see no productive method of reasoning against the zeitgeist marketed by the handlers of America's kakistocracy. At this point its a foregone conclusion that Brussels, (and probably Brazil!) will be more politically powerful than us in 10 years and that our empire is coming to an end. Which is fine by me. America was never meant to be an empire. What I'm starting to worry about is whether or not any shred of the conceived republic will remain.

Well, I don't know what's going to happen, but it feels like something is coming to a head with all this stuff. So many people are so into these outlandish theories, like that not only is Obama hiding his Kenyan citizenship, he was also selected at 18 years old to be groomed as a Puppet President who would impliment a New World Order! And he's creating death panels that will kill your grandmother so that we can provide all of Mexico with insurance instead! And now he wants to commandeer the airwaves and stream his communist agenda directly into our children's spongy minds! Just like Hitler did!

I mean, how can I seriously be open to their completely speculative point of view when I find it to be completely, 100% wrong based on facts? I just don't see where the middle ground is in this situation. Hell, they deal with the debate by bringing guns to townhalls, shouting down the opposition, and even jeering a woman confined to a wheelchair for talking about why healthcare reform would be good for people like her. How do you reason with that? So I have no clue where this country is headed.

[BeautifulBurnout]

I'm finding this all a tad scary. I don't know whether to put it down to the last throes of madness as the American Empire falls into decline, or whether it is just the continuation of the paranoia that has always haunted the fringes of American society. McCarthy didn't happen in a vacuum; you have to have the right soil there in the first place for the seeds of bonkers-ness to germinate.

There is a very interesting article on the website Democracy Now! where Max Blumenthal talks about his book "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party"

Fifty years ago, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower issued a warning against the rise of extremist movements within his own party. During his presidency, Eisenhower had endured attacks by Senator Joseph McCarthy, the radical right John Birch Society and others. In a 1959 letter to a World War II veteran, Eisenhower wrote, quote, “Many prominent officials, possessing no standing or expertness as they themselves claim it, attempt to further their own ideas or interests by resorting to statements more distinguished by stridency than by accuracy.”
Half a century later, in a summer of town hall disruptions and birth certificate controversies, what Eisenhower had warned against has come true: that the Republican Party has been captured by its extremist wing.

The problem with these people is they are clearly nuts, they are angry, they have guns, and they have the likes of Limbaugh lighting the blue touch-paper and stepping back.

I don't know whether to point and laugh, or to advise you all to build a shelter and start stock-piling canned goods and bottled water....

[King of Snake]

scare mongering the population to make them do your bidding is a tried and tested concept. It is what the reublicans/Fox do best and will continue to keep doing until one of those idiots who bring assault rifles to town hall meetings actually pulls the trigger.

[Deckard]

The number of times I read comments below articles and just get floored by the sheer amount of stupidity. And I don't just mean people being in the unfortunate position of being uneducated, or lacking time to get up to speed on the intricacies of healthcare systems or international development. For the most part that ignorance is entirely understandable. No, what I mean is that very unique mix of unforgivable stupidity, combined with selfishness and topped off with spite and occasional thuggishness.

Really, it depresses me nowadays. After all, we're not talking YouTube comments here. Reading comments on mainstream platforms, more and more, genuinely depresses me. I think to myself, are people actually getting dumber? Or has the internet - and the explosion of opinion platforms - merely drawn back the curtain on stupidity that was always lying there, unnoticed?

Sometimes I feel optimistic that the internet is making people more informed, dispersing information, supplying examples of reasoning all of which represents the most wonderful intellectual revolution in centuries, and that slowly, ignorance is being countered. I tell myself that what seems to be the moronic 60% of public opinion is probably only 10% or less, and I'm being fooled into registering those particular neanderthal views more strongly than they warrant, which is throwing my perception of how proportionate they are.

Other times, I think - no, it really is as bad as I fear. And I fear that the internet - and digital communication platforms generally - are increasing the tribal mindset, reducing the amount of open-mindedness so crucial to any kind of intellectual growth. That people have gotten much more ideologically divided since the communications revolution (for want of a better phrase), and not in a healthy way.

One thing I can say is that it's not just the US. Or at least, if the US is going down, then the UK is going down with it. I think what we're all hearing said about Obama is coming from the same 'place' as what I read on British mainstream opinion platforms like the BBC and Sky News and even supposedly liberal blogs. A kind of mean-spirited anti-intellectualism.

In America's case, this is possibly made worse by latent racism, and by a deep culture of machismo that, it strikes me, has long run through US political debate and was always going to pounce on the skinny, cerebral liberal who showed the remotest sign of asking people to think.

What do you think? Is there a 90% silent majority of people who have reasonable views and just choose not to comment? (Btw, 'reasonable' doesn't have to equate to the same political position as yours or mine - it just has to be of a fairly decent quality.)

God I hope so. I hope these dickwads aren't indicative of our populations as a whole.

If they are, where is it all going wrong? And why does there appear to be no reverse gear?