If I told you that the divorce system, indeed all of family law, is biased against fathers and needs reform, would you be interested in hearing what I have to say? If I then outlined this bias and I point out to you instances where this has caused the courts to award children to unfit or abusive mothers over the objections of excellent fathers, would you consider my suggestions for changing the law to correct those problems? Probably, right?
Now let me change this scenario somewhat. Assume again that I want to tell you about problems I see with the state of family law and the reforms I think are needed. But this time, let me tell you why I care. Well, I was CHEATED by that very system!! See, my evil ex-wife and her rotten lawyer cheated me. They used dirty tricks put into the law by man-hating feminists who hate men and want to use the law to grab political power for womyn! It's an outrage! I’ve actually formed a group called “F**kWOMYN” to advance my goals, and you should join. In fact, I can't see a reason why you wouldn't join. You're not one of THEM are you?! And while I’m at it, I should point out that rape is a made-up crime, that it’s a biological fact that women are liars, and that my ex-wife is a lazy whore.
Still want to listen? Hell no, right?
Before I continue, let me point out that none of this is true: never been married, never been through a divorce or adoption, don't even practice that kind of law - it's brutal. There is some anti-male bias in the law, but I don't care. So why did I mention any of this? I wanted to show you how quickly I can lose you on an emotional level with my own conduct. In the first paragraph, I come across as rational, informed and dispassionate. That approach puts you at ease and makes you more than willing to listen to what I am concerned about. But in the second paragraph, I send up red flags all over the place that give you the screaming willies. For one thing, it’s clear that I am biased. That wipes out the trust factor and now everything I say goes through your bias filter. For another, I demonstrate a lack of judgment. For example, the name of my organization calls into question my ability to function in human society. And then there’s the real killer: it’s clear that I’m obsessed, and that will send people running because it scares us.
Why does obsession scare us? Obsession is seen as dangerous because it causes people to act irrationally. It makes them blind to reality, immune to fact or logic, and it strips them of their judgment both in terms of what is important but also in terms of what is appropriate. Obsessed people lie, cheat, stalk girlfriends and shoot up offices. But even when it doesn’t go that far, obsession is super unpleasant to be around. People who are obsessed talk about the same thing over and over. They are blind to the gaping holes in what they believe, yet they demand absolute conformance to their crazy views. They are obnoxious, conspiratorial, and hateful. We flee them.
So what does this have to do with anything?
There have been a series of studies lately that reached an interesting set of conclusions. In essence, the studies sought to determine how activists were perceived by the public. They studied feminists and environmentalists, but the same holds true of any activist group... like Tea Party types, like talk radio, and like my divorce reform guy above. And what they found was that the public holds overwhelmingly negative views of activists. Even more interestingly, they discovered that activists actually make people less likely to adopt behaviors advocated by the activists. In other words, activists actually turn people off of their cause.
To test this, they gave people an essay on recycling and a biography of the author. One group was told the author was just a regular person without much in the way of environmentalist credentials. Another group was told that the author was engaged in low-key fundraising to help environmentalist causes. The third group was given the biography of a hardcore activist who stages protests and the such. The result was that the people who were told the author was the hardcore activist were significantly more hostile to recycling than the other two groups. In other words, knowing that the author was an aggressive activist actually made people act in the reverse manner to what the activist wanted.
Now, there are some weaknesses with this study, but years of seeing people react very poorly to activists tells me they are correct. All that screaming, table pounding and demands that the rest of the world adopt your obsession right now!! just turns people off and makes them root against you.
This is a key lesson that unfortunately is lost on the people who need to hear it: the more obsessed you act, the more you lose people. Unfortunately, just like other activists before them, our fringe has no clue how they are perceived. They mistake their obsession for righteousness and they wrongly think the public admires them. . . they don’t, they feel the same way you felt when you read that second paragraph above: they get queasy, they look for the exit, and they actively hope that the crazy doesn’t get what he wants. That’s the lesson of this study and that's how life plays out time and again.
Why this matters can be related to a quote from Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck famously said, “Politics is the art of the possible.” That is truly insightful. It’s also shocking, if you think about it. Bismarck was known as “the Iron Chancellor” and was essentially German’s first dictator. On paper, he is what the fringe argues we need right now. Yet, even in rigid, dictatorial Imperial Germany Bismarck couldn't just get his way; he could only get “what was possible.” And by that, he meant what the public was willing to give him. In fact, I would argue that Bismarck’s quote is actually incomplete. What he should have said is that “Politics is the art of shifting the landscape to make your goals possible.” That's what Reagan did... he took what he could get and he kept the ball moving and, in the process, he kept winning more and more.
What both Bismarck and Reagan understood, which ideologues/activists don’t get, is that the public is self-interested... they don’t care about crusades or ideology, they care about their own lives. As a result, the public fears those who scream about changing things and it despises troublemakers who want to disrupt the order they've established in their lives in the name of ideology. What this tells us is that the fringe is doing it all wrong. The ONLY way to win the public is to take what the public will give you right now, to use that opportunity to show that you are responsible and pose no threat to them, and then to ask them to give you a little more. Demanding everything at once is a nonstarter. And executing leaders for failing to deliver the impossible, screaming about traitors, reveling in purity and crippling the government are guaranteed to turn off the public.
The left has learned this lesson and they have a century of gains to show for it. Little by little, they’ve accepted bastardized versions of things they’ve wanted and then they went back to pushing to un-bastardize them once the public realized the world didn’t end. It has only been when they tried to push too far too fast that they experienced a backlash. The right needs to learn the same thing. The public will give you want you want a little at a time, but if you demand everything at once, you will get nothing. And if you act like an obsessed weirdo, the public will intentionally go the other way.
And if you think about it, you know this is right. When you see a child throw a tantrum, a teenager demand that the world should revolve around them, a friend obsess about his model train hobby, a jilted spouse complain about their ex, a liberal environmentalist protesting before a chemical plant... do you think, "Wow, they real mean it! There must be something to this!" No way. You think they're crazy and you want to get away from them. So why do you think the public will follow you when you do it?
Anyway, let me point out that this does not mean that you have to give up your principles. It just means you need to be sane enough to realize that you have sell people on your principles a little bit at a time, and that you can't act deranged and obsessed and expect people to adopt your ideas. It's time to learn the art of the soft push and to stop screaming like mental patients.
50 comments:
Agree fully. And its one of the biggest lessons I've had to learn in the past 5 years.
Also, to take your original example further, I've actually been to several Men's Rights websites and while there are some that behave like the former, sadly too many act like the latter. And when people are turned off they scream "FEMINISTS!" or, if the person is a man, "WHIMP!/MANWHORE!/UNCLE TIM!"
Its all rather stupid and sad.
Kit, I've run into those people too and that's why I used the example because they really do act that way and it never dawns on them just how sick and messed up they come across. That's one of many reasons I avoid divorce law.
On the bigger topic, I first noticed this in law school. There were a lot of people I should have liked because we theoretically shared similar views... only I felt utterly repulsed by them. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized they were just crazy. They were obsessed. They lived in a bubble and couldn't believe that anyone could disagree. Their "solutions" were things I wouldn't support on a bet, yet they assured themselves that they were speaking for "everyone." And normal people fled from them with all deliberate speed. And ultimately, these people would lose a lot more people than they would convert.
These studies, though weak from a data perspective, really back that up. And they stand as a warning that this idea that we need to fight more obnoxiously is backwards. All that does is lose you supporters.
Interesting study, though I can't say I'm surprised in the least. Whether it was a publicized event or just seeing a bunch of UGA students doing some kind of silly protest in person their behavior did quite a bit to turn me off of their positions. I always wondered if I was alone in this, and it's refreshing and enlightening (given the study) to see that I'm not. Hopefully the idea in this study will catch on, it's tiring to see the battlefield of the insane, the amazingly stupid, and an army of opportunists who couldn't find their butts with a map... and in some cases all three at once, as you put it back in the Agenda 2016 Education post, Andrew.
- Daniel
Dale Carnegie knew this.
Daniel, Yep. I like to call them Butt-mappers. Just kidding.
In all seriousness, you are not alone in this. The study backs up what's been kind of obvious to anyone who pays attention to human behavior for a long time -- people don't like extremists... not in any facet of their lives. They don't like the way they act, they don't like the things they claim to stand for, and they don't like them personally. And given the choice, they will go out of their way to make sure the extremists are not rewarded for their behavior.
What's fascinating to me though is that our politics are now backwards and has drifted in the direction of the extremists for about the last two decades. The Democrats went first when "the progressives" pushed out the moderate Democrats, but then the conservatives followed. At this point, I would argue that both sides have made themselves poisonous to the public, as shown by the shockingly low voter turnout. And what we seem to have is government by anti-elections: whoever has offended the public the least during the cycle doesn't get tossed out as much as the other guy.
Meanwhile, both fringes insist that if only their parties would finally go full retard(which they essentially already do), then the public would reward them -- they even invent boogeymen and myths to assure themselves that their version of insanity has never been offered to the public by their side. Even more ironically, both fringes point at the other fringe as evidence of their strategy working, even though both fringes rack up nothing but failure time and again.
It's almost like someone is having a joke on us and has arranged a theatrical parody of our political system.
Kit, I would suggest that most of our most successful leaders have been aware of this. And the same rules apply in all endeavors -- business, civic leadership, sports, war, influencing other individuals, etc.
You mean choking the crap out of some idiot who desperately needs it is not a good idea..? Mom told me that. Those are really good points. I'm Roman Catholic and I abhor abortion, however, I still think our money in the Church is better spent on education and services rather than protests. I don't like being tied to the far right kook fringe that thinks it alright to kill an abortion doctor in the name of life. Most of my anger has really been vented at the GOP, they are supposed to be conservative and thoughtful, forget it. They run from pillar to post looking for something to hold on to. I can't stand Leftists, but I expect them to torque me off on a daily basis,, but my own party? We need some young blood up there and not of the far right variety. One issue where I can get my hackles up real quick is the 2nd Amendment. We have enough laws, and I have as yet to hear a far Lefty that even comes close to knowing what they are talking about when it comes to guns.
I'm having a real problem with the militirization of local police forces. They wear para-military uniforms, combat boots, carry automatic weapons and wear all that junk on them that is hardly ever used, but hey, it's tacti-cool. My dad was a lawman back in the 30s in the South. He carried a small gun in his pocket sometimes,,he said if they anticipated trouble they went and got a shotgun. Dad referred to himself as a peace officer. If you weren't distrubing the peace he wasn't too worried about you. We've had way too many unnecessary shootings in the past few years...the cops need to back off some. I saw a Missouri Department of Natural Resources cop the other day who was all tacticooled out,,,I have to ask why? DNR tests well water and dirt..why do you need a Glock 22 for that?
I think the premise of this study is correct but there is another way to judge the effectiveness of an activist. Yes people are fearful of the environmentalists standing outside the power plant with the signs screaming and chanting. People will avoid them, people will think they are nuts and all of that. But there is one other thing that people won't do.....
They won't challenge them! That is where the Activists win. That is how Al gore managed to convince people there is catastrophic environmental change going on that you can't actually see or feel.
What the activists need to win is a supporting media. Twenty environmentalists show up at a rally and the media plays up the success of the protests. One million Tea Party activists show up on the white house lawn and the media ignores and then condemns them.
Occupy Wallstreet protesters rape women in their camp and the media praises their protest group nostalgic for the 60's. Tea Party activists clean up their site before leaving it and are anarchists and terrorists.
True no one flocks to the protesters' side but no one stands up to tell these people they are wrong if they think the media supports that point of view. That is how you get a political narrative accepting man made climate change that is not able to be evidenced.
Here is a perfect example of this phenomenon. On FB, I saw a "share" of a post from "I cannot sleep, there is epic shit happening on the internet." They in turn linked to a website www.popularresistance.org and an article titled "Everything you need to know about Fukashima (sp?)" The point is, the article was quite interesting, but whether or not it is true, the tendency is to discount it, because it is an organization of activists sounding very much like the "climate change" crowd. One starts by saying "if it is this bad, why are we only hearing about it via extremist group websites (who btw, are asking for donations) ?
Indi, That is simply wrong. As the study notes and as I've seen my entire live, activists LOSE support. People who would otherwise support their cause turn against it or refuse to support it because they dislike the activists and the way they behave. How does it help at all if the public at large despises you, the other side fights you openly, and your friends refuse to support you?
Moreover, "not being challenged" (which doesn't actually happen) isn't victory. It's called being ignored. And when you are ignored you lose because that means you're just jerking yourself off that you matter... you're the whiner down in the park no one cares. Only in this case, you aren't just ignored, you become the strawman example of "what the other side really wants" and your opponents use that against the people who actually are making a difference.
And that's what's wrong with the rest of your examples. The environmentalist movement wins (for the most part) because the public has been with them since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. Their continued success comes from media campaigns, from established "respected organizations" who put out data and sound very rational, and from broad public support for their goals...not from activists. In fact, the things their activists want are the things they never get and never even come close to.
The same was true of the feminists who imploded when their activist pushed too hard in the 1990s, the "civil rights movement" when they let their activists like Al Sharpton become their voice, etc. As for OWS, what did they achieve exactly except shaming themselves?
Critch, You mean choking the crap out of some idiot who desperately needs it is not a good idea..? I didn't say that! LOL!
Seriously, I agree with you across the board. First, on the GOP, I totally agree. We need some people who understand that the public is won over by being assured that we know what we're doing, that we aren't going to experiment with their lives, and that we are sane and competent. We don't have that right now. Instead, we've become the party who doesn't know what they want but are willing to destroy the government not to get it.
Agreed on the abortion movement as well. This is one of those issues where a soft sell is needed to win people over. When you are seen embracing a terrorist/murder or attacking pregnant women with signs, you will always turn off the public. In the 1980s, they embraced people who were blowing up clinics and that causes massive numbers of people to become pro-choice. When they finally rid themselves of those people, the public got to think things through and became pro-life again. The lesson is clear -- you need to win the public over the same way you win friends.
On guns, this is an area where I really need to hand it to the NRA. They've mastered sounding completely rational and normal no matter what position they take. And it has paid off because the public simply doesn't support anything the left wants on guns. And what do you see from the NRA? Lobbying, the annual convention, they teach gun safety courses, they send people in suits to do interviews. You don't see them staging protests before people's homes and screaming slogans at passersby. They do it right.
Agreed on the militarization of the police too. That's an issue that a lot of people are starting to care about.
be back soon, work calls.
Indi,
re the OWS, outside of New York and Oakland, Occupy protests typically followed a basic cycle:
(1) Protestors begin illegally camping out in public park. City ignores them and does nothing.
(2) College students and some others stop by just to see what is going on. Most, believe it or not, go back to their college to study/work at job/begin team practices/begin drama rehearsals/play beer pong. Some people driving by "honk" in support, others flip them the bird. Most people ignore them.
(3) 3-4 weeks pass and city begins to get tired of them. They aren't "bringing down anything" they are just becoming a nuisance. They smell, they are driving away business in the area they are protesting, and they are just generally annoying.
(4) City sends in the police and in one night the camp is cleared out with minimal arrests and/or violence. Clean-up begins.
(5) Everyone goes back to their business.
(6) A few months later protests start back up in either the same public park and another one. The cycle begins again. (Note: This one does not always happen)
To piggyback on Kit's comment: the Tea Party started out turning people off by protesting town hall meetings. They actually started to turn their image around by having very peaceful gatherings. But then every yahoo with a radio show or political aspirations or both tried to get in front of it and confused the message. In the end, what started as a tax protest (hence the name) became identified with every far-right social obsession and the taxes were all but forgotten.
Ironically, most activists also suffer from a lack of focus. Their obsessions are actually about quite broad things: the environment, the government, X's rights, taxes, healthcare, immigration, world peace. These are very broad categories that encompass many specific issues. But try to engage a foaming activist about issues and they'll usually resort to non-specific platitudes and the insistence that we must do something NOW!
Take Andrew's example above. The second guy seems all over the map anti-woman. The first guy, on the other hand, has zeroed in on bias against fathers and child welfare. That is to say, one can be a successful activist if they are activist for something very specific. And odds are, that specificity will inform one's actions and focus them. Instead of standing in the rain holding an angry sign, you find yourself writing intelligent letters to the editor and even conversing with the people who can actually do something about it.
I'm back for the moment! Ta da!!
Jed, That's a classic example. Like it or not, the messenger matters. And people are very quick to dismiss things told to them by people they don't trust. And one of the easiest ways to lose trust is to give off the appearance of being a crazy activist.
Kit, That's exactly how it happened. But not only that, no one cared what they had to say. The right mocked them. The middle ignored them. And the left blushed and tried to sweep them under the carpet. Only the far left touted them and then had to lie about who they really are. And in the end, the only thing they achieved was to expose themselves as pathetic.
The first Tea Party rallies I went to were tax protests, we stayed away from many of the social issues..the last one I went turned into a circus with a bunch of right wing nuts going on about black helicopters and the like...very few of the people from the first meetings were there.
tryanmax, I think the Tea Party started really well. They were a collection of very polite people who made the statement that they wanted fiscal sanity -- less spending, less debt, lower taxes. They were multi-ethnic and came from a wide variety of ideologies. Most importantly, they weren't doing anything crazy. That was at first.
Then it all went wrong. The crazies and the opportunists saw this leaderless movement as the biggest opportunity of their lifetimes, so they hijacked it and turned it into a giant, formless hateful activist-like creature that was obsessed with purity and eliminating traitors and could be warped into whatever obsession you had. Don't like gays? No problem, the Tea Party hates gays. Mexicans? Yep, hate them too. Obama? God, do we hate Obama. Common core? Oooh, commie plot. You want to carry an AK47 into a school? Sure, we all do. We should bomb the crap out of Syria and kill all those Moozlims too. Trayvon Martin? He got what he deserved. There wasn't a fringe issue they didn't embrace with absolute zeal. And like that, their growth stopped and their unfavorables skyrocketed.
Then they decided to dedicate themselves to the destruction of the GOP and now they've lost the vast majority of conservatives too.
In all honestly, they remind me of the late 1990s feminists.
tryanmax, You are correct about the lack of focus. I think it comes from the obsession aspect. Being obsessed, they are emoting rather than thinking. And thus, rather than separating their ideas, focusing on what is important and what isn't, they just spit them all out under a giant generic umbrella.
That was actually something I wanted to capture in my examples. The first guy, who is rational, is looking to solve a problem. The second guy is looking for attention and affirmation and pulls in all the issues that obsess him because when you are "thinking" emotionally, you lack the judgment to decide what is relevant and what isn't... all you know is what is upsetting you.
That's obsession for you -- uncontrolled emotion that fixates on a perceived injury or something you desire but can't have. It's irrational and hateful and dangerous. And that's why people avoid it and those who are obsessed.
Critch, I'd heard that too that most of the original people are gone. I know several Tea Party people who have stopped going because they don't like the group who are left.
Andrew,
I've noticed advocacy groups are most effective when they have a clearly defined short-term goal where you can clearly define victory.
The perfect example is the organization "Freedom to Marry". They have a clearly set goal: To gain the right of same-sex in all US states and territories.
Victory is clearly defined: Right of same-sex marriage is active in all US states and territories.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (Dr. King's civil rights group) and the wider civil rights movement excelled at this in the 50s and 60s.
First, there was the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Its goal was to end segregation on Montgomery buses. Easy to define.
The diner sit-ins had a goal: End segregation of diner counters. That was succeeded. And a lot of this was pushed locally.
The rest of the civil rights movement involved similar goals often pushed at the local level.
Kit, The thing about the Civil Rights Movement is that all the activist stuff happened at the tail end. It's been the subject of a real historical revision to make it sound like they changed America when they really didn't. The truth is that all this stuff began in the early 1950s and almost all the changes that people think happened because of the marches and sit-ins had already become law and was being enforced in state after state by the time they marched. All they did was take credit for what was already changing.
The gay stuff has been effective, but there's more to it than people realize. This stuff started with a decision in Hollywood to portray gays as happy, monogamous, and harmless. That changed attitudes starting probably in the late 1980s already. At the same time, they became heavy donors in the Democratic Party and got the first phases of their agenda -- anti-discrimination, made part of the Democratic agenda.
It still didn't get much traction until the Religious Right stepped into this and overplayed their hand dramatically in places like Colorado and Virginia. People responded poorly and the issue became "do we like Christian fundamentalists or gays better?" rather than "Are gays asking for something we want to give them?"
The gays then tailored their message to "this is about individual freedom," which is always a winner, and they toned down their public behavior. Since that time, they've started sweeping state after state. Without the backlash though, I suspect they would still be sitting at square one.
But my point in general was that having a clearly defined goal helps. At least in being able to organize your group.
True, and I agree with that. And that's something the most effective groups do -- they have a specific, attainable goal.
It's the wide-ranging groups like feminists or liberal environmentalists who end up bouncing from issue to issue, which just invites disaster as your own people start to insert their pet peeves into the group's mission.
And I agree, that it was largely about getting the straggler states in line. And that the country had already largely turned against racial segregation after the Holocaust. In some ways, Adolf Hitler did more to end segregation than Martin Luther King.
But I think people like Martin Luther King and, ironically, Bull Connor, probably hastened it in the South.
Kit, Ironically, in what I've seen throughout history, it's always the backlash that changes the world. Someone does X for some ideological reason, e.g. Hitler goes to war to purify the human race. This results in a backlash which then has people all over the world rejecting everything he stood for.
Everywhere you look historically, it's the backlash that's more powerful than the initial push.
So Hitler helped end racism?
In a roundabout way, definitely. When the backlash came, the US started pushing desegregation and Civil Rights law. Antisemitism and eugenics were instantly discredited. In Europe, his defeat brought with it an end to empires as the moral justification for empires vanished and was replaced with the moral case against Empires. And it completely discredited those who would use a racist theory of governance.
Throughout history, when people have gotten aggressive about their ideology, the result has always been a backlash that leads the world in the other direction.
I don't think I could find it if I tried, but I remember reading a list article about strange conspiracy theories that included a branch of the Aryan Brotherhood that actually regards Hitler as a traitor to the cause b/c they believe the backlash was all part of his master plan.
tryanmax, That sounds crazy enough to believe that someone would believe it.
In any event, it's the moment in history where the backlash doesn't end up redefining the course of human history.
And to be clear, this only applies to people who push too far. When you stay within the bounds of what society considers acceptable and for which there is a moral cause, the public will internalize the change and it becomes the new normal. It's only when you try to push the public to somewhere they don't want to go that you generate the backlash.
"That sounds crazy enough to believe that someone would believe it."
So true.
It seems that the stupider an idea, the more conspiratorial types are likely to believe it.
Andrew
I understand that you believe the protestors on the environmental side have no affect but from my perspective I have seen how these supposed "interest" groups behave. In 1994 working for the Mark Little campaign he sent my friend Todd to represent him at a Sierra candidates meeting. I had to go along to help him in the audience with questions if anyone started yelling at him.
What I saw was bewildering. The moderator was some guy from the sewage plant who was trying to maintain decorum because I believe this was a business event for him but this was a lost cause. They had several state and local candidates there not just Congressional in a Q&A forum.
One woman running for something was a Sierra club favorite who wanted to ban all commercial fishing of any kind on the world's oceans for 10 years and new that big corporations gave her cancer. She was a Sierra club backed candidate running for some kind of city environmental office.
One Republican State Senator who handled himself well had to endure what was 10 minutes of some guy "questioning" him very viciously. I put the that in quotations because the questions were something along the lines of "since you are an evil Republican trying to kill children what makes you think you have the right to breath our air."
This was well before Al Gore and the Climate change nonsense came into the public view. Yet despite this (and I think this was probably the norm for the Sierra club at the time) the public never rejected but embraced the Sierra club and the other environmentalists.
Mark sent us there because he found out Corrine Brown was not sending anyone to it. He told us to just smile and answer questions and don't say anything stupid which meant "don't challenge these people".
I have read the IGCC reports and other studies of the Antartic Ice Cores and they don't seem that definitive based on what the scientists supporting it describe.
So if what you are saying is correct how can the people who wanted to shut down fishing for 10 years and remove tuna fish from the grocery shelves have gotten to a point where government spend billions in regulating what we now know to be a fraud only because the lead scientists were caught plotting how to lie and destroy their critics in private emails.
What I see is, if leftist protest for something and the media picks up that narrative everyone walks on egg shells for fear of offending whatever group is the victim de jour.
"It seems that the stupider an idea, the more conspiratorial types are likely to believe it."
Yup.
Indi, Think about what you're saying. You're saying that you went to a meeting of activists and you found them to be hostile to you and you wonder based on your experience at this meeting of 50 or so ideologues which no one else in the country saw, why the nation didn't suddenly abandon environmentalism? Does that really make sense?
Anti-elections, eh? Ha, that's a good way to put it... It really does feel like we're in the middle of a colossal cosmic joke with all the stupidity going on in the system.
I've seen how the fringes demand more extremism on other sites as well, and it's always left me shaking my head. I often wondered if they realized how crazy and idiotic they sounded, but by then I had seen enough of these types of people on enough forums (such as gaming, books, etc) to know that there's no convincing them.
Regardless, it's good to see a study backing up what I'm sure a lot of people felt. All this crazy really needs to come to an end, and soon.
- Daniel
Daniel, It does feel like we are in the middle of some cosmic joke. Even worse is that so few seem to get the joke.
On the fringe, I see that all the time, with calls to "finally" go full-fringe. Those same people keep coming up with all kinds of excuses for how no one has ever actually pushed the fringe position before blah blah blah. Talk about living in denial.
In terms of whether or not they understand how crazy they sound, well, the answer is absolutely not. They think they're the most sane person in the country and they think that the vaaaaaaaaaaaast majority of the public is with them, but has been too intimidated by _____* to say so.
* insert poorly explained and unworkable paranoid fantasy here
Andrew,
Take it from Mr. J, also known as, the Joker!
"When I saw what a black, awful joke the world was, I went crazy as a coot! I admit it! Why can't you? I mean, you're not unintelligent! You must see the reality of the situation. Do you know how many times we've come close to world war three over a flock of geese on a computer screen? Do you know what triggered the last world war? An argument over how many telegraph poles Germany owed its war debt creditors! Telegraph poles! Ha ha ha ha HA! It's all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for... it's all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing?"
"Indi, Think about what you're saying. You're saying that you went to a meeting of activists and you found them to be hostile to you and you wonder based on your experience at this meeting of 50 or so ideologues which no one else in the country saw, why the nation didn't suddenly abandon environmentalism? Does that really make sense?"
Andrew, I don´t quite agree. Almost everyone knows how radical environmentalists or anti-war activists behave. Many people never meet one, but the number of people who know a crazy right-wing radical is fairly low, too. How they are represented in the media and how leaders react to them is more important than personal experience.
Yes, activists can hurt their cause, all other things being equal, but all other things are rarely equal.
The most visible part of the anti-fur movement were those paint-throwing anti-fur freaks. Crazy, yes. So what? Wearing furs is still more controversial than it was.
People are social animals. Most people are unable to judge anything on its merits without some pointers from their environment. They don´t know if something´s a scandal until enough people within their informational universe tell them. They don´t sail by their own stars, certainly not when they don´t feel directly affected. Fringe movements operate in a bubble but they are not the only ones. Everyone has his informational universe. It´s just that a majority of people share similar bubbles for similar subjects.
Within the bubbles, what counts as acceptable or outrageous is often simply a matter of convention. That is why conservatives try to protect conventions and liberals try to destroy them and replace them with new ones.
Let´s say there is an experiment, in which average people hear the news that a bunch of animal-rights activists burned a test lab and killed a dozen scientists in it. It would be easy to get a majority on the side of the activists if you controlled their environment. All you have to do is provide a strong signal that this is the thing to do. Basically you need control of the media, a couple of authority figures and time.
What activists need is backup, which today means "serious" sounding "moderate" (but in fact radical) figures in politics, education and the media. Given that, I swear the majority of people will go along with almost anything. It is extremely hard to tell everyone that THEY are crazy and you alone are not. Most people adapt. The religious are probably most immune, but that can go both ways.
The problem with the right fringe is a) that they attack their moderates or force them to sound less moderate and b) that they are hated by the liberal establishment, which dominates the culture. Only the first is their fault and it´s a big one. Blaming the fringe is not wrong but it can be taken too far. If there was only a choice between getting rid of the right fringe OR making Republicans better communicators and manipulators of media and language, I´d probaby choose the latter.
What activists need is backup, which today means "serious" sounding "moderate" figures in politics, education and the media.
Precisely. And that's because no one will listen to the activists. In fact, they could disappear and it would make life much easier for the serious sounding moderate figures. The problem on the right is that we don't really have any serious sounding moderate figures because everyone has been bowing to the fringe which demands shows of purity by way of insane rhetoric and drastic action.
In short, the left judges their leaders by the moderate standard and thereby discounts their fringe. The right judges their leaders by the fringe standard and thereby discounts their moderates.
Andrew
There were about 150 people there, there was a representative of a congressional candidate, there were two candidates for State Senator, two for state legislator and some six other candidates and this was covered by the news so the activists at least on this day were not acting in a "bubble".
Furthermore this was in Jacksonville Florida about as Red a city in Florida as you can get. If you are going to look to extremists in the Sierra club it shouldn't be here.
The extremism which was on display was simply them speaking out for what they think. Everyone there applauded the shut down of Ocean Fishing for 10 years when it was stated. Furthermore why must I expect people to abandon environmentalism just because I don't want to believe falsehoods put out by political activists. Global Warming hysteria is not about the environment, it is about control of industry by government.
Even though Mark himself knew that this stuff was BS which is why I think he had other plans there was no way he was going to dis these people. So their meme does not get challenged.
Andrew
Let me be clear I am not stating your premise is wrong. When you see activists acting out it does turn people off. I guess the problem is that the media publicizes only those on the right and not the left but there is another aspect to it and that is one of bullying.
The NYC police chief that was booed out by the students of the profiling issue in NY at Brown University is an example. Yes these activists made rear ends of themselves and showed up as idiots on TV. I am sure as you say they hurt their cause by turning people off.
BUT in one regard they were successful. The NYC Police Chief I believe in was Ray Kelley but I am not certain ended up not giving his speech. He was silenced because no one wanted to challenge the malcontents. Young impressionable people were denied the ability to be influenced by what he said. So in that aspect they are successful.
El Gordo,
I agree in some parts, but not in most. Let me address this in parts.
First, all the evidence tells me that the MSM is NOT capable of putting ideas into people's heads. They can get people to focus on things they already believe and they can offer up new ways to look at issues, but unless those are things the public either believes or finds compelling, the public ignores it and the issue dies.
And the most obvious proof of this is that the country is not liberal on any particular issue. If the MSM and Hollywood had this power, this country would be far left. Instead, the public continues to support conservatism to such a degree that even liberals need to run to the right.
Secondly, the public knows what activists are like -- on both sides -- and they despise them. But the public's view of activists doesn't matter unless the activists are seen as running the show. If an issue is seen as an activist issue, then it gets no traction. If it's seen as a majority issue, then the activists get ignored and the public runs with the majority position.
This is the problem for conservatives. Liberals are very good at having politicians, foundations, "unbiased" journalists and experts run their issues. That gives their issues the feel of being a legitimate issue with mass appeal rather than being run by activists. Conservatives, on the other hand, often hand their issues off to whack jobs or assign a single person to lead the issue, e.g. Rubio running immigration. This gives the feel of our issues being activist issues. Then this is made worse by the types of defenses our side makes, like quoting the Bible or claiming to stand up against "radical socialism." Those are not mainstream arguments.
As you note, people are social animals and they look to the herd leaders to tell them what to believe. The left has learned this and presents the idea that "everyone" has already decided and the issue is "settled." The right screams about being the loner who is going to stand against the majority to bring about some reactionary world. Bad, bad, bad plan.
Let me also say, that there are two misconceptions I see from the right that need to be addressed. First, is this faulty idea that the MSM can brainwash the public. This is a problem because it causes the right to misunderstand the public. As much as conservatives hate to hear this, the public likes things conservatives don't. They haven't been tricked into accepting welfare and environmentalism against their wills... they embrace it. Indeed, those issues were resolved by consensus because that is what the public wanted. The reason conservatives wrongly think the activists won those things is because they don't want to face the fact that the public decided to accept this and isn't going back.
Look at the Civil Rights example above. The Civil Rights Laws were not won by activists. They were won by millions of people waking up to something they considered wrong. As a result, laws were passed in state after state by politicians who were already elected but sensed this new desire by the public... exactly the way democracy is supposed to work. By the time the activists got involved, all that was left were a handful of outlier states that were effectively already under federal marshal law and would be forced to comply one way or another. The same is true with every other issue I can think of where a liberal position has been adopted by the public -- the public found it to be a good idea, then the activists moved in and claimed credit for it.
tryanmax, That's exactly right. The activists add nothing to the debate, they only detract. It's the serious sounding "speaking for the establishment" types who sway the public. The only power the activists have is to undermine their own side.
Indi, I think we agree more than we disagree. Let me put it this way, activists can succeed with an immediate goal, like disrupting a speech. But their victories are Pyrrhic because the very nature of the way they fight loses them public support.
That's really the issue. Disrupting a speech may be unpleasant to deal with, but it's not really relevant in terms of the direction of the country. It's the support of the public that sets the direction of the country.
In that regard, the left does have a powerful ally in the MSM, but I will also say that conservatives vastly overestimate the strength of the MSM and they miss the fact that they typically cause their own problems.
It's like this "extremist" issue. Republican after Republican screams about how far right they are. Talk radio then screams that we should burn all moderates at the stake and purge the party of anyone who isn't "to the right of Attila the Hun." Then they act surprised when the public considers them extremists and they try to lay the blame for that on the MSM. That's like Coke advertising that their drinks make you stupid and then blaming the media for tricking the public into thinking that Coke makes people stupid. The problem isn't the MSM, it's the self-destructive conservative message.
Andrew
I get your point. I tend to play devil's advocate in my thinking out loud against my own best debating interests and I am left explaining myelf.
The problem as I see it is that the "moderate" Republicans took the first shots. I actually think the term to use is "establishment" Republicans. The problem is that what Conservatives naturally believe is 180 degrees from how the "establishment" wants to govern. Conservatives actually want to see government departments ended, money not being spent and government as a whole shrinking and covering less of our lives. The "establishment" which is made up of the politico class loses power when that is put into place which is why they have never done so to any real extent. What they have been doing since Reagan was in office is selling us "Conservatives" on the notion that they stopped government increasing by stopping "liberals" who wish to spend scary amounts of money.
With Obamacare the "establishment" method of the GOP maintaining power became moot. The government was no longer taking control over specialized areas but is now taking over everyone's health care and the cost is not JUST extra taxes you have to pay, they government will now RUN your coverage. That is what finally fueled the Tea Party because no longer is "we stopped the democrats from more bad government" enough. One you've never stopped just slowed and two to many of the "establishment" types are actually increasing things.
This creates an establishment that had to attack people that they had been saying were on their side openly. Case in Point. O'Donnel beating Castle. Carl Rove went on Fox news the night she won before she had a chance to make her acceptance speech to announce she was a "far right" ideologue that had no chance in a blue state and then announced she was a loser who never won an election. I took this to mean that she was told not to challenge Castle and did anyways and this was payback to hurt her because some people were worried more about their personal power than the wishes of Delaware's GOP voters.
Prior to Rove's speech the dem reporters on CBS were one of some concern because Castle was a liberal even if he was GOP. After it was Ha Ha the right wing nut is going to lose even the GOP knows it.
Far left candidates in Red states that win are never attacked by the left. Instead they are applauded and the meme is the right is in trouble even if their candidate has no chance.
The IRS scandal is not just Obama. We know that Senators like Schummer pressured the IRS to go after campaign finance issues because of the Citizen's United case. No established left wing group or even traditional right wing group was targeted. Just Tea Party groups applying. Same senators in started downplaying the Tea Party the "establishment" ones started calling them extreme and wacko birds.
To me this is marketing and labeling and while it has a place in winning the agenda behind it important too.
Quite Frankly if you think balancing the budget was a good idea you get labeled as "extreme" in today's climate despite the financial death spiral we have been on since Obama got into office. Why! because it is not politically expedient.
I look at who is running Washington and I see too many Corporatists. The left has wholly embraced Corporatism under the label of Progressivism and the myth that government is controlling corporations for the betterment of all. But there are strong corporatist interests in the GOP.
The left creates the program which is too pie in the sky and doesn't work and the GOP works to tweak it and make it manageable. The problem for me is I don't want either. I don't want to live under government programs which is what places me firmly at odds with the establishment. I think it a mistake to simply pile on the Conservatives as the problem.
Indi, It doesn't matter who took the first shot. Coke and Pepsi can argue all they want over which one is the biggest jerk. All the public cares about is whether or not they feel like they want to buy the product.
As for scandals, scandals NEVER work to bring anyone down, so it's a waste of time. Again, the public knows there is corruption and they don't care. And screaming about it only makes you look like a jerk.
Quite Frankly if you think balancing the budget was a good idea you get labeled as "extreme"
No, this is talk radio bullshit. Everyone talks about balancing the budget -- even the Democrats. The problem is when you add the crazy to this statement: "We want to shutdown the government and get those lazy ____ and close departments and return the country to the way it was in 1850." That's when you get labeled as an extremist. When you claim that no one is more right that you and use the impurity of those around you as a way to smear them, that's when you get seen as an extremist. When you obsess about someone like Obama and you say stunningly hypocritical things all in an effort to bring him down, that's when you get seen as an extremist.
The fringe wants to fight the Republicans and they're going to come up with provocation to do it. Don't drink the KoolAid, my friend. Stop blaming everyone but the fringe for the fringe's problems, stop trying to spin a growing list of ugly loses as a strategy for victory, and stop buying into the lies and bullshit of the phony purists. Rush Limbaugh has done more to elect Democrats and ensure that Obamacare will forever be the law than Barack Obama has.
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