The Gaming Den

I've been thinking for awhile how much of US culture is a "victim culture" in that as soon as a perceived wrong happens, the media jumps in to highlight this wrong.

For example, I think that the best thing for Obama would be to have a bunch of McCain supporters say a lot of racist comments about him and have television

I'm having trouble of thinking what would be ideal for McCain, and maybe you can help.

Is there a word for this phenomenon? Where by being attacked someone benefits greatly? And, the best way to win is to have people pretend to hate your candidate and tell others not to vote for him/her?

I welcome your thoughts?

I think you are looking at that the wrong way. Obama would be in a good position if McCain or his supporters started acting like racist douchebags, but that's only because it is a 2 party system and therefore having your opponent shoot himself in the foot is just as good as doing something good yourself. Hell, I don't even vote for people anymore. I just vote against people I really don't like.

That's a good point, I didn't consider mutli-party systems. Indeed, with those systems you'd need to have staged attacks against all of your competitors which is considerably harder.

So, what would help McCain? A bunch of black racists harassing people and telling them not to vote for McCain?

The black racists wouldn't be able to do it.

A majority hating against a diverse group of minorities or even a minority irks people. --

A minority hating against diverse minorities or another minority is just strange. It'll just have people scratching their heads.

Well in this case it would be the minority (black) hating on the majority (white).

Well, what would work then? Anti-War seems not to work. What about insulting McCain's age egregiously?

I'm thinking that a liberal Ann Coulter - like person would be very beneficial to John McCain.

Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp wrote:So, what would help McCain? A bunch of black racists harassing people and telling them not to vote for McCain?

Constant harping about his VP's pregnant daughter.

Personally, I'm gratified to see that abstinence-only education works exactly as intended.

That people somehow think that Obama will raise taxes in light of non-partisan budget analysis of both candidate's proposed budgets is what disturbs me. And that anyone can think that Obama is going to increase the size of govenment after the gross differences between the Bush (record deficits, massive new federal bureaucracy, added extra-constitutional powers for the executive branch) and Clinton ("the era of big govenment is over!", balanced budgets) is downright Orwellian. I guess Ignorance is Strength for some siggys.

But hey, if you want to reduce the size of government, let's quit with the mortgage bailout, disband the FDIC and let efficiency of the free market solve our banking crisis - after all that worked so well for Hoover.

What helps McCain?

The media.

They give him donuts, he gives them barbeque. They repeat what he and his subordinates say without every fact-checking it.

Repeat something often enough and it becomes true for the majority, even if its a lie.

-Crissa

Tzor's sig is basically why democracy doesn't work in the U.S., and hasn't since... well, before my grandparents were born.

But, hey, as long as were turning back the clock to before the GOP was the tax-and-burn party, let's keep going. Let's go back to 1864, when the Republicans actually were the party of liberty and individual rights (kind of sort of) and the Democrats were singing this at campaign rallies. That's a race I can take an interest in!

As for this race... if Obama actually was an idealistic reformer and if McCain actually was a blunt and honest maverick, I might care. But since I live in Massachusetts, my vote doesn't matter in the first place, so it's no problem that I don't. I'll go to the polls on the first Tuesday and fill in a circle pointlessly. Probably Ron Paul. He's hilarious.

The media's love affair with McCain is close to over. For the longest time they had an... inappropriate relationship, due chiefly to McCain giving them a lot of access. Then the Rove squad got into his campaign, the access shut down, and the media is starting to respond with actual coverage.

Hell, Fox News called him a liar.

Crissa wrote:What helps McCain?

The media.

They give him donuts, he gives them barbeque. They repeat what he and his subordinates say without every fact-checking it.

And "the media" has cockblocked Obama at every possible turn, right?

angelfromanotherpin wrote:The media's love affair with McCain is close to over. For the longest time they had an... inappropriate relationship, due chiefly to McCain giving them a lot of access. Then the Rove squad got into his campaign, the access shut down, and the media is starting to respond with actual coverage.

Hell, Fox News called him a liar.

Oh wow, lol. Yes, this clearly heralds a new dawning of media scrutiny, when we can once more rely on major networks to risk actual criminal charges in order to assail the corrupt and the fraudulent in politics, to say nothing of the dishonest and the panderers.

Seriously, though, that would be nice.

Nihlin wrote:Tzor's sig is basically why democracy doesn't work in the U.S., and hasn't since... well, before my grandparents were born.

I think I need to disagree. (It’s the contrarian in me.) Democracy does work, surprisingly well it seems, but it takes a long time for it to work. Hey it only took almost a century to abolish slavery and then another century to actually have a decent civil rights movement. It took us the same time roughly to give women the same rights to vote that they would have had under the Iroquois Confederation (the Five Nations).

Likewise the same forces that are active today were active at the start of the new nation. There were those who wanted a strong federal government and there were those who didn’t. There were those who didn’t want the federal government to even have a standing army (mostly because they feared a military coup). The irony is that the modern Democratic notion of a large federal solution to all problems would have been abhorrent to old Thomas Jefferson. Unfortunately the Republican Party is also filled with people who want a large federal solution, only a different type of large federal solution. But that’s the problem for us Republicans who want to go back to smaller government.

One would think that small-government Republicans would, you know, stop voting for their Republican guy who voted in the highest deficit yet. All fifty of 'em in the federal government.

-Crissa

Crissa wrote:One would think that small-government Republicans would, you know, stop voting for their Republican guy who voted in the highest deficit yet. All fifty of 'em in the federal government.

-Crissa

I'm sure they'd all support the Libertarian party if such a thing existed.

Tzor wrote: Democracy does work, surprisingly well it seems, but it takes a long time for it to work. Hey it only took almost a century to abolish slavery and then another century to actually have a decent civil rights movement.

Seriously, though, Tzor, you've given my (originally cynical and hyperbole-filled) point a fair bit of validation there. We didn't need a Civil Rights Movement right after the civil war - we had a huge upheaval and race relations were alarmingly good after it, and getting better thanks to radical action. Then 1890 rolled around and we entered the so-called Nadir, and things backslide. Slow and steady had become the name of the game for the anti-racists, and that went poorly for them.

Slow and steady change in which you throw your support to people who pay slightly more lip service to your beliefs accomplishes... well, put it this way: are you counting the last eight years as a net win for your team? Because it sure wasn't for mine (team We Need More NSF Funding, It Pays Our Bills). I'm hoping it was a win for someone who wasn't already winning in the previous eight.

The basic economic thesis of the quote from Palin you have there has been debunked by Fox News, as Koumei pointed out. You're being played. Obama might seem like a worse alternative to you, given your beliefs, and that's fine. But if you never actually throw your support strongly behind the candidates who actually embody your politics, if you just settle for whoever tells you slightly more of what you want to hear about a few things you have an interest in, then you are basically dooming the rest of your own beliefs to the status of an inconsequential fringe.

Well, tzor has the problem of being a Republican in New York, whose Republican primary is run like a Soviet election, IIRC. That means he has problems actually trying to influence the nomination process.

But really, the big problem isn't democracy per se, but peculiar institutions we have in the U.S. Like the fact that we have so many rules in place to keep these particular two parties in power no matter how out of touch they get. Even with the electoral college and other institutions that encourage a two-party system, it's possible to have a system where a third party can rise up to replace a major party that has outlived its relevance. Unfortunately, most U.S. states have ballot access laws designed to prevent this from happening.

A Republican from New York, where their Republicans still vote lock-step with the party yet randomly hold one or more liberal views because to not hold one would mean no majority support. Much like the Californian governor who basically supports nothing that tzor does, because to do so, would actually never get him elected to office in the state.

You can con some of the people... ...all of the time, I think is the Republican catchphrase.

-Crissa

Nihlin wrote:Seriously, though, Tzor, you've given my (originally cynical and hyperbole-filled) point a fair bit of validation there. We didn't need a Civil Rights Movement right after the civil war - we had a huge upheaval and race relations were alarmingly good after it, and getting better thanks to radical action. Then 1890 rolled around and we entered the so-called Nadir, and things backslide. Slow and steady had become the name of the game for the anti-racists, and that went poorly for them.

If I had the time I could organize my collective thoughts into something more coherent but basically I could argue that the problems of the post Lincoln - post Civil War administration were in some ways parallels of the problems of the effects of post WWI and even some shades of post Iraq invasion. This is due to two major effects; the first effect being the enforced change from the "carpetbaggers" from the north and the second was that the underlying problem - the notion of equality - was never really addressed. I think logic would have demanded the eventual backlash and the resulting backslide which was just as much the result of the African American community (segregation laws were originally proposed by them for their own protection) as it was the vile villians of horrible hatred.

Absentminded_Wizard wrote:Well, tzor has the problem of being a Republican in New York, whose Republican primary is run like a Soviet election, IIRC. That means he has problems actually trying to influence the nomination process.

I am assuming you are talking about the presidential primaries (I can hear my uncle complaining about how we have to pay for the cost of two primaries - Presidential and everyone else every four years) I would have to say that this year was the fairest of all Republican primaries I have ever voted in the state of New York (Having missed a few when I was in Key West). One of the worst was the primary of 2000 when Bush was actively trying to get opponents disqualified from the ballot. I don't think I would call that "Soviet" style but more "Iranian" style.

At the local level, primaries are generally pretty much free and fair, assuming we have enough people to make it an interesting primary. Over the years the two parties; the Republican and the Conservative, have gone into and out of harmony. Today, at least in Riverhead they are in perfect harmony. But while party is important, to the people it's all about people. That's why we have a majority of Republicans in the town but a Democratic town supervisor ... we never had the right person to run against him.

In between we have the state level which is exceptionally Soviet style, lead by the three supreme leaders of the state, the Governor, the leader of the House and the leader of the Assembly. The house is still Old Time Democrat. The assmelby is Republican. The new governor Patterson is Democratic but is able to (for a change) get the legislature to agree on things that is generally middle of the road, for example spending cuts to counter a projected state deficit.

Still we are working to change that attitude and break up the unholy trinity with people who are willing to cross the aisle to get things done.

I am assuming you are talking about the presidential primaries (I can hear my uncle complaining about how we have to pay for the cost of two primaries - Presidential and everyone else every four years) I would have to say that this year was the fairest of all Republican primaries I have ever voted in the state of New York (Having missed a few when I was in Key West). One of the worst was the primary of 2000 when Bush was actively trying to get opponents disqualified from the ballot. I don't think I would call that "Soviet" style but more "Iranian" style.

Yes, I was talking about the Presidential primary. From what I heard, the setup is that the party leaders vote to determine who automatically gets on the ballot, and then it's almost impossible for anybody else to get on the ballot.