Where has civility gone in American society?

[KindaSkolarly]

Thank you for the thank you.

I joined BookTalk for the literary aspects but, you know, politics. Sometimes it seems that EVERYTHING is politics. And it's hard not to be intrigued by politics in America at the moment.

I don't have anywhere near the knowledge of the Frankfurt School that you do but, yes, the Zerohedge article seems on target. It certainly explains the frothing that we see coming from the left right now--it's the result of 80-odd years of conditioning.

We see frothing on the right, as well. The Republican party's neocons are often hard to differentiate from leftists. Neoconservatism had its roots in Trotskyism. U.S. congressman Ron Paul made a speech about the origins of the neocons. I expect you've seen it, but if not you might find it interesting. Rather wordy. It's at the link below.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/ne ... onned.aspx

[DWill]

This perception of "frothing on the left" is interesting. If I may ask, where do you see it in particular? And you also think that the right currently is not, to continue the metaphor, acting like a rabid dog? I'm not attacking you but just trying to understand how two perceptions can diverge so sharply.

[KindaSkolarly]

No offense taken.

I did mention frothing on the right. I said, "We see frothing on the right, as well. The Republican party's neocons are often hard to differentiate from leftists...." John McCain's a good example of what I mean. Lately he's been doing the Democrats' dirty work, while he rails against President Trump as rabidly as any leftist.

As for the frothing left, we've just been through a year of the liberal media calling Trump a Russian spy. No proof, but lots of spittle slathered around, and now it turns out that the Clintons are the ones with Russian connections. Their Uranium One dealings may develop into the biggest scandal ever to vomit forth out of Washington.

Hillary Clinton was schooled in frothing. Literally schooled. The virulent smearing of opponents was a favorite tactic of the Frankfurt School and its chief proponent, Saul Alinsky. For people not familiar with Alinsky's work, the link below goes to a pdf of his Rules for Radicals:

https://chisineu.files.wordpress.com/20 ... s-1989.pdf

Hillary Clinton wrote her senior thesis on Alinsky:

https://www.docdroid.net/V8962fC/hillar ... pdf#page=2

An article about Clinton's thesis:

http://humanevents.com/2007/03/09/hilla ... -an-enemy/

To her credit (and shame) Clinton put her theories into practice after she left school. For example, she took part in fabricating the fake "Russian dossier," which accused Donald Trump of consorting with Russian prostitutes. Alinsky would have been proud of the smear.

Clinton team and Democrats 'bankrolled' Trump dirty dossier
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41752908

But as damaging as the Russian Dossier scandal will be to Clinton, it pales when compared to Uranium One. Madam Secretary may have committed capital crimes with that one. O the irony. O the smell of burning Frankfurters.

[LanDroid]

As for the frothing left, we've just been through a year of the liberal media calling Trump a Russian spy. No proof...

No the media does not call Trump a Russian spy. The consensus of the intelligence community is Russia significantly escalated long standing efforts to subvert US elections, this time in favor of Trump. There are multiple investigations to determine if there was collusion with these efforts on the part of US operatives or the Trump campaign. That is not a claim that Trump is a spy. You say there is no proof - of course not, the investigations are not complete and charges have not been filed. But there is certainly enough evidence to warrant these investigations as has been stated by investigators who have access.

Note some of the typical twisting of facts in the quoted statement required to mount an attack. Investigations into obstruction of justice and collusion are changed to Trump is a spy. Investigations into evidence of collusion and obstruction of justice that are haven't been concluded get twisted into "no proof."

The opposition research was initially funded by an unknown Republican consulting firm, which pulled the plug once Mr Trump captured the party's nomination.
(From KindaSkolarly's link above.)

Regarding the Steele dossier, the quote above is the most important point to remember regarding funding; the document would not have existed without Republican support.

Hillary Clinton was schooled in frothing. Literally schooled.

This seems to be all that's behind KindaSkolarly's point about frothing. According to him both the right and left are frothing, but only the left has been schooled and implemented a system. In contrast, I gather KindaSkolarly implies right wingers are naive people that have only recently engaged in worse tactics as an unorganized improvisation, not a school of thought or system, therefore all right wing abuses should be excused. That's a ridiculous concept as the following points summarize.

- KindaSkolarly admits right wing neocons are influenced by Trotsky, an old school of thought.
- The Alt-Right and neo-nazis are gaining prominence, reaching back to the horrendous philosophies of WWII Germany.
- 60 years ago Senator Joseph McCarthy exposed how far right wingers are prepared to go with the propaganda and physical abuses of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
- Previously mentioned propaganda by Gingrich schooling activists in specific language to attack opponents 24 years ago.
- Right wing propaganda has an efficient distribution system, a huge network of media organizations.
- Now they appear to be going after truth itself, stating any information outside of the right wing bubble is "fake news." This allows conspiracy theories and other false information to flourish while fact-checking is dismissed. Very dangerous.

[geo]

. . . This article is filled with outright lies and half truths. It is obviously not written to enlighten anyone about this group but to attempt to push a particular agenda.

I agree, the "article" was absolutely cringeworthy.

I’m familiar with this Frankfurt School meme from a right-wing site I used to frequent. Basically, the ’Cultural Marxism’ movement (started by the Frankfurt School), is taking over and destroying Western society—aided and abetted by liberals, of course.

When it looks like, acts like a conspiracy theory . . .

From the same right wing site, I have also heard the idea that the Civil War could have been avoided if we had only agreed to phasing out the institution of slavery gradually. I have no idea why the Right has latched on to this idea except that it stokes the notion that our radicals (today’s liberals) are responsible for all society’s ills. See how they started the Civil War? All we had to do was wait 20 years or so and the South would have come around.

This kind of historian’s fallacy is basically revisionist thinking to push a particular agenda, as LevV says above. And, as Landroid said, you won’t find actual historians that would say something so patently absurd for the simple reason that it's an assertion that can never be tested or supported by facts. I do think chattel slavery would have ended sooner or later, but only because most Americans were opposed to it. Not just opposed to it, but rightly repulsed by it. But in the south, slavery was a firmly entrenched institution, both an economic necessity and justification for white superiority. There is no way Southern nationalists were going to relinquish it without a fight.

What’s interesting is how the Party of Lincoln has completely flip-flopped with Democrats over the slavery issue. Republicans are now wedded to a southern evangelical movement, which wants to reinvent history in order to sell their anti-intellectualism and white supremacy propaganda to the American people. These are the people who get their news from FoxNews (Santa Claus is white) and Breitbart News, because mainstream news outlets are “fake”.

[LevV]

I agree, the "article" was absolutely cringeworthy.

I’m familiar with this Frankfurt School meme from a right-wing site I used to frequent. Basically, the ’Cultural Marxism’ movement (started by the Frankfurt School), is taking over and destroying Western society—aided and abetted by liberals, of course.

Virtually everything from the "article" appears to originate from this site: http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=8183

And more from the original source:

"But suppose you were to learn that nearly all of the observations made in this series of essays are completely consistent with a 'design' -- that is a concept, a way of thinking, and a process for bringing it about. And suppose one could identify a small core group of people who designed just such a concept and thought through the process of infusing it into a culture.
Just such a core group did, indeed, exist......They were members of the Frankfurt School, formed in Germany in 1923. They were the forebears of what some proclaim as 'cultural Marxism,' a radical social movement that has transformed American culture.

The vehicle for this introduction was the idealistic Boomer elite, those young middle-class and well-to-do college students who became the vanguard of America's counter-culture revolution of the mid-1960s -- those draft-dodging, pot-smoking, hippies who demonstrated against the Vietnam War and who fomented the destructive (to women) 'women's liberation' movement. These New Totalitarians [7] are now in power as they have come to middle-age and control every public institution in our nation."


Really - KindaSkolarly, if you actually believe this stuff you will have to provide a bit more evidence to support these crazy claims.

[KindaSkolarly]

lol. Thanks guys. You had me going there for a moment, pretending to be Coincidence Theorists. But then I remembered that you're not a bunch of five-year-olds. Thanks again for the chuckle.

[Robert Tulip]

Thank you for the thank you.

I joined BookTalk for the literary aspects but, you know, politics. Sometimes it seems that EVERYTHING is politics. And it's hard not to be intrigued by politics in America at the moment.

I don't have anywhere near the knowledge of the Frankfurt School that you do but, yes, the Zerohedge article seems on target. It certainly explains the frothing that we see coming from the left right now--it's the result of 80-odd years of conditioning.

We see frothing on the right, as well. The Republican party's neocons are often hard to differentiate from leftists. Neoconservatism had its roots in Trotskyism. U.S. congressman Ron Paul made a speech about the origins of the neocons. I expect you've seen it, but if not you might find it interesting. Rather wordy. It's at the link below.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/ne ... onned.aspx

Our current fiction selection The Master and Margarita explores cultural polarities in Bolshevik Russia that help to explain current political debates. It is arguably the greatest Russian novel of the last century. People may find the conversation there of some interest even if they have not read the book.

[LanDroid]

Virtually everything from the "article" appears to originate from this site: http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=8183

If that is true, the above website was archived in 2012. It refers to the new site below, which is extremely racist. (Might want to use a VPN or Tor before viewing to isolate your computer, yes it's that bad.)
http://www.wvwnews.net/content/

[LanDroid]

Moving on...
A major reason for current incivility is bias confirmation. Left and right have separate information channels where one can find everything to confirm and strengthen your current opinions and avoid almost anything that challenges them. Hence the terms "alternate universe", "fake news", and "alternate facts" that describe the isolation between various political camps. It takes an effort to recognize this and attempt to avoid it.