Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, September 14, 2021
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73 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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I never would have expected Why is Nicki Minaj tweeting about vaccines and some guy’s swollen testicles? to show up in my timeline.
Well, I just got my first Twitter violation. I went “What?” Went through the process and found out what the AI considered a violation.
First the Tweet was in response to one of our elected representatives (Van Taylor, Chip Roy, and Greg Abbott) and it said:
“Hysteria and childish tantrums from our elected officials. Tired of the buffoonery. You may as well hold your breath until blue. None of you are fit to serve.”
Apparently, telling them to hold their breath until blue is promoting suicide and self-harm.
Like I said, gotta love AI.
Well Jim Brown has entrenched himself in Lower Alabama as a trusted agent. I get asked all the time now about the culture skirmishes DuJour on CNN/Fox. Its clear the Conservative distrust of Authority doesn’t stop with Government or Liberals…it goes all the way down through their own team. This is clearly because these people understand their vulnerability in the big scheme of society and are afraid. It is also a huge unexploited opportunity for liberals.
I’ve been able to educate a few that trust me the most on Black issues…obviously not from the Liberal viewpoint (because Im not a liberal). And frankly, the environment here makes it hard to like liberals…but I understand that is a function of being in an environment where Fox plays on almost every commons TV and people are talking the Fox outrage of the day…all day.
Eventually, Cable news and social media itself is going to confronted. I mentioned earlier that rural movements have a history of overunning tea-drinking, philosophizing urbanites who like to admire and discuss problems. Good Ole boys do shit…often the wrong shirt but you will get thrust…albeit questionable vector. The information environment we have today will slowly strangle this country.
Id forgotten how much I liked good ole boys…they are like pit bulls. Properly socialized lovable and protective. Neglected? They’ll maul a toddler.
Because Im understand influence tactics Im able to craft nuggets for them to make useful discussions around politics. They have no idea who they are messing with.
Ok– Im going back in. Brown out.
@Jim Brown 32: Jim, what are you trying to say?
@Jim Brown 32: When you’re done down there, can you come up here and give me a hand?
If this is accurate, it’s going to be interesting. Apparently, Anonymous has hacked Epik, a “hosting provider of choice” for right-wing garbage. They’ve released a decade’s worth of information.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Blinken pushes back against Republican criticism at Afghanistan hearing
“We inherited a deadline. We did not inherit a plan.”
-Anthony Blinken
“If anybody believes that the previous administration would’ve evacuated any Afghans to the US much less tens of thousands as President Biden did, I would suggest they ask the Kurds their opinion of that.”
Rep. Tom Molinowski
@Jen: I have a feeling a lot of folks are sweating bullets.
@Barry: Basically that these areas arent lost causes. They will never be “blue” but they can be shaped into being a loyal opposition….with the right message and messenger.
And…that cable news and social media must be confronted…or more violence is going to emanate from these areas. The people in many of these regions are largely not ok physically and emotionally. A populace like this is ripe for exploitation of base emotions of safety and security. If you watch Fox closely, almost every story is crafted to create a sense that both of those are devolving.
Oh…and that I like good ole boys and gals.
@Mikey: I saw that. I love it.
https://t.co/ID7mJS5vit
@Mikey: We have to realize that this has been part of the Republican grift for years. Trump almost certainly didn’t expect to win in 2016 and was preparing to deny the legitimacy of Hillary’s victory so he could use this narrative to fuel a post-defeat career. It isn’t clear that was true in 2020; I think by that point he may have been convinced from the information bubble he was in that he was actually going to win. But whatever his intentions, his reaction to the 2020 outcome has cemented the overall strategy, to the point that other Republicans may even realize (as the Georgia runoffs demonstrate) that this preemptive crying-foul isn’t just a contingency plan but works against the goal of winning by de-motivating Republican voters.
@Kylopod: It really is a brilliant plan. First, you demoralize your voters by telling them their votes won’t count because the election is rigged, and then any who might consider voting you kill off by telling them to avoid the vaccine.
I mean, I guess it would be a brilliant plan if Republicans were doing this to Democrats. Doing it to their own, that’s a logic I can’t quite grasp.
@Kylopod:
I recall reading in a few places–I wish I could recall where–that Trump was aware at least in August 2020 that he was going to lose in November. It was only by a fluke that he won in 2016.
@wr:
There are perverse incentives at work. To begin with, there’s the element that right-wing personalities generally profit when Dems are in power (in fairness this has been true for a while on both sides of the aisle to a certain degree). But I think there’s something additional going on since the pandemic. Yes, it might seem to make no sense that they’re doing things that will kill off their own supporters. But I don’t think it’s happening in large enough numbers to affect their bottom line (at least that’s their wager–it could be a miscalculation), and they get so much outside funding from right-wing billionaires that they’re not genuinely threatened by a loss of revenue from dying audience members.
@Jim Brown 32: Secret Agent Brown.
@Jim Brown 32: thank you for clarifying that.
@CSK:
It’s possible. I’d have to read more inside accounts to try beginning to grok what he was thinking (and that isn’t as easy as it might seem). But you need to consider the differences between 2016 and 2020 in the overall information Trump was receiving. In 2016 most people regardless of their political views didn’t think Trump was going to win. So right-wing media was probably preparing for what they saw as his inevitable defeat, and this lack of confidence filtered into Trump’s circle. I think it’s even possible they were attempting to avoid what happened in 2012, where conservative media became so convinced of Romney’s coming victory that reportedly he didn’t even bother writing a concession speech.
After 2016, however, the entire conventional wisdom shifted. People were so shocked by the outcome that in 2020 just about everyone was bending over backwards to credit Trump’s chances at pulling off another upset regardless of what the polls showed. Right-wing media, in turn, doubled down on bullishness, and their crying voter fraud wasn’t just a post-defeat strategy–it was part of a long-term attempt to enact draconian voter-suppression laws in swing states and to set the stage for challenging the election results in courts afterward. I think Trump did believe he could get the courts to side with him at least part of the time, and to bully local officials into changing the outcome–his leaked call to the Georgia Sec. of State was not part of a grift strategy, it was part of a sustained attempt to keep himself in power.
I watched a couple of DC animated movies, both based on comic books, which are both highly regarded.
One is The Killing Joke, which I’d dub “Joker’s Pointless Master Plan.” enough said.
The other is Red Son, an alternate timeline where the infant Superman’s spaceship lands in Ukraine in the 30s rather than in Kansas.
I came in without any expectations, having read no spoilers nor the original comic ahead of time (latter reading of a synopsis tells me there are some major difference between the comic and animated versions). It handles the sweep of history rather well (it goes on from the 40s to the 80s).
The most interesting character is Luthor, which is never a given. Here he’s not the bad guy, exactly, but he’s a major cruel and ruthless SOB. Despite having no expectations, I kind of thought Superman’s antagonist would be Bruce Wayne. But Mr. Wayne does not appear in the movie at all.
There are alternate versions of Hal Jordan and John Stewart in an alternate Green Lantern Corps, which I didn’t buy entirely, as well as a Soviet version of Batman (with fur hat!).
It’s also more political than superhero movies tend to get. Superman gets to rule the USSR, for one thing, and Luthor wins some election.
@Kathy: have you checked out Y The Last Man on Hulu/FX?
(for the uninitiated, it’s a series about the aftermath of a plague that kills nearly every animal with a Y chromosome except for Yorick and his monkey, ampersand.)
I think the first 3 episodes are out so far. I read some of the graphic novels awhile ago, and it seems like a decent job of bringing them to the screen. They also are dealing with trans people, something I don’t remember the novels doing.
H/t to Balloon Juice for a series of Twitter threads by @KT_so_it_goes, regarding the real reasons for the hydroxychloriquine and invermectin crazes. TL; DR: like most everything else in the right wing bubble, it’s a grift:
In response to a comment by another Tweeter, KT wrote:
@Jim Brown 32: That was a great read and good to hear. I have long suspected the vulnerability you speak of. I’m not from those parts, though I did spend 6 years in Tidewater VA, so I’m not an authority, and yet…
You are the one that gets to describe yourself, but everything I’ve read you write here suggests to me that, according to my definition of liberal, you definitely are one. Just sayin’
@Monala:
I think you can’t overdose on pot.
Maybe it’s time to push a line of tasty, ivermectin enriched cannabis edibles?
@Mike in Arlington:
I think I saw it in one of my current subscriptions. I’m not much into post-apocalyptic fiction.
@MarkedMan:
That’s some guitar riff.
@Kathy: yeah, but the market is more limited. Think about the criteria KT outlines: legal but by prescription only so you need a teledoc to dispense (some states have legalized medical marijuana; elsewhere it’s either totally illegal, or legal without a prescription); and most importantly, able to convince the right wing rubes to buy it in large quantities. Libertarian bros might love marijuana, but what about all the seniors and homeschooling moms who are the prime markets for invermectin, etc? Bonus if you can say that the coastal elites are covering up the truth about this cure they don’t want you to know about! Coastal elites certainly aren’t doing that with weed. 😀
@CSK: I almost reflexively avoid the old stuff, except in Jazz and Classical, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think there isn’t a lot of great stuff out there. I just don’t want to be the guy pushing my walker to the 2030 Eagles concert…
@MarkedMan:
Oh, God forbid.
@Kathy:
I should note that while the comic version of The Killing Joke is highly regarded, the animated movie version was very unpopular. The central problem is that the central story wasn’t movie length, and the plot they chose to add to pad out the run time is REALLY cringeworthy.
It’s also does a thing I’m increasingly seeing in remakes of older material where some aspect of the original that hasn’t aged well (in this case Barbra Gordon effectively getting “fridged”* at the beginning) and trying to fix it in a way that makes it even worse.
Finally, the producers seemed to enthralled with “this is an R rated movie, so we’ll put in unnecessary sex and swearing just to be edgy, and not because it serves the story in any way”
* – “fridging” refers to a common story element in comics where to show that a villain was a serious threat, they would kill off a female character close to the hero in some unnecessarily gruesome fashion purely for shock value at the beginning of a story. Besides the misogynistic aspects of the violence, this also frequently reduced female characters to just extensions of the heroes goal rather than people with goals of their own.
According to the Woodward/Costa book, no other than Dan Quayle saved the Republic.
https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/status/1437820255921922051/photo/1
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: Doesn’t surprise me. I can totally see how that happened. Quayle was VP to GHW Bush, and the Bushes by and large do NOT like Trump. I also think that Quayle and Biden probably served together in the Senate.
Also excerpted from the Woodward/Costa book, re not certifying the electoral votes:
I don’t want to be your friend anymore…if you had any lingering doubts about how childish this 75 year old baby is.
@Stormy Dragon:
I was kind of surprised Joker doesn’t appear until halfway through the movie. and, yes, the whole Paris Franz thing was awful.
I did not like how they handled Barbara Gordon, either. I can’t buy that faced with a threat she’d just stand there and get shot.
My favorite Batman movie remains Mask of the Phantasm.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
@Jen:
I’m trying to figure out anyone calling Dan “Potatoe” Quayle for advice.
I’m guessing because he was the last Republican VP who presided in the Senate over his own electoral loss after one term.
@Kathy:
Also, they’re both from Indiana.
(And also had a rep as being a few bricks shy of a load.)
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: I saw that over lunch and just put up a quick post about it.
@Kathy: He and Pence are both from Indiana. There’s probably been a fair amount of connection between the two of them over the years.
ETA: Since I have the edit button (!), I’ll add, I see Kylopod beat me to this observation. 🙂
I think the most important thing I’ve learned from the trump pandemic is that few countries will enact the needed measures for the next one, at least not at once when they’d do the most good. It’s against the religion of most world leaders: economic growth.
That said, I know I can take measures to protect myself while a vaccine gets developed. Things like masks, keeping a healthy distance from others, and avoidance of crowded places and public venues are all indicated at the first sign of an outbreak.
The only flaw is if the new pathogen originates in your area. In that case you get little to no advance warning.
@Kathy:..I’m trying to figure out anyone calling Dan “Potatoe” Quayle for advice.
@Kylopod:..they’re both from Indiana.
Spent too much time working in Indiana in the early ’80s. Did meet some fine people among the citizens. Like the Vietnamese woman who’s family ran one of the older motels I stayed at in Reynolds. She was maybe in her 40s. She and her family were refugees of that GODDAMNED WAR. She had lost part of one of her forearms. Didn’t really get to know them all that well but I did get the impression that they grateful to be where they were and were proud of their Inn.
@Jen:
I was curious about this and decided to look it up after I posted my previous comment, because I knew they didn’t overlap in holding office in the state. Pence first ran for Congress in 1988 and 1990 (Quayle left the Senate to become vp in 1989), losing both times. Then he spent several years as a radio host before successfully being elected to the House in 2000. By that point Quayle was long retired from politics. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve known each other and been in communication for a long time.
@Mister Bluster: From an essay by Geoffrey Nunberg in 1989:
Nunberg goes on to explain that in the 19th century most states had a specific term for their residents which began as an insulting expression and was later reclaimed by the residents themselves, sort of like the way various groups co-opt slurs today. Hoosier is one of the last surviving examples of that pattern.
I just realized the end game for the anti-choice crowd. Abortion is just the current front in their war. When I was in high school (1960’s) , it was difficult to get condoms. I do not think you could even legally buy them in Massachusetts. Fundamentalists fought against the new forms of birth control as they came out. Roe v Wade ended the birth control wars for a while. From the beginning, some radical anti-choice fundamentalists have considered any chemical birth control as having aborted a viable human being. Since then the radicals have firmly moved their definition of human life to the single cell fertilized egg. When the abortion wars are over, they are coming for your birth control pills and maybe your diaphragms and condoms. This is not hyperbole. The entire Catholic church and much of fundamentalist Christianity believed that masturbation was a sin because you spilled your seed, all of those potential human lives, on the barren ground. Birth control is the ultimate barren ground. Abortion is not the end game.
I pasted a link to an article – it did not take so I try again
http://advocatesaz.org/2015/06/02/when-contraception-was-a-crime-griswold-v-connecticut/
@Kylopod:
Wisconsinites are traditionally “Badgers”; a nickname for the Cornish minors who dug into the hillsides.
But we’re also known as Cheeseheads–originally used as an insult and proudly claimed as our own.
(Illinois people have yet to proudly claim “FIB”)
@RWB: Unfortunately, I think you’re right.
@RWB: You’re absolutely correct. Every now and then they’ll come out and explicitly claim that birth control effectively causes abortions (and they’ll lie through their teeth about it). It’s one of the reasons they push those personhood bills.
https://www.guttmacher.org/antiabortion-activists-their-own-words-contraception-abortion
@RWB: If you scratch a serious anti-abortion believer you will find they have lots of objections to ‘hormonal’ birth control and to IUDs. So, yep — you saw right through their bullshit
@RWB:
You’re dead on. I’ve been saying this for years.
This is, above all, a morality play. ‘Just say no’ to having sex, except when it’s time to have a baby, and ‘no’ Morning After Pill’ either. Anti Abortion activists are not going to stop if and when The Court decides to let this become a States’ Right. This issue is a war without end.
@Kylopod: State-level party politics can be a small and clubby group. Current and former elected officials end up on fundraising circuits and meet a lot of the up-and-comers. It’s all very interconnected. State parties are run on shoestring budgets and every event ends up with certain headliners in attendance, etc. Even if they didn’t serve together, I’d bet they knew each other.
@Mike in Arlington: And OBTW, personhood bills will kill Assisted Reproduction techniques like IVF.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: Say what you will about Quayle, at least he was an idiot with moral standards. The fact that Pence had to look to Quayle for advice? Well… let’s just go with better left unsaid and leave it at that.
@Kathy: “I’m trying to figure out anyone calling Dan “Potatoe” Quayle for advice.”
Yes, exactly. And Vice-President “What Would Jesus Do” Pence needing this kind of advice is beyond gobsmacking, for me anyway.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I’m not even sure I’d go that far. Quayle advised Pence not to attempt a coup–and a stupid one at that, one which was almost certainly going to fail even if Pence had declared Trump the winner. That’s a test probably every previous president and vp, including Richard Nixon, would pass. If we’re going to call that “moral standards,” that just goes to show how low the bar has gotten.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Pence strikes me as Ned Flanders in the Star Trek Mirror Universe.
@Kylopod: “that just goes to show how low the bar has gotten.”
Your point is…? And being the unreconstructed and unrepentant believer that conservatism left me, not the other way around, I will note that even back in the day, I was willing to hold the Quayle, more than others at least, tried to live guided by moral principles. Certainly not my moral principles you understand, but by 1988, even that was rare in politics. Luddite was already noting that the difference between current politicians and ones of the past was that the ones of the past would at least stay bought. And it’s gone downhill from there. YMMV.
@Kathy:
Ned Flanders is a very sincere and moral guy. I would not say that about Pence.
Norm Macdonald has died. He was 61.
@Kylopod: Well, the bar has in fact gotten that low, maybe lower.
@Kylopod:
I didn’t realize until after I posted this that what I said isn’t just hypothetical–Nixon did in fact pass that very test in 1960.
I’m working on entering my grandmother’s recipes into the newspaper site and scheduling them for future posting.
Her “Baked Chop Suey” lists the 2nd ingredient as “2 Tbsp fat”.
@Mu Yixiao: Heh. I love my inherited family recipes.
Thread:
God bless America, ’cause dawg has cursed us.
@Jim Brown 32: would you be willing to share some of your nuggets that I could replicate your work here? Or even better some practical references that would help me create my own? I’ve been trying to find some practical info warfare type references without much success. Thanks!
For today’s gourmet street dining section:I can’t see a Panda Express sandwich working But I used to eat corndogs and mochi donuts in Korea. (The donuts didn’t have their own store yet, but Dunkin’s had them as a special (but not the same month as the garlic and tomato, tomato and basil, or whole Korean wheat donuts). But I never was able to find the sweet potato studded ones at a time when I had the time to stop and buy one. (Another goal for my next trip back.)
@Just nutha ignint cracker: If you’re ever in Northern Virginia we have all that stuff. Huge Korean community here. I had mochi donuts a couple weeks back and there’s an H Mart with a food hall with all the Korean corndogs and tteokboki you could want.
@Jay L Gischer: In the classic sense–yes, I am a liberal. In terms of the Democratic Party platform of the past 30 years–not really. Branding wise I’d fit best into the Conserva-Dem bucket.
I spent a few years in the Tidewater area myself–kinda Red state but certainly not to the intensity of the Southern gulf coast states.
@Erik: Im not exactly sure of your ask? You’re looking for Theory or Tactics/Methods?
@Jim Brown 32: @Erik:
This was a good paper I read recently–even more shocking that it came from Marine Corps University and wasn’t written in crayon LoL
https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/1_Forest.pdf
In terms of the basics–influence operations begin with collecting survey data on the target audience which is readily available an almost any population now because of smart phones. Once you have that–you decide on narratives that exploit vulnerabilities discovered in your survey data.
The principles of influence remain rooted in the standard logical fallacies. Methods that leverage those principles? Ancient Chinese Secret…. If you want to start your own study–I would recommend Neuro-Linguistic Programming & Milton Erickson
@Jim Brown 32: thanks for the link. I guess for the moment I’m looking to shortcut directly to immediately employable methods/tactics, although longer term I’m much more interested in the theory so I can effectively modify/develop my own tactics. I’ve read some NLP and am familiar with motivational interviewing. I’m more familiar with Milton Erickson from his work developing clinical hypnosis. So as I’m typing perhaps what I really need is how to determine *what* to target rather than *how* to target it. Determining what their vulnerabilities are and which vulnerabilities to best exploit may be my missing link.
PS Marines don’t actually use crayons all that much because they stain the teeth
@Mikey: Our H-Mart (the closest one is in Tigard, OR, a Portland suburb) doesn’t have either one. 🙁 That’s what I get for shopping with a bunch of granola leftists. (On the other hand, the jap chae and kim chee and haemul jeon are great.)
@Erik: Well that’s sort of two fold…all of it subjective and requires A-B testing for effect. For individuals…you’re targeting an “in” to establish trust or sense of common cause/interest. Trump for examples is clearly target-able thorough flattery…that’s your way into his psyche. Of course, Trump himself is also a master of NLP so the “in” is not as enduring as one would like which makes him different than a normal example. For most people the end “in” can be nostalgia, common interest, fear, you name it.
For groups of people, you are targeting influences. There is a whole cottage industry of ‘influencers’ on social media that marketers are using to target audiences because its an easy button to push and requires less data collection. You feed them the goals you want and they translate it to their tribe. The trick is to understand who the influences are and the “in” for the influencers–if its simply money in exchange for selling product–easy day. If its for social and political influence–that is a lot of shaping and messaging that must go into building the right themes and targeting those message to the right people. Both the audience and the influencer have to be worked simultaneously in this case.
@Jim Brown 32: I suppose I should have realized that this would be complicated, since there are actual professionals that do this and I’m just dabbling. Clearly I have some work to do, but you’ve given me a good leg up. Thanks for taking the time to educate me