First off, Jeff's just dead wrong when he says that "fucking" isn't nuanced. He damn well
used in a nuanced way - unless he thinks that the existence of humanity is a bad thing itself. Because he used it as an insulting and extreme cuss word, so if it does not admit of nuance, that requires that he likewise think of copulation as something negative and undesirable. QED.
Secondly, this whole fracas - Jeff's outburst, and the responses pro and con - demonstrates the kind of blinkered, binary thinking that allows the adversary to rule. I laud those like colleen and others who did strive valiantly to interject sanity. Lord knows I've tried as well over the past weeks.
Thirdly, I'm jolly well going to post on whatever I like. I was working on this discussion of polls before I read the diaries, and they just make it clearer that this is all the more necessary. -If you just don't like it - well, take a page out of your own book, Jeff et all, and, as they say on ffnet, JUST DON'T READ!!!!1!1
Exerpted from Nothing New: Putting Out More Flags: The GOP's strategy w/re polls, and how it works, or,
Why I'm not afraid of the Digital Brownshirts
These guys, Yoshida and Misha and Robinson and the rest, they're no midwestern rebel polygamists standing off the government from their ranch-bunkers (until they're overrun by superior firepower.) They may glorify the Militia Ideal - which is the dangerous element, but it isn't them.
They're the sort of punks who might, as a gang of five, stomp a man to death for suspicion of being Jewish or gay, or rape a woman with recourse to Rohypnol or spiked punch, or among the elders of FR and LGF, send the anonymous letters so beloved of nice American hausfraus, or make threatening phone calls as their husbands were wont to do.
But as a fighting force? I've read lots of first-hand accounts of what it is to be in a resistance, in a civil war, even to be in a revolutionary mob rioting in the streets. It takes a great deal of cunning, of the ability to eat tyrants' shit in silence without even an angry look, to put up with extreme physical hardship in patience, to take orders, to assess situations logically, to avoid attracting attention - and not to lose one's nerve when things get sticky. It's very lonely, often.
Now remember the story of Theoria and his turning the tables on the lying creep who pretended to be a sympathetic New Yorker with a room to let. Look at the quickness with which Misha caved and claimed that his directions of personal vengeance were postmodern satire; at the speed with which Dr. Nutjob Corsi was cast off; at how fast Robinson crawled into his portable hole and closed it behind him. DenBeste has stopped blogging because it's no fun when real people take exception with you calling them wicked fools in the abstract. LGF has never gone near Kathryn Cramer again, after the legal guns were drawn.
Moral of these stories: They feed on fear. They need to hunt in packs. Light and resistance throw them into disarray - and particularly mocking them back as well as bringing threat in turn against them. ("The devil, the prowde spirite, cannot endure to be mocked.")
They might be able to be turned into a regular fighting force the way that all kinds of young punks were on both sides in WWII - by rigorous training in boot camp, where many of them would undoubtedly be washed back a flight, (and washed back and washed back) until they learned some prudence and restraint.
Otherwise, they're only a danger if we reach a point where our own Kristallnacht is routine. That's where punks or any age are deadly, beause there is official tolerance of punks-in-packs and intollerance of those who fight back. Limbutt would have been right at home outside the jail in To Kill A Mockingbird safely ensconced in the mob of fat middle-aged racists.
But are we as a nation at that point? Things are bad, no denying. But the fact that the Establishement has to hide and waffle about its racism, that when it's brought to light they disavow real fast, that they pretend it's not them, even when confronted with the documentation, and this is true and has been for years. They may say they speak for the Heartland. They may even think that. But that's because they hit the cuttoff button whenever there's dissent.
One thing else, is that they've been predicting the coming race wars for half a century now. Instead, we have ever-increasing racial mixing, being accepted in the media, which is what is driving them to new heights of panicked fury. There's a wolf-crying aspect to it, and the fact that ever more people have inlaws of another shade of fleshtone.
Yo, punks! We've got your number, and we're not going to let you slink off to your holes and keep spouting hate speech unchallenged and unremarked. We're the barbarians from the hinterlands, and we dont' care how etiquette has demanded that things are done within the Beltway or on Madison Avenue in the past. We made your hero Limbutt cry, and we'll make you little goblins cry "uncle", too.
Putting Out More Flags - The Purpose of Polls
The big problem I'm still seeing is that even with the newest revelations about how Gallup is admittedly partisan and is using algorithms or whatever to oversample likely Republican voters and undercount likely Democratic voters, along with all the other poll methodology jiggering, - people are still thinking of polls as if they were good science.
As if they were meant to discover, as if they were supposed to reflect objective truth. They're not. They're a propaganda tool. They're part ad for the PTB, they're part cheerleeding squad for wavering supporters of the Establishment, and they're part disinformation campaign designed to destabilize the Opposition.
The purpose of the poll is to convince readers that the pollsters' desired outcome is inevitable.
The parallel to this in science is a medical test done by a drug company where they suppress all the methodology and the bits about how after the six months reported in the study, a bunch of people died from liver failure.
It isn't like a genuine fact-finding expedition by enthusiasts with a drive to learn as much as they can so they know how to proceed, and so are committed to making as thorough and exact a study of, say, all the bacteria in a watersource. It's more like a study commissioned by a company that wants to "prove" that their plant's wastewater emmision isn't hurting the town's water supply.
Two consequences of this, disinformation wise, that we have control over. We don't have any direct control over those people who just "want to vote for the winnner" - I don't personally know any of these, and I suspect if I did that their mindset would be so alien to me that there would be no way for me to communicate with them. We have only direct control over our own beliefs and attitudes and behaviors.
Some have said that the polls which "show" Bush neck-and-neck with Kerry show them how stupid/hopeless/wicked the American PeopleTM are. This makes them despair and say more and more scornful things - playing right into the "Elitist Liberal" trap that the Neocons have been building up for the past 30 or so years. It's bad from a moral point of view, of course - and it's bad from a tactical standpoint. Why? Because it alienates potential sympathizers. It drives away those who could be brought into association with us, those who are wavering from the certainty
It is the opposite of the mindset that has produced the heartening dKos diaries about how successful conversions have been made - slowly, patiently, one-on-one or in small groups, by listening to the others' concerns, then asking key questions, providing direction for them to go and fact-check for themselves, instead of bludgeoning with indoctrination. It doesn't work for everyone - it wouldn't work for Freepers, frex - because there is no magic bullet, no "conversion gas" taht can be sprayed over a crowd.
This is Socratic method politics. It's something that will only work with people who are of good will and some level of critical analysis - and those are the ones most likely to be alienated, driven off, and forced back into the arms of the enemy (theirs too though they do not know it) by this sort of inflammatory "Undecided Mouth-Breathers/I hate the fat TV watching herds" ranting.
And since we know the polls are rigged, why would anyone look at them for anything but a measure as to the slant of the media pushing them?
Here's a better gauge - though it too as I shall explain is filled with uncertain variables.
How many signs are you seeing in your neighborhood for one candidate or another? Bumperstickers on cars? Lots of one, or about equal?
Signs and stickers aren't a hard-and-fast measure. Some cultures go for political signs in a big way, some of them place them with gusto (cough*Rome*cough) and some of them are too laid-back to put up signs and other public displays of allegiance. It doesn't mean they don't care. It's local style. Same with holiday lights.
But if you're seeing more of one than another, it indicates definitely something. Now, it can indicate that one is more popular than the other - but that assumes no outside interference. We have lots of anecdotes of Virtue Party supporters going around and tearing down Democratic signs, peeling bumper stickers off cars, even keying cars. There are a lot fewer anecdotes of the reverse. (One Republican candidate got caught with his rival's signs in the back of his pickup, according to the police report, who let him go the first time he did it.)
Sometimes this is tactical - take down the opposition signs (in Rome they just glue new ones over them until they're six and ten layers deep) to make it seem like your candidate is more popular. Sometimes it's deeply personal ideology - the outrage that anyone else would dare to challenge your guy.
So more Bush signs could mean, not that Bush is more popular, but that they're constantly pulling down Kerry ones, as Democratic householders have reported happens on a daily basis in some areas. This betokens desperation, as well as a total rejection of the traditional principles of free speech and fair play that we like to think of as an American trademark. If they were either confident or ethical they would ignore rather than suppress.
OTOH, we don't go around doing that much, and we frown on it when we hear about it happening to others, rather than encouraging it (because of ethics, not because of confidence, which latter problem si why I'm writing this), so more Kerry signs is probably a good gauge as to greater real popularity. Bumper stickers, less vulnerable (tho' not invulnerable) to being taken off, may be a better barometer than yard signs - except as we've talked about here in the last few days, you don't know if people in the menshevik party feel too intimidated by fear of vandalism or job loss to display them.
And yet, over and over, from the deep south and the midwest, there are increasing stories of more and more Kerry-Edwards signs going up, and no Bush-Cheney signs to be seen - even in wealthier neighborhoods to back the anecdotes of those whose friends and relatives and coworkers regret having voted for Bush in 2000.
That Nob Hill is no longer defiantly Red, but now also showing a distinct Blue presence, is a very good thing. Remember what I've been saying about how it's going to be critical to convert the Establishment, as much as possible? -It's possible. Not everyone is stupid, ignorant, irretrievably lazy. Those guys (and gals) are just noisy and shameless - like a yardful of yap-yap dogs, they'll deafen you.
But they're Attack Poodles, don't forget.