Alec Baldwin, Rosie, Cher and Streisand all promised to leave the country if George Bush was elected. Now you can send them a reminder!

-- Uncle Bob (unclb0b@aol.com), December 28, 2000

Answers

Sure-Large scale invasion of privacy by jerk-offs who pretend to find privacy important.

Yes, this is a brilliant idea. Typical of the tactics of this rag. Anyone who supports such nonsense can never again be said to support the rights of individuals to be left alone.

-- SydBarrett (dark@side.moon), December 28, 2000.

Hey Syd, it's only $5.95! Such a deal.

-- (nemesis@awol.com), December 28, 2000.

And as Syd would have said if Gore had won and some notable Republicans had promised to leave the country, "Oh well, they're only Republicans, who would expect them to tell the truth anyway?"

Right, Syd?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 28, 2000.

Shame on you Syd, shame.

Good thing Flint is around to interpret others "hidden" deeper meanings and intents.

Hell I was fooled, I actually thought Syd was commenting on Newsmax.

We should all know better. Flint was right on Y2k. Flint is so right he knows anothers opinions before they do. Guy is a wizard.

-- Doc Paulie (fannybubbles@usa.net), December 28, 2000.

I don't want to send them a reminder. I just want them to leave like they said they would.

These socialist entertainers are the biggest hypocrites on the planet. They belittle the capitalist system, while they use that very system to enrich themselves.

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), December 28, 2000.

uh, J:

In your entire life, have you ever not done something you said you would do?

Flint:

?

-- SydBarrett (dark@side.moon), December 28, 2000.

Syd,

Sure. I just have never made a statement so publicly (on national television/in the national media) from a position of such notoriety (popular entertainer) and then not backed it up by following through with it.

No big deal either way. Either they leave like they said that they would and we are rid of them, or they stay, and they show the whole country what blatant hypocrites they are.

My guess is that they will all stay. My hope is that forevermore their words mark them for the phony hypocrites that they are.

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), December 28, 2000.

If they are gonna talk the talk I can't help but hope they will walk the walk.Maybe they could go and start a mini-mega Branson,only in Budapest or Chad,and no,I have no ill feelings towards Budapest or Chad.

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), December 28, 2000.

Syd, are you *ever* in a good mood?

(smile)

-- 999666333 (what@ever.huh), December 28, 2000.

Yea I don't think they can walk the walk, too bad. It would be nice to be rid of Cher and Barbra.

What I don't get is how they can claim to be such liberals. I truly don't get it. Here's an industry that so blatantly discriminates against blacks, women (unless of course they've had a boob job), old, fat, you name it. If it doesn't fit the white beautiful mold, then it's not promoted. Gays were banished from hollywood, Rock Hudson case in point, hid in the closet. The director's couch was used to keep women in their place. I don't get it. How can they claim they are for civil rights, equal opportunity, and ignore very talented minorities because of their skin color or sex or looks.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), December 28, 2000.

Syd:

I was just noticing that for you, honesty is critical when Republicans make promises. But suddenly *privacy* is most important when Democrats break their promises. Ain't prejudice amazing?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 28, 2000.

For Flint, Uncle Bob, Ain't, Maria, etc.....

You can learn a lot on the Internet. Just yesterday, for example, I learned that Gore voters associate with criminals, that Gore himself is gay, and that if Bush becomes president then a group of liberal financiers is planning to crash the stock market. There it was, in one place: The Conservatives' Greatest Hits.

And those were the polite ones. We have a serious problem in this country, regardless of who becomes president -- a cult that conducts its political life in an aggressive and antirational jargon. On many occasions here I have dissected the workings of this jargon, but now I want to focus on the cultivated use of jargon for purposes of emotionally abusing people. My long message about the hate mail that I've received since I started covering the election controversy brought quite a bit of testimony on the matter from people who are distressed at the name-calling, disregard for reality, and all-around dehumanizing scorn that they suffer from the members of this cult. Many of these folks reported feeling all alone with this abuse, and they spoke poignantly about being trapped in overwhelming conservative parts of the country where the cult and its jargon dominate public discussion to the exclusion of everything else.

Most of these people didn't even think of themselves as liberals -- at least not until they learned, for example, that Al Gore didn't claim to have invented the Internet, wasn't lying when he described his childhood farm chores, didn't grow up in a luxury hotel, didn't falsely claim to have been the model for Love Story, didn't hold a fund-raiser at a Buddhist temple, didn't propose abolishing the automobile, didn't propose to outlaw guns, and so on. They had been genuinely shocked to discover that the cult members had been lying about these things, and they were even more shocked to discover that they and everyone around them had been living in a media bubble whose ranting and raving had shut off the oxygen from even these very simple truths. Some of them described the paralyzing despair that they experienced during the post-election controversy when they found themselves surrounded by angry and irrational people who display no respect for logic.

It is important to be clear about some things. Not all conservatives participate in this cult or speak its jargon, and not all speakers of the jargon engage in personal abuse. I have received many messages from rational people who treat me like a human being even as they express conservative disagreement with my views. I have also received many messages that labor to twist the facts of the election controversy, as if they were taking the opportunity to sharpen their sophistical skills on a real live college professor, without being especially rude about it. And I have received some messages of crude name-calling and insults that required no particular skill or cultivation and could simply be the product of a deranged mind or a bad day. Those are not the people that I am talking about, or that my correspondents were talking about. After all, I've expressed myself strongly on some controversial political issues, and it stands to reason that someone somewhere is going to get mad.

No -- I am talking here about people who are emotionally abusive, and who have obviously invested effort in learning a whole technology of emotional abuse that they are deploying in a systematic way for (what they regard as) political purposes. I am talking about people who express themselves in snide, sarcastic, scornful tones, who express themselves in innuendoes, who invest incredible effort in provoking an intemperate response so that they can portray themselves as victims, and who engage in complicatedly indirect forms of rhetoric that deniably presuppose things that are false.

Let us consider a few examples of the phenomena I am talking about. This message was in response to my essay on the hate mail I've been getting:

so, let's see. If we disagree with your spin and erroneous conclusions, we are sending "hate mail"? my god, what hypocracy, what insular thinking (and frnakly, I worry about using that last word)

My problem with a passage like this, I repeat, is not exactly that it is nasty, but that it is nasty in a stereotyped and cultivated way. It is part of a technology of nastiness. Let's consider how it works. Start with the first sentence. In the jargon, expressions like "let me see if I've got this straight" are used to preface a distorted paraphrase of an opponent's words. This is a matter of routine; it's part of what a linguist would call the "phasal lexicon" of the new jargon. In fact, "so, let's see" does two kinds of work: it prefaces a distortion of what I said, and it pretends that the distortion is what I said. It twists reason, and projects that twisting onto me. I, of course, never said that everyone who disagrees with me is sending hate mail. Never said it, never meant it, never implied it, never presupposed it, never thought it.

And this is not just any distortion. It's a type that is also very common in the new jargon: someone sends me hate mail that expresses disagreement with my views, and so rather than acknowledge the hateful elements of that mail, my correspondent here pretends that I have associated all disagreement with hate. Underneath, in other words, it's a matter of associationism. Associationism deletes all of logical connections among ideas, and instead works to create certain strategically chosen associations among concepts, and to break others. The first step, very often, is to project the very fact of engaging in associationism into one's opponent: by writing about messages of disagreement that were hateful, it is said, "they" are the ones who associated disagreement with hate.

Notice, too, the rhetorical question ("If we disagree with your spin and erroneous conclusions, we are sending 'hate mail'?"). This is also common. It's a way of making an obviously false assertion -- in this case, the assertion that I have said that everyone who disagrees with me has ispo facto sent hate mail -- without admitting to it. Then the "my god", etc, which assumes an answer to the rhetorical question, as if the rhetorical question's proffered paraphrase were something that I said. Then, of course, the flood of nasty language.

The same writer continues as follows:

Yep, you must really enjoy democracy if you feel that Al's team is absolutely with clean hands while W is totally wrong.

Having worked himself into a state of righteous indignation, he starts in with the sarcasm: "yep". Then another characteristic pattern of the new jargon: reframing issues in terms of straw-man extremes. He ascribes to me a view that is framed in terms of absolutes. Notice how the straw man is amplified even further through imbalance: it's Al's team versus W (alone). Notice, too, how this view is not quite ascribed to me in a straightforward way; he doesn't say "You believe that Al's team is absolutely clean and W is totally wrong". Rather, he puts this proposition, for which he has presented no evidence, into an "if", thus sheltering it from the rational examination that it would invite if he had squarely asserted it. This is part of what I mean when I say that the jargon is subrational: it continually places its assertions out of the reach of rational inquiry, either as innuendoes, or rhetorical questions, or presuppositions, or beneath ambiguities that also admit trivial interpretations. I'm not saying that this is a conscious strategy; rather, it is a property of a way of speaking that one cultivates in the same way that one acquires any way of speaking -- by listening to the radio, reading pundits, rehearsing lines with other members of the cult, and so on.

He continues as follows:

Phil, this diatribe can only be the result of lack of sleep, or some other medical condition. Why are you so logical, informative and interesting on non-political topics, but rant uncontrollably, name calling, ignoring facts, hypocracy and worse when your man is losing the election, despite Bill Daley's best efforts to the contrary?

Lack of sleep is a medical condition? Blah blah blah -- more broad accusations without evidence. Never mind that I have been offering pretty much the same analysis of the decline of public reason in the United States for a long time, regardless of who has been ahead in the polls.

Then note the reference to Bill Daley. It is a recurring theme of the current party line that Bill Daley's father engaged in political corruption in Chicago, and that somehow Bill Daley is doing the same thing. What's noteworthy here is that this slander has been repeated so often in the press that it is now a rhetorical commonplace -- something that can be indexed, alluded to, simply by mentioning Bill Daley's name in an appropriate context. This too is part of a broad pattern in the workings of the jargon. The jargon is not something static; it is very much a process, and through this process the cult members work hard at extending the underlying principles to every topic, every word, every remaining holdout of rational thought. One method by which they do this is, as analysts of propaganda have always said, repetition. But the word "repetition" does not fully capture it -- it's too static a concept. The point of repetition is not just to say the same thing over and over, but to say the same thing in fewer and fewer words, making it more and more of a commonplace, so that it can be alluded to in ever briefer and more indirect ways, so that the very mention of Bill Daley's name can become a shorthand code for corruption, and deniably so, even though Bill Daley has never even been accused of doing anything wrong beyond choosing the wrong father.

Moving along:

This is NOT hate mail. I don't know you from Adam. I don't HATE your silly conclusions -- the beauty of this country is that we are entitled to hav differences of opinion. But your willingness to ignore facts, well, that is scary.

Observe how my author, who is manifestly engaged in writing hate mail, sets about redefining the term "hate mail" so as to disassociate it from himself. In order to write hate mail, by his definition, he must know me as an individual well enough to have a particularized hatred of me. But this is not what "hate mail" means. A letter of anti- Semitic diatribes mailed at random to someone named "Blumenthal" who is picked from the phone book would be hate mail. (And this happens.) But now this guy has taken the phrase "hate mail" and twisted it. Note how this works: if I wanted to make claims about what the phrase "hate mail" really means, there is no authority to which I could turn -- no dictionary, no official body of scholars. That's part of how he can get away with it, and it's also one of the ways in which this kind of rant induces feelings of helplessness in the people upon whom it is inflicted. It's destructive: in twisting words, this guy is twisting something that is common property, degrading part of the collectively inherited culture. The element of language that he is wrecking lives nowhere else except in the shared culture.

Then, this thing about "ignoring facts". You've read his whole message -- he does not present a single fact that I have supposedly ignored. The phrase "ignoring facts" is part of the rhetoric of public relations. Facts (which in practice need not be factual, but never mind about that for now) are what you use to create an association between two concepts, or else to break an association that you do not like. Thus, for example, he attributes to me an association between Gore's team and clean hands, and between Bush and total wrongness. The "ignored facts" that he has in mind surely take the form of unclean things that Gore or his team have done, or right things that Bush has said. The cult of jargon is not indifferent to facts; quite the contrary it invests tremendous effort in building and circulating them, exactly so that they will be ready when a mental association needs to be built or broken. To the associationistic way of thinking, one single fact is enough to prove an argument, exactly because all of the positions have been reframed in extreme ways. Thus, for example, if I demonstrate that the Bush campaign has been engaged in a campaign of fabrications against Gore, to the associationistic mind it suffices to refute my argument if one can produce a single example, just one, of Bush saying something that's right or Gore saying something that's wrong. Never mind that one could use the same logic to "prove" exactly the reverse set of associations.

Finally this, in response to my discussion of the Republican riot in the Miami government building:

By the way, I viewed all the video you cited, as well as other sources. Check out some of the FLA based news sources. Methinks you will agree that your initial description was inaccurate, shall we say?

More snideness, more lack of evidence. To be honest, despite his confident prediction, I haven't the faintest idea what he is talking about. The video I cited, which is only a few seconds long and shows only a small portion of the events in question, shows running, screaming protesters knocking down a cameraman and pounding their fists against windows and furniture. The Florida based news sources that I cited in abundance on my list describe a great deal of other mayhem organized by the same parties. But I want particularly to remark on the word "inaccurate". This is another term of art in the public-relations vocabulary of the jargon. In the jargon usage, "inaccurate" does not mean "false". Rather, PR distinguishes between "messages" and "facts". "Messages" are strategically vague, and someone else's "message" is ispo facto "inaccurate" if it conflicts with your own. Of course, you can't tell from this guy's e-mail that he meant "inaccurate" in that sense; it is simply that he is consistently using a lexicon and a mode of reasoning that derives from public relations, and "inaccurate" is part of that. The lexicon is like a toolkit, and every word in the toolkit has a function in the rhetorical technology of the jargon.

Let us consider another message that I was fortunate to receive in the course of the current controversy:

Subject: Those 13 "myths"

You are REALLY desperate if you think the American public are stupid enough not to see through this deliberately misinformative "spin". You are still feverishly campaigning for Gore and the Democratic Party at the expense of truth and justice. Get over it, the time for campaigning is done! Oh, and Leave the exaggerations to Gore himself please, he's at least funnier with them. You assume too much when you assume we don't know and understand the undoctored, unspun facts.

I'm sure you understand that to assume makes and ASS out of U and ME, to which I say make an ASS of Uself as much as you please, but leave ME out of it!

As the subject line indicates, this message was apparently sent in response to Rich Cowan's "13 myths" article presenting the facts that conflict with both the Gore and Bush camps' mythologies in the early days of the Florida election conflict. I have no idea who the writer is, or even his gender, but I'll say "he" because almost all of my hate mail on political topics comes from men. I'm not even clear why this guy sent his message to me; I didn't write the "13 myths" piece, which is clearly credited to Rich. I did forward that piece to my list, and a couple of URL's to my Web site appear at the bottom of the piece. The point is, this guy sent a message filled with harsh and abusive verbiage out of a clear blue sky to a complete stranger who didn't even write the article that he is ranting about. This kind of random abuse is not uncommon, and it is certainly part of the political strategy of the jargon, much of whose purpose is to make sane people feel so traumatized that they will keep their mouths shut.

Now, as to the substance of the message. Let's start with the word "desperate". This word derived from the party line of that particular week (I got the message on November 30th). Followers of Gore (which he imagines me to be, despite the criticism of Gore in the "13 myths" piece) were held during that week to exhibit "desperation" in pretty much everything they did, and this word was applied to me in at least two dozen messages. When the party line moved along to other words, so did the messages. Yet in that week, the word "desperate" had been repeated so many times, through so many of the literally hundreds of pundits who speak and write the jargon in the national and regional media, that everyone was familiar with it. It was a commonplace, a topos, but a bad sort of topos, one that achieved its effect not through its novelty, freshness, precision, or aptness but precisely through its bluntness, by bludgeoning. Everyone who was attacked with the word "desperate" during that week was made to feel the combined blows of a million abusive cultists, all simultaneously dehumanizing their opponents as if they were a single assailant.

The word "spin" is used in the same way -- not as the flavor of the week in this case, but as a trope, that was floated during the impeachment controversy, and that the practitioners of the jargon have worked to attach to their opponents at every opportunity ever since. (Another example, less obvious, is the word "attack", which some "journalists" associate with Al Gore's name every chance they get, regardless of whether he has said anything that deserves such a strong word.)

The message goes on to attribute a mental state to me; I am held to have engaged in "deliberately misinformative 'spin'", and to regard the American public as stupid enough to believe my conscious lying. This, too, is very common. In order to dehumanize their opponents, it is not enough for cultists to refute their opponents' arguments; rather, the liberals, like Satan himself, must be made out as liars. This is the deep meaning of the false accusations that Gore is a liar. If you persuade yourself that your opponent is a liar -- that his whole being is in its very essence a lie -- then you no longer feel any responsibility to take what he says seriously or accountability to the reason in his words. And so my assailant does not accuse me of being mistaken, or stupid, or a dupe, or careless. I am not even accused of deceiving myself. No, I am accused of deliberately and consciously lying. About what, you might ask? He never tells me -- having crafted my lies deliberately, he imagines, I already know.

The idea that putative liberals regard the American public as stupid is itself a common conceit of the new jargon. It is something that Rush Limbaugh says constantly.

Next, I am told, I am "still feverishly campaigning for Gore and the Democratic Party at the expense of truth and justice". Observe the use of the abstract words "truth" and "justice". Here we have more associationism. The new jargon breaks all thought into atomic elements like these and then arranges them with vague associations and strong emotions. So I am not simply telling particular lies -- I am engaged in a generalized war on truth and justice. By now you have probably long forgotten what I actually said that brought us to these primitive sentiments, but that doesn't matter. The end-point of a rant in the new jargon is always the primal scene of the Satanic liberal engaged in an apocalyptic attack on the broadest, vaguest, most emotionally charged symbols in the world, in this case truth and justice. The logic that connects anything that I actually said to this primitive scene is completely beside the point. As a moral matter it is certainly relevant whether the accusation is true; there does exist such a thing as engaging in a way or truth and justice, and in fact I think that my assailant is doing just that. The point is that he has assailed me in such terms on no rational grounds, and to the extent that his argument has any defeasible sense it is not true.

We are truly staring in the face of madness here, and in a healthy world nobody would even read such things without having an appropriate mental health specialist on call. Note, too, that it is not just my own evil self who is set against truth and justice, but Gore and the Democrats: the situation is constructed such that advocacy for Gore and the Democrats (which, you will recall, is not what the "13 myths" piece was) is ipso facto the opposite of truth and justice. That is the emotional structure of the rant.

Next comes the phrase "Get over it". This is part of the rhetoric by which one sneers at people for being "victims". Of course, the jargon recognizes all sorts of legitimate victims: people who are victims of liberals. Victims of conservatives, however, are harshly instructed to quit crying and get over it. (I've been accused of "crying" many times in the last month. I feel sorry for these people; I can only imagine what their childhoods were like.) In this case, the theme is not elaborated. "Get over it" has itself been repeated often enough that it is a taken-for-granted element of the rhetorical background. Nobody needs to explain any more how disgusting it is to pose as a "victim"; an aggressor need only invoke a little phrase like this one, and all of the scornful lectures of the past will come flooding back.

Next I am instructed in sarcastic tones to "leave the exaggerations to Gore himself" -- "Gore's exaggerations" having been one of the central messages of the Bush campaign. I have already discussed in detail the disturbed nature of this campaign, in which Gore was falsely accused on many occasions of being a liar. This particular version of the story simply invokes Gore's supposed exaggerations as a commonplace, and heaps on some extra ridicule. But I do think it's worth a moment to focus on the last sentence:

You assume too much when you assume we don't know and understand the undoctored, unspun facts.

The "13 myths" piece, as you may recall, listed various myths that had been put about by both campaigns, and responded to them each with abundantly documented facts. Now, some people responded to that piece by arguing at great and twisted length that these facts were partial or incomplete or did not establishe what Rich was supposely trying to establish by them. But this guy doesn't go into any of that; that I am a liar is too obvious to need proof, in his view. Instead, he sneers at me that I falsely assume that "we" (who?) don't know "the undoctored, unspun facts". This is a fancy thing to say. The "Gore's exaggerations" campaign was a tidal wave of non-facts, which is to say actual, real lies -- Things That Were Not True. And the facts in the "13 myths" piece were, as I say, both abundantly documented and not even contested. The situation, in short, is precisely the reverse of what my assailant alleges them to be. Yet he is ranting at me about "the undoctored, unspun facts". This phrase must be significant. What are "doctored" facts? What are "spun" facts? As so often in the jargon, each of these two phrases is ambiguous. They could mean that my "facts" are factually false, that is, that they are not facts. Or it could mean that the world contains two categories of facts: those that are doctored or spun, and those that are not. In other words, the possibility is held open here that the facts adduced in the "13 myths" piece really are facts, but that they are nonetheless, in some sense, not legitimate, not real, not part of the correct factual world. It is hard to know.

And to be honest it is not worth investigating. The reality is that this gentleman is doing what he is falsely accusing me of doing, and doing it at the top of his lungs, and is assisted in doing it by a rhetorical technology that makes it easy to lie and to falsely accuse others of lying, without ever saying anything that risks being subjected to rational investigation.

For the sake of completeness, my correspondent riffs on the "assume" theme using a commonplace of vulgar abuse. This last bit is noteworthy, if only slightly, by his instruction that I "leave [him] out of it!". In what way have I included him in it? I have never sent him anything. Notice, once again, the projection: he is the one who sent unsolicited junk to me.

Let us consider one final message. This one was evidently in response to my discussion of the quotation-out-of-context of Paul Begala by a series of widely-published jargon-slingers. You will recall that a conservative pundit had asserted that the Bush-voting states in the south and middle of the country represented "family values" where the Gore-voting states in the northeast and west represented "entitlement". Begala responded to this ugly regional stereotyping by explaining that the situation was more complicated, that every region had good and bad, and that various bad things had also occured in the southern and middle states. The point of Begala's comments was plainly to explode stereotypes, and he was polite about it, praising the conservative pundit in question despite his calumny. A series of pundits then took Begala's words out of context to suggest that he had stereotyped the *Bush-supporting* states, as opposed to offering a balanced view in response to stereotyping of the Gore-supporting states. This tactic was the purest projection, and especially so given that Begala's mis- quoted words were widely put about as reasons why conservatives must act like the vicious animals that the Democrats had supposedly shown themselves to be. In response to this explanation, someone who I know nothing about (and who is not on my mailing list) responded as follows:

Are you serious? You suggest that characterizing one region of the county as believing in entitlements and another region being murders and racists as having equal weight. Get real. The only thing viscious about an entitlement, is that it takes away from producers without their consent and gives to non-producers.

Also, I think it hilarious that a Lib is crying about Republicans falsely acusing Democrats of wrong doing to cover their equal sin. Bill Clinton invented the tatic, (with apologies to Stalin).

By now you are familiar with this tone of scornful irrationality, which pervades American political culture like a 60-cycle hum. People can address their fellow citizens in this way with impunity, with no fear of criticism, but only so long as they are conservatives. Liberals do engage in their own trash-talk, of course, but it is conservatives who can carry on in this harshly abusive tone of voice without anyone calling them on it.

Now, it would be one thing if we had simply learned to screen out a bad attitude. "Oh, you know, they're like that. Just ignore them." But it's worse than that. In ignoring the awful tone of voice, we also ignore the howling unreason that boils below it, and that gets insidiously into our minds through repeated pelting with it. So it's important that we slow the rhetoric down so that the irrationality becomes visible for what it is.

He says this:

You suggest that characterizing one region of the county as believing in entitlements and another region being murders and racists as having equal weight. Get real. The only thing viscious about an entitlement, is that it takes away from producers without their consent and gives to non-producers.

Never mind the guy's bad grammar, or the bad spelling in the other messages. That's not the important thing; besides, my own messages to this list often have bits of bad grammar as a result of hurried editing. What's important is the poor logic of the accusation.

Let's start with the second part. To paraphrase the tone of the accusation that the pundits had issued against Begala, I had used the word "vicious" to describe the original stereotyping of liberal states in terms of "entitlement". But this guy addresses a different question, whether an attitude of entitlement, or more precisely its implementation in government policy, is itself vicious -- switching the issue, in other words, from the viciousness of the stereotypers to the putative viciousness of the people who were being stereotyped. That particular bit of bad logic, however, is probably just sloppy. Despite the slickness of the change of topic, I'm not sure that this particular bit of sophistry is characteristic of the new jargon in general. At least I'm not aware of it being a pattern.

The sophistry of the first part, however, is a different story. I am accused of having equated morally unequal stereotypes, that of Begala and that of the pundit to whom Begala was responding. The accusation only makes sense if did in fact Begala characterize an entire region of the country as being murderers and racists. But (1) Begala did not do that, and (2) my whole point was that Begala did not do that, so that logically I could not be suggesting anything that presupposes it.

The illogic here was so severe that I couldn't help inquiring: but Begala did not say that, I said. That was something that was imposed on him through quotation out of context. He responded as follows:

Paul Begala (excuse the spelling) wasn't trying to make a clever and cerebral comment. I truly believe that this is the way the man thinks. Furthermore, painting people in certain states or regions as racists and bigots is exactly what he wants to do, because he knows it is devisive. That's the way his ilk work. Divide people, by lying and scaring them. Then use them.

The argument is no longer that Begala stereotyped people, but rather that he harbored a hidden intention of stereotyping them, that being the sort of person he is. The method here is obviously similar to the previous writer's accusation that I was consciously lying, except that it goes a step further: this guy knows what Begala had in mind, even though it was the opposite of what he both said and did. Begala had explicitly denounced regional stereotypes; that was his whole point. But this guy just knows the opposite. He went on to claim that he had not encountered Begala's words through the filtering of the pundits, but had seen their original complete context on MSNBC, and that he had come up with his interpretation independently. I don't doubt this. Part of an apprenticeship in the jargon is learning how to interpret everything you hear and read in terms of projections about the evil intent of the people involved.

Although it's probably too obvious to even deserve mention, I'll mention anyway the projection involved in stereotyping "his ilk" in this ugly fashion, precisely by accusing them of stereotyping -- but not just any stereotyping, but by accusing others of stereotyping. Are you following me? Paul Begala denounces stereotyping, but what he is actually doing (my assailant tells me) is stereotyping people as people who engage in stereotyping. The author is engaged in projection, which involves falsely accusing your opponent of doing what you're doing, except in this case the projection is two-deep: he's stereotyping Begala's ilk as a people who stereotype people as engaging in stereotyping. That probably went by a little too fast, so I'll slow it down: Begala did indeed accuse the pundit in question (Mike Barnicle) of having stereotyped whole regions of the country, but the accusation was a true one. Barnicle did in fact issue such a stereotype. Except now Begala is falsely accused of stereotyping people as stereotyping. By this double-reverse wrist action, my correspondent has been able to duck the whole question of whether Begala's accusation was true, and instead to attribute to him a generalized practice of accusing people of being racists and bigots. He says that Begala's method works "by lying and scaring [people]" -- even though what Begala said was true! Pretty fancy, I have to say. Now, of course this guy didn't invent any of what he's doing. He probably doesn't even understand it very well. The point is, there's no way that he could have produced this incredibly sophisticated paragraph without having worked really hard to cultivate a jargon that would trash the reason of any sane person.

His final comment is a lower-grade version of the basic technique:

Also, I think it hilarious that a Lib is crying about Republicans it falsely acusing Democrats of wrong doing to cover their equal sin. Bill Clinton invented the tatic, (with apologies to Stalin).

Speakers of the jargon very often describe themselves as laughing at their opponents, or more twistedly they accuse their opponents of lacking the capacity to laugh at themselves. Here what he's laughing about is another double-reverse version of the projection tactic: I, a supposed liberal, am "crying" (that word again) about Republican projection, Bill Clinton having really been the one who invented it. (Um, except that maybe Stalin did, or maybe he didn't, or something -- the point simply being to associate Clinton with Stalin somehow.)

Accusing Bill Clinton of having started it is of course a staple of the jargon; it's a variety of projection that requires no real proof, such is the infinite evil of the Great Liar, that infinite sink for all possible projection. (For example, Clinton is often accused of having invented the "permanent campaign", even though the guy who wrote the book of that title did so in 1980.) The fact is, of course, that neither Clinton nor the cult invented the general technique of projection, which is found anywhere and everywhere in human history that people engage in aggression despite a culture that claims to disapprove of it. So I'm not just talking about doubletalk, or unfairness, or false accusations, or bias, or lack of objectivity, or propaganda as general matters. What the modern cult of the American far right did invent was this specific jargon, this specific way of emotionally assaulting people with the aim of crushing their reason and one's own. And it is this jargon that I am trying to flush out into the open.

Now, it may seem like absurd overkill to expend all of this time and intellectual precision analyzing the rantings of people that most of us probably have no respect for anyway. Aren't I swatting flies with cannons here? I'm really not. I'm not writing this message simply because someone said something mean to me and made me feel bad. I'm writing this message, simply put, because the jargon I have been describing is everywhere. If I'm hallucinating, if other people have not been suffering from the assaults of this deranged cult, then my effort is wasted -- nobody will have any idea what I am talking about. But if others have had the same experience, and I believe that millions upon millions of normal Americans have this sort of experience on a regular basis, then my goal is to provide names for things that have heretofore been largely nameless. I do not want this jargon to succeed, and it can only succeed by taking over people's minds. Everyone's mind has its breaking point, and there is no shame in succumbing to the waves of vitriolic nonsense. And there is hope for those who have succumbed, if any humanity remains in them. But hope grows dim with time, and as the madness takes over more and more of our public discourse. When I read the newspaper today, I see dead people. I see vampires feeding on my country. I have no power to make them stop. What I can do, however, is to shine a light on them, and that's what I'm trying to do here.

-- Phil (agre@agre.com), December 28, 2000.

Two questions from where I sit in the peanut gallery:

1. Who is Phil?

2. Why does he decry sarcasm, snideness, etc., yet also says the people doing it are members of a cult? Amounts to just about the same thing to me.

By the way, capnfun's idea was the best: send them all to Chad. The perfect destination given the circumstances! LOL!

-- Buddy (buddydc@go.com), December 28, 2000.

Buddy well put.

Phil, why did you address me? The only thing I can conclude is that you either think I need an English lesson or you think I'm sending you hate mail. If it's the former, thanks but I know exactly what I mean to say when I post. And I'll use whatever jargon that suits me and whether it suggests sarcasm, humor, love, hate, compassion, or any other emotion is up to the reader. When the reader wants further explanation, I'll certainly oblige. If it's the latter, I can assure you that I don't even know your address.

The internet has placed a veil on all our faces. This allows people to become more direct in their conversations, not seeing into the person's eyes. Ken, I believe, started a thread some time ago on this topic. Phil, if you don't want the jargon to succeed then you should recognize it for what it is and ignore it. Posting this long rant doesn't help anyone, especially the ones you addressed.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), December 28, 2000.

Think I'll print out Phil's 'stuff' to help that insomnia problem I've been having lately......zzz zzz zzz........

Deano

-- Deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), December 28, 2000.

Phil, you said,

Start with the first sentence. In the jargon, expressions like "let me see if I've got this straight" are used to preface a distorted paraphrase of an opponent's words.

That would be a valid interpretation ONLY if you were looking to interpret someone's subsequent statement in a negative light, IMHO.

What I find is more often the problem in communication is that people don't "hear" what I'm trying to "say". It is a *good* communication technique to repeat in your own words the point someone makes to you so that you BOTH are sure that you are talking about the same thing, and he can correct you if your interpretation is different. Why don't you give the person the benefit of the doubt and assume that he's really ASKING YOU if he's correctly interpretting your point of view, so as to comment on it appropriately, rather than initially assume he's out to get you?

If you're always looking for the worst possible interpretation, you're sure to find it.

Y2K prepared,

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), December 28, 2000.

FWIW, T he New Conservative Jargon.

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), December 28, 2000.

Phil,

Wow. Lucid, engaging, brilliant. Off target. Misguided. In the end you hint that you realize you may be wrong, did you catch that? I know it's weird to ask someone if they understood something they themselves wrote, but in this case... Also, to re-ask a question someone posted, who are you? Have you been writing/editing this tirade since January 1st, 2000?

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), December 28, 2000.

Phil Agre is a liberal writer.

This is a cut and paste.

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), December 28, 2000.

Always in a good mood. I am not sure who has been posting under my handle the last week, but, as the story goes, I WAS diagnosed with schizophrenia. Maybe it was a little too early to come back from the dark side of the moon, eh? Guess I better go back on that medication.

-- SydShock (dark@side.moon), December 28, 2000.

Hey Syd. I am curious why you took part of my name? I agree with much of what you say, but hey, I am FutureShock. Just who ARE you? No-you don't have to answer that question. It was impolite. Just refrain from taking part of my handle. Thanks, man.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), December 28, 2000.

Hey Future:

Who told you you were seperate from me? Aren't we all connected? Isn't there a bond of consciousness which exists between all souls, so that what is me is in some sense you? So what is the big deal with borrowing pieces of another part of myself? Relax, it will not be long now.

-- SutureBock (dark@side.matter), December 28, 2000.

Yeah, Syd, FutureShock only lets girls use that part of his handle. >:)

-- helenShock (Shock@r.us), December 28, 2000.

syd:

It sounds like you are losing it. Time to step away from the keyboard, lad, and take a deep breath. While I may believe in the collective consciousness, my handle is my handle, and I would appreciate if you left it alone. I like you, guy, most of the time, but this behavior is a little bizarre.

Can you say multiple personality disorder?

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), December 28, 2000.

You raise the blade, you make the change

You re-arrange me 'till I'm sane

You lock the door

And throw away the key

There's someone in my head but it's not me.

And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear

You shout and no one seems to hear

And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes

I'll see you on the dark side of the moon

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), December 28, 2000.

Now this is interesting. Who knows which is which, and who is who? Who are we all at the end of the day?

-- KeepDigging (you@will.find.matter), December 28, 2000.

FutureShock:

You need to be honest with yourself. Can you really say who you are, or who I am? Your anger is misdirected, lad, as I am the keymaster, who travels through your brain, and knows the parts of you not even you know. I was here before there was here, a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

-- SydBarrett (dark@gray.future), December 28, 2000.

And Digging-

Who invited you? Shouldn't you be on some other thread fighting with Frank?

-- SydBarrett (dark@side.moon), December 28, 2000.

This KeepDigging character is getting on my nerves. Another anon- seems the new board is attracting the bunch of them. Who asked ya anyway, dirtman?

Moonie:

I must say, I have no idea what has gotten into you tonight and the last few days-earlier in this thread someone had you pegged right. Smile now, it is not so hard. takes more muscles to frown than to smile.

There-now doesn't that feel better?

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), December 28, 2000.

You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Well you wore out your welcome with random precision,

rode on the steel breeze.

Come on you raver, you seer of visions,

come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), December 28, 2000.

Remember when you were young, You shone like the sun. Shine on you crazy diamond.

Now there's a look in your eyes,

Like black holes in the sky. Shine on you crazy diamond. You were caught on the crossfire

Of childhood and stardom, Blown on the steel breeze. Come on you target for faraway laughter,

Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!

-- (nemesis@awol.com), December 29, 2000.

Shock:

You cannot get away from me. Wherever you go, I will be. I was with you at the first second, and I will be with you at the last breath. When you have sex, with yourself or others, I am there. Whenever you pick your nose or scratch your ass and think no one is looking, I am there. I am your worst nightmare and your fondest dream. I will not go away merely because I make things uncomfortable for you. You cannnot explain me away by saying I am having a few bad days.

Get with the program, new age man. Wake up. WAKE UP. Remember-I'm an asshole, you're an asshole.

-- FydSarrett (gray@matter.side), December 29, 2000.

FS-

And who made you keeper of the board, master of the anons? Who are you to tell me what threads I should be on, and with whom I should be debating? Please, enough with the pomposity. First you go slinking over to Poole's, hiding over there for who knows what reason, and then you come back here, in the cover of night on the superbowl predictions thread, and now throw yourself in the middle of this thread, telling me what to do and say.

Please, dude, get a grip.

-- KeepDigging (you@will.shock.future), December 29, 2000.

Barrett:

You really must be out of your mind-all these years and still the madness. I used to think I saw you in the shadows, laughing with a cheshire cat smile at my youthful awkwardness. I thought that may have been you who told my mother I was getting high at school-How else could she have known? Surely it could not have been one of my friends, right? At times I thought you were the monster under the bed, ready to devour in a moment of blissful poetry-a notion wrapped in Keatsian dreams, my head severed by your scythe-like hands.

But you cannot fool me anymore, Barrett. I know you are an illusion. You pretend to be me, you think that you can take over in moments of stress, usurping my being. But you cannot win anymore. I am on to your game, fella. The cat is out of the bag. The minions of wholeness are reaching out to your mad realm and reeling you back in.

Digging-

You too, imposter. I do not know you as well, but I know you have been lurking. I know you have beenn yearning, itching to be free. And when I was not looking you broke your chains, ran with all abandon to this board and went ripping through people, full of piss and vinegar, as if the years of solitude had just sharpened you more for the fight. I thought I had you down for good, but no, here you are, just flaunting yourself, trying to make me gnash my teeth and writhe in pain-trying to ruin any semblance of normalcy I had-painting me as a no-good, argumentative liberal goon. If you think I will continue to let you roam free, you are truly the crazy one. Back in your cage.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), December 29, 2000.

Malcovich. Malcovich. Malcovich. Malcovich. Malcovich. Malcovich. Malcovich. Malcovich. Malcovich. Malcovich. Malcovich. Malcovich.

-- FutureSydigging (gray@youwill.find.graymatter), December 29, 2000.

Re the posts immediately above: I'll be glad when the schools resume classes........................ some posters have a little too much time on their hands right now.

-- (kb8um8@yahoo.com), December 29, 2000.

Re: Phil's post

Come ON, did ANYONE REALLY read it ALL? Hee hee. I thought it was somethin from Flint so I skimmed over it...took forever just to skim the damn thing, let alone read it.

And...it brought ALL the loonies out.

I think I'll mosey on over to the cyber bar..Pepsi please?

-- sumer (shh@aol.con), December 29, 2000.

I am Dennis Olson.

-- Y2J (Y2J@home.comm), December 29, 2000.

I am Dennis Olson.

-- Y2J (Y2J@home.comm), December 29, 2000.

So am I. Now it has occured to me that we 'both' cant be dennis, so If you would like I propose a joint sharing of the persona involved, oh for a minor fee, of course.

-- sumer (shh@aol.con), December 29, 2000.

I am Alley Oop.

-- Cave Man (caves@are.us), December 29, 2000.

Future:

You are pathetic. I have my own life, dude, and just because you do not like something I say or do, doesn't mean you can make me just go away. I am free, you cannot contain me.

-- KeepDigging (you@will.find.dirt), December 29, 2000.

That's right. Shock man. Just what digging said. You are out of control, way over the boundary. If you do not leave me alone, I am going to do what I said I would never do. You know what that is. I can see you cowaring now, coward. Now go back to your pathetic friends and leave me to my discourse.

-- SydBarrett (dark@side.moon), December 29, 2000.

You are both dead. Figments of some perverse imagination, usurpers of a brillaint mind. You are emotional bandits, bent on destroying images, creating graven images yourself, worshipping deceit like a new God. Off with you both. I am the creator and the destroyer. Not one of you can enter this board but through me. Off with you.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), December 29, 2000.

Why do I have the feeling that someone is writing to himself?

-- (another@brickinthe.wall), December 29, 2000.

FutureShock~

Nice to see you back in full swing! While you are indeed the "creator and the destroyer" perhaps you could also be the amalgamator, weaving the intricacies, (both the positive and the negative aspects of Syd and KeepDigging) back into your special, sensitive being? Each of us brings all we have to the front when presenting ourselves for others views. Fragmenting one's being does not result in experiencing the whole, divine self. You have the ability, and the prescience of mind, to accomplish this task. I know it. We have missed your thought provoking posts. Please bring back your whole self, won't you? Make it so!

-- Aunt Bee (Aunt__Bee@hotmail.com), December 29, 2000.

?

-- Stephen M. Poole (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), December 29, 2000.

SYD/KeepDigging

Rest in peace.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), December 30, 2000.

The sad thing is that this whole thread is more lucid than anything Doc Paulie has posted for the last couple of months.

-- Keep Jogging (Not@gonna.doIt), December 30, 2000.

FS,

If you don't mind my asking, why did you post things as Syd and Keep?

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), December 30, 2000.

Frank:

I guess the only answer I have is I wanted to try on something new. I wanted to have a little fun with the change in forums-I was upset that it happened, so my cyber personality warped a little bit. I, myself, am fine(This is for Bee).

I was not trying to hide, just trying to have a little fun-see how long it would take folks to discover my identity. I believe the earliest to do it was Barry. Some folks I knew personally figured it out-but Barry was the first to postulate it was me.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), January 02, 2001.

Thank you FS, for re-integrating!

I appreciate you letting me know, my friend. I am so glad to hear you are ok! (FYI-some of us figured it out, we just didn't want to "out" you, out of respect!). How ARE you? You have been missed, in case no one has told you! Welcome back!!

-- Aunt Bee (Aunt__Bee@hotmail.com), January 02, 2001.

FS,

I am appalled at such deceit. I can't imagine how you live with yourself.

-- (LeonTrotsky@Wobblies.com), January 02, 2001.

Sorry to interrupt the Future Shock saga, but I'm going to reply to the Phil thing. (bushisms..gotta love 'em)

To the poster of the Phil "thing":

In truth, it is a drag, the entire mud slinging name calling political rampage we must endure once each year, and especially once every four years. It's done on both sides, and it's been done as long as history can recall. It continues to be done because alas, it works with the easily swayed mind of a public that doesn't want to take the time to find out the truth for themselves.

IF only we could have politicians who stick to the issues, who present their side and perhaps list the reasons they think their oppositions reasonings are incorrect. A straight foward plain language synopsis of each persons beliefs, period. If people would read such things, and make a choice, we'd get leaders based on real thought.

Instead, we get sound bites and mouth pieces and spin, oh my. Is it the media doing it to us?..talking down to the dumb American masses, or are they giving us what we want, having learned over the years what holds ratings?

I once complained to my spouse that I needed a "Politics for Dummys" column in the paper each week, just to understand what was being said sometimes. And I'm no dummy, contrary to what you might have heard! It's just that so much rheotoric and lies get repeated and tangled up into the truth, trying to see beyond it for the average person is tough...let alone for the true dummies.

It is verbal assault, and it's packaged and presented to all of us, not just the liberal or just the conservative. Even I, a conservative, get sick of Rush and his repetition of lies and half truths, but he knows it gets people...it gets people. That's how it works. I don't think we'll ever see the day when we can get past the school yard taunts.

Sorry for the long rant, but yours was long too! Interesting, but long! And I've come to no conclusions, I've strayed from my original thought, it was a rant after all.

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), January 02, 2001.

Leon:

Aren't you dead?

-- GeneralissimoFranciscoFranco (gray@matter.think), January 02, 2001.

Funny how I like Future Shock, but I didn't really care for Syd.

-- Cisco Marramba (ciscsyM@marramba.jamba), January 02, 2001.

Generalissimo baby,

How can I be dead when I have my own thread?

-- (Leon(hot_to)Trotsky@AFL.CIO), January 02, 2001.

kritter,

Your above post should be sent in as a Letter To The Editor of your ALL your local newspapers. Beautifully ranted, my friend.

FS,

thanks for letting us into the cracks & crevices of your mind. Must say it is nice you have allowed us to watch while you meandered your way back out, all the while providing play-by-play. :)

-- Rich (howe9@shentel.net), January 02, 2001.

Leon-

The rumors of your death, I suppose, were premature.

I guess when the voices in my head told me I was going to be Syd-I heard Barrett, when actually the voices were saying "Syd Vicious". Funny how the voices in your head can be so muddy. Guess I started as Barrett but morphed to vicious somewhere along the line-I guess I was hearing in my mind, during the FLorida debacle-"anarchy in the usa".

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), January 02, 2001.

Shove me in the shallow water before I get too...deep.

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), January 02, 2001.

-- Our Supreme Traitors (democracy@can.drop.dead), January 02, 2001.

Racism!

-- (nemesis@awol.com), January 02, 2001.

Sigh..and visual abuse,...as you were saying, Phil...

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), January 02, 2001.

Welcome back FS. Why not take the plunge and use your real name? There is a certain freedom associated with this and I think you would enjoy ‘coming out’ so to speak.

-- Barry (bchbear863@cs.com), January 02, 2001.

Barry-you first-rational 1?

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), January 03, 2001.

FS, Barry is my real name. In the past I have used many different handles, i.e.; RA tion@l.1, I h@ve.spoken, Truth at the ready, and others. Now that I post with my real name and email addy, I have yet to receive any nasty retorts. Might have something to do with the ‘senders’ revealing themselves. Anyway, it is hard to disguise one’s style for too long and that is why Syd was so obviously you. I mean that as a compliment BTW.

-- Barry (bchbear863@cs.com), January 03, 2001.

Okay, I admit it! IRL, I am Paul Milne.

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), January 03, 2001.

Barry-

That is what I meant by my post-that you were Ra1-I knew you were I have also, because the tenor of our pissing matches was similar to one's we had earlier last year over other topics.

I think you may know some of the issues I have with e-mail addresses and myself being the victim of identity fraud. I have also takien a lot of time to build a "Brand Name"-FutureShock-I will continue to use this going forward.

-- Tom (gray@matter.think), January 04, 2001.

Tom…….’Brand Name’? Gotta love it:>)

-- Barry (bchbear863@cs.com), January 04, 2001.