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U.S. Politics; Who Watches the Watchers?


LongRider

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I just watched the WH press conference with Trump and the president of South Korea.

Trump just personally guaranteed the safety of Kim Jung-il. The mind boggles at the idea of the US not just propping up a vicious, corrupt dictator but actually protecting him. What's he gonna do, send a battalion of marines to guard the palace?

Trump also talked about the fact the North Korean people were wonderful, hardworking people - just look at South Korea - and that the US has invested trillions of dollars in South Korea. And North Korea too can become great. The obvious implication is he's saying, at the vary least, billions will be poured into North Korea by the US.

Now, I guess once he realized what he said, he added that South Korea, Japan and China would also invest in North Korea.

Since South Korea is a country Trump has consistently attacked on trade issues, the mind once again boggles on the idea the US will invest billions in a country to take away American jobs in the future.

A shame billions aren't available for health care and repairing infrastructure. And education. But billions to North Korea would be an investment, right, unlike health care, infrastructure and education.

Getting a Nobel Prize is such hard work! You gotta spend money to do it!

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Dear lord, someone just posted this official US government page on Facebook: What You Need To Know About the Violent Animals Of MS-13.

That's correct. They used 'The Violent Animals of MS-13' on an official US government page.

How many times have I said this now? I always think that Trump can't surprise me anymore and I have been repeatedly proved wrong.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/need-know-violent-animals-ms-13/

 

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10 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Dear lord, someone just posted this official US government page on Facebook: What You Need To Know About the Violent Animals Of MS-13.

That's correct. They used 'The Violent Animals of MS-13' on an official US government page.

How many times have I said this now? I always think that Trump can't surprise me anymore and I have been repeatedly proved wrong.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/need-know-violent-animals-ms-13/

 

Call ms-13 animals because animals are accepted as inferior to humans, then they call anyone they don't like an animal, then everyone internalizes that anyone called an animal is as bad as ms-13, then no one bat's an eye when 'animals' are rounded up and no sympathy is given to those rounded up and killed. Social engineering.

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8 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Dear lord, someone just posted this official US government page on Facebook: What You Need To Know About the Violent Animals Of MS-13.

That's correct. They used 'The Violent Animals of MS-13' on an official US government page.

How many times have I said this now? I always think that Trump can't surprise me anymore and I have been repeatedly proved wrong.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/need-know-violent-animals-ms-13/

 

And of course -- 

Quote

"Why would ICE inflate gang affiliations? One immigration official offered a reason to CBS News’s Margaret Brennan last year.

“So his known crime is entering the country illegally?” Brennan asked.

Correct,” Molina said.

“But that’s it at this point, that’s all you definitely know?” Brennan asked.

That’s correct. The purpose of classifying him as a gang member or a gang associate is because once he goes in front of an immigration judge, we don’t want him to get bail, because the whole point of this operation is to get these known gang members off the street,” Molina said."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/21/the-slippery-slope-of-the-trump-administrations-political-embrace-of-calling-ms-13-animals/?

Obviously, the point of the MS-13 push is truly to paint all immigrants with the same brush without saying so.

Old Line: Mexico is sending rapists!

New Line: MS-13 are animals!

Common sense read for both: Brown people who look like they or their family is from South of the border are open season for harrassment and attempted deportation. Because, gang. ? 

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49 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Though of course, people here will know this is a rather recent evolution. The individual right to self-defense only being a few decades old (and a single one as far as legal precedent goes), and the individualistic culture being due to the rather recent conservative "revolution."

While I agree that America's rather unique individualism plays a role here, I think Tocqueville would have something to say about it only being a recent phenomenon.

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49 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

The interesting unusual thing here is that a whole lot more people are finding themselves alienated from their own community.

This is pretty much the crux of the issue, and its the most glaring difference between America and the rest of the world, in my humble opinion. Community. Extended family. Socializing with your neighbors. These constructs provide a sense of belonging, and help us develop empathy for others by teaching us to respect and value those around us, because they improve and enrich our lives. These constructs still exist in most European countries to some extent, and in many other "developing" countries I've visited, but are crumbling in America.

All this is not to say that racism and tribalism is not an issue around the entire world. It most certainly is. Does terrible shit happen everywhere, all the fucking time? Yes. Are young people killing each other because they were rejected for the school dance? Apparently, more so in America than anywhere else. 

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1 minute ago, Relic said:

This is pretty much the crux of the issue, and its the most glaring difference between America and the rest of the world, in my humble opinion. Community. Extended family. Socializing with your neighbors. These constructs provide a sense of belonging, and help us develop empathy for others by teaching us to respect and value those around us, because they improve and enrich our lives. These constructs still exist in most European countries to some extent, and in many other "developing" countries I've visited, but are crumbling in America.

All this is not to say that racism and tribalism is not an issue around the entire world. It most certainly is. Does terrible shit happen everywhere, all the fucking time? Yes. Are young people killing each other because they were rejected for the school dance? Apparently, more so in America than anywhere else. 

Get rid of the school dance then. That's the real problem.

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1 hour ago, Pony Empress Jace said:

We have a crisis state because sick people have no access to medicine but easy access to weapons designed for murder.

It's very convient to label all of these violent men as "sick" and abdicate responsibility for participating in a culture that very clearly drives some people to acts of extreme deprivation. We're all culpable, and we're all "sick". 

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5 minutes ago, Relic said:

It's very convient to label all of these violent men as "sick" and abdicate responsibility for participating in a culture that very clearly drives some people to acts of extreme deprivation. We're all culpable, and we're all "sick". 

Anyone who associates themselves with Nazism is sick. Anyone who has the thought of shooting up their school pop into their head without immediately banishing said thought is sick. Any kid who harasses another kid seeking sexual gratification is sick.

Reality is relative. We decide what parts of the tree need trimming, it's how every pack animal on the planet survives.

Entertainment today doesn't even show up on the graph of human depravity of our ancestors. The difference is that it somehow became socially acceptable to rant and rave about flat earths and demon politicians without being cast out of the tribe.

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2 hours ago, Fez said:

 

There's lots of studies showing no relationship between violent entertainment and violent actions. And this easily passes the smell test by just looking at the fact that all Western countries have access to same violent entertainment we do but don't have our violence problem.

 

As a psychology professor I'm going to dispute that one. There are more studies that show there IS a relationship between violent entertainment and violent actions.

This is only one of many factors -- if you got rid of all violent entertainment (not a possibility) I doubt if you would reduce real violence by more than 10%. But it is one of many factors.

And the difference between the USA and other Western countries can be partly explained by the fact that Americans watch a lot more TV on average than most other nationalities. Even if there was as a high a percentage of violence on TV in other countries (which you'd have to give me stats on for me to believe it), it would be the total amount of exposure to the violence that would predict how often it is imitated. I would bet the average American kid sees many more acts of violence in the media per year than others simply because they watch more hours of TV in total.

Also, though I don't know about this factor in regards to Europe, in Japan there is a lot of violence in the media but to my understanding the CONSEQUENCES of the violence are depicted more realistically on Japanese TV. One of the problems with the way violence is depicted in American entertainment is that it makes it look all too easy -- the hero gets into a fistfight with a bunch of villains and completely knocks out several with just one punch to the jaw, for example, which would be practically impossible in real life. Characters on cop shows get shot one week and are completely healed and have no physical or psychological consequences the next. When you make something look easier and more effective than it really is, more people will imitate it. 

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Just now, Ormond said:

Also, though I don't know about this factor in regards to Europe, in Japan there is a lot of violence in the media but to my understanding the CONSEQUENCES of the violence are depicted more realistically on Japanese TV. One of the problems with the way violence is depicted in American entertainment is that it makes it look all too easy -- the hero gets into a fistfight with a bunch of villains and completely knocks out several with just one punch to the jaw, for example, which would be practically impossible in real life. Characters on cop shows get shot one week and are completely healed and have no physical or psychological consequences the next. When you make something look easier and more effective than it really is, more people will imitate it. 

Dude, Japan has Dragonball, Hentai and guys who carry around swords with guns built into them. They had a cartoon series that had people's heads exploding in gory bloody bits from a punch 30 years ago. If violent media and 'realism' was a predictor, we should have seen Japan turn into Fury Road already. 

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Just now, Kalbear said:

Dude, Japan has Dragonball, Hentai and guys who carry around swords with guns built into them. They had a cartoon series that had people's heads exploding in gory bloody bits from a punch 30 years ago. If violent media and 'realism' was a predictor, we should have seen Japan turn into Fury Road already. 

It already did, man! The media just wants you to believe that Japan is still there.

I will give it to Ormond that I have long found most violence in American entertainment to be wholly unsatisfying. Paradoxically in LOST someone gets 'knocked out' about 2 times per episode on average, a common and cheap trope displaying America's poor understanding of violence but the show also has one of the better torture scenes I've seen where the interrogated subject is pretty nastily abused but doesn't just wilt and give away his (nonexistent) secret.

 

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1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

While I agree that America's rather unique individualism plays a role here, I think Tocqueville would have something to say about it only being a recent phenomenon.

Absolutely. The idea that individualism in American culture is a recent right-wing phenomenon is hogwash. Ever since psychologists started doing cross-cultural research on individualism and collectivism, American citizens have averaged out with the highest level of individualism. But we did not invent this -- England is the most individualistic country in Europe and there is some historical evidence that it has been as far back as medieval times. The UK and Australia generally end up being #2 and #3 on individualism in cross cultural studies. It's a general phenomenon of English-speaking cultures -- the USA just upped its game on individualism a little bit from England to get where we are. 

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1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

While I agree that America's rather unique individualism plays a role here, I think Tocqueville would have something to say about it only being a recent phenomenon.

Have any of you read Richard Slotkin's books?  They still remain perhaps the most cogent works on the connection between the history of the United States, its primary entertainment subjects, and its culture of violence.  I would recommend particularly his trilogy: Regeneration of Violence; The Fatal Environment; Gunfighter Nation.  His novels are very good too.

Here's an interview with Slotkin, by Bill Moyers, at the first anniversary after the horrific Sandy Hook murders:

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/20652-richard-slotkin-on-guns-and-violence

 

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29 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Dude, Japan has Dragonball, Hentai and guys who carry around swords with guns built into them. They had a cartoon series that had people's heads exploding in gory bloody bits from a punch 30 years ago. If violent media and 'realism' was a predictor, we should have seen Japan turn into Fury Road already. 

The difference in "realism" is not in terms of goriness but in terms of long term consequences for survivors and perpetrators -- and the main difference would still be that Japanese teenagers watch a lot less TV than Americans, so the total number of acts of violence they are exposed to is less, even if the level of violence on the TV series is the same. 

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3 minutes ago, Ormond said:

The difference in "realism" is not in terms of goriness but in terms of long term consequences for survivors and perpetrators -- and the main difference would still be that Japanese teenagers watch a lot less TV than Americans, so the total number of acts of violence they are exposed to is less, even if the level of violence on the TV series is the same. 

I think the 'watching TV' metric in the age of the internet (especially for Japanese consumers) is pretty out of date. Does watching Netflix count here? How about YouTube? How do video games work into this, especially given that Japan and Korea are far bigger consumers per capita of video games than US citizens? 

And sorry, the Fist of the North Star suffered zero consequences when exploding heads. (the heads suffered a bit). Goku ended up with all the dragonballs for his quest of neverending violence. Cloud ended up with bitching hair. Japanese media is typically characterized by extreme embarassment and ultraviolence; there's very little consequence to a lot of it save winning cash and prizes. 

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20 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I think the 'watching TV' metric in the age of the internet (especially for Japanese consumers) is pretty out of date. Does watching Netflix count here? How about YouTube? How do video games work into this, especially given that Japan and Korea are far bigger consumers per capita of video games than US citizens? 

And sorry, the Fist of the North Star suffered zero consequences when exploding heads. (the heads suffered a bit). Goku ended up with all the dragonballs for his quest of neverending violence. Cloud ended up with bitching hair. Japanese media is typically characterized by extreme embarassment and ultraviolence; there's very little consequence to a lot of it save winning cash and prizes. 

As Slokin points out, in the interview I linked to above, and in his historic studies is this is what ultimately differentiates the US violence from other countries:

Quote

RICHARD SLOTKIN: Well, yes, I mean, the thing that's different, that's exceptional about American gun culture, so called, is the license that we grant for the private use of deadly force. Other countries have similar levels of guns in the home.

That's exactly what that very popular -- and very good -- television entertainment deals with right up front, including its title -- Justified.  Justified violence by an individual, the individual who is a hero, and thus is justified.  This is the game that so many are playing out in their heads as they go on their massacres, as Slotkin tracks Adam Lanza doing, playing out his video games' training, step-by-step -- and even trying to connect himself to justification as hero by his historical research conducted beforehand.

More from Slotkin, who elegantly draws this connection of glorified individual violence that is so USian to white supremacy -- the hero fighting the Other:

Quote

 

BILL MOYERS: Now, Switzerland is a militia state--

RICHARD SLOTKIN: Switzerland.

BILL MOYERS: --and the guns are kept at home.

RICHARD SLOTKIN: But the guns kept at home in those countries are not used to murder individuals. They're not used to settle property disputes, are not used to shoot somebody who comes to your door trick-or-treating and you're not sure who they are.

And what we have in this country is we have a history in which certain kinds of violence are associated for us with the growth of the republic, with the definition of what it is to be an American. And because we are also devoted to the notion of democratic individualism, we take that glorification of social violence, historical violence, political violence, and we grant the individual a kind of parallel right to exercise it, not only to protect life and property but to protect one's honor and to protect one's social or racial status. In the past that has been a legitimate grounds.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

RICHARD SLOTKIN: Well, I'm thinking of the Jim Crow era in the south where if a black man is walking on the sidewalk and towards a white man and the black man refuses to give the sidewalk he can be-- any sort of violence can be safely visited upon him because no jury will convict. Cases where-- another book that I wrote about in which a successful black farmer refused to sell his crop, this was in South Carolina, for the stated price. And events escalated from a personal attack to ultimately lynching. So we granted to private citizens the right to police the racial boundary and the social boundary.

 

 

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More Moyers and Slotkin, because that interview goes to the heart of the current discussion on this thread on whether or not violent entertaiment can contribute or cause our national affection for individuals behaving violently:

Quote

 

BILL MOYERS: Well, we talked about videogames. But what about movies? Here's a group we put together. If we find that entertaining, are we in a societal way condoning or validating violence?

RICHARD SLOTKIN: I think it has to do with proportion. There's so much violence and it's so inescapable. If you look at the-- if you sort of did a genre map of the different types of films that are now available, so many of them are violent action movies that if you're taking your repertoire of responses to the world from the art that you consume, violence is the right response in, let's say, eight cases out of ten.

That's the first thing. The second thing is that, aside from just the sheer level of raw violence that one sees, the question I would ask is what kind of rationale are movies now, television programs and videogames, what kind of rationale for violence are these stories providing? The old Western movies provide a very important rationale. And that was the principle that no moral, social, political problem can be resolved in a Western without violence.

Anyone in the Western who thinks you can get away without a gunfight is wrong. And there, it isn't so much the spectacular quality of the violence, because by modern standards, it's pretty tame. But it's that insistent rational: the only way to resolve the situation is violence, and anyone who thinks differently just doesn't understand the way that the world works.

BILL MOYERS: I have actually wrestled for some 20 years with something you wrote in “Gunfighter Nation.” You said that central to the myth, the myth of America, the myth of how we came to be is the belief that “violence is an essential and necessary part of the process through which American society was established and through which its democratic values are defended and enforced.” So we invoke violence because we think it not only saves us but nurtures us and that we have some kind of obligation to use it in the service of spreading democratic values?

RICHARD SLOTKIN: Yes, and it validates our beliefs, it validates our values, the things we stand for if we're willing to fight for them. Nothing validates them like combat, fighting for them. And, you know, and the frontier myth is the oldest myth. We have a couple of others that work with similar kind of power. One of the ones that I was thinking of when I wrote that was what I call the “good war myth” or the “platoon movie myth.”

 

 

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2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Dear lord, someone just posted this official US government page on Facebook: What You Need To Know About the Violent Animals Of MS-13.

That's correct. They used 'The Violent Animals of MS-13' on an official US government page.

How many times have I said this now? I always think that Trump can't surprise me anymore and I have been repeatedly proved wrong.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/need-know-violent-animals-ms-13/

 

I actually don’t think it’s that surprising. We know that Trump traffics in bigotry, can’t admit a mistake and surrounds himself with sycophants. I’m sure, if this was not ordered by the top, that some young and astute staffer did this to curry some favor with the President.

2 hours ago, Week said:

And of course -- 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/21/the-slippery-slope-of-the-trump-administrations-political-embrace-of-calling-ms-13-animals/?

Obviously, the point of the MS-13 push is truly to paint all immigrants with the same brush without saying so.

Old Line: Mexico is sending rapists!

New Line: MS-13 are animals!

Common sense read for both: Brown people who look like they or their family is from South of the border are open season for harrassment and attempted deportation. Because, gang. ? 

Precisely. I don’t think it’s the end all be all to call MS-13 animals, but if you listen closely he almost always starts by talking about migrants/immigrants from South of the border as a preface before he goes on a rant about the gang. He’s priming his audience to automatically associate the two.

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