The whole scam depends on dumbing an audience down so far that they're willing to pay to be swindled over and over and over again.
Mission accomplished. From my friend Rick Perlstein in Mother Jones:
Peter's Choice
I asked my student why he voted for Trump. The answer was thoughtful, smart, and terrifying.
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Or as Michael Moore has said (Trumpland), "A giant "F*ck you" from the voters because that vote is the only thing they have left.
RP
How "thoughtful" the student in the linked piece was depends on how closely your definition of "thoughtful" resembles "believes true a bagful of ridiculously-easily-disprovable wingnut tropes, racist claptrap, and the Big Lie of Treason In Defense of Slavery".
Otherwise the guy comes off like every other hick town shitkicking cracker I've ever run into.
YAt this early point of the "Conservatives drive drunk the car off the bridge and into the river.
I would prefer a terrifying student answer over an adult first female victorious campaign presidential manager telling Dewey Dull Todd that Spicer didn't express a "falsehood". He was providing "Alternative Facts".
I am calling the CIA first thing in the AM and ask them to provide this president with "Alternative nuke codes".
If I may, I would like to share an impressive 4 minutes of Supreme Court Justice Souter answering a question on the role of Gov't with education. From 2012. Before Trump came along and told folks "only he can make it all right".
youtube
Apprx 7 minutes A must watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWcVtWennr0
It is worth your time.
They do have a word for thoughts that don't resemble reality, and if fantasies are what we base our government on now, I have a list for their consideration...
-Doug in Oakland
Dunno what's so chilling about Peter. He's the model Fox viewer - he believes all the myths that were poured into his head about the past and he's constantly looking over his shoulder for the librul boogeyman that he's SURE is right behind him. He's too young to be truly dumb, but he's also on track to hit that mark by his early thirties. And apparently the university he's at, his last chance to be confronted with realities that differ from the custom fit Fox News coccoon that awaits him after graduation, has become a safe space where his ignorance and foolishness is coddled and indulged. That's not chilling - it's just your standard, run of the mill depressing.
I think the professor is confusing "thoughtful" with "specious."
Actually the article almost touches on an important educational and cultural point but just about misses it.
I remember when I grew up in the rural South(Alabama, to be exact). I remember everyone being super riveted by Haley's Comet passing(in 1986). I also clearly remember watching MASH and the Andy Griffith Show.
My point is that cultural and educational advancement tends to start in the cities and progress outward. I grew up with things that people in my age group who grew up in cities barely remember because it was before their relative time.
From the article,
"As a historian, I found this remarkable, since it was precisely what all American schoolchildren learned about slavery and Reconstruction for much of the 20th century. Or rather, they did until the civil rights era, when serious scholarship dismantled this narrative, piece by piece."
It's very much like when I grew up as a child of the 80s growing up with media from the 60s and 70s. He's a child of the 90s who is growing up with historical research from the 40s and 50s.
If I had been in the class, in my 20's, Peter's essay would have been followed by a loud "FFFFUUUUUCCCCCCKKKK YYYYYOOOOOUUUUU!!!" from the back. Not only because its pure bullshit, but it is such an old, worn out whiny conservative white men troupe to make the oppressor feel that they are the oppressed.
I grew up surrounded by this "Humble, yet Glorious, Conservative White Man So Put Upon by Society" Myth in the urban Midwest. I've heard it repeated across the U.S. by people of very high education, wealth, and privilege. Peter just adds that "Lost Cause" special sauce so loved in the old confederacy since even before they attacked Fort Sumter.
But I am sure to Peter would only think reading how the cotton kings and sugar barons still standing after the Civil War ratfucked Reconstruction until they got a President on their side who ended it and then promptly purged their state governments of African Americans (up to 40% in Texas at the time), re-segregated public institutions, passed Jim Crow, and made a deal with working class whites that as long as they didn't unionize (or organize in ANYWAY) they wouldn't bring African Americans into the non-agricultural workforce as urban liberal propaganda.
All this shit about "listening to both sides", and thus legitimating rubbish, is how you end up with Trump and the Legion of Doom in the Whitehouse.
The "other side" isn't interested in listening to you at all. They are too busy compiling professor watchlists
http://www.professorwatchlist.org
and preparing policies to criminalize your left wing behaviour all the while crowing about free speech and liberty (for them, that is).
The left doesn't stand a chance if it doesn't learn that repression needs to be met with repression.
Like so many other american myths, the supposed "Noble, yet humble conservative christian white man who society has left behind" myth is another cheap, bumper sticker sales pitch that the right wing will beat to death in some vain effort to cover their moral and ethical bankruptcy while they make out like bandits with their continual push to break our government.
Peter is for all purposes, a useful rube, who may not have the sociopathic desires of his preferred elected officials, he nevertheless is a willing party to the bigoted nature of evangelical christians who no longer embody the teachings of christ. I unfortunately grew up with yahoos like him and regardless of the numerous facts or history to contradict such unfounded inherited ideas, you cannot reach someone whose understanding of the world comes from stories told from father to son at the dinner table. He and others like him are ignorant and take pride in that ignorance since our media holds them up as such "salt of the earth" noble americans who are deserving of what america is supposed to be.
They shouldn't be ignored with their empty threats of revolt, but they also shouldn't be given a unchallenged platform to recite their closed worldview without pushback.
I'm sure Peter is really sweet to talk with in person.
He's also political anthrax.
Ignore the lips - watch the hands.
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