Alex Jones' propaganda wars

[KacyRay]

The problem is that Glenn is not having a resurgence. He never went away. He's just stepping real hard on a callous that threatens Obama's administration for real. And look at what Salon wants to do about it--"sites are remembering the appealing traffic numbers that come with putting Glenn Beck in headlines."

Hey, it would have been a shame to let a good tragedy go unexploited.

Again, I'm going to have to step back and let time tell how much of a threat this is to the Obama administration. I've seen nothing of substance that points to any cover-up or conspiracy.

[KacyRay]

By the way... I'll state here for the record that I'm not going to respond to any of what RB has to say.

So please, in the future, don't interpret my silence as some type of tacit acquiescence to any "point" he thinks he might have made. Rather, my silence will be consistent with the relevance I assign to whatever he's posting on here, whatever it is he's trying to convince himself of.

He's a guy who came to OL for one reason and one reason only - because socks and pseudonyms are the only way he can find to communicate with people that he has previously pissed off enough that they no longer want to be pestered by him.

I'll offer up one example, just to make my point: He said "but based entirely out of his own desire to be part of what he calls the "right side of history" alongside his carefully cultivated social-media echo-chamber of progressives, enablers, and revisionist historians."

I have a private group on FB that neither him nor SB are included in. No one else can see who the members are, not what conversation takes place in there. It's private. Only the members knows what gets talked about in there. (SB was in the group for the first 30 minutes of its inception before any threads appeared, and then left voluntarily and hasn't been back in).

Yet he is making a definitive statement that it's a carefully cultivated social media echo chamber.

That right there should tell you all you need to know about his penchant for speaking with complete authority on things he cannot possibly have any information on. And it's those kind of baseless accusations that caused me to break contact to begin with him to begin with. I have better things to do with my time than to deal with that childishness.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

If I haven’t made it clear yet, I favor smaller government. Taxation only as absolutely necessary, optimum freedom and liberties, government intervention in business affairs only insofar as needed to keep unscrupulous businessmen from harming private citizens, no vice laws, no discrimination laws (for private business owners), reduced (or eliminated) foreign aid, abortion rights, gun rights, everyone-and-everything rights, non-interventionism, no legal favoritism, etc.

Kacy,

This is what confuses me about you.

If a person says he wants all--or at least most--of these things. If that person puts ALL of his political capital and efforts in the promotion of these things. And if a person's career has shown signs of preaching and living these things, year after year.

Don't you think that should be recognized?

Granted, I lean right, but I strongly favor the small government pro-freedom crowd (Tea Party and libertarian and so on) and consider the old boy big government network to be a different animal altogether.

Then, with some of these people whose views I know and whose actions I have studied for several years now, you simply claim they are the contrary and call them vile names.

I don't get it.

I know what I see. It;s not as if I saw it in passing. I've seen it for a long time and I've studied it. And then you say it's something else.

I have to say, "No it isn't."

I have to.

That's what confuses me.

I'm going to have to come up with some liberals who are basically pro-freedom to talk about so we can get some common ground, even though I will disagree with their reliance on government to do what individuals should do (and do do in America--for example, I saw the other night over $23 million came in as donations from all over the USA for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, and more is on the way until the end of May--much of it unsolicited).

In fact, I lean mushy touchy-feely myself. I do.

There was a huge blow-up once on the old SoloHQ over an episode called "abandoned child in the wilderness." OL was just starting, so I was posting at both places back then.

This was an argument I had with a bonehead who told me he had the inalienable right to come across an infant in the wilderness, eat for as long as he wanted to out of his knapsack in front of the child and watch it starve to death if he wanted. He had no obligation to give that child any of his food. That was his sovereign right and nobody could take if from him.

This was at a dinner of a small Objectivist meetup I once belonged to. I kept listening to the smug tone as he kept elaborating on and I got real cold inside. I stopped arguing, looked at him blandly and said something like I would see his ass in jail if I ever saw somthing like that, if I didn't kill him first.

He looked shocked. He wanted to know if I was serious. I was dead serious,

Kabooom!

A blow up right there at the table in the restaurant and shouting in the parking lot. He called me a fascist and every name in the book. I kept telling him that was fine, just don't so some crazy-ass stunt like that around me because I meant what I said.

The next day he was denouncing me as evil all over the friggen' place and there was bickering galore for months on O-Land forums and on some blogs. It was almost a mini-schism. Even Nathaniel Branden posted about this here on OL during that time, and he never posts. (He asked some very good questions and called on people to check their premises.)

For me, a ridiculous situation like that is where the issue of rights goes right out the window. I simply refuse to live in a world like that.

I'm one who believes freedom is useless for a society of scumbags. They will lose what little they have by default. Here is an imaginary situation to ponder. If you took a bunch of hardened criminals from a prison, dumped them on a desert island, gave them a constitution enumerating individual rights and gave them a few classes on elections and so on, then told them they are free and left--then if you came back six months later, what do you think you would find?

Gangs. That's what. Probably half of them dead from fights. Anyone with street experience knows that.

The point is that people have to be good people for freedom to work. Being good is not a luxury. It's not an add-on. It's fundamental for freedom to even exist in society. The majority of people in a society have to be good or the society will transform into something ugly. It is literally cause and effect.

So my view of life and politics and reality is not theory first, then deduce reality from that. I hold to the preciousness of each individual--and I hold to that in the deepest part of my soul--as one of the fundamental starting points of morality.

And when I see others doing and living the same, but someone who seems to agree with me calling those folks horrible names and claiming they stand for things they do not, I simply don't get it.

I get it if you disagree and even despise the fact that a person can love freedom and small government, etc., but be for laws against, say, recreational narcotics. Or you despise his religion. Whatever. But to ignore the 90% or 95% and focus only on the 10% or 5% and trash the person as if his or her essential political views are represented by that makes me scratch my head in perplexity.

The Soros-media-machine laden rhetoric when you do that compounds my confusion.

I'm not trying to be ornery or judgmental. I'm trying to understand something that doesn't make sense to me.

Michael

[KacyRay]

Mike,

Sounds like you and I are coming from the same place, and I can see why you would find this confusing. I particularly like your formulations on why freedom is useless to a society of scumbags.

And your reaction to the guy at the SoloHQ function – my god, that’s so exactly what my response would’ve been that it’s almost scary. I wish I’d have been there for that one. The worst part of it is that guys like that are what the layman perceives us all to be if we describe ourselves as objectivists. Believe me, I’ve had to correct people in my “echo chamber”, as well as in other places, about that misnomer on many occasions.

Look, if I’m wrong on Beck – if I’ve mistaken him for just another sensationalist pundit who makes his living off of instilling fear into the masses for his own professional gain while masquerading as some kind of legitimate journalist/investigator when he’s actually some small-government freedom crusader – then I’m wrong on Beck. If all the tears, all the chalkboards, all the dramatic pauses, all the dire predictions, all the doomsday “we –aren’t-going-to-recognize-this-country-in-a-year” harbinger-drawing, liberal-socialist-boogeyman stuff that I see every time I’ve every seen him on TV was just him on a particularly bad day, if all the David Barton revisionist theocracy-pushing, bogus history stuff was just something he did to fill the time and doesn’t actually represent him or what he stands for, then alright… maybe I’m just seeing the ass end of the elephant.

But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong on the idea that theocrat revisionists are more repugnant than liberals. I find Sean Hannity infinitely more disgusting than Rachael Maddow. I find Rush Limbaugh infinitely more distasteful than Keith Olbermann. Guys like Breitbart, who went out of their way to splice together video and wreck people’s careers, guys like James E. O'Keefe who go “undercover” trying to snare people, and when it doesn’t work, they create their own narrative – scumbags like that are much more distasteful to me than anything comparable coming from the left.

Now when it comes to guys like Michael Moore, Sean Penn, et al… I consider them on the same level as those I mentioned in the preceding paragraph. I have nothing good to say about guys like that.

Does hypocrisy not matter to anyone? Does it mean nothing to anyone here when the same Republicans who all voted against the stimulus package all – almost to a man – fought to grab as much of the stimulus money as they could when it was available? Does it not matter than so many defenders of “the sanctity of marriage” are on their 3^rd and 4^th marriage (Limbaugh, Gingrich, etc). Does bigotry not matter to anyone here?

Based on your comment, you see as clearly as I do the problem with failing to recognize the basic value each individual has the potential to offer.

“The point is that people have to be good people for freedom to work. Being good is not a luxury. It's not an add-on. It's fundamental for freedom to even exist in society. The majority of people in a society have to be good, or the society will transform into something ugly. It is literally cause and effect.”

Don’t look now, but Obama said something very similar in his book “The Audacity of Hope” I can’t remember the exact phrase and I don’t have the book to reference it here with me, but it was something to the affect of “If we, as a society, simply look the other way while the most vulnerable among are abandoned to … (whatever fate)… we diminish ourselves.” (paraphrased)

Again, what I see coming from the right are people vehemently fighting against big government coming in and interfering with their interests. What I see coming from the left are people fight against big government coming in and interfering with the interests of the most vulnerable among us.

While I'd prefer big-government not to interfere with anyone's life at all, it's not difficult for me to see the difference between the self-serving nature of the former and the legitimately concerned nature of the latter. So again - when I have to choose between the two, I generally (not always) side with the latter.

I intend to start a different thread outlining what I see as the fundamental difference between the conservative mentality and the liberal mentality. It’s a big enough topic that it merit’s its own thread – and I think I might have some original insight to offer on it. (Hopefully)

[Robert Baratheon]

Since this discussion has turned on the topics of truth-seeking, good-faith investigation, and objectivist principles in our lives, I would like to respond to some specific items to make a broader philosophical point and perhaps defend myself a bit in the process.

Kacy claims that I accidentally "outed" myself and was somehow concealing my identity in order to engage in bad-faith discussion. This is what Kacy has chosen to be true because it is the intellectually convenient position that allows him to discount me at the outset (more on that in a moment). As those supporting objectivist principles, let's examine the plain evidence instead: 1) By choice, I have my actual name listed in my profile - known to Kacy. 2) By choice, I have my actual place of residence listed in my profile - also known to Kacy 3) By choice, I selected a moniker from the same book series that is plastered all over my Facebook page - also known to Kacy (but probably forgotten by him). The rational and objective conclusion Kacy should have reached from all this is that I *wanted* him to be aware of my identity but was choosing to remain anonymous for purposes of wider audiences. Notice how this differs from the iimmediately dismissive and accusatory conclusion he chose to reach instead.

Kacy then stated that he will not, under any circumstances, respond to my posts. No matter what insights I may bring, what legitimate points I may raise, he is categorically refusing to even consider them as having any worth. He claims this is due to some fundamental fault with me, but we see it plainly displayed as a pattern in this very thread: e.g., Beck does a few things Kacy finds offensive, so Kacy resorts to ridicule and discounts Beck as a repugnant person, in totality, refusing to consider any of his ideas or methods in furtherance of limited government. This is one of the fundamental differences between progressive utilitarianism and objectivist truth-seeking; when progressives become offended by a viewpoint, they view that as equivalent to being *wrong,* then personalize and radicalize the messenger (Alinsky's Rules for Radicals) to shut down discussion on the merits. An earnest truth-seeker should instead examine why the message bothers him so much and what that tells him about himself. So to take this perfect example, we have numerous individuals here telling Kacy - in unison - that his behavior is harming the cause of limited government he claims to support. But against the weight of this evidence, Kacy instead assumes there is something *wrong* with each of these people and that he could not possibly be guilty of what they are pointing out (look at how he writes off me and SB at the outset).

In the interest of full disclosure, the central reason Kacy finds me so offensive is that he was regularly holding himself out to others as living according to objectivist principles of individualism and self-reliance, i.e., a producer, a modern-day Howard Roark. I asked Kacy to take a moment to examine whether this was objectively true in light of the evidence, namely that Kacy has chosen to be a lifer in the U.S. military, draws a government allowance, goes where the government tells him to go, and spends a significant amount of energy encouraging others to drop out of the market economy and sign their life away to the military as he did. A word of explanation - I don't think there is necessarily wrong with this path he has chosen, but I was asking Kacy to simply check his premises against the weight of the available evidence. Rather than engage in discussion, Kacy responded in true progressive fashion by labeling me as guilty of bad-faith, calling me a worthless individual, then publicly refusing to ever consider anything I said again. In case you think I was simply attacking Kacy out of meanspiritedness, another word of explanation: I was at the same time pointing out my own government employment and explaining to him how I reconcile that reality with my own philosophies, asking him to do the same.

[Serapis Bey]

Until then, I'll have to just endure SB's charges that I'm a bleeding heart liberaltarian and somehow find a way to sleep at night knowing that the world as we know it is coming to an end tomorrow... every single day.

In the spirit of fairness... SB isn't really one of these guys who believes the world will end tomorrow, every single day.

Rather, he believes it will end in the next 10 years. Every single year. See? There's a difference.

What I have said usually involves current trends that portend bad things for the future. Feel free to disagree with my negative perspective, that's a discussion we could have. But I never said anything about "the world ending"; that is your (mis)characterization of my position. Mike provided a good example upthread of the situation in Brazil.

I would take you more seriously if your argument ever got off the ground from merely speculating about people's "irrational" pessimism. But it rarely does. You apparently feel free to grab whatever factoid at the moment serves your purpose, without the need to inform yourself of the details. For example, you recently posted to FB a blurb from CNN about the Dow being at an all time high, and used the opportunity to crow about how wrong all those damn "fearmongers" are who are concerned about the economy. For one thing, did you stop to consider that much of that financial activity reflects how well CORPORATIONS are doing, and not nearly so much about the average citizen? Probably not.

But I understand how "end of the world" hyperbole can be useful in getting some yuks out of the audience, by exaggerating the opposition. I can see your slavish devotion to The Daily Show has served you. Jon Stewart has trained you well, young padawan.

[Serapis Bey]

I'll offer up one example, just to make my point: He said "but based entirely out of his own desire to be part of what he calls the "right side of history" alongside his carefully cultivated social-media echo-chamber of progressives, enablers, and revisionist historians."

I have a private group on FB that neither him nor SB are included in. No one else can see who the members are, not what conversation takes place in there. It's private. Only the members knows what gets talked about in there. (SB was in the group for the first 30 minutes of its inception before any threads appeared, and then left voluntarily and hasn't been back in).

Yet he is making a definitive statement that it's a carefully cultivated social media echo chamber.

I was a member of your group long enough to get a feel for what the tenor of the discourse was (there were, in fact, multiple threads I posted in before I left). And the private group was really no different that what I've experienced on the rest of your page. Basically, all the usual suspects were there, all with the same heavily progressive mindset (excluding a handful of GOP/FOX types).

When Dan was still involved in the regular discussions, he debated with most of the same people. His characterization of your private group is not arbitrary or made up out of whole cloth. I can vouch for it. Do you deny that "being on the right side of history" is a concept you have used and endorsed on multiple occassions (for instance)?

[Serapis Bey]

Kacy then stated that he will not, under any circumstances, respond to my posts. No matter what insights I may bring, what legitimate points I may raise, he is categorically refusing to even consider them as having any worth. He claims this is due to some fundamental fault with me, but we see it plainly displayed as a pattern in this very thread [...]

Rather than engage in discussion, Kacy responded in true progressive fashion by labeling me as guilty of bad-faith, calling me a worthless individual, then publicly refusing to ever consider anything I said again.

Boy, Kacy does a great Stephen Boydstun impression, doesn't he?

[Brant Gaede]

Back in the early 1970s I could see that expanding government--regulations, taxes, programs, etc.--would make the country poorer and poorer, especially for the middle classes (lower m, middle m, upper m). With spiky interruptions in equity and real estate markets it's all come true and will get worse. Now the country's capital base is disappearing, ate up by government "workers" and programs and out of control central banking. It will take ten or twenty years to get the rest of the juice out of this duck. Entitlement programs won't be enough for the elderly, but they will be enough enoughs to transmogrify government into overt fascism or break the federal system up into individual states and regions. This last is just (10th Amendment) starting.

--Brant

women and children and other passengers last!--save yourselves; this is a Greek ship and it's on the rocks!

[PDS]

Dennis,

Your view that this is the "final hour before liberty leaves the earth" is fantastical, not in balance. Freedom is all around us, and its principles in our legal system are alive in the minds of our judiciary. Yes, we face serious challenges to future material liberty due to federal debt, but within the financial constraints of meeting that burden, this country is going to remain very free.

Stephen

Stephen:

I couldn't agree more from a sense of life perspective.

There is a line in the movie The Count of Monte Cristo where the protagonist tells his friend, after years of plotting his revenge, "don't deprive me of my hate."

That is the sense I have sometimes from Dennis: he doesn't want anybody to deprive of him of his sense that an American Chateau d'If is just around the corner.

[dennislmay]

Dennis,

Your view that this is the "final hour before liberty leaves the earth" is fantastical, not in balance. Freedom is all around us, and its principles in our legal system are alive in the minds of our judiciary. Yes, we face serious challenges to future material liberty due to federal debt, but within the financial constraints of meeting that burden, this country is going to remain very free.

Stephen

Stephen:

I couldn't agree more from a sense of life perspective.

There is a line in the movie The Count of Monte Cristo where the protagonist tells his friend, after years of plotting his revenge, "don't deprive me of my hate."

That is the sense I have sometimes from Dennis: he doesn't want anybody to deprive of him of his sense that an American Chateau d'If is just around the corner.

I have my sense of life - as life could be - and my sense of life - as it is likely to be - given the current situation.

I feel held back every single day - opportunity denied at every corner by big government sucking the oxygen out what could be,

leaving just enough to get by, never enough to get ahead unless you're corrupt and connected.

I view 6-8% real growth every single year decade after decade as the low end of expectations. What we have now

is a crime.

Dennis

[Robert Baratheon]

We might not have a choice. You propose involuntary conscription, but the political feasibility of that is questionable (time will tell). More to the point, when you say, "preparing them with life skills for the possibility of returning to the market economy in the future", what reason do you have for supposing there will be any jobs suitable for such people in this rapidly accelerating technological society? Did you happen to miss this article when I first posted it?

I believe we are in a new epoch where analogies to the Industrial Revolution are no longer germane. The jump in competency required to go from "weaver" to "power loom operator" is an order of magnitude different than going from "factory line worker" to "computer programmer."

Of course, my analysis is moot if you (like most Objectivists) consider intelligence to be infinitely malleable, such that a toothless hillbilly can become a physicist with just enough education, volition and Rea$on. I'm not so sanguine.

I'm agnostic on the issue on whether the burgeoning socio-economic class of unemployables is fixed, or whether it is the temporary byproduct of a transitioning economy coupled with a particularly bad recession. Fast food is still hiring en masse for the moment, but SSI/SSDI/TANF/SNAP/WIC/whatever is now a much more attractive option for many, and that is an incentives problem with current public policy that should be addressed. I don't think anyone has, or can have, meaningful evidence for or against the post-scarcity hypothesis at the moment - we'll just have to wait and see how that whole thing turns out. If you believe that lower-class joblessness is the new and immutable status quo, then there is really nothing to be done besides buying off the unwashed masses with allowances to buy their dollar-menu hamburgers, smart phones, and Beats by Dr. Dre. I'm not ready to give up quite yet.

My primary concern is that incentives are pointing the right way, which in this case means encouraging work, or that failing, at least some sort of societal buy-in to counter the zero-sum kleptocracy culture that has been hyperaccelerated in this country under the Obama presidency. I'm arguing for voluntary conscription (join the military - we'll give you free stuff and something to do each day) as a less bad alternative to the big SSI/SSDI fraud, which brushes these individuals out of sight and into a deep, dark dependency cycle that they have no incentive or ability to ever emerge from. I perhaps differ from many libertarians in accepting partial solutions and incremental improvement as appropriate goals short of a complete overhaul of the system.

[KacyRay]

Since this discussion has turned on the topics of truth-seeking, good-faith investigation, and objectivist principles in our lives, I would like to respond to some specific items to make a broader philosophical point and perhaps defend myself a bit in the process.

Kacy claims that I accidentally "outed" myself and was somehow concealing my identity in order to engage in bad-faith discussion. This is what Kacy has chosen to be true because it is the intellectually convenient position that allows him to discount me at the outset (more on that in a moment). As those supporting objectivist principles, let's examine the plain evidence instead: 1) By choice, I have my actual name listed in my profile - known to Kacy. 2) By choice, I have my actual place of residence listed in my profile - also known to Kacy 3) By choice, I selected a moniker from the same book series that is plastered all over my Facebook page - also known to Kacy (but probably forgotten by him). The rational and objective conclusion Kacy should have reached from all this is that I *wanted* him to be aware of my identity but was choosing to remain anonymous for purposes of wider audiences. Notice how this differs from the iimmediately dismissive and accusatory conclusion he chose to reach instead.

Kacy then stated that he will not, under any circumstances, respond to my posts. No matter what insights I may bring, what legitimate points I may raise, he is categorically refusing to even consider them as having any worth. He claims this is due to some fundamental fault with me, but we see it plainly displayed as a pattern in this very thread: e.g., Beck does a few things Kacy finds offensive, so Kacy resorts to ridicule and discounts Beck as a repugnant person, in totality, refusing to consider any of his ideas or methods in furtherance of limited government. This is one of the fundamental differences between progressive utilitarianism and objectivist truth-seeking; when progressives become offended by a viewpoint, they view that as equivalent to being *wrong,* then personalize and radicalize the messenger (Alinsky's Rules for Radicals) to shut down discussion on the merits. An earnest truth-seeker should instead examine why the message bothers him so much and what that tells him about himself. So to take this perfect example, we have numerous individuals here telling Kacy - in unison - that his behavior is harming the cause of limited government he claims to support. But against the weight of this evidence, Kacy instead assumes there is something *wrong* with each of these people and that he could not possibly be guilty of what they are pointing out (look at how he writes off me and SB at the outset).

In the interest of full disclosure, the central reason Kacy finds me so offensive is that he was regularly holding himself out to others as living according to objectivist principles of individualism and self-reliance, i.e., a producer, a modern-day Howard Roark. I asked Kacy to take a moment to examine whether this was objectively true in light of the evidence, namely that Kacy has chosen to be a lifer in the U.S. military, draws a government allowance, goes where the government tells him to go, and spends a significant amount of energy encouraging others to drop out of the market economy and sign their life away to the military as he did. A word of explanation - I don't think there is necessarily wrong with this path he has chosen, but I was asking Kacy to simply check his premises against the weight of the available evidence. Rather than engage in discussion, Kacy responded in true progressive fashion by labeling me as guilty of bad-faith, calling me a worthless individual, then publicly refusing to ever consider anything I said again. In case you think I was simply attacking Kacy out of meanspiritedness, another word of explanation: I was at the same time pointing out my own government employment and explaining to him how I reconcile that reality with my own philosophies, asking him to do the same.

Dan,

Correct. I will not respond to any point your make regardless of any merit they possess, and that decision is not arbitrary or without good reason. I have no time for an homs and insults, and you've used up any patience I've had with you long ago.

Even my uncle, whom I dialogue with regularly on my FB page - a guy I have to exercise extreme patience with due to his almost non-existent reading comprehension ability, his cognitive dissonance, his complete failure to understand even the most basic, rudimentary rules of intellectual discourse... even HE knows that ad homs and insults have no place in an adult conversation. I can exercise infinite patience with him, because at least I know he's trying.

I wouldn't even say he's arguing in "good faith" (since his mind has long since been made up on the issue), but at least he understands that the best point made by a disrespectful, insulting asshat will be less welcomed than an honest error made by an respectful interlocutor.

I'm not even saying you don't have a point to make. I'm not saying you have nothing useful to contribute. Hey, stick around OL as long as you can before you get banned - that's fine with me. What I'm saying is that you've burned your bridge with me, and whatever great pearls of brilliance you may have had to offer are of no interest to me. You are insulting, you are disrespectful, you are narcissistic, you are unapologetic, and I have no use for associations like that.

And, as I know your knee-jerk reaction is to blame those whom you've offended for taking offense, I will point out that you are alone in this category. I have all kind of people on my FB page - Fundies, Tea Partiers, etc. I routinely dialogue with many of them. I enjoy doing so. I also take opposition to many of my liberal friends on issues such as taxation, property rights, discrimination, etc. No one has a problem - we all enjoy talking to each other. Everyone wins. You are the only one I've ever had this problem with. And I've been doing this a long time.

But I know you'll shift blame to me - as though I'm the one who just can't stand dissent. In fact, you come in here to Objectivist Living, where I post on a routine basis, into a thread where I am basically alone in defending my personal viewpoints against a roomful of very intelligent, very intellectual, very educated, very right-leaning proponents of reason and accuse me of deliberately surrounding myself with a carefully selected cadre of liberals who re-affirm my beliefs in an echo-chamber that you've never been part of.

The absence of mind required to make that accusation here, in this forum, in this thread, should be enough to embarrass you. But I know it won't, because your narcissism and character disorder is so deeply entrenched in your soul that the idea that you could possibly be at fault for the way other people respond to you is so entirely alien in your mind that it couldn't possibly seep into your imagination, let alone be accepted as a bitter reality.

So yes, I have relinquished any responsibility to respond to any point - however pressing you might think it is - that you make. You don't get to piss on my leg and expect me to play along. And I feel no responsibility to be discreet about this - your insults and disrespect were public. My responses to them will be as well.

[KacyRay]

MSK - Feel free to relegate this entire thread to the Garbage Pile if you think it's appropriate.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

MSK - Feel free to relegate this entire thread to the Garbage Pile if you think it's appropriate.

Kacy,

LOL...

Tell me how you really feel.

Michael

[Robert Baratheon]

I wasn't intent on psychoanalyzing Kacy, but since he felt it was necessary to accuse me of "narcissim" rather than engage my substantive posts on the thread topic, let's talk about narcissism for a moment.

Kacy appears to be using "narcissist" in the vernacular sense of the word as an insult meaning "somebody with an overly high opinion of himself." We can make this assumption because he uses it in the context of a gushing torrent of other juvenile insults, even though he tells us he has "no time" for ad hominem (it appears he found the time, somehow). What a narcissist actually is, in the clinical sense, is someone who exclusively views others as they relate to the narcissist. The commonly used analogy is a narcissist views himself as the central character, and everyone else is a supporting role defined by how they affect his "story." Narcissists are totally invested in the story they have created for themselves, so when their story is challenged as conflicting with objectively reality, they respond invariably with a) rage, b) regressive defense mechanisms, and c) control behavior.

The social-media group Kacy references isn't really an echo-chamber per se. That is, there are token participants who do disagree with Kacy, and they were chosen by Kacy specifically for that purpose. A more appropriate analogy is that Kacy has set up a kind of "Bum of the Month Club" for himself, where his A-team of like-minded progressives has a controlled environment for tackling the clumsiest arguments and proponents the born-again/Fox-News-conservative crowd has to offer, then patting themselves on the back as champions of compassion and reason. To take one example, there was a regular participant on Kacy's Facebook page whom I personally witnessed advocating world conquest by the United States to violently spread democracy. My response was to simply tell this invididual that his view was irresponsible and unrealistic, then ignore him. But that is precisely the kind of right-wing living caricature Kacy wants for his discussions as easy target practice in his verbal archery sessions. Kacy is the "good guy" in these discussions, and the intellectual hobos he lures to these bouts with the promise of a ham-and-egg breakfast are the "bad guys," who are present for the sole purpose of being knocked down by him. There is no genuine desire there to question his fundamental assumptions. Hence the dimwitted, stumbling uncle, whom Kacy would have us believe he tolerates out of his infinite good nature and patience, when it's readily apparent that the uncle is tolerated precisely because he poses no actual challenge to Kacy's story and wordview.

What Kacy calls "insulting" was my request, as part of these social-media conversations, that Kacy examine his own story of himself, and his role in the world, in a objectively critical and intellectual manner. He was loudly asserting to others that he was a producer in the Randian sense, and he seemed to be taking great pride in achieving that elevated status. I asked Kacy to question that premise and support it in light of the available evidence. So how did Kacy respond? As we see plainly in this thread, he responded with a) rage ("disrespectful, insulting asshat"); with b) regressive defense mechanisms (splitting people into simplified all-good/all-bad archetypes based on how they affect his story (SB and I are emotionally-disturbed, dishonest "bad guys," so he can ignore our arguments); and with c) control behavior ("I'm ignoring you. You're an insignificant flea to me. Nyah nyah.")

So who more closely fits the clinical definition of a narcissist? The person who is asking another for an honest appraisal of their assumptions as part of a larger philosophical discussion, or the person who is so invested in their ego-centric story that anyone who challenges it is immediately attacked and discounted through classic narcissistic-rage behavior?

[KacyRay]

MSK - Ain't easy to get me going. But it happens.

[Brant Gaede]

I know what it's like to be a narcissist. I've got a narcissist button I push each year for Trick or Treat. It's the way I get candy without paying for it even though I look like an adult. I don't need a costume; I go as myself. A lot of people go WTF! when they answer the door, but I pay them no mind except to tell them that I am actually my inner child

--Brant

no apples--damn it!.

[Brant Gaede]

Liberals have become progressives. I don't have the heart to tell Kacy the next step is fascism. (Didn't someone write a book called Liberal Fascism, cutting out the middleman?)

--Brant

dirty up one label, get another one, ad infinitum, while underneath the world turns

[KacyRay]

Brant,

Call me whatever you want. `

-Kacy

just don't call me in the morning!

[caroljane]

Brant,

Call me whatever you want. `

-Kacy

just don't call me in the morning!

OK Mr Late for Dinner,

Let's go to Brant's house next Halloween in our liberal-progressive-morphing-into-fascist costumes. I am not visually gifted, maybe Jonathan or WSS could help us out with the costume design. Mine has to be blue and white though.

[dennislmay]

Brant,

Call me whatever you want. `

-Kacy

just don't call me in the morning!

OK Mr Late for Dinner,

Let's go to Brant's house next Halloween in our liberal-progressive-morphing-into-fascist costumes. I am not visually gifted, maybe Jonathan or WSS could help us out with the costume design. Mine has to be blue and white though.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200509/02/eng20050902_206085.html

It's what all the Progressives are wearing this season.

D

[caroljane]

Brant,

Call me whatever you want. `

-Kacy

just don't call me in the morning!

OK Mr Late for Dinner,

Let's go to Brant's house next Halloween in our liberal-progressive-morphing-into-fascist costumes. I am not visually gifted, maybe Jonathan or WSS could help us out with the costume design. Mine has to be blue and white though.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200509/02/eng20050902_206085.html

It's what all the Progressives are wearing this season.

D

Smart! Thanks Dennis. It is just like my father's HM Customs/Douanes uniform from before they became the CBA. I still have a couple of his old summer shirts and the royal buttons. Off to the dressmakers!

Btw I thought it was you Serapis was trying to dump his LSD on, not Ninth. Anyway, don't you listen to him either.

[Selene]

Brant,

Call me whatever you want. `

-Kacy

just don't call me in the morning!

OK Mr Late for Dinner,

Let's go to Brant's house next Halloween in our liberal-progressive-morphing-into-fascist costumes. I am not visually gifted, maybe Jonathan or WSS could help us out with the costume design. Mine has to be blue and white though.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200509/02/eng20050902_206085.html

It's what all the Progressives are wearing this season.

D

See this is why the anti-progressive forces have no street smarts. The "ladies" should show up with in your face street presence, a la, CMU demonstrator who:

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Students at Carnegie Mellon say it’s freedom of expression, but the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh calls it inappropriate and disrespectful.

At an annual art school parade, a female student dressed up as the pope, and was naked from the waist down while she passed out condoms.

Even more, witnesses say the woman had shaved her pubic hair in the shape of a cross

http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2013/04/29/cmu-parade-controversy-over-woman-naked-and-dressed-as-pope/

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Look, if I’m wrong on Beck – if I’ve mistaken him for just another sensationalist pundit who makes his living off of instilling fear into the masses for his own professional gain while masquerading as some kind of legitimate journalist/investigator when he’s actually some small-government freedom crusader – then I’m wrong on Beck. If all the tears, all the chalkboards, all the dramatic pauses, all the dire predictions, all the doomsday “we –aren’t-going-to-recognize-this-country-in-a-year” harbinger-drawing, liberal-socialist-boogeyman stuff that I see every time I’ve every seen him on TV was just him on a particularly bad day, if all the David Barton revisionist theocracy-pushing, bogus history stuff was just something he did to fill the time and doesn’t actually represent him or what he stands for, then alright… maybe I’m just seeing the ass end of the elephant.

But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong on the idea that theocrat revisionists are more repugnant than liberals. I find Sean Hannity infinitely more disgusting than Rachael Maddow. I find Rush Limbaugh infinitely more distasteful than Keith Olbermann. Guys like Breitbart, who went out of their way to splice together video and wreck people’s careers, guys like James E. O'Keefe who go “undercover” trying to snare people, and when it doesn’t work, they create their own narrative – scumbags like that are much more distasteful to me than anything comparable coming from the left.

Now when it comes to guys like Michael Moore, Sean Penn, et al… I consider them on the same level as those I mentioned in the preceding paragraph. I have nothing good to say about guys like that.

Does hypocrisy not matter to anyone? Does it mean nothing to anyone here when the same Republicans...

Kacy,

This is exactly what I am talking about.

I don't frame things like this.

If you want to do the celebrity pundit thing, I will look at a few for you. But you may be surprised at the result since my approach is not fundamentally competitive like the above frame.

(Score 1 for MSNBC, Score 1 for Fox, Score 3 for MSNBC, Score 0 for Fox, etc. Look at Victim A of Celebrity B. Disgusting. Boo.)

Now that I know you run a discussion place and have for some time, I'm beginning to understand why the polemical dichotomy frame kept repeating in your comments, especially with the Soros-media-jargon. It's a habit and probably some well-worn arguments and narratives.

And that's OK. I just couldn't figure it out.

Let me start by saying this on one of your celebrities. You said, "Now when it comes to guys like Michael Moore... I have nothing good to say about guys like that."

Well I do. I think Michael Moore is a knucklehead on his politics, but he is one hell of a documentary maker. He has my utmost respect in that regard and every time I see one of his works, I learn a little more about how to do it and be persuasive. (He's a master of the hero's journey format, for example.)

Also, he's not bad-intentioned. I believe he cares about people for real. And he's clear, not deceptive. Even though I disagree with him on fundamentals, I highly prize these positive values.

I do not put him in the same class as I would, say, someone like Sandra Fluke, who is all about opportunism and deception, even though they both share the same politics.

Michael Moore is a voice--a legitimate voice. Sandra Fluke is a manipulator.

In my world, there is room for Michael Moore (well... not all that much ), but none for Fluke. What I mean is that I look at his work and use my intellect to probe what I agree and disagree with, why, and I analyze what he did and how. I have major disagreements with his views, and even contempt for some of the more outlandish ideas he tries to put across (which I think are more for showmanship and marketing than depth anyway), but I have respect for him.

With her, I just dismiss her out of hand. Just one more blip on the Progressive radar.

I don't know if this is clear to you.

You see? I'm not playing by your dichotomy rules. And it's not to show you up or win any argument or be superior or whatever.

I'm truly that way. That's how my mind works.

The ideas are far more important to me than tribal associations.

Michael