The Story Wars of Hot Political Issues

[Peter]

Ah gee. After several cups of coffee in me and thinking about Star Trek, do I hafta stay on subject? Watch now, as I effortlessly meld two discombobulations.

Michael wrote about the Sandra Fluke incident: Rush was resilient enough to beat back that attack, but he did catch a painful metaphorical bullet or two at the time--all because he fell for this process. He took the story bait. end quote

I remember that. There was talk that Rush would soon be off the air, except in Yorba Linda, California. (Warning. Inner hull failure imminent on decks twenty-three, twenty-four, and twenty-five. Decompression eminent . . . grab hold of any object bolted down. A photon torpedo will detonate in 10 seconds, destroying the Borg ship captained by The Borg Queen Sanda Fluke. 9, 8, 7 . . . . To many fans, Majel Roddenberry will always be the voice of the Star Trek computer.) I do keep worrying Rush will retire. How old is he? I will look it up. Peter

Maybe Rush can get this job next time he errs big time. Posted on: June 5, 2019. City Seeking Applicant to Fill Vacancy on the Traffic Commission. The City Council of the City of Yorba Linda is seeking applications from Yorba Linda residents to fill ONE vacancy on the Traffic Commission. The Commission, appointed by the City Council, is comprised of five members who serve alternating four-year terms. The term for this appointment will terminate on December 31, 2020. The Traffic Commission meets on the fourth Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m.

edit. Rush is 5'11" and 68 years old.

[Peter]

I looked her up and now I have spent too much time on the likes of her. Fluke is a bit heavier now. She may not be well liked. And she may NOT be a lesbian as some have speculated. From Wikipedia: In April 2012, Fluke became engaged to Adam Mutterperl. According to Fluke's state senate campaign website, "Sandra and her husband, Adam, live in West Hollywood with their dog, Mr. President."

A guy named Mutterperl? A dog named “Mr. President?” As in a Marylyn Monroe’s sexy tribute to President Kennedy’s private parts? Or is that a latter day dig at President Obama in 2012, not El Presidente Trump in 2016?  

From below. “Allowing Citibank or Nike or Sprint to deny birth control coverage to employees is not a valid religious liberty concern.”

Her reasoning is that not giving free birth control is denying access to birth control? Two pictures from when she was promoting free contraception as a right showed her with her lips sexily pursed up, (called a moue by the French?) which pictorially, hee hee, hinted at another way of keeping a man’s bleep out of her bleep. You’re welcome Rush. I know you couldn’t say that on the air. Peter      

From “The Daily Caller” and The Net . . . . Later that year, after being the subject of radio host Rush Limbaugh’s criticism, she spoke at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. She also tried to raise her own profile by rallying support for Obama’s reelection campaign. In October 2012, for example, Fluke delivered a speech to 10 somewhat rapt Nevada residents in the mostly empty parking lot of a Sak ‘N Save grocery store in north Reno.

Fluke would later auction one hour of her time for an online “strategy session.” The auctioneer, a charitable website BiddingForGood, closed the auction two days early after deeming some responses to the auction as unacceptably “harassing.”

In 2014, Fluke became a wannabe politician and was pummeled in a California state Senate race, losing by a 61 percent to 31 percent margin to fellow Democrat Ben Allen, an adjunct law professor at the UCLA School of Law.

Fluke earned her B.S. in Policy Analysis and Management as well as Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies from Cornell University in 2003. She also received her J.D. with a Certificate in Refugee and Humanitarian Emergencies from Georgetown University Law Center. While at Georgetown, Fluke was the President of Law Students for Reproductive Justice, an editor for the Journal of Gender and the Law, and Vice President of the Women's Legal Alliance.

Sandra Fluke Pens Scathing Open Letter to Trump About Birth Control: You’re ‘Radicalizing Religious Liberty’ by Kylie Cheung | 2:39 pm, June 22nd, 2017

. . . . Now, in the face of challenges from the Trump administration (which run parallel to Congressional efforts to overhaul the Affordable Care Act and defund Planned Parenthood) in the name of purportedly protecting religious liberty, Fluke returns to the public eye with a scathing open letter to Trump about birth control coverage, in which Fluke tells Trump he and his administration are “radicalizing religious liberty.”

“There are legitimate religious liberty claims under our Constitution. People practicing a variety of religions in America have real reasons to be concerned about their constitutional rights and whether this administration will protect them (see: the Muslim travel ban),” Fluke writes in the letter. “Allowing Citibank or Nike or Sprint to deny birth control coverage to employees is not a valid religious liberty concern. Treating that claim as legitimate and worthy of protection cheapens our nation’s commitment to true religious liberty.”

Flukey Quotes. There are many types of preventive health care services that are covered, things like blood pressure medication, for example. And women are merely asking that their health be taken just as seriously.

In the last two years, the amount of legislation in the House of Representatives and state legislatures has been really unprecedented, that has focused on reproductive rights.

I am proud to stand with the millions of women and men who recognize that our government should legislate according to the reality of our lives - not for ideology.

We've also seen another future we could choose. First of all, we'd have the right to choose. It's an America in which no one can charge us more than men for the exact same health insurance; in which no one can deny us affordable access to the cancer screenings that could save our lives; in which we decide when to start our families.

I was proud to share the stories of my friends at Georgetown Law who have suffered dire medical consequences because our student insurance does not cover contraception for the purpose of preventing pregnancy.

It's unfortunate that there's such a disconnect between what's happening on our legislatures and what the public knows about, the consequences what that means for ourselves, our mothers and our wives.

Restricting access to such a basic health care service, which 99% of sexually experienced American women have used and 62% of American women are using right now, is out of touch with public sentiment.

I have received so many messages of support from across the country - women and men speaking out because they agree that contraception needs to be treated as a basic health care service.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

48 minutes ago, Peter said:

I looked her up and now I have spent too much time on the likes of her.

Peter,

That's another aspect of this process I talked about.

The people who present these triggering narratives do not have to be famous, nor do they have to have a future as famous.

The fame is in who responds. That is the payoff for the frothing-mouthed discredit, the cultural voice gets discredited, not those who do the poking. These last are ultimately expendable.

When you spend time among the pokers, you generally don't find much--unless you are digging for their handlers and mentors. Then things get a little more interesting. Their handlers and mentors are the storytellers in the story wars. The pokers are merely the actors and, by their very nature of not being famous, not A-team actors. Most will never be A-team after their 15 minutes of fame. The role of human prop doesn't call for it.

 

Michael

[Peter]

Michael wrote, “When you spend time among the pokers, you generally don't find much--unless you are digging for their handlers and mentors.”

Rush Limbaugh sometimes drifts back and forth between several positions 1) They all think alike on the left, and come to the same conclusions but there is no central location that tells them what to do and say that day. 2) The Deep State has a central location that all of them call at 8 in the morning that tells them what to do or say that day. He or she is their handler. and 3) They just listen to some revered yahoo on the telly or the radio that morning and parrot what they heard because it was exactly what they were thinking. That is why they repeat the same phrases over and over again. 

Michael wrote: “The fame is in who responds.”

Ah, I had a powerful vision. The fame in in who responds and who they imagine is listening to their words. When I write what I think is intelligent or funny I think of the regulars on Fox’s show “The Five,” like Greg Gutteld, Dana Perino, Jesse Watters, and the lost to love, Kimberly Guilfoyle, etc. taking heed of my words. And of course, the special microphone crew in Roswell, New Mexico, is recording everything I think. “Did they hear that zinger?” I say to myself, chuckling. Unfortunately I have never been quoted, on The Five but I will take credit where it is due. And President Trump says what I say, only he says it before I do. Maybe he is reading my thoughts, and I am really an alien  . . . . I will tell my therapist at Sunnybrook tomorrow. But, maybe not. The last time I told him what was really going on he put me in a straight jacket.

But who does the left listen to? Who is their guru? How does the left work if they are not individual thinkers? Peter

Joseph Goebbels was Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda. As any war historian knows, propaganda was hugely instrumental in pushing the Nazi agenda. A skilled public speaker, writer, and philosopher, Goebbels quickly rose through the ranks to take over the news media, arts, and all German government information.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, Peter said:

But who does the left listen to? Who is their guru? How does the left work if they are not individual thinkers?

Peter,

You have to catch them to find out. Here is one group that got caught not too long ago:

JournoList

The mistake the public makes is imagining that, once busted, these people drop the idea of belonging to a secret group to covertly influence the public. They don't drop it. Why would they in a free country?

They just create a new group, make membership harder and hide it better.

So Rush is right in all three of his suppositions.

In my mind, they might also entrap members with sexual misbehavior, embezzlement, etc., then threaten them with exposure if they don't toe the party line.

Never forget what famous NYT journalist, Glenn Thrush, said in an email to John Podesta during the last presidential campaign (see here

Quote

No worries Because I have become a hack I will send u the whole section that pertains to u. Please don't share or tell anyone I did this Tell me if I fucked up anything.

Thrush apparently didn't learn one of his basic freshman lessons when he was at Bad Guy University: never leave a written trail.

Notice that after he got busted, not too long after he was denounced in public for sexual misconduct.

He was used as a lesson to the others out there.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

The New York Times is their guru.

--Brant

or that rag in DC

[Peter]

13 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

The New York Times is their guru.

--Brant

or that rag in DC

I used to get the Sunday issues mainly for he puzzles they raised. One liter of alcohol added to one liter of water does not equal two liters of combined substance. Know why? It has nothing to do with drinking the stuff as you pour. Got things to do so this is Rushed.

I put some stock in pollsters if they say someone or some issue will win by 30 percent but otherwise no way. And those polls that focus on California and New York? No algorithm can predict what will (or must) happen when humans are involved. Well, except in Cali-York (commie,) or Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho (patriots!), with at least a 20-point Republican advantage. Maybe Texas too? Some pollsters admitted that they thought some of their poll responders deliberately lied on the phone about who they were going to vote for, just to be ornery.

 

That was a very funny video Michael posted that showed one leftist political commentator after another saying Trump has zero chance of winning in 2016. “Wishing and hoping and dreaming and planning” won’t get you to be smart. Rush just said that as soon as Trump wins in 2020 the dems will raise hell and say he cheated. And he just had a caller who said, of course a sitting President who is chief executive office and law keeper Should listen if someone has dirt on a political opponent and then call the FBI. That the number one law enforcement exec is the Prez, is a brilliant thought, says Rush.

From Realclearpolitics. Democratic Presidential Nomination. Biden32.8 Sanders16.8 Warren9.8 Buttigieg6.8 Harris6.8 O'Rourke3.8 Booker2.5 Klobuchar1.0 Yang0.8 Castro0.8 Bennet0.8 Inslee0.7 Ryan0.7 Hickenlooper0.5 Gillibrand0.5 de Blasio0.3 Gabbard0.3 Delaney0.3 Bullock0.2 Williamson0.2 Biden +16.0

Republican Presidential Nomination. No candidates have announced except for our beloved President. If any others do they will be drawn and quartered. Rasmussen has Trump’s approval ratings at 51 to 47 percent. No other poll besides Rasmussen’s is anywhere near believable. Peter

From: Keyser Soze To: atlantis Subject: Re: ATL: Determinism/adaptation Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2001 16:33:15 -0800 (PST) Gayle, Gayle's friend, and anyone else who is interested, My nit-pickerishness comes from hearing too many scientists confuse many of the issues involved in such discussions. In general usage, "chaos" means utter confusion or disorder. But it also refers to complex mathematical theories and systems which are used to predict or explain seemingly unpredictable - chaotic - events. Chaos is this sense would have the opposite meaning of its use in the first sense (shouldn't it be called Anti-Chaos Theory?). Unfortunately, I have heard many people speak as if the two meanings are interchangeable.

In this regard there is a further tendency to view the limits of our ability to measure accurately as evidence of randomness in existence. Philosophically imprecise theoreticians seem to confuse attempted explanations of reality with reality itself. The terms "chance," "random," "uncertainty," "disorder," and "unpredictable" are often implied to be metaphysical attributes of the entities being described rather than evaluations of our current epistemological (or scientific) limitations. Objects do not "possess unpredictability." The inability to predict strictly refers to our state of observation and knowledge.

Disorder means that something didn't behave in the way we expected it to, in which case there are two possible conclusions: the behavior contradicts reality, or we had imprecise expectations. I think a good example of bad philosophy is the oft cited wave/particle "duality" of light. There's nothing wrong with identifying both aspects of a photon's behavior, but to come to the conclusion that a photon exists in contradictory states is bad science based on bad philosophy. I am by no means an expert on the subject, but Lewis Little's Theory of Elementary Waves, which may or may not be valid, is at least an original, rational approach to the problem. Rather than believing that a photon's behavior reveals metaphysical uncertainty (by traveling two different courses at the same time), Little's science starts from the assumption that the contradiction reveals an error in our understanding.

One liter of alcohol added to one liter of water does not equal two liters of combined substance. A bad philosophy of science would lead to the conclusion that one plus one does not equal two. A rational view would be that we did not first determine a molecular standard of value for the experiment, and that if we were to do so, the correct conclusion would be an understanding of how displacement was involved in the experiment.  So I'm more apt to agree with Gayle's friend's statement that, "The past contains the whole future, but hides the exact content of the future from any process smaller than the entire universe," but I have yet to be convinced that, "The past contains an inherent disorder in what the future will be, some random dispersions of events -- the fact this is all contained in the past doesn't change its consequences.   There is a mixture of order and chaos to things." Determinism is Fatalism. The Soze

[Peter]

Election Central says there may be 12, count’um, 12 Democratic debates. I did not make up any of the following names including True Jersey. I am not saying some of the candy dates don’t inhabit an alternate universe. Some of them may even live inside their heads. The first two Democratic presidential debates will be on Wednesday, June 26, and Thursday, June 27, from 9-11 PM ET. Watch them on NBC, MSNBC, or Telemundo, if you can’t speak English but are still allowed to vote. Peter

From “NJ, True Jersey.” The lineup for the first two-hour session on June 26 features Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Julián Castro, Bill de Blasio, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Tim Ryan and Jay Inslee.

The lineup for the next night features Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Michael Bennet, Marianne Williamson, Eric Swalwell, Kirsten Gillibrand, Andrew Yang and John Hickenlooper. The Democratic National Committee says it divided the candidates at random but ensured that contenders considered front-runners would not be stacked on one night to avoid the impression that one night was more important than the other.

[william.scherk]

On 6/12/2019 at 10:27 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tim Pool discusses the Straight Pride parade [...]

Flowers and ribbons ...

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here is one hell of a story war technique.

Override a defense mechanism in the human brain that shuts off predictions and scare the shit out of people with their own personal death. Then offer your agenda as a savior to stave off the end for a time.

This technique is as old as the hills, like stories of the apocalypse, but the left and ruling class has come up with a way to literally rob the young of their future by short-circuiting the brain's defense against depression from contemplating their own deaths. Many young people don't believe they are going to live past 30 because of manmade climate change (and other things, but climate change is the main story culprit).

And the unintended consequences?

There is a huge increase in young people suicides.

How's them apples?

Congratulations, assholes. 

Here's the transcript.

The Left Has Reprogrammed the Human Brain to Focus on Death

Read it. This is really evil.

Rush based his comments on this story:

Doubting death: how our brains shield us from mortal truth
Brain seems to categorise death as something that only befalls other people

And that is based on a study that is coming out in a few weeks. I will try to remember to post it.

In sum, if you can indoctrinate school kids with fear of their own impending doom--with no plausible escape--in order to mold them into proper little voting machines after they grow up, you also rob them of their entire meaning in life. If there is no future worth living, many of them will check out through suicide.

And that is exactly what they are doing.

I don't think the elitist ruling class gives a damn. They already send the young to fight pointless wars just so they can make money and keep power. If some legs get blown off or the caskets pile up, well, too bad. They just want power over whoever is left.

Michael

 

EDIT: A tangent from Rush today: Environmentalist Wackos Drop the Polar Bears. 

The polar bears were storytelling gold for manmade climate change. People even made commercials about polar bears showing up and hugging people who held back carbon emissions. But those suckers just won't die. What's worse, they are thriving and increasing.  Now it's at a point where the victimhood story has collapsed. It's just too damn obvious to everybody that the polar bears live. They live! So the poor things are being fired as poster animal for the environmentalist movement. 

[william.scherk]

The 'hot political issue' is "Muh Russia."  The hero is Maria Butina ...

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, william.scherk said:

The 'hot political issue' is "Muh Russia."  The hero is Maria Butina ...

William,

Just so you understand, this thread is not intended to be about specific stories unless they illustrate a story war technique.

So, big deal that Maria Butina received a hero welcome according to this imminent expert intellectual master of the universe fake news reporter. How does this event, or the reporting of it, "control the narrative"? What is the storytelling technique the reporter used?

That's the focus of this thread.

Is it a David and Goliath story? Is it a victimization story with a target for shame? Is it a story that raises moral questions to the higher ground, thus diminishing the other side? Is it a story with a mentor to stand in for the agenda? And so on.

The main discussion is not about a gotcha thing regarding a specific news story with a "nyah nyah nyah" emotional payoff. (That's a fundamental part of the main template used with the gotcha tactic.)

It's a discussion of diverse templates for persuasive stories in general.

You've made this mistake several times in this thread, which leads me to believe you don't understand story and persuasion templates, and how and when to use them.

I mean, post what you want, but the "virtuous/smart/cultured/scientific/etc. us against the evil/stupid/uncultured/primitive-thinking/etc. them" is the only story template I've seen you do so far. Still, you don't discuss how to pull this off to persuade. Instead, you tend to look down on "us against them" and only mention this when talking about others.

Here's another way to look at it. The most competent deployments of the most effective storytelling templates will win the culture wars. So which ones should be used and for which political and philosophical agendas? Which types of propaganda work the best when in story form?

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Getting the Victimization Story Right

I'm going to come back to the article below and tease out the nuances later. 

No time right now, but I have to get this on record.

Nicholas Kristof's Advice for Saving the World

The most important point re the victimization story (which is a linchpin of story wars propaganda) is there can only be one victim as the main focus, preferably a girl, for maximum emotional impact.

Also, for Objectivism-oriented folks, the following quote is fascinating (my bold).

Quote

Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon who has pioneered this field of research, notes that saving a large proportion of a group is very satisfying, while saving a small proportion seems like a failure—even if it's a high number. All this fits in with a large body of research that suggests that people do good things in part because it feels good. The irony: Altruism creates its own selfish reward. Or, to put it another way, nobody gains more selfish pleasure than those who act selflessly.

I got this article from a YouTube video by Randy Olson on his ABT story template (see here). If you want to know about the ABT structure (And, But, Therefore), you can read about it on Olson's blog, Science Needs Story.

ABT is a hell of a great system for un-boring coma-inducing text.

More later.

Michael

[ThatGuy]

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Also, for Objectivism-oriented folks, the following quote is fascinating (my bold).

"All this fits in with a large body of research that suggests that people do good things in part because it feels good. The irony: Altruism creates its own selfish reward. Or, to put it another way, nobody gains more selfish pleasure than those who act selflessly."

"SIMPSONS FRIENDS did it..."

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

One of the real subtle story wars techniques involves undermining a culture by satirizing a sacred story in order to replace it with a different culture that is more friendly towards new authoritarians.

A recent example is perfect. Last month Netflix presented a comedy special where Jesus turns out to be gay and Mary smokes weed. It is called The First Temptation of Christ. The comedy group, Porta dos Fundos, is Brazilian and Brazil is where the biggest dustup happened.

A judge in Rio de Janeiro banned the comedy special from being shown in Brazil on Netflix and the Brazilian Supreme Court stepped in yesterday and reversed the ban.

I agree with the legality of upholding free speech, but I, for one, don't intend on seeing this show unless this story wars element gets much stronger and I have to in order to argue points. But at this distance, on a small scale, gay Jesus going mainstream is another win for those trying to take down family-oriented Christian culture and replace it with the state. 

Do you want to know how I can tell this is a story war propaganda effort and not merely an expression of free speech through satire?

It's easy. 

The satire is politically selective. 

First, just look at the size of the kerfuffle and gloating this has caused in the leftie part of the mainstream media.

Then ask, where is the gay Mohammad comedy special on Netflix?

Or how about Porta dos Fundos coming out with a trans Mohammad talking over his woes with the Archangel Gabriel as he drops acid, or maybe a skit about an orgy in Mecca, say, in front of the Zamzam Well?

When that happens, I will start treating it as mere satire. Until then, be aware that a satirical video bashing Muhammad, even one on YouTube by a little known video creator, will be used as a story war propaganda weapon by the left to justify killing US Ambassadors and so forth. 

Even when Ayn Rand argued against Christianity, she did not mock the sense of the sacred in Christians. She argued against specific ideas promoted by the religion like altruism. But that's a different discussion.

Michael

[Peter]

I don't feel hypocritical when I wish someone a Merry Christmas. It just seems fitting in a cultural sense even if I am not a Christian. Oh, and happy Festivus. Remember, there is the same amount of evidence to prove the existence of all the "old gods" too, so don't mock the old Greek, Roman (or Navaho for that matter) gods either, by Jove.      

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

For story wars, what is the purpose of toppling statues like the Black Lives Matter and Antifa people are doing these days?

That's not a trick question.

The answer is a political tactic that has been used over and over with success (and, to the disgrace of humankind, resulting in piles and piles of murdered dead bodies)--and it all revolves around storytelling.

Let this young Venezuelan lady give you a hint in a short video. 

This tweet hit Real Clear Politics Video (see here). Below is the transcription (as given on that site).

Quote

ELIZABETH ROGLIANI: Why do I even worry about some silly little statues coming down or some silly little street names changing? Why do I care? 

It is because the last time I didn't care about this, I was a teenager. I have already lived through this thing when I was living in Venezuela. Statues came down -- Chavez didn't want that history displayed. And then he changed the street names. Then came the [school curricula]. Then some movies couldn't be shown, then certain TV channels, and so on and so forth. 

You guys think this can't happen to you, I've heard it so many times. But always be on guard. Never believe something can't happen to you. You've got to defend your country and your society or it will be destroyed. 

We didn't believe it could happen to us. Most Venezuelans --Cubans warned us-- and we were like, "This is Venezuela, we know about freedom. That's not going to happen here." Yet it happened. And there are literally a lot of people wanting to destroy the U.S.

 

The Common Factor

The ugly word that informs the storytelling and story wars in the current statue-toppling unrest we are now seeing is Marxism.

Here is the co-founder of Black Lives Matter,  Patrisse Cullors, stating clearly that the ideological frame of her and BLM is Marxism, and she and one of her co-founder buds Alicia Garza are trained organizers. (In other words, they are trained to know the value of statue-toppling, which is why they campaign so hard to get people to do it.)

It's a short video.

And what does "trained organizer" mean at root?

It means telling stories to get people aroused enough to act.

So why statues?

Toppling them is a form of rewriting history--that is, telling different stories about the past than the stories people normally tell. And why do that?

If you get people to give up the markers of their history (like statues, road names, etc.), and you get them to denigrate the principal people (and heroes) of their past, you leave them with a core story vacuum. When those anchors to their past are severed, they are ripe for new core stories to come in and fill that vacuum.

Enter Marxism.

 

The Dark Storyteller

If there is a charismatic Marxist who tells the new stories of the new good for people, and if those stories become accepted, meaning if the Marxist is a great storyteller, then people will trust that Marxist to govern while they go back to their everyday lives. They will not notice that this person (or persons) is a dark storyteller--one who changes the stories of history and makes new stories promising things that can't happen in the future--the talking snake in the garden. Then the dictatorship will come and their societies will go to shit.

Marxists have done this countless times all over the world and it is always through the same mechanism. It always starts with painting the past of a culture as evil. Don't forget, the past is nothing but stories about what was once present. Except nobody can see with their own eyes any part of any former present any longer. They have to imagine it through stories. And what's easier to change than a story? Not much. All you have to do is tell a different story. What's more, the best storyteller wins.

Once people believe the stories of their past are about evil people, that their ancestors were evil people, they will be open to stories about the present and future where they can become good. And they will cling to these new stories once they become convinced they are valid (through repetition and propaganda, adherence by celebrities, and so on) .

So, without a fight, they will turn their power structures over to evil people--for real evil people--not because they like evil, but because--through storytelling--they believe they are avoiding evil. Like the slow-boiled frog, they only realize what is happening once it is too late.

Now look at what that young Venezuelan lady said again. She lived this. So she knows how powerful it is. And she admits she, herself, allowed it to happen because she didn't think statues and stories about prominent dead people were important.

Destroying the good in the stories of the past of a culture is the nuclear bomb of the story wars. It is the most effective and devastating weapon in the arsenal. And this is the story weapon favored by Marxists.

This is the main story war being fought at the present in America. And, surprise, surprise, Marxists are the ones doing it.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Laura Ingraham just interviewed Elizabeth Rogliani.

Elizabeth Rogliani said (hat tip to Gateway Pundit here)... 

Quote

I had friends who told me it’s just the Confederate statues. And I said ‘no’ it’s not going to be just the Confederate statues just wait and see. This is a slippery slope. The next thing is going to be all the symbols of the United States, the Founding Fathers are going to be attacked, religious symbols are going to be attacked. And, the next, probably museums. Anything can be attacked if you just let it happen. If you just let the first ones come down, nothing, there’s no limits to whats next… It’s a cultural revolution. It’s an attempt to change the national identity. They’re trying to change the system.

"Change the national identity" means change the stories that support that identity.

Only after that is done is it possible to change the system and have it "take."

If we don't want to have someone change the American system, we have to refresh our core stories and keep them alive.

That's why national identity is one of the main fields of battle in the story wars. It's all-or-nothing stakes. Nothing can change the system until national identity changes, and national identity doesn't change until the core stories change.

Apropos, the reason Marxists like censorship so much is that core stories that do not have a long tradition of virtue and effectiveness (like Marxism) are easy to change when everybody has contact to any story they wish to hear. Once people realize that the story they are living doesn't make sense because they heard a different story that does, it's a bitch for an authoritarian to get that new story out of their heads.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 6/24/2020 at 1:13 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

... the purpose of toppling statues...

Incidentally, has anyone noticed the commonality among all the statues that have been toppled or attempted to be toppled or defaced?

The story war reason to topple them is to signal they are the villains, right? After all, every engaging story needs a villain.

And the people doing the toppling and damage belong to Black Lives Matter, right?

Well, they started with Confederate leaders. But now they are going after Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, Robert Gould Shaw (the leader of the black regiment for the North in the Civil War), George Washington, Christopher Columbus, Father Junipero Serra (an 18th-century Franciscan priest and Catholic saint), Francis Scott Key, and on and on.

What do all of the people memorialized by these statues have in common? What is their villainy?

Simple.

They are white males.

Even if one of these white males was a champion of blacks, like Grant and Lincoln, that doesn't eradicate, for the statue topplers and damagers, their evil whiteness and their evil maleness.

White males are the villains for the New Racists in the modern story wars.

That's only a ruse for the useful idiots, though. Marxists (the true ringleaders) don't care about race. They want authoritarian power.

Michael

[Jonathan]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Incidentally, has anyone noticed the commonality among all the statues that have been toppled or attempted to be toppled or defaced?

The story war reason to topple them is to signal they are the villains, right? After all, every engaging story needs a villain.

And the people doing the toppling and damage belong to Black Lives Matter, right?

Well, they started with Confederate leaders. But now they are going after Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, Robert Gould Shaw (the leader of the black regiment for the North in the Civil War), George Washington, Christopher Columbus, Father Junipero Serra (an 18th-century Franciscan priest and Catholic saint), Francis Scott Key, and on and on.

What do all of the people memorialized by these statues have in common? What is their villainy?

Simple.

They are white males.

Even if one of these white males was a champion of blacks, like Grant and Lincoln, that doesn't eradicate, for the statue topplers and damagers, their evil whiteness and their evil maleness.

White males are the villains for the New Racists in the modern story wars.

That's only a ruse for the useful idiots, though. Marxists (the true ringleaders) don't care about race. They want authoritarian power.

Michael

 

FDR statues remain unscathed. He had placed Japanese Americans in concentration camps. It doesn't get much more racist than that. Why is he exempt from the current mob? Heh.

LBJ is famous for having looked down his nose on blacks as lesser beings. He is known to have frequently used the n-word when referring to them. He was motivated to cave in to the political pressure of civil rights by the idea of making blacks dependent on his party. He is quoted as having said that he would "have those n*****s voting Democrat for 200 years." His statues and portrait are intact and untouched. Why is he exempt? Heh. We all know the answer.

[Jon Letendre]

5 hours ago, Jonathan said:

 

FDR statues remain unscathed. He had placed Japanese Americans in concentration camps. It doesn't get much more racist than that. Why is he exempt from the current mob? Heh.

LBJ is famous for having looked down his nose on blacks as lesser beings. He is known to have frequently used the n-word when referring to them. He was motivated to cave in to the political pressure of civil rights by the idea of making blacks dependent on his party. He is quoted as having said that he would "have those n*****s voting Democrat for 200 years." His statues and portrait are intact and untouched. Why is he exempt? Heh. We all know the answer.

Both Killery and Biden spoke glowingly of the wonderful character of Senator Byrd, a KKK Grand Master. Killery thanked him for the wonderful mentoring he gave her.

DemocRats fall over themselves to make them President.

Ratios vary, but, mix stupid with evil and you get a DemocRat voter.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Getting back to story wars techniques, the following came up in a different thread a little while ago. And I came across a beauty of an example to show what this looks like in practice.

First, what stories do we tell to whom and when? That is a persuasion question that rarely comes up in politics. At least I don't see it much. And this is the most important question of all for long term change. I mean, who doesn't want long term change in the world, hopefully toward peace and prosperity for all?

Yet there are entrenched beliefs and there is hatred standing in the way. So, to me, a proper story war starts with demonstrating how such beliefs and hatred can be part of the evil a person despises. They have a problem and don't even know it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here is the post.

On 10/23/2020 at 6:20 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

On 10/23/2020 at 5:32 PM, ThatGuy said:

But she is also orthodox Christian, who believes the Biblical prophecy that peace in the Middle East is a sign of the AntiChrist.)

TG,

That's your ticket into her head. It takes time and has to go in small steps, but you have to step into her story if you wish to lead her out and into yours.

The trick is to take a truth with you when you go in, something that is true in her story. One of the most effective for hardcore Christians is a thought about Satan and seduction rather than Satan and confrontation. This later goes to the saying that Satan's greatest trick was to convince people he didn't exist. Then that leads to asking if she is sure Satan is not fooling her when she thinks she is looking at him when, in fact, she might looking where he has convinced people--including her--that he doesn't exist. There are lots of great metaphors about animals walking into traps, quicksand that looks like normal ground, and so on.

People in O-Land want to use reason on everybody and get perplexed why it doesn't work. They don't think in terms like I just mentioned.

There's a really good book I read a while back on how to make changes in people's lives (I can't remember the name right now--I'll see if it comes to me later). They were funded by the US government, of all things, and were dealing with behavior like smoking. But the process they laid out is sound.

These were science-oriented people, so they had their protocols, etc. In the middle of their experiments, they discovered that people have 4 stages they go through to make lasting change and here's the kicker. The things that are relevant to them in one stage are not relevant to them in another. Here are the stages (I paraphrase).

Stage 1 - Does not know they have a problem.
Stage 2 - Knows they might have a problem, but has not decided to do anything about it yet.
Stage 3 - Knows they have a problem, and has decided to fix the problem, that is, preparing to fix it.
Stage 4 - Enters into the fixing the problem mode.

There is a fifth stage of maintenance after fixing the problem, and a sixth stage for relapses. But that's almost a different discussion.

In smoking, if someone is in the first stage of not even realizing they have a problem (they tell themselves they can quit anytime they want, for example), telling them about lung cancer doesn't make a dent. Discussing strategies on how to give up smoking (Stage 3) is irritating to a person who just stopped and is going nuts at times with craving (Stage 4). And so on.

Shifting this structure over to religion and ideology, it works with stories and reason, too. The lady you are talking about is in Stage 1. She doesn't even know she has a problem. In the stories she tells herself, there is no problem. None. Nada. She already has it figured out. So how are you going to reason her out of that? You can't. Ever. She has to do it herself. But you can make her uncomfortable with inconvenient questions and observations using her own standards. And, over time, that will likely get her into Stage 2, if she is still talking to you.  

Until cracks appear in her certainty, she will never move to the next stage (Stage 2) of doubt where she will start doing her own looking at things, research and private mulling things over. 

This is a great system, but it takes time. The good news is that it works. I know. Looking over my past at artists I have produced, I used this sequence without even knowing about it. And this is exactly how I got out of my previous addictions.

EDIT: I just found the book. The jargon is different than my paraphrase, but the conceptual framework is the same. Changing for Good: A Revolutionary Six-Stage Program for Overcoming Bad Habits and Moving Your Life Positively by James Prochaska, John Norcross and Carlo DiClemente. (That's an affiliate link. The Amazong gods say I have to say this now and I might make 25 cents or so if anybody buys this sucker. Yay...  )

Now here is the example I found.

Ice Cube is a super-famous black artist. He recently started working with the Trump administration to get tangible results for the black community. He said he wanted to work with the Biden people, but they blew him off until after the election. So he will keep working with the Trump people.

Since this is election time and Trump hatred is preached so much in the black community, this caused an explosion of cognitive dissonance. Ice Cube was recently invited to do discuss this on a show with famous black women called Cocktails With Queens (Claudia Jordan, Vivica A. Fox, Syleena Johnson, and LisaRaye).

And they are in a pickle. Here they are before them one of their cultural gods and he, to them, has embraced Satan. They don't want to offend their icon, but they can't accept that he doesn't hate like they do.

In other words, they have a serious problem and don't even realize what it is. All they see is a paradox. Just watch this exchange below and it will be clear as the discussion morphs from pleasantries to agenda.

I don't think I need to say that I disagree with Ice Cube's separationist views and reparations and things like that, but that is not part of my point right now.

This is, and I agree with him. He wants black people come to the table with the rich and powerful and negotiate what blacks are getting in concrete terms--and he wants them to actually get it and fulfill their part. He wants a deal that is honored on both sides.

He put together a plan with a group of people who want the same thing and he called it Contract with Black America. He doesn't want a story for results. He wants money and reality, whether it comes from the government  or the market, and he's not afraid to ditch those who only do the story.

But you have to fight a story with a story if you want your own side to come to where you are at. And here Ice Cube is brilliant with these ladies. He keeps it to Stage One. They have a problem and they are not aware of it. So he needs to get them to see that the essence of their problem is always talking and not doing (except to demonstrate and things like that). Until they see that and see that they are helping to cause that problem, all else is useless. 

One of the best moments where this theme was expressed was at 27:43.

Quote

Claudia Jordan: I will tell you we have to wrap the show. We're way over, but I just want to say, Ice Cube, I hear what you're saying. But I just want you to know, as black women, how we would feel with there's no mention specifically of black women in the Contract with Black America 

Ice Cube: You stand on top of that. I just told you, you can write that up if you want to.

Claudia Jordan: We're not out here jumping on calls...

Ice Cube: We're all black, so we're all in this together.

Claudia Jordan: We're not meeting with Jared Kushner and Donald Trump about this. You are. So you can't say: "Well if you don't like it, add to it." You're out here. You took that job. You took that position. 

(crosstalk)

Ice Cube: I'll write up the black woman's part of the Contract for you. 

(crosstalk) 

Ice Cube: How many words do y'all want it to be? [crickets] The thing is, you guys are the experts. But here we go again. You just want to talk. Nobody want to help me. Just want to talk. But y'all are experts on black women. So why won't y'all help me? See that's the problem.

Then the four women exploded.

Man, what a great example. That's what a well told story war does. A well told one. Which means the right story to the right people at the right time in their lives.

And the result?

It's too early to change their minds about putting Trump in perspective or any of these other self-inflicted things standing in the way of real progress they all want for the black community. They first have to realize they have a problem and they, themselves can fix it. But they don't even know what the problem is, yet.

And here Ice Cube's talent enters. Because he rubbed this problem for this stage in their faces so well rubbed, these women are going to talk among themselves, talk among their friends, talk among a lot or people, and gradually they are going to see the image of the problem appear in their minds and accept it as a problem.

Then they will will be ready for Stage 2.

But that's a different story war.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Geoffrey Miller (an excellent evolutionary biology dude I follow) is right. But I want to add to that.

The video below is one of the best descriptions of the intended audience outcome of a story war propaganda campaign done on a massive scale I have come across.

And I study this stuff.

(Please note, I am not talking about whether Trump should have won or not. I'm focusing on how story war propaganda impacts voters. The techniques and outcomes.)

I liked this so much, I even did a transcript.

Quote

JACK MURPHY: So the point actually is that the choice that the Democrats were faced with was this: Do I want to be mentally tortured for another 4 years by my own party? 

The Democratic Party and the Democratic media have tortured, gaslit, and abused the Democratic voter for 4 years by telling them that this guy, Donald Trump, who everybody loved in 2014, who was on The Apprentice, is with Oprah and with Jesse Jackson and getting awards from NAACP, and the whole thing, we're gonna say, all of a sudden, "He's a racist. He's Hitler. He's the end of the world. He's authoritarian. You should be scared. You should be terrified. You should be freaking out."

The Democratic Party beat their own voters into voting for whomever they decided. The only choice the Democrats had was, "Please make it stop." 

And they didn't know, they don't know what it is, but, really, they're just saying, "Please make it stop." 

And where's the abuse coming from? It's not coming from Trump's policies. It's not coming from the actions of Republican Party. It's not coming from MAGA patriots blowing up cities and rioting all over the place. 

No. The torture is coming from the Democrats. They're doing it to their own people with their foot soldiers in the street, with Black Lives Matter and Antifa, and all this chaos.

And saying to people, "If you don't vote for our guy, you're gonna let Hitler take over the country."

And they're just like, "Please make it stop." They're all deranged and broken down on purpose. That's their only choice. 

TIM POOL: And where are we at now? The media is saying, "The election's over. Joe Biden won. Submit."

JACK MURPHY: Submit. 

TIM POOL: Even though we haven't gone through State certification, let alone choosing Electors, let alone certifying the Electoral results. Congress has to then certify the results after that. We've gone through none of the traditional Constitutional processes and they're already saying, "Shut your mouth."

And to point, re Tim's final comment, the propagandists can say (or imply), "Shut your mouth," and people will shut up because they have already been softened up and dominated to the extent, the poor bastards are no longer thinking of anything except the relief of having it stop.

I felt this personally. Before the election, the people where I live are mostly liberal. They walked around tense and afraid all the time. The day after the media called the election for Biden, I had to go out in public and they had become some of the nicest people I've ever come across. The same people--ones I knew and strangers alike. It was like an on-off switch. The relief was tangible. You could almost touch it.

A well orchestrated and well performed story war propaganda campaign did that to them. It didn't do that to me because I was immune to the message.

It did that to them.

Propagandists targeting their own people is one way to make this form of propaganda work with a predictable outcome.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This is going to be one hell of a post. I will repeat it over in the The 2020 Presidential Election Tournament thread since people who go there often don't go here. And this sucker is illuminating.

The following diagram is one of the best outlines of "controlling the narrative" I have seen to date from the standpoint of injection and reinforcement points and injection frames.

This diagram is so important, here it is separate in case Twitter ever takes it offline.

Take any issue, give it an injection frame and follow it through the injection/reinforcement points (btw - this is how I describe it, not @rwoster. These words are clunky, I admit, but I just came across this thing and they are the ones that came to mind).

So what kind of narrative are we talking about? On the diagram, you only get scandal, coverup, weapon.

Oh, but there is so much more...

Let's dig a little deeper for other examples, shall we? This is a good time to do that because the intensity of the different efforts within the current culture to sell a Biden win over Trump in the election provide a while crapload of great examples.

Here's just one approach. Take a look this tweet by Scott Adams:

That opens a thread of eight tweets. For the sake of convenience, here is the text of all eight in one place (my bold):

Quote

Democrats are employing some excellent brainwashing technique to defend the election as fair. Here are some of their tricks.

1. "Refuses to concede" is making you think past the sale that Trump's legal challenges will fail. This is their main persuasion trick.

2. "Audit" is being used to make a simple recount of (alleged) fraudulent ballots seem as if that could potentially find all types of fraud, which a recount is not designed to do. When none is found (because they are not looking), they will declare it proof there was no fraud.

3. "No evidence" is being used to reframe "plenty of evidence but not yet proven in court."

4. "No WIDESPREAD fraud" is the defense against the allegation of TARGETED fraud in specific swing state cities. This is misdirection aimed at low-information voters, which is most of the public.

5. Massive fraud would be "obvious" if it happened, so therefore it didn't happen. This ignores the entire nature of the allegation -- that it is totally obvious to about half of the country. No one believes Biden got far more votes than Obama.

6. Trump lawsuits are being tossed out of court. The fake news does not tell you the strongest evidence of fraud has not yet been presented to the courts. The first lawsuits were probably just to keep the fraud argument alive while lawyers dug for the good stuff.

7. Character assassination by bad analogy. The fake news is labelling Trump's legal challenges to the election as McCarthyism, racism, and the work of a dictator staging a coup. All of that is fear-persuasion based on bad analogies.

8. Experts and trusted media say no fraud has been detected. What they leave out is that they were not looking for it, and in some cases the people responsible for preventing election fraud are just saying they did a terrific job. This is misdirection.

btw - Those are only a few. 

So now take any one of these techniques/tricks, or any combination of them, and create a story around it. Throw in some victim or victims in distress with real faces on them and make sure Trump is the evil monster tormenting them. It doesn't even have to be a good story. 

Then run the story through the injection/reinforcement points on the flow chart and run it round and around as much as you can.

This is what the bad guys mean by "controlling the narrative."

Now look around you and try to see the culture through this lens.

Do you see it?

I sure as hell do.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The chart below I found out there on the Interwebs is not about storytelling per se--that is until you look at the items as story themes and look at the predominance of them in the stories within the mainstream news and culture.

The column  on the left is from the 1950's and is more abstract (that is, more general). On the right, it is how to concretize such a theme through the COVID-19 filter. (This isn't 100% correspondence, but enough of it is to be quite useful as a story-wars approach.)

Notice on the left how images don't come to mind easily. But on the right, they do. That's not because of description, but instead because of the predominance of the themes in the mainstream news and culture wedded to specific items and familiar situations.

For example, under isolation, depriving an individual of his social support and ability to resist immediately brings to mind very little image-wise. Once you start thinking about it, something comes. But when you switch to the right column, social distancing immediately brings to mind images of people in grocery stores standing in staggered lines, sitting in large spaces like at a speech with chairs far apart, and so on.

I'm not saying the mainstream news uses this chart for thematic outlines, but this chart does a pretty good job of laying out themes of helplessness and obedience within a social context. 

As humans are primates and primates do many things by imitation, stories full of these images fill the public mind (that is, the minds of the individuals who make up the general public) with lots of helplessness and obedience situations to imitate.

Now think of this. Had American economic reliance on China in the American Middle Class not been interrupted and had it been allowed to dominate the US economy, imagine replacing the column on the right (COVID-19) with concretized themes of obedience to China. 

Or imagine this same column with concretized themes of the Great Reset.

Or the social justice warrior agenda.

Or, hell, even the need for endless war for profit.

This is a great tool for planning out a story wars campaign to soften people up with feelings of helplessness, fear and obedience if you start fiddling around with it.

Never forget that, in terms of society, fear is mostly followed by submission to authority. That is one of the templates most used in framing plotlines. Make people afraid of something (with story), then show them (with story) how obeying an authority, or the advice of an authority (as opposed to their own observation and thinking) will make them safe.

Michael