We should have a thing:

All Politicians Are Disingenuous #APAD

or something.

#MetaPol

I've had a gutful of these sacred pigs of politics!

#MetaPol

I think there needs to be much more distinction drawn between these usages of the words "partisan" and "ideological":

• supporting a party or idea in spite of evidence against it (Wiktionary)
  • e.g. "my country, right or wrong!"
• supporting a party or idea because of the evidence for it (e.g. endorsing a particular party or candidate because their current policies work better; endorsing a particular policy because it's backed by scientific studies; etc.)
  • e.g. UBI, universal healthcare, and other things falling under the "socialism" umbrella

#metaPol

For myself (and probably many other neurodivergent people), "advertisements" would be better called "aversements", because they make me feel averse to the product or service -- i.e. I want to not buy whatever it is that they're trying to convince me to buy.

It seems likely that this is related to the thing where some (a lot? most?) people get an actual dopamine hit from successfully following a trend, whereas many of us experience the opposite -- a negative feeling when we realize we're just copying something, and a positive feeling for having come up with something original.

...and I suspect that this is one of several axes that are the basic drivers of where people end up politically.

(This thought inspired by noticing that the French for "warning" is "avertissement".)

#metaPol

#metapol #nextdoor #crosspost

Time to introduce "Dear Red America"!

This group is an experiment. It may fail, but it seems worth trying. Maybe we'll learn something, even if we end up not being able to agree on anything.

A watershed election has occurred, and Republicans now dominate the field (to say the least). A lot of folks are very happy about this, while a lot of us are somewhere between "not looking forward to" and "terrified of" the next four years.

So, there are a lot of strong feels in play here! Some negative, some positive. I think we can talk honestly about those feelings, be straightforward about them, without having to bash each other over the head with accusations or gloating. I'm not here to take away anyone's joy or deny anyone's fears.

We do need to talk about why we're having such different reactions, though. We need to dig into the facts -- and how we decide what is fact and what is fiction, because that has clearly been the source of the overwhelming majority of disagreements between Left and Right.

My hope is that the differences between us, as voters, are far less than the differences between the political parties we'd prefer to represent us and the pundits and news-outlets we choose to listen to -- and that what appears to separate us is largely the product of media spin and echo-chamber silos, rather than simply emerging from mutually incompatible views of the future we want.

...and yes, a lot of the more mainstream news outlets (often inaccurately described as "left-leaning") distort and mislead too -- especially the ones owned by billionaires -- although they tend to take a more delicate approach than right-wing media. Both "sides" of the media talk about the problems we face in terms that keep us from addressing the real, underlying issues -- by starting proxy-wars over talking-point issues and bumper-sticker politics.

On a more personal note, I'm sorry it's taken me so long to write this intro post after setting up the group; I had a migraine for most of the weekend, and the work that had piled up to be done stayed piled up and I only started to cut through it in the last couple of days and get my head to a place where I could figure out what I wanted to say here. I hope it makes sense.

Anyway, having written that, hopefully some of the other ideas I wanted to discuss will start allowing themselves to be processed into words as well.

ad astra per aspera,

Woozle

(the post, for anyone who might be able to access it)

This seems highly relevant. #metaPol

"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore.

A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong.

And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want."

Hannah Arendt, German historian and philosopher (1906 - 1975)

(I can't find the quote in WikiQuotes, but it seems consistent with other things she is quoted there as having said.)

Anyway, this is so totally what I've been seeing lately. "Open your mind, but not so far that your brains fall out." oops, guess they didn't hear that last part...

(+edit 1: I meant to note that this came from localfriend Jane Bozarth on Nextdoor)

(+edit 2: As has been pointed out, the quote is not verbatim, but does at least represent a reasonable synthesis of Arendt's views.

Via WaPo --

2024-10-02 Differences in misinformation sharing can lead to politically asymmetric sanctions

Emphasis mine:

Although users estimated to be pro-Trump/conservative were indeed substantially more likely to be suspended than those estimated to be pro-Biden/liberal, users who were pro-Trump/conservative also shared far more links to various sets of low-quality news sites—even when news quality was determined by politically balanced groups of laypeople, or groups of only Republican laypeople—and had higher estimated likelihoods of being bots.

Related Links

I think this is the WaPo article, but it's behind a paywall; the email, fortunately, included links to earlier reports (along with enough clues to let me find the new paper):

• 2021-06-02 Conservatives more likely to believe false news, new study finds
• 2021-02-15 Right and left, partisanship predicts (asymmetric) vulnerability to misinformation

#metaPol #epistemics

Revolutionsplanungen: Strategietagung mit #AfD , „Neuer Rechter“ und und #Neonazis

Am letzten Samstag, dem 14. September 2024, lud die neonazistische "Denkfabrik" #MetaPol zu einer konspirativen Strategietagung in Thüringen ein.
MetaPol ist eine seit mindestens 2019 agierende Organisation der klassisch-völkischen Rechten, die ihre Vernetzung im Geheimen betreibt und dabei nicht weniger als eine Revolution von rechts plant.

https://recherche-nord.com/gallery/Metapol.html.

Ganz, ganz rechts

Ein Vehikel, die #AfD noch weiter zu ra­di­ka­li­sie­ren, ist der #Thinktank „#Metapol“. Er ver­brei­tet #rechtsextreme #Propaganda, or­ga­ni­siert Ver­an­stal­tun­gen. Die taz @tazgetroete hat jetzt mit dem Me­di­en­kol­lek­tiv Re­cher­che-Nord @recherchenord zu einem ak­tu­el­len Seminar von Metapol re­cher­chiert

Von Jean-Philipp #Baeck
https://www.taz.de/!6034283