TRIBAL SNAPSHOTS: Dick jokes of the tribe, unite!

WEDNESDAY, JULY 18, 2018

Part 3—A snapshot of smutty disdain:
What does it mean to belong to a tribe?

Along other things, it means the member gets to bathe in the water of tribal assurance. We've marveled at this in the past two days as cable watchers were assured that "everyone" was appalled by Commander Trump's Helsinki performance, and that "no one" believes his Tuesday attempt at a walkback.

Watching CNN or MSNBC, we kept receiving this odd reassurance. On this morning's front page, the New York Times states the obvious—many Trump voters disagree with the Standard CNN Take.

Everyone doesn't think Trump bombed in Helsinki. In this passage from his report, Matt Flegenheimer quotes two examples:
FLEGENHEIMER (7/18/18): So it went in interviews with Republican voters across the country on Monday and Tuesday, most of them devoted to the president’s policies generally. They quickly sorted themselves into two camps: those who winced at the episode, or at least questioned it, and those who continued to defend Mr. Trump without hesitation.

If history is a guide—and polling, too—the second group is significantly larger within the party...

“It is strictly a witch hunt,” said Carol Livingood, 74, of Danville, Ind., who says she owns enough “Make America Great Again” hats and shirts to “wear Mr. Trump” every day of the week. “It makes Watergate look like playing in the sandbox.” She blamed the news media and the F.B.I. for stoking tensions.

“They’re just trying to make Trump’s election look fraudulent,” said Vernon Hastings Jr., 76, from Shreveport, La., calling reports of Russia’s election interference overblown. “You think it ain’t happening already? You think China’s not fooling with it?”
Other Trump voters offered theories concerning the method behind the alleged madness. "Everybody" doesn't agree, in spite of what pundits have said.

These are the people whose votes allowed Herr Trump to squeeze into office, even without a major East Coast weather event. They're the people whose votes could help the Republican Party retain control of the Congress in this November's elections—although we're being assured, on tribal channels, that a blue tidal wave's on the way.

As liberals, we know how to process comments from the likes of Livingood and Hastings. We tell ourselves that they and their kind will soon die off, leaving the planet to the wiser people, to people a bit more like us.

Such comments are common in liberal comment threads. They echo Hillary Clinton's famous statement about how "unfortunate" it is that such "irredeemables" even exist at all. The statement produced LAUGHTER/APPLAUSE from the tribal base—and may have sent Trump to the White House.

Alas! Such statements find their way back to those lesser beings and to their families and friends. And sure enough! Instead of exhibiting gratitude for the way we're willing to share our wisdom, these small-brained oafs tend to take offense when they hear us counting the days until they're gone from the Earth.

What will happen this November? We have no way of knowing. But history suggests that the turnout of the oafs could, in fact, exceed the turnout of our own tribe's many gods.

Our own tribe's bands tend to stay away from the polls, especially in off-year elections. And we aren't always completely successful at getting the lessers to switch—to vote the way we tell them.

What makes the lessers Over There cling to their tribal allegiance? We're going to guess that it doesn't help when they hear themselves described as "ignorant hillbillies" who can be smelled at the Walmart. Or when they hear themselves pruriently denigrated in the way one cable star did.

This cable star is a drinking buddy of Donald Trump's leading birther enabler. She thinks her friend Chris Matthews is the best political analyst ever. Never mind the lunacy he unloosed for two years in the quest to get George W. Bush elected, or the smutty misogyny he aimed at Hillary Clinton over all those smutty, amazingly stupid years.

Last night, the cable star returned to her favorite new pastime; she opened with a long-winded public reading of a pointless court transcript. Still, this peculiar star is one of our own, and she's skilled at selling the car.

Long ago and far away, she helped create the present moment. We're thinking of the extended reign of tribal insult concerning the comical term, "teabagging," which she helped us tribals enjoy over the course of two weeks.

The cable star kept pretending that she was embarrassed by what she was doing on the air night after night. No matter! The smutty fun started on Thursday evening, April 9, 2009. By Monday evening, April 13, the cable star was "teasing" a "teabagging" session like this:
MADDOW (4/13/09): Coming up, what is red-faced, assumes their taxes are going up even though they`re not and will be jockeying for air time on Wednesday? Conservative teabaggers, now with extra Ron Paul. Coming up next, Air America's Ana Marie Cox will join us for a double entendre palooza.
So cool, and so much fun! By the time the palooza was done, the star was playing us gullibles thusly:
MADDOW (4/13/09): Wow, I almost can't hold it together. Thank you very much, Ana Marie Cox, Air America national correspondent and Daily Beast contributor. Thank you very much. Look at me.

COX: Thank You, Rachel.

MADDOW: I've never sneezed on the air, but now, I have officially blushed, twice.
The cable star had now officially blushed! Despite her tremendous embarrassment, she kept the dick jokes coming for six straight nights, aiming them at regular people who weren't smart enough to consult UrbanDictionary.com to learn "why they shouldn't refer to it as 'teabagging.' "

During a later hour-long discussion, Jon Stewart scolded the star for this ugly, stupid behavior. For ourselves, We recall the first night of this extended insult-palooza as the ugliest, stupidest thing we'd ever seen on cable—and we'd sat through the smutty sessions, ten years earlier, in which Matthews explained that Candidate Gore was "today's man/woman."

The cable star entertained the tribe with her smutty putdowns of Others. Our tribal culture is heavily built upon such statements and acts of disdain.

We'll be better off when The Others are dead. We can smell them in Walmart stores, hillbillies that they are. Way back when, it was loads of fun to go on the air and show how thoroughly we disrespect Them for their pitiful lack of hipness.

"Tolerance is not a [Homo] Sapiens trademark." So says Professor Harari, cheekily understating the point in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.

Our little political/cultural band is often eager to demonstrate Harari's point. In standard tribal fashion, we're highly intolerant of The Others' alleged intolerance, very much in love with our own.

For better or for much, much worse, we harden the other team's tribal instincts as we express ourselves in these ways. This makes it harder to shake voters loose from a fellow like Donald J. Trump.

These are snapshots of primal behavior. In these ways, our uglier, stupider tribal instincts have helped get us where we now are.

Tomorrow: A wholly different snapshot

40 comments:

  1. "The statement produced LAUGHTER/APPLAUSE from the tribal base—and may have sent Trump to the White House."

    You, Bob, I must say, are a typical specimen of your (formerly) super-arrogant unpleasant 'tribe', currently a zombie death-cult.

    You believe that people (not you, of course) are so stupid that they will elect or not elect someone because of some statement, or a joke ('invented the internet'), or any number of other meaningless vibrations of the air.

    Don't get me wrong: you are precious. But it does get boring.

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  2. Somerby doesn't seem to accept the intelligence reports either. He thinks it is Liberal intolerance that elected Trump, not Russian election tampering. He thinks liberals elected Trump by not being nicer to The Others. Has Somerby ever participated in an election? Was he around for the last one? Does he think "Lock her Up" is some kind of campaign slogan? Now he revives the myth that Maddow somehow created the tea party by making jokes about teabagging.

    Somerby is a fool if he isn't being paid for writing this stuff. Russians are shelling out good money these days.

    When I read this kind of thing, it makes me want to call Trump supporters even more names. There is no defense for what they have done to our nation by foolishly supporting this man. Yes, they will suffer the effects more than others too, but they have inflicted harm on everyone else in the process. This isn't about civility. It is about a group of people who have inflicted a traitor on the country because they are too stupid to use their vote wisely. And now Somerby thinks we shouldn't be pointing out that they have committed the error of the century!

    What an ass Somerby is. If he weren't a liberal, I would be suggesting he too is a Putin-loving whore. But we all know he is just a confused Bernie supporter who thinks knocking down liberals will bring some kind of revolution. Is it worth destroying our country to get single payer health care, Bob?

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. It was neither liberal intolerance nor "Russian election tampering". Certainly, there was no "Russian election tampering" that helped Trump emerge from the pack of mental midgets, otherwise known as the Republican primary.

      I was listening to a story on NPR about Wisconsin turning from deep blue to bright red. In passing it was mentioned that Clinton visited Wisconsin (and Michigan)...zero times during her campaign.

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    3. Ilya,
      Right on!
      It was the bigotry, hands down.

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    4. What makes you think that the psycho-witch visiting a state would result in more people in that state voting for her?

      A completely baseless supposition.

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    5. You are the king of baseless suppositions.

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    6. Clearly, the troll's kicking it up a notch in terms of quality and blather show what a rough week it's been for Trump and the troll's paymaster(s).

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    7. Should be quantity instead of quality. The troll is incapable of the latter.

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  3. Somerby is just plain wrong about this. During an election, there is competition between candidates for votes. The use of language that unites a group and rallies support for one candidate over the other is appropriate because the goal is party cohesion, unity among supporters. The goal is not a broader unity with the other candidates, nor is it to increase sympathy for and appeal of the opposite candidate. It is to sharpen the us versus them aspect of the campaign. The very function of language to create within-party cohesion and sharpen between-party boundaries is exactly what is supposed to happen during an adversarial competition among candidates.

    If Somerby wants to see unity across party lines, he needs to look outside politics for it. A threat to our national survival, for example, such as that posed by Russia, would do it. We were united during WWII. We will be united again if Russia tries to capitalize on its subversion of Trump's presidency.

    In everyday life, people can and do unite without regard to politics. Those FBI agents investigating at Mueller's direction include both Republican and Democratic party members, united to find out what happened during the last election. They are united by the goals of their job. People similarly work side by side in businesses all across the US, disregarding party affiliations. They marry, they participate in sports, they have meaningful lives independent of who voted for whom. No one asks which astronauts were republicans and which were democrats, which authors, which actors, which fashion icons. When the government starts sorting us into such categories we will be living under fascism, as in Nazi Germany where party membership matters for jobs and cultural participation. That we do not currently have such a situation in the US is a mark of our freedom as a nation.

    Somerby exaggerates the extent to which we are divided into Us vs The Others. It could be much different than it is. He thinks we should be all one big happy family, all voting for...who? Bernie? Trump? Diane Feinstein? He never quite says. But if we're all supposed to get along without opposing each other's views, who do we unite behind? Dear Leader?

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    1. "Those FBI agents investigating at Mueller's direction include both Republican and Democratic party members, united to find out what happened during the last election."

      Could be. Except that now, when we know so much about Mr Strzok and his FBI-lawyer girlfriend, it seems more likely that they are a bunch of assholes inventing bullshit stories in an attempt to overturn the presidential election.

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    2. "inventing bullshit stories"
      ---------
      “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

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  4. Why does Somerby hate talking about sex? Why does he especially hate it when women do it? Why does Maddow of all women incite his disgust? Is it because she is lesbian? Or is it because she is smart? What sets him off?

    Only Somerby's analyst would know for sure, but I would bet it is tied up with complicated conflictual feelings about the Catholic church, his own mother, and his ambivalence toward women in general reflected in his failure to marry anyone (male or female). He acts this out repeatedly by attacking a variety of women, mostly young, mostly for doing their jobs but occasionally for being physicists or journalists, as Somerby perhaps wished to be.

    Just like the incels in their special subreddits, Somerby calls women whores and wants to see them back in traditional situations (where there mothers can tell them to marry much older men) and wants to see them forbidden from mocking men, especially in sexual terms (especially at correspondents dinners). Is it because they don't admire him sufficiently, because they compete with him in comedy clubs, or because they compete with him as journalists, their success revealing his own inadequacies. Is Somerby disordered for feeling this way? Should we be talking about his disorder, or just confine ourselves to dismissing his rants against Maddow?

    When we figure out what to do about Trump, maybe we can apply that solution to Somerby too.

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  5. "These are snapshots of primal behavior. In these ways, our uglier, stupider tribal instincts have helped get us where we now are."

    It's worse than that. They're all you have left. Your ideology is too unpalatable to sell, so your tribal tactics against those who disagree with it are what you rely on and it's equally revolting to the average or above voter.

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    1. I bathe in the water every day! Lather it up - down. Lather all over!

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  6. Here's what I wish Bob would explain. If liberals are losing because we've been dismissive and contemptuous toward conservatives, in particular Trump supporters, why doesn't the theory work both ways? Why do the Republicans never pay an electoral price for decades of arguing that every liberal hates America? Why doesn't Trump pay a price for saying that Congressional Democrats want increased crime?

    Even the best of us are never going to be perfect in our communications, and the right wing has a propaganda machine that exists to gin-up controversies, whether or not they're real. If liberals manage to avoid saying something stupid or obnoxious, Fox will just run with the Seth Rich story line. It's a mug's game that we can't win, and I don't know why Bob keeps pushing this.

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    1. "...and I don't know why Bob keeps pushing this."

      Bob wants liberals to fight with their hands tied behind their backs, so he can criticize them for getting rolled by conservatives all the time.

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    2. Other people's motivations can only be a guess. My guess is that Bob wants liberals to be a group that he can be proud to belong to.

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    3. "only"
      Nice try. It was Trump's bigotry that had you vote for a grifting, admitted sexual predator.
      Who, besides yourself, do you think you're fooling?

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    4. “If liberals are losing because we've been dismissive and contemptuous toward conservatives…

      That does often seem the sole issue Bob seems focused on. It has merit of course, but there are certainly other factors involved.

      “…in particular Trump supporters, why doesn't the theory work both ways?

      “Why do the Republicans never pay an electoral price for decades of arguing that every liberal hates America?”

      It’s been noted that the Powell Memo inspired organizational efforts by right-wing conservatives that took place over decades, which has resulted in the formation of talk shows, personalities, lavishly funded think-tanks, and a near takeover of the msm to the extent that liberals, a rather amorphous group, cannot and probably never will touch. Right-wing conservatives invade the corporate media in a way that liberal orgs and personalities simply cannot compete with, because RWC’s started way early. I used to enjoy NPR, but now I have to listen to corporate ads when I make the occasional foray, thanks to these efforts. Seems minor, but only shows the effectiveness of the right-wing machine, to which you alluded. As far as Bob’s efforts, I hope he keeps it up. Even Mao and Ebola would agree with that sentiment.

      Leroy

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  7. I enjoy to bathe and then use skin ointment.

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    1. Reluctantly, Greg, based on the other comments here, I have to award you "best commenter of the day" today.

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  8. "As of today, many more pundits are openly asking if Donald J. Trump is being blackmailed. That strikes us as a very good question. So do questions about his mental health and his intellectual competence."

    --Bob Somerby, TUESDAY, JULY 17, 2018

    It's likely that "many Trump voters disagree with" Somerby's take from yesterday.

    Journalists definitely should ask whether Trump is being blackmailed, or whether he is cuckoo. But when they do, it is tribal and hurts The Others' feelings. Except when Somerby does it.

    'K.

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  9. "Everyone" viewed Trump's press conference as disgraceful. Well, obviously not everyone, according to Flegenheimer. But that "everyone" includes Republicans, including ones currently serving in Congress. It also included the Wall Street Journal and even some Fox News pundits.

    Why was it considered disgraceful? Partly because it may show evidence that Trump might be being blackmailed, a "good question" to ask, according to Somerby's column yesterday.

    But today, Somerby connects concerns about Trump's performance at an important press conference with "dick jokes" on the Maddow show 9 years ago, and it's all relegated to typical "liberal" tribalism. (Did we mention there was across-the-board criticism of the press conference?)

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  10. "Such comments are common in liberal comment threads. "

    Does Somerby read his own comment threads? Does he read comment threads on conservative web sites? He would find a great deal of vile attacks hurled at liberals. Which might tend to hurt Liberals' feelings, and draw stinging responses. But Somerby has a theory of that too: Conservatives' vile comments? It's liberals' fault. After all, Somerby has said that Liberals exude a moral squalor, and Liberals make The Others hate us. (Check his archives). In his view, it isn't policy or tactics, but character flaws in liberals that cause all the problems. And character flaws aren't fixable. Too bad, suckas.

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    1. Liberals have some huge character flaws that make others hate them: weakness, low self esteem, gutless, defeatist, hypersensitive, mean, self hating, full of themselves, dumb, no knowledge of history, spoiled, stuck up, elitist.

      To me the big one is how dumb they are. But they are just human. They are just doing the best with what they have. The results speak for themselves. They don't seem too worried about any character flaws they possess. They actually deny possessing them. So if they are right, they should be just fine. They seem to feel confident about themselves and really be angry that anyone would point out their flaws. Let's see what happens. I respect them although I think they should be more open.

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    2. How can they at the same time have low self esteem and feel confident about themselves? And anon 4:01, are you flawless?

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    3. Why is it always about the projection?

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    4. With Conservatives, every accusation is a confession.

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    5. It might rather be transference than projection.

      Leroy

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    6. ACMA- Not flawless. But I understand my value and am confident about my ability to confront and fix problems that inevitably come along.

      Democrats don't have this type of confidence. They don't know how to solve their own problems and satisfy their own needs. Deep inside, they feel like a losers. Their feelings of inferiority are so ingrained they cannot conceive of themselves as powerful and valuable individuals who fight for what they want and need.

      These are the types of character flaws that make people hate them.

      Obviously not all Democrats can be described this way but I'm just giving you a broad look at the character flaws of the vast majority of Democrats which they cannot see in them selves but others see in them.

      If you want to dismiss me as as a right winger who is just projecting, that is fine but I would encourage Democrats to examine their feelings of self worth and inferiority and begin to find their strength and USE IT if any of what I say does rings true. You ARE strong and powerful. The world requires your courage and strength and will reward you for finding it within yourself and using it. The world has always required humans to get up every morning and fight for what they want and need and to use their individual power and strength to get it. Modern technology and the division of labor took that away and left Democrats in particular, totally out of touch with that power and how to use it.

      Stop being so sensitive, collectivist, masochistic, weak and hostile. Stop hating yourselves.

      (Oh - I would argue the confidence is just a front, a way to avoid the self hatred and feelings of powerlessness I describe here.)

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    7. You sound like someone who doesn't know any actual Democrats.

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    8. An over-the-top parody of a concern troll perhaps?

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    9. "Stop being so sensitive, collectivist, masochistic, weak and hostile. Stop hating yourselves. "

      If they take your advice they'll be Republicans.

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    10. Lefties think conservatives are mean, conservatives think lefties are stupid. Same as it ever was.

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  11. A site that claims to highlight dishonesty and hypocrisy SHOULD be run by one who possesses these qualities in spades. Nice work Bob!

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  12. Somerby is rewriting the story "The Emperor's New Clothes."

    In Somerby's version, the child who cried out "but he has no clothes at all" is attacked for hurting the feelings of the people who believed the Emperor was wearing clothes.

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