WHEN HUMANS SEE OTHERS: When humans see Others, most reasoning ends!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2022

Now also, The East Bumfuck Files: According to major anthropologists, when we humans believe that that we're seeing Others, things can get ugly real fast.

Indeed, things can get extremely ugly, even here in our own "liberal" tribe! Just consider The East Bumfuck Files.

Yesterday, Kevin Drum triggered the onslaught with this unfortunate post. In a string of ugly comments, delighted droogs fell into line. 

Ugly and stupid, yet highly instructive? What can you say about this behavior—about behavior which has existed within our own self-impressed tribe down through the annals of time? 

We expect to visit the "Bumfuck files" early and often next week. For today, we'll briefly return to yesterday's post, in which an array of commenters pounded away at a peculiar contention by Drum.

As you may recall, Drum had advanced a strange set of claims in this earlier post:

According to Drum in that earlier post, Fox News viewers are "victims" of the Fox "con game" too. According to Drum, Fox viewers don't understand that they're being conned. According to Drum's peculiar contention, the millions of people who watch Fox News don't deserve our contempt. 

Repeat! According to Drum, Fox News viewers don't deserve our contempt! That was a very unusual claim. And then, after that, the deluge:

In 51 comments by Drum's readers, no one seemed to agree with Drum's bizarre contention. To those Drum readers, Fox viewers are Others—and Others exist to be loathed. 

Others deserve our contempt.

According to major award-winning experts, what happens when human beings start seeing Others? To many such people, these experts say, the Others are all just alike:

COMMENT 6: Nope. They are not victims. They deserve all the scorn, ridicule, and contempt we can muster.

COMMENT 9: Fox viewers want to hear this stuff. If they didn't, Fox wouldn't be selling it. 

COMMENT 19: Fox News viewers know exactly what they're buying (with their attention and ad dollars) and they want it. If it wasn't Fox, it would be someone else.

To Commenters 6, 9 and 19, Fox viewers are all just alike. There was no suggestion in these comments that some group of Fox viewers might differ, in some significant respect, from some other such group.

In fairness, Drum had also drawn no distinctions between different groups of Fox viewers. But when we humans start seeing Others, it will often seem that the Others are all just alike. 

A few commenters did draw distinctions between different groups of Others. As we noted yesterday, this comment provides one example:

COMMENT 11: The reality is there's more than one type of Fox News viewer. Some are racist jerks who know, deep in their hearts, that the outcomes they want are profoundly wrong and unjust. But they support the things they do (and consume the news they consume) out of resentment and bitterness. They're like Gollum. I know one or two like these. And there are also Fox News viewers who genuinely are entirely bereft of the ability to analyze what's going on in the world. And they really do believe the stuff Murdoch pushes on them. Such people are profoundly ignorant.

The world is a complicated place.

Somewhat comically, this commenter identified two groups of Fox viewers. One group is profoundly ignorant. The other group is worse!

A few other commenters seemed willing to draw sweeping conclusions about Fox viewers based on their own experience—even though, inevitably, their experience seemed to be limited. The high-powered scholars with whom we've consulted pointed to comments like these:

COMMENT 3: In my experience, most Fox News types are also huge assholes. Sure, to some extent they're being conned, but the con is designed to appeal to selfish, racist, sexist, xenophobic jerks. AKA Republicans.

RESPONSE: In my experience, they also tend to be gun owners, so having sympathy while afraid of them is simply not possible...Where so many have multiple weapons & some give them to kids, I just cannot sympathize.

COMMENT 17: I work with many of these people. Hard to have sympathy for them. Maybe for their families, who, in several cases I see, disagree strongly with the Trump fan.

According to Commenter 3, most Fox viewers (in his experience) were huge assholes. In response, someone else said that, in his experience, Fox viewers tend to be gun owners.

Commenter 17 said he works with many Fox viewers (actually, with many of "these people"). That said, how many such people could he possibly know? Millions of people are watching Fox News at every hour of the day.

According to experts, when we humans start seeing Others, it may not occur to us that our personal experience is limited. We tend to plow ahead with our sweeping judgments based on the relative handful of people we do know.

Meanwhile, what about the Fox News viewers who aren't huge asshole and aren't gun owners? Do those Fox viewers deserve our contempt? 

Inevitably, the answer will be yes. Experts tell us this:

When we humans identify a group of Others, we'll often say that the Others are all just alike. We may tend to draw sweeping conclusions based on our limited experiences. 

When the Others are political Others, it will rarely cross our minds that there may be something some Others may think or may know which might explain their different inclinations from ours. It will never occur to us that the Others could even be right in some way.

These experts added one additional point:

When we humans start seeing Others, a lack of fundamental humanity will often reveal itself. Inevitably, these Others will deserve our contempt. Even if they truly can't see that they're being misinformed and misled, we'll extend no sympathy to them.

By definition, all Others are bad. No other viewpoint is possible. "There but for fortune" will not occur. As we saw in Drum's original post, empathy comes off the table when humans start to see Others.

Then we arrive at the Bumfuck files, the files which appeared yesterday. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but the Bumfuck comments are ugly.

We expect to look at those comments next week. We advise you to read those files

Why do (some) Others vote as they do? Why are (some) Others inclined to side with the viewpoints they encounter on Fox?

Could it be because of what you can see in those files? The experts all say that's a yes.

We humans are inclined to "kill the pig." The principle holds, major experts say, when we humans invent and see Others.


73 comments:

  1. Shouldn't we concentrate on discussing the actual MSNBC and CNN viewers, dear Bob?

    After all, those are the goebbelsian media orgs you watch all time. Certainly you must have a good idea what MSNBC/CNN-watching creatures are like.

    Are they all the same? Are there different kinds of them? What kinds?

    Why don't you tell us, dear Bob. That would definitely be more interesting than brain-dead Kevin Drum audience's opinion of mythical "Fox News viewers"....

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  2. Let’s be really kind and just say that Bob’s way of framing our current crisis is profoundly silly.
    In the interest of lighting a candle against the darkness, I would suggest hunting down ( Micheal Moore posted it) the letter Jennifer Crumbly wrote to Donald Trump. The edited versions in articles don’t do it justice. The tone of possibility justified grievance mixed with ugly elements stoked by Trump is quite illuminating, and gives us a look at this stuff without the sugar coating Bob requires.

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    1. No, "let's" not. You might be mistakenly thinking that you are part of some majority consensus of opinion.

      I completely agree with what he is saying here.

      You have the position that we should never look inward, and seek to improve. Just stick to criticizing the Others. Here's a couple quotes for you to consider.

      "Don't ever defend. Always attack."

      L Ron Hubbard

      "The unexamined life is not worth living."

      Socrates

      So... you're taking Hubbard's position over Socrates, just to be very clear.

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    2. "grievance mixed with ugly elements stoked by Trump is quite illuminating,"

      Can you point out some?

      In the part I read, she described herself as an atheist who has always been against Republicans and is suffering from economic anxiety."We are good fucking Americans that cannot get ahead ... Do you know how hard it is to support a family on only $40,000 a year?"

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    3. Greg - what is the basis on which you claim Somerby's framing in this post is profoundly silly?

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    4. You will have to find it, read it yourself, make your own judgement.
      Socrates weeps. My use of the Royal “we” seems to provoke a guilty response. Bob’s post, and your acceptance of it is hardly rational. You seem to assume, like Bob, the breakdown in our discourse can be fairly judged by looking at the comments section about one very dubious judgement from Kevin Drum. It’s absurd on the face of it. And you are a very silly person.

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    5. Too bad you can't back up your claims re. that letter. The comments on Drum represent an outlier opinion to you??

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    6. If you think the letter I referenced does not exist, fine, let the world judge our characters on that truth. Mh goes far enough into Bob’s silliness further down the thread. Yet being forced by weirdos like Rationalist to explain that 2 plus 2 makes 4 every day is a task probably counterproductive to fulfill.

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    7. Google Crumbly letter to Trump the Daily Mail also printed the whole thing.

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    8. No, I read the letter. I was just interested where you found "ugly elements stoked by Trump" in it. And I was interested if you thought the comments on Drum represented an outlier opinion since you claimed it was absurd to make judgements based on them.

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    9. She says she is a LGBTQ friendly feminist who wants a woman to be president and never liked Republicans.

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    10. And are you not doing what you accuse Bob of? Assuming the breakdown in our discourse can be fairly judged by one letter from one person? Is that not also absurd on the face of it?

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    11. It's absurd to make judgments based on a comment section so "let's" instead make judgments based on one single letter from one random person? Does that really make sense?

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    12. How is the letter illuminating? What is illuminated? How does it "give us a look at this stuff without the sugar coating Bob requires"? What is the sugar coating Bob requires?

      Would like you to please explain what you mean so I can understand what you are trying to say.

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    13. Were the comments on Drum not ugly and stupid? Does our tribe "see the Others" significantly differently from the way the commenters do? Does our tribe empathize with Fox News viewers as "victims" of the Fox "con game"?

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    14. "The comments on Drum represent an outlier opinion to you?"

      Yeah Greg is acting as if this framing of the problem exists in a vacuum. This is but the latest example.

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    15. Just letting people read the letter on their own seems to make you nervous…. Well, now they can sort thru your cherry picking and understand why. The question as to if these people are representative of liberal meanies in general is a silly one examined outside the current animosity in general, but that is the only way Bob will do it.

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    16. What "ugly elements stoked by Trump" do you see in the letter? What is illuminated in it?

      Don't understand you last sentence.

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    17. Is the letter representative of conservatives in general? How?

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    18. Do the comments on Drum represent an outlier opinion?? Why or why not?

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    19. No problem if you don't want to flesh out your opinions. I just wanted to understand them better.

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    20. Sorry if you don’t understand. Trump people pretend not to understand election results. But why don’t we let people read it and make up their own minds?

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    21. I'm wondering what you think since you made the claim. What "ugly elements stoked by Trump" do you see in the letter? What do you feel is illuminated in it?

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    22. Not trying to bust you chops just want to understand on what basis you are making the claim.

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    23. Do you feel letter representative of conservatives in general? How?

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    24. Do you feel the comments on Drum represent an outlier opinion?? Why or why not?

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    25. Again, the notion of people just reading the letter, with or without your cherry picking, seems to really drive you nuts. Let people read it and decide for themselves. By the way, I voted for President Biden. Who did you vote for?

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    26. Biden. Why do you feel the notion of people just reading the letter, with or without my cherry picking, seems to really drive me nuts?

      You're not interested in explaining what "ugly elements stoked by Trump" do you saw in the letter and what do you feel is illuminated in it? Why not?

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    27. I read Somerby's essay and it sounds like he is objecting because he thinks Drum's commenters are claiming that all Fox viewers are alike.

      Somerby says:

      "Meanwhile, what about the Fox News viewers who aren't huge asshole and aren't gun owners? Do those Fox viewers deserve our contempt? "

      Drum's post was about who to have sympathy for, not how many kinds of viewers might be watching Fox News at any point in time (Somerby's strawman).

      No one thinks that Fox viewers are all alike. That said, generalizing is a valid thought process because people cannot think of people as a long string of individuals each with different characteristics. Categorization results in rounding off the corners and making overall statements that are generally true even while not necessarily being representative of any single member of the group being categorized.

      But Somerby isn't arguing in good faith, and neither are today's trolls. No one in Drum's comments has stated that they think all Fox viewers are exactly alike (Somerby's thesis). Somerby would be wrong to assert that there are NO commonalities among Fox viewers. So, given that there are some things that Fox viewers share, the question is what are they, not Somerby's claim that no people should ever be categorized, not even the people who identify themselves as Trump supporters or gun owners or Tucker Carlson fans.

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    28. This is the thesis: "when we humans start seeing Others, it may not occur to us that our personal experience is limited. We tend to plow ahead with our sweeping judgments based on the relative handful of people we do know."

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    29. What else is anyone supposed to do? You cannot go through life without making any judgments. It would be a bigger mistake not to use the people you know as a source of info. It is not possible to go down the road meeting as many Republicans as possible until you feel you have a sense of who they are. Insufficient time and resources for that approach.

      So this is just stupid. If I assume that my friend's cat likes to sleep a lot and eat catfood, I won't be far wrong. Similarly, if I assume that any random Fox viewer is likely to be Republican, support Trump and vote in reprehensible ways, I won't be far wrong there either. The people who don't feel that way tend to stop watching Fox.

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    30. It seems none of Somerby’s defenders want to state who they voted for. Maybe Mao would. Many seem to sense that being a Trump voter will rob them of any credibility with decent people.

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    31. I said I voted for Biden. And Clinton in 2016. I voted for the queen of all warmongers! I don't believe that all Trump voters are racists though. I empathize with them.

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    32. I empathize with you guys too. I know you are repulsed by Trump and it's very hard and scary to deal with. I don't agree with the black and white thinking you apply to Trump followers though. And Greg I'm very disappointed that you will not even back up your claims. What is so Illuminating about that letter? What was illuminated? How does that letter fairly judge our current discourse where the Drum comments don't? Were the Drum comments an anomaly from the liberal opinion of Fox News viewers? It doesn't sound any different from how you and the other trolls here regard them. It seems to me to be a completely accurate sample. You see the same black and white types of comments on liberal blog after a liberal blog and Twitter.

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    33. “ …not even the people who identify themselves as Trump supporters or gun owners or Tucker Carlson fans.”

      Raising hand…

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    34. Greg didn't really light the candle in the darkness he claimed he did. He turned out to be 100% full of shit.

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  3. “Sorry the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist.”

    I

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    1. We understand. You are a victim.

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    2. I was thinking more of your media and political fleecers. Just trying to live by Bob’s words.

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    3. They said to tell you “Hey”.

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  4. Should you really judge all liberals based on a handful of comments at a relatively obscure blog?

    If so, then why shouldn’t liberals judge what all conservatives think based on the comments at some right wing blog, or the views of Tucker Carlson?

    By what logic does Somerby attribute certain behaviors and tendencies to liberals in general? I mean, how many such people could he possibly know?

    And the extra touch, the ad hominem, calling Drum’s commenters “droogs”, shows Somerby is unable to practice what he preaches.

    And by the way, should Drum’s commenters also be viewed as victims? Why the contempt from Somerby then?

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  5. Is it Bob's view that Republican politicians deserve the praise for Republican voters dying from COVID?

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  6. mh - Good point. IMO we are ALL victims of our news sources. Every news source spin the news and promotes desired narratives. That includes conservative, liberal, and mainstream news.

    This situation encourages extreme tribalism. I wish I know what to do about it. The one suggestion for individuals is to give some regular attention to news sources on the other side -- people who disagree with you.

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    1. No everybody doesn't do it.

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    2. Conservative and mainstream news are the same thing.

      What do you mean by "liberal', Mother Jones Magazine?

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    3. @2:08 one reason to follow news sources on all sides is that one side often corrects errors or omissions from news on the other side. If you just follow one side it's difficult to know how adequate their coverage is. I have a tennis buddy who's a conservative nut. He believes in wild conspiracy theories. He will never change his belief, because he ignores sources that debunk it. What beliefs are presented by YOUR sources that are being debunked by FoxNews or conservative web sites? Unless you follow them, you'll never know.

      Bob Somerby is a treasure-- a liberal who debunks liberal news sites. I don't know of a conservative counterpart.

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    4. The information ecosystem has morphed into two primary camps: 1) Information sources that exclusively deal with how conservatives are all good and how liberals are all bad and 2)Information sources that exclusively deal with how conservatives are all bad and how liberals are all good.

      So if you are exposed to '1' you never hear how conservatives are bad and how liberals are good and if you are exposed to '2' you never hear how liberals are bad and how conservatives are good.

      But more importantly audiences of both groups are not exposed to issues that both liberals and conservatives are 'bad' at. These issues are never discussed at all! Eg - no one on either side discussed the record breaking military budget that was waved through by both parties last month. Neither sides talks about or cares about that issue at all. So enormously important issues are disappeared while we focus on elector slates and Kamala Harris's popularity polls. This is by design and works perfectly for the people who designed and implemented it.

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    5. "Information sources that exclusively deal with how conservatives are all good and how liberals are all bad..."

      25% of the population identify as 'liberal'. Well, probably somewhat fewer today, but let's say 25%.

      Speaking only for ourselves, we wouldn't call them "bad" (and what does it even mean?). But we would definitely call them stupid.

      ...unless they're some sort of anti-liberal-establishment liberals. By the way, dear Bob certainly isn't one of those. That would be someone like Jimmy Dore. An extremely rare phenomenon.

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    6. You don't correct any errors in mainstream news by watching Fox News. You correct them by watching different mainsteam outlets, and checking back later to look at the corrections that inevitably appear in stories.

      Fox News only provides misminformation and disinformation combined with "outrage" stories that may be made up or may be exaggerated commentary about real situations, all designed to whip up a sense of outrage in viewers.

      Take, for example, the story circulating that schools are building special lowered lunch tables for studients who "identify" as furries. That is total nonsense designed to upset viewers who dislike any sort of identification, don't know what a furry is, but think it is wrong for kids to pretend they are not people (as if that is happening anywhere in real life).

      Watching Fox news, OAN, Newsmax and spending time with Alex Jones and his ilk is a huge waste of time. There is an opportunity cost to wasting time with such outlets because there are only 24 hours in a day and people are limited in their capacity to watch news all day (even Somerby, apparently, judging by what he doesn't watch or read). For every minute spent with Fox someone could have been reading or watching something useful, real, true in the world, informative, enlightening, even entertaining. But not if their times is wasted by propaganda.

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    7. MSNBC just announced that they were giving Joe Scarborough a 4th hour in the morning, so from 6 to 10 am, MSNBC, the "liberal" counterpart to Fox Noise, presents 4 hours of politics hosted by a former Republican congressman who attained national fame by being one of the impeachment managers in the trial of President Clinton.

      George W. Bush's Communication Director and John McCain's presidential campaign senior advisor, Nicole Wallace hosts a program for two hours 4-6 pm 5 days a week on the liberal MSNBC.

      And all day long there is a regular parade of refuges from the republican party rewriting history as though they had not a damn thing to do with how the republican party embraced a monster like DJT.

      Beyond that, Rachel Maddow gets one hour in the prime time 9-10 slot.

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  7. We can only judge others on their demonstrated behavior. Their behavior is on display day after day, week after week, year after year.
    So what are we supposed to judge them on but their behavior?
    If they don't like being judged so harshly, let them change their behavior. After all hundreds of thousands of people are dead because of their behavior.
    And we should not judge them?

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    1. You don’t need to judge them, it might be in everyone’s interest to try and understand them. Bob pretends to want to do this, but it’s just a cudgel to beat liberals with.

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    2. Reading comprehension is in short supply around here.

      How does writing things like "They deserve all the scorn, ridicule, and contempt we can muster" equate to simply "judging" in this poster's mind?

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    3. I do not understand why it is wrong to condemn people who are helping to spread covid and contributing to unnecessary deaths?

      I do not understand why it is wrong to condemn people who put guns into the hands of children or into the hands of mentally ill people or criminals, so that kids are being shot as innocent bystandaers or targeted in their schools?

      I do not understand why it is wrong to condemn legislators who will not pass reasonable laws affecting women's health?

      ....

      And the list of things I do not understand about the way the right thinks about things is too long to mention everything, but I cannot consider the people who think and vote and make laws that hurt people to be anything other than wrong and beneath contempt.

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  8. That has nothing to do with reading comprehension. It’s a judgement you may judge as harsh, but it’s a judgement. Since these people tried to subvert our Democracy through violence, it might be considered a mild judgement.

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    1. Sorry, no.

      Judging
      form an opinion or conclusion about

      Ridiculing
      subject (someone or something) to contemptuous and dismissive language or behavior

      It has everything to do with reading comprehension. You claim it has nothing to do with it? Guess were miles apart on this one, doesn't bode well.

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    2. Yes, I agree that Somerby is ridiculing liberals rather than judging them.

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  9. Being concerned over who has contempt for whom is for children, children who are not being parented well.

    Somerby phones it in today, this is pretty much the same post from the other day, it is still just as garbage.

    Those on the Left are unmoved by contempt, indeed FDR famously said he welcomed it, days before winning the presidency in a landslide. Republicans are both Reactionary and reactionary, they are very sensitive to personal affronts, real or imagined, but Somerby's notion that if we all got along somehow these people would switch their votes is UTTER NONSENSE, theres is zero evidence for this.

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  10. "We expect to look at those comments next week. We advise you to read those files."

    This is truly a link to nowhere. You click on it and it gives a blogspot error message. Somerby would be very intolerant of this mistake if it had been made by someone else.

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  11. This is why it is a mistake to treat Fox viewers as normal human beings:

    "The National Butterfly Center near Mission, Texas, released a shocking statement this week, announcing it would be forced to shut down for the weekend due to credible threats. “We simply cannot risk the safety and lives of our staff and visitors during this dangerous time,” the organization said in a statement Thursday.

    You may be asking yourself what in the world anyone could have against a butterfly center. Well, the organization is located along the Rio Grande and has spent years fighting the previous administration on border wall construction. It fought the corrupt, privately funded border wall, too.

    It’s since become a target of the right, now, unfortunately, closing for the weekend due to a MAGA-related rally scheduled to take place nearby. But there’s more. The email said a Virginia candidate arrived at the center with someone who claimed to be Secret Service and demanded access to the property, apparently enraged over a conspiracy theory that the center is aiding in human trafficking. When the center’s staff demanded they leave, the email said the candidate tried to run down director Marianna Treviño-Wright’s son in her vehicle."

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  12. This is what Fox News viewers see when they watch Fox:

    "Fox host Griff Jenkins interviewed Joseph Imperatrice, the founder of Blue Lives Matter, in a segment about a shooting that threatened Democratic Rep. Cori Bush:

    Jenkins: Now we see Cori Bush, liberal Democrat from St. Louis, Missouri, saying on Twitter that her car was hit with bullets. Her car was shot. No one was in it, fortunately. But will these lawmakers change their tune?
    Imperatrice: The harsh truth is we need these lawmakers to be victims. We need them to understand when the worst situation possible hits them, and then they can turn around and say, 'Wow, maybe it's an issue. Maybe I need to wake up and do my job and change things for the better. I'm not praying any of these people get hurt or harmed, but they need to see firsthand how bad the streets really are.
    Jenkins: Of course, we would never wish any harm whatsoever on any American, let alone a politician we disagreed with. But the instances we did see - two instances of carjacking, fortunately, everyone was OK - maybe it will change their minds. Who knows?"

    Contempt may not be the right word to use to describe people who are scarey. 40% of those who watch Fox are saying that it may be necessary to use violence to fix this country. These are not people I want anything to do with. I wish they didn't live in this country, because their views are dangerous to everyone else.

    How on earth can we let these kinds of threats go by, as if they were just part of normal broadcasting?

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  13. "One day after Holocaust Remembrance Day, multiple people posted photos to social media showing swastikas scrawled on Washington, DC's iconic Union Station."

    This rise in hate crimes is why we cannot condone what occurs on Fox News, especially on the shows like Tucker Carlson's that support white supremacism.

    Somerby wants to pretend that these are just nice, good people watching Fox News, not members of hate groups and fellow-travelers, racists, misogynists, sociopaths and drunken idiots. The people watching Fox News on a regular basis are not decent, not anyone that good people would want to have anything to do with.

    Lately, I place Somerby in that category too. He belongs in the deplorable basket right along with the rest of the miscreants. Somerby can try to portray these people as cuddly and cute, like puppies, but they are evil filth. There is no one anymore who doesn't know what Fox News is about. If someone is watching, it is because they want to fill their minds with shit. I don't need to know people like that.

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  14. Conservatives generally think average Joe liberals are more than a little absurd, if well-intentioned and think that powerful liberals are on the order Dr. Evil.

    Liberals think all conservatives are Hitler and that is all the world needs to know.

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    1. Cecilia, why do you keep doing this? Somerby tells liberals not to stereotype conservatives, and here you go doing it with liberals. Nothing is ever going to charge if you think you are immune from having to give up your intolerance and stereotyped thinking. But have no fear, you’re in a safe space where the blogger will never call you out for your hypocrisy, because he himself is a hypocritical ass.

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    2. Unfortunately, mh, most people do resort to stereotypes, conservatives included.

      I don’t. I’ve stated many times that the liberal commenters here are more militant and angrier than liberals are in general. They are very different in the way they relate to others from the average liberal next door.

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    3. "They are very different in the way they relate to others from the average liberal next door."

      Meh. To believe this, we would have to see a video of someone who is openly liberal, having a normal, humyn-like conversation with someone like you.

      Also, liberals don't typically live 'next door' to normal ordinary humyns. They tend to inhabit college dorms (the expensive kind) and ticky-tacky suburbs.

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    4. Mao, all internet artifice aside, I’d wager that you have precious family members who are liberal in their politics and that don’t mean a thing in their dearness to you.

      Look at Somerby, an inexplicably unsung national treasure, who I wish was twenty years younger so I didn’t have to worry about him dying in his sleep.

      Please exercise and watch your weight and cholesterol, Bob!!

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    5. "I’d wager that you have precious family members who are liberal in their politics and that don’t mean a thing in their dearness to you"

      Absolutely. The closest kind. So what. We never talk politics with them. That's the point.

      "Look at Somerby, an inexplicably unsung national treasure"

      Meh. We disagree that dear Bob is such a great treasure.

      Dear Bob, in our humble opinion, is a loyal pro-establishment liberal.

      Judge for yourself: any minor ridicule of any liberal demigod-politician is the Crime of the Century, while most of the Others' politicians are 'Crazy'. Liberal-goebbelsian media clowns are almost as bad as their Fox News counterparts. No worries about Mr Biden's Big War. Of the Great Leader's mental abilities and his handling the 'nuclear codes'. Etc., etc., etc.

      We're surprised you don't see it yourself. Yes, dear Bob is a pro-establishment liberal.

      Not a garden variety, we'll admit. He's just a liberal who doesn't understand modern liberal electoral politics: they got nothing to offer, and therefore hate-mongering and demonizing their opponents is their only chance.

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