March 06, 2006

• Fascism and boobs, together at last!
• rense.com? Are you fucking joking? Have you been to any other pages on that site?
• Gitano Mullet el Awesome-o.
• err . . well, no. Is that bad? Here's the google search. The checklist is lots of places, I just picked the first one I saw that seemed to have a regular URL. Not a user page, not a wackity cookie-like URL, that kinda thing.
• Very interesting article. It reminds me very much of one our Social Studies teacher had us read back in 1988.
• rensewatch.blogspot.com/ is down right now but here's Google's cache. Even ignoring who wrote it (it originated at rense as far as I know) it's still a very oberly simplistic and misleading definition of what historians call 'fascism', and isn't any more instructive than those forwarded emails detailing Hilary Clinton's crimes, i.e., if you're inclined to believe them then the ysound plausible.
• A search for "Dr. Lawrence Britt" says that it was first published in Free Inquiry magazine "a journal of humanistic thought", but I didn't pursue it beyond that. It seems that didn't come from rense.com. I don't know that it's overly simplistic or particularly misleading (but I'd be interested to hear how), although I'd agree that fascism itself is used by the other side all the time as Orwell points out. Also, madison.com has a multipart series that looks at each of these `14 points.
• Yup -- the US fits too many of these specs, pete. Or did ye mean for us to talk about neoconmen boobs?
• Well, as long as the trains boobs run bounce in time... *runs*
• And yes, Rense used to have interesting stuff from time to time, but its' rising racist comments turned me off it long ago.
• Unsurprisingly, my old law school checks off on every fascist point listed.
• > I don't know that it's overly simplistic or particularly misleading (but I'd be interested to hear how) Perhaps we should compare this list against a Propaganda Checklist. It feels like it's trying to take a crowbar to the discursive part of my brain. It feels cherry-picked. It's great persuasive technique that people would read #1, and think, "Oh my god! The flags on cars and all over the place!" and then they'd read #2 and think, "Oh my god! Guantanamo Bay!" and by the time they were done, they'd absolutely have made the world into a black-and-white in their head. And for them, we would no longer just be a country with serious problems that need attention — we'd be just the same model of fasicm that the list had created in their minds. Other reasons it feels like a crowbar include: Many of these points were pre-existing, from way before people starting claiming the US had suddenly become fascist. (They are talking about the US, right? I mean, I know it's supposed to be general, but which country did you think of when you read it?) Part of the persuasion technique is: let people make the connection themselves, and since they feel like they "own" the connection they made, they'll dig in and defend that position when opposed, and you can effectively change someone that way. Persuasion and propaganda are powerful, subtle stuff! You'll also notice that many of the points are softened, to be more general, so they fit the target better.
• (And to demonstrate this to yourself, think of how your reading of the list would have changed if the title were, "14 Ways The United States Has Become a Fascist Theocracy" — you might have still agreed or disagreed, but the flavor of thing would have been unmistakably different.)
• <1>Many of these points were pre-existing, from way before people starting claiming the US had suddenly become fascist. Wait, wasn't the whole point of the article that is DOESN'T happen suddenly?
• The US??? I thought we were talking about Sweden! darn tall blonde blue-eyed sweater-wearing delicious fascist snuggleboogers!
• I'll admit it: I only clicked on the boobs ones.
• I'm writing a searing response to this entitled "14 Reasons Why I, Fes, Am Numbingly Luscious"
• > Wait, wasn't the whole point of the article that is DOESN'T happen suddenly? Well, the primary thrust of it is that, if the reader feels that most of the supporting points apply, that we're already there. I think that how long it took to get there or when the process started is secondary. There's nothing wrong with this argument intellectually. The author can say anything they want, really, if they can back it up. It's just that the supporting points seem kind of general and inconclusive. Maybe I'm just hesitant to take it up because, as a US citizen, I'm horrified and in denial. Or maybe that's the author's fallback strategy. Who the hell really knows anymore?
• Fes: See, now that I could get behind. Hrm.
• Who the hell really knows anymore? Werner Herzog knows. But it'll take more likker than we can come up with to get it out of him. specially on Fes's expense account.
• Who the hell really knows anymore? Werner Herzog knows. But it'll take more likker than we can come up with to get it out of him. 'Specially on Fes's expense account.
• Ooh, I doubled my pleasure. Damn that itchy trigger finger.
• No worries. Charge it to the dust!
• ("...and let the rain settle it.")
• I think one of the defining characteristics of fascism is a public that can be easily distracted from the important issues of the day by boob videos. For my part, I clicked the boob videos FIRST, then checked to see if any of the defining characteristics of fascism had changed since the last time I read that goddam article. Also: can we please quit with the fake boobs? They look terrible.
• Now I'm cornfused again. Except for the part about the boobs. That part I get.
• I don't find that fake boobs are terribly offputting.
• That's why we need a woman president. She can't be distracted by boobs.
• *throws beads at GramMa*
• What Fes said.
• I can't believe we have a pro-fake-boobs contingent. The slow descent into fascism I could stand, but this... THIS... !!!
• Sure sucked me in. He had me convinced we were on the move towards fascism. Thanks for calming me down guys.
• That's why we need a woman president. She can't be distracted by boobs. But then the whole world would be distracted by hers. Ohhh, Geena Davies.... mmmhh...
• Number 15 is the rampant tolerance of fake boobs. Thanks for tipping us over the edge!
• I have no problem with fake enhanced boobs. I even dated a woman who had a pair. No problem at all.