rrneck
rrneck's JournalIt's interesting that everyone seems to have gotten the message
even though the OP was "heavily redacted". Granted it's little more than internet performance art, but it does help illustrate the difficulty in controlling the message by controlling the words.
Yes, words can hurt. But any objective evaluation of intent and injury based on word choice is almost impossible and controlling language based on such subjective criteria quickly runs into the realm of diminishing returns. Think about how difficult it would actually be to drive any particular term out of existence balanced against the ease with which it can be replaced with another. It's like tying balloons to the tailpipes of every car made and then sending them into outer space. Better to convince people to not drive so much. Better still to build a society where people can walk. And to do that, we have to get the cooperation of the drivers. Bitching at them about their tailpipe emissions is the wrong way to go about it.
There is plenty wrong with his insults.
But the wrong is not in the insults themselves. Yes, they contribute to an atmosphere of hate and division, but if you engage that atmosphere you're fighting against air. Good luck with that. The wrong is in the objective that drives the insults. Limbaugh and his ilk (and I include the talking heads on the left here as well) are media whores. Nothing more, nothing less. People do not exist for them, only the ratings they represent and the money they can make from them.
Imagine a natural resource that is powerful, ubiquitous, inexhaustible, and costs almost nothing to exploit: human emotion. All you have to do is tell people what they want to hear and they will throw money at you by the boxcar load for the luxury of not having to question why they feel the way they do or how it affects others. Preachers and pundits, talkers and screamers, politicians and pimps all line up at the trough to feed on hopes and fears of self indulgent citizens who treat the marketplace of ideas like an vending machine.
Trying to control the words people use does absolutely nothing to control the motivation that drives their use. Words, like any other weapon, are only tools. And it costs nothing to produce new hurtful words. Trying to control something that costs nothing to produce is an exercise in futility because if actual control is achieved it is a pyrrhic victory of censorship.
If you want the Limbaughs of the world to go away, remove the profit motive and they will leave on their own to find new ways to feed off of people. The only way I know how to do that is to teach people to understand themselves and encourage them to do so. If you remove the market, you cut the marketers off at the knees. The danger is that the sun shines on everyone, friend and foe alike. In the words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
I think it's possible to be a liberal bigot as well.
I could point to at least one right now.
There is an old truism that I think is pretty accurate: Change is a process, not an event. Did you ever go years just assuming some inconsequential factoid was correct only to find out whoever gave you that information was just plain wrong? I've had that happen a lot in my life, on small issues and large. I wasn't born a liberal. The "rneck" in rrneck means exactly what it seems to mean. The whole thing stands for "renaissance redneck". I started out life as a tractor jockey and became an artist. And me and my bootstraps had to fight every step of the way against everything in my cultural environment to do it. And the funny thing is, I am not a liberal because I wanted to be a liberal. I'm a liberal because I applied my not inconsiderable intelligence to the task of understanding right from wrong. I worked hard for it. I wasn't fucking around then and I'm not fucking around now.
I think one of the greatest problems in our culture today is slavish devotion to ideological labels. We worry too much about who is in or out of "the club". Such devotion only profits the producers of ideology who are little more than disaster capitalists. If you try to do what's right, you'll find yourself in the right camp. But if those in the camp don't recognize your efforts and reward them by welcoming you, they lose an ally and reduce their own effectiveness to achieve meaningful change. That's the essence of the "bit tent".
If somebody wants to come in and poke around, as long as they don't cause too big a ruckus I say let 'em. As long as they at least try to wipe their feet on the mat we have a chance to make an ally out of them as long as we don't behave like jerks doing it. That's what wins elections, and winning elections is what we're all about here.
Regarding the use of certain words.
Of all the things in the world to get [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]torqued up about, why do [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]people feel it [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]necessary to have a knock down drag out [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]saloon brawl about [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]terminology? It doesn't do [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]any good in any real way to [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]actually impact the quality [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]of people's lives. Granted, [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]some words are much [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]stronger than others and [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]not a few are designed to [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]inflict psychological pain on people. The result of that [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]psychological pain is known as an insult, and I am not aware of [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]anybody suffering an injury from the utterance of [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]a word in speech or in writing.
Certainly, [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]on an internet message board where [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]not only are people free to [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]come and go as they please but [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]the software itself will actually allow us [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]to remove people and text [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]from our sight so we are not [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]required to even [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]be aware of their existence. And there, I think, lies the crux of the confusion. [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]There are those who seem to think the very existence [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]of a word poses some sort of [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]existential threat to them or those [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]with whom they identify. Such a belief [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]should have been left in the [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]fourteenth century. There are no [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]"words of power" capable of [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]hurting people. [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]Such words were known as [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]evil incantations in their time and their [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]efficacy has long since been proven [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]to be nonexistent.
Those that perceive [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]danger in certain words actually perceive [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]a danger to their [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]ideology. Words can [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]change the way we [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]think about things, and if we are so [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]wedded to our ideology that we cannot [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]tolerate the use of certain [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]terms for fear of[div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]damaging our [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]image of ourselves or [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]of the world, our [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]self image or our [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]world view should be [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]reevaluated for [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]weakness. Such concern for [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]ideological security is not the result of [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]careful thinking and effort to [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]understand ourselves and everything [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]around us. It is the result of [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]an ideology easily acquired and betrays the [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]need for continuous [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]maintenance by whoever [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]provided it. Such an [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]ideology is an [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]ersatz construct designed to create a [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]coalition of consumers rather than a group of [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]thinking individuals secure in their [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]understanding of themselves, their world, and their objectives in life.
Hat tip to Make7 who has mad [div style="display:inline; background-color:#000000;"]fucking coding skillz.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/124025017
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Member since: Sat Nov 29, 2008, 01:55 PMNumber of posts: 17,671