Misinformation Peddlers

[Cait]

Literally no brakes on this man's mouth or brain (for some questionable value of "brain").

Not a real tweet, though. The actual post was much whinier.

[Mongrel]

Well that's my bad (in my defence, who wants to go read that asshole's actual Twitter?), but I appreciate that a mocking parody is somehow less bad than actual Peterson Tweets.

Also this was right after Elmo was attacked by Larry David? Man...

Goddamn, old white guys really doing it. Can we have like, a pact around here that if any of us ever get that bad, we'll agree to just Old Yeller each other?

[Friday]

It's a myth that people get more conservative as they get older. They get more conservative as they make/have more money.

The reason Boomers thought (and think) that age equals conservatism is that the majority of Boomers made a lot of money as they aged and saw themselves and all their friends starting to become more conservative and drew the wrong causation.

It's sort of like that old party game what's her face used to play: 10% of people will be leftists no matter what their wealth, 10% will be conservative, and 80% will go whatever way their financial situation pushes them. Though again, I disagree with her numbers. I think it's closer to 20/60/20 for both Nazis and percentage of people affected by personal wealth.

[Thad]

The conventional wisdom that Boomers shifted from liberal to conservative is largely a mirage. They were never that liberal to begin with; it's just that when they were college-aged, they liked sex and drugs and didn't want to get drafted.

Even then, Nixon got a majority of Boomer votes, both times; it was just a smaller majority than he got from older demos.

Wealth is a factor (the conventional wisdom about Trump winning because of "working-class whites" is misleading too; he won white people at every income level, but performed *worse* with poor white people than wealthier ones), but race is probably the big one. And both of those things correlate with age; Boomers are richer and whiter than younger generations.

[Mongrel]

The conventional wisdom that Boomers shifted from liberal to conservative is largely a mirage. They were never that liberal to begin with; it's just that when they were college-aged, they liked sex and drugs and didn't want to get drafted.

Yeah, everyone remembers the hippies, but not many people actually chose that lifestyle or were genuinely hippies in outlook. Most hippies actually stayed hippies throughout their life, and most of us have met a couple of those. The good news is the situation is improving, the bad news is we still need to get rid of Gen X as well, and they're worse.

Excess money and brain poison do go hand in hand, though there's something of a chicken-and-egg argument there.

Jokes aside, we're all old enough that the outlook we have now is highly likely to be the outlook we largely retain for the rest of our lives, magic windfalls of money or no.

[Brantly B.]

The thought I've had for a while now is that people don't get more conservative as they get older, but rather conservatism molds itself more around them. It's not even really a theory since the GOP is outright about courting whoever happens to be retirement age at the time.

The most striking thing about it though is how they pretty reliably undergo a regime change every 20 years to match whatever tick is up that generation's ass. In the 60s Nixon courted turn-of-the-century people who couldn't handle all these new civil rights; in the 80s Reagan courted people who remembered the dustbowl and were panicked about another Great Depression; in the 00s Bush courted the people who grew up thinking Americans were born to fight the world's wars; now we've got Trump reminding all the 60s kids that foreigners are spooky and the government will send your brother off to die.

What the GOP will look like when we're struggling to cash in our benefits I have no idea, but you'll probably hear the term "American Dream" thrown around even more than it is now.

[Brantly B.]

The craziest thing is thinking about how in 2036 or 2040 when some new thing kills off the MAGA cult people are going to be wistful about the "old GOP", again. "Sure, they were unreasonable murderous terrorist assholes, but at least they were honest about it!"


Oh God the Xennial GOP's just going to be people who are nostalgic for the Cold War isn't it. Ugh.

[Mongrel]

The thought I've had for a while now is that people don't get more conservative as they get older, but rather conservatism molds itself more around them. It's not even really a theory since the GOP is outright about courting whoever happens to be retirement age at the time.

The most striking thing about it though is how they pretty reliably undergo a regime change every 20 years to match whatever tick is up that generation's ass. In the 60s Nixon courted turn-of-the-century people who couldn't handle all these new civil rights; in the 80s Reagan courted people who remembered the dustbowl and were panicked about another Great Depression; in the 00s Bush courted the people who grew up thinking Americans were born to fight the world's wars; now we've got Trump reminding all the 60s kids that foreigners are spooky and the government will send your brother off to die.

What the GOP will look like when we're struggling to cash in our benefits I have no idea, but you'll probably hear the term "American Dream" thrown around even more than it is now.

Well, except they're also still courting turn-of-the-century people who couldn't handle all these new civil rights.

The craziest thing is thinking about how in 2036 or 2040 when some new thing kills off the MAGA cult people are going to be wistful about the "old GOP", again. "Sure, they were unreasonable murderous terrorist assholes, but at least they were honest about it!"


Oh God the Xennial GOP's just going to be people who are nostalgic for the Cold War isn't it. Ugh.

I think they really are at a major demographic inflection point though, that there is no post-MAGA GOP. If they don't get a coup or a dictator in some other way, they're fucked, and they know it. Everything they do reeks of sweaty desperation. Well, federally anyway.

Sometimes sweaty desperation succeeds of course, but by definition that's absolutely not guaranteed.

[Brantly B.]

nostalgic for the Cold War

Like, that was the perfect American war, right? We got to be the big heroic superpower fighting the forces of some kind of evil, but nobody had to, like, actually get into combat with anybody, which at the end of the day is something Americans talk a big game about but are really awful at actually doing oh my God we are the Klingons

Uh

Where was I

[Büge]

No, no no, don't be silly!

At best, we're the Romulans.

[Mongrel]

Even that's aiming high. I'm thinking Pakled-Ferengi hybrid.

[Classic]

Busting your chops here:
Why would the US and its foibles be represented by just one farcical allegorical species or culture?

[Thad]

nostalgic for the Cold War

Like, that was the perfect American war, right? We got to be the big heroic superpower fighting the forces of some kind of evil, but nobody had to, like, actually get into combat with anybody

I mean there was that time we fought that proxy war against the commies in Vietnam, but I suppose by these people's reasoning that doesn't count, for the same reason "George Bush kept us safe from terrorist attacks" is a thing people can say with a straight face.

Even that's aiming high. I'm thinking Pakled-Ferengi hybrid.

I listened to an excellent interview with Mike McMahan recently where he explained that the reason he brought back the Pakleds for Lower Decks is that they're a parable for the age we're living in: they demonstrate how fascists seize power because everybody underestimates them because they're a bunch of stupid clowns.

Come to think of it that's more or less the point of Young Zaphod Plays it Safe. Zaphod's handlers lead him past a bunch of doomsday weapons and explain that they're perfectly safe, because anyone who'd be crazy enough to use them gives off strong "do not let this person anywhere near those weapons" vibes. And that the only unsafe thing on the ship is an artificial lifeform who's crazy enough to use them but doesn't give off those vibes (it turns out it's Reagan).

[Friday]

oh my God we are the Klingons

[Destynova]

Eh.. I wanna be a Medusian.

[Mongrel]

This story could also go in the Ukraine thread, and I almost put it there, but it really is way more about Carlson than Ukraine, or even Russia.

Anyway...

Fucker Carlson has been spotted several times in Moscow over the past several days. Rumours flew that he was going to interview Putin, but there wasn't much point in talking about it until something other than rumour actually came up.

Earlier today, fuckface did put out a video saying he plans to interview Putin "soon", adding that since the start of the war "no western journalist has bothered to interview [Putin]". Carlson of course avoided mentioning if any actual journalists had asked to interview Putin, much less how many times some of them or their parent org or publisher had put in formal requests (dozens of times in at least some cases).

It remains to be seen if the asshole will in fact GET an interview. I suppose Carlson figured out that interviewing internet trash with names like 'CatTurd' wasn't doing his so-called called career any favours even with his leftover fans, so it's very possible that he came to Russia to beg for an audience with the Tsar, without actually having anything arranged. I can think of plenty of reasons Putin wouldn't see any benefit to himself in such an interview, which leaves us with the very funny possibility that Carlson might have flown to Russia to impotently bloviate with Moscow in the background, before slinking back home without anything to show for his plane fare.

Some Russian propagandists are excited for the possibility though, promising Carlson "wonders of civilization that U.S. citizens cannot even dream of". So... maybe? But Putin hasn't even granted yapping cheerleaders like Solovyev (who previously offered Carlson a job) or Simonyan an interview anytime recently, instead making all his public statements at events or press conferences.

Even if Carlson does get to kiss the ring, I doubt it has much effect on American sentiment; Carlson's remaining "constituency" is already in the tank for Russia anyway, not to mention the very real possibility that any such interview will be comedically awkward. "Success" might revitalize Carlson's reputation among the portion of the MAGA-chuds that dropped him though (not because he was too extreme, but because he'd become an unemployed laughingstock) or get him some sort of actual "i'M A jErnALiSm!" job back. I guess we'll see.

(no links, because I doubt any of us actually want to watch Shitstain McWank blowing smoke up his own ass on Twitter, but it's easy to search if you feel you really must)

[nosimpleway]

he's not going for an interview with putin, he showed up for putin's performance review of his own work

[Mongrel]

When he was first spotted at the airport, the comments were mostly very dry barbs about how the sanctions had forced him to go pick up his paycheque in person. :D

[sei]

It's a myth that people get more conservative as they get older. They get more conservative as they make/have more money.

The reason Boomers thought (and think) that age equals conservatism is that the majority of Boomers made a lot of money as they aged and saw themselves and all their friends starting to become more conservative and drew the wrong causation.

It's sort of like that old party game what's her face used to play: 10% of people will be leftists no matter what their wealth, 10% will be conservative, and 80% will go whatever way their financial situation pushes them. Though again, I disagree with her numbers. I think it's closer to 20/60/20 for both Nazis and percentage of people affected by personal wealth.

Reminds me a bit of this.

https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/okcupi ... oobig.html

[Mongrel]

https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/okcupid/thedemocratsaredoomedorhowabigtentcanbetoobig.html

I appreciate how this is a very straightforward statistical failure in how he went and gathered seemingly extensive data, but only from a single point in time. Textbook-worthy example of sampling bias.