Wanted: better propaganda
Things are getting funnier and funnier over at the Corner. Stanley Kurtz is bemoaning the fact that young people have largely turned their backs on conservatism as a philosophy and that the country will soon be overrun by Islam-loving hippies. The reason for this meltdown, Kurtz argues, isn’t due to the fact that George W. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress have overseen one catastrophic blunder after another – from the Iraq war to record deficits to the botched Katrina response to major corruption scandals – but rather that conservatives simply haven’t been as effective in implementing their propaganda as liberals have:
I want to underline something from Mark’s depressing late-night post. Here’s how Mark’s correspondent describes one of the factors threatening to “sink conservativism for at least a couple of decades:”
…years of liberals running their own private indoctrination camps through the American education system have finally taken their toll and are churning out reliably liberal kids who will inevitably come of age. Not enough of them are conservatives and not enough of them will be mugged by reality to convert to conservatism.
This guy is onto something, and it’s a problem conservatives have largely ignored, although it bears on our very existence. For all the grousing about liberal bias in education, conservatives have done virtually nothing substantive to combat it. And there are plenty of things we might have done, without in any way infringing on academic freedom. Unfortunately, the Bush administration has intentionally avoided fighting the education battles that earlier administrations pursued under the leadership of Bill Bennett and Lynn Cheney. Leading a public campaign against the bias and foibles of the American education system could have put a far larger question mark behind the taken-for-granted leftism students find at school.
It’s amazing. With Republican credibility at an all-time low on every major issue – from Iraq to the economy to health care to national security – Kurtz doesn’t even consider rethinking some of the disastrous policy decisions that he’s endorsed during Bush’s seven years in office. No, such immense public dissatisfaction with the GOP can only be the result of ineffective propaganda. The solution, of course, is to pump still more money into better propaganda:
The Bush administration’s attitude was that Bill Bennett/Lynn Cheney-type culture war issues sap political capital that could more profitably be put toward the war effort or social security reform. This was a huge mistake. Fighting the education culture war would have accumulated political capital. When it comes to the left-leaning craziness of the education system, the public is with us. The Lawrence Summers dispute, for example, was a disaster for the academy in the public eye. Linking the Democrats with their crazy leftist pals in the academy is the best way to beat them. The public is with us on this. The problem is that we haven’t developed any institutional way of harnessing public antipathy to educational bias.
You gotta be shitting me.
The Republicans have led us into a bloody mess in Iraq, they’ve aggressively redistributed wealth upward, they’ve squandered away the country’s fiscal resources, they’ve made our government vastly more corrupt than it’s been in years, they’ve appointed countless incompetent hacks and cronies to key positions within the federal government, they’ve been completely oblivious to middle and working-class economic insecurities, they’ve… well Christ, you get the idea. And you really think that you can win the public back to their side by RAILING AGAINST UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS???!!!!! ARE YOU GODDAMN KIDDING ME, MAN!!?!!!!?! WHAT KIND OF FREAKING DRUGS ARE YOU TAKING AND CAN YOU HOOK ME UP WITH YOUR DEALER?!?!!?!!!!!???
I mean, holy crap.
These guys are on autopilot. Berube has always been the betest, noiriest, bete noir.
The fact is, shut the hell up!
Admittedly, conservatives have been a little busy lately what with having to stake out the homes of 12 year olds who need health insurance and running from the Code pink armies that are always trying to make them have abortions and gay sex.
It’s tough out there for a winger.
What about D-Ho’s campaign against Michael Bérubé?
Linking democrats to smart people is sure to bring them down?
I am a hack, and no one has appointed me to a key role. That’s what really pisses me off.
I’m also crazy, which I picked up at college.
But I was too drunk to adhere to propaganda.
Whoa, why would you want to take the kind of drugs that would make you think like this douche?
conservatives simply haven’t been as effective in implementing their propaganda
The Conservative Movement never fails. People fail the Conservative Movement.
Boy, I sure remember when, getting to college after graduating from a very conservative Midwestern public high school and not having heard a single teacher-spoken word about MLK, the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement or, really, anything not dealing with war or Reagan, having to work so hard to get the burden of my liberally-biased education off my back…
Man that’s my favorite Ruppert post so far.
So, in this shitheel’s mind, does “mugged by reality” = “bereft of all empathy”? Yes, I think it does. They have mugged all of us for the last seven years by imposing their reality upon us. And what has been the result? Pending Democratic landslide.
conservatives simply haven’t been as effective in implementing their propaganda as liberals have
Really?
Let me phrase this in the form of a general question here:
I believe my point is made.
…years of liberals running their own private indoctrination camps through the American education system have finally taken their toll and are churning out reliably liberal kids who will inevitably come of age.
Is this how thy see the world? So I take it that they need their own conservative indoctrination camps.
Oh, and conservatives have not been attacking public education ever since I can remember?
I think here the American (and worldwide) public’s propensity for shallow and fad-driven thinking actually helps.
They’ve been beating this rotten, smelling, putrescent, leaking dead Reagan horse for 27 years now, and people have finally gotten tired of it.
Not because the American public turned into Solonic figures, but because the right wingers had absolute power over all branches of government, everyone knew it, they went balls to the wall for their brand of crazy, and it completely stunk up the place, and what’s worse, for our media-driven public — it got old.
Of course, these may be the same people who think that foreigners who don’t know English understand you better if you talk louder, so they may not notice that people are tired of their sh*t.
The Republicans have led us into a bloody mess in Iraq, they’ve aggressively redistributed wealth upward, they’ve squandered away the country’s fiscal resources, they’ve made our government vastly more corrupt than it’s been in years, they’ve appointed countless incompetent hacks and cronies to key positions within the federal government, they’ve been completely oblivious to middle and working-class economic insecurities…
But to a movement conservative, those are all good things, so they can’t be responsible for people not liking conservatism.
Neoconservatives are of two minds about the American public. When the polls swing their way, Americans can think for themselves. When the polls swing the other way, the American public is a dumbass that needs to be told what to think.
How true. Kind of like the Xian’s where everything good that happens, all successes are due to Jesus. If you fail, if things go badly, it’s your fault.
On another note, I went to see Horrorwits when he visited Penn State. I looked around and didn’t see America’s most Dangerful Perfesser so that was a bit of a disappointment. Horrorwits was very funny. All unintentionally, natch.
When the polls swing the other way, the American public is a dumbass that needs to be told what to think.
To be fair, I thought this way after Bush got reelected.
Uh … wasn’t the Lawrence Summers thing about a white man claiming women couldn’t cut it in the sciences, and then rightly getting smacked down by a bunch of liberal university professors?
How in God’s name is that a model for conservative complaints about the university system?
Shorter:
I’m not wrong, you’re biased!
And through all these years, the moral, right, upstanding, god-fearing, patriotic parents of these children have been powerless – powerless, I tell you! – to instill any kind of conservative values, if any values at all. The elementary teachers are unstoppable!! Weep, America, for you are doomed!
Kind of odd that the conservatives hate gov’t, but they’re always looking for the gov’t to prop up their ideologies thru mandated Bible classes and Reagan Youth programs. Huh…
Allow me to rephrase Kurtz’s argument for the nice Spanish fellow, since it appears he didn’t quite understand it the first time.
LINKING THE DEMOCRATS WITH THEIR CRAZY LEFTIST PALS IN THE ACADEMY IS THE BEST WAY TO BEAT THEM. THE PUBLIC IS WITH US ON THIS. THE PROBLEM IS THAT WE HAVEN’T DEVELOPED ANY INSTITUTIONAL WAY OF HARNESSING PUBLIC ANTIPATHY TO EDUCATIONAL BIAS.
“[T]he public is with us…The public is with us on this.”
Repeat to catapult the propagana, eh comrade Kurtz?
“So I take it that they need their own conservative indoctrination camps.”
WTF is Jesus Camp? Or home-schooling, for that matter? And what of the conservative assault on science?
No, the problem is not that they need better propaganda — it’s that the notions they chose to get behind were so ridiculous, so addlepated, so nonsensical as to be worthless as standards behind which to rally the troops, as it were. Sure, you’ll get some causeheads to get behind intelligent design, for example, but in so doing, you’ll scare away and piss off the well-educated economic conservatives.
Big tent? Sure. Just like the Superdome was a big tent, but that place started to stink to high heaven after a couple of days. And then it gets kind of hard to keep people from bailing on you.
I think each and every one of you guys has hit the nail on the head with that shit. I can’t really form a coherent reaction because I find Kurtz’s idea that somehow we’re using public schools to indoctrinate so fucking scary. That’s how people at the Corner see the world, honestly? Next they’ll be telling us the true purpose of aglets is sinister!
“Mista Kurtz, he Nuts”
Every winger argument comes down to, “I’m rubber and you’re glue.” Seriously. that is the whole weight of their arguments.
And yes, that is the best fakeGary comment evAr!!!1!
I posted on the winger mentality.
Cognitive Dissonance, thy name is Neocon.
The Lawrence Summers dispute, for example, was a disaster for the academy in the public eye. Linking the Democrats with their crazy leftist pals in the academy is the best way to beat them.
So, wait. Crazy Larry Summers is a hero to these people? Saying that half the U.S. population is too stupid to teach science is an example of how conservatives are going to recruit more young people?
Hokay, fine.
And what would Mr. Kurtz recommend? Perhaps the 10 Commandments, a Remington 10-SP and a bronzed bust of Ronald Regan in every classroom?
The only way he’s going to get real, thinking human beings to his camp is to replace the chocolate milk in school cafeterias with antifreeze.
Yep yep yep.
Some frenchy guy, de la something or other, said “those who are incapable of comitting great crimes do not readily see them in others.” ‘Course, he said it in French so don’t flame me about that please.
I draw several corollaries, among them this one: “People who are sneaky, vile, scumpond expect others to be the same.”
And the lemma, “People who suspect others of being sneaky vile scumpond are themselves exactly that.”
RAILING AGAINST UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS???!!!!!
Give the man credit for an argument that doesn’t involve swarthiness or boners up the pooper.
Just like any internet troll he looks around and sees no one is buying his shit and he thinks to himself “Hmmmm, must crank it up a notch and be even more shrill”. Good plan dude.
I don’t know who the odd Spanish fellow is, but whether Kurtz would like to live in an imaginary land where they haven’t already been trying exactly that for a generation is irrelevant to the fact that the right wingers have been trying just that — developing every single solitary institutional method of harnessing public antipathy to educational bias. Name it at every possible level, too — inside and outside the Academy; elementary, middle, high, and university levels; developing independent “universities” for nut squad ideologues; lunatic right wing “education” reformers; making education run like the Business Roundtable wants (“leave no child behind”); right wing “think tanks” to promote their fake and lousy professors…
And it worked for a good long while. And it’s finally starting to sputter.
Now, the entire right wing is free to fantasize that “do what we’ve been doing but do it again harder” is the same as “we are about to do what we’ve never really done”, but it isn’t reality.
Well, the Larry Summers things is a little more complicated than it is at face value. He made an observation, (women are under-represented in science and math professorships, but not in the other departments) and offered 3 (THREE, I repeat THREE) hypotheses as to why (prior discrimination discouraged and barred women from entering such professorships, OR society had been telling women not to pursue sciene careers and few people ignored it OR women were inherently not predisposed to the kind of thinking invovled in math and science). Many Harvard professors took exception (female science and math professorships, male professors who felt they were being called sexist) and the media reported it as Summers saying that women were under-represented in math and science positions because of an inherent predisposition to other things. Sexists said “why yes, of course!” When the still iritated and frustrated Harvard professors pursued restitution (whipped on by the namakemono (lazy people) in the media) the sexists said “Look at that, Summers must be right about that!”
That was for you, El Cid. I was repeating what Kurtz said but really loud ’cause I took you for a foreigner.
My god, all I can think is — this is just such wonderful fucking news.
They have no idea how bad they’ve been fucking up. They have no clue how to get things back. Their solution for their hard times is to keep repeating the same things over and over and over and over because hey, it’s all a matter of getting their propaganda right. All they have to do is put Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday with a backwards baseball cap and all the kids’ll start voting for Fred Thompson.
Their movement has run out of gas, and instead of heading to the station for a fill-up, their solution is to sit tight, yell at the engine for a bit, and wait for the car to start up on its own. Reagan will save them, and any other plan of action is blasphemy.
Here’s to the GOP dying in the desert because they’re too dumb to check the canteen.
Completely missed it. I am only a humble figure whose online identity obviously was incapable of picking up that line of humor.
“Here’s to the GOP dying in the desert because they’re too dumb to check the canteen.”
I’ll drink to that!
The public is with us on this. The problem is that we haven’t developed any institutional way of harnessing public antipathy to educational bias.
Isn’t “The Public” made up of, you know, people? Usually people who pay taxes, and often, people with children actually in the public school system? And if this was such as problem that “the public is with us”, then wouldn’t there be something being done about it?
Is “the public” made up of such flaming morons that they can’t do anything about a serious educational problem without The Corner organizing it?
WHAT KIND OF FREAKING DRUGS ARE YOU TAKING:
Crack
AND CAN YOU HOOK ME UP WITH YOUR DEALER?!?!!?
Ummm… I don’t know you that well, an he’s kinda jumpy. You should ask mextremist…
what about all the babies they’re having? if they can’t even hold on to their tightly regimented offspring, it’s no wonder their screwed.
Yeah, and those poor, impoverished think tanks and big corporations, rhey can’t get their propaganda out, nosiree…
LOL! One thing about today’s conservatives is that they will always lie to themselves. It’s always someone or something else’s fault as to why they are rejected and/or reviled for their asshole ways.
Just remember, these guys are never happier than when they’re the victims of vast conspiracies. As the victims, they are justified in using any measures at all to survive, and they are responsible for nothing. As a progressive I of course yearn for a wide-ranging progressive (or as good as one can get from this system) victory in the Fall. But I recognize that losing will simply recharge the neocons, bigots, knuckle-draggers and deadbeat dads of the Right. Rather than their recent dismissive, smug, reality-defying arrogance, they will swiftly switch back into the frothing, irrational rage that they displayed in the Nineties.
Why don’t conservatives become teachers if they’re so concerned about education? They’ll be thrilled that tax cuts keep their pay low. Or are they afraid they’d have to work instead of leech off of think tanks?
Why aren’t they having more kids? They only seem to have one or two each. Their women work as lawyers and speechwriters instead of breeding the way God intended. Could they–gasp–actually be taking birth control?*
*K-Lo excepted, of course.
What about D-Ho’s campaign against Michael Bérubé?
Are we allowed to say “D-Ho”? I though that was unpolitically correct. Thank gawd you didn’t say “crack den.”
Actually, he’s relying on Norman Podhoretz’s formulation that liberals who get mugged grow to hate black people.
Reminds me of Mittens saying at the second Republican debate held @ the Reagan Library (Just stop it,please!) that the Republican Party wasn’t in very good shape, but it wasn’t George W. Bush’s fault, it was just that “Washington is broken.” Well, who broke him then?
Also, Washington is just as dead as Reagan is.
I think they’ve finally been mugged by reality, those righties. They’ve been trying to make it up all by themselves and they can no longer maintain the illusion. The Bolshevik Party was much better at this than the Republicans.
Their problem is that they consider most Americans to be part of the fringe – they are literally delusional. It’s the “fringe” that dislikes Bush, the “fringe” that is opposed to the Iraq War, the “fringe” that is concerned about the economy.
They hate the majority if Americans. Not a winning formula.
Yep Random Observer,that’s it. Their list of Americans They Hate has become so long that it’s become impossible to hide their contempt for everyone who isn’t wealthy,white and insulated,the In Clique.
That means they hate all Americans except the top 1 or 2 percent. Not exactly a winning way to keep their,um,movement strong.
I would be loving this,except that the mess they’ve made is going to effect my grandbabies and their kids. That pisses me off.
Highly skilled Republican propaganda research teams are already vigorously investigating the threat posed by sodomy-crazed islamo-mexican biochemistry instructors. Contact Gary Ruppert for details.
Shhh, don’t shout, don’t scare them. Let them pursue this madcap strategy. Urge them on to similar pursuits.
“Here’s to the GOP dying in the desert because they’re too dumb to check the canteen.”
And if they do check it, they’ll find the dust and metal filings I put in there for them. Heh.
…and continue to provide Stanley Kurtz with gainful employment, confirm the Peter Principle yet again.
Wow. I can’t imagine being in such a thick bubble. It’s like… reality is irrelevant to him.
That’s it! That’s the loud whining “conservative constituency” they’re courting. The right-wing parents of kids who were sent off to expensive colleges like Harvard and Stanford, and came back more liberal than they were raised.
And now, boy, are those parents pissed.
“For all the grousing about liberal bias in education, conservatives have done virtually nothing substantive to combat it.”
Except getting the would-be winger sons of wingnuts to surreptitiously record their high school teachers asking thought-provoking questions (Does oil have anything to do with the U.S. being in Iraq?) for broadcast out of context on right-wing media radio in order to get their teachers disciplined or fired. Thus silencing free discussions in high schools.
For all the grousing about liberal bias in education, conservatives have done virtually nothing substantive to combat it. And there are plenty of things we might have done, without in any way infringing on academic freedom.
Yeah, they could have demolished all comprehensive sex education and replaced it with fact-free “abstinence only” programs!
Or they could have waged a war against evolution and tried to replace it with Biblical creationism thinly disguised in pseudo-scientific language!
Or they could have mandated an impossible-to-achieve standard and tied all the school funding to it! That might force schools to abandon all in-depth coverage of history, social studies, and current events in favor of superficial test-taking skills and endless practice tests!
Wow….If only.
Flying Fox: It’s really more that Summers ignored the extensive work published by the female scientists and social scientists who made up the panel he was addressing. The hypothesis that women are inherently unsuited to scientific research was the subject of much of this research, and the consensus reached by the scholarship was in the negative. Summers was suggesting that the gender-deficiency hypothesis had occurred to him but not to any of the eminent scholars assembled (or, more maliciously, implying that evil feminist academics were skirting the question in pursuit of their evil agenda of castrating matriarchy) His remarks were indicative not simply of entrenched sexism or the kind of megalomania that allows neoliberal economists in particular to believe that deregulation and tax cutting are somehow new ideas (though it certainly was those things), but of an indifference to the work of the scholars over whom he was presiding at Harvard. When you are the boss of a group of competitive and careerist academics, it’s not a good idea to flaunt your ignorance of their work in front of them.
I get the feeling this walking schwantz tried to think of ways to stop “reliably liberal kids” from coming of age and regretfully concluded there was no course of action he could take. Unless he wanted to be a large brown fellow’s bitch for 30-Life.
I also note Stanley Spurtz conflates school age children with college aged people. Maybe it’s just me, but adults who can’t tell kids from adults need to be watched. Or just hit in the nads with a ball peen hammer.
Captain Morton:
Thanks for filling that hole. I’m afraid that part of the story never occurred to me. Irony, much.
Let’s not forget that female elementary school teachers are the worst fascists, per Jonah the Whale. Mistah Kurtz railing against them as evil brainwashers — yeah, that’ll fly…
I see this as a good thing. The more disconnected these people are from reality, the more likely their long-term strategy will fail.
Railing against university professors….hmmm, guess these guys just want to repeat the Condemnations of Paris over and over again.
Hint: It didn’t work then. It won’t work now.
There’s two major points I see:
1) Conservatives are Never Wrong. All issues are someone else’s fault.
2) The Conservative movement as noted in the first post, IS on autopilot and has been for a good 8-12 years at the very least. It’s a bunch of converts, second-and-third generationers, trust fund kids, and think tank lackeys in charge with NO contact with reality. They’re in their own bubble right now, and the only reason most people vote for them is their marketing. Nothing is keeping them going except lots of cash and an entrenched subculture.
And just how old would the people who were in school during that “Bill Bennett culture war” be, now…? Somewhere around, say, all grown up perhaps?
Well, good to see these folks retreating to their baseline of fear: the rabid anti-intellectualism that forms their core scare tactic. It means they’re realizing the other panic buttons have been pressed so many times the contacts are wearing out.
All that’s needed now is a Religious Revivalist third party to appear when McCain gets the Republican nod. Well, probably not “needed” so much as “hoped for”.
For all the grousing about liberal bias in education, conservatives have done virtually nothing substantive to combat it.
Kurtz (the poor man’s David Horowitz) and David Horowitz (the idiot’s David Horowitz) have tried. The problem is that no one buys their arguments and they get crushed anytime there’s a debate or public attention on this “issue.” All they have on this are lame anecdotes (most of which are fabricated or exaggerated) and lamer statistics about most professors being registered Democrats (I’m sure lots of clergymen are Republicans–when is government going to march in and enforce false “balance” in that part of the nonprofit sector?).
Ahhh, the smell of fear-sweat and stale cheeto-dust congealing into the ooze of right-wing “personal responsibility”
* “It’s not our fault that those crazy religious zealots we armed and trained back in the 80’s are using those weapons against us, it’s the liberals fault for being so…so. liberal”
* “it’s not our fault that the younger generation isn’t swallowing our superstitious, ignorant, deranged and often racist bullshit, it’s those damned liberals and their fancy intellects and their education”
it’s all so many fucked up flavors and degrees of der dolchstosslegende that they fail to realize that every version of their excuses are just new variations on the idea of trying to polish a turd
etc, etc.
[…] what do you do? Say you were wrong? Nope, wouldn’t be prudent. Pretend you didn’t fuck up? Uh, been doing that for decades. No one’s buying it any more. No, you’d sit right down […]
For all the grousing about liberal bias in education, conservatives have done virtually nothing substantive to combat it.
Sure they did. Back in the 1930s.
http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-hs729a,0,7169.story?coll=ny-lihistory-navigation