I'm with you on this. But I guess I'm just a moron too.
Corsi, it really reads like you 'both sides'-d the argument. And I think its fair to ask for counter examples.
Good God. Fine.
In post 18127, FlameOn noted that far right politicians campaign on fear. In response, I said, that it's not just right wingers that do it, and even the democrats are campaigning on fear (i.e., fear that there will be a national abortion ban or that democratic freedoms and voting rights will be eroded or removed). It's just that in this particular case, they're right to promote those fears. In MOST elections - that is, not ones that involve a candidate who actively cozies up to dictators while selling out to people who write documents like Project 2025 - the people campaigning based on fear will still say the fears they're exploiting are justified warnings, such that it's really just a matter of perspective whether someone is stoking fear or "pointing out a real danger".
Everyone always thinks their side is "pointing out a real danger". In 2012, people suggested Romney wanted to turn the USA into a theocracy - that was a talking point. That was not a real danger. The McCain campaign suggested that Obama would turn the IRS into a massive wealth re-distribution agency. That was not a real danger. Usually, the "you should be afraid of what the other guys will do" arguments are over the top and not real.
This time they're real. Trump really will do this stuff, or more accurately, will allow it to happen.
Hopefully that helps.
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Somewhat more on topic, here is a live feed of the Harris / Walz Michigan rally. Curious if they'll respond to the "stolen valor" attack. I'm guessing not.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
In 1993, when Travis Hofmann was a freshman of 15, he had traveled little beyond the sand hills that surrounded his hometown, Alliance, Neb. He was the son of a railroad engineer, a trumpeter in the high school band, with a part-time job changing the marquee and running the projector at the local movie theater. In Travis’s class in global geography at Alliance High School, however, the teacher introduced the outside world with the word and concept of genocide. The teacher, Tim Walz, was determined that even in this isolated place, perhaps especially in this isolated place, this county seat of 9,000 that was hours away from any city in any direction, the students should learn how and why a society can descend into mass murder. [...]
“The Holocaust is taught too often purely as a historical event, an anomaly, a moment in time,” Mr. Walz said in a recent interview, recalling his approach. “Students understood what had happened and that it was terrible and that the people who did this were monsters. “The problem is,” he continued, “that relieves us of responsibility. Obviously, the mastermind was sociopathic, but on the scale for it to happen, there had to be a lot of people in the country who chose to go down that path. You have to make the intellectual leap to figure out the reasons why.”
So Mr. Walz took his students [...] and assigned them to study the conditions associated with mass murder. What factors, he asked them to determine, had been present when Germans slaughtered Jews, Turks murdered Armenians, the Khmer Rouge ravaged their Cambodian countrymen? [...]
When the students finished with the past, Mr. Walz gave a final exam of sorts. He listed about a dozen current nations: Yugoslavia, Congo, some former Soviet republics among them, and asked the class as a whole to decide which was at the greatest risk of sliding into genocide.
Their answer was: Rwanda.
We of course know what happened the following year.
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Somewhat more on topic, here is a live feed of the Harris / Walz Michigan rally. Curious if they'll respond to the "stolen valor" attack. I'm guessing not.
Oh no, this brings back memories of the American Politics thread on here when John Kerry got 'swiftboated.'
He didn’t, not in the way Mathgod is positioning it.
Both sides DO run campaigns based on fear, that’s a “both sides” that’s true, so the hypocrisy is either side (or a supporter of either side) positioning themselves against a fear-based campaign.
If Side A says “Trans people are a danger to society, they must be stopped! We will stop it, vote for us!”
And Side B says “Campaigning on fear is ridiculous and I am against it. And also, climate change is a serious threat to our world and must be stopped! We will stop it, vote for us!”
Side B is a hypocrite. It doesn’t matter that Side B’s concern is valid and side A’s isn’t, because the hypocrisy comes from the approach, not the content.
You can’t be against “fear mongering” as a concept while ringing alarm bells (fear mongering) about climate change and fascism.
Once again, warning people about real dangers is not the same thing as fear mongering.
Otherwise, telling people to wear seatbelts in their cars is fear mongering. Telling people to lock their doors at night is fear mongering. Telling your daughter not to date a sex offender is fear mongering.
Once again, warning people about real dangers is not the same thing as fear mongering.
Otherwise, telling people to wear seatbelts in their cars is fear mongering. Telling people to lock their doors at night is fear mongering. Telling your daughter not to date a sex offender is fear mongering.
See how ridiculous it sounds?
They're saying it's the how, not the what.
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Once again, warning people about real dangers is not the same thing as fear mongering.
Otherwise, telling people to wear seatbelts in their cars is fear mongering. Telling people to lock their doors at night is fear mongering. Telling your daughter not to date a sex offender is fear mongering.
See how ridiculous it sounds?
If your intent is to make people wear seatbelts, lock their doors, or not date a sex offender out of fear vs. rational thought and logic, it’s the exact same thing.
Presenting the statistics on seatbelt safety and the impact it has on accidents and vehicular deaths isn’t fearmongering. Stating that if you don’t put on your seatbelt you’re probably going to die and you should fear driving in your car without a seatbelt is literally fear mongering.
In both cases, the danger of driving without a seatbelt is very valid, and very real. The approach is what establishes whether it’s fear mongering or not, not the validity of the fear. You can absolutely fear monger people into taking action on real dangers, it just has (usually unintended) negative psychological impacts.
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If your intent is to make people wear seatbelts, lock their doors, or not date a sex offender out of fear vs. rational thought and logic, it’s the exact same thing.
Presenting the statistics on seatbelt safety and the impact it has on accidents and vehicular deaths isn’t fearmongering. Stating that if you don’t put on your seatbelt you’re probably going to die and you should fear driving in your car without a seatbelt is literally fear mongering.
In both cases, the danger of driving without a seatbelt is very valid, and very real. The approach is what establishes whether it’s fear mongering or not, not the validity of the fear. You can absolutely fear monger people into taking action on real dangers, it just has (usually unintended) negative psychological impacts.
Ok, so if I tell people that climate change is a real threat to society, and it will cause huge amounts of human suffering, damage to property, and yes, lost lives, if swift action isn't taken now... is that fear mongering, or is that just sharing truthful information about the inconvenient reality of the world we're currently living in?
The problem I have with the term "fear mongering" when it's used against those who communicate warnings of real dangers, is that it implies an accusation of emotional manipulation to provoke irrational responses.
Because that's what actual fear mongering is - fabricating or exaggerating dangers to try and provoke responses that are not rational. (Tuco in this thread for example.)
So in terms of the Harris-Walz campaign, are they using fear mongering in any of their messaging, or are they just communicating real dangers? Looking at Trump's threat to democracy, for example, how do you tell people that he wants to dismantle American democracy, without causing negative psychological impacts?
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Last edited by Mathgod; 08-07-2024 at 06:22 PM.
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