Calling Out Culture Nannies and Cognitive Dissonance
Alright, time to man up, Snowflake…
What is the equivalent of Snowflake™ in terms of culture?
People who use the term snowflake are always whining about all kinds of crazy shit — starbucks hates Christmas, the WAR on Christmas, happy holidays hurts my fee-fees, protest peacefully, peaceful protest is terrorism, get your government hands off my medicare. omg, he didn't even capitalize GOD!!!
I would like speak in a frame that speaks to this fragile, brittle culture that Snowflake haters seem to have. Something that cuts to the bone and draws attention to the severe disconnect between their actions and beliefs.
A Weak Culture in Need of Nannying
Why they feel the constant need to attend and defend their culture is beyond me. It seems to me that a strong culture is not in danger of being overwhelmed by nonsense like a prepackaged “War on Christmas”.
The strong culture laughs at that shit while minding their manners and speaking appropriately and sensitively around other humans and other cultures.
Culture nannies seem to swing radically between cradling their precious culture in their arms, cooing at it, and singing it lullabies -- such a swaddled, premie culture, like it couldn't exist without their constant suckling -- and angry flailing at perceived attacks on the baby. If they could they'd put a booby trap on the baby's crib.
Ironic that when it comes to the culture of Snowflakes, it is rather adult, the individual and individuality is important. It should go with bootstraps and family, "You're your own man son. Figure out what you need to do... I'll give you all the support I can. " Right?
And then with the preemie culture of the modern conservative, it is rather childlike, you have to conform to what others do to fit in. It doesn't say bootstraps and family,"You're my son (an American) and you'll do what you're told by your Father (President)."
If You're So Tough, Why Are You whining?
Fragility might be a good frame adopt, promoting a cognitive disconnect. The same cognitive disconnect between them being tough and hardened by years of abuse while whining about the most absurd and meaningless manufactured outrages. They’ll tell you about their savage history of media induced inadequacy while railing against basic human rights and human decency.
Same thing for America. We are tough! Just look at our history. Greatest People on the planet! Colin Kaepernick is going to destroy America. Greatest military and bastion of freedom in the entire free world and a few cave dwellers are an existential threat.
America is the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, but you can't do that and I can't leave my house without my gun.
Why are they so protective of their culture? Why is their culture so weak that it needs constant attention? Mother hens don't work so hard to protect their babies.
How can we best exploit the naked cognitive disconnect between the paranoid conservative style of politics and rugged individual bootstraps?
Comments
I try to use derogatory psychology like how they're so
chickenshit of muslims they hide under their beds at night, or ridicule the "land of the free, home of the brave" bullshit while pointing out their dependence on the government they pretend they want to be smaller. I don't know if it works, but it makes me feel better.
Destroying their "Christmas" is a perfect example, their worries about a war against Christmas shows how they're dependent on a manufactured illusion to satisfy their meaning of life.
Snowflakes ironically get overheated when trivia
"disgusts" them, like alluding to a pussy-grab. But let that cool black dude dehoused millions and deport more millions, why not a single snowflake melted. When Comey gave Killary a Get Out of Jail Free card, he was god's gift to the American people but seven days before the election, snowflakes felt Comey was the Devil incarnate.
@Alligator Ed What's interesting is it
What's interesting is it's hard to see whether k9disc is talking about the right-wing "War on Christmas" snowflakes on the right, or the ultra-sensitive SJWs on the left.
Both of them are using some similar tactics, to be sure.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Manufactured Outrage...
is all either of them know any more.
As long as they keep pointing the finger at the other guy, they think they don't have to acknowledge their own shortcomings.
It's worked for a long time now, but those days are coming to an end.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Yea, It's Guilt By Association, an Houle Hoop, Actually...
It is highly effective. It's ugly and it plays to the basest of human emotions -- me, not thee, and thou shalt and shalt not.
It belittles the very idea of solidarity from human empathy. Solidarity is about conformity and identity to them. Empathy ain't got nothing to do with Them. Maybe sympathy...
Countering it is quite important. I remember talking of refusing to bend "like the bedwetters surrendering our rights to a couple hundred cave dwellers" to my aunt, it was highly effective. The pejorative is not the point with these illustrations. It's the hypocrisy and/or cognitive disconnect.
The bedwetter thing is an illustration of exactly the point I'm trying to make: you can't be tough when you're wetting your bed and surrendering your People's rights to a couple hundred cave dwellers. It really popped the cognitive dissonance that my aunt was suffering under.
Those things are seeds that, if watered occasionally, sprout and grow.
I think there are similar cut to the chase type metaphors that we can use to expose the rank hypocrisy of the reactive and radical Right. And it's simple shit that will work.
"I thought you wingers were tough. All you do is whine."
"Well, I guess that just means you don't work hard enough, Al. If you worked harder your boss would pay you more."
"Cut their taxes and your boss will give you a raise."
Shit like that, cut, whole cloth from RW values, policy, and rhetoric. Farce, Satire, and Irony all lapped Reality some time ago. As a result, I think Reality can be weaponized.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Rowboats
Recently I was with a group of co-workers in our office. We're all mechanics; all men. They all consider themselves conservatives because Limbaugh told them they are. They're convinced this is true because they know libruls want to take their guns - the NRA told them so.
The talk was about how dangerous A-rabs are, etc, and how we need to nuke them, etc. I was silent for quite a while, then said one sentence: "Why are you all so afraid of a group of ragtag religious nuts that don't so much as own a rowboat?"
Silence. They had no retort. Nothing. The effect was more immediate than I would have imagined. One guy blabbered some non-nonsensical Fox-News-speak he'd heard, but he might as well have barked like a dog. I'd hit home and they knew it.
As for the "rowboat" comment, I have to say I didn't come up with that - in fact, I believe I may have read it here on c99. No matter. Believe me, I'm stealing the "Cut their taxes and your boss will give you a raise" line, too! This type of talk puts runs on the scoreboard.
Well done
I think this approach is far more effective than the resort to name-calling. You forced them to think. Sure, you won't immediately change someone's mind, but the thought lingers. The feeling of being stumped resonates. Most people don't like being put in that position, so they are prone to think the issue through at least a bit to make sure it doesn't happen to them again. And in that is your success. The danger, IMO, is not bad views/opinions, but ill-thought views/opinions. That's what makes TOP so toxic. It's overrun with low intelligence ranting in lieu of actual thought. People who refuse to (or are incapable of) rational thought are the real obstacle.
my recommended response to 9/11 was simple:
Ignore it.
Only an insecure bully needs to lash out when his supremacy is threatened.
If you are confident of your position and your status, you take in stride the inevitable costs associated with doing business: Credit card companies know there will be fraud, and they factor that cost into their profit/loss models. Police departments know they will lose officers in car accidents.
If America had picked itself up on 9/12/2001 and set about nothing but healing its wounds, pretty much everything happening on the planet would be better than it has turned out in the reality "we" chose.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
@UntimelyRippd
Yup, I always used to think, thank goodness Britons didn't crumple up with every bombing and randomly murderously bluster like the Bush Admin and other perps in eternal fearmongering disinterring of each tragedy, during the Blitz.
But those involved in generating the whole 9/11 War On The World wouldn't have been able to smirk while counting their money and wiping their butts on the US Constitution ("It's only a piece of paper" I swore to uphold the principles of in order to gain and retain public office; "Law doesn't apply to ME!" in a democracy where all are entitled to equal rights, treatment and opportunity, with none 'more equal' than others and none 'above the law') if they'd had a stiff upper lip.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I have to admit...
I need work, I generally just tell them to stop crying, man up you pussy (apologies ladies..) or I'm a socialist like that jew Jesus, he healed the sick and fed the poor, and not once did he charge them for it, so f off! (Of course I would believe in Aliens before I would believe in God)
I was speaking with this guy last night and was smiling to myself because he was having serious voters remorse, but, he was upset about people protesting instead of "just let it ride out man, let's just see what Trunp will do, I mean come on, we can vote him out in 4 years..."
He went on about how we are all in this together. I had to bite my tounge, I wanted to scream ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!
I honestly don't know how to deal with these people. Not to mention we have to deal with this shit from the Left nowdays as well, OMFG the Russians did it! Or Paul Krugman this or Paul Krugman that, Schummer / Pelosi etc... Tom perez!
I don't know how to talk to bat shit crazy people....my head fills with a tusnami of 'facts', followed by an onslaught of expelitives....
C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote
It's all a smokescreen to cover the ongoing looting of
the economy and the biosphere. Paying attention to their nonsense allows them to distract you from what's really going on.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
But it's not a strong culture. Not anymore.
Actually, it never was one of the world's strongest cultures, and there was a time when I'd have said it was one of the world's weakest. Weirdly, in its decline it has proved that it has more strength than I thought. But that strength is only perceptible in the fact that it still exists at all, after more than 40 years of psychological, educational, moral, linguistic, and economic blitzkrieg.
Capitalism, especially unregulated capitalism, destroys cultures. It devours them from within. It hollows them out and parades the empty forms like Disney's Small World, the way I might keep stuffed specimens of extinct species in a museum--when it doesn't simply wipe them out and refuel its mechanisms on their wreckage.
One of the things that I share with the people you're talking about is that at least I see the same destruction and devastation that they do, a devastation we both object to. Right-wingers are wrong in how they interpret that devastation, who they blame, and what it means. But left-wingers are, if anything, more wrong, too often practically jumping up and down cheering at the bombardments, saying things like "it was always racist anyway" without noticing that the racism is surviving the bombardments, and surviving quite well; saying things like "it was never a democracy anyway" when every legal, political, and moral edifice that ever served the ideal of democracy, even brokenly or in part, every step we ever took in democracy's general direction, is dismantled and sold for scrap in front of our eyes; saying things like "it was always genocidal anyway" without noticing that the destruction of the culture hasn't reduced the number of genocides currently undertaken--far from it--and that the ultimate goal of those reducing the culture to dust appears to be a genocide of the entire human race. One need not idealize the culture lying in ruins to understand that its destruction is a bad thing, that those who destroy it are simultaneously those most likely to destroy life on this planet.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I guess it depends upon the meaning of culture
I would argue that the 20th century was the American century. Our music, film, TV, dance- along with our mythos as the land of opportunity- led the world. I have always maintained that the exportation of our culture was the lynchpin to our position in the world.
As for the complaints about America's history, I find this trend juvenile. Perhaps it's my perspective as a gay man who was raised in a world where homosexuality was a mental illness, where I had no rights, where the act of publicly identifying myself was incredibly risky to my health and welfare, that leads me to find the current whining offensive. No, American society was not perfect and likely will never be perfect. Nothing is. Yes, we have our problems. But so does every society.
I make it a point
To call Drumpf a delicate snowflake every time he whines about the anything.
" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "
Thanks! Great insight and writing. Much appreciated.
Unless we learn to work with them and with each other, though, we'll be sunk even worse than we are. It may already be too late, but I don't see any other shot.
Yup. It Ain't the Immigrants Killing Mom & Pop.
It ain't the muslims taking away civil and constitutional rights while peeping in on everything you do.
Ain't the muslims bankrupting us and stealing our homes...
And on and on. Corporate is the bogeyman. You find a shitty law? You'll find a fat corporate pig holding a sack of loot. You find a roadblock to humane public policy? There's a multi-billion dollar contract somewhere that swings in the balance somewhere.
Corporate is the one destroying culture. The only culture that will be allowed to survive is the Brand.
Great comment.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Snowflakes, individuals, on the Left. Snowflake Culture on the
Right.
It is a bit counter intuitive, but that's not the point.
Everyone IS a snowflake. We are all different and special. That's a fact. As a snowflake, it behooves you to be nice to the snowflakes around you -- it's a deep metaphor for accepting our differences and making humanity a single tribe.
If we are not special snowflakes, then we can be mowed down, droned, incarcerated, and shat upon because we're not talented enough to be special. It's insidious crabs in a bucket, meritocracy crap.
I don't think calling Drumpf a Snowflake is a smart response, per Lakoff and Nixon. We should talk about how weak and insecure Drumpf is. Snowflakes might be lots of things, but they ain't weak and insecure -- they're doing their thing, braving the constant assaults of authoritarian culture nannies.
I went out on halloween with my mohawk fired up -- about 8" tall -- and you would not believe the angst I got -- On HALLOWEEN -- snowflakes, and the culture and political debate that debases snowflakes and makes distinctive human differences and the fragility of life a negative are cultures and debates that the Left should avoid.
Those are the cultures and debates that have brought us to "grab them by the pussy" and illegal mexican rapists stealing our jobs.
"Snowflake" blocks off sympathy and empathy and shuts down the debate by creating an entitled Other. This becomes an emotional sink that people can pour their angst into.
To use it on Drumpf may be good tactics but poor strategy. I would expect it from the corporate Left. They don't believe in solidarity and empathy unless it comes with a loyal voting delegation.
The key is to step outside the chosen frame, and this is super important if that frame is effective. Snowflake, I believe, is a very effective frame.
Maybe those cats should put a helmet on their culture. Seems pretty fragile.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
How do we exploit the disconect?
We push like crazy a 99% estate tax. Rugged individualism, indeed!
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Also too
as we did in the last election, follow the money.
The 1% bankrolled Hillary.
Trump bank rolled himself.
Bernie from a raft of small donations.
It was clear who the moneyed were behind. Also clear, who posed the greatest danger to the establishment. Bernie Sanders.
This is how Trump won. The DNC totally underestimated Trump and could not or would not see reality, both Trump and Sanders were non establishment candidates. IMHO.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Drumpf Was Allowed to Win Because He Still Gives Government a
black eye, .
"Well, he's erratic and dangerous, but he's a capitalist and he's going to trash government. Better him than Bernie."
And so he got their blessing.
His policy will tarnish the good name of government and his style will make a mockery of it. What could be better.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu