America Ain’t That Great?

[Martin Hash]

Wikipedia isn’t a good place to look for established truths. It is a good starting point and has some good sources to explore. That’s about it.

Google changed their defintion too, and if you go to Snopes, they've got something similar. The Left is whitewashing the language to fit their narrative. They are experts at using linguistics as a weapon.

Another word that has its meaning constantly muddied by The Left is "liberty." There must be half a dozen defintions out there now trying to confuse people what they are fighting for: from "liberty is a synonym of freedom" to the justification for quashing Free Speech that may offend someone's liberty.

p.s. I call this tactic "Oral Illusions" in my books.

[Speaker to Animals]

It's called sophistry and has been the enemy of Western Civilization since the time of Plato.

[Hastur]

Wikipedia isn’t a good place to look for established truths. It is a good starting point and has some good sources to explore. That’s about it.

Google changed their defintion too, and if you go to Snopes, they've got something similar. The Left is whitewashing the language to fit their narrative. They are experts at using linguistics as a weapon.

Another word that has its meaning constantly muddied by The Left is "liberty." There must be half a dozen defintions out there now trying to confuse people what they are fighting for: from "liberty is a synonym of freedom" to the justification for quashing Free Speech that may offend someone's liberty.

p.s. I call this tactic "Oral Illusions" in my books.

It neurolinguistic programming. I blame Noam Chomsky for putting it in the hands of the leftist strategists.

[Martin Hash]

Yes, Noam is to blame.

[ooky]

Yet again, a change I missed while I was doing my thing; apparently GenZ doesn’t think America is any great shakes, and 60% of them actually prefer socialism.

Patriotism is obviously something that has to be indoctrinated into kids, and schools have apparently been doing exactly the opposite. I’m not sure we can turn this shit around?

I don't think this is true at all, and I also think it is a mistake to assume each generation's patriotism will look like what older generations understood to be patriotism.

For example, patriotism doesn't have to be blind acceptance of any particular leading regime in this country, or fervent nationalism. Patriotism can be, there are some real problems here and I love this country enough to want to fix it. Things are so broken in terms of wage growth, access to health care, families being able to stay in the middle class, and income equality a certain amount of socialism is making increasing amounts of sense.

Look at the wave in voter registration for Gen Zers! Look at people like Mari Copeny (Little Miss Flint)! The Parkland activists! All of these Gen Zers are extremely patriotic.

In general, the right wing has long loved to attack the left, which tends to be younger, for not being "patriotic", when we just don't like certain right wing ideas, didn't agree with certain wars, etc. Whereas from where I sit, authoritarianism and believing Putin over our own intelligence agencies, attacking football player's free speech rights, constantly attacking the free press, relying on a state propaganda network and telling people "what you see and read is not what's happening" are MUCH less patriotic than the average Gen Z kid I know.

[Martin Hash]

You're a woman, I'm an OWG. The battle lines are drawn - you drew them; I'm just standing on my side. My kids probably won't like your kids. There will be restaurants that will say "No Republicans" and others that say "No Democrats." The Virtual Civil War is upon us. I don't know how it ends but it probably won't be in Socialism.

p.s. I ran for the U.S. House as a Dem this election cycle. Now I'm #Walkaway

[DBTrek]

The government censored football players?
When did this happen?

(Or is this another one of those “criticizing me is an attack on free speech” things?)

[BjornP]

That's gone, to be replaced several times with a new explanation, the most recent of which is:

"Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and workers' self-management of the means of production[10] as well as the political theories and movements associated with them.[11] Social ownership may refer to forms of public, collective or cooperative ownership, or to citizen ownership of equity.[12] There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them,[13] though social ownership is the common element shared by its various forms."

Notice how it doesn't say "State owns the means of the production," but uses Marxist language, "workers' self-management," and it states there is "no single definition." Americans can be forgiven for not knowing WTF socialism is.

Dunno if it makes me more forgiving, but yeah, that's a pretty clear attempt at linguistic obfusciation. It reminds me of highly bureaucratic legalese-speak. "Social ownership" is such a broad descriptor, it's useless. And that's just part of it. Goes to show that maybe one should crowd fund some sort of encyclopedia made by actual experts vetted and peer reviewed, instead of risking ideological editing like that wikipedia entry.

[Ph64]

The government censored football players?
When did this happen?

(Or is this another one of those “criticizing me is an attack on free speech” things?)

Funny how different things stand out to us. The thing that stood out to me in Ooky's diatribe was:

"relying on a state propaganda network".

Made me LOL reading that.

Meanwhile the left has MSNBC, CNN, and pretty much every TV news org other than Fox, control the NYT, HuffPo, and a majority of the other online/print "journalism"... All of who, btw, helped lie us into Iraq, Libya, pushed false chemical weapons claims in Syria, etc. But no, it's the RIGHT that relies on a "state propaganda network", and ONLY the right, and don't you forget that!

At least I know I'm being lied to by both sides, probably frequently, and I question the narratives, especially when they are blatantly politically motivated.

[ooky]

The government censored football players?
When did this happen?

(Or is this another one of those “criticizing me is an attack on free speech” things?)

President Trump directly and repeatedly asked the NFL to create rules and penalties to punish the players who protest, asked ESPN to change what they do showing the national anthem, and tweeted at the players to stop doing it. Then he said maybe he would use his presidential power to do more pardons of black people they like as a carrot to just stop protesting - seems like government actions to me.