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Friendly reminder: if you feel passionate and excited about someone else being denied employment, or otherwise punished based on their views, you are likely bei

Friendly reminder: if you feel passionate and excited about someone else being denied employment, or otherwise punished based on their views, you are likely being manipulated. By caring about those things you care less about demanding a better deal for yourself, and that's exactly what the media wants. USSR was built on that kind of manipulation and now it's coming here.

mrshadowgoose 5y ago
I personally think a lot of the infighting we see today is largely self-inflicted by the masses on themselves, as opposed to solely due to manipulation by media giants. However, your point still stands. Humans have a finite amount of attention. If you waste it hating on some other sub-group (regardless of whether or not you're being manipulated), instead of focusing on improving everyone's life, you're not really helping society. The modern "woke" movement is a great example of this. People are wasting their life playing a hateful privilege points game, and are even arguing that some other people should have their quality-of-life forcibly reduced due to having too much "privilege". Instead, we could be focusing on guaranteeing a decent standard-of-living for everyone, regardless of who you are or what you look like.
trutannus 5y ago
> USSR was built on that kind of manipulation and now it's coming here Can you link to where I could read up on that? Propaganda tactics are fascinating, and this one is one I never knew about.
- thesketh 5y ago
  I believe what they're talking about is more commonly referred to as "McCarthyism".
  - trutannus 5y ago
    No, McCarthyism was an anti-communist panic in the USA. They're referring to USSR propaganda. I assure you, resentment over a better quality of life was not driving McCarthyism. Quality of life was far lower in the USSR, in addition to the fact that the Union and SSRs had more mass killings and abuses of citizens than United States by orders of magnitude: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_the_Sovie... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union#Death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_deportations_from_Estonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_deportations_from_Eston... A place with high quality of life wouldn't have three entire nations jump at the first sign of instability to declare independence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing_Revolution "I have seen the future, and it works!" is nothing more than demonstrably false propaganda. See here the anarcho-communist Emma Goldman say it themselves: http://libcom.org/files/Emma%20Goldman-%20My%20Disillusionment%20in%20Russia.pdf http://libcom.org/files/Emma%20Goldman-%20My%20Disillusionme...

mrshadowgoose 5y ago

I personally think a lot of the infighting we see today is largely self-inflicted by the masses on themselves, as opposed to solely due to manipulation by media giants. However, your point still stands. Humans have a finite amount of attention. If you waste it hating on some other sub-group (regardless of whether or not you're being manipulated), instead of focusing on improving everyone's life, you're not really helping society. The modern "woke" movement is a great example of this. People are wasting their life playing a hateful privilege points game, and are even arguing that some other people should have their quality-of-life forcibly reduced due to having too much "privilege". Instead, we could be focusing on guaranteeing a decent standard-of-living for everyone, regardless of who you are or what you look like.

trutannus 5y ago

> USSR was built on that kind of manipulation and now it's coming here Can you link to where I could read up on that? Propaganda tactics are fascinating, and this one is one I never knew about.

thesketh 5y ago
I believe what they're talking about is more commonly referred to as "McCarthyism".
- trutannus 5y ago
  No, McCarthyism was an anti-communist panic in the USA. They're referring to USSR propaganda. I assure you, resentment over a better quality of life was not driving McCarthyism. Quality of life was far lower in the USSR, in addition to the fact that the Union and SSRs had more mass killings and abuses of citizens than United States by orders of magnitude: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_the_Sovie... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union#Death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_deportations_from_Estonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_deportations_from_Eston... A place with high quality of life wouldn't have three entire nations jump at the first sign of instability to declare independence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing_Revolution "I have seen the future, and it works!" is nothing more than demonstrably false propaganda. See here the anarcho-communist Emma Goldman say it themselves: http://libcom.org/files/Emma%20Goldman-%20My%20Disillusionment%20in%20Russia.pdf http://libcom.org/files/Emma%20Goldman-%20My%20Disillusionme...