BC SOCIETY
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Thread: Rush Limbaugh and the conservative Id

On the day of his passing, it's worth doing a brief retrospective on how Rush Limbaugh's personal life almost perfectly paralleled American conservatism...

 One thing that's not commonly known about Rush Limbaugh is that he began his career in sports, doing sales for the Kansas City Royals baseball team. That's significant because much of the tribalism and dumbed-down rhetoric in American TV news directly came from sports media.
Television journalism in its earliest days was a fantastic product with real investigative reporting, no filibustering live interviews, and no soundbites. This began changing in the 1970s when ABC Sports president Roone Arledge was put in charge of ABC News.
Limbaugh tried to be a conventional FM deejay but kept getting fired because his personality was too abrasive. After working with the Royals, he began a small political talk show for a Sacremento station. The Reagan repeal of the Fairness Doctrine made his show possible.
Rush Limbaugh's Sacramento show started in 1984 (he replaced Morton Downey Jr) and after 5 years, he was picked up by ABC Radio which was trying to copy some of the sensationalism that ABC News television had started. It was a perfect fit.
While Rush Limbaugh's uneducated background (he flunked out of college according to his mother) brought him some regular-guy cred, his style of saying anything to trigger liberal outrage wasn't his invention. In fact, William F. Buckley started the trend in the 1950s.
Buckley's first book, God and Man at Yale, was hundreds of pages of him trying to cancel atheist professors. He wrote a second book with Brent Bozell Jr. dedicated to defending the disgraced Joe McCarthy. He even once threatened to punch a liberal commentator (on ABC, fancy that)
Rush Limbaugh merely updated the Buckley shtick, adding parody songs, conspiracy theories, & guttural insults of political figures.

Limbaugh's show was a hit among fundamentalist Christians who'd raged for decades that their beliefs were mocked. Rush was their equalizer.
Republican elites were overjoyed at Limbaugh's emergence as a national figure. Buckley saw a kindred spirit and almost immediately befriended Limbaugh as well. Rush was invited to the Bush 41 White House as an honored guest.
Talk radio was different in its earlier days. In the 80s and 90s, it almost exclusively was a megaphone for GOP politicians, lending them air support against the evil Democrats.

But this changed over time as the hosts were courted by the extremists who run right-wing DC groups.
The blowout of Barry Goldwater in 1964 made some conservatives like Buckley realize that Americans would never want to eliminate the welfare state. He, Goldwater, and Reagan became somewhat more moderate afterwards. But the true believers like Brent Bozell Jr. became crazier.
After working extensively with his brother-in-law Buckley, Brent Bozell broke things off as he began realizing that the US would never adopt the Christofascism that he wanted. In 1965, he literally moved to Spain to live under the dictator Francisco Franco.
But Bozell wasn't content to leave America alone. He started up a far-right Catholic magazine called Triumph & a Christian Proud Boys group called "Sons of Thunder." In 1970, he was arrested for using giant crucifix as a battering ram and weapon against police.
Despite never being popular with the public, the far right has always been lavishly funded by billionaire business magnates who hated the government & wanted Christian supremacy.

The conservative establishment bought off talk radio and turned it much more extreme than it began.
Rush Limbaugh was never particularly religious himself but he knew where the audience was and where his fat-cat friends were. So he never spoke up about their Christian nationalism and intolerance. And he continued embracing whatever radicals that came along.
As @Mr_JamesLandis noted in 2016, that even included embracing the then-new "alt-right" movement which was trying to meme nazism into American politics. I don't think Limbaugh really knew what he was doing then, but he indisputably was a fan at first https://t.co/gXZhM4ywKa
Because conservatives so utterly succeeded at canceling moderates in the GOP, Rush Limbaugh and other established talk radio hosts were always under constant pressure to move further and further right since there is no energy in the center of the Republican party.
Also like so many in the far-right establishment, Rush Limbaugh refused to think ahead past his own demise and so he failed to raise up a successor, even as he knew he had terminal cancer. His program will likely have no future at all, leaving many stations with lost revenues.
Limbaugh's refusal to think deeply about his own legacy and future program were of a piece though. His career represented the conservative Id killing the conservative superego. It's why there are no Republican policies on much of anything domestically. All that's left is rage.
The 1/6 Capitol attack was eerily foreshadowed on Rush Limbaugh's 11/20/20 program when a man called into the show and in tears told Rush that he had nothing left in life and was willing to die for Donald Trump
To the end of is days, Limbaugh never once acknowledged what he was doing to his audience, that he had fed them a diet of hate and never offered them an actual way forward. He never wondered why the candidates he supported were never able to achieve the things they both wanted.
My friend @LeslieVryenhoek has a great short podcast series talking about how Rush Limbaugh warped her parents' minds with decades of brainwashing. It's worth a listen to get a look inside the mind of talk radio fans. https://t.co/IqXwGBurBT
OK this thread is long enough. If you want to read more about the GOP's endless cycle of radicalization, I wrote a piece about it in Salon that might be of interest: https://t.co/Elm4t3E2AB
PS: I had forgotten to mention that Limbaugh's ABC intersections continued later on in his career when he briefly served as a Monday Night Football commentator https://t.co/ezw7t5bs8F
Oh and it's also worth adding that in the 1990s, Rush Limbaugh hosted a syndicated television talk show. His executive producer was Roger Ailes, who put what he learned into Fox News shortly thereafter.

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@mattsheffield
Thread: Meaning and loss in American conservatism

I've written a lot about how Christian supremacism (expressed and implicit) is the underlying objective of most Trump supporters but the psychology of American conservatism is very important in its descent into madness.

We're seeing it manifested heavily in the present moment as Trump and his followers are forced to contemplate the loss of the presidency but it's important to realize that losing is the psychic core of the U.S. right.

Trump's repugnant demeanor and prior history of political moderation is what made him so reviled by conservative activists and donors in 2015 but his angry victim complex so deeply resonated with the GOP base that this is why he won the primary.

American conservatism has been obsessed with death and loss since it emerged in the 1940s. The utter humiliation of Herbert Hoover and the rapid growth of federal spending and regulation under FDR was an existential moment for the corporate barons who started the U.S. right.

The rise of explicitly atheist Marxist-Leninism was also immensely triggering of long-time fundamentalist fantasies of persecution and death before the return of Christ. Most Christians don't see John's Apocalypse as a literal text but fundamentalists do.
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Matthew Sheffield
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Thread: People love to rag on Nate Silver for his arrogance & they should, but he's merely an example of a larger issue that the web has made it easy to draw inferences from data without knowing the context in which it lives. 1/x

Alexander Pope's warning that "a little learning is a dangerous thing" has never been more true than an age in which we can obtain information about anything without being able to understand it.

Having data doesn't mean you can use it.

Western society has a very significant problem that expertise in one area is often conflated with expertise in others.

Men are the main culprit. We have been socialized to think we know more than we do. There are many studies showing this. Here's one:

Not only do men think we're smarter than we are, we also overestimate our own attractiveness:

Male overconfidence has lots of negative implications for society. The biggest is that too many men in media have amassed followings by speaking confidently about subjects they don't understand.

Nate Silver finds Donald Trump appalling, but his shtick isn't all that different.
LIFE
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Matthew Sheffield
Matthew Sheffield
@mattsheffield
Thread: Conservative Policy and the Trump Presidency

On the last full day of the Trump administration, I think it's useful to examine why he accomplished so little legislatively. TLDR version: American conservatism has almost no policy program.

The most important thing to know about conservative politicking is that people do not vote FOR Republicans, they vote AGAINST Democrats.

The GOP is dominated by a minority of far-right activists and wealthy donors who have views that their own voters don't support.

American conservatism is premised on the twin ideas that the New Deal & Great Society were immoral and that God himself created America and that we should honor this creation by establishing full Christian supremacism in which LGBT people, atheists, and Muslims have fewer rights.

Because God created America, this means that conservatives believe in essentially no domestic policy of any kind. If it wasn't literally in the Constitution, then the feds shouldn't be doing it is their opinion.

This is not, however, how things used to be in the GOP.

For much of its history, American conservatism was a sort of intellectual parasite on the Republican party which was run by a mix of moderates and liberals. They actually had domestic policies. Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon had many policies that actually helped America.
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Matthew Sheffield
Matthew Sheffield
@mattsheffield
This Parler user explains it quite well here. Because of yet more security flaws at Parler, it's now possible for all that "free speech" to be shared and archived with the world, even if the posters tried to erase their not-at-all innocent videos and GPS data.


In slightly more technical terms, it seems as though Parler never closed some of their developer-friendly security holes (sort of the programming equivalent of game cheat codes made by devs) and as a result, their anyone with the right knowledge could have admin access.

Parler never actually deleted anything its users posted. And, stupidly, they also kept it accessible to admin users.

This meant that anyone with admin access could still download it.

Once Parler's two factor authentication feature was disabled, because it was designed for developer convenience rather than security, anyone with the knowledge could become an administrator. And that's how Parler just got owned.

People have been downloading the raw videos, photos, and text posts by the gigabyte and archiving it for later public distribution.

All that perfect, totally harmless free speech will still be searchable, even now that Amazon locked out Parler from its servers.
SOCIETY
Matthew Sheffield
Matthew Sheffield
@mattsheffield
Conservatives love to complain that everyone is against them: professors, journalists, intelligence officers, social media companies, and so on.

I used to as well until I considered that maybe having problems with everyone else isn't their fault, it's yours.

I was reminded of that realization when I read this important NYT article about how Facebook keeps weakening news source quality controls because conservative content gets disproportionately effected by them.

Unfortunately, this great piece of reporting by @MikeIsaac, @sheeraf, & @kevinroose didn't mention the greatest challenge in AI news signal processing: Humans can barely separate conservative & far-right content. Which means computers can't either.

This techno-semiotic conundrum originates from the fact that in the US, because there is no moderate conservative tradition, the gravitational center of the right is far removed from the political center.

More plainly, this means that almost all the energy and organizing on the right exists on the far right.

This is not the case on the US left where there is a strong moderate tradition capable of organization and force projection. Ask Bernie Sanders if you disbelieve.
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1/ The “I Have a Dream" speech is one of the most extraordinary speeches in American history. You should read it again. First, a few thoughts about the common American heritage Dr. King relied upon in calling Americans to rededicate themselves to the unfinished work of freedom.


2/ Dr. King delivered his speech in what he called the “hallowed spot” of the Lincoln memorial. More than a picturesque backdrop, King relied on America’s reverence for Lincoln and the common celebration of Lincoln’s words and acts, especially the Emancipation Proclamation.


3/ “Five score years ago…” King echoes the words of the Gettysburg Address. Like Lincoln, King invokes the Declaration of Independence and the fundamental principles of American freedom, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Every person in that crowd knew these words.


4/ The Declaration, Constitution and Emancipation Proclamation declared and established the fundamental American principles of freedom that all Americans knew and believed in. But these principles and promises remained unfulfilled for black Americans.


5/ Lincoln’s audience knew the history of slavery and many had suffered personal loss in the ongoing war. Dr. King’s audience knew the history of violent racism, segregation, and unequal economic opportunity. The Proclamation freed the slaves, “but the Negro still is not free.”
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SocialCops’ 10 (base 10) Engineering Commandments — the values that drive everything for the #Engineering Team #InsideSocialCops 🙌

(Thread👇) Tell us if you can relate to any of these? Do you have your own values that guide your decisions? Share them with us! ⛳

0. Coder != engineer

Coders focus just on writing code to make something work. Engineers take a much wider view, focusing on both the problem and every aspect of the solution. 🤓

1. “Import lib”

It's not wise to waste time building tools or libraries if there’s already something that does the same job! Wherever possible, extend existing libraries and contribute back to the community. 💁‍♀️

2. With great power comes greater responsibility

Every choice we make on our platform and every feature we build stands up to a responsibility — helping people make more data-driven decisions and bring about real change for millions of people. 💪

3. Fail fast and keep learning

Failing fast is about doing lots of fast iterations and learning from each, rather than getting stuck on one solution or decision. 👊
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Sara Benincasa
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@SaraJBenincasa
Spent a quaint half hour in a cafe listening to a guy yell at his dad after his dad said that the women Trump molested wanted it: "Dad, that's like saying the Jews who died in the Holocaust were asking for it!" ENJOY YOUR TERRIBLE FAMILIES THIS WEEK!

"Mom, has a man ever touched you without your consent?"
"Of course."
"Did you report it?"
"No."
"Dad, your WIFE has been through this!"

Dad was unmoved and told the guy to stop arguing with him.

At this point we learned the boy child has allergies.

I forgot to remark upon the presence of the very cute grandson, who was very small and gave not one shit about the yelling. I believe a sister or aunt was present and feeling very stressed. I wanted to hand her a Xanax or seven.

It was really hard to not jump in and say, "Sounds like you guys are going to have a fun meal tomorrow!" so they could unite in hatred against me, the outsider, and stop squabbling. Instead I exchanged glances with a nearby fellow lady patron, who also emotionally ate a cookie.

Anyway, I want to thank the random family for yelling about rape and the Holocaust in an Israeli cafe in the US of A today because it reminded me that while this country isn't the greatest, it is inevitably my stupid favorite and I am never, ever bored.
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For Black History Month, Vox is publishing a big series on rethinking policy for Black America.

I wrote 3,200 words on eradicating exclusionary zoning.

It's a 3 step formula: Persuade, incentivize, and if all else fails, SUE THE SUBURBS.

Thread

We know that exclusionary zoning is locking millions out of opportunity.

Work by @OppInsights, Richard Rothstein, Ta-Nehisi Coates, @nhannahjones, @RickKahlenberg, Chang-Tai Hsieh, Enrico Moretti and @ProfSchleich details the economic impact of these discriminatory policies.


51 years after the Fair Housing Act, it's never been seriously enforced. It's time to change that.

First things first, Biden has work to do to convince whoever can be convinced that there is a racial, environmental, and economic imperative to undo residential segregation.


Use whatever explanation works!

For sympathetic progressives Biden should link racial and environmental justice to ending exclusionary zoning.

For everyone else, he can simply make an economic

Second, there are many tools to incentivize localities that rely on federal dollars to reform their zoning codes.

There is a ton of federal money that can be conditioned on reforming exclusionary zoning laws. @ebwhamilton has some good ideas on this front.
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Having spent 2020 telling covid denalists that they were overly optimistic about the pandemic, I now look forward to spending 2021 telling covid maximalists that they are overly pessimistic about the end of the pandemic.

Telling a denialist in May that we shouldn't open bars back up = telling a maximalist in February that we should open schools back up.

Look, folks, the math is straightforward. ~13% of Americans have been vaccinated as of this

And the 7 day average continues to rise; we're approach 2 million vaccine doses per day. Meaning that we'll double that ~13% much faster than the two months it took us to get there.


So it's entirely reasonable that absent any other intervention, we should expect to hit ~30% vaccinated by the end of March.
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The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.

1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!

2) "Repressed memory" syndrome

3) Facilitated Communication [FC]

All 3 led to massive abuse.

"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.

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I think I'm giving up on mainstream marketing content.

I'm giving up on social media consumption too.

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Who needs another "5 ways to boost growth" post? I click and am disappointed every time. Not again.

I don't want to poop on content marketing, but marketers need to step it up.

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Two of the chief sins:
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2. Not having anything more to add that's meaningful

Why blog/podcast/vlog/etc about something that's already been said? Already been done?

Do we really need another interview with founder of x hot startup? Do we really need another ultimate guide about facebook ads?

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Sometimes, you get an occasional piece that truly leaves you better off than you were before. That doesn't make you want to skim.

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SRI THIRUNARAYANA PERUMAL, MELKOTE (KAR)

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Once, Sri Rama gave his aradhana murthi of Sri Ranganatha, to Raja Vibhishana on his request. So he was left without a murthi for his daily pujas. Brahma is said to have provided the murti of Selva Pillai to Rama who later passed this on to his sons, Lava and Kusa.


When Kusa’s daughter married a Yadava prince, this murthi moved to the lunar dynasty from solar.

It is said that the utsav murthi got the name Selva Pillai due to Sri Ramanuja.
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I get asked for writing tips a lot. Of all the ones I’ve given, here are a few of the ones that seem to hold true and remain somewhat universal or at least mostly unobjectionable:

#amwriting #writingtips

1. If you are a fast writer (i.e., if you compose first drafts very quickly) then you absolutely must become a slow editor. Much of what I call “writing” is really, for me, editing.

2. If you don’t read you cannot write a lot or well. Sure, maybe you can read like a maniac for a decade and then read less after that, but without some large volume of intake, there will never be a meaningful output.

2.1 I sometimes say that I feel like writing without reading is like trying to run a marathan on a cracker. And sadly I see many students struggling to write when they have simply never read enough to fuel that demand of the task at hand.

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