The cloud house GIF is where the white puffy dude in Cloud Town demands Bing Bong fix his wall or else…
2 Likes
When I first joined Boing Boing, there was @Modusoperandi.
Then for a long time there was no @Modusoperandi. Dark, dark days.
Now once again there is @Modusoperandi! Rejoice, and do not ask questions!
10 Likes
How does that follow? Having an opinion is contingent upon consumption? Or having an opinion is only valid if you are an input to the economic engine? Having an opinion is only allowed if you’re self-sufficient?
Sounds to me like the dude’s just an asshole who is wrong, and doesn’t care to make a good defense for his own position.
9 Likes
Yeah, that’s just his modus operandi
4 Likes
Maybe, in the near future, elections will be replaced with loyalty card schemes? Hashtag ShopRepublican 2020
4 Likes
Or maybe only property-owning men of stature can vote?
5 Likes
Instead of a literacy test, now they’re going to measure our height?
8 Likes
It’s pretty much “having an opinion is only allowed if you’re self sufficient”, but I don’t think it means anything at all. It’s designed to put people in their place. It’s also a variant of “I’m not wrong, you just don’t know how the world works”. God I’m sick of that. I hear that one from all sides to all sides every day.
It’s not only stupid, it’s a special kind of stupid that stuck with me 15 years after the fact.
5 Likes
That’s not how I remember the early 2000s… It was a good notch scarier since the fanaticism was for the most part a unified front. People who questioned the lame party line of “they bombed us because they hate our freedoms” lost their jobs or worse. See Bill Maher for example.
2 Likes
Bill Maher got into trouble saying the 9/11 hijackers weren’t cowards, which is technically correct but still a creepy thing to say right after 9/11. He still has a job despite the controversy.
You might be thinking of Phil Donahue. Losing Phil Donahue was awful and uncalled for, but today things would have been so much worse. Everyone in the media sucks up to the corporations and the political establishment. Break from the party line, lose your job just like Donahue.
I was being a little sarcastic when I said the early 2000s were a simpler, more peaceful time, but not totally sarcastic. I remember thinking things were bad with the divisiveness and jingoism everywhere, but the political climate is way worse today.
Maybe the 90s were… nope, Monica Lewinsky scandal etc.
3 Likes
In the nineties, the GOP was pathetic. In the '00s, the GOP was proto-Orwellian.
Now, they’re straight-up fascist.
3 Likes
No I was definitely thinking of Bill Maher. And the fact that he got hired after the lockstep insanity went away only reinforces the point.
I know you were mostly making a joke but still it’s interesting to compare the two eras. There were so many other examples of the rampant mandatory “patriotism” at the time. Donohue, the Dixie Chicks getting blacklisted for criticizing Bush, and a biggie was Susan Sontag being called a “traitor” for her thoughts on 9/11 in a New Yorker article.
Here’s the Sontag essay incidetally (search for the word “disconnect” on this page. And if you still think Bill Maher’s ideas were “creepy” you should read this):
We have right wing idiots now with their false patriotism, but they’re relatively powerless. After 9/11 they had real power over the national dialog.
Shudder!
As far as “the media always sucks up to corporations”, at least we have social media now, which has taken a ton of power over the national dialog away from the traditional media. That social media gave us Bernie Sanders, and it even gave us Trump. And remember that if it weren’t for Trump Jeb Bush (or Ted Cruz! Eek!) would be the candidate and it would be a competitive race.
As far as the political climate being worse today, I have one word for you: recount. And two more: Dick Cheney.
This is a frickin golden era as far as I’m concerned…
2 Likes
This is untrue in my neighborhood. There are no Clinton signs in the yards that once sported Sanders signs, but there are Clinton signs. What’s missing this time are Trump signs in the yards that have hosted Republican signs in past cycles.
3 Likes
That never made any sense to me. Don’t the same people who listen to the Dixie Chicks listen to Johnny Cash? He was easily as liberal as they were.
I never said that. I said that he was technically correct, but him saying what he said when he said it was a little creepy. Huge difference.
They still do. They have huge influence over our foreign policy. No Presidential candidate can be dovish now without appearing weak. Also, who do you think got Trump nominated? Right wing idiots with their false patriotism. They don’t give a damn about this country, they just want more nativism and more jingoism. Trump couldn’t have been a serious candidate 12 years ago, 8 years ago, or even 4 years ago.
Slightly off-topic but still relevant: Independent media is on the rise, but it still needs more time to get the same respect as the Plastic News Anchor fake neutrality type of media gets now. Independent media existed then, and I became a fan of Amy Goodman during Bush’s first term. But then as in now, it’s just not taken nearly as seriously as it should be.
Exactly. Social media is a powerful force, but it is neither a force for good nor a force for evil. It doesn’t have any morality of its own. It’s a tool for reaching huge numbers of people, either for the purposes of spreading truth or for spreading bullshit propaganda and memes that are on par with 80s faxlore.
Yeah, I think Cruz would both be worse than Trump and more electable than Trump. I concede that a Ted Cruz could have been a viable candidate 4, 8, or 12 years ago, but he’s still a viable candidate, so nothing’s changed on that front. The same applies to Jeb Bush, except for the viable candidate part. The more he talks, the more empty-headed he appears.
Don’t jinx it 
3 Likes
If anything I’d say infantilizing the public discourse to the extent that our government and media did was the creepy thing. Maher and Sontag and the like were trying in vain to steer the discourse back to reality. We can see the importance of their mission, since our government kept us distracted and attacked a soverign nation and killed hundreds of thousands of people and gave birth to ISIS. Oh well, never again I hope.
Good point. But I think even the mighty Cash was cowed into silence at the time. Spooky stuff.
Good point.
Personally I wouldn’t conflate “independent media” and “social media”. Both are independent I guess but the similarities mostly end there.
I’m hoping that as it matures it’ll be a little more Wag the Dog and a little less Idiocracy, if that makes sense. This is really the first presidential election in the social media era (as a mainstream force, not just early adopters), so it’ll be interesting to see where its headed. I have faith in the hive mind, however misplaced.
Not in this election! Thank effin bejeebus!
That’s because he was dead 
He had been severely ill since 1997 and died in 2003.
I said they were different, but just went off on a tangent. Sorry about that.
Indie media does deserve way more respect than it gets, though.
I would say 2012 was the first Presidential election where social media was used as a mainstream force, but whatever. I agree, things won’t be the same, just like they were never the same after the 24-hour news cycle.
He was second place behind Trump, and Ben Carson was the only candidate besides Trump to take the lead in the Republican polls. Scary times indeed when Cruz and Carson are your alternatives to Trump!
Again, social media is technology, it has no morals and is not alive. It only does what we let it do, so my faith in social media is essentially the same as my faith in humanity. In other words, I’m optimistic, but very cautiously optimistic.
When ever some shmuck threatens me over the internet I just show them a picture of my gun and my last trip down to the range. Contrary to popular belief, some progressives do like handguns.
This part must be repeated! You don’t want to know what will happen, not just to you, not just to your loved ones, not just to the earth, but to the entire universe IF THOSE QUESTIONS GET ANSWERED.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
