The mangling of managed minds

George Rebane

People who are informed primarily through media soundbites have been shown to have very volatile opinions.  When a new and contrary tranche of soundbites comes along, such people more often than not change their minds and follow the new direction of the most recent compelling soundbite.  This is because soundbite driven opinions are reactionary and not reasoned.  That is simply because the individual takes no time or effort to develop any depth of understanding in what he currently believes.  Finicky and fleeting feelings drive decisions for such people.  Bryan Caplan, in his The Myth of the Rational Voter, was one of the first to publish the research confirming how voters make decisions about issues and candidates.

The bottom line acceptance of Caplan’s findings is corroborated by how politicians and our news media (specifically the lamestream) construct their messages for soundbite thinkers.  This morning’s analyses of President Trump’s Oval Office speech last night is chuck full of such messaging.

One frequently used ruse is to dismiss stated levels by surreptitiously sliding the argument over to rates, and also dismiss inconvenient rates by citing the more fortuitous change in the offending rate.  [For the technically versed, this well-known process is known as ‘climbing the derivative ladder’ until you find the one that serves your narrative.]  An example here is the President’s citing the high number of illegals currently coming over the border.  This the lamestream journalist brushes off by telling listeners that the rate of illegals entering was higher in the past.  For innumerates and soundbite thinkers, this is an effective way to dismiss concern over the continuing rate of illegal entrants.  Presented in this context, it never occurs to them that what’s happening now is still a huge and preventable problem that overwhelms our border security personnel.

Another well-oiled piece of legerdemain is how criminality rates, acts, and incarceration costs for illegal aliens are papered over in light minds.  One only has to point out that rates of criminality for US citizens’ are higher than for illegal aliens, which is further confounded by substituting the unadorned ‘immigrant’ label, letting one play with all kinds of stats that include legal immigrants.  But the point is again that the soundbite thinker never considers that the indigenous US criminality rate doesn’t matter in this argument.  Why? Because the illegals contribute existential marginal rates, acts, and costs that we wouldn’t have to bear were we to significantly reduce our border porosity.

The same smoke is blown to fog minds when our leftwing politicians pooh-pooh the cross-border terrorist threat by reminding their simple-minded constituents that more terrorists have been caught entering through our airports than when coming illegally across our southern border.  Again, that is an irrelevant argument against more border security infrastructure for two reasons.  First, that more bad people are stopped here, does not mean that we should now ignore the fewer bad people who are stopped elsewhere – should we not do a better job at stopping them wherever we can?  Second, arrest stats are one thing (what we can measure), but no one knows the actual terrorist influx rates (what we can’t measure).  All we know for certain is that if we greatly reduce means and points of illegal entry, then we also minimize the marginal number of terrorists who successfully enter our country.

The same light can be shed on the progressives’ countering the influx of illegal narcotics problem.  They get the nation’s snuffies to breathe a sigh of relief when they cite that more drugs are intercepted at legal points of entry than have been stopped coming over our wildland borders.  Again, no one knows exactly what levels of successful drug smuggling occurs by either means.  And a little thought reveals once more that the counter argument here is irrelevant, because reducing border porosity reduces the rates of successful entry of illegal drugs.   And this has a double benefit because of the corresponding level of crime against innocent victims will be reduced in border areas that are relatively immune to penetration.  Regions near such borders lose value to migrants, coyotes, and drug gangs.

Finally, there is the Left’s response to the notion that our porous southern border presents a national security crisis.  Their effective counter to this, one that brings a halt to all further thought in our soundbite citizens, is that “mothers and children are a humanitarian crisis, not a national security problem.”  They are indeed, but what our good-hearted Democrat brethren don’t even bother to consider is that this is a purposed and systematically solicited humanitarian crisis that serves a much more sophisticated Democrat agenda.

Mothers and children have suddenly started migrating in ‘caravans’ by the thousands from central America because the Democrat Party has provided the ‘pull’ by putting out word that they are welcome here, and will receive succor if they are successful in crossing the border by any means.  On the other end providing the ‘push’, leftwing NGOs are active in central America putting out the word and organizing the caravans with promises (mostly made good) of transport, food, and shelter being available to them on their 2,000 mile journeys to wildland border crossing points and legal ports of entry.

Again, these are recently manufactured humanitarian crises for Democrats’ political gain, and can be stopped immediately by making the border much more secure.  This would halt the activists’ invitations on this side of the border, and also the organized instigations going on in the source shithole countries.  And one would have to be a naïf to believe that among the masses of families and unaccompanied children there are not untold numbers of bad actors melding into the desperate throngs demanding to be let in.

As a postscript, perhaps what is most astonishing is that soundbiters are successfully being convinced that ‘walls don’t work’, an easily refuted and bald-faced lie which, when swallowed, is interpreted by the intellectual innocents to mean that therefore no physical barriers at the border are effective, they are simply “immoral”.  (more here)

Comments

[***M***]

,,,George you are so wrong,,,guess what? Obama had a system in place that allowed families, women, and children to apply for asylum at the US embassies in their native lands but asshole Trump, in his stupidity and desire to take down everything Obama did, stopped that program!!! Now the must trek to the border where they are gassed. Nice job! Trump has started a humanitarian crisis.

More people on watch lists were turned away on the Northern border than on the southern border because it is so well protected by walls, personnel and tech, Duh!

Too bad Trump does not have a vocabulary and cannot stop with his meathead soundbite mantra of Build that WALL when what is really happening at the border is a humanitarian crisis. If there is a 1.5 Billion in cash waiting to be spent on the idiotic wall idea why not spend that first and see how much of the necessary repairs to existing wall can be made.

You are obsessed with promoting that last card that is holding up the Trump chance for a win in 2020.

[***M***]

,,,The caravan hysteria was promoted by Trump and his ilk for political gain during the midterms just as his Build the WALL mantra was manufactured as a soundbite for the 2016 elections.

[fish]

Posted by: ***M*** | 09 January 2019 at 11:51 AM

Obama had a system in place that allowed families, women, and children to apply for asylum at the US embassies in their native lands but asshole Trump, in his stupidity and desire to take down everything Obama did, stopped that program!!!

That isn't the type of program legitimate asylum seekers can use you feeble nitwit. Asylum seekers in desperate fear for their lives generally don't have the option to schlep down to the embassy for a nice family outing to sign some forms, and then wait patiently at home to wait to see if their petition has been accepted! What you are describing is a system for processing economic migrants! People who have the time and freedom to visit an embassy without fear that they're going to be gunned down in the process!

Economic migrants don't get asylum!

You need more convincing talking points old man!

I'll ask you again (your earlier non-answer answer is insufficient) just how many more "foreign" people we need in the United States many of whom will likely be a burden on an already stretched social services system?

[Walt]

That "program" you speak of was illegal at face value.
Somehow you believe your boy "O" could write law.(along with most rabid LIBS) You know,, Dictator actions.
LIBs flaunted the fact they were picking and choosing what laws to follow AND ignore. Trump has worked to put and end to that. What do You and the LIBS try now? Fabricating crimes where there are none.

"(June 6, 2014 - Washington, D.C.) - While an unprecedented number of illegal alien minors surge across the border – incentivized by lax enforcement and promises of amnesty – the Obama administration has just announced it is expanding a program that defers the deportation of illegal aliens. In June of 2012, the Obama administration bypassed Congress with an executive action that put into place Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The program, otherwise known as the DREAM Act, grants a reprieve from deportation and work authorization to broad categories of “young” illegal aliens. Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that a two-year renewal process has begun and encourages those not already enrolled to do so."

For those with a piss poor memory.

[Walt]

WOW!!! Trump even makes a concision to reopen the gov.!
" Trump asked Nancy Pelosi if she would bring up a vote for border security within 30 days if he signed a bill to reopen the government."
( he gave them a loaded gun!!!)
And what was the reply?
According to Trump, Pelosi said, “No.”

“I said bye-bye, nothing else works!” Trump wrote.

Vice President Mike Pence noted that Democrats remained unwilling to negotiate a deal with the president and confirmed Trump’s account of the meeting.

NanChuck now own the shutdown.

[Bill Tozer]

The myth of the rational voter? Might have some truth to it.

Screen time versus book or play time affects other aspects of life than IQ. In March, 2016, for example, Intellectual Takeout editor Annie Holmquist wrote about how few Americans read books anymore and how this affects our elections. If you open the Holmquist article, look at the literacy rankings of various countries. Note that Norway ranks ahead of the United States, which means that our own IQ scores may be falling at even a greater clip.

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/falling-iq-scores-suggest-were-getting-dumber-can-we-reverse-course

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/americans-dont-read-and-thats-affecting-our-elections

[Bill Tozer]

Mangled minds

“Ocasio-Cortez is right about facts taking a backseat to emotions. Immigration is one such issue, where Ocasio-Cortez’s take-all-comers and dismantle Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement position is now the de facto standard in the Democratic Party.

There’s a tendency on the left to claim that no one is “for” open borders, but it’s also a neat trick of obfuscation because almost the whole Democratic Party has shifted to an extreme that opposes virtually any border enforcement. In three decades, Democrats went from supporting border security and opposing legal immigration—at least rhetorically—to holding the nation’s business hostage over giving illegals amnesty and preserving physically porous borders.”

A recent report suggests 91 percent of U.S. criminal aliens are from Mexico, guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador: “They accounted for 4.9 million arrests for 7.5 million offenses. (The numbers, according to the GAO: 197,000 criminal aliens in federal prisons, arrested 1.4 million times for 2 million offenses, between 2011 and 2016; 533,000 in state or local facilities between 2010 and 2015, representing 3.5 million arrests for 5.5 million offenses.) The arrests include allegations of more than 1 million drug crimes, a half-million assaults, 133,800 sex offenses and 24,200 kidnappings.

Most of these criminals are based in sanctuary cities.”

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/09/dont-let-ocasio-cortez-party-dance-around-facts-immigration/

Which leads to my next post

[Bill Tozer]

Let’s embrace diversity, rather than allowing people in the closest proximity to define policy. After all, if one of the goals of immigration is to enhance American diversity, we shouldn’t allow those closest to the border to dictate the parameters of American immigration. I understand that Honduras is an appalling place, rife with crime and poverty, but so is Chad. I realize that Guatemalans are oppressed, but so are Coptic Christians in Egypt.

That said, if we want a diverse set of immigrants, we should welcome those with useful skills, and those with no skills at all. Millions of human beings in this world lack skills because they haven’t been allowed to develop their gifts in the theocratic, socialistic, or corrupt societies they live in. As we’ve seen with the most successful immigrant population that embrace American values — those from China or Nigeria or Eastern Europe — some people just need a chance.

Of course, in practice, converting these broad concepts into policy would be incredibly complex. Whatever immigration policy ultimately looks like, though, it shouldn’t be forced on us by the actions of others.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/09/about-time-immigration-plan/

[George Rebane]

M 1151am - as pointed out above, you again insist on embarrassing yourself. I've been trying to puzzle out why you do that on these pages. The only reasonable answer (not that this is your strong suit) is that you are talking to all the liberals who meticulously follow the debates here. Perhaps you have a better answer.

[Bonnie McGuire]

I'm posting excerpts of this article because of the political hypocrisy displayed by highly paid individuals elected to represent and protect us from invasion. Walls, or fences for protection of self and possessions remind me of the vegetable garden I used to plant for my family to eat. Without fencing it the wild animals would come in and eat everything.
https://freebeacon.com/issues/flashback-democrats-supported-mexico-border-fence/
Democratic members of Congress have been critical of President-elect Donald Trump's anti-illegal immigration proposal of building a wall on the Mexico-United States border since he proposed it on the campaign trail in the fall of 2015, but several Democrats voted in support of similar legislation in 2006.
While there were some Democrats who opposed the legislation due to cost restraints and concerns about the environmental impact of the fence, several prominent Democrats supported the legislation in the Senate, including Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), former Sen. Barack Obama (D., Ill.), and former Sen. Hillary Clinton (D., N.Y.).
Boxer, who has been critical of Trump's wall proposal, spoke on the Senate floor in September 2006 where she defended building a fence on the border. " I don't oppose building a fence where you need to do it where the border is poorest. I just don't have a problem with that," Boxer said.
Obama also supported building a fence on the southern border of the United States. While Obama didn't believe the fence was a permanent solution, he did believe that it would provide better security along the border. Regarding the Secure Fence Act, Obama said in September 2006 that "the bill before us will certainly do some good. It will authorize some badly needed funding for better fences and better security along our borders and that should help stem some of the tide of illegal immigration in this country
Clinton, who was critical of Trump's plan during the presidential campaign this past year, also supported fencing along the border and bragged as recently as November 2015 about her previous votes as senator on the issue. At a campaign event in New Hampshire, a woman asked Clinton about securing the border from illegal immigrants.
"Well, look I voted numerous times when I was a Senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in and I do think you have to control your borders," Clinton said.
Other notable Democratic Senators who supported the legislation include Vice President Joe Biden (Del.), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y).

[Bonnie McGuire]

What we've all been enduring is age-old pschycology
used by dishonest politicians to destroy the reputation of competitors...while creating their followers. So you have to ask why everything President Trump says or does is made out to be repulsive, or stupid by Democrats, Hollywood, and media. It's distracting because the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie...smear tactic they use.
There are a number of YouTube versions of Rep Pelosi's "If you say it and repeat it often, it becomes the truth." This dishonest political warfare's getting pretty obvious to those who pay attention. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GMBeUORJWj4
That's why Joseph Goebbels added that it works only as long as the people don't suffer any consequences from the lie. The truth is the mortal enemy to the lie...and consequently the mortal enemy of the state. Therefore the state resorts to suppressing freedom of speech. He observed, that "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-goebbels-on-the-quot-big-lie-quot

[Bill Tozer]

Bonnie

I could not help but think of this when looking at what is going on, i.e., Mangled Minds. When the Left had only horrid examples to point to of their Utopian Workers’ Paradise, they moved to Identity Politics to accomplish the same goal. The justification of fascist tactics by Antifa, class warfare, “social justice”, the redistribution of wealth, the destruction of the individual....yes, Mangled Minds.

“Some reformers are squeamish about terror. Lenin was not. He viewed it not as useful but as necessary to any successful revolution. He was fond of quoting Robespierre’s observation on the virtue of terror: “…terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is thus an emanation of virtue.”

Lenin had never bothered to hide this view. More than a decade before the revolution Lenin said men needed to be asked if they supported a people’s revolution. “If he's against it, we'll stand him up against a wall.”

He took these words literally and his vision quite remarkably. W.H. Chamberlain, the first historian of the Russian Revolution and an eyewitness, estimated that the Cheka was executing 250 people a week by mid-1918. (As a point of reference, 17 people were executed annually for all crimes under Tsar Nicholas.)

By 1921, the Cheka had executed 50,000 people, many of whom were not dissidents but simply people who belonged to the wrong class or worked in the wrong trade.

A senior official of the Cheka summed this up well:

The Extraordinary Commission is neither an investigating commission nor a tribunal. It is an organ of struggle, acting on the home front of a civil war. It does not judge the enemy: it strikes him... We are not carrying out war against individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. We are not looking for evidence or witnesses to reveal deeds or words against the Soviet power. The first question we ask is - to what class does he belong, what are his origins, upbringing, education or profession? These questions define the fate of the accused. This is the essence of the Red Terror.”

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/revolutionarys-guide-creating-workers-paradise

[Scott O]

M is going for the 'purple prose' gold.
"Now the (sic) must trek to the border where they are gassed."
Oh the horror!!!!
They MUST trek to the border!!!
Probably at gun point. Box cars weren't available, apparently.
"...where they are GASSED"!!!
Yep - 'gassed'.
Probably in their sleep.
The Russians and Chinese are falling on the floor laughing at this kind of nonsense.

[Bill Tozer]

Suggested reading:
How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration- (from the Left leaning Atlantic

A larger explanation is political. Between 2008 and 2016, Democrats became more and more confident that the country’s growing Latino population gave the party an electoral edge. To win the presidency, Democrats convinced themselves, they didn’t need to reassure white people skeptical of immigration so long as they turned out their Latino base. “The fastest-growing sector of the American electorate stampeded toward the Democrats this November,” Salon declared after Obama’s 2008 win. “If that pattern continues, the GOP is doomed to 40 years of wandering in a desert.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/the-democrats-immigration-mistake/528678/

[Michael Brubaker]

Mr. Rebane, when I read the words derivative ladder, I immediately thought of Chuck Todd and all his "explanations". You would not qualify for his panel of hard leftists and never-Trumpers because you point out too many inconvenient truths and ubiquitous fallacies.