[mos6507]

I've got to ask, what is the draw of the peak oil meme to dittohead right-wingers?

I know peakers CAN come from across the political spectrum, but it seems in the last year or so, the demographics of this board have shifted so much to the right that I feel like I'm reading a FoxNews talkback half of the time.

If the natural order of things is to bring back some 1950s utopia of happy motoring, then why would right-wingers decide to hang out in a place like this, in which most of us take for granted that TEOTWAWKI is gonna happen?

It's one thing if these people didn't believe in peak oil. But they often write as if they are indeed worried about peak oil. And yet at the end of the day, they cling to their brown-tech vision of the world in which ANWR, OCS, oil-shale, tar-sands, and gunboat diplomacy will insure the non-neogotiable American way of life pretty much indefinitely.

That's assuming they even talk about peak oil, rather than starting a zillion open-topic threads pushing the usual right-wing agenda of bashing entitlements and playing apologist for the rich, corporate America, and praying to the church of Ayn Rand.

If there's one thing rabid right-winders are good at, it's out-typing their opponents on places like this or under the comments of any news story. If quantity was the only measure of winning an argument, the right-wingers win every time. That their arguments normally don't elevate themselves beyond ad hominem doesn't seem to matter. If you can just keep steamrolling on the keyboard, you'll eventually burn everybody out until you're the last one typing, and you can claim victory.

So seriously, why bother? Peak oil is about change. Everybody's lives are going to change, and dittoheads don't seem to accept that. If they believe in peak oil enough, are fired up enough about the topic, to come here and brave the granola crunchers and the libertarians, then obviously there is something bothering them.

If BAU and your comfortable lifestyle really is in danger, then why not pay a little more attention to the details instead of hiding behind a wall of sloganeering and namecalling? The right-wing idology had its chance for 8 years and failed to deliver the goods. Why do they continue to cling to it as the best medicine for what ails us--against all reason to the contrary?

If libs are really so terrible, and the neocons didn't work, don't you think it's time to step back and reassess your entire way of thinking about politics in general?

I wonder whether the people here are really capable of that much higher thought.

That's why people like Planty have been accused of being paid disinformation agents, because there's no real way to have a two-way debate with him. He and others like him are merely a BS factory of one-sided attempts to slander. I keep wondering whether there's a real person behind the keyboard, someone willing to talk about what he really thinks, hopes, believes, someone capable of critical thought and reevaluation, and all I ever get from these ideologues is facade.

It's like, when you watch the USTREAM videos of Charlie Sheen, you can tell he's not all there. He's ranting and raving his (Queen's English) US vs. Them narrative at the camera, and as crazy as he is, that's an aural representation of the sort of rhetoric that has become commonplace on the internet. People go there as a form of tribal warfare. They find their tribe, and they go on the warpath, dehumanize the other side, and so on. Actually learning something new is anathema.

So please, enlighten me. Why do right-wingers devote so much of their lives to this place? Is it really all about being the center of attention, no matter how negative?

[Lore]

Maybe they just can’t stand the fact that you might have an opinion that differs from theirs in which you disrupt their space time continuum.

[dsula]

this board have shifted so much to the right

can you say americandream, ludi, vision-master, lore and many others, without a smile?

[Lore]

this board have shifted so much to the right

can you say americandream, ludi, vision-master, lore and many others, without a smile?

Speak for yourself, I can be just as hard on the right or the left. Wherever injustice is found.

[Loki]

I don't know if the board has shifted right, more likely that there are a handful of extremely prolific posters who cut and paste GOP propaganda to get a rise out of the lefties. Their voices seem amplified due to the decline in traffic on this board over the last couple years.

Though most conservatives live in a techno-cornucopian fantasyland, some take peak oil seriously. I imagine many come from a "survivalist" perspective, guns and bug-out bags and bug-out locations and the like (not a bad thing, I've spent my fair share of time reading and thinking about "survivalism," especially guns).

I do wish some (TIMMAC, TIMMAC, TIMMAC) would stop spamming the board with their GOP propaganda, though. It gets tiresome to see so many spam posts on the first page of 'Active Discussions.'

[Ludi]

Speak for yourself, I can be just as hard on the right or the left. Wherever injustice is found.

I'm not sure there's much of a "left" in the US. I doubt Bernie Sanders is inflicting much injustice on anyone......

[Lore]

Speak for yourself, I can be just as hard on the right or the left. Wherever injustice is found.

I'm not sure there's much of a "left" in the US. I doubt Bernie Sanders is inflicting much injustice on anyone......

One of the few politicians I truly admire.

[mos6507]

Speak for yourself, I can be just as hard on the right or the left. Wherever injustice is found.

I don't think it's possible to believe in global warming and be classified as right-wing.

[scas]

The extreme right-wingers remind me religious devouts, completely oblivious to anything but the good word (right wing doctrine).

Personally I am more bothered by the misanthropes and wannabe-genocidaires here. The general distaste for the public, as if they're an evil horde of locusts out to kill the Earth.

[scas]

Speak for yourself, I can be just as hard on the right or the left. Wherever injustice is found.

I don't think it's possible to believe in global warming and be classified as right-wing.

The sad thing is that the vast majority who accept global warming are going by the old IPCC standards which does little to motivate people to action. Few will read James Lovelock/James Hansen or track events closely to see how they match predictions.

[AdTheNad]

The extreme right-wingers remind me religious devouts, completely oblivious to anything but the good word (right wing doctrine).

Personally I am more bothered by the misanthropes and wannabe-genocidaires here. The general distaste for the public, as if they're an evil horde of locusts out to kill the Earth.

The good thing about the right wingers is after a certain point you can just start ignoring them. I'd rather debate with them in the hopes of changing their mind, or hell maybe even changing mine on different things if they had any salient points other than just ill informed propaganda, but they don't. With the misanthropes and wannabe genocidaires at least you can get a reasoned discussion. If someone is incapable of rational thought, or is paid to not change their mind any discussion is pointless.

[mos6507]

I'm not sure there's much of a "left" in the US. I doubt Bernie Sanders is inflicting much injustice on anyone......

Everything's relative. Left and right in common parlance refers to a fairly narrow band and whether you see that as a bad thing I guess depends on whether your ideology falls within that band. I know Eastbay loves to kind of portray himself as a sort Pope of the left and hand-wring about how Obama or Pelosi aren't left-wing pacifist enough to be able to show their face in public to their base. That's fine if he actually does represent mainstream left though, but he doesn't. Few people go around with Castro avatars. So he feels unrepresented. Boo hoo hoo. I'd say doomers should get used to feeling politically isolated. We're not "normal" to most people and I don't think our politicians will ever come close to reflecting our unusual values. The political debate here tends to focus on a sense of expectation that we have for politicians to a) take doom seriously and b) be willing to rock the boat of their voterbase. It's not gonna happen.

Democracy means everything kind of shifts towards the center, and that center in the US is probably to the right of center as far as ideology in general.

I strongly believe that who we elect represents who we are, not that we are victims of corruption. Our system is self-healing. Politicians who reneg on their promises will get the boot if the voting public get fed up enough. If they reelect them over and over again, that signals their approval. If we really wanted politicians like Bernie Sanders, we'd vote for him. But the only reason people like him are around is because the US has tiny little ultra-liberal enclaves like Vermont. Most of the country is pretty far right of center. I was shocked when I came back to MA to find the radio here dominated with the usual dittohead rhetoric, by local talkshow hosts. I really saw MA, a state known for higher education, as a liberal enclave but even within liberal enclaves it seems that liberal political speech is in the minority, at least it's just not nearly as outspoken and brazen as the conservatives who have pretty much overtaken radio.

Conservatives have evolved a winning low-brow blitzkrieg model of rhetorical discourse that is triumphant in the blog generation. It works because it appeals to the reptilian brain the same way a bud lite commercial does. That's why liberal media doesn't sell, like NPR which survives on government funding. It requires too much intellectual horsepower to digest, and people just want to feel like they are playing in a game of good guys and bad guys. Patriots and traitors. They don't want to discuss issues. They don't want William F Buckley. They want Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Politics as theater.

Personally I am more bothered by the misanthropes and wannabe-genocidaires here. The general distaste for the public, as if they're an evil horde of locusts out to kill the Earth.

I don't know what's worse, what they say, or the fact they feel brazen enough to say it out in the open like this.

I mean, it's a virtue to be tolerant of diverse viewpoints and all, but when you've got this sort of rogue's gallery of extremism, it's hard to look at it in such casual terms. At some point you have to have the guts to stand for what you believe. It's not a fricken' popularity contest. It's only TEOTWAKI and I fear the noisiest psychopaths will eventually gather the most mindshare once everybody has shut their brains off in favor of hysterical crisis-mode thinking.

[scas]

a) take doom seriously and b) be willing to rock the boat of their voterbase. It's not gonna happen.

I'm quite confident that within the next 10 years governments all over the world will be taking abrupt and runaway climate change very seriously. In fact, it may become our number one priority along with power for the cities and food for the people.

People like to say, Look at the history at climate change - governments haven't taken CC seriously in ever, what are the chances that they will now?"

But I think the tipping point for consciousness and awareness is as abrupt as the tipping point for a hot-house Earth. The 100th monkey?

A small fraction of me also believes that if concerted efforts for stratospheric solar engineering and a worldwide sequestration attempt takes place, and oil is reserved for farming, then it is possible that Earth will remain a viable planet. Of course, these events in themselves might shock the population into falling fertility.

[Ludi]

It's a tribute to how right-leaning the US is that NPR* is considered "liberal."

Not sure how folks are supposed to get actual liberal radio broadcasting when the stations are owned by right-wingers who are willing to operate at a loss. Sort of a monopoly on the marketplace of ideas. The Monsanto of ideas.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mann ... 06444.html

*Now Programmed by Republicans

[ian807]

Fanatics are all pretty much the same, regardless of content. Left. Right. Demican. Republicrat. Conservative. Liberal.

All of them want to be Right, the only Right. The one and only truly right. They tend to be cognitively and emotionally rigid and high on numerous scales of socio-pathology. They are often, though not always, not the sharpest knives in the drawer. They flock to movements. It really doesn't matter what the movement is. Most just go with the first thing that allows them to express their fanaticism. It could be politics, religion. It could be sports. It could be a TV show.

A couple of you out there are probably nodding your heads. Everybody knows a few of these. You try and keep your kids away from them. They themselves are totally unaware and utterly lacking self-insight. That seems to be another defining trait.

These are all sort of general. You'll find fanatics with varying amounts of these traits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanaticism

[PrestonSturges]

For right wingers, a big part of it child abuse and alcoholism. This can break left or right depending on the era and society, but right now the drug abusers are leaning right. Beck/Bush/Limbaugh.

The other draw is academic failure Beck/Hannity/Limbaugh/O'Reilly(?)/Gov Walker. Palin did actually squeak out a degree eventually.

Also, some forms of mental illness seem to be huge draw to the righties. Charlie Sheen's rants bring the sherifff to his house and his kids are taken by social services. Beck? Why hasn't the county taken his kids? Even Meghan Kelly goes off in ways that make Sheen seem reasonable. Coulter acts thoroughly psychotic. Etc etc. But what's that you say? They are actors and Charlie isn't (yeah that doesn't come out right does it?). Try that again - "Beck/Coulter/Meghan are entertainers, not actually mentally ill like Charlie Sheen" OK, fine, I'll give you that much. But why are righties irresitably drawn to mental illness and pathological liars? Why is it mandatory for right wing media figures to behave in ways that would demand intervention by law enforcement for anyone else? If it's an act, but why is that the only thing righties are comfortable with?

And while Beck has inspired a lot of liberals to buy guns, it's even scarier to see people like Palin/Bachmann/ODonnell taking this crap into mainstream politics. But that is a very narrow and specific profile also - sexual hysteria: flirtatous (wink wink) and obsessed with sex in a sexually frigid puritanical way (abortion, masturbation etc etc) castrating (man up). Hey what ever floats your boat guys. More about the flirtatous/castrating Bad Mother in the next paragraph.

Well that brings us full circle back to alcoholism and child abuse. Psychosis is their "sugar tit" (not actually a sexual term, look it up), listening this crap was what they had to put up with to get mom to put down the waterglass of gin and get them a bowl a ceral with expired milk, listening to this crap is what they had to do to a get sad excuse for love with extra helping of abuse and neglect. Psychologists call this "attachment disorder." Remember the experiment with the baby monkeys clinging to the frightening wire mesh mother? Yeah, the point was those monkeys were permanently damaged and grew up be a real mess. That's "attachment disorder." And it is learned behavour that gets recycled generation after generation.

And that bring us to their fourth draw - sadism. They spend their lives looking for someone smaller and weaker so they can get some payback against the world.

In these traits we see all their familiar obsession - torture, secrecy, and the relentless attacks on women and children. Hey everyone else's mom wasn't the stay-at-home alcoholic shut-in version of Ann Coulter, so dial it back will you?

[PrestonSturges]

Fanatics are all pretty much the same, regardless of content. Left. Right. Demican. Republicrat. Conservative. Liberal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanaticism

And with every passing day we see the Tea Party crowd sounding more and more like Maoists intent on a Cultural Revolution, starting with the teachers.

[Oneaboveall]

If the natural order of things is to bring back some 1950s utopia of happy motoring...

The funny thing is the 1950s weren't really the 1950s. That is to say...they were not the 1950s that the conservatives are always talking about. I wasn't alive back then obviously, but from what I've read the era would be more like The Honeymooners (living in an apartment, riding public transportation, not having a lot of the then-modern conveniences) instead of Happy Days (with the suburban living and "happy motoring").

[Quinny]

Surely you should know!

I've got to ask, what is the draw of the peak oil meme to dittohead right-wingers?

I know peakers CAN come from across the political spectrum, but it seems in the last year or so, the demographics of this board have shifted so much to the right that I feel like I'm reading a FoxNews talkback half of the time.

[PrestonSturges]

If the natural order of things is to bring back some 1950s utopia of happy motoring...

The funny thing is the 1950s weren't really the 1950s. That is to say...they were not the 1950s that the conservatives are always talking about. I wasn't alive back then obviously, but from what I've read the era would be more like The Honeymooners (living in an apartment, riding public transportation, not having a lot of the then-modern conveniences) instead of Happy Days (with the suburban living and "happy motoring").

Like Mad Men, those Manhattan executives were living in "big" 1000 sq ft homes that today they would not have as a hunting cabin. Or the movie "The Good Sheperd" about the founding of the CIA - tha main character lives in then middle class Chevy Chase and rides the bus. Today people like that have chaffeurs. Yep you had a b&w tv, a rudimentary stereo, one car (used). This was all a huge step up from the 1930's when people who HAD jobs were totally poor, and novels often mentioned someone like a waiter washing their shirt and staying in while it dried on the radiator because it was the only shirt they owned, and that was people with a job.

If you notice in a lot of Twilight Zone episodes they show Appalachian culture of the 1950s, where people were living without paved roads, running water, toilets, or electricity.

We could go a long way to balancing the budgets by making the states pay their own way. This would result in many of the southern red states and their successionist yahoos returning to tilling the fields with mules and reading by candlelight. if corporations like Cisco can't depend on their employess getting to work on horseback, let them relocate to the north.