Poll: The single most vile group in the USA (no, it's neither the KKK nor Westboro Baptist)

[Scuba]

It's Republican debate audiences.


Please rec if you agree.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. I thought maybe the entire Walker Administration.

But then I suppose they're a subset of the debate audiences. Certainly most of their dumbfuck followers are.

[BlueCaliDem]

2. K&R, but to be fair

the KKK and the Westboro Baptists make up the TeaBaggers and they make up the Republican debate audiences.

[Chan790]

6. Only most of them.

I present to you, unironically, sans-commentary and mostly in great confusion:

Tea Party for Obama
http://teapartyforobama.com/

An article from Esquire on support for Barack Obama from white-supremacists during the 2008 election.
http://www.esquire.com/the-side/feature/racists-support-obama-061308

[BlueCaliDem]

7. Okay

you just totally blew me away with these links.

Is the Tea Party for Obama real? Or is it another tongue-in-check liberal site. I'm sorry if I'm a little dense and slow with my comprehensive reading, but I really do want to know.

Esquire, well, um, wow.

[Ter]

14. I never heard of the latter

But the KKK isn't likely to support most Republicans. They hate Israel way too much, and call just about ever Democrat and Republican Zionists.

[WhoIsNumberNone]

21. Sorry to be correcting you, but everybody hates Westboro Baptist

Ok, maybe not Michele Bachmann, but everybody else.

[barbtries]

3. i haven't watched a single one of the debates,

just can't stand to listen to those tools blather. but i've heard enough about the audiences to agree with you. they appear to be full of not shit so much as hate.

[alfredo]

4. I read the live blogs of the debates. The snark and real time fact checking is more

interesting than the debate.

[gordianot]

5. My hope is future generations will be able to understand what emerged in 21 st century America.

The Republican monstrosity equals the mindless ignorance of any human movement of the 20 th Century.

[duhneece]

8. No kidding

I was so ashamed of being an American when I heard them cheer at the number of executions Perry oversaw and the suggestion that death was ok if the patient had no health insurance.

[TBF]

9. I'd give a nod to that "Focus on the Family" group in Colorado for most vile group. nt

[cthulu2016]

10. No.

How can I put the audience below the candidates?

Makes no sense.

Exploiting the insane is even lower.

[redqueen]

11. That's an insult to people with mental illness. (nt)

[Saving Hawaii]

12. Nope.

It's the people who post in the comments sections of newspaper websites.

[mojowork_n]

13. The SOB's who cheered Newt Gingrich answering Juan Williams....

...are despicable. But to be fair, it's been 30 years since the Other
Side started using "Perception Management" (also called
"Public Diplomacy" during the St. Ronnie mis-administration) to
mold the opinions -- and fear and prejudice -- of "low information
voters." (As Thom Hartmann calls them.)

Only a few more hours to take a look, but the wiki page is
very revealing, and has a lot of good information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_management

There are nine strategies for perception management. These include:

1. Preparation — Having clear goals and knowing the ideal position you want people to hold.
2. Credibility — Make sure all of your information is consistent, often using prejudices or expectations to increase credibility.
3. Multichannel support — Have multiple arguments and fabricated facts to reinforce your information.
4. Centralized control — Employing entities such as propaganda ministries or bureaus.
5. Security — The nature of the deception campaign is known by few.
6. Flexibility — The deception campaign adapts and changes over time as needs change.
7. Coordination — The organization or propaganda ministry is organized in a hierarchical pattern in order to maintain consistent and synchronized distribution of information.
8. Concealment — Contradicting information is destroyed.
9. Untruthful statements — Fabricate the truth.

Does anyone really have any idea how organized and dedicated and well-funded that effort's been?

Can we make any sort of informed estimate, based on the apparent results? As seen in places like
the Republican Debates?

[Kaleko]

16. Good info to have for posters on this site!

I have an IDEA of how organized and dedicated and well-funded that effort has been.

In short: very. And liberally used on both sides of the aisle.

But I have no data to back up my gut sense judgment here.

If Anonymous were to hack into the Rendon Group's databases, we might get a better picture of just how lucrative and wide-spread the business of perception management has become in the last decade or so.

[mojowork_n]

19. There are so many more PR people (and PR dollars) than

journalists (even bad ones), or budgets that include
any "honest, objective, investigative reporting."

It's like we live in this constant, fulminating miasma
of obfuscation and disinformation, it's changed the
atmosphere. We might as well be living on Venus.
Always hot and dark, with cyclones of thick gas
swirling all the way up to the stratosphere.

I think it goes back to that drag queen G-Man, and
the corporate/government partnerships that came
out of the Cold War. What John Perkins wrote about
in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" has been
in-sourced.

[Kaleko]

23. Damn, that is a brilliant description.

We have been importing our foreign policies. Horrific stuff. A nightmare hellish enough, it forces many of Americans to wake up
and smell the rot of massive deceit. Studies show that if roughly 10 percent of any given population adopt an idea whose time has come, the rest of the populace will integrate the new idea and absorb it as part of their mainframe operating system.

Do we have 10% of Americans ready to pop right out of the fog of disinformation and the trance of personality cult membership?

I think we're at the tipping point... and sometimes I think we've already gone over it.

The Shift is in progress, that's for sure.

[bigwillq]

15. I don't agree (nt)

[Rozlee]

17. I feel bad for Juan Williams.

Being a black conservative or a minority conservative of any kind in today's Republican Party means you're nothing more than a token; you're there to give them a legitimacy they don't deserve. I think my only teabagger relative is finally coming to that conclusion after these last couple of weeks as the rhetoric on the DREAM Act has heated up. Even yesterday's Republican Party wasn't that inclusive. In today's, they might as well just start every meeting and debate with a cross burning.

[RainDog]

18. I don't want to live in the same country as the republican base

honestly.

we do not share the same values. we do not hold the most basic agreements about what this country is about or what is best for it. I wish we could agree to separate - let them have the nasty nation they want and let those of us who want to solve problems have the country that we want.

I don't think they have anything good to offer to this nation. Nothing.

We don't want to live in the same nation - they don't want it either. So why do we continue to pretend we share anything other than imaginary boundaries called states or a nation? We don't.

Let them be slaves for their corporate masters and let the rest of us live without their neofeudalism.

No doubt this would mean migration and dislocation - but, to me, the outcome would be better than what we have now.

[lunatica]

20. Boy oh boy! You have that right!

[Fumesucker]

22. Glenn Greenwald and Ron Paul..

At least judging by the number of negative OPs about them on DU, anyway.

[Kaleko]

25. A fine example of perception management

in action. I found myself lumped in with a horde of "douchebag Ron Paulists" purported to have infiltrated the board and had the slightly nauseated sinking feeling that I won't be able to make it through this latest spin cycle without actually leaving DU.

[MarkCharles]

24. Sadists at a gladiatorial battle of pseudo-intellectuals. n/t