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Extremism normalized

Sun, 08/05/2012 - 13:39 — Dave Culver
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Critical Thinking
  • How Americans are efficiently trained to acquiesce to ideas once deemed so radical as to be unthinkable
  • How propaganda is used in the U.S. to control it citizens
  • Michele Bachmann's damaging innuendo
  • How to Think

Glenn Greenwald, Salon  

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., left, shakes hands with Vice President Dick Cheney after McCain introduced Cheney during a campaign stop, Friday, July 16, 2004, at the Lansing Center in Lansing, Mich. (Credit: AP Photo/Al Goldis)

(July 31, 2012) Remember when, in the wake of the 9/11 attack, the Patriot Act was controversial, held up as the symbolic face of Bush/Cheney radicalism and widely lamented as a threat to core American liberties and restraints on federal surveillance and detention powers? Yet now, the Patriot Act is quietly renewed every four years by overwhelming majorities in both parties (despite substantial evidence  of serious abuse), and almost nobody is bothered by it any longer. That’s how extremist powers become normalized: they just become such a fixture in our political culture that we are trained to take them for granted, to view the warped as normal. Here are several examples from the last couple of days illustrating that same dynamic; none seems overwhelmingly significant on its own, but that’s the point.

After Dick Cheney criticized John McCain this weekend for having chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate, this was McCain’s retort:

Full story...

Related:

How propaganda is used in the U.S. to control it citizens, Jack Finley, Veterans for Peace

  • This video can provide a one and one-half hour of a Marketing 101 class on how rulers govern.
  • The End of America? Naomi Wolf Thinks It Could Happen

Michele Bachmann's damaging innuendo, Eric Schwartz, Minneapolis (MN) Star Tribune

  • If the casual use of public innuendo is not challenged at every turn, we will undermine our national security.
  • Michele Bachmann, have you no shame?
  • Remove Rep. Bachmann from the Intelligence Committee!
  • Beware of Radical Islam

How to Think, Chris Hedges, Truthdig

  • If universities think a Milton Friedman or a Friedrich Hayek is more important than a Virginia Woolf or an Anton Chekhov, then we become barbarians.
  • Chris Hedges on The Alyona Show
  • Special Report | The Dumbing Down of American Politics: Week of July 1
  • George Lakoff | How Right-Wingers Scam People Into Buying Their Toxic Philosophy
     

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