Awesome thread...what a great point that the 'war of words' undertaken by partisan politics does its' part in alienating society from each other and can contribute in not so unimportant ways to real life actions.

Perpetuating partisan fears for political gain is not a productive strategy in my opinion.

You know, i knew a skinhead once..i wa 19 at the time..this was 1994. A friend kinda knew him...so i wa at his house that night, witht he skinhead thier. He was trying to recruite. His name was 'chucky" also known as blockhead..as in charlie brown. The nicknamed him that, because he was only 22, and in and out of prison so many times for petty stuff. Hence forth, thats something a blockhead would do.
Now chcuky, was a skinhead..shaved head, tall, built figure, on the quiet side, nazi tatoos. He was talking about the war coming with the african americans, and all races had to be wiped out for the white purity/aryan race. I quickly learned this dude was off the rocker..the things he said. HE was jsut effin nuts, what he wanted to accomplish..pure insanity.
But..he never really spoke about the governemnt or anyting. He wasnt into conspiracy stuff.

That YouTube clip amazed me and not in a good way either. There were a few phrases in there that really had me thinking. It says something when it's only on the bottom of the secondpage of google's search results that the use of the word 'exceptualism' appears without the word 'American' in front of it. Is that some kind of tautology or some kind of irony?

What a lot of Americans don't seem to understand is that this is how the rest of the western world tends to speak: 'our country is great!'. Whereas Americans tend to speak like this: 'our country is greatest!'. It's a big difference, and it is pretty arrogant.

As for the actual gun legislation/ban issue: I'm not entirely sure what to think but it's hard not to see it as a form of scare-mongering. It's hard for me not to see this as a manifestation of the 'what is and what isn't American' patriot game. Guns not only helped define America - gun ownership is enshrined in a constitutional amendment written in the context of a war against Britain that subsequently gave America independence - but they're said to be there to defend America too. To appear to threaten guns themselves is like killing two birds with one stone; scaremongering and propaganda doesn't get any more efficient than this.

I'm genuinely glad my own politics aren't reflected in the mainstream media - aside from being the bad guy in (American) propaganda posters of course!

When the MSM can't get their spin all together in the same synchronized rhythm because events are happening so fast; they are trying so hard to implicate "known threats" they've been told to, by TPTB...

Their stories fall apart. This could be a good sign for revival of journalism. Compete for the facts until they all come out. No Spin.

They could have stood together and made this into a great anti-gun focal point but they blew it this time around. Unfortunately there will be more opportunities this year, I'm sure.

Sadness and prayers for policemen's families.

Just one more thing I would like to add that I observed whilst connecting these easily visible dots.

Isn't it convenient that Glen Beck of Fox news has suddenly turned into a conspiracy theorist. It is one further step in intentionally trying to inflame and marginalize the Fox audience. In essence you have all the others on that "network" spewing fear and disinfo 23/7 and here comes a little sprinkle of paranoia disguised as conspiracy theory.

You know there are times I find my own ideas siding with those "bad" people that the news likes to bash and warn us about but am I one of those people? No. I'm just an American into conspiracy theories and suppose-ed off the wall topics.

What the main stream doesnt get though is that all people should at least once in their life look into this stuff, just for the basic knowledge of it. Alas, they do not. They live their lives being fed lies by nearly everyone from the second they enter School to the day they realize they are lies and knowingly believe in them.

What is crazier? Believing that there is a old bearded man in the sky that guides your whole life or that your government lies to you to make you hate people unlike yourself?

Originally posted by DrMattMaddix
This could be a good sign for revival of journalism. Compete for the facts until they all come out. No Spin.

Though I agree with everything you say in your post I am afraid that the days of true journalism within the main stream media are long gone, I'm not even sure they were ever really there.

The intentional association by Fox news of news such as the recent Pittsburgh shootings to conspiracy theorists is the perfect deflection from their own responsibility in promoting the hate which triggers such events.

Originally posted by Merriman Weir
To appear to threaten guns themselves is like killing two birds with one stone; scaremongering and propaganda doesn't get any more efficient than this.

How true.

No small coincidence that we never hear of "they're coming to to take our tvs away."

[edit on 7 Apr 2009 by schrodingers dog]

Originally posted by Tentickles
You know there are times I find my own ideas siding with those "bad" people that the news likes to bash and warn us about but am I one of those people? No. I'm just an American into conspiracy theories and suppose-ed off the wall topics.

The marginalization of conspiracy theorists is nothing new.

Unfortunately neither is the intentional association of CTs with hate groups.

Most of the time this was done in order to give the people a quick and convenient explanation for what were undoubtedly much more complex and uncomfortable truths.

What is interesting and deplorable in this case is the concept of starting a fire via words, and when someone gets inevitably burned, the person who started the fire deflects responsibility onto the very people who know better, the conspiracy theorists.

This not only deflects accountability but also attempts to discredit those who would expose the devious ruse.

That is one of the reasons I am not a member of the NRA but a gun owner and avid shooter. I support gun rights, but I will keep my thoughts about the government taking away my guns to sites like ATS and the gun forums I frequent, thank you.

Which is also why I have industrial sized electromagnets 8 feet from my computer to wipe my hard drive if need be.

Originally posted by Tentickles
I support gun rights ...

As do I actually, but only to a certain level of weaponry. But that's actually neither here or there, at least for the purposes of this conversation.

Fear a paranoia is never a good thing, exploiting the fear and paranoia of armed people in order to achieve a greater agenda is imho at the very least irresponsible and at the very worst reprehensible bordering on criminal.

Inciting is after all illegal in many world jurisdictions.

Which is also why I have industrial sized electromagnets 8 feet from my computer to wipe my hard drive if need be.

Don't we all?

[Post removed]



Mod edit: 1h.) Spamming: You will not post identical content, or snippets of identical content, to multiple threads in the discussion forums. You will also not create more than one thread for your topic, or create multiple "slightly different" threads for a single topic.

[edit on 4/8/2009 by Majic]

In alot of ways this is a good topic because it gets to the heart of what is and what a conspiracy is not. A conspiracy is 2 or more people coming together to commit a crime. A conspiracy theroy is what you can prove threw fact of what has or did take place during or after the fact of the crime or crimes that have been commited.

Now a conspiracy theorist is someone that can have facts related to a crime or crimes but inserts there own ideas or facts that may or may not be true. When it comes to the recent gun violence stories spewed out on the major networks I cant help thinking about all of the stories this media fails to report.

Now ok they reported on a few people in the last month that when on a shooting rampage and did people die why yes they did. How many more people died by things this and other medias didnt report or choose not to report on.

So you could argue that because the networks dont want to get killed by reporting some really hard core factual news story they choose to cover the average shooting rampage rather then risk there jobs covering secret bases, torture, human trafficing you name it.

Although in the last few years the media in the U.S. has gotten there heads out of the sand and realised they were next on the chopping block by the establishment. So yea Conspiracys do get people killed in that if you investigate them correctly and expose whats going on behind them you risk being executed and worse depending on the level of crime your looking into.

Those pictures I posted in 2004 still havent gone away I had to go into hiding over that for almost a year, and the military did eventually track me down and had more then just a few question's to ask me. The rubber gloves and electrodes were quite interesting being tortured isnt something that many people can indure.

But all people like that get whats coming to them eventually they cant keep something secret and covered up forever. I can name here about 200 + people that have flat out gone to jail or died for some news story to come out or something relating to a bigger issue being exposed.

Im not the only one here either that can name people that have just disappeared after covering some issue. A good example is voter fraud. I watched the 2004 election data disappear in less then 1 week there were no more stories being discussed or talked about when it came to voter fraud.

I can prove 2 reporters on that are on 2 magizines that were just flat out paid off and told to stop reporting on diabolt in 2004. Thats usually the standard practice of the establishment if you can buy them off get rid of them or set them up and get them in jail to shut them up.

But it doesnt work on everyone I have been threatened by the establishment too Im not shutting up am I, you cant take us all and some of us wont bow down just because its convient for some of you involved in these kinds of coverups.

By the way the next time you people in the nsa feel like hooking electrodes up to my body I would at least prefure we do so in public so all can see and at least some pictures can be taken for evidence.

As far as fox goes I know people on there especially hannity gets paid ehhm should I go so far as to say bribed to put out the line hes told to put out. I have yet to see fox news or hardly any news networks aside from C-span cover one single bill in my years watching these networks.

That kind of level of failure goes to show why they are losing there ratings and sites like ats are exploding.

Long live ATS!

Viva la Francia

Falcon

Originally posted by falcon
As far as fox goes I know people on there especially hannity gets paid ehhm should I go so far as to say bribed to put out the line hes told to put out.

I dare say that every host and producer is in on that. Like I said in my OP this whole inflammatory message is an intentional construct of one side of a verbal war. It's not even like they try to hide it that much nor are they the only ones doing it.

That kind of level of failure goes to show why they are losing there ratings and sites like ats are exploding.

To be honest with you, I don't think that Fox news is that interested in greater ratings, at least not in the conventional sense. They care about ratings in the context of recruitment. So the idea is not to gain a greater audience by providing a superior product, but rather to straight up indoctrinate those who are ready to join the cause.

An interesting aspect of this is that if one watches Sky News (UK version of Fox news), very little of this polemic attitude is manifested. No, this is indeed a purely American phenomenon because it works, to a degree that is, until people start shooting each other.

[edit on 8 Apr 2009 by schrodingers dog]

I think it's a fascinating topic. I find it hilarious because Fox News according to their logic, the conspiracy theorists were harmless and insane in the past. Now, conspiracy theorists are insane and deadly. What the h*ll? But it's coming from Fox News, no big surprise. Even though I am not a big fan of Alex Jones, I think this was out of line to the point of desperation on the media's side.