Mediaboss Marketing

Intolerance, at times exploding into violence, is spreading throughout our society. And its coming from the political left.

Its happening on college campuses. Most recently, students walked out on Vice President Mike Pences commencement address at Notre Dame University.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was interrupted by boos and jeers at her commencement address at historically black Bethune-Cookman University.

Conservative scholar Charles Murray was met with violent protests at Middlebury College. Another conservative scholar, Heather Mac Donald, was violently shut down in a presentation she was giving at Claremont McKenna College. These are just a couple examples.

Now its spreading off college campuses with reports of violence and threats toward Republican members of Congress and their families, as they hold town halls in their districts.

A column in The Hill newspaper bears the headline, Republicans fearing for their safety as anger, threats mount.

Whats happening?

A recent commentary in Forbes Magazine from a London School of Business professor calls this The Post-Truth World.

He describes a prevailing feeling of helplessness as individuals inhabit a world in which knowledge is, in general, exploding but each individual knows, relatively, less and less. And he points to a world in which business and politics are becoming increasingly interdependent.

New York University psychologist Jonathan Haidt attributes whats happening to a culture in which young people are not forced to deal with opposing viewpoints. This, says Haidt, is amplified by social media, which serves to reinforce existing biases.

But all this doesnt explain why the intolerance and violence is coming mainly from the political left.

A new survey from the Pew Research Center sheds light on this.

Sixty-six percent of Republicans compared to 29 percent of Democrats say that a person is rich because they worked harder than most people rather than because of having personal advantages in life. This 37 percent difference in attitudes of Republicans and Democrats about why some people are rich is 12 points larger today than where it stood just three years ago in 2014.

Seventy-one percent of Democrats compared to 32 percent of Republicans say someone is poor because of circumstances beyond a persons control, rather than because of lack of effort. This 37 percent difference between Republicans and Democrats in attitudes regarding why someone is poor is 19 points larger than where it stood three years ago in 2014.

The nation is becoming increasingly polarized on the very fundamental question regarding the extent to which individuals have control over their own life.

Across the nations whole population, 53 percent feel poverty is the result of circumstances beyond an individuals control compared to 34 percent who see poverty as the result of lack of effort.

What is the meaning of freedom in a country where more than half its citizens feel fate rather than choice governs their life?

Not surprisingly, for the first time in eight years, according to Pew, more Americans (48 percent) say they want bigger government than say they want smaller government (45 percent).

Conservatives are exposed to the same cultural and technological forces as liberals. But its not what comes from outside that determines human behavior. Its what comes from inside the individuals attitudes and approach to life.

Liberal mentality, increasingly dominated by moral relativism, produces a culture of victimhood. The victim sees life exclusively in political terms, seeing political power and government as the means to a better life, rather than freedom and personal responsibility.

With Republicans now in power, trying to restore economic vitality and fiscal balance by limiting government and expanding personal freedom, the left sees this as a threat, not an opportunity.

We all should be deeply troubled that, in the land of the free and home of the brave, some are turning to violence to battle the prospect of becoming freer.

More:
Liberals' violent fight against freedom - WND - WND.com

The most effective way to block an obvious attempt to bait you is to swim away. Dont petition. Dont attend. Dont enrich those who make a livelihood out of getting under your skin.

Rising to the bait is a fishing term. Anglers lure fish hiding in the deep by positioning bait on or near the surface. Fish that rise to the bait usually end up on someones dinner plate.

Conservative groups routinely try this technique on college liberals. Their lure is an inflammatory right-wing speaker. The catch comes in duping liberals to act badly as censors of free speech or, even better, violently. The protesters provide free entertainment on Fox News Channel. And the broader public sees them as spoiled college kids. Its painful to watch.

Why else would Berkeley College Republicans invite the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos to speak on their famously left-leaning University of California campus? A publicity freak trafficking in racist slurs, Yiannopoulos is currently best known for advocating sex between men and boys.

Taking their cue in a play their enemies wrote, the offended ones made a big deal out of this cartoonish character. The cameras caught protesters, some wearing masks, in full rampage. They trashed the campus before heading off into downtown Berkeley to smash some windows.

Over at the State University of New York at Buffalo, agitated students all but shut down a speech by Robert Spencer, an alleged Islamophobe. Spencers claim to fame is his controversial Jihad Watch website.

Behind many such speaking engagements is a group called Young Americas Foundation. And behind Young Americas Foundation are the Koch brothers, Richard and Helen DeVos and other very rich financiers of the right. Their agenda relies on discrediting anyone to their left.

Frankly, I dont care enough about Ann Coulter to even dislike her. Her political shock act ran its course long ago, and being ignored is probably her greatest fear. But the left seems determined to revive her career.

Coulters scheduled speech at Berkeley was canceled after protests raised security concerns. It should surprise no one that the foundation was picking up her $20,000 speaking fee. College Republicans and the foundation are now suing Berkeley for allegedly violating Coulters First Amendment rights.

What should smart lefties do? Three things.

One is develop a very thick skin. Many of you are unable to distinguish between merely provocative and totally offensive. You can simplify by dropping such distinctions. Both kinds of speech are protected. If right-wingers choose to invite promoters of disgusting views, let them own it.

Two is to understand this about the opinion business: Success can come from drawing a positive response or a negative one. Failure is no response. Thus, the most effective way to block an obvious attempt to bait you is to swim away. Dont petition. Dont attend. Dont enrich those who make a livelihood out of getting under your skin.

Wit, meanwhile, makes for a great offense. As the writers at Saturday Night Live have taught us, mockery is a more fearsome weapon than raw rage.

Three, when campus conservatives book speakers custom-designed to enrage you, try this clever tactic: Host a sensible conservative to give a talk at the same time. The growing ranks of anti-Trump conservatives offer a pool of highly promising candidates.

Such speakers would draw audience and attention away from the flamethrower across campus. Finding common ground is good for the civic culture, and joining forces enhances power. Importantly, you would come off as open-minded and also beopen-minded. Wed all do well to listen more to opinions contrary to our own.

Resist the flashing lures. The choice for campus liberals comes down to this: Either you frustrate those who would provoke you or you become their dinner.

Follow this link:
Campus liberals: resist the conservative bait | The Seattle Times - The Seattle Times

A simple explanation for this shift is that misperceptions often focus on the president and are most commonly held by members of the other party. Just as Republicans disproportionately endorsed prominent misperceptions during the Obama years (like the birther and death panel myths), Democrats are now the opposition partisans especially likely to fall victim to dubious claims about the Trump administration.

In other words, losing the presidential election made Democrats more likely to blame secret conspiracies for the state of the world, while making Republicans less willing to indulge these sorts of claims. If you dont believe me, just compare your social media news feeds with what you saw during the campaignor ask yourself who you think is behind the news you are seeing.

Its true to an extent that, pure independents notwithstanding, partisanship drives conspiracy-mongering on both ends of the political spectrum. But its also the case that the two tribes are very different. There are no easy parallels between Democrats and Republicans propensity for believing conspiracy theories. The anti-Trump theories havent traveled nearly as far as anti-Obama and anti-Clinton ones have because the left and right are not symmetrical political tendencies in America.

Democrats are much more heterogeneous than Republicans, which makes it harder to spread conspiracy theories among their ranks. While the Republican Party is solidly a party of the right, with some variation between the Tea Party wing and conventional conservatives, but within a narrow spectrum. Democrats are divided into factions that run from Bernie Sanders leftists to Hillary Clinton liberals to Heidi Heitkamp centrists, and even have earned temporary support from a smattering of Never Trump conservatives like David Frum, who voted for Hillary Clinton.

The ideological mishmash of the Democratic Party helps explain an interesting fact about the Russia conspiracy theorists themselves: They often arent from the left at all.

Beauchamps article focuses on three major conspiracy theorists: Mensch, the Observers John Schindler, and photographer Claude Taylor, who tweets under the handle @TrueFactsStated. Of the three, only Taylor is anything close to a liberal Democrat. Mensch was a Conservative member of Parliament and until recently led Heat Street, Rupert Murdochs attempted Breitbart imitation. Schindler is a former National Security Agency analyst with hawkish foreign policy views. In 2015, National Review wrote, Schindler has amassed a loyal following, particularly among conservatives, for his blunt missives on cyber-security, foreign policy, and intelligence.... Conservative pundits and scholars alike have made Schindler their go-to authority on national-security matters. Hes featured regularly on conservative talker Hugh Hewitts popular radio show, and his blog posts are often cited in top Republican consultant Rick Wilsons commentary. Wilson, as it happens, is another member of the Russiasphere cited in Beauchamps article, along with the anonymous Twitter account @counterchekist, whose author identifies as Republican.

In other words, the Russiasphere is not particularly liberalnor are liberals especially fond of the Russiasphere. Debunkings of Mensch and company have become standard fare in left-wing, liberal, and centrist publications (Beauchamps own article is an example of the genre). Current Affairs describes Mensch as legitimately paranoid and deluded. BuzzFeed has counted 210 people and organizations that Mench has accused of being under Russian influence, dryly remarking that in many cases, she lacks strong, or any, evidence connecting her targets to Russias campaign to influence the 2016 election. Rolling Stones Matt Taibbi described Mensch as a noted loon. And the former Obama aides who host the podcast Pod Save America have warned their listeners to avoid these conspiracy theorists.

Luckily for the Democratic Party, Beauchamp correctly pointed out, there isnt really a pre-built media ecosystem for amplifying this like there was for Republicans. In the absence of left-wing Limbaughs and Breitbarts, media outlets totally unconcerned with factual rigor, its much harder for this stuff to become mainstream. But hard doesnt mean impossible. The most worrying sign, he added, is that some mainstream figures and publications are starting to validate Russiasphere claims. As evidence, he cited scattered cases of prominent liberals briefly giving credence to the conspiracy theorists. The New York Times published a Mensch op-ed column, one that was criticized by the Times own reporters. Donna Brazile, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, tweeted Menschs article and thanked her on Twitter for good journalism. And Markey, the Massachusetts senator, parroted the grand jury lie while on CNN.

But Markeys mistake illustrates the difference between Democrats and Republicans: He apologized. There still exists a feedback loop on the left, so when a prominent person falls for a conspiracy theory, they are challenged by the media and willing to correct themselves. Conversely, conservatives tend to adhere to a no apologies ethos that makes admitting error verboten.

The few scattered cases of liberals echoing the Russiasphere are minuscule compared to the vast infrastructure thats spreading conspiracy theories on the right. First and foremost there is Trump, the erstwhile birther who has continued to promote conspiracy theories from the White House, like his claim in March that he was wiretapped by Obama. That lie, which originated from right-wing radio hosts Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh, gained currency thanks to Trumps pulpit and the power of partisanship: A CBS poll in late March found that 74 percent of Republicans believed it was very or somewhat likely that Trumps campaign was wiretapped or otherwise surveilled by the government.

Beyond Trump, major conservative figures like Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House, and Fox News Sean Hannity are spreading the most dishonest smears imaginable. Gingrich and Hannity have both recently pushed the lie that Seth Rich, the slain Democratic National Committee staffer, was murdered because he provided Hillary Clinton emails to Wikileaks.

We have this very strange story now of this young man who worked for the Democratic National Committee, who apparently was assassinated at 4 in the morning, having given WikiLeaks something like 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments, Gingrich said Sunday on Fox and Friends. Nobodys investigating that, and what does that tell you about whats going on? Because it turns out, it wasnt the Russians. It was this young guy who, I suspect, was disgusted by the corruption of the Democratic National Committee. Hes been killed, and apparently nothing serious has been done to investigative his murder. Neither Gingrich nor Hannity have apologized.

Whereas left-of-center publications have criticized Mensch, most conservative outlets have been silent about the Rich conspiracy theory (National Review, The Weekly Standard) or have given voice to it (The Federalist); The Daily Caller, in a rare exception, refers to the Rich conspiracy theory as debunked. Conservative media tends to be strongly tribalist and self-pitying, adhering to the idea that liberal bias is the biggest problem in news coverage. Such ideological tunnel vision disinclines these outlets right to counter conspiratorial thinking in their own ranks. It doesnt suit their narrative about the lamestream media, and its bad for business.

Figures like Mensch are pests, but they will almost certainly not gain the same audience on the left that Alex Jones and Hannity command on the right. The key members of the Russiasphere have Twitter followings in the hundreds of thousands, at most. Hannity hosts a primetime show on what was, until recently, the most watched cable news network in the country; he has millions of viewers. The real lesson to learn from Mensch and company is not that the left is suddenly falling for conspiracy theories with the same fervor as the right has for decades. Its that these theories can be largely smothered if you have a vibrant and diverse political party that is open to debate and beholden to a fact-based press. The tragedy of modern American politics is that only one of the two major parties fits that bill.

Read the rest here:
No, Liberals Are Not Falling for Conspiracy Theories Just Like ... - New Republic

Wisconsin Republicans' Plan to Counter Liberals on Campus Inside Higher Ed Wisconsin's Republican leaders intend to create a new leadership center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, announcing Tuesday they will seek $1.5 million in annual public funding for what they said will be a bipartisan center offsetting liberal ... and more »

Read more:
Wisconsin Republicans' Plan to Counter Liberals on Campus - Inside Higher Ed

British Columbias Opposition New Democrats have increased their narrow lead in a riding that could deny the Liberals a fifth-consecutive majority government, but about half the absentee ballots in Courtenay-Comox have yet to be counted.

On election night, the New Democrats led in the riding with nine votes, a margin that see-sawed this week after a recount and with the addition of previously uncounted ballots. On Tuesday, Elections BC continued counting the almost 180,000 absentee ballots 2,077 of them in Courtenay-Comox. By the end of the day, the NDP had a 101-vote lead in the riding.

But another 1,000 absentee ballots must be counted on Wednesday.

Explainer: What you need to know about the final election count inB.C.

At the end of the day on Tuesday, with the results still not complete, the Liberals remained ahead in 43 ridings one short of a majority while the NDP held 41 and the Greens three. If those numbers hold, the future of the government will depend on whether the third-place Greens decide to prop up the Liberals or throw their support to the New Democrats. The last ballots are expected to be counted in 14 ridings on Wednesday. If the margin of victory in Courtenay-Comox is less than about 58 votes, it would go to a judicial recount.

Amid the uncertainty of whether Premier Christy Clarks BC Liberal government will stand, a coalition of activists assembled in front of the B.C. Legislature buildings on Tuesday to urge the Greens and the NDP to make peace, and together end 16 years of Liberal rule.

Environmental organizations, opponents of the Site C dam, advocates for child care and for public health care, and a senior First Nations leader are hoping the final count will deny a majority to Ms. Clark.

With the final election results still unclear, the calls for co-operation remain speculative but a reminder to both the Greens and the NDP that many of their supporters see them as natural allies.

If no party has a strong majority after the final ballots are counted, the NDP and the Greens have a historic opportunity to make good on the important policies they both campaigned on but only if they work together, said Lyndsay Poaps, executive director of Leadnow, the umbrella organization that delivered a petition with 25,000 names calling for an alliance between the two parties.

At the end of the day on Tuesday, with the results still not complete, the Liberals remained ahead in 43 ridings one short of a majority while the NDP held 41 and the Greens three. If those numbers hold, the future of the government will depend on whether the third-place Greens decide to prop up the Liberals or throw their support to the New Democrats.

The last ballots are expected to be counted in 15 ridings on Wednesday, and if Courtenay-Comox remains close, it will go to a judicial recount.

While the outcome remains unclear, the Greens have been negotiating with the NDP, and also with the BC Liberals, to determine where they will deliver their support when the Legislature is recalled.

The expectations of the different groups who joined the rally at the Legislature calling for a Green-NDP alliance are broad.

Terry Dance-Bennink, from the Rolling Justice Bus, said she wants construction on the partly built Site C dam halted. Jen Kuhl, spokesperson for the BC Health Coalition, wants a stronger public health care system and a plan to combat child poverty. Katie Harrison, managing director of Force of Nature, said she expects a Green-NDP alliance to put B.C. on a path for a low carbon future. Sharon Gregson, spokesperson for $10 a Day Child Care Campaign, said the two parties can together resolve a crisis in child-care affordability.

Stewart Phillip, Grand Chief of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said the opportunity for a change in government is tantalizingly close: As the final ballots are tallied, I pray that we will all be... celebrating the change that we have all worked so hard for over the last 16 years. I think we are on the brink of some pretty wonderful things here in the province of British Columbia.

Sven Biggs, a climate campaigner for Stand.earth, said only the Greens and the NDP together could stop Kinder Morgan from completing its oil pipeline expansion. Were hoping both parties will put aside their partisanship, any personal grudges they may hold over from the election, and come together and do whats right for British Columbians by finally protecting our coast.

Carole James, who is on the NDPs negotiating team, and newly elected MLA Sonia Furstenau, who is part of the Greens bargaining team, accepted the petitions for their parties. But as they stood side-by-side on the steps of the legislature, both declined to discuss whether an accord is possible.

The message that was given to us was that the people of British Columbia have spoken, they are looking for positive change, Ms. James said. But she would not say if the NDP would agree to the Greens demands for electoral reform without a referendum. We are in discussions.

Ms. Furstenau acknowledged the boxes of petitions contained a message from voters, but said: We are waiting for the outcome of the election before we really get into those kinds of specifics, and we are all anxiously waiting for those final ballots.

No ridings flipped between parties, but two tight races in Metro Vancouver were called early on Tuesday evening.

Former Global TV reporter and LNG lobbyist Jas Johal held on against NDP candidate Aman Singh, a civil rights lawyer, to win Richmond-Queensborough for the Liberals by 134 votes. That is about half the margin of 263 he tallied in the new riding on election night.

And in Coquitlam-Burke Mountain, Liberal candidate Joan Isaacs defeated NDP incumbent Jodie Wickens by 87 votes.

Two other Metro Vancouver races remain undecided with margins of less than 600 votes each: Maple Ridge-Mission (NDP lead by 369) and Vancouver-False Creek (Liberals lead by 406).

Follow us on Twitter: Mike Hager @MikePHager, Justine Hunter @justine_hunter

See more here:
BC Liberals maintain minority government in recount, with ballots still to count - The Globe and Mail