Politics
Out of context: Reply #6749
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- TheBlueOne0
I'm in way too much of a good mood today and enjoying the spectacular spring sunshine to get into anything in this thread today...
But I will say this, as I was thinking about it on the drive into work this morning. Despite GetRefresh's digs at me being an "overeducated liberal" a few weeks back, I actually have a degree in political science. I still read an academic political science book or two a month. Doesn't make me smarter or more wise on these fundamental issues than anyone else, but it does make you think about alot of this stuff with more accuracy, depth and implications.
And so, for me, words like "socialism", "communism", "fascism", "trade deficit", "budget deficit", "social contract", "liberalism", "extremism" etc., etc. ...have very specific meanings and contexts, both in terms of political theory and within different historical periods.
It drives me absolutely fucking bonkers to see not only on an internet forum, but also on ALL the mainstream media outlets (Fox, MSNBC, CNN, whatever..) throw these words around with only vague connections to what they really mean.
I'm not academically trained in the design field, but I know enough about it from experience to to call things "type faces" and "type families" and not "fonts". I know about grids, and letter spacing, and proofing, etc. and all that shit. I also now that I can drive academically trained designers fucking bonkers by misusing these terms, especially so when it's not in a casual conversation but when it actually matters - like sending shit off to a printer and having to have an actual discussion with a printer to get things done. I am sure it's something any of you guys deal with daily when dealing with clients.
Look when I see or hear ANYONE throw around things like "US is socialist" "Commies out of the White House!" Or "George Bush / Obama is a fascist!" it's just stupid. I know if I'm having a discussion with people who spout this shit I can't really get into too much detail, or really discuss anything truly meaningful. It's like spending ten minutes discussing why you've chosen Helvetica for the client, explained the white space on the ad material, and some clever bit of kerning to get everything to fit legibly and then the guy throws down a piece of paper with 24 pt Arial Bold on it and says "Hey, my kid did this last night in photoshop, can you make what you did look like this? I like this font alot..."
I mean, the level of discussion on this stuff in the mainstream media sucks total ass. It's borderline Orwellian how they fuzz up and dumb down this stuff. And thats' for neither left or right issues, it's just in the nature of the beast.
I mean how many of you are into whatever - moutain climbing, biking, stamp collecting - whatever hobby or passion you have, and you see some news show do a special on it and you figure, "Awesome, let me watch this..." and five minutes later you're like "Wow, the parts you didn't get absolutely wrong in there entirety, you completely misrepresented!" I've never seen a media report on some of the other things I get into (heavy metal, brazilian martial arts) ever come close to being accurate so I assume everything they cover is half-baked...and knowing politics academically this is triply true for politics in the media..probably because unlike mountain climbing or brazilian martial arts or whatever there are actual interests out there that actually don't WANT people discussing this stuff in detail.
If you ever watch news programs form the 50's and early 60's..wow, totally different. Sure there was a bias there, but it was more a beuaracratic/systemic bias and not one of left/right so much. And on top of that news divisions actually had huge budgets and at least tried to be principled neutral. Now, forget it...journalism is a joke.
Ug, anyway..this has gone on too long..but look if I come across as didactic half the time in this thread or get pissed off easily it's because when someone says something stupid like "US is turning communist!" it just is a total facepalm for me. It has absolutely zero relation to reality I mean there very well might be something going on very seriously with government spending and debt allocation and so forth, but if you're whole argument or line of thought is centrally "USA = Socialism" and you can't go beyond that except for saying "But it is. It's turning socialist because it is..." I just go nuts. I mean I would stare dumbfounded at the asshats on the left who were saying "Oh those FEMA camps are there for when Cheney goes totally Nazi and cancels the elections in 2008!" Ah, nevermind..this went way off track paragraphs ago..I'm just hyped up on too much java and sunshine today
- Damn...how do you write that muchukit
- No one's talking about US being communist, you need to snap out of this 'sunshine' bullshit and get your edge back.tommyo
- We need you is what I'm saying.tommyo
- hahaha! Hey that was just a general riff and nothing to what's going in the last page or two...TheBlueOne
- Well get relevant, quick, or we will smite your name.tommyo
- I'm high on sunshine man...TheBlueOne
- TheBlueOvary
I did just smite your name.tommyo - TheBubonicOrifice
uh huh. Yes I did. No more sunshine, get to work.tommyo - ok, I see someone else is high on something...TheBlueOne