@_hockeyStuff 1) I would, if I could (I like the sound of this expression): it's not like there is any dialogue anymore in the world. The greatest feat of the global right wing cabal was the complete neutralization of any actual public conversation.
@_hockeyStuff 2) The public conversation is an interesting and non-consensual idea, rather than a concept. But everyone agrees on some basic required items:
- availability of actual information about "subject X". We are the microscopic privileged minority that can actually dig down...
- availability of actual information about "subject X". We are the microscopic privileged minority that can actually dig down...
@_hockeyStuff 3) ... or through the massive flow of communication and identify either factual information (sometimes embedded in persuasive discourse) or disqualify dis/mis-information. The "masses" are now, more than ever, excluded from any access to factual accounts.
@_hockeyStuff 4) Second: the public conversation requires interlocutors. An entity endowed with "social agency", whether and individual or an institution, will qualify as interlocutor if if is capable of engaging an opponent within a set of argumentative rules.
@_hockeyStuff 5) There is no dialogue without rules. That goes way back to social psychology. For example: between ages 5 and 10, children may spend over 50% of the time negotiating rules before engaging in play. Adults have already interiorized "rules of engagement".
@_hockeyStuff 6) What populism does is destroy public conversation by inserting chaos and eroding the rules of engagement. Anyone and no one can engage, the discourse about society is pulverized into thousands of incomensurable discourses and they win: their discourse is predominant.
@_hockeyStuff 7) Back to the false impeachment trial, there will be no public conversation about it prior to the elections. There will be "floating discourses", all of them persuasive discourses (marketing) and completely incomensurable.
@_hockeyStuff 8) To make it even worse, the conservative base is, on average, cognitively impaired. Studies have identified basic logical operational deficits and they can only process very simple information items. This is not genetic: it's cultural.
@_hockeyStuff 9) Rural America brings up dumb children because cognitive impairement is foundational to its social systems: family, church, etc. Children are not educated: they are de-educated.
@_hockeyStuff 10) To go back to your issue, there is nothing you or any communication channel can say to them. It's over. The hard-core base wouldn't even care what the trial ended as. But now the fringe may shift to their side. That's my fear.
@_hockeyStuff @threadreaderapp unroll
