11.23.2013 07:37 AM

Ford Nation sightings

Right here.

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7 Comments

  1. Arnold Murphy says:

    What astounds me, is that amongst the strongest supporters the Ford Nation and Harper have there is this one connection. Ignorance and a lack of any common sense, intelligence, compassion for others a definitive and defining lack of redeeming qualities. They are the members of the lowest common denominator club, and they are like pigs in shit about it. Not only do they continue to spout, hate to bully to demean to contort the truth and propagate misleading and sometimes racist, homophobic, bigoted nonsense but they enjoy it. If I were a Conservative troll by now there would be ten expletives insulting whomever was the target. I see “Libtard, Lieberals, Fucktard, Gay, Asshole, Asshat” and many more regularly and I wonder, if you cant add anything pertinent to the conversation what they are doing. Its becoming apparent they do not know, that they react viscerally to anything that merits debate or change, by attacking the messenger and not the message. In this right now, both myself and Warren are guilty. Attacking the messenger is something that has to be done sometimes, but after a discussion that merits exposing their ignorance. I don’t know what I don’t know and sometimes that make me ignorant, if someone informs me of what I don’t know and it is in fact a fact that they are exposing me to, I would not attack them for it. Because when I am exposed to new facts, I consider them and sometimes change my opinion accordingly. It is a favor someone does for another, like when I say to someone watch out the floor is slippery. I don’t expect that person to swear at me, to attempt to belittle me and I don’t expect them to ignore me and purposely slip on the floor to hurt themselves. It just does not make sense, it astounds me. Why then do they choose to ignore others, ignore facts, stifle conversation, deny science and surveys as well as feedback. Why do they silence a PBO whose job it is to advise them? Why do they do the things they do? Why God WHY??? But then I think, I must have done something in a previous life to deserve this, I start blaming myself for their stupidity. I cannot inform them, they will not change, they will not listen its as if they are incapable of logic or of ceding to an argument. Its like they have never been wrong, stubborn oh boy are they stubborn its their best characteristic, they persistently resist change and information. In point of fact they treat information with disdain, like its evil or corrupting. Maybe its the Adam and Eve and the snake thing all over again, I don’t know. Its so blatantly stupid that its almost smart like a fox. The Conservatives by choosing to cater to the lowest common denominator, the most intractable people they can find have engaged and won over a constituency of mob mentality. They have succeeded in co-opting the only people in Canada that cannot be swayed by logic, insight, compassion, reason and rational thought and that is their core. How could any political group ask for more? They have cornered the market on stupid and hateful.

  2. Matt says:

    🙂

    Careful Warren. You’re contributing to his re-election.

  3. patrick says:

    The IDK should have gone on a lot longer in a “who’s on first” spiel.
    Two things!
    First, I find that Ford supporters, or those that just like what stutters incoherently from his gob, they all seem to take his word as gospel. Literally, they just repeat his slogans as if they are facts. Then when you point out that the tax savings, the transit fiascos, the lie about St. Clair boondoggle, etc. are not true the response is “Well, I don’t know about that.” And literally that’s what they mean, “they don’t know”. Facts, information, other than what they’ve been told, seems to be irrelevant. Ford, and what he is supposedly about, is an act of faith, not an act of factual choice. So how do you argue against faith?
    Second, mocking people’s faith and calling them stupid for voting for Ford is a sure way to entrench those people to repeat their mistakes.

  4. david ray says:

    if you really want to understand why the willfully ignorant act as they do may I recommend “Deer hunting with Jesus” by the late Joe Bageant. read it and weep. No-one has ever captured the angst of those who continually vote against their best interests any better. IMHO

    http://www.amazon.com/Deer-Hunting-Jesus-Dispatches-Americas/dp/0307339378/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385226811&sr=8-1&keywords=joe+bageant

  5. John D. says:

    Warren,

    The conversation that you seem to be trying for here is nothing new. Rob Ford is only a fairly recent manifestation of the extremely nasty far right “populism” that’s been popping up pretty much all over the world for the past few decades, and I’ve been observing discussions online like this one far too many times for my liking. Not because it’s without merit (far from it), but because those of us in the “reality based community” (as our Democratic Party friends in the U.S. like to put it) are expected to always be the ones who give in and behave like grown ups in the face of stupid, mean, violent, unstable, bullying thugs and assholes who have no intention of compromising, on anything, ever. Acting like punks and getting away with it isn’t just a fringe benefit to this this mindset; it’s the whole point. It’s Ford’s whole schtick in a nutshell.

    In one such testimonial – and I’ve long forgotten which blog or forum I saw this at (it could have any one of a dozen or so) or just what the topic under discussion even was – one fellow recorded an encounter he had with a particularly mouth-frothing Tea Party cretin over in the States. According to the guy, he was polite in trying to get his points across to this character on certain basic realities, he wasn’t rude or condescending, he was respectful, he didn’t snap or bite, he used logic and verifiable facts, he wasn’t emotional, and didn’t use a single insult during whatever it was he was attempting to set this clown straight on. And the other ‘participant’ in the conversation simply got visibly angrier and angrier, until he finally screamed, his face suffused with rage, “YOU THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME!” And that was the end of that discussion.

    So you (in your earlier post) and Patrick are correct when you say calling Ford’s hardcore fanbase out on their demonstrable stupidity and hypocrisy is only going to make them dig in thier heels and support the fat fool even more. The problem is that they’re going to do that anyway, no matter how polite or deferential we are to them. These people want that sense of grievance and persecution from imaginary elites while they suck up to a real elite, like the wealthy Ford brothers. It’s like the schoolyard bully’s nasty little friends who were always ready to egg him to worse acts as long as they weren’t the ones being bullied.

  6. davidray says:

    someone once told me you could put a tomato on television and if you left it there long enough you could place a tomato on a table in a mall and some people would see it and say “isn’t that the tomato we saw on TV. The problem of course is those who watch tomatoes on TV can be taught to believe anything and they vote for tomatoes in large numbers. Chomsky called it manufacturing consent but career politicians have refined into a fine art. if you could get students to vote as a bloc they’d own everything but their cynicism and bs filters are too powerful unless a Justin can change things but we all know he will turn out to be just more of the same.

    dunno where we go from here
    but is seems to me pretty clear
    we’ve come to the end of our run
    hope to hell we had a lot of fun
    cause not even God herself
    will visit us on the shelf
    to watch reruns of what we did to one another
    and the damage done
    and the damage done

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