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Don't Be a Sucker (1943) [video]

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Re: Don't Be a Sucker (1943) [video]

#181

Post by thomassmith65 »

pyuser583 wrote: post #172
thomassmith65 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my fellow citizens are tired of liberal democracy, and subjecting the rest of us to something worse, it warrants criticism. Whether criticism will improve anything, or just annoy people, is another story. There's not likely to be any 'Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?' moment in the current environment, so God help us all.

You're approach seems very zero-sum: if the other side wins, we lose. Some things are zero-sum, and maybe American politics has changed in a way that makes it zero-sum. But that's what it is.

The other side won, and, going by your initial praise for the film quote, you lost.

Perhaps our disagreement is whether this generation of Republicans values the quote's ideals or not.

Re: Don't Be a Sucker (1943) [video]

#182

Post by scoofy »

softgrow wrote: post #103
neilv wrote: post #23

I love that this was US propaganda at one point. The US always has failings, but this message is something we can be proud of.

I watched the film and was surprised when it moved on from gambling and scams. Initially thought it was aimed at avoiding being scammed of your hard earned cash by shysters. I wonder if there is a film produced at the time about that?

It's priming. You have to present very obvious scams, to then conflate the concept of being scammed with political ideology... which doesn't necessarily follow.

Propaganda is really interesting in the way it carries a narrative. It's like a good movie, gives you an idea about what you're going to watch, and then slowly flows to the places you expected it to go to, but it does it in unique and interesting way.

There is certainly something innate in the human mind that loves these predictive narratives.

Re: Don't Be a Sucker (1943) [video]

#183

Post by otterley »

rootusrootus wrote: post #180
otterley wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably the stupidest thread I've ever had the displeasure of reading. In the U.S., most homicide perpetrators are white. And it is extremely rare for a Black person to intentionally kill a white person. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Your own stats actually seems to suggest otherwise, doesn’t it? About 1 in 5 murders of white people are committed by blacks, while about 1 in 10 murders of black people are committed by whites. And in absolute numbers there are slightly more black murderers. Arguably race is the wrong metric anyway, isn’t it fairly well established that socioeconomic factors play the larger role by far?

The victim was white. Thus the relevant statistic is whether you'd be more likely to be murdered by a white person than a black one. (It's also quite probable that white perpetrators are undercounted, as these are based on conviction rates.)

You can't necessarily see whether someone is wealthy (although poor people tend not to wear expensive clothing or carry expensive items on them). I'm also not aware of a reliable source of statistical information about homicide perpetrators based on the perpetrator's wealth.

Re: Don't Be a Sucker (1943) [video]

#184

Post by rootusrootus »

mlrtime wrote: post #143
alganet wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is fair to assume that some suckers are reading though.

Is anyone who voted for Trump a sucker?

If by sucker you mean in the context of the film's title, then that fits. If we use a more general definition of sucker, then I guess it depends on if the Trump voter wanted exactly what he is delivering. If they are getting precisely what they wanted, then they aren't really a sucker, they are something else.

Re: Don't Be a Sucker (1943) [video]

#186

Post by jibal »

vintermann wrote: post #136
cortesoft wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the standard definition of propaganda is that it is false and misleading : > information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a particular cause, doctrine, or point of view. Which I think most people consider bad. If the information is true and not misleading, it would be considered educational or informational.

As long as you pick one definition and stick with it, you can define propaganda how you want. But this is not what people do. They juggle two definitions of propaganda: one broad where anything used to convince you of something is propaganda, and one narrow where it by definition is deceptive. It's the original "no true Scotsman": there the broad definition (Scotsman=person from Scotland) is used to argue for the nar…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

Re: Don't Be a Sucker (1943) [video]

#187

Post by jibal »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #14

Awesome video. So much great content is so easily accessible today. The challenge is discovery! Grateful HN is a quality “feed” - way better than all the algorithmic feeds.. If something as curated as HN existed & appealed to the masses - even if it was ad funded! - we could live in a different world.

I've seen this video several times in the past, and it wasn't via HN.

Re: Don't Be a Sucker (1943) [video]

#188

Post by jibal »

potato3732842 wrote: post #90

The real disservice of this sort of this sort of stuff is how flagrantly obvious they make the bad guy. Yeah, everyone can identify the idiot spouting off about skin color and engaging in an un-obfuscated textbook exercise in divide and conquer as probably not worth listening to. Patting yourself on the back becase you can identify it when it's flagrantly obvious is counterproductive. The guy in the internet comment…

> Yeah, everyone can identify the idiot spouting off about skin color and engaging in an un-obfuscated textbook exercise in divide and conquer as probably not worth listening to.

I can think of 71 million people who can't.

Re: Don't Be a Sucker (1943) [video]

#189

Post by jibal »

15charlimitdumb wrote: post #175
beloch wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that people are still falling for exactly the same sort of comic-book evil even though it's every bit as obvious. e.g. Haitian's eating dogs, illegal immigrants scamming medical services, stealing high-paying jobs, etc.. A high percentage of people completely lack what Carl Sagan would call a "Baloney detection kit", and the current purveyors of baloney like it that way. That's why they're anti-science…

I noticed you didn't include any bipartisan examples. I'll help with that,for example believing Joe Biden was sharp as a tack is more damaging than any examples listed, and is probably the primary factor in Trump's reelection.

They only included actual examples of the phenomenon they were talking about. And "bipartisan" does not mean what you seem to think it means.

Re: Don't Be a Sucker (1943) [video]

#190

Post by jibal »

rootusrootus wrote: post #176
mlrtime wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that all you think this is about, being racist and sexist? I agree with OP, this video shows how easy it can be a sucker. There are two parts to it, one is being the sucker, the other is the specific content and time. OP is pointing out that the sucker is in every echo chamber because these chambers get filtered to only allow extreme viewpoints thrive.

It would be easier to accept a both-sides argument if there were good examples and counter-examples for what opposing viewpoints are equally reprehensible.

Your correspondent is on the other side (the one the video is critical of).
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