peterbirks | (no subject)

Pew Research reports that in the US it's become a land of alien tribes.

The downside of the splinterization of information provision is that:

"They can't stand the other side's viewpoint - and because hyper-partisan news and social media enables them to live in ideological isolation - they don't even have to try to understand it."

It's going to go the same way in the UK. Most partisan people I know gravitate towards social media friends who think the same way and media outlets that reinforce their own point of view. There will be no dialogue and no compromise, because it will be easy to find posts which make you think that your own view is the "norm". Everyone you work with will be within your political spectrum; you will never meet those on the other side and they will become cartoon characters with cartoon names.

It's a grim prospect for a country that was once a home of dialogue but that has now become, on both sides, one of caricature.

You think that the "other side" is more different than it was, say, 60 years or 100 years ago, but nothing could be further from the truth. Neither Corbyn nor Cameron is the devil incarnate; neither is going to bring about the end of civilization as we know it, and the suffering of either the taxed or the underprivileged is as nothing to how it was in the decades gone by. Our period isn't "special" and your opponents aren't unique. Everyone is just trying to achieve their own vision of "fair and just", and if you refuse to see that, it's because you only mix with people on your own side.           

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Already happened.

The species you refer to is called "The Guardian Reader".

To be clear, it takes a Guardian reader to talk about tribalism in such a detached manner whilst not noticing the ridiculousness of what they say because they themselves are part of a tribe.

A tribe that belittles and despises that which is not like them.

Your blog is full of hatred of those who are not like you; people who live outside London, people who get too close to you on the bus, the working class that you came from and now dispise so that you can fit in with your Guardianista friends.

You've hit on the very reasons that those of us who are not like Birks, live outside London, are truly inspired by the notion of getting too close to him on the bus, are not working class, do not read the Guardian, and can spell the word "despise," read this blog.
Darned if I can imagine why you do, though.

And you've proven that you and Birks are the subject of his blog.

Note that he says, "Neither Corbyn nor Cameron is the devil incarnate". Of course that means Trump, Farage, the SNP and any other rockers of the establishment boat are fair game.

Hypocritical Guardian readers at their best. Always talking down to people. Acting as though they know everything and that anyone who disagrees with their distorted world view can only be a racist/Nazi or any other control word that you like to fling around.

Supporting the anti 1% group on one hand and then, on the other hand, supporting the EU that props up the 1%, TTIP and other globalist ideologies. Telling Scots they are fools to leave the UK and then treating the UK as an English empire and England as a fiefdom of London. And it has to be the Islington Set's view of London and the outside world.

The Reality Distortion Field of Steve Jobs is nothing to that of a Guardianista.

What genuinely bizarre posts from Mr Vandalay. I disagree with most of what Peter writes, but one accusation I would not level at him is that he is a 'Guardianista'. Incidentally, if you really think that all people who read that newspaper share the same worldview you really have just confirmed the thrust of the original article. Get out more, take your blinkers off, speak to people who do not share your opinions. Oh yeah, try not to be so angry.

I (Aardvark) would assume that it means that not a single one of the set of {Trump, Farage, the SNP and etc} are "fair game." I can't quite recall the term for this logical fallacy, but it should be immediately obvious, given a cup of coffee and a small amount of thought.

Without subjecting Mr Birks to the Inquisition, it would seem a reasonable extension of his original proposition to assume that {Trump, Farage, the SNP -- taken as a whole, presumably, rather than being considered individually, although I fail to see the logic in this} are, for the purposes of Mr Birks' present argument, in at least this one narrow sense, equivalent to {Corbyn and Cameron}.

Or, to simplify it for you, there is a very real possibility that Mr Birks would consider the first set to be equivalent (in this regard) to the second set. I see no reason to infer that any member of either set can be considered to be "the devil incarnate" on the terms presented.

Then again I like to rub myself up against Birks on a London bus every now and again, whilst infuriating him by lighting my cigar with a handy copy of the Guardian.

It is these small pleasures in life that we can use as mementos of what is important, I feel.

"There will be no dialogue and no compromise."

Indeed.

Yrs, With Admiration,
Aardvark

Your double-talk and Guardian speak have no place in a democratic world.

Be gone, you clique of kiddie-feelers and return to your imaginary Corbynite world of the hell that was the 1970s.

The Real Aardvark.

Never a truer word spoken by a ponce for a nonce.

"There will be no dialogue and no compromise."

That's the spirit. Floreat the establishment whores.

A ghastly sight it is when Telegraph and Grauniad readers unite to pay lip service to the 1%.

The Real Aardvark.

Forgery.
Dr Johnson would love it. One step lower in the mire than Patriotism.

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