
I lost my dad to Fox News: How a generation was captured by thrashing hysteria - middleclick
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/27/i_lost_my_dad_to_fox_news_how_a_generation_was_captured_by_thrashing_hysteria/
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mcphilip
Fox News is a reasonable focal point for this piece, but it's only one small
contributing factor. The sad thing is that purveyors of fear and distrust are
all over the internet. I lost my dad to some combination of Glen Beck, Fox
News, and the "Gold, Guns, and God" crowd.

I caught glimpses of it via his emails from time to time. The first major one
being links to radiation pills after Fukushima. Then the obsession with silver
hit -- no one in my family knows how much or where he has buried his stashes
in our two acre yard, but we know there are at least 4. Then the fear of
drones hit, evidenced by my dad saying he was mowing the lawn as a "dog and
pony show" for the eyes in the sky. Then the internet had to be disconnected
because neighbors might be hacking him. Then the telephone was unplugged
because it was bugged. Then he started making my mom write messages to him on
paper in the house since the house was bugged. Then he had a restraining order
put on him by a preacher who was so unnerved by his ranting. During this whole
process he was convinced he was being led by the Holy Spirit and threatened my
mom if she told anyone about it.

Things went down hill so fast that I'm still shaken by it. I had to work with
my family to get him committed on Christmas Eve.

Maybe this is TMI, but hopefully some will see it as a warning. If you see
someone you love going down that slippery slope of paranoia, don't hesitate to
talk to them about it at first, and get advice from a trained psychologists if
things get worse. Love the person, ignore the content of their ideas... maybe
you can help prevent a breakdown.

~~~
onli
I don't know if that is common knowledge (or how old your father is), but
there is a specific kind of paranoia which is quite common after a specific
age. In Germany it's called Altersparanoia, informally (which translates to
_paranoia of the old_ ). What you describes doesn't sound like the
radicalization caused by manipulating (and fascist?) propaganda, but more like
that (maybe triggered or fortified by that thought environment, might be
possible. We still don't know enough about stuff like that). Though the holy
spirit should make it a different thing, a schizophrenic attack.

I'm sorry, good luck to you and your family.

~~~
brg
Interesting that it is being attributed to the old and conservative. From 2002
to 2006 this kind of hysteria strongly affected the youth in the US beyond
what I would consider reasonable measure. In 2004 I couldn't have a political
discussion without someone talking about the inevitability of the draft, and
in 2006 it was about how one party was obviously more corrupt than the other.
From a foreign perspective, these views were obviously false, but were held by
some with hysterical strength.

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Buntraceable
I highly recommend anyone in a similar situation read Jonathan Haidt's book
"The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion."

Haidt is a psychologist who studies moral development, and while I don't
believe everything he puts forth in the book to be gospel, he makes many good
points about how people come to moral conclusions (which may not be logical
conclusions, but nonetheless are based on what the person uses their senses to
believe is true).

You can hear a summary of Haidt's theory or moral matrices, as well as an
example of how the theory has been employed to talk to people across the
"political divide": [http://media.uoregon.edu/channel/2013/06/04/what-on-
earth-is...](http://media.uoregon.edu/channel/2013/06/04/what-on-earth-is-
happening-to-us-polarization-demonization-and-paralysis-in-american-politics/)

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busterarm
I lost my brother to this also, but he's only 40 and it started much longer
ago and with talk radio (Limbaugh, Hannity, etc). I'm in the process of losing
my 72 year old mother to it too.

I remember as a family we listened to Bob Grant and he seems tame by
comparison to the hosts of today. What a slippery slope... Thankfully, I saved
myself from this sort of thinking, but it's sad to not really be able to talk
to my family.

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greglindahl
I lost my dad to the weather channel.

~~~
logfromblammo
Too right. The next person to refer to a winter storm by name in my presence
is likely to be uninvited from all future family gatherings.

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billyjobob
From the perspective of the rest of the world, your Democrats and your
Republicans seem so similar that it is bizarre these two had enough
differences to argue over.

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jiggy2011
Might this just be an example of someone who is getting old and cranky?

As you get older things start to change and it's harder to move with the times
and the world doesn't seem to make so much sense; so it's comforting to
consume media that tells you that it isn't your fault but the rest of the
world.

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Carltonian
Addiction really is the operating word here. It's what keeps you in front of
the TV in the same way it keeps people in front of slot machines. The worst
part is the thesis of conservative media; that while you do everything right,
some nebulous liberal agenda is taking away everything that you hold dear, and
are entitled to as a working person (ignoring all information regarding
demographics and welfare recipients). Fox News makes good money off of
convincing people who feel they are victims of the world at large that they
are in fact autonomous conservatives/libertarians.

~~~
Prophasi
"The worst part is the thesis of [...] media; that while you do everything
right, some nebulous [...] agenda is taking away everything that you hold
dear, and are entitled to as a working person"

That's not particular to conservative media; it's the same tactic used to
convince whole swaths of the population that the rich, the white, sexists,
racists, jingoists, big corporations, government, etc. are keeping you down.

Leveling it at only one side of a debate is falling into the trap polemicists
set up. They _all_ do this, from every angle and via all means possible. It's
just propaganda, and one insidious aspect of it is that they convince people
only the other side engages in it.

~~~
Carltonian
True, but Fox News is the best at it, so they get the flak. I'll give the
other channels for convincing people Obama was going to change things, but
those people already mostly wanted change (especially after the financial
crisis). Fox News did more than that. They convinced people who had been
Republicans for 30 years that they have been libertarians fo 30 years. That's
just really scary.

~~~
logfromblammo
Meanwhile, people who have been actually libertarian for 30 years have to find
another word to use for themselves. Again.

If you want to be truly libertarian, guys, you also have to embrace open
borders, support non-interventionist foreign policy, and desire that drug
prohibitions cease. Defending gun rights and complaining about taxes and
welfare is just a tiny part of the package. You can still oppose state-
sanctioned gay marriage if you want, but only to the extent that you oppose
government involvement in _any_ kind of marriage.

As I am a long-time libertard, the people who talk about freedom after
watching Fox News make me laugh. They fill their heads with mass-media talking
points all day, meet with like-minded people to create an echo chamber for the
ideas they were force-fed, then worry about having adequate self-
determination.

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sentientmachine
From my perspective, the faulty programming being pumped into the older white
guys (my dad included) is not the content of the message, but the methods of
how to manipulate ideas to transform them into other ideas, and transform
those into actions.

For example, in my dad it started out around age 67 as the "bird people", the
"green weenies", or the "save the whales" people. How they were ruining
everything, stopping the corporations (of which he has no part in), stopping
some business or something, and how it was such a travesty that someone could
be so bold as to place the convenience of humans over the lives of critters we
eat for lunch and dinner every day.

So far so good, but the disturbing part I found was in how he responds to a
rebuttal or a devils advocate. Even if I were to go out of my way and say
several times: "I am not opposing your conclusion that your conclusion is
absolutely right, I am simply offering the opposing view as a way to zoom in
on the issue". Even if I ought right tell him that he can't get angry when I
tell him that I'm about to disagree with him for purpose of having a debate.
It's like those words don't have any meaning anymore. The opposition to his
view causes anger like pushing down on a lever causes the other end to go up.
He was not always like this.

The faulty programmed response is one where the fox viewer should immediately
sabotage, attack and oppose anyone taking up the alternate view. If I offer up
an argument that tries to track in toward when animal protection is bad, and
when it is good, immediately the anger kicks in. How can you be in bed with
_Them_? How have you given up your soul to the enemies? It's THEM vs US and we
have to protect what little we have. He's set in his ways, he's found the
answer to everything in life, and the only thing left undone in the universe
is to conform the universe to those structures.

I would bring in hypotheticals, like what if mankind grows to 200 billion
people, should we focus more on stopping corporations? It doesn't matter, the
argument is not one that sparks discussion, it's one that reveals the position
of the enemy. Things may be offered up to resist the opposing view. But I'm
not opposing, I'm trying to clarify.

I think its the Anterior cingulate gyrus that is responsible for causing pain
when you hold two contradictory ideas in mind at once. As we age, this ability
to juggle opposing views is reduced to nothing. And brains become like
hashmaps, all we can do is map our universe onto predefined outputs. It's a
descent from there down to other serious psychological and neurological
problems, and when the damage spreads to necessary system functions, the
person dies.

~~~
logfromblammo
I love playing Devil's Advocate. Perhaps I have been participating on the
Internet for too long, but I tend to think that anyone who cannot maintain
composure in the face of dissent needs to be trolled hard and often.

A lot of the rhetorical arsenal that works well in person, like the array of
ad hominem attacks used to emotionally undermine the opponent's credibility in
the eyes of a specific audience, just don't fly when all that you know about
the guy behind the ideas is maybe his IP address and whatever else he chooses
to tell you about himself, such as the shape of his cutie mark, the number of
medals of honor he has been awarded, or the number of blood rubies in his
eyepatch.

Appeals to authority come crashing to a halt with a flippant [citation
needed]. Bottled talking points can be countered with the bottled rebuttals.
Physical bullying is, of course, a practical impossibility. It's like being on
the Internet forces you to actually have a cogent argument and defend it
instead of relying on all the rhetorical crutches.

~~~
sentientmachine
Trolling someone who suffers great pain when holding two opposing positions in
mind, and blames the pain on the person bringing the opposing position is
counter productive.

It feels like trying to paint a 3d rotating gif onto a canvas with a large
brush. You may be able to paint one frame fairly well, but it will not rotate.
The spirit of the gif cannot be hosted on this canvas. You can host subsets of
it, but not the entire spirit of the duality of ideas.

The "dance around the issues like a butterfly" is not something you teach. And
trying to teach it, you just make the other person angry or depressed they
can't do what you do.

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badman_ting
Why was Fox News so able to induce such hysteria in these people, though?
(Admittedly, that's less comfortable to think about than just complaining
about what Fox does.)

~~~
gojomo
There's a human 'set point' for fear. If there aren't enough real things of
which to be afraid, the mind will latch onto the next-most-credible things,
even if relatively farfetched.

With current long lives, lower crime, domestic peace, reasonable prosperity,
and social insurance, there's a lot less to genuinely fear, in the US, than
ever before. Without the challenges and stresses of full-time, market work,
the retired are especially lacking in 'common project' or 'tribal team' fears
(as opposed to say personal-health or relationship fears).

Politics, among other industries, competes to answer this craving for objects-
of-fear. The cable-news/permanent-political-campaign/crusading-government-
busybodies nexus is an extremely efficient, low-cost, high-emotional-salience
provider. Small staffs, recurring themes, and grandiose good-vs-evil
narratives can be constantly redeployed, as a neverending modern fairy-tale
with the added sheens of 'reality' and 'import'.

Compare also: the hygiene hypothesis, for how an immune system unchallenged by
real threats may tend towards misguided allergic or autoimmune overreactions.

~~~
glenra
I would just add that being overly afraid of Fox News, the Tea Party, and/or
the Koch brothers is part of the exact same phenomenon.

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swframe
I lost my Mom to Fox News for a while but after talking with her, she has come
back. I didn't actually expect her to return but it is so easy to point out
the holes in the Fox News arguments. I'm atheist but I know the bible well
enough to use it to refute any argument she has heard on Fox. The _wonderful_
thing about the bible is that you can quote it to defend or defeat just about
any point of view.

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johndevor
I think this article is writing about symptoms, not underlying causes. The
vast majority of people do not fall prey to sensationalist media.

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sprockincat
I can't tell if the title is ironic or just overly dramatic.

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forgotAgain
I find the father _and_ the writer to be insufferable. The father for, as
portrayed, his clutching ignorance, the writer for being a born-again snob.

~~~
SavvyGuard
What's important is you found a way to be superior to both of them [1]

[1] [https://xkcd.com/774/](https://xkcd.com/774/)

~~~
sov
And you (and I, in turn) to be superior to him.

~~~
ld00d
It's only good for one conversation. Read the hover.

------
GauntletWizard
Some of us are terrified of an ever-more invasive government, welfare progams
that only ever seem to be welfare for corporations, and the destruction of the
important american myth of hard work == success. Some of us keep listening to
lies and dreams from an increasingly despotic asshole while american
prosperity drifts away. You've lost yourself in fantasyland, not the other way
around.

~~~
logfromblammo
And some are also terrified of increasingly consolidated broadcasters that
choose to have an obvious political bias.

Fox News is part of the problem, as part of News Corp. As is
ABC/ESPN/Disney/Touchstone/Pixar, and CBS/Viacom/Columbia/Tristar/Paramount,
and NBC/Comcast/USA/Universal, and Time Warner/CNN/HBO/AOL/Castle Rock/New
Line, and Clear Channel/Bain. And those same companies own newspapers,
magazines, and book publishers, too.

On top of that, investigative journalism has been in a death spiral ever since
CNN debuted and inaugurated the 24 hour news-entertainment cycle. You're more
likely to find something interesting in niche blogs and foreign media than on
television.

