What Would be the Pupose of Industry Shills, et al Posting on DU?

[laughingliberal]

I'm not an apologist for the cheerleaders and I am pretty firmly opposed to the health care legislation we have before us, now. However, given the fact that Rahmbo and, apparently, Obama have decided the left is looney, doesn't count, and isn't needed to pass their damned bill, why would people from either their message machine or the industry spend time trying to persuade us? Really, do people think that does happen? And, if we think it happens, what do we think the goal would be? I just don't get the logic of spending resources (money, time) persuading those who you have decided are unnecessary.

Input?

edited punctuaion

[Ildem09]

1. to create anarchy

It's damn good strategy too. Get us all divided and upset at each other. Union V Globalists, Gays V african americans, *examples are hypothetical and not at all real :) all our special interests pitted against each other. so that when other stuff comes down the pipe in the future we are too fragmented to do anything about it

[laughingliberal]

2. Well, that makes sense. I know I always think the opposition uses a lot of the social

policy issues that way-racial divisions, gender wars, etc...I always thought that was divide and conquer. Keep the have nots fighting amongst themselves so they don''t organize against the haves.

[Jamastiene]

5. They've been doing it for years and so few people

are ever aware of it. Thank you for pointing it out.

[Ken Burch]

3. It's about hegemony

Those who think they are more powerful than a group of dissenters and don't need to make concessions to them are almost always STILL obsessed with silencing ALL dissenters. Even if they have 99.92A% support for something, they don't feel they can rest easy until they get that other .08%.

Look, for example, at how shrill the "free market" types were about attacking "socialism" in the early and mid-1990's when it appeared, to the naked eye, that there were hardly any "socialists" around for them to attack.

Look at how totalitarian regimes still denounce their "treacherous enemies", even when all such "enemies" have been lined up and shot.

That's the mindset that would lead them to such an apparently pointless act of infiltration.

It's the idea that not even if there's only ONE person who still disagrees with what the hegemonic power wants, that one person can never be left in peace.

[laughingliberal]

6. Another point I did not consider. Thanks nt

[Hannah Bell]

10. I think it's different. Even though there's not much "left" to speak of, & it sure isn't Obama,

the "Obama is a socialist/communist!" thing still gets a lot of play.

The ideology is not so important as the division & confusion.

Enemies must always be invented (by both sides) so people don't get it together to see who's behind the curtain.

[laughingliberal]

19. There's really nothing new on the face of the earth, I guess.

Newer technologies and more sophisticated communication devices but, I guess, divide and conquer still rules the day. Thanks for that insight.

[mitchum]

28. That's it. (n/t)

[laughingliberal]

4. An Unrec???!!! Oh, noes!! They do exist!!! lol nt

[Jamastiene]

7. I Recced

and took it back to 1 from wherever it was. It's a good question.

[laughingliberal]

8. ty :)

[drm604]

9. Regardless of the purpose, it's pretty obvious that we have shills posting here.

Some of them are very transparent.

Also, I recall someone posting here a link to an article about a company (or companies?) that pays people to post on political boards. If there are such paid shills you can bet that this is one of the places they would hit.

[Jamastiene]

12. There are some who sound like insurance salesmen.

I understand that there is a split in thinking on HCR between progressives.

Some believe the health care bill MUST be rammed through as is for fear of never getting a chance again.

Some believe we would be worse off if we don't try to get the public option back in there and get rid of the mandates.

But, the ones who appear to be paid operatives post nothing but preachy salesman type posts. It's rather creepy.

[donco6]

37. Without question.

Too bad we can't name names. I believe there is a French phrase for it though . . . something about a feline . . .

I for one have always been "pro" common sense, though.

[Jamastiene]

11. The best way I can describe it is political baseball.

I'm not sure if you really pay attention to the game of baseball a lot, but the "Pick off" scenario seems to be the basic method of operation behind the shills.

When the runner is on first, the pitcher communicates with the catcher on whether he is going to throw the ball to first to try to pick off* a runner or pitch to the batter. Then when they are clear what they are going to do, the pitcher and catcher get into position and make the play.

*The pick off move is when the pitcher pitches to first base to try to catch the runner off the base and get him called out.

In this scenario, the pitching coach is the Democratic leadership, i.e. Rahm.

The pitcher and catcher and first baseman are the workers/shills who coordinate their play and deliver it.

The runner on first is us.

The batter is another one of us.

If they pick off the runner, the batter is demoralized and stands more of a chance (through psychological warfare tactics) of not getting a hit.

If they are not able to pick off the runner or strike the batter out, they lose ground and may lose the game or at least have a bad inning.

In this version of the game, when the batter and runner are called out, they are collected up and decommissioned. They are no longer playing on the team they originally started with. They are assimilated. That's how political baseball goes.

[laughingliberal]

16. That's a good analogy. Could be the problem. I thought it was chess nt

[Luminous Animal]

13. This.

Watch it and if you don't respond then you didn't honestly ask your question.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gy_XdhN4h0

[laughingliberal]

15. Damn! nt

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

30. "It's a chain of taxidermy stores..."

Lol.

[Occulus]

14. To sow confusion and dissention, of course. They're paid to do this, here and elsewhere.

There have been a few articles posted here to that effect, if I recall correctly. Believe it or not, PR firms do indeed pay people to post. A simple "get paid to blog" Google search will reveal many examples.

[Hekate]

17. Dissension, division, anarchy, general misery. Always ask: Who does it serve?

During the Bush years there were so many things about the actions of the Repubs and Neocons that simply did not make sense to me because they seemed so destructive.

Finally I started asking myself: Who does it serve? And there would be my answer. I have a friend who would say: Follow the money. She usually would end up with the same answers I did.

Hekate

[Kablooie]

18. We aren't that important. They don't ever know this web site exists.

[Mithreal]

20. It's not about persuasion necessarily, marginalizing, frustrating, despairing

in order to push the party toward more corporate friendly goals.

Removing populists from the activist pool, tamping down rage.

[dmallind]

21. To all the tinfoil hat crowd I pose a simple challenge

Show us.


Find a company or organization willing to pay people to support centrist Democratic, capitalistic, globalist, fiscally responsible political viewpoints on a left-leaning website. Not to mention any companies or give links to for-profit concerns (which is what blogging for pay is), but simply to support sociopolitical viewpoints a bit less to the left than the majority on those left-leaning sites.

When you've found it you can get two things as a reward:

1) The right to crow that you were correct all along (because I personally will make sure you will become so) and actually offer proof not shadowy conjecture.

2)33% of my income from that source for perpetuity. Since I post these views anyway, I would not have the slightest moral qualms about taking money for them, and would be more than happy to share that income as a finder's fee. Sad to say yet that I have not been asked to do so professionally, nor seen any place where I can apply for such a job.

[LoZoccolo]

25. This should be an OP.

Maybe wait a while, but yeah. :thumbsup:

[laughingliberal]

33. I guess I'm not so much convinced there are companies which employee people specifically to post

I keep thinking about those astro-turf movements and how some of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies encourage their employees to attend those. Some, I think, even gave people time off. For an older example, I go back to those staffers who showed up during the recount in Florida posing as outraged 'citizens.' This, I could see. I know people who work for a business in my town (not related to politics) and one of their duties when they have down time at work is to go online on the message boards and in the chat rooms and pose as regular old folks interested in the services of the business and just stir up some enthusiasm. This is more along the lines I wonder about.

[Name removed]

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[trotsky]

39. EXCELLENT post.

:applause:

[MineralMan]

22. As far as I've seen, nobody has actually produced any evidence

that anyone posting here is getting paid to support President Obama or any political organization. There are lots of people saying it must be so, but no evidence for it.

Is it so unreasonable to suppose that there are people who genuinely support President Obama and who feel he will get the job of moving this country in a progressive direction done? Why is there constant comment about people getting paid to support this idea?

While DU is a great site, it's unlikely that discussions here really influence much of anything. Occasionally, something here makes it into other media, but it's not like DU is at the top of anyone's mind when it comes to policy decisions.

Why would anyone pay someone to come here and support President Obama if it doesn't actually affect anything? Would they not put their money somewhere that it might have a chance of creating influence?

I just don't get it.

[KharmaTrain]

23. It's Cause They're Playing Beltway Games Now...

The campaign mode is now directed inside...to the "power elite" of Washington and they've sealed themselves away from the rest of the world. This is now bloodsport where votes are won and lost, bought and sold...and the only ones that matter are 535, not those in 50 states. The only thing we do is spectate and try to voice opinions that are heard only from the sidelines.

We're also seeing the downside of being a majority party. This means having a lot of different groups that try to find common cause but have diverse interests. The problem this Administration is now facing is that their tunnel vision in playing the beltway has turned them off from a variety of "the base"...be it Progressive and Liberals who feel sold-out on HCR or blacks on job creation or Hispanics on immigration and so on.

As far as what one sees on a message board like DU...I've always taken much here with a grain of salt. The great thing is this place's relative annonymity that allows people to openly vent. But it's also a community of egos that tend to come to the front when discussion become heated. C'est la vie...I think a majority of DU'ers can think for themselves and determine when someone's post is sincere or if it's grandstanding.

[LoZoccolo]

24. To provide an excuse for ad hominems by progressives who don't think they have to be compelling.

If there was no way to dismiss opponents outright, they'd actually have to take reponsibility for their opininions. The Internet was supposed to fix all that.

[DainBramaged]

26. To simply distract us from our purpose

may I say to ALL of the man pig industry shills still hovering on DU, FUCK YOU.

[mitchum]

27. To continue the process of shifting the Democratic Party more rightward

not individual Democrats, but the Party.
To marginalize.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

29. Corporate shills, maybe not. DLC shills, DEFINITELY!

And a couple of them have chimed in on this thread to deny that there are shills posting.

They are easily recognizable by their insistent repetition of DLC talking points and by their Republican-like tactics of changing the subject and/or resorting to insults (in an attempt to goad their opponent into writing something that warrants banning) when confronted with facts.

[hayu_lol]

31. They are here strictly for the...

giggles and snitzfitz.

[dmallind]

32. By which "logic": there must also be socialsit paid infiltrators from the left!

After all they are easily recognizable by their insistent repetition of socialist talking points and their Commie-like tactics of changing the subject and resorting to insults (oh the irony) when confronted with facts....

[Name removed]

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[lunatica]

35. Abe Lincoln understood it well

“You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.”

They're pulling wool over our eyes. They pretend to be representing us with their words but the reality is in their actions. It keeps the masses mollified. Every four years or so they really lay it on thick and the masses get fooled again. It's been the modus operandi for generations.

[treestar]

36. That's about as useful as calling you a republican operative

pretending to be a progressive and trying to divide us.

Doesn't help the argument either.

[Name removed]

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