Welcome to Buster's Blog

Irregular commentary on whatever's on my mind -- politics, sports, current events, and life in general. After twenty years of writing business and community newsletters, fifteen years of fantasy baseball newsletters, and two years of email "columns", this is, I suppose, the inevitable result: the awful conceit that someone might actually care to read what I have to say. Posts may be added often, rarely, or never again. As always, my mood and motivation are unpredictable.

Buster Gammons















Monday, February 12, 2018

Sloganeering In The Bot Age


Conservatives/Republicans have long been slogan masters.  Their spin doctors have come up with some real beauties over the years:

Love it or leave it;  Better dead than red;  Bleeding heart;  If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns;  Tax and spend;  Trickle down;  Jobs-killer;  Death tax;  Death panels;  Tree-hugger;  Clean coal;  Drill baby drill;  Entitlements;  Welfare queen.

 They're all too-short, over-simplified distortions, but they're effective with some people and the Republicans excel at using them.  Democrats, being more thoughtful, big-picture folks who see complexities and details, don't do the bumper-sticker mentality nearly as well.

Today the Republicans are getting online sloganeering help from social media.  Hashtags and Facebook shares can hit more people faster than anything ever before.  Example:  Even thought the Nunes scam memo proved to be a dud, #ReleaseTheMemo was a viral trender on Twitter, helping the R's drive their conspiracy theory no matter what.  That hashtag ultimately had more messaging oomph than the stupid memo itself. 

And today we learned that #ReleaseTheMemo was driven primarily by Russian twitter bots, doing their insidious thing, sewing the seeds of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), all in the hope of helping Trump and thus Putin's Russia.

Are we surprised?
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