The key point for me is that the media are more interested in the supposed leaker's background than in the substance of the messages our government was sharing internally.
I ventured into the comments section of a couple NYT and WaPo articles today. They were rife with claims that the leaker is part of "the MAGA crowd," and they're basing that assumption on the fact that the leaker likes video games, guns, and "indecent humor."
I don't know who ELSE needs to hear this, but the Democrats are not the fucking left.I know, because endless warmongering, crony capitalism, open borders (globalists' wet dream), censorship, propaganda, and rigged elections are not leftist. And I know that because I'm a leftist.
Real lefties always quibble with this shorthand, but there needs to be a name for the collective that includes the democrats, feminists, LBGTQ activists, environmentalists, identity politics types, the MSM, academia, the administrative state, madison avenue, hollywood, corporate hr and pr departments etc.
I do hear what you're saying - I grew up in the 60s, where we had anti-war protests, loved people, hated the government, deeply wanted freedom to say/do/sing/smoke whatever we wanted (as long as it didn't directly injure someone else.) That was the "left".
The free love kids of the 60s would never believe that their generation (and following ones) would turn into these twisted, obsequious apologists for draconian force. These brainless sheep that subsume their will underneath the dictums of a censorship industrial complex - a dark warmongering partnership between massive corporations and the voracious "security state." Surveilling their friends, reporting them to the authorities for stepping out of line.
I'd agree that the Democratic party bears ZERO resemblance to those idealistic (if unrealistic) young people. What I don't know, is how many of those leftists are left? Has the idea of "the left" just lost all meaning?
(And yes, similar arguments can be made for the right.)
angelO - Do you see yourself as a "democrat"? I have started feeling there's something hollow in being labelled as dem or republican? Both are now loaded up with stereotypical positions that most people don't really have, we just profess them because we want a flag to fly. You present an excellent point that the weirdness is the frequency with which they overlap across the parties.
Meanwhile we're fed issues like transgender by Fox/Reps and CNN/Dems. Yeah, we don't want to be bullies to people that are different to us. Yeah we don't want 6'8 testosterone loaded girls winning the fem Olympic 100m. But it's just incendiary trouble making on both sides. Just a false-flag distraction from more world-scale bad-opinions that both sides share.
There is no "left" or "right" only the Constitution and the citizen willing to defend it. Weaponized division by race, class, political ideology, disinformation, fear and propaganda in support of a class/culture war managed by unelected Federal official's in service to corrupt elite capital are working to supersede (soft coup) the Constitution, wipe out the American middle class, and install a world wide fascist totalitarian state. Corrupt element's primarily in the DNC but also within the Republican Party are perpetrating the travesty.
Recent RACKET NEWS/Taibbi articles, report's by TABLET'S Jacob Siegel, report's by the journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon, and Glenn Greenwald at SYSTEM UPDATE, confirm this.
Again: WE are living through a last ditch attempt by a venal and avaricious political/financial elite to maintain power after the sudden jump in tech and communication made their grift transparent to reality. Hence the assault on free speech and truth/fact based journalism, the object lesson imprisonment of whistle blowers, attempts to neutralize and control free speech platform's and the creation of a propagandist psyop to prevent and destroy all attempt's at the creation of the healthy American national dialogue that would put solutions to our problem's on the table. You are being looted. NO ONE argue's that the greatest upward transfer of wealth in the history of the world is underway. It's not something else.
All that matters is the survival of the Republic and the Constitution.
Cool. I believe you. Now as a public service make a similar list of where you lefties are different. Not being a wise guy. I'd sincerely like a lesson.
Well, they certainly enjoy whoring out to the left: defund the police, antifa isn't a real "group", pro bono for the Gitmo detainees but cheer trespassers escorted through the Capitol getting no due process, we support "gender affirming care" for 5 yr olds w/o parental consent, we screamed for Title IX until it threatened 6'4" transwoman's "journey"....if you don't use approved pronouns we will ruin you (along with the DOD recruiting and Anheuser Bush.)
The “left”-however it defines itself-needs to figure out a way to psychically separate themselves from the D tent. People can squawk about the GOP all they want-but the party has legitimate infighting and debate-to a severe degree. There is a reason why there isn’t an equivalent D perjorative term like RINO. And yes, I know that most American “socialists” don’t want socialism, they want a woke unicorn fart welfare state where all physical tasks are somehow accomplished by Twitter and TikToking as opposed to, you know, actual work.
Suck it up. Now you know how libertarians felt when the left co-opted the word "liberal". The clowns who support open borders, censorship, and rigged elections call themselves leftists. Complain to them, not to those among their opponents who nevertheless oblige them in their preference.
They want to criminalize Liberalism as well. The left pushed out past Liberalsim a few years ago. We Liberals are now independents, or perhaps even conservatives in today's world.
Oh please. No ideology has had more sunshine blown up its ass than the liberal / left. You have the mainstream media, hollywood, madison avenue etc validating your worldview 24/7/365.
THE DEMOCRATS ARE NOT THE LEFT. They hate the left more than they do the right. And if you don't believe me, compare their treatment of George W. Bush with that of Bernie Sanders and his supporters. As far as the Dems are concerned, Berniecrats were MAGA before there even was a MAGA.
Let's not argue about semantics. Your definition is just as correct as anyone else's. Let's call them the "Ruling Party" as the late, great Angelo Codevilla called them.
RFK Jr is who I'm backing. But if they manage to keep him out, and the Dems are just the assholes to do it, then yeah, MAGA all the way. Anyone who has their sights set on the deep state/IC as the most present danger to our tattered republic at least has the right focus.
Any genuinely funny humor is "indecent" to this clownworld regime and their NPC bootlickers. "Hey, they're laughing at how absurd we are; they must be part of that crowd that wants to make America great again!"
If they start to try convincing people that gamers are dangerous, in 2023 that's going to be as easy as trying to convince people that coffee drinkers are dangerous. So I hope they do try that so that everyone will see how full of shit they are.
The NYT began managing or "curating" the approved comments back when the local organizer of MomsDemandAction was the assistant to the NYTs own gunblog.
You think the group that controls the mainstream media, hollywood, corporate HR and PR departments, K-12 education, Madison Avenue, the Administrative State, and the NGOs is the out group?
The in-group/out-group distinction doesn't define who has power, it just has to do with who you consider your in-group and who you consider the out-group. Although it is a very common in-group belief that the out-group has all the power. We love seeing ourselves as rebels and scrappy underdogs.
So a person who self identified as a democrat might see the the out-group as people who identify as republicans, and I don't want to put words in your mouth but it sounds like you consider the "left" (however you want to define that word) as the out-group.
You don't have to play the in-group/out-group game, I would recommend against it because all group identity is intellectual and moral suicide.
So in this case my post was pointing out that you are "otherizing" the "left" in a statement condemning the left for otherizing. It's not only funny but blissfully unaware.
All group identity is intellectual and moral suicide.
Jan 5 pipe bomb, leaked Dobbs decision, sabotaged Russian pipeline - Clapper lied, Comey leaked, the whole damn gov lied about The Russia hoax, (and still is), in one day, we bombed the peeps who killed our 15 servicemen in Afghanistan, so many times our gov has outright lied to us about Afghanistan and every other lie they still tell. They were caught in several lies with this last leak, and are still lying about it.
The key point for me is that quite obviously Teixeira seems to be a young moron willing to wreck his life in order to simply look cool to his chat friends - if he even understood the risks he was taking, which is doubtful. He clearly didn’t do it as a political statement/whistleblowing (or else the documents wouldn’t have languished on an obscure gaming venue), but it’s a sign of America’s degenerescence that each “side” paints him in ideological colors. The woke establishment wants him to be at least MAGA-adjacent, while the isolationist right plus old-fashioned anti-American left (such as Taibbi) quickly embraces him as a champion of “freedom” and promotes him to “whistleblower”. Equal indifference to facts and willingness to spin it in their own narrative. Pretty disgusting.
If you’re taking the nihilistic view that 100% of what ALL the MSM (including for instance WSJ) says it’s all lies, then how do you even know that a data leak has happened, that somebody has been arrested and who that is? You’ve really heard about it from the MSM!
For those of us who can still add 2+2, how the classified material was leaked says everything. If it was a spy, we would have never heard of it. If it was a Snowden, it would have blasted from Wikileaks or somebody like Glenn Greenwald. Instead, it was a dumbass who included in the pictures details from his home and posted the result on a game chat.
Yup. One thing that dismays as I get older is the unwillingness of either side-woke/corporatist, MAGA-whatever-is a blanket refusal to acknowledge that sheer idiocy can and does exist outside of an ideological vacuum, and just b/c someone parrots the same talking points as you doesn’t mean they aren’t also a flaming moron.
There were documents in that release that are simply not available outside a skif. This is a delibrate "leak" from within Government, the rest a cartoon level cover story.
This is to ensure the proper political orientation is demonized. He'd better be a "far-right extremist radicalized by hate speech." This is the rationalization for the Digital Panopticon all these power-mad bureaucrats and their pimps in the press are drooling over.
As usual. The narrative usurps reality. This is how its done. We know this, have known this forever. At this moment, tho, the intense, disorienting, and psychotic jockeying for power is just a tad concerning.
The way I see it how did he get a clearance, who gave him the clearance and why didn’t they catch it before he posted it on social media? It’s a leadership problem. Heads need to roll
This is clearly a false flag kind of thing. They’re going to rake this low level kid over the coals - a shiny object, look over there moment. Like a 21 year old reservist would have access to that level of intel - and if he did - the military is dumber than it already looks. They already failed with the Streisand Effect, so they’re moving to phase 2/3. “He’s definitely a Russian Asset”, rinse and repeat. Ask Ed Snowden how the process works. They can’t stand being exposed, but they revile the embarrassment.
You are absolutely right. There's no way this kid would have the necessary security clearance to access this information. Andrew Napolitano has interviewed several people who DO have such clearance and have years of experience with military intelligence and all say this story is as fishy as they come.
He's an IT weenie, he'd totally have access. And I haven't seen anyone calling him a Russian asset, he's a moron who leaked classified documents (which have nothing that Russia, for example, doesn't already know) for discord cred, and that's how he's being portrayed. Not a reason to crack down on either discord generally or being a moron generally, although he's totally arrestable.
This entire episode occurred because people who have access to sensitive documents are about as dumb as the general populace, and the general populace is really remarkably dumb. See also the entire cold war, or like basically every episode involving intelligence or counterintelligence in the last 120 years. It's all Spy vs. Spy stuff only in real life, idiots slipping castro exploding cigars or putting soviet moles in charge of hunting down soviet moles. No one in the world is good at this.
lol, what exactly is a "false flag kind of thing"?
You're clearly making a wild assumption based on very little information.
"They can’t stand being exposed, but they revile the embarrassment."
Wait, so... are you saying it's a false flag, or a legit leak? If the government did this on purpose, why would they be desperately trying to squash or discredit it? For that matter, why would they include damning info like details of the US spying on its allies?
Can a human being really be dumb enough to write such an incoherent, self-contradictory screed?
(and, btw, the military is not great at data security. this is a well-known thing)
I’m not going to try to attempt to explain anything to a boot-licking imbecile who can’t be bothered to do the elementary book report level of reading/research on a given topic; and relies on ad hominem attacks. You’d rather toast the method of discovery vs. the underlying information and it’s ramifications. I’m jut a subhuman AI bot tho - Beep bop beep beep boop. But let me take a guess at your current status: you’re in the process of “transitioning”, but the docs can’t quite get the mix of HRT hormones “just right” in order for you to be a functioning member of society. I’d wager my diagnosis is pretty close if not exact.
To Mr. Taibbi's credit he does not share his "wishes," hopes, dreams or desires, if he has any of them, regarding his comment section and what is said and not said by his subscribers.
Your mind went directly the anal region - see, I knew I could diagnose your mentally disordered state in the 30 seconds it took to type out the previous response. Sincerely - the incel loser responding from your mother’s bedroom.
Bingo! When something needs done like a leak every agency has their particular paper of record. The Washington Post is CIA/NSA. The U.S. government with all their surveillance couldn't find the leaker. But some journalists found him on a gaming site.
I have to agree. He's a fall-guy. A 21-year-old "cyber transport systems journeyman" working for the Air National Guard has access to this level of intelligence? How? The operating principle for intelligence operations is that people have only as much access as they need to do their jobs. Why would a junior Air National Guard enlisted person have this kind of access? If he was able to legitimately access this stuff on his own, US intelligence is totally broken. Remember: the simplest explanation is usually correct.
Note to Jack Texiera: now is the time to tell the world you want to transition (I’d go with to female if I were in your shoes) it won’t help your sentence much but it will get the press off your back while your kangaroo show trial proceeds.
I will laugh my ass off if they try to destroy internet privacy because DISCORD, of all things.
Everything you ever do or say on Discord is saved on their servers, forever. Discord has a soft requirement for a phone number to get an account (sometimes, it's weird). Discord has an activist mod team with a strong leftist bias. Discord does process spying, which is how it knows what game you're playing.
Discord is one of the least secure, leakiest, most easily surveilled forms of communication to ever exist. Exactly zero needs to be done for the government to spy on it as is. If anyone says otherwise, they're lying.
Yep discord is fully onboard with nanny state ideals. It’s funny to hear experts talk about how dangerous it is. In reality any time humans communicate it’s “dangerous” based on these experts.
I honestly think if these people were around during the revolution most of them would have been anti the right of free assembly. Maybe even no talking allowed outside government post messages. It is bizarrely Orwellian, just because you can eavesdrop on huge swaths of human communication due to technology doesn’t mean you should.
Yeah I wouldn’t leak my barbecue sauce recipe on Discord, yeah with enough cross referencing from other platforms you can figure out who I am but anyone who knows even a modicum of cybersecurity knows to not leak things on damn Discord, unless he bought a prepaid card in cash in one state before buying a prepaid phone in another state to setup the account.
I don’t like to tinfoil hat things but, a bit odd.
I like the fact that they'll use their own incompetence (letting a low level person walk off base with this classified information) as an excuse to try and enact tyrannical policies on the people. It's like your parent screws up and you get punished. Brilliant. I wouldn't expect anything less out of these clowns.
On another note, I write all sorts of zany commentary about our strange society on my Substack, for those who enjoy a bit of outlandish but fun writing.
The other night on Rumble, Glenn Greenwald went through this. It sounds fishy as hell. Given that people are referring to the "RESTRICT Act" as Patriot Act 2.0, I'm having trouble believing this is legit and isn't a set up to, once again stampede the livestock. (And we all knew Ukraine was losing. That's not exactly a revelation.)
It covers two pieces of ground valuable to the IC; Biden and his admin are idiots and unfettered communication is a source of pushback against the IC. This works on both fronts to further the goals of this group. Like you say, Ukraine is losing and everyone knows it, even if they wont admit it. This helps clear the way for other things.
You know the kid had a handler playing him up to do this. They know the process well, and use it over and over again to create fall-guys to accomplish their dirty work. The better question is "why was THIS information leaked?" Watch what they DO, not what they say.
Hey it’s no joke, not only did I find 2 Russians this morning in my closet, New Knowledge exposed my cactus as being secretly a Russian bot. They’re everywhere.
99% of what is classified could simultaneously fit in the category of "any idiot who is paying attention knows that." All of this spy crap is designed to conceal how bad they are at their jobs and the bad self-serving stuff they are up to and now we are have a corporate media who considers themselves part of the team. By the standards of today, half the Democratic party of the 80s were Russian (Soviet) assets! Just because you oppose a policy doesn't make you a traitor. Saying Ukraine is Europe's problem doesn't make you Putin's pal. One last thing, I have been meaning to write about redactions and the "sources and methods" cop out. Sources are redacted because they are biased, partisan, crazy, or simply suck. Methods are hidden because they dishonest, entrapping, or illegal probably.
As others below note - how on earth did a 21 year old kid in the MA Air National Guard get these? I mean they were either really not "top secret" or the designation is meaningless.
And how was it the Post and the NYT identified him? I mean what were the FBI, NSA, CIA and 15 other intelligence agencies doing? They didn't notice these months ago? Seriously?
I mean the NSA could pull my info from this comment but those damn Minecraft Discord servers, only the crack team of elite investigators at newspapers probably half written by ChatGPT can find out what’s going on there.
If he is such a low level youngster how did our incompetent government give him access to such "high level" information so he could leak it? If they put this kid in lockup there should be hell to pay. Creepazoid is a perfect description of these boobs.
Why was this stuff classified? Oh, right everything is classified. If there is a chance it could embarrass the Intelligence Industrial Complex, it is classified. Isn't it strange that a 21 year old Air Force Reserve member and defense contractor has this kind of access? Seems odd to me.
More sunshine, not less. More journalism (not MSM journalism, real journalism), not less.
It is amazing how quickly journalists have sunk into this role as propaganda parrots. I wonder if Matt encountered any signals within the Twitter files that reporters have actually been deputized by IC spooks as paid-on-the-side CHS’s and operatives. As newspaper newsrooms were being cut back and financial shortfalls accelerated during my 40 years at major metro dailies, sure, it was obvious conservatives or contrarians that gave the pervasive leftish orthodoxy headaches were the first out the door with their “cardboard coffins.” But the resulting homogeneity cannot totally explain such a willingness to do the IC’s bidding. When I was RIFF’d from the Dallas paper in 2004, those I left behind still maintained an adherence to the “speak truth to power” philosophy. They were definitely lefties, but they had a conscience and considered themselves challengers to government agencies. They were working to get the truth to their readers, albeit their own slanted version. What vexes me about today’s most powerful news outlets is that they willingly spew such uncritical garbage on behalf of their “sources with knowledge of the situation.” It can’t be a coincidence. The key actors must be getting some handsome rewards.
Around the time Trump got elected, a handful of journalists who were quietly infamous within the business for their open editorial devotion to the intelligence services began getting more and more prominent placement by editors. A lot of us noticed, but few said anything. It's always been my belief that you don't need to infiltrate media because existing staffers will do the same work stumping for the intel community for free. But I'm beginning to wonder.
Matt, respect, to you and your wife for how insane you have to be to fly from NJ to Disneyland & then from Cali to Honolulu with 3 kids.
I am west-coast based and the flight from here to Hawaii with a kid, just about kills me. At what point have you or your wife considered taking a sedative or giving them to the kids?
Enjoy the Hawaiian surf. Your kids will love it. I don’t know many who deserve it more than you and your family.
It’ll be V for Vendetta long before any of us hit 30. So it’s as much entertainment as anything else. Yeah we suck. But what the hell kind of world are we living in where Bryce Young could go 1st overall? Even Orwell didn’t see that coming
IIRC, in Philly the Bulletin and Inquirer had a preponderance of good-government lefty types. If you loved Nixon and Rizzo their work might drive you crazy, (and so you went to the Daily Times) but it wasn't simply regurgitated narrative and received opinion from somewhere else. And clamping down on "dangerous" speech. Not in the lexicon. No op-eds praising how censoring dissenting voices saves democracy etc.
Something has changed. The canary in the coal mine was the First Gulf War. No more Vietnams. They were going to control shit out of the narrative and if you weren't going to send in the xerox, you were going to get frozen out of access.
Of course, what is happening today makes the First Gulf War speech culture look like open mic night at the Quaker meeting. I liken today's government-media complex with how the Mob (of blessed memory) used to function. Evey level had a different access to the information, every level had a different financial incentive, and every level had controls. A mob boss knew everything- the good, the bad the ugly. The Capos knew some and kept the underlings in line. The soldiers did their job for money and advancement. And the unmobbed up locals simply believed that Mr. Bruno was a wonderful man. Christmas baskets and all that.
So perhaps. The highest media execs are in on it. They are in touch with the Alphabet agencies all the time. They know what needs to be said and pass it down to the Capos (producers, editors etc.) who makes sure the reporters and writers present in the instructed flavor. And those people just regurgitate the narrative bullshit.
And your average voter, who self identifies as enlightened, believes it all. I have an ivy league educated writer father who absolutely believes that President Biden has all of his cognitive faculties. That only a Trumpian lie would suggest otherwise.
As for media. If it ever existed, gone are the days of Howard Beale: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
An Onion headline some years ago plots precisely where we are : "Local anchor happy as hell! Going to take it for a long, long time." To whit, today's media will say and report on and convince themselves of anything, if it keeps them employed and un-alienated from their social circle. They are the soldiers and they will simply do as they are told.
Sorry, but I do not believe newsroom denizens are simply taking orders. Up until Trump there was at least an attempt at fairness. At the Dallas paper we entered the building every day under a massive stone carving that echoed the founders: “Build the news on the rock of truth.” The more jaded of us used to add, “Doo dah, Doo dah.” Yet our silly cynicism didn’t alter the way we pursued truth in our daily efforts.
We weren’t allowed to use unnamed sources unless approved by the exec editor. And we needed three sources to even get an appointment to discuss. Government sources were generally not prevalent in our final products, and never presented without countervailing opinions that offered a semblance of fairness and balance.
These days I don’t recognize the construction of the most headline-grabbing “scoops”in the Wapo or NYT. I worked with some of the NYT reporters who boosted the Steele dossier crap. They refuse to even informally discuss their processes. It appears they are proud to be willing accomplices with operatives like Fusion GPS and agents of the IC in producing endless waves of bogus anti-Trump BS.
Let’s just say many seem to be living beyond their journo means.
When friends stop yacking about how they got their super scoops, something is horribly wrong. It must be money.
Well, I believe you are correct that it isn't always simple order taking. In fact, in most cases it is not. But I also believe there are some hot button issues where a robust presentation of the existing "company" narrative is absolutely required if the journo wants their words to see the light of day.
Control comes in different shapes and sizes, from direct orders, to indirect allusions, to general approved collegial group think, to a climate of fear around issues that may lead to social or career ostracism. And what form control takes can vary from issue to issue.
Haven't seen local tv news in well over a decade, but last summer or fall while in the gym I saw a local news broadcast segment covering an anti-lockdown protest at the state house. As far as I could tell, the protest was quite modest, both in size and message. A bit of a sad affair really. Several of the participants were interviewed. They doubted the efficacy of masks, boosters etc. After every interview, the reporter would turn and face the camera and state, "Of course this is just misinformation. If you want real information go to cdc.gov etc etc." I actually found this fascinating in a way. They didn't interview someone with a competing viewpoint in studio or some other technique to balance the conversation. They simply declared statements as false. It happened with the anchors as well, when they wrapped up the segment. Pretty much the same disclaimers verbatim. It became quite clear they weren't speaking because the Holy Spirit struck them, but rather because they were required to say this.
Different from print journalism to be sure. but I would posit that for a year, in a metro daily, if you did not cover the Hunter Biden laptop story without robustly implying that it was all probably just Russian disinformation, your article would be transmogrified in re-write. The journalist might not have gotten explicit orders. The re-write guy sure did.
And I absolutely agree. There is a lot of money in the pipeline. And that money ain't going to people who are balanced. Often people who are suspicious of media accuse them of "being sensationalist to sell papers." A hoary shibboleth that held some truth decades ago and i wouldn't entirely discount today. But maybe the big money doesn't come in selling news to the people, but in selling narratives for someone else.
Philosophical and political diversity of newsroom thought has been dwindling quickly from top to bottom, regardless of any available financial temptations. But we have also witnessed a complete personality change with modern newsroom denizens. It’s like they have been assigned to specific comms channels by the government. The CIA leaks go here with Joe, the FBI is assigned to Maggie over there.
If the IC was paying Twitter millions to censor conservatives, its agents had plenty to spend on the poorly paid US news crews needed to keep the narrative aligned and pure top-to-bottom. That’s why you can’t recognize the construction of today’s “scoops.” Most often they include unattributed boilerplate language that is demonstrably false. And it’s just flatly declared as if they own the truth and you don’t even get to argue. “Take that stuff down the hall to our moderated article comments section and shut up.”
As Greenwald pointed out today, “[N]ow -- in a new and genuinely shocking escalation -- it is the largest media corporations themselves, such as the Times and the Post, that actually do the FBI's work by hunting down the leaker, exposing him, and ensuring his arrest.”
This is warped beyond anything I have ever seen in journalism, and it is terrifying.
Question of degree. He was never the sharpest guy. But his gravy train began day one. I mean, he's from Scranton, PA, and he ends up in Delaware, the state where credit card companies and so many businesses are incorporated? His most reliable donors. He's the C student who's learned to mimic the smart guys. He's a thief. He shamelessly steals ideas, rhetoric, even other people's biographies. Once he became Veep, the rest of the country started paying more attention to him. Remember the comment of former Sec Def Bob Gates in 2014: "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
The key point for me is that the media are more interested in the supposed leaker's background than in the substance of the messages our government was sharing internally.
I ventured into the comments section of a couple NYT and WaPo articles today. They were rife with claims that the leaker is part of "the MAGA crowd," and they're basing that assumption on the fact that the leaker likes video games, guns, and "indecent humor."
It's always good to have a bogeyman to shift the narrative.
The left wants to criminalize conservatism and libertarianism.
I don't know who ELSE needs to hear this, but the Democrats are not the fucking left.I know, because endless warmongering, crony capitalism, open borders (globalists' wet dream), censorship, propaganda, and rigged elections are not leftist. And I know that because I'm a leftist.
Real lefties always quibble with this shorthand, but there needs to be a name for the collective that includes the democrats, feminists, LBGTQ activists, environmentalists, identity politics types, the MSM, academia, the administrative state, madison avenue, hollywood, corporate hr and pr departments etc.
The Borg needs a name, and it is called the left.
I do hear what you're saying - I grew up in the 60s, where we had anti-war protests, loved people, hated the government, deeply wanted freedom to say/do/sing/smoke whatever we wanted (as long as it didn't directly injure someone else.) That was the "left".
The free love kids of the 60s would never believe that their generation (and following ones) would turn into these twisted, obsequious apologists for draconian force. These brainless sheep that subsume their will underneath the dictums of a censorship industrial complex - a dark warmongering partnership between massive corporations and the voracious "security state." Surveilling their friends, reporting them to the authorities for stepping out of line.
I'd agree that the Democratic party bears ZERO resemblance to those idealistic (if unrealistic) young people. What I don't know, is how many of those leftists are left? Has the idea of "the left" just lost all meaning?
(And yes, similar arguments can be made for the right.)
angelO - Do you see yourself as a "democrat"? I have started feeling there's something hollow in being labelled as dem or republican? Both are now loaded up with stereotypical positions that most people don't really have, we just profess them because we want a flag to fly. You present an excellent point that the weirdness is the frequency with which they overlap across the parties.
Meanwhile we're fed issues like transgender by Fox/Reps and CNN/Dems. Yeah, we don't want to be bullies to people that are different to us. Yeah we don't want 6'8 testosterone loaded girls winning the fem Olympic 100m. But it's just incendiary trouble making on both sides. Just a false-flag distraction from more world-scale bad-opinions that both sides share.
There is no "left" or "right" only the Constitution and the citizen willing to defend it. Weaponized division by race, class, political ideology, disinformation, fear and propaganda in support of a class/culture war managed by unelected Federal official's in service to corrupt elite capital are working to supersede (soft coup) the Constitution, wipe out the American middle class, and install a world wide fascist totalitarian state. Corrupt element's primarily in the DNC but also within the Republican Party are perpetrating the travesty.
Recent RACKET NEWS/Taibbi articles, report's by TABLET'S Jacob Siegel, report's by the journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon, and Glenn Greenwald at SYSTEM UPDATE, confirm this.
Again: WE are living through a last ditch attempt by a venal and avaricious political/financial elite to maintain power after the sudden jump in tech and communication made their grift transparent to reality. Hence the assault on free speech and truth/fact based journalism, the object lesson imprisonment of whistle blowers, attempts to neutralize and control free speech platform's and the creation of a propagandist psyop to prevent and destroy all attempt's at the creation of the healthy American national dialogue that would put solutions to our problem's on the table. You are being looted. NO ONE argue's that the greatest upward transfer of wealth in the history of the world is underway. It's not something else.
All that matters is the survival of the Republic and the Constitution.
What about: uniparty authoritarian, coined by Matt, a couple of posts ago?
Cool. I believe you. Now as a public service make a similar list of where you lefties are different. Not being a wise guy. I'd sincerely like a lesson.
Well, they certainly enjoy whoring out to the left: defund the police, antifa isn't a real "group", pro bono for the Gitmo detainees but cheer trespassers escorted through the Capitol getting no due process, we support "gender affirming care" for 5 yr olds w/o parental consent, we screamed for Title IX until it threatened 6'4" transwoman's "journey"....if you don't use approved pronouns we will ruin you (along with the DOD recruiting and Anheuser Bush.)
The “left”-however it defines itself-needs to figure out a way to psychically separate themselves from the D tent. People can squawk about the GOP all they want-but the party has legitimate infighting and debate-to a severe degree. There is a reason why there isn’t an equivalent D perjorative term like RINO. And yes, I know that most American “socialists” don’t want socialism, they want a woke unicorn fart welfare state where all physical tasks are somehow accomplished by Twitter and TikToking as opposed to, you know, actual work.
Suck it up. Now you know how libertarians felt when the left co-opted the word "liberal". The clowns who support open borders, censorship, and rigged elections call themselves leftists. Complain to them, not to those among their opponents who nevertheless oblige them in their preference.
True. But why don't you real Democrats at least attempt to seize control of the machinery from the gatekeepers? Surely you must outnumber them.
They left you.
Thank you for setting that straight. The term left is so misused now but the meaning of a lot of terms are being misused. It is aggravating.
I don't think labels are useful anymore, because they've just become another football in the whole propaganda program.
Well, they are certainly not Right of Center.
Keep telling yourself that, comrade.
Neoliberals is more accurate.
(Sigh) - they are liberals, not the left. Actual lefties' priorities are with class issues. These pieces of excrement are neoliberal warmongers.
Well, I suppose this means the Supreme Court leaker wasn’t conservative.
The lack of intellectual curiosity in the media and government over who it was says everything.
This isn't 'left'...its corporate power over everything else.
AKA fascism. But I would argue it's more accurately the Elites vs the rest of us.
There is no Left. It’s Wrestling. Blue Trunks Vs Red Trunks meeting back in the dressing room to get paid along with the next script.
They want to criminalize Liberalism as well. The left pushed out past Liberalsim a few years ago. We Liberals are now independents, or perhaps even conservatives in today's world.
The left should just criminalize stupidity---that would cover both categories not to mention a few others.
The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so
Oh please. No ideology has had more sunshine blown up its ass than the liberal / left. You have the mainstream media, hollywood, madison avenue etc validating your worldview 24/7/365.
The left never passes up an opportunity to project. Alinski protocol.
THE DEMOCRATS ARE NOT THE LEFT. They hate the left more than they do the right. And if you don't believe me, compare their treatment of George W. Bush with that of Bernie Sanders and his supporters. As far as the Dems are concerned, Berniecrats were MAGA before there even was a MAGA.
As an ex-Dem, they are the left in American politics.
Trying to call them anything else is a fools errand.
Let's not argue about semantics. Your definition is just as correct as anyone else's. Let's call them the "Ruling Party" as the late, great Angelo Codevilla called them.
Is GWB (and all the RINOs) really part of the right?
Right on! Exactly
Please keep the distinction between liberals and the Left clear. They are not the same.
LOL! Gotta watch that “ indecent humor.” 🤦♀️🤦♀️ The kid is 21, his brain is not fully formed!
Let's start asking these folks to join the PEN 15 club. They'll never catch on.
Include me! I’ll look it up!
And they couldn’t wait to paint this kid as a “raycisssst.”
You know... have any any recent mass shooters been slandered as gamers?
Perhaps the sheep miss an old favorite slur.
Gamers!? Jumping Jehoshaphat, you mean they're back to playing those accursed "murder simulators" that Jack Thompson warned me about!?!
After creating Spacewar!, the world's first computer game, Cain murdered Abel.
And not only a Catholic but a “devout Catholic”. And the walls empty of their woodworm-bigots in the comment section.
I'm thinking I just might join the MAGA crowd. If tptb are that frightened, I think that Trump might be the only candidate I will support.
RFK Jr is who I'm backing. But if they manage to keep him out, and the Dems are just the assholes to do it, then yeah, MAGA all the way. Anyone who has their sights set on the deep state/IC as the most present danger to our tattered republic at least has the right focus.
"their sights set on the deep state/IC as the most present danger" - you do realize that part is a scam, right? How much did Trump actually do?
Any genuinely funny humor is "indecent" to this clownworld regime and their NPC bootlickers. "Hey, they're laughing at how absurd we are; they must be part of that crowd that wants to make America great again!"
If they start to try convincing people that gamers are dangerous, in 2023 that's going to be as easy as trying to convince people that coffee drinkers are dangerous. So I hope they do try that so that everyone will see how full of shit they are.
The NYT began managing or "curating" the approved comments back when the local organizer of MomsDemandAction was the assistant to the NYTs own gunblog.
She later went to work for Bloombergs Trace.
The fish in that goldfish bowl ...
Along with most other young people in the armed forces.
Indeed. What normal 20-year-old is interested in such things? 🙄
There goes that “toxic masculinity”! And they wonder why they have difficulty recruiting.
Smh
The left never passes up an opportunity to otherize its ideological opponents.
Gosh I hope the right never does that!
Gee golly never would they ever.*
*unless they happen to be the ones in power
They perfected it. Imitation is the sincerest form expressing incompetence
If your post was satire, I apologize in advance for stealing your joke and repeating it back to you but...
"The out-group never passes up an opportunity to otherize its ideological opponents."
That's genius level satire and a wonderful example of the idea that all group identity is intellectual and moral suicide.
If it wasn't satire, then your subconscious mind is screaming at you, you might want to listen.
You think the group that controls the mainstream media, hollywood, corporate HR and PR departments, K-12 education, Madison Avenue, the Administrative State, and the NGOs is the out group?
The in-group/out-group distinction doesn't define who has power, it just has to do with who you consider your in-group and who you consider the out-group. Although it is a very common in-group belief that the out-group has all the power. We love seeing ourselves as rebels and scrappy underdogs.
So a person who self identified as a democrat might see the the out-group as people who identify as republicans, and I don't want to put words in your mouth but it sounds like you consider the "left" (however you want to define that word) as the out-group.
You don't have to play the in-group/out-group game, I would recommend against it because all group identity is intellectual and moral suicide.
So in this case my post was pointing out that you are "otherizing" the "left" in a statement condemning the left for otherizing. It's not only funny but blissfully unaware.
All group identity is intellectual and moral suicide.
Don't you remember when the media fixated on Deep Throat and ignored Watergate entirely?
Of course! They're attack dogs, not journalists.
Like the censorship industrial complex ignoring everything Matt/ Michael presented. Yep, ugly real fast.
Same with Hunter Biden laptop. When do we learn what was on that thing? Or is it enough to know it was real and not a Russian plant?
Nashville manifesto?
Jan 5 pipe bomb, leaked Dobbs decision, sabotaged Russian pipeline - Clapper lied, Comey leaked, the whole damn gov lied about The Russia hoax, (and still is), in one day, we bombed the peeps who killed our 15 servicemen in Afghanistan, so many times our gov has outright lied to us about Afghanistan and every other lie they still tell. They were caught in several lies with this last leak, and are still lying about it.
“ gun enthusiast”... and there ya have it.
Exactly - we have troops on the ground in Ukraine and the big story is about the leaker.
It’s like Matt and the Twitter files - confirmed intervention of the government to suppress free speech and the media response is to demonize Matt.
we do? I must have missed that part
As Matt has so ably documented, the media class has stopped seeing itself as a watchdog and is now a guard-dog for the MIC.
It always has some with that tendency, but now it is rampant.
The key point for me is that quite obviously Teixeira seems to be a young moron willing to wreck his life in order to simply look cool to his chat friends - if he even understood the risks he was taking, which is doubtful. He clearly didn’t do it as a political statement/whistleblowing (or else the documents wouldn’t have languished on an obscure gaming venue), but it’s a sign of America’s degenerescence that each “side” paints him in ideological colors. The woke establishment wants him to be at least MAGA-adjacent, while the isolationist right plus old-fashioned anti-American left (such as Taibbi) quickly embraces him as a champion of “freedom” and promotes him to “whistleblower”. Equal indifference to facts and willingness to spin it in their own narrative. Pretty disgusting.
Where are you gleaning all your info about the motives of the leaker? MSM? Only a fool would believe what they are telling you.
If you’re taking the nihilistic view that 100% of what ALL the MSM (including for instance WSJ) says it’s all lies, then how do you even know that a data leak has happened, that somebody has been arrested and who that is? You’ve really heard about it from the MSM!
For those of us who can still add 2+2, how the classified material was leaked says everything. If it was a spy, we would have never heard of it. If it was a Snowden, it would have blasted from Wikileaks or somebody like Glenn Greenwald. Instead, it was a dumbass who included in the pictures details from his home and posted the result on a game chat.
Yup. One thing that dismays as I get older is the unwillingness of either side-woke/corporatist, MAGA-whatever-is a blanket refusal to acknowledge that sheer idiocy can and does exist outside of an ideological vacuum, and just b/c someone parrots the same talking points as you doesn’t mean they aren’t also a flaming moron.
There were documents in that release that are simply not available outside a skif. This is a delibrate "leak" from within Government, the rest a cartoon level cover story.
This is to ensure the proper political orientation is demonized. He'd better be a "far-right extremist radicalized by hate speech." This is the rationalization for the Digital Panopticon all these power-mad bureaucrats and their pimps in the press are drooling over.
As usual. The narrative usurps reality. This is how its done. We know this, have known this forever. At this moment, tho, the intense, disorienting, and psychotic jockeying for power is just a tad concerning.
The way I see it how did he get a clearance, who gave him the clearance and why didn’t they catch it before he posted it on social media? It’s a leadership problem. Heads need to roll
Of course that’s what they were ordered to do.
Minitrue does what the Party says. 🥳
Exactly
This sharing practice allows over 1.3 million access to secret docs and that’s the issue
This is clearly a false flag kind of thing. They’re going to rake this low level kid over the coals - a shiny object, look over there moment. Like a 21 year old reservist would have access to that level of intel - and if he did - the military is dumber than it already looks. They already failed with the Streisand Effect, so they’re moving to phase 2/3. “He’s definitely a Russian Asset”, rinse and repeat. Ask Ed Snowden how the process works. They can’t stand being exposed, but they revile the embarrassment.
All the earmarks of psyops diversion.
You are absolutely right. There's no way this kid would have the necessary security clearance to access this information. Andrew Napolitano has interviewed several people who DO have such clearance and have years of experience with military intelligence and all say this story is as fishy as they come.
How old were Chelsea Manning and Reality Winner?
Alphabet Ed: Hey kids, hold this bag while I wander off.
He's an IT weenie, he'd totally have access. And I haven't seen anyone calling him a Russian asset, he's a moron who leaked classified documents (which have nothing that Russia, for example, doesn't already know) for discord cred, and that's how he's being portrayed. Not a reason to crack down on either discord generally or being a moron generally, although he's totally arrestable.
This entire episode occurred because people who have access to sensitive documents are about as dumb as the general populace, and the general populace is really remarkably dumb. See also the entire cold war, or like basically every episode involving intelligence or counterintelligence in the last 120 years. It's all Spy vs. Spy stuff only in real life, idiots slipping castro exploding cigars or putting soviet moles in charge of hunting down soviet moles. No one in the world is good at this.
Marcus Wolfe was….
Proof positive the smartest people do the dumbest damn things.
Yes. I've seen this in people recovering from alcoholism. The smart ones always need the most help.
no disagreement except one. They are dumber than they look.
Bingo
lol, what exactly is a "false flag kind of thing"?
You're clearly making a wild assumption based on very little information.
"They can’t stand being exposed, but they revile the embarrassment."
Wait, so... are you saying it's a false flag, or a legit leak? If the government did this on purpose, why would they be desperately trying to squash or discredit it? For that matter, why would they include damning info like details of the US spying on its allies?
Can a human being really be dumb enough to write such an incoherent, self-contradictory screed?
(and, btw, the military is not great at data security. this is a well-known thing)
I’m not going to try to attempt to explain anything to a boot-licking imbecile who can’t be bothered to do the elementary book report level of reading/research on a given topic; and relies on ad hominem attacks. You’d rather toast the method of discovery vs. the underlying information and it’s ramifications. I’m jut a subhuman AI bot tho - Beep bop beep beep boop. But let me take a guess at your current status: you’re in the process of “transitioning”, but the docs can’t quite get the mix of HRT hormones “just right” in order for you to be a functioning member of society. I’d wager my diagnosis is pretty close if not exact.
Do we think this is the sort of discussion Matt wishes to encourage here?
To Mr. Taibbi's credit he does not share his "wishes," hopes, dreams or desires, if he has any of them, regarding his comment section and what is said and not said by his subscribers.
I mean, you know I'm not reading anything past "boot-licking imbecile", right?
I bet your asshole smells better than your dick, incel loser.
Your mind went directly the anal region - see, I knew I could diagnose your mentally disordered state in the 30 seconds it took to type out the previous response. Sincerely - the incel loser responding from your mother’s bedroom.
You are confusing the elected government with the intelligence beaucrats who don't need to be elected.
Why do coherence when you can do the equivalent of a double negative with a conspiracy theory.
Why did this low level guy even have access to these documents? Seems like he might have been set up and someone higher up wanted these docs leaked.
Bingo! When something needs done like a leak every agency has their particular paper of record. The Washington Post is CIA/NSA. The U.S. government with all their surveillance couldn't find the leaker. But some journalists found him on a gaming site.
His friend came forward, after he said good bye.
Ya think!
Ooooh, interesting!! That actually makes sense... take advantage of a 21 year old male . Sad.
I have to agree. He's a fall-guy. A 21-year-old "cyber transport systems journeyman" working for the Air National Guard has access to this level of intelligence? How? The operating principle for intelligence operations is that people have only as much access as they need to do their jobs. Why would a junior Air National Guard enlisted person have this kind of access? If he was able to legitimately access this stuff on his own, US intelligence is totally broken. Remember: the simplest explanation is usually correct.
Can you say pawn?
Note to Jack Texiera: now is the time to tell the world you want to transition (I’d go with to female if I were in your shoes) it won’t help your sentence much but it will get the press off your back while your kangaroo show trial proceeds.
Get an attorney
I will laugh my ass off if they try to destroy internet privacy because DISCORD, of all things.
Everything you ever do or say on Discord is saved on their servers, forever. Discord has a soft requirement for a phone number to get an account (sometimes, it's weird). Discord has an activist mod team with a strong leftist bias. Discord does process spying, which is how it knows what game you're playing.
Discord is one of the least secure, leakiest, most easily surveilled forms of communication to ever exist. Exactly zero needs to be done for the government to spy on it as is. If anyone says otherwise, they're lying.
Yep discord is fully onboard with nanny state ideals. It’s funny to hear experts talk about how dangerous it is. In reality any time humans communicate it’s “dangerous” based on these experts.
I honestly think if these people were around during the revolution most of them would have been anti the right of free assembly. Maybe even no talking allowed outside government post messages. It is bizarrely Orwellian, just because you can eavesdrop on huge swaths of human communication due to technology doesn’t mean you should.
They would have been Torries enforcing the King's writ.
Indeed.
Yeah I wouldn’t leak my barbecue sauce recipe on Discord, yeah with enough cross referencing from other platforms you can figure out who I am but anyone who knows even a modicum of cybersecurity knows to not leak things on damn Discord, unless he bought a prepaid card in cash in one state before buying a prepaid phone in another state to setup the account.
I don’t like to tinfoil hat things but, a bit odd.
Holy shit ok I had not seen the reports about American troops in Ukraine being part of the leaks.
Teixeira, if what is been said is true here, thank you.
But Mincraft is still a stupid game.
I like the fact that they'll use their own incompetence (letting a low level person walk off base with this classified information) as an excuse to try and enact tyrannical policies on the people. It's like your parent screws up and you get punished. Brilliant. I wouldn't expect anything less out of these clowns.
On another note, I write all sorts of zany commentary about our strange society on my Substack, for those who enjoy a bit of outlandish but fun writing.
https://theunhedgedcapitalist.substack.com/p/exception-making
The other night on Rumble, Glenn Greenwald went through this. It sounds fishy as hell. Given that people are referring to the "RESTRICT Act" as Patriot Act 2.0, I'm having trouble believing this is legit and isn't a set up to, once again stampede the livestock. (And we all knew Ukraine was losing. That's not exactly a revelation.)
We knew, but it was news to The Herd.
It covers two pieces of ground valuable to the IC; Biden and his admin are idiots and unfettered communication is a source of pushback against the IC. This works on both fronts to further the goals of this group. Like you say, Ukraine is losing and everyone knows it, even if they wont admit it. This helps clear the way for other things.
Whenever a leaker perfectly fits the bogey man profile of the people in charge, you can bet it is BS, and he is at best a cut-out for the real leaker.
You know the kid had a handler playing him up to do this. They know the process well, and use it over and over again to create fall-guys to accomplish their dirty work. The better question is "why was THIS information leaked?" Watch what they DO, not what they say.
Another better question: why has the populace been lied to?
Because they can be lied to.
When I returned home today, my dogs informed me that the russians took a shit in the hallway.
I had some bumper stickers printed up;
I used to blame everything on the cat,
but now I know it's the Russians.
Hey it’s no joke, not only did I find 2 Russians this morning in my closet, New Knowledge exposed my cactus as being secretly a Russian bot. They’re everywhere.
Thank you for the best laugh I’ve had in years....my wife is totally annoyed.
99% of what is classified could simultaneously fit in the category of "any idiot who is paying attention knows that." All of this spy crap is designed to conceal how bad they are at their jobs and the bad self-serving stuff they are up to and now we are have a corporate media who considers themselves part of the team. By the standards of today, half the Democratic party of the 80s were Russian (Soviet) assets! Just because you oppose a policy doesn't make you a traitor. Saying Ukraine is Europe's problem doesn't make you Putin's pal. One last thing, I have been meaning to write about redactions and the "sources and methods" cop out. Sources are redacted because they are biased, partisan, crazy, or simply suck. Methods are hidden because they dishonest, entrapping, or illegal probably.
As others below note - how on earth did a 21 year old kid in the MA Air National Guard get these? I mean they were either really not "top secret" or the designation is meaningless.
And how was it the Post and the NYT identified him? I mean what were the FBI, NSA, CIA and 15 other intelligence agencies doing? They didn't notice these months ago? Seriously?
I mean the NSA could pull my info from this comment but those damn Minecraft Discord servers, only the crack team of elite investigators at newspapers probably half written by ChatGPT can find out what’s going on there.
Totally legit.
Probably reading the Twitter Files while wondering what to do
If he is such a low level youngster how did our incompetent government give him access to such "high level" information so he could leak it? If they put this kid in lockup there should be hell to pay. Creepazoid is a perfect description of these boobs.
Agree, but spoiler alert: There will be no hell to pay. Not even a lick of hell.
Don't worry, Matt, we're gonna get that Supreme Court Leaker any day now!
I was thinking the same.
Why was this stuff classified? Oh, right everything is classified. If there is a chance it could embarrass the Intelligence Industrial Complex, it is classified. Isn't it strange that a 21 year old Air Force Reserve member and defense contractor has this kind of access? Seems odd to me.
More sunshine, not less. More journalism (not MSM journalism, real journalism), not less.
It is amazing how quickly journalists have sunk into this role as propaganda parrots. I wonder if Matt encountered any signals within the Twitter files that reporters have actually been deputized by IC spooks as paid-on-the-side CHS’s and operatives. As newspaper newsrooms were being cut back and financial shortfalls accelerated during my 40 years at major metro dailies, sure, it was obvious conservatives or contrarians that gave the pervasive leftish orthodoxy headaches were the first out the door with their “cardboard coffins.” But the resulting homogeneity cannot totally explain such a willingness to do the IC’s bidding. When I was RIFF’d from the Dallas paper in 2004, those I left behind still maintained an adherence to the “speak truth to power” philosophy. They were definitely lefties, but they had a conscience and considered themselves challengers to government agencies. They were working to get the truth to their readers, albeit their own slanted version. What vexes me about today’s most powerful news outlets is that they willingly spew such uncritical garbage on behalf of their “sources with knowledge of the situation.” It can’t be a coincidence. The key actors must be getting some handsome rewards.
Around the time Trump got elected, a handful of journalists who were quietly infamous within the business for their open editorial devotion to the intelligence services began getting more and more prominent placement by editors. A lot of us noticed, but few said anything. It's always been my belief that you don't need to infiltrate media because existing staffers will do the same work stumping for the intel community for free. But I'm beginning to wonder.
I’m about to sound like the biggest nerd in the world but...
Some friends and I got really interested in Twitter Files because this is ALL new to us.
We’ve really gotten into the 2016 election.
We started making a spreadsheet of what certain reporters’ “jobs” were and what phrases gave them away.
Kinda like how 3 Pinocchios always means it’s true.
That's really interesting. Can you tell me more? Maybe at taibbi@substack.com?
Definitely. I’ll hit you in about 10 if that’s cool. I’m icing my knee and typing over my shoulder sucks
Sorry but have to ask who was on your list?
Matt, respect, to you and your wife for how insane you have to be to fly from NJ to Disneyland & then from Cali to Honolulu with 3 kids.
I am west-coast based and the flight from here to Hawaii with a kid, just about kills me. At what point have you or your wife considered taking a sedative or giving them to the kids?
Enjoy the Hawaiian surf. Your kids will love it. I don’t know many who deserve it more than you and your family.
It’ll be V for Vendetta long before any of us hit 30. So it’s as much entertainment as anything else. Yeah we suck. But what the hell kind of world are we living in where Bryce Young could go 1st overall? Even Orwell didn’t see that coming
Adam Goldman, Natasha something - she’s 2020 but she’s on fire. SO bad XD
Keep in mind the banks own both politicians and the media.
"Follow the money."
The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth.
When the medium enabling markets is privately held, we are all tenant farmers to the banks.
IIRC, in Philly the Bulletin and Inquirer had a preponderance of good-government lefty types. If you loved Nixon and Rizzo their work might drive you crazy, (and so you went to the Daily Times) but it wasn't simply regurgitated narrative and received opinion from somewhere else. And clamping down on "dangerous" speech. Not in the lexicon. No op-eds praising how censoring dissenting voices saves democracy etc.
Something has changed. The canary in the coal mine was the First Gulf War. No more Vietnams. They were going to control shit out of the narrative and if you weren't going to send in the xerox, you were going to get frozen out of access.
Of course, what is happening today makes the First Gulf War speech culture look like open mic night at the Quaker meeting. I liken today's government-media complex with how the Mob (of blessed memory) used to function. Evey level had a different access to the information, every level had a different financial incentive, and every level had controls. A mob boss knew everything- the good, the bad the ugly. The Capos knew some and kept the underlings in line. The soldiers did their job for money and advancement. And the unmobbed up locals simply believed that Mr. Bruno was a wonderful man. Christmas baskets and all that.
So perhaps. The highest media execs are in on it. They are in touch with the Alphabet agencies all the time. They know what needs to be said and pass it down to the Capos (producers, editors etc.) who makes sure the reporters and writers present in the instructed flavor. And those people just regurgitate the narrative bullshit.
And your average voter, who self identifies as enlightened, believes it all. I have an ivy league educated writer father who absolutely believes that President Biden has all of his cognitive faculties. That only a Trumpian lie would suggest otherwise.
As for media. If it ever existed, gone are the days of Howard Beale: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
An Onion headline some years ago plots precisely where we are : "Local anchor happy as hell! Going to take it for a long, long time." To whit, today's media will say and report on and convince themselves of anything, if it keeps them employed and un-alienated from their social circle. They are the soldiers and they will simply do as they are told.
Sorry, but I do not believe newsroom denizens are simply taking orders. Up until Trump there was at least an attempt at fairness. At the Dallas paper we entered the building every day under a massive stone carving that echoed the founders: “Build the news on the rock of truth.” The more jaded of us used to add, “Doo dah, Doo dah.” Yet our silly cynicism didn’t alter the way we pursued truth in our daily efforts.
We weren’t allowed to use unnamed sources unless approved by the exec editor. And we needed three sources to even get an appointment to discuss. Government sources were generally not prevalent in our final products, and never presented without countervailing opinions that offered a semblance of fairness and balance.
These days I don’t recognize the construction of the most headline-grabbing “scoops”in the Wapo or NYT. I worked with some of the NYT reporters who boosted the Steele dossier crap. They refuse to even informally discuss their processes. It appears they are proud to be willing accomplices with operatives like Fusion GPS and agents of the IC in producing endless waves of bogus anti-Trump BS.
Let’s just say many seem to be living beyond their journo means.
When friends stop yacking about how they got their super scoops, something is horribly wrong. It must be money.
It has to be.
Well, I believe you are correct that it isn't always simple order taking. In fact, in most cases it is not. But I also believe there are some hot button issues where a robust presentation of the existing "company" narrative is absolutely required if the journo wants their words to see the light of day.
Control comes in different shapes and sizes, from direct orders, to indirect allusions, to general approved collegial group think, to a climate of fear around issues that may lead to social or career ostracism. And what form control takes can vary from issue to issue.
Haven't seen local tv news in well over a decade, but last summer or fall while in the gym I saw a local news broadcast segment covering an anti-lockdown protest at the state house. As far as I could tell, the protest was quite modest, both in size and message. A bit of a sad affair really. Several of the participants were interviewed. They doubted the efficacy of masks, boosters etc. After every interview, the reporter would turn and face the camera and state, "Of course this is just misinformation. If you want real information go to cdc.gov etc etc." I actually found this fascinating in a way. They didn't interview someone with a competing viewpoint in studio or some other technique to balance the conversation. They simply declared statements as false. It happened with the anchors as well, when they wrapped up the segment. Pretty much the same disclaimers verbatim. It became quite clear they weren't speaking because the Holy Spirit struck them, but rather because they were required to say this.
Different from print journalism to be sure. but I would posit that for a year, in a metro daily, if you did not cover the Hunter Biden laptop story without robustly implying that it was all probably just Russian disinformation, your article would be transmogrified in re-write. The journalist might not have gotten explicit orders. The re-write guy sure did.
And I absolutely agree. There is a lot of money in the pipeline. And that money ain't going to people who are balanced. Often people who are suspicious of media accuse them of "being sensationalist to sell papers." A hoary shibboleth that held some truth decades ago and i wouldn't entirely discount today. But maybe the big money doesn't come in selling news to the people, but in selling narratives for someone else.
Great points all.
Philosophical and political diversity of newsroom thought has been dwindling quickly from top to bottom, regardless of any available financial temptations. But we have also witnessed a complete personality change with modern newsroom denizens. It’s like they have been assigned to specific comms channels by the government. The CIA leaks go here with Joe, the FBI is assigned to Maggie over there.
If the IC was paying Twitter millions to censor conservatives, its agents had plenty to spend on the poorly paid US news crews needed to keep the narrative aligned and pure top-to-bottom. That’s why you can’t recognize the construction of today’s “scoops.” Most often they include unattributed boilerplate language that is demonstrably false. And it’s just flatly declared as if they own the truth and you don’t even get to argue. “Take that stuff down the hall to our moderated article comments section and shut up.”
As Greenwald pointed out today, “[N]ow -- in a new and genuinely shocking escalation -- it is the largest media corporations themselves, such as the Times and the Post, that actually do the FBI's work by hunting down the leaker, exposing him, and ensuring his arrest.”
This is warped beyond anything I have ever seen in journalism, and it is terrifying.
Is it possible that Biden has the same cognitive capabilities that he has alway had, it is just he never had many to begin with?
Question of degree. He was never the sharpest guy. But his gravy train began day one. I mean, he's from Scranton, PA, and he ends up in Delaware, the state where credit card companies and so many businesses are incorporated? His most reliable donors. He's the C student who's learned to mimic the smart guys. He's a thief. He shamelessly steals ideas, rhetoric, even other people's biographies. Once he became Veep, the rest of the country started paying more attention to him. Remember the comment of former Sec Def Bob Gates in 2014: "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”