Your point about the Democratic Party-aligned media 'juicing' Trump stories is spot on. Coming from the left, for quite a while I'd take them at their word whenever they'd summarized something Trump said. Then one day I actually watched one of the referenced clips in full and found that he hadn't said any of the things they said at all, they'd somehow projected or imagined that he had said something worse and attributed it to him. Since then, I've made a point of actually watching important clips all the way through, and frequently they don't line up with the juiced narratives that are being pushed.
For example, the hullabaloo over him telling the Proud Boys to 'stand by'. In the full exchange (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZk6VzSLe4Y) he's clearly denouncing them, but people seized on his awkward phrasing to make it sound like he wanted them to attack or something. (Katy Halper even repeated this during a Useful Idiots episode!)
To be clear, i think Trump is a dimwit and don't agree with him on a million things, but pretending he's some Grand Dragon Machiavellian Puppetmaster totally misses the point. Trump blurted out plenty of things that were disqualifying and frightening, you don't need to invent stuff. There are many more examples of this. My trust in most media has absolutely plummeted this year.
Biden said his whole campaign was based on running against Trump's "good people on both sides" comment. The biggest lie of them all...but at this point most people believe he was calling Nazi's good people.
Yes! Everyone remembers this sentence being repeated ad infinitum (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmaZR8E12bs&t=1m3s - starting at 1:03), but no one remembers that after finishing that thought, he loops back around to clarify ~20 seconds later: "...and I'm not talking about neo-nazis or white nationalists, they should be condemned totally." (1:57 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmaZR8E12bs&t=1m57s)
These fuckers are making me defend Donald Trump of all people, geez.
(Edit: removed previous comment because the link was messed up)
It is. I tried to get through the 4 years without looking at him at all.
The truly scary thing is not Trump's tweets, but the fact that the people now running the country looked at 2016, saw that we'd voted for a buffoon over their annointed candidate...and chose to learn nothing from it.
Exactly! Read the full quote for yourself if you do not believe this (it can be googled). Trump was referring to "both sides" of the statue question and said Neo-Nazi's were bad in the same remarks. (and I know African Americans who think statues should be left up so some good people want them up - I think they should be taken down after a city approves it, using the rule of law, and I hope all cities approve it.
I wanted Ammendment 25 used on Trump when he did not immediately tweet "get out of the building" I thought only a person gone insane would fail to do that. He did not say "go home" for two hours. (Stay peaceful, mind the cops, is not enough). But his speech before supporters marched to the capital said:
"No we will march peacefully and patriotically to the capital"
Those of you who only watch CNN and MSNBC never hear that.
(Oh, and I think Trump went over the line into insanity - he has always been rather odd - but I think he is now sane again. No use putting the country through more misery - the 20th is coming.)
I do wish the left wing would admit it is mostly fringe groups like QAnon and Proud Boys, along with a few mentally unstable people, and a few innocent souls who literally saw open doors and thought they were allowed to walk through. It was a tiny percent of those who support Trump - all with something "wrong upstairs" I guess, but there are just as many on the left with something "wrong upstairs".
One violent protest...ok, it was in the capital...they didn't burn anything down, they didn't kill anyone. I cringe when I hear BLM would be treated differently. Yeah, that woman - and I do not blame the man who shot her!! - would be a martyr to CNN, MSNBC and BLM because she was "peacefully protesting" and trespass is not worthy of death.
Bear in mind I agree with most that Trump's behavior since the election was called has been abhorrent. He could have noted once, maybe twice, how the results didn't ring true, but that should have been it. Let his lawyers proceed. None of the "rigged", "stolen" and other incendiary language he instead chose to use. In that sense he became somewhat responsible for the nutcases who breached the Capital, albeit a result he could not have foreseen because 'MAGA' actually protest peacefully.
That said, I don't buy this mostly bipartisan narrative that his words AT the rally had anything to with the Capital break-in. I don't buy that he was even aware it was happening.
The first wave of criminals appeared at the Capitol a full half hour before Trump finished speaking at the Ellipse. Anyone spurred by Trumps words would have had to navigate from the Ellipse to the Capitol (2 miles or ~45 minutes), alongside and through an estimated 50k people, and then again through those criminals already present on the Capitol steps. What's that, maybe an hour.5 to complete trip? The Capitol was breached at 1:50, 40 minutes after Trump had finished.
There are also many people interviewed stating they had no idea how bad thing's were until they saw tear gas. All these horrific videos of the breach were shared post facto.
If anyone has evidence to the contrary I would very much like to see it, but until then, and as always, I'm not buying the narrative.
You're viewing the Trump riot with some rose colored glasses. His speech also included 'You Will Never Take Back Our Country With Weakness'. It was incendiary and poured gasoline on the fire. He deserves all of the derision heaped upon him for this one.
Ask the black cop who ran for his life up flights of stairs pursued by a fearless mob in red if it was mostly fringe groups.
I don't blame the tiny percentage of Trump supporters as much as I do Trump himself. Don't know how anyone can support him after this.
“On 1 July 2019, hundreds of protesters stormed Hong Kong's Legislative Council, (Legco), spraying graffiti and defacing symbols of the Hong Kong law-making body. The ransacking of the government building marked a turning point in a protest movement against a now suspended extradition law.”
I've discovered that it's not merely pro-Trumpers who are targets. I've been opposed to him since he first came to prominence in the 1970s and he hasn't changed anything but his party affiliation. When I criticized Democrat Trump I was attacked. Funny.
Today, I write defending constitutional rights and calling out precedents with potentially catastrophic consequences. It doesn't matter that I never support Trump; I'm accused of supporting him because I am insufficiently zealous in calling for his arrest and execution. Precedents are powerful, and we now have precedents that perjury is justified if the accused is on the wrong side of an issue, that weaponizing government is justified by being on the correct side of history, that an administration plotting the overthrow of its successor is acceptable, that fabricating evidence is acceptable, that spying on reporters is righteous, that using the tax code to silence dissent is admirable, and the list goes on.
Harry Reid established precedent doing away with almost all rights of the minority in the Senate, which wound up leaving Democrats in the hole. Andrew Johnson was impeached for violating an unconstitutional act of congress, but the real reason was his refusal to cooperate with the Radical Republicans and use Reconstruction to completely destroy all vestiges of the Democratic Party, and to reduce the entire South to a state of ruin from which it could never recover. That's the precedent now being used by the authoritarian left in efforts to abolish dissent. This is dangerous stuff.
«I am insufficiently zealous in calling for his arrest and execution. Precedents are powerful, and we now have precedents that perjury is justified if the accused is on the wrong side of an issue, that weaponizing government is justified by being on the correct side of history»
My usual quote from George Orwell, "As I Please", 1945-01-26:
“The Daily Worker disapproves of dictatorship in Athens, the Catholic Herald disapproves of dictatorship in Belgrade. There is no one who is able to say - at least, no one who has the chance to say in a newspaper of big circulation - that this whole dirty game of spheres of influence, quislings, purges, deportation, one-party elections and hundred per cent plebiscites is morally the same whether it is done by ourselves, the Russians or the Nazis. Even in the case of such frank returns to barbarism as the use of hostages, disapproval is only felt when it happens to be the enemy and not ourselves who is doing it.”
Blissex, you're suggesting that authoritarianism and all evil did not begin with Trump's election? You do know that Big Tech is watching, and they know where you live. That's only half in jest. I agree fully. We need some self-examination.
Yes to all this. And if we see an impeachment actually move forward despite zero evidence that of any incitement...then we’ll have a dangerous precedent for free speech...that you can be tried and convicted for...your tone? Imputed intent? Rather than for your words themselves.
Yes to all of this. He also never said to drink bleach (It’s like the media...supposedly expert writers...suddenly forgot the difference between a statement and a question. Pop quiz pearl-clutches: what’s the difference between an imperative and an interrogative?)
Nor did he say that he wouldn’t send aid to governors who didn’t thank him...nor did he ask the GA SOS to find 11,000 votes...unless you listened only to the 4 seconds the Post included and ignored the rest of the call...and I can think of a dozen other things. Most notably perhaps...he didn’t tell anyone to riot at the capitol. He didn’t even suggest it. But that won’t stop a second ridiculous impeachment attempt.
Did not vote for Trump in 2016. Voted for him while holding my nose in 2020 because I became a single issue voter...and that issue was free speech. The media sent me that direction...the more censorship I saw...the more my trust in our institutions plummeted...the more I wanted to vote for the person they disliked the most.
«take them at their word whenever they'd summarized something Trump said. Then one day I actually watched one of the referenced clips in full and found that he hadn't said any of the things they said at all»
And that is a general principle: realizing that something is hearsay and looking beyond it to the at the original sources, whether they are the actual words of someone, or the original book from centuries ago, can be amazing. Two of my favourites that I often quote here are A de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" and JK Galbraith's "The great crash 1929" and "Money".
Indeed. We are now living in multiple "realities": those who believe their preferred msm, those who believe in conspiracy theories, and those who are independent and think everyone has lost their minds.
I agree that we are not going to come back from this.
I will say that those of us who are independent live by our principles and anyone who believes in corporate totalitarian censorship is insane. I recommend they look up the definition of "fascism."
Lol, I’m defiantly in the independent, everyone has gone bonkers category! I have Trumper neighbors that appear to be sane until any kind of politics comes up and then it’s crazy conspiracy highway. My 11 year old came in months ago from playing outside to ask me if Bill Gates was really putting microchips in people through covid tests....🤦♀️
On the flip side are my left wing friends who believe the 1st and 2nd amendment need to be revoked. They are acting extremely hateful and bigoted to Trump supporters as well. Some of the things they say about these people who not be tolerated aboyt any other group. They are every bit as intolerant (or more so) than the other side. They are acting just like the Religious Right did in the 80’s and 90’s and I suspect their self righteousness to come crashing down in the same way,
@Spiderbaby @mule Thank you both for the most lucid comments on the thread. Self-righteousness is indeed one of the key banes of the human race. I grew up with it and learned to despise this behavior in humans. It can, in those with a predisposition toward megalomania or even just solipsism, catalyze a quest for purity that destroys the ties that bind us - love, compassion, respect and the benefit of the doubt. It conveys the illusion that when we are right, we are pure, we are good, we are safe, we are powerful. It is one of the most dangerous of all of our mental proclivities for the reasons you cite. It is an emotional high like no other. It is one of the main reasons that, as a former left-leaning liberal, I deeply fear the left right now. I always thought it would be Christian zealots that would break this country, but I was mistaken. I was very poorly educated in terms of systems and politics. As I have become more educated, I now believe that it will be the far left in their hyper-reaction to the horrible unfairness and inhumanity (also driven by self-righteousness) practiced by the old moral majority over the past several centuries. The old moral majority applied their principles of Christian charity only to the select. If you didn't qualify (for a variety of reasons - skin color, sexual orientation, refusal to accept certain social norms (particularly for women), sex/gender, etc.), you were othered - which meant shaming, ostracization, dimunition of livelihood, laws passed against you, and even death.
Because it behaves like a drug in human brains, I see no way to stop it other than appealing to people's hearts and compassion. And my own attempts to change this in people have not been successful. BTW, I am a vet and care deeply about the fate of this country, which even today, at 56, I would lay down my life for. But, how do you change a "belief mob" that is committed to believing that other people should be deplatformed, cancelled, or even killed simply for not agreeing with them?
Ironically, the US was created (in part) by people trying to escape the bloody religious wars in Europe (old school belief mobs). And, here we are again - come full circle. SMH
Sanctimony is the original high. At least most religions warn their adherents against it (none too successfully, but at least it's identified as a sin). The secularists have no institutional or philosophical brakes on that addiction.
Short and sweet, you said it. A pastor of mine once said the strongest human drive isn’t for food or shelter or sex. It’s the need to know you are right 100 percent of the time. Hence, religious fundamentalists, secular humanist fundamentalists, zealots of all stripes.
I see no reason to believe that an arbitrary group of "lefties" (chosen at random) would be fundamentally different in knowledge or intelligence from an arbitrators group of "righties" (chosen at random) , especially if they are genuinely extreme lefties and genuinely extreme righties.
To make up for my Santa crack I'll chime in. I think political thought is one big circle. Whether you head to the right or to the left, if you stay on course long enough you eventually end up in Looney Tunes Land. Sadly that's not a retirement village for Mel Blanc, Daffy Duck & Foghorn Leghorn.
I have to agree. The urge to know you are right 100 percent of the time — a drive I expect everybody has felt at one time or another— can produce fundamentalists who can lead a “Cultural Revolution” or a Nazi war machine.
I liked your comment but there is a problem between the original statement and the final sentence. Randomly chosen v. genuinely extreme. I don't think the majority of either group are genuinely extreme. You'd find fewer extremes in a random group.
I'm not that offended by acting "bigoted" toward Trump supporters. My problem comes from default liberals hyperventilating about our SACRED this and that in reference to foundational American ideals. Since when was anything about American institutions sacred to the left? What exactly is sacred when you want to abolish the most fundamental building blocks of American representative democracy? I'm on board with removing Trump from office, but I'm not stupid enough to believe that default-liberals and the establishment press are doing it out of some altruistic adherence to 'muh democracy.
It's the same response that's shown towards conspiracy theories. Russiagate propagates like fruit flies, while QAnon & such are swatted with a virtual fly swatter.
I think that used to be called "do as I say not as I do."
No kidding! I had to be diplomatic about and be subtle in my explanation, instead of saying they’re bat sh#% crazy. Lol they’re neighbors so no need to make enemies but still.
Large companies silencing and blacklisting political opposition at the behest of one party is the definition of fascism, where companies are an arm of the state.
When I visualize fascism, it looks much worse than that. Mussolini. Hitler. And, actually, Stalin, though that is not the usual designation for him.
You know, the more I think about it, the less sure I am that I even know what fascism means anymore. Political books now tend to use more descriptive words like oligarchy or autocracy.
One of the things that security expert Bruce Schneier always likes to point out is that we tend to defend against the last threat, and lack the imagination to properly recognize what the next threat will look like.
So we tend to think of the fascism of old, from times long before the internet, global surveillance, etc. Who needs to fight people directly when you can cancel their bank accounts, have them banned from social media, pressure their employers, put them on the no fly list, and so on? Very few people are in a position to live off grid and be fully self sufficient.
that's ok. We can skipo Marriot and Blue Cross and even Ford or Fed EX if they decide to do such a thing. And we are not supporting Amazon, Apple, google, Twitter and FAcebook and we have a lot of ways to make them feel the pain. So let them try it. The right hasn't done that before, but this was before they went after freedom of speech.
You individually might try to make Amazon feel pain, but it won't hurt Amazon too bad until a lot of other people are also trying to make it feel pain.
I think observing this discrepancy might feed into the original intent of antitrust laws.
Frances, I have faith that we can come back from this.
Faith, like hope or democracy, isn't a strategy. It's just a thing that one clings to, trusting that most of one's fellow human beings want the best for all of us.
Who is the "we" that cannot come back? The current US political system? The current and future inhabitants of the North American continent? The human race? This is a serious question. Arguments and political parties and governments die out; humankind goes on until the ecosystem breaks, which we all hope will not be next week.
All of America. Can you seriously think that we can come back together united when one half of the country wants to put the other into re-education camps? Are you even paying attention?
The problem is "paying attention" to mass media orgs, as MT points out.
The "re-education camp" crew are loud voices on social media. I don't think they'll get much traction in reality. Please try to have a little faith in your fellow citizens.
I think certainly yes things can improve. The conditions are pretty bad for the short term. But the conditions are changing. In some dimensions the changes have been positive.
We don't need to be united and we never were. Have you read Rick Perlstein? We've always been fighting each other.
I feel the ludicrous extremes are dominating the conversation, from Q, to storming the capitol, to the wokeist cultural revolution etc. it's just bonkers. Depressing, yes, but how long can it last? The only way forwards for these intolerant ideologies is to get more bonkers.
And I think your math is wrong. Some fraction wants to enforce reeducation. Another fraction is like me thinking it all bonkers or incomprehensible. And those two together are less than 1.
Exactly. That's the problem. Dems - and especially all these woke people - need to learn that the life models of conservative people are to be respected. Even if they despise them. Reps need to learn that the woke crowd and their life styles are to be respected. Even if they think these are crazy dangerous people. To each its own.The problem starts when 1 group applys force to change the other goups way of life / thinking. Here the main culprit is definitely this whole woke crowd with its cancel culture and often violent supression of free speach. It does'nt make matters any better that they have the might of Silicon Valley as helpfull friends.
My point is that "America" can mean various things. Our current constitutional system could fall and be replaced by another one that might be similar or might be completely different, but still called The United States of America. Could the result of that "come back"?
Our entire government could go out of business. The next country built on th ruins of the old America could be called Republic of Tears. Would that "come back"?
The USA could split into 50 separate countries. Could they come back?
I’m sure that’s what most Northerners and Southerners thought on 10/9 /1864, 6 months before Lee surrendered Confederate troops.
For things to improve, they often have to get worse first. As Ross Perot was fond of saying, if you can’t figure out how to solve a problem, make it bigger.
Right. When I get fearful about the US, I think of countries that have collapsed just in the period I have been alive. Humans are still living in those countries. Things get better or worse after the event. Life continues.
I think you are looking at it two-dimensionally and from a place of entitlement as an American insulated from the outside world. Real pain takes place during collapse. It's best not selected as an option.
Yes, people do survive (most do). Life continues. I grant that. Perhaps you could do some research on a recently collapsed country such as Ukraine. Check out how many people have emigrated.
There's a precedent. Until about AD 1150 Islam was the center of learning in the Old World, with the best in science, philosophy, art, literature, architecture, the works. Something happened that caused the unified state-religion to turn its back on that and rely solely on education about the Koran, and in that case it was only to memorize selected verses. It corrupted the beautiful concept of Jihad, which in Roman Catholicism is called self-examination, and in psychology introspection. Jihad was outward directed as violence toward anyone not in full agreement with the popular narrative.
Islam, which had expanded through trade, exploration and proselytizing, tried to continue expansion through warfare and destruction. This suffered a severe blow in 1492 with the expulsion of the Muslims from Spain, and died in the 1683 siege of Vienna. Islam has not yet recovered and in large parts of the world appears to continue decaying.
That was without aircraft, tanks, biowarfare and nuclear weapons. The ecosystem is far more fragile and the threat orders of magnitude greater than in 1683.
Frances , when you walk into any room , you are probably the smartest person there. I know too many people who have taken sides , believe what they want to believe and disregard the rest * , have become tribal and will believe things without evidence . They are not stupid people but their conclusions based on fear and extreme bias , lack of critical thinking , and a psychological barrier to seeing what is obvious, make them appear very stupid.
I was always above average but what's going on these days , allows me to pull way back and in the end I wind up looking like a freakn' genius . Who would have thought
Yes, "The Boxer": "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." In a sense that has to be true of all of us to some extent, because no one can process everything that comes into their ears. The key is to keep reevaluating what you want to hear.
Not sure there’s much difference between those who believe their preferred msm and those who believe in conspiracy theories, given that the MSM has pushed conspiracy theories ranging from “Trump colluded with Russia” to “Trump watches the Gorilla Channel for several hours a day”.
I hope so. I really like your optimism. Indeed, I have been white pilled by the event because I think it exposes who the real tyrants are. So far, I have been disappointed by how so many people are absolutely swept up by the Cathedral. But I'm hopeful that many more will wake up. The Great Awakening is here!
I can see it. I mean, if this MAGA reads every MT article and watches every Dore show because I really enjoy them, how far off am I?
I like the man but the downside of Bernie's policies have always been the socialist angle, but the way our govt is printing money like it's toilet paper in a pandemic, how long before the word 'fiscal responsibility' becomes a forgotten concept? Kinda strange how Wang's UBI went from ridiculous to sure-why not in the space of a year.
Keep this in mind- if the poor get UBI, just imagine what the elites are going to get. I can certainly see how a number of unscrupulous individuals would like to exploit the printer of the world's reserve currency abandoning all fiscal restraint.
It's funny how much Bernie appealed to the Reagan Democrat bloc. Crucial difference was Reagan won a national election twice and Bernie couldn't get through the Democratic primary.
Reagan didn't have his own party sabotaging his primary run though. I remember reading an article at the beginning of the primary season that said the Democrats biggest donors had informed the DNC that, should Bernie win the nomination, the donors would switch their money to Trump.
"Lots of Berners and MAGAs getting together." LOL, I howled at that. I have thought from your comments for weeks that you are a Russian troll. Your comment confirms it.
You'd be surprised. I'm an ex-Berner that turned MAGA and even noticed some comments in Jimmy Dore's videos supporting the Capitol uprising. Person noted that they thought it was awesome that anyone stormed the Capitol and that the progressives should have.
The sad truth is that there is no way to have an honest and/or rational conversation with anyone indoctrinated into either Team Blue or Team Red (whether they are self-aware or not)... and that started before the Trump era. Neither side can believe that I didn't vote for their douche bag of choice... even if as a vote against one or the other. They may not be able to pillory me for being on the 'other team', but my choice is no less treasonous in their mind... and maybe worse, because I refuse to participate in their game.
Agree. When Hilary won the nomination, I felt that Bernie supporters had more, or at least the same amount of, beliefs in common with the MAGA crowd. I'm a lifelong conservative, yet I'm now drawn to reading Matt and Glenn Greenwald because I care first and foremost about civil liberties. I wouldn't lose hope for the US just yet. I wasn't alive in the 1960s, but I can imagine that everyone felt pretty hopeless and divided during that time.
Wally, you have uttered the most intelligent and composed statement on this thread (much of which is a Q.E.D. of what Taibbi wrote). As I said to my dad the other night: if the poor right and the poor left ever figure things out and get together, we might have a very interesting situation on our hands. But then what.....?
There may be some overlap with some minor points of economic libertarianism and the Populist Bernie left, but the problems of racism, woke police, and indifference make this alliance fleeting at best. These two groups could partner on legislation in a few areas, but not align naturally with any sort of platform.
Yep. I've been saying this for at least a year before Trump won in 2016. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The MAGA were anti-war and so were the progressives.
But the progressives were so short-sighted that they didn't realize by uniting to stop the establishment we would be saving hundreds of thousands of brown and black people on the other side of the planet. As an ex-progressive, I think the progressives are dumb AF.
Most libertarians (and decent/libertarianism conservatives) have zero problem with legitimate police reform-body cams, union oversight, more/better training,etc.
The problem is that D dominated. big cities don’t want the fiscal investment-they would rather pander to the mob, pay the occasional settlement, and virtue signal instead of actually improving the police and by extension their worst neighborhoods. They would rather play to the woke mob of n a virtual one party state and hope for a fiscal bailout from DC.
That is true, but they hold very little sway over the right in a political sense - Enjeti talks about this all the time on Rising as he thinks it is a big barrier for the Republicans to claim more populist positions. But it is not that easy to cut Ayn Rand out of the right's consciousness --- just as the Bernie left defending Marx's criticisms of capital (some memes always get knocked into the rough, using Matt's metaphor of golf in Hate Inc (2019).
Unusual coalitions do occur and I mentioned that on certain individual policies, but it would be an uneasy long term partnership -- fraught with the possibility of getting to close to one another and then betrayal (not unlike the Scorpion and the Frog parable).
In this globalist driven culture war, the biggest weapons of destruction are profit centers. Think money printing, socializing losses and privatizing gains that roll up. Currency, trade and culture wars all lead to real ones eventually.
I agree, which is sad and scary in the near term, but possibly the best thing to happen in the end. Studies of government accountability all point towards smaller governments being more accountable to their citizens.
Maybe in 5 years when people look back on what was lost between 2017-2021 and compare it to what was lost between 2021-2025, they will see that a media-driven virtual crisis where most peoples' lives improve, except their blood pressure during twitter sessions and a imbecile-driven political crisis where civil liberties and the last specks of privacy are lost while bathing in dulcet tones of social media confirmation bias.
I won't hold my breath, people only got more divided when those scenarios happened in reverse between 2009-2021.
All repair requires an honest assessment, self-reflection, and a commitment to make change as a means of not repeating past mistakes. We have a system devoid of all three - coming back (resilience) resides in our ability to change systems versus holding up our hands in disgust at the present situation.
It is hard to imagine systems changing at this moment, but if there is one display that is more powerful than those who wield economic and political dominion, it is the utter incompetence and failure of American systems rhetoric/actions to live up to the promise of what it sells. Corruption erodes trust -- this can be weaponized by smart people who resist both parties.
Elon Musk got $10 billion from the government to to make things science fiction writers invented. He takes the government money and pays talented people to design and engineer them. He is a a con artist..........................
Rumor has it he meets earnings expectations by selling energy certificates to other manufacturers, which seems plausible since he misses his goals on actual production
OK - I get it some people don't think of Elon as the model citizen so how about this for a plan..
1. Donate it to a Charitable Trust (and yes take the $10b tax deduction because you can)
2. Put people like Joe Rogan, Matt Taibbi, Jeff Gundlach, John Mauldin, Naval, Mother Teresa etc etc as the Trustees - people who aren't afraid to be different
3. Have a diverse pool of "journalists" and by diverse I mean diverse in thought. Minimal Ivy League grads, proportionate representation from all 50 states (not the coastal) and from around the world
4. No click-bait journalism
What else? Let's crowdsource this and get it to Elon. And Elon...you want to fix a fundamental problem in America right now? This is how to do it.
yes...and I'm ashamed to admit I don't know of women that fit into "free thinkers". Some young people too (my list are all over 50). No "celebrities" - just solid people. With term limits.
As a reminder, his child is known as x. If I had to choose between Bezos and Musk, I would pick Musk, but he buys into the popular narratives too easily. That is just as dangerous.
That’s because he sees through the DNC’s woke facade to their true dark corporate, wall street, tech monopoly center. He’s reporting on real power in Washington which happened to switch from the Republicans of the Bush oughts to the Democrats. The Democrats are the party of wall street, tech oligopoly and entertainment elites. That is where power is focusing their appeal. If they appear diverse & woke enough then maybe they won’t get broken up and the anti-trust book thrown at them.
Well, he has a history with Snowden which is relevant for ethics alone. Second, he has had his life threatened by the Bolsonaro government and stayed in Brazil to fight off the move towards a fascist Brazil (after the seedy take over from Lulu -- which has been found to be a soft coup).
Also, he did not fall for the mainstream head fake of Russiagate or Syria put out by centrists in both parties here in the US. And he has severed his relationship with the Intercept, which has proven itself to be utterly incompetent and helping the Bellingcats, CIA front operations for the US intelligence community.
I'd say his big mouth is less crazy, and more likes a scrap.
He is a guy like Matt. He's a civil libertarian guy. I am against any elitist from whatever party who thinks they can censor people like this. That includes the Lincoln Project RINO crazies.
I have found that I have that assumption about many people before I actually read their work or listen to their podcasts. I try to resist that and hear them out. It's easy for someone to be given the taint of "a bit crazy" by their rivals or mainstream media. Just listen and decide for yourself.
As I've said before on these pages, Matt T and I agree on very little policies, but his argument, "We need a new media channel, the press version of a third party." is 100% what is needed to bring this terribly divided country to some kind of peace resolution.
I've been saying for many many years, the mainstream media (NYT, WaPo, NBC, CBS, ABC, NPR, Academia, Hollywood) causes more division than the political parties. I believed if they weren't so one sided, Fox would never have been financially successful.
Matt & Glenn Greenwald are my heroes because of their courage and desire for honesty.
Matt, I am new to all of this, 67 years of age and finally paying attention. I took my freedom of speech, politics, religion for granted and now I am afraid we have lost them.
I have close liberal friends who believe there is no evidence of fraud and that Trump is a maniacal dictator. I believe that the election was stolen and is an act of treason. You described the great divide perfectly. How did we get this way?
My friends watch MSN and CNN, their parents, who are really old watch FOX. I don't watch any mainstream media, they all seem like caricatures. I like Epoch Times and Roman Balmakov on youtube, FACTS MATTER. I read lots of everything, NYT, WSJ, Time, YOU.
I agree with you - the days of coming home after work and turning on Walter Cronkite are gone. I like your idea of a new media system but how does one go about making that happen?
I am big on making a plan and breaking it down into baby steps, Tony Robbins style. The closer you come to defining your target, the greater chance you have of hitting the bullseye.
Marcia , You have to follow the money on who owns and controls these news outlets . I'm sorry to say but the Epoch News the NYT ,WSJ and Time are not independent unbiased outlets . They are have a spin , an agenda , and have financial interests that push what you read or hear. Even in the big media there are board members that are also on the board or other companies that are unrelated to media . These board members have a financial interest not to upset the establishment elite . It's all about big money and avoiding any threat to the status quo.
Tony, I research the things that are important to me. I know that Epoch was started by Chinese Americans. Their agenda comes through loud and clear. Most of their stories are just the facts, I'm always surprised when they say what happened and then the story ends. I skip around to see what both sides are saying because I don't want an interpretation of what they said by an opposing view point.
Sort of-- big money Right wing interest "Chinese" Americans. Kind of like the "Cubans" living in Miami-- moneyed interests. Interests that want to see China be the bad guy cause China is officially overtaking the US economically.
Marcia it's easy to see your point because of Biden and Civil Asset Forfeiture, TPP, NAFTA, Ed Snowden, 2005 legislation, Crime Bill's, taxing SS, trying to cut SS 4x's, over 20k bombs dropped, and China. I didn't add it all here but Matt's work alone in the last few articles was enough.
If you don't watch right-wing media, how did you come up with your kooky belief the election was stolen? Where is the evidence that 6 states colluded in lock step to only overturn the presidential election? Why didn't they also rig the vote to elect others on the ballot in the favor? 70+ lawsuits were brought by Trump. All failed. If you still have belief there is no convincing you otherwise.
Moxie, I was a little put off by the tone of your questions so I glossed over them, I apologize for that. So now I will answer as honestly as I can because it pertains to Matt's article.
Where do I get my news?
I don't watch tv. I read conservative and liberal papers and I have subscribed to several writers such as Matt Taibbi and Glen Greenwald on substack. I subscribe to commentary on youtube. Then I start asking questions and research. I go direct to the source whenever possible, it's surprising how much you find out. For example, I listened to John Poulos testify before the Michigan legistlature - boring as hell, I heard him lie at least twice and the clueless politicians just kept going. Then I researched Dominion and found this- https://www.clintonfoundation.org/clinton-global-initiative/commitments/delian-project-democracy-through-technology I noticed the date 2014 and then I went to the notes I keep on current events and found this -2014 - Hillary starts her run for the presidency and Hunter Biden's company Rosemont Seneca was involved in raising money for Harvest Fund Management and Bohai Industrial Group, the Chinese asset manager, and Burisma appoints Hunter Biden to it's board @ $50,000 a month.
Why do I believe the election was stolen?
So many reasons but here are the main reasons.
I listened to all the people who were brave enough to give affidavits and get up and testify on camera. I believe them. People like Jesse Morgan - https://youtu.be/FAB2NVJtVVg
I listened to and read every story I could find on how the vote was stolen, all by conservatives. When I went to Reuters, ABC, etc. the rhetoric was the same, "no evidence, moving on, we rejoice that Joe Biden is the president elect and we can begin the healing."
Then things start being censored and blacked out and the masses are told over and over there is no election fraud. Biden if he had any character or love for the America people, would say "Hey Man, let's get to the bottom of this."
Big tech - 15 people donate well over 1 billion dollars to the Democrat party, I have the list from vox.com. Do you think they are going to put millions down without some kind of guarantee of Biden coming out on top?
I could go on but I feel like I'm hijacking Matt's space.
I'm thinkin' you already know the standard kooky answers to your standard questions. I have a question for you - what is the worst lie Trump has told in the past 4 years?
I, personally, go to fact checking sites - even though they often rule out things that I go in believing. Here's a Google search that returned 10: https://answers.library.american.edu/faq/282165
I most frequently visit Politifact, Snopes, Media Matters and ProPublica. You will see that I deleted something below - full disclosure: it was that I wanted to add ProPublica to my list of faves.
What has done Trump which is worse than Bush’s war crimes in Iraq or the NSA spying on American’s private conversations? A few mean tweets that some grifter didn’t like? Half million Iraqis murdered by Bush and his cronies. Liberal response? On its knees pleasuring Bush at every turn.
Bush in terms of killing people is way worse than Trump for sure. If Trump were ever to shut his big fucking mouth for 5 minutes, he would be 20% more popular. That's the issue here, like it or not.
You can't excuse Obama here either. In fact, I'd say the Obama admin was probably worse. They didn't declare a war, they just did it all in secret, and then weaponized the intelligence communities around the world to do their work, and obliterate citizens rights.
It sounds as though you are conflating evidence with proof. There is a great deal of evidence of fraud, but until it has been examined and cross-examined under rules of evidence not made up on the fly by Mark Zuckerberg, it cannot be proof. That has not yet been permitted to occur, and now it will never will. That, in turn, will be cited by kneejerk partisans as proof there was no fraud. Perfect example of "If you don't believe me, just ask me."
That's not evidence. That's a couple guys who downloaded election data and wrote scripts to manipulate it to prove their point. They were nice enough to post their work online so I downloaded and read through the code.
I have to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they genuinely believe their conclusions--but this is far from definitive and, as 'evidence' it's riddled with problems (think the data equivalent of chain of custody). Looking at their script, they are manipulating the source data. I'm not suggesting it's outright changes to make their argument, but a programming error (there are 1,000s of lines of code) can explain their conclusions too. Charts/graphs and spurious 'statistical impossibilities' do not make facts.
Another point: the video only shows assertions being made by one party to the lawsuit or dispute resolution meeting. Both sides of a dispute have to be heard for a judge or jury to render a decision.
I have to say just one more thing. Charts and diagrams do not make facts. They are there to show what the audit found because people's eyes glaze over when an IT person tries to explain what happened. Trumps numbers going up and then being taken away all through the count shows fraud. You can't say it was a programming error and then accept the count as legal and correct.
Yes, it is easy for IT people to lie to the general public. They should have taken it to court where they would have to present their findings under oath and go to jail if they were lying.
So you are saying that the truth can never come out because they are biased one way or another? Who do you think lies the most? Republicans or Democrats?
you didn't check it out... no Durham, data scientists explain to Georgia state legislators what happened with graphs and timelines. This is not what could have happened, it was what actually happened from their audit. If you put their graphs up on instagram, they will be blacked out. Open your heart and your mind.
NB this site was setup (by a barrister I believe) to specifically gather information that would be *court admissible* as evidence, ie testimony in court.
Not all of it would hold up under scrutiny, but to say there is no evidence is disingenuous.
Whether it would affect the outcome would only have been known if it actually had been examined. Perhaps at some stage it still will.
BTW not American, but you guys have my best wishes.
What’s happening politically at the moment is quite deranged, from an outsiders perspective.
Marcia, this clip is impressive - that people can go to such lengths to produce video that can be disproved in 10 minutes is amazing. let me just take one point: The presenters are discussing Fulton County, Georgia, results. They state that a voting precinct that goes more than 75 percent for a candidate is a red flag for fraud. They go on to give higher and higher percentages and the increasingly likelihood of fraud, and note that scores of precincts in Fulton County did just that. And they say it is clear evidence of fraud. And yet ... Fulton County overall went 73+ percent for Biden. So the whole county is a few votes from being a red flag. But wait. Look at every county in Georgia. There are lots that are 75%+ either Trump or Biden. And these "data scientists" assert that 75 percent in a single precinct is a red flag for fraud, even though there are hundreds of precincts in a large urban county and statistically they are going to show more variance than the county overall. It took me longer to write this comment than it did to run that down. Which I did even after Googling NTD and learning that it stands for New Tang Dynasty and that it's funded by Falon Gong. Did you even think to look? Look! They are lying to you. You need to find some new sources of information.
Sigh ... I'm not sure why Matt and Glenn and other independent thinkers attract so much left-wing trolling. It's like the trolls aren't content with the monolithic groupthink in academia and the mainstream media, they view themselves as some kind of societal T cells tracking down all dissent and trying to stamp it out.
True - but the difference is the right-wingers come to argue; the left-wing trolls come to intimidate into silence. They generally invoke the "How could you ..." or "How dare you..." or the "I can't believe ...". These are all attempts to silence. I haven't seen that nearly as much from the Right.
Bush led the murder of 500,000 men, women, and children in Iraq. He’s beloved by the likes of you and his cronies all cash big checks in liberal networks. What has done Trump that is remotely as terrible as the murder of half million Iraqis just to steal resources from that country and enrich a few American pieces of garbage?
Sold weapons to the Suadis who use them to kill civilians in Yemen. Opened up public lands to destruction by private companies. Created a humanitarian disaster at the southern border by blocking asylum seekers. Expanded the drone program. And maybe you've missed the 360,000 + Americans dead from COVID. Oh and then there's the total botching of support for small businesses during the pandemic meaning the destruction of innumerable small businesses and people's livlihoods. Other than these and a few other master strokes I'm not calling to mind at the moment, he and his administration together with Mitch and his supporters in Congress have been just amazing.
Covid is a Chinese made disaster. You and your liberal friends spent all spring babbling about social distance only to say suddenly it was coo to go out and loot. The Saudis relationship with the government is something Obama did. Bush did. All presidents do. Trump wanted less wars. And fuck it, even with your nonsense, 500,000 Iraqis and millions more displaced from their home and the Middle East on fire is more than Bush and you love him now. The grifters like David Frum, Bill Kristol and other scum making money off the pockets of naive people like you. Can’t wait for the Biden admin to kick in. This system was sold and paid for a long time ago. Can’t wait for the effeminate, ultra rich, privileged white guys in Silicon Valley to rule this country. Then you will see the tit that the cow has as grandma used to say
I guess you're referring to the migrant caravans that originated in Guatemala and points south. Legally those persons were required by international law to request asylum in the first country in which they arrived which would have been Mexico. By the time they got to our border they were not seeking asylum. Truth is these border problems had their failings in administrations going back to Bush elder. Trump was trying to get back to the rule of law.
I don't know... I truly and dearly hated the Cheney administration for a great many things, but it took the Obama admin to make me change my voter registration to Independent and not vote for either Dem or Republican in a presidential election ever again. In my mind each administration since Reagan has gotten progressively worse. That is the only progressiveness left in America.
The election was not stolen and the 6th was a catastrophe, but what happened on the 6th has nothing to do with the reality of what happened during the election. You connect dots like a Qanon Shaman.
I don't understand your comment, but it sounds very interesting. Could you possibly state your point in a simpler way so I might have a better chance of following along? Thank you very much.
I believe he's one of the many people here who are paid subscribers but somehow are angry about almost every one of Matt's articles. This forum is kind of a strange place. But welcome!
I'll probably come across them in time. I gave in to your snark with my own, alas—not my intent—but I see no reason not to pay compliments where I believe they are due. Nothing sucking up about it, especially since I have ZERO to gain from my comment (beyond a snarky yawp).
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED !! Lets divide the masses , keep them occupied with identity politics , Portland is burning down , Antifa terrorists , MAGA terrorists , attempted Coup , BLM terrorists , No masks-I Want my freedom Covid spreading terrorists , Putin stole the vote , millions voted twice terrorists , a muslim behind every rock .........and the band played on . Now while you are preoccupied with all that stuff allow me to continue with the greatest transfer of wealth in human history . I could use another house in the Hamptons . RIP the middle class.
"another house in the Hamptons". Yes, they do, plunking down millions in cash like it's nothing. Nothing shows the corruption of this society quite like spending time in the Hamptons these days.
There are alternatives -- until the social media giants shut them down. Bret Weinstein this weekend on one of his podcasts spoke of how social media companies are ignoring centuries of debate about free speech. They act like the issue just arose and are working through Free Speech 101.
There are others, here at Substack or with podcasts, who aren't in the business of catering to "the left" or "the right," though they might be guilty of catering to "the intelligent" (which SHOULD be an identity group). But who knows how long they will be allowed to exist? Weinstein has already been deplatformed once.
[I'm more than a little surprised you spent so much time on Fox News in the wake of Amazon pulling the rug out from under Parler. This is a pretty huge moment. Can cable companies, local or national, now abruptly dump networks under the pretext of violence instigation or hate speech? (Remember the cable networks showing the man in Ferguson urging the crowd to "burn it down"?) The implications are far-ranging.]
"Pulling the rug?" Amazon's actions were legal, a fact that will hold up in any court. They were not 'sudden' but a result of continued efforts to request compliance with terms of service. Parler's was a failure of risk and technical strategy. Amazon does not 'owe' them hosting on their platform when their actions are not conforming to a terms of service they signed when they paid to host their product there. There are hundreds of other hosting platforms for technology companies (which include building your own infrastructure). By Parler CEO's own admission, they need to re-write their platform due a dependence on AWS services. Creating their product in this way and selecting AWS was Parler's choice.
So let's be careful about hyperbole on this front. Parler owes its customers continuous service, Amazon owes Parler service pursuant to contracts that Parler signed.
No one disputes that it was legal, but there's this whole weird realization that the biggest companies are becoming a sort of world government in control of the public square
If a company can't get hosting it can't operate and leaving AWS is not the same has just popping your files onto another host.
I supposed I'm cursed with having had that realization years ago... I just think the way it's being framed is a lot of high drama. The internet is still the most free forum for expression in history. The problem now is not with the technology or infrastructure, it's entirely possible for me to serve up a website in any number of ways that avoid obligations to Big Tech--I can even use Open Source code that all of the major players donate for free to the world. The problem now is that Big Tech has made it so cheap and easy for new players to enter that they leap down the path of building products that will only work on a particular framework. I write software for a living, I'd consider it a significant risk to pin my product to any framework I don't control.
I can assure you that the problem with Parler is not that it "can't get hosting", it's that they made a business decision to tether themselves to Amazon. It's a fatal flaw in strategy that all companies need to consider. But maybe to illustrate my 'high drama' point better, can you imagine the equivalent of Parler sprouting up in other industries like Banking, Internet Service Providers, or even your local hardware store? Relatively speaking, Tech is still very wide open industry to competition. Whether regulatory action needs to be taken against the few players that have the most revenue is a reasonable discussion--but my 2 cents is that we are better off regulating data privacy than crying foul in a case where Amazon has a rock solid case with service agreements and protecting its own interests.
Privacy regulation is the magic bullet that does a vast public good while reducing outsized power.
They just hosted with AWS - they didn't, according to Parler's CEO, "tether" themselves to Amazon in terms of using the built-in Amazon tools. So they can simply move their own database and files to a new server and be back online without having to rebuild from scratch.
I'll dispute that it was legal - if you have a 30-day cancellation notice that you void, AND other customers are engaging in the same behavior (Twitter is also hosted on AWS), you don't cancel them?
Breach of contract is illegal.
If, as Parler is alleging, Amazon conspired or coordinated with Twitter on this decision, now you have antitrust violations.
I noticed the 30 day bit too in an article describing the suit (after my OP). They may have grounds there, but if it were that simple why didn't Parler file a simpler suit that would get them back up faster and running for 30 days?
Admittedly I'm reading tea leaves here as not all the source materials are public yet, but most T&Cs for AWS-like services also have a termination for breach contract. Amazon has not responded yet other than to say it's meritless, but that does seem to be the strongest claim in the suit. I'd expect they counter it directly.
For what it's worth, I'm not an Amazon fanboy and am not really vested in my analysis as far as an opinion goes. I'm just weighing in as someone who has signed a lot of technical service agreements both as a vendor and provider. Their suit definitely feels like a longshot.
The public square needs to be moderated - just like the freeway has highway patrol - simple. By the way, a real public square doesn’t replicate my Nazi sympathizer views (just a hypothetical example) millions of times - I get to reach 59 peoples ears...maybe...with a megaphone or by speaking into the inside of a paper towel roll.
Hey, I don't really care if Amazon had a right to. WE have a right to get rid of them. I probably spend at LEAST $5K/year buying shit from them and I just switched to Walmart, Costco, Home Depot and Lowes online. Let's see $5K x 80 million people. I know Amazon doesn't get all that, but it'll add up pretty well. I will keep them for JUST my movies I've bought and will buy no more, use Netflix or somebody else. So we'll see how that works out for them. I've passed around my recommendations to all my conservative friends. Let's see how that goes.
I’ve been trying my best to not use amazon since the lockdown. Last night I had enough and canceled my prime and all subscriptions. I’m ashamed to reveal how much money I was wasting on channel subscriptions that I never watch and had forgotten about. I’m sure amazon won’t notice but my bank account will.
For the record Parler wasn’t great, I had an account to see what it was about and it was a bunch of crazies repeating the same stuff but even crazy people deserve free speech. I didn’t see any threats besides the occasional “get your guns ready” type of stuff. To me that’s not a real threat but I guess others could see it differently.
There are lots of kind of people on Parler just like on Facebook and Twitter. The point is freedom, right? So when that idiot woman holds Trump's head up on Twitter and Joe Biden talks about beating him up and other memes show people beating him up, and Madonna talks about blowing up the capitol? And BLM and Antifa burn down our cities. Oh, and for four years they called Donald Trump illegitimate with NO evidence. And calle dhim Hitler and a racist and a bunch of other total lies, THAT wasn't insurrection, of course. Nancy Pelosi did it herself and so did Hillary Clinton over and over. Let's talk about fucking crazy. They weaponized the justice dept. and used opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton to get illegal (even by their own admission) FISA warrants to spy on an American president and they changed emails and framed Carter Page. NONE of that is crazy? They say this crazy shit EVERY DAY on tv. Rachel Maddow called Trump a RUSSIAN AGENT, and SHE isn't fucking crazy? God, that pisses me off. Get a grip. Let's talk about crazy.
And I could go on and on about assholes like Robert DeNiro and Rob Reiner and all the rest of those "inciting" insurrection. How dare they. THEN they censored us, censored the information about the Biden crime family so people didn't even know it -- called THAT Russian disinformation. Those assholes. THEY are responsible for every bit of this and they have gotten away with it. (Other than those cowardly Republicans who should have stood up en masse for an investigation into this mess of an election.) That has to stop, too. If they think they are going to keep doing what they are doing, they are going to see America split in two.
Parler is like Twitter, only conservative. I picked and choose who I follow - mostly fellow jazz and blues fans, and Catholic and Eastern Orthodox groups. When they come back, I'll be back on, and will keep on avoiding the crazies.
It is extremely telling that Parler is not suing on violation of terms of service grounds. They are suing on anti-trust grounds. That tells me they don't have a strong counter argument to Amazon's case (supporting evidence of which was likely couched in the letter).
I read Parler's policies last night before they were removed. Their privacy policy is as bad as any in Big Tech with respect to selling personal data, for what that's worth. The community guidelines they require users to consent to were aligned with Amazons T&Cs--and included significant coverage of incitement to violence, essentially hinging on an interpretation of 'fighting words' for the internet. Reasonable people could probably pick at fringes of the policy, but generally the policy is/was beyond reproach. But policy is one thing, enforcement is another. Amazon's issue is with policing, they don't have to substantiate their view much when they made prior requests to Parler were not complied with at all or in a timely manner.
This is a legal matter first, I'm simply stating that based on precedent and fairly straightforward legal argument, Amazon is acting well within its rights.
But my argument is two-fold. If you have Parler's mission statement, do you think it's wise to hitch your technology approach to a provider that you have a) No control over and b) You have reason to believe will effect an active bias against you?
Amazon has a major problem in that even a private business has to enforce its contracts consistently. Given that Twitter is also hosted on AWS, and that every allegation against Parler is doubly true of Twitter, cancelling Parler's contract in violation of the 30-day contractual stipulation is breach.
The anti-trust argument does allow for triple damages, however. ;-)
Most companies want to farm out their servers, along with responsibility for backups, UPS generators, etc. Once upon a time, companies did their own hosting, but not much any more. I imagine the Amazon sales people were telling Parler exactly what they wanted to hear.
I don't know what parleys Amazon has singled out, but reading sections 6.1.1 and 6.1.2, it seems there is a lot of room for interpretation, especially around the word "intent."
This is not the first time we've seen violence result from online activity (assuming that's true). Shutting down the platform seems harsh and out of line with what we've seen with others in similar cases.
Yes, you can point out Amazon's hosting is distinct from everything else we are seeing in the social media world, but I'm pretty good at pattern recognition -- and I'm also aware who owns the very anti-Trump Washington Post -- so I don't think it's far-fetched to lump this in with the others.
We know Parler's relationship with Amazon or any internet infrastructure organization must be contractual in nature. But does Parler have a contractual relationship with customers under which Parler guarantees a certain level of service to those customers?
Highly unlikely, the only real enforcement for uptime SLAs is typically refund of fees. How do you compensate customers who are paying you with their personal data, content, and ad clicks?
At least from Amazon's letter, their requests for Parler to comply with its own community guidelines had been ongoing for weeks. Seems obvious that last Wednesday is an event that raised exigent circumstances for Amazon's leadership.
Well I think cable companies must have the discretion to choose the channels they offer, and might legitimately decide to reject a channel that was consistently dishonest or that urged viewers toward violent behavior. I don't see an alternative to choosing high-quality fare.
No, you have it backwards. Stores, and cable companies, get to decide who they BUY from (candy bars, TV shows) but NOT who they sell to -- which is everyone, by law, if the store or cable service falls into the category of a "public accommodation."
I am trying to figure out what is wrong with your reply - are you unaware of what Jim Crow means and therefore miss the sarcasm or do you really think Amazon did not sell its services to Parler?
I'm talking about unceremoniously tossing them off the air, contract be damned, with a claim about instigating violence. If you don't like my example, I'm sure you can come up with scores of others where a company might want to void a contract.
Is that fundamentally different from choosing channels initially? Channel content and management might change and need reevaluation. Is your purpose to exclude snap judgements, just giving in to the latest witch hunt?
Somewhat, but it's more about the arbitrariness of it all. In my original post, I pointed out the cable news nets fanning the flames in Ferguson: "No violence today, but it usually starts after dark. We hope there isn't any, but usually the violence starts after dark. Let me repeat -- violence after dark. Though we hope there is none." And I pointed out the coverage of the Brown family member calling for people to "burn it down."
Consistency is key. Lacking that, when you have pretty-obviously-biased social media companies calling the shots, you get what we've seen the past few months.
I think we can imply that Matt agrees with what they’re doing to parler as he didn’t even mention it as you point out. part of his plan to pretend news organizations haven’t merged with political parties I suppose.
I believe Matt has written extensively about the negative externalities of the politicization of news media -- a book called "Hate, Inc." comes to mind as a single but by no means isolated example.
Matt, whatever else he is or is not, certainly qualifies as a respected writer. His reputation would suffer if he repeated material from previous books or columns.
Only people who listen to podcasts all day and have their favorite podcasts and are socially networked to their podcast heroes think podcasts are somehow of crucial relevance at the present moment.
Amen. The histrionic reaction to the riots on Jan 6 and the weird about-face embrace of police violence in response was so sickeningly hypocritical. There's a reason I subscribe to this website and not the NYTime, or National Review, or any other mainstream source. They're all hot garbage these days.
Someone (not me, no tech skills unfortunately) should launch a service called “Yesterday’s News” that literally takes the top stories from yesterday and then points out what is factual and what is opinion. You could also have one right and one left commentator give their view on the opinion side and then readers would have the facts and both sides presented in the same place so that could make their own independent determination.
Not a bad idea. I think you could go a step further and have "Last Month's News." Most stories would be dismissed with, "Why did anyone even care about that?"
Decent name. In discussions with friends and family, it is amazing people in this era struggle with the idea that two things can be true at the same time. Facets of issues. A truth does not negate all other truths.
«“Yesterday’s News” that literally takes the top stories from yesterday and then points out what is factual and what is opinion.»
For an experience of something like that, about economic news and commentary, Dean Baker's (old style socialdemocrat, honestly so) "Beat the press" is something I like:
In the mid 1980s after trekking around Europe, I got a job in Germany (West Germany at the time). I listened to an eclectic radio station that had five minutes of news at the top of every hour. The news always began with three slow deep gongs — then the reporting would start. Something about the sombre tone of that gong and the serious tone of the announcer's voice always made me think that whatever was being reported was important. Since my language skills were limited I couldn't really follow the stories but the announcer's voice implied: This is serious and factual. At the time, two words I could pick out were "Afghanistan" (Russia was fighting the Afghans) and "Chernobyl" (the nuclear plant had imploded in 1986). When those words were spoken I knew that war and radiation were being talked about and that they were very serious matters.
Today the news I watch on broadband and on cable often fail to present an appropriate tone. Reporters signal their opinion with subtle gestures, eye-rolls, sighs or snide remarks. And with the explosion of "pundits, analysts, commentators, and columnists," facts and opinions can get mixed up and leave us misinformed and poorly educated about what is really going on. I agree with Matt, we need a new system. One that returns us to the unbiased seriousness that is factual reporting.
What you say makes sense, but you gloss over the differences between the approaches of both sides. Fox is mostly straight up propaganda, saturated in lies. MSNBC is not. There's a liberal point of view, but it isn't a factory of lies, as Fox certainly is. The Democratic Party is a more or less normal political party, in the model of parties in western democracies, moderately corrupt, disorganized, sclerotic, and the Republican Party is not, it's the equivalent of the far-right parties in Europe, racist and rebarbative in nearly every respect, and utterly divorced from any attachment to empirical solutions to our problems. Republicans deny climate change, pretend that tax cuts for the rich will help everyone else, that the only racism is anti-white racism, and that all regulations on business are bad and job-killing. There's no equivalent in the Democratic Party. So totally accurate and honest reporting will have to reflect this.
Not just that, they were obsessed with Russia, Russia, Russia. Often to the exclusion of real developments of interest to their viewers. Instead, it was Pee tape, Chris Steele, and of course Mueller! Oh, Mueller. The MSNBC bots seemed genuinely puzzled that the Mueller Report didn't directly lead to Trump being frog-marched off to a Supermax.
A simple test for MSNBC/NYT consumers who are unaware they are being brainwashed: ask if they find it perfectly reasonable that internet companies be regulated "like public utilities" and censored by the government. Because, of course, Russia! Russia! Russia! they're everywhere! Help! OMG!
What you said right here is what every fan of MSNBC thinks of MSNBC and every FOX fan thinks of FOX. This is the problem in a nut shell. Go back and read Matt's article again
They are totally the same. And over the past four years, MSNBC probably has been worse. Don't know for sure because I get sick every time I try to watch it. Same way I felt about Fox during the Obama years. Matt is 100% right. Read Hate Inc. We're being made fun of. Time to give yourself a promotion from journalism to books. Just finished Rage by Bob Woodward and learned a lot.
It's actually the opposite of what you said. The problem is that both the Fox and MSNBC business models profit on getting their audiences to be afraid or angry or both. Like sugar, it keeps them coming back for more.
Fox hasn't improved. If anything they are even worse, adopting the practice of inserting Fox opinion host rants as stories covered by Fox news to blur the line even further.
I will take your word for it on MSNBC. Not sure how they could get worse, but I am often wrong.
Give up...this person obviously doesn't get it at all. They are too far gone. If you can guess someones political side within the first paragraph of their writing, they are too far gone to be reasoned with.
nope. the difference is that MSNBC, for all its faults, is largely fact-based. Hayes, Maddow, Williams are basically journalists. Hannity and Carlson are not.
nope. no propaganda excused. conservative politics are based today on four lies: climate change is a hoax; taxes for the rich are always the answer; regulations on business are inherently job-killing and the more of them you get rid of the better; and the only racism is anti-white racism. all of these are bullshit. Fox exists to push these ideas. Ergo, Fox must tell lie after lie after lie. there simply is no equivalent in the mainstream left.
So is Maddow - Rachel Maddow has seen her monthly ratings drop more than 800,000 viewers since the beginning of 2019.
Fox News will finish the year again at top of the news channels in primetime, with an average of 3.6 million viewers, up 45% from the same period the previous year. MSNBC averaged 2.2 million, a boost of 24%. CNN saw an even greater increase, as it was up 85% to average 1.8 million.
This person is too far gone too. Nothing you can say to this person will make them understand they have been mind controlled by "their side." They are low information people who believe one side or the other absolutely. They see the other side as evil. Total fanatics with no ability to reason properly. Cannot even read an article and come away with the basic premise of the article. Their response shows the rational among us that Matt is absolutely correct. How people can be so mind controlled is outrageous. I am guessing that about 30% of the people are mind controlled by MSNBC and CNN, and about 30% by Fox and the right wingers. About 40% of us are rational and do not allow the left or right to mind control us.
Williams is not a journalist IMO but a news reader. Maddow lost credibility with her breathless Russia coverage drawing conclusions based on some rather disparate parts. Chris Matthews called Bernie supporters brow shirts, Joy Ann Reid brought in a body language expert; neither of those can be called bastion of truth. Chris Hayes seem ok.
Martin, who owns Fox, MsNBC, CNN? Who are their most lucrative sponsors on their channels? Once you understand the answers to these questions, the line between commentators and journalists goes right out the window. Owners decide what gets published or broadcasted - them the facts.
Its profits over people in the media business. That is so apparent as to be weird I have to mention it. Russiagate, Elizabeth Warren accusing Bernie of sexism, and the manipulation of the Iowa caucuses strike me as fertile places to examine DNC propaganda.
Attorney General William Barr’s letter summarizing Mueller’s report was released on March 24 -- the final week of the quarter -- indicating that a Trump campaign-Russia conspiracy didn’t exist, contradicting Maddow’s nightly narrative, and that was that.
You can only fool some the people some the time:
Maddow’s performance in May was even more alarming among the key demographic of adults age 25-54, where she averaged 455,000 viewers to finish tied for No. 7 in cable news, behind five different Fox News shows and even one program on MSNBC’s fellow liberal network CNN.
Really: US citizens don't lose jobs to immigration:
Construction in Los Angeles has shifted from a heavily unionized labor force that was two-thirds white to a largely non-union one that is 70% Latino and heavily immigrant. .American construction workers today make $5 an hour less than they did 40 years ago after adjusting for inflation.
You're joking right? And just because someone is a journalist (which dont really exist anymore in the traditional sense), doesnt mean they're going by facts. I think the last 4 years has been pretty clear on how counterfactual reporting has become.
MSNBC isn't fact-based, it just chooses different facts and distortions than Fox does. MSNBC cancelled Phil Donahue's popular show because they didn't want anyone on the air who opposed the invasion of Iraq. They highlight every charge of "Russian hacking", no matter how tenuous, and never bother to take note when those charges fall apart. For some reason they were unable to recognize the coup in Bolivia for what it was. They haven't exactly stood up against the anti-Venezuelan propaganda, either. Like Fox, they refrain from showing us data or scholars who hold positions that depart from their own narratives. Very often they dovetail with each other in their efforts to hide the truth we need to see.
Well that captures it very well. My party normal. Your party racist and all lies. Both parties have racists within them. Both have habitual liars permeating their core. MSNBC, CNN, NYT, WAPO, ABC, NBC, CBS, Yahoo, etc. are just as bad as Fox. To stick your head in the sand and pretend that rioting didn't occur during at all during the "peaceful protests" all summer, and that the Senate building wasn't stormed by leftists during the Cavanaugh proceedings, and that the Democrat party was calling the election of Trump a fraud a permeating the ongoing Russian collusion hoax narrative, is the reason that many people believe this country will heal - there is little to no ability for many people to be intellectually honest about the limitations and faults on their side of the aisle. You should have added to your last sentence: "....reflect this, and that means reporting that reflects my viewpoint"
How do you know? i felt the same way as you for a very long time. i watched 'Outfoxed' and read Al Franken and yada yada yada. And i agree Fox is biased! But if you truly start paying attention, you might just find that MSNBC is doing many of the exact same things now. But if you've been consuming MSNBC steadily in the Trump era, you might just be unaware of how it's been changing you all this time. i'd encourage you to go back to some key points and read up more about them in retrospect - you may find yourself surprised at how different the facts are from what you remember.
Why are you even here? You embody cognitive dissonance. You’re the viewership he’s writing about and you’re re arguing based on the carefully curated shit you’ve been sold.
You might be right. But you have your assessments exactly backwards. You can't be watching both of those venues enough and come to that idiot conclusion.
An outright lie is not the only way to spew propaganda. The best/most successful and most commonly used propaganda is the type that’s more nuanced, less blatant, less easily detectable at first glance: it’s less about outright lies and more about the framing of the issue, the subtle spin, lying by omission, repetition repetition repetition, featuring/citing highly credentialed “experts”/authority figures and presenting them as objective commentators while failing to point out their affiliations/funding/biases, etc. I agree that MSDNC may be less blatant, more subtle, more sane-sounding in their spin, while FauxNews is less polished, cruder in its, but the underlying principle and business model is the same: 1. pick a demo and feed them exactly and only what they want to hear 24/7, 2. be in a state of permanent hysteria: every single solitary fucking day is “one of the darkest in US history”, “our Pearl Harbor”, “the new 9/11”, “Treason! Treason! Treason!”, “Fascism!”, “Communism!”...
Speaking of repetition, do people notice how often there seems to be a "key message" which is distributed in advance to a seemingly large group of "news sources", which all parrot the exact same thing? This bothers me. When I feel like I'm being force-fed a viewpoint, I reflexively assume it's a lie, propaganda, disinformation, etc.
So who do you trust? Really, name one or two credible sources for you. I’ve asked this same question at least a dozen times in various sites — WSJ, NYT, WAPO, others. Crickets, nothing but crickets.
There apparently is (or was) a forum or mailing list of journalists (the “journolist”) where leftist MSM reporters coordinated their stories in advance.
Ha! You’ve never worked in a newsroom. Organization is not our strong suit. Really, there’s peer pressure, but the desire for a good story wins out every time. That said, I never worked in D.C.
MSNBC, CNN, NYT etc are not the left. They are the PR arm of the Dem Party, i.e. basically the socially liberal version of the (corporate-owned warmongering) Republicans.
The racist party is the one that prevents poor children of color from attending a school of their choice. Education is the key to advancement and teachers unions which refuse to open up the schools, block school vouchers, block charter schools, insist on tying compensation to seniority, and protect failing teachers (or even teachers who molest students!!!), do more harm to the black and brown community than nearly anything else. The Democratic Party takes money from the teachers unions and does their bidding.
I work in a mostly black school district and NO ONE is preventing poor children of color from attending the school of their dreams. That is nothing but right-wing propaganda.
For the last 4 years, Rachel Maddow, one of MSNBCs most profitable shows, has convinced its audience that Trump had been a Russian asset for years. If you believe you're getting honest reporting out of a network that gets significant revenue by selling it's viewers fiction, I'm not sure you're understanding the problem. How is it that you can see this problem with Fox but not with MSNBC... other than being part of the tribe that's bought into one side of the argument.
Oh please. The nonstop propaganda and lies of MSNBC and every other mainstream channel have been well documented by Taibbi and others. The fact that you actually believe that strange caricature of the Republican Party that you wrote is evidence that the lies and propaganda have worked.
The rest of your assessments are childish oversimplifications and would take more time than I'm willing to spend to go through the actual nuance, and you'd probably miss it anyway.
Actually, the one about "thinks anti-white racism is the only racism" goes beyond childish oversimplification and into "purely made-up" territory. As I've interacted with a lot of people who believe they actually ARE seeing (attempted?) anti-white racism, I've yet to encounter a single such person who thinks that's the ONLY racism. Not. One.
(bonus fact: none of them approve of racism against other people either)
Dude must've had some extra strong straw when he came up with that one.
I can't believe you would even have the gall to write this. Both sides of the news spectrum are giving us propaganda. the fact that you could read this article, then write this comment is beyond the pale. It is your type that is the problem with America. You cannot even recognize the propaganda you are being fed. Unbelievable.
I have said it before but will continue to say it ... If we could get rid of all of the folks that think Trump was our savior AND all of the folks who think Trump is Hitler, this would be a happier, more productive society. You would be included in that group.
I Don't watch much Fox or MSNBC because they both irritate me. I do think Fox occasionally trots out a left leaning personality just to give the appearance of balanced news. Hence people like Juan Williams and Donna Brazile being regulars on the channel. I can't think of anyone filling that role for right leaning perspectives on MSNBC. I may be wrong because as I said I don't watch much of either.
Oh my God. DO you WATCH Fox? For years, Shepherd Smith was a flaming liberal and now Chris Wallace? LOTS of the reporters are liberals and you have Juan and Donna and Geraldo in the middle and TONS of guests that do not get interrupted while they do their spin. Get a grip. Fox is balanced until you watch the editorial shows at night.
Dana Perino is with Fox and Rick "re-education camps for Walmart dwellers (giggle..giggle)" Wilson is hardly a great example. Any info-tainment "host" is slanted on either side. The biggest difference I see the there is Fox on one side of the major players and everyone else on the other. Both just slinging shit through the bars at their viewers. It is nearly impossible to find a straight-up news anchor. Brett Baier actually tries very hard, but still often falls short. Personally, my outrage tank is on empty. I can't watch any of it any more - no televised news can deliver news, only things to be pissed about. I now scan headlines on the usual 10 or so sites I frequent on both sides and simply ignore any headlines that look designed to serve up outrage. Slim pickings.
Climate change happens, it’s just not that big of a deal and certainly not worth killing the economy over. You are also correct that racism comes in many forms-just ask the Asians who are denied admission to Harvard or elite science HSs in NYC b/c their test scores would throw the color demographics way out of wack. As for leftism and environmentalism, why on earth is the former USSR basically one giant superfund. site?
"why on earth is the former USSR basically one giant superfund. site?"
My sympathy is with the great Soviet science fiction writers, like the Strugatsky Bros., and the great Soviet film directors, like Tarkovsky, who called this shit out at the time.
Oh man. IMO STALKER is the best Tarkovsky, but you can't go wrong with any Tarkovsky -- if you're into long, moody depictions of plebeian human misery inflicted by elite technonarcissism.
As if such a thing could happen. CNN tells me these are the good people, and anyone who doubts their noble intentions must be the bad people. Can't beat in depth "authoritative" analysis like that!
Libertarian here. I was inspired by JFK to become a liberal Democrat in 1960. I was inspired by Nancy Pelosi to become a liberal independent in 2009. I have never been a Republican. I watch both Fox and MSNBC with foreknowledge of their biases. Please understand that I now have foreknowledge of your biases. So do all the rest of Matt's followers who favor reasoned discourse.
This is in response to “I watch both Fox and MSNBC ...” Response: Why? Turn the TV off and go for a walk in the park. Try leaving cable news and talk radio and other commercial news alone for a week and then see if you feel more ignorant of current events than during the weeks you sat there and watched, and listened, and seethed ... We humans do not benefit from commercial “news” outlets. It doesn’t inform, it doesn’t entertain, and it doesn’t bring you feelings of fullness, joy, and harmony with life, the universe, and everything.
Find good investigative journalism. If you don’t know where to look, ask friends or others to recommend investigative journalism podcasts. And when you find some good ones, you can always take them along on your walk in the park.
I'm exploring investigative journalism this instant on substack. I am dying, unable to walk, older than dirt and housebound. I'm at the top of the vulnerable list for COVID19 thus kept quarantined. I keep a news channel on, muted, at all times just in case of an asteroid strike or a return of the hidden Imam. I don't seethe, if you're familiar with Myers-Briggs typology I'm an INTJ. We don't have seething genes, nor do we outsource bringing feelings of fullness etc. I create that internally.
Not to claim that Myers-Briggs is a perfected system, but I've always thought it amusing that collectors strongly tend INTJ (one might rationally expect ENTJ) while analysts tend INTP. The extroversion is a fake-out.
My best wishes to you, man. Try to stay as comfortable as you can for as long as you can.
Good for you Bill. You are one of the good ones. I am opposite of you, but agree that both sides are giving us propaganda. I actually watch Fox, CNN and MSNBC and laugh at them. They are pure propaganda and I treat them as entertainment. We need to coin a new term for them: propagandtainment or something. They are utterly useless.
I don't use FB or twitter or parlour or any of that waste of time crap. Everyone should abandon these joke companies for anything except sharing recipes. Totally jokes and wastes of time. My grankids spend 12 hours a day on bullshit internet crap that is eroding their minds.
If you are the opposite of me then you are not an earth-origin homo sapiens. Since you are my opposite, only one of us can be sentient, but the evidence is mixed. You've done an incredible job of mastering my language. I'm limited to terrestrial tongues.
Seriously, I've owned and run a couple of businesses as a living for about twenty years and have no social media presence. I hired a guy last year to help me use FB to generate awareness for a book I had worked on for five years, but it was a commercial flop. I'm not too old to learn, but I don't have enough lifespan left for it to be worth my while. I've never been a Twit, and the rest of it is just variations on a theme.
I mentor disadvantaged people to help them start their own businesses, the surest route out of poverty. Typical is a young Czech man I was working with to repurpose his skills and experience to start a low-investment company to meet an existing need. He decided it was too much work, and suggested we just exchange photos and cute cat videos on Whatssnapogram or whatever.
I want Al Gore arrested for inventing the internet.
Tried that. It just left a slime trail and died. Attracted ants that ate the slug. Got any other suggestions? And, do you mind helping me get rid of the ants?
I look forward to the day when we don't have to put on Kevlar to have a political discussion. That may require persuading some of us that a "second amendment solution" isn't the right answer to anyone who disagrees with you. (and it is only one side of the political divide that thinks that)
Gotta be the ass that says I told you the media wasn't going to chill out after Trump lost. The media has gone mental and will not go back to being sane.
Objective truth has become relative in the "new media". It no longer matters what you say, if one can interpret what is meant to be wrong think, you will be censored. Words no longer have meaning. Peaceful protest means armed insurrection only if practiced by the rural minority ;-)
Matt, I enjoy your writing and am glad that journalists like you have found an outlet like Substack. If I may provide some objective criticism, however, it feels like your position on “original sin” is evolving to the left a bit. What I mean is that most of what I read from you several months ago was either pretty agnostic on the issue or didn’t even address it at all. Your most recent writings, today’s being the best example, go farther in laying the original sin at the feet of Fox News. It is my opinion that the most dangerous journalist is not the blatant ideologue but rather, the journalist with a strong bias who feigns objectivity. Nearly all traditional media post-Reagan had slid a good bit to the left (including CNN) by the middle 1990’s, but feigned objectivity - as they still do. Fox News was launched as a reaction to this trend, as Roger Ailes famously saw their market as 50% of the Country. So, it is my opinion that the original sin is the ideological slide of traditional media to the left, with Fox News being a counter and alternative to that evolution. Fox’s success lead to the reaction of the traditional media to more open bias, and the launch of dog-shit cable news sites like MSNBC, with Trump being the final excuse to letting their bias flow freely. Let’s suffice it to say that Fox News could never have been created if Walter Cronkite was what traditional media looked like in 1996. In my opinion, there is no way to understand what is needed to correct the current media bias problem if we do not correctly diagnose the original sin in how we got here.
I fail to see why it is relevant discussing who did what first. Everyone is doing it now, and engaging in fingerpointing over who did it first is something only partisan hacks would care about to deflect blame. It's like communists and fascists arguing over whether left wing totalitarian regimes slaughter more people than right wing totalitarian regimes. Who cares? They're all bad!
Because if we don’t know how we got here, we are likely to get here again. If people believe that going back to pre-Fox 1996 will get us back to objective journalism, they will miss the point. If we go back to slanted journalism simply feigning objectivity, 50% of the Country will still be looking for an alternative.
Journalism has always been to some degree biased. Go read some choice comments from Mark Twain or George Orwell if you want some examples from the past. It just so happens that most people bought into the illusion of objectivity in postwar America, but that doesn't make it truth. Ideally people should be trained in school to spot propaganda and see it for what it is.
Depending on a small group of enlightened thinkers to spoonfeed the public whatever the editors and their bosses consider important is an inherently biased process. Rather than lie about a romanticized version past that never really existed, people should learn to think for themselves and start ignoring irrelevant BS.
I will agree with your comment that “ideally people should be trained in school to spot propaganda”, but increasingly they aren’t. Also, it is a provable fact that our finest liberal arts Colleges and Universities have pushed out nearly all conservative views and professors. So, increasingly our brightest young people are getting indoctrinated into a single way of seeing the world vs. being taught to follow an objective path to reach a conclusion. The vast majority of those in traditional media were indoctrinated at these Colleges and Universities and generally believe conservative ideas are not only wrong, but evil. So, where are people to find objective information, even if they desire it?
Suppose we can all agree that it's like communists and fascists arguing about who is worse, but both are bad.
Hang on, that's not quite the same as looking back to the 1930s, 40s and 50s to argue about who WAS worse back then. This is NOW. That means we can't just say "both are bad" and close up the history book.
No, because this is now, we actually have to DO something. We have to find out where we are and where we want to go. And for the purpose of doing something, there's nothing to be gained by saying that both sides are bad.
Instead, we actually have to find something GOOD, doncha see? Or at least, not bad. Well, that good thing can't very well be either left or right, because remember, both are bad. So we need something new, or maybe we need to take parts of left and parts of right.
Now, begin over. Discuss. Argue. But don't end up telling me what is bad yet again.
"there's nothing to be gained by saying that both sides are bad." There is for Matt -- he gets to hang on to his far left core audience. I unfollowed him on twitter because all he does is post counterpoints to actually stupid outraged leftists, and occasionally retweet Greenwald. Why not just go to the source? Glenn makes relevant posts, and doesn't pull punches for his leftist friends.Just for context, I campaigned for Bernie in 2016, but not SJW Identity Politics Bernie in 2020, which was a totally different campaign.
I didn't interpret this article as calling Fox the "original sin", just that they were the first to explicitly only go after this niche audience of the disenfranchised right wing viewer. He said, "For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties" and then listed four. You are upset about one of the four? Also the lines between left and right are constantly evolving and have changed dramatically since the 90's. There isn't some arbitrary never-changing center for the media to be "too far" to the left or right of.
It is all about proportionality, whether with respect to the 4 things Matt listed or the bias in the media. The national media bias is close to Fox News on one side and everyone else on the other, so the news most people get (particularly given the bias and even censorship in social media sites) is hardly balanced in its bias.
It's all relative. The point of Matt's article and book is that the news has splintered to give people what they want to see rather than capture a single huge audience. The vast majority of people are getting news from sources they agree with. So if you think that "most" people are getting news that is biased. That means that "most" people share that bias and you, my friend, are simply in the minority.
Given that comment, I will respectfully leave you with your views. No reason for us to go down the rabbit hole, there are times it is best to just agree to disagree.
First let me say thank you! What you write was exactly what I was about to write, every last word. I want to say also that I work in the media, for the last 25 years. I worked at NPR, CBS, NBC, and finally FOX, and can honestly say as a liberal, FOX was a reaction to the bias of all the other networks. The liberal fix was in! I never met a conservative until I started working at FOX, and it's a great big family of Libs, Independents, and Conservatives, unlike what you will find at other MSM places. What Ailes saw was an opportunity to serve an underserved audience, to give voice to a huge part of the country not being heard. The others reacted to what he did because it was so successful. Taibbi did this in his book HATE INC., too, which I also read. He does put all the blame on FOX, and it's not a fair or honest assessment of how it went down. Nicely done.
Ah, but this is where it gets tricky. Matt a few months back did a long interview with Noam Chomsky. They talked about his 1988 book “Manufacturing Consent.” I asked for a copy for Christmas, which I haven’t read yet, because I’m a retired business journalist who remembered a time in the late 1980s when folks would ask me why I wasn’t writing about “the other side.” Based on Matt’s interview, Chomsky argued that American media had swung to the right, and that’s when my questioners were asserting. At the time, the Soviet Union was imploding, China was scrapping its economic model of backyard steel mills for state capitalism, so my reaction was, “ I think the other side just died. Why keep arguing for it?” I realize the book goes into a lot more that economics, but my point is that your view on the bias of media is usually pretty biased itself. You see it sliding left, Chomsky saw it sliding right. And to me, that argues for the humility of a traditional “objective” media model of suspending partisanship in favor of multiple viewpoints.
I don’t want to get into a back and forth down the rabbit hole with you, which from your first reply seems would be likely. It is to me a provable fact that conservatism has been pushed out of our finest liberal arts colleges and universities over the past few decades. I can site statistics on the political affiliations and donations of the professors at our most prestigious schools if you like. Those schools have produced the journalists that occupy most of our national media and leaders of our social media companies. If you believe that the journalists at the NYT, Washington Post, CNN, (NBC, CBS, ABC) and the primary social media sites are balanced in their political ideology and reporting, then we just live on different planets. If you believe that Facebook and Twitter censor inflammatory and/or false information equally, then we just live on different planets. I don’t want to insult you or deny you your right to your own opinion, but unless there is some basic agreement on our current situation, there is no point in discussing solutions.
There is what I think is an inescapable bias, but it’s less institutional than you argue. Here’s how I see it play out. Journalists-to-be consider the profession and see that it doesn’t pay tons and requires a lot of preparation if you want a good position, but do it anyway for the personal satisfaction of making a difference. See an early trend? Then one decides they want to cover government and politics, and they do this because ... they think government is the problem, not the solution? Not likely. They pick business coverage (as I did) because ... they think it’s evil, or because they find it interesting, get to meet smart people and dig into the why and how of the matter? Cover sports because it’s a hoot, or because they find it mindless and barbaric? There’s a lot of self-selection going on. But we all get run through the objectivity grinder, so sports guys never want to be “homers,” political reporters know they need to remain non-partisan, and business reporters interview labor and management, regulators and entrepreneurs. The Business Desk thinks Metro are economic ignoramuses, and Metro wonders if business reporters are really fascists. ( I should be talking in past tense, since most papers don’t have enough reporters to make up separate departments anymore. ) My point is that it’s not a monolith, although I will say the NYT seems hellbent on getting there.
I think your analysis is more appropriate for a local newspaper reporter than the national media. As Matt has pointed out, the local newspaper is quickly dying and has been irrelevant to younger people for some time. This, along with the rise of people increasingly getting their news via feeds on their social media accounts, has further elevated the national media. If you want to make an argument for the balance of reporting coming from the national media, we can stop our discussion now.
It's important, I think, to add that like all the best con-men the top media people believe their own bullshit.
I have a relative who is a genuine New York media elite. Can't talk to her at all. Trump supporters to her are drooling racists, that's it! No discussion. I try a Taibbian argument (you guys made this cake by selling drama and "narratives" while acting as corporate satraps). Nope! Wrong! I completely screwed the pooch when I suggested that Harvey Weinstein would never get a fair trial, and that should worry self-described liberals like her. Bam, no good, bad, scare bath! I added that he was a bona fide asshole from everything I'd heard and probably guilty of some if not all the shit he was accused of. My point was that he wouldn't get a fair trial. It was an ACLU-sticking-up-for-the-Nazis kind of thing. Didn't matter. She was like "how DARE you!" Suddenly I was a Trumpist, a sexist pig and a right wing Republican -- even though my politics have always been well to the left of hers.
Yup I have a good friend who lives in NYC (of course house in the Hamptons) and every year the list grows longer of what we cant talk about. Started with Israel, then any Republicans, then the problems of the middle and lower class.... soon it will just be the weather. So bloody sad.
The problem with the center is that no one is buying it, monetarily or intellectually. People want their juicy Hannity burger with an OAN shake, or the Maddow Supreme Pizza with some Seder cola. No one wants the Politico spinach salad with low-fat dressing.
I was watching Alex Jones trying to talk the almost-rioters off the ledge the other day and all I could think was "my god, this guy is one wrong sentence away from being shouted down as a Soros shill". One of the most wingnut conspiracy theorists in the world, and if he says something they don't like we all know many of them would instantly write him off as a sellout and move on rather than question than own beliefs. It's that easy to lose relevance.
Vox Day, the white supremecist had to flee Gab because he questioned the methods of those even further right than him. A lefty like Rogan becomes suddenly "alt-right" person non grata in humanities departments across the country because he doesn't want to see a trans-woman beating the snot out of unknowing cis-women. Tulsi Gabbard is accused of being a Russian asset for trying to utilize diplomacy rather than demonization.
The One World Government is poised to take over..... The Great Reset. Make the US equal to Mongolia:
Biden's New World Order. "We have to update the global rules of the road, and we have to do it in a way that maximizes benefits for everyone, because it’s overwhelmingly in our interest that China prosper, that Mongolia prosper. …We have to level ”the playing field.”
“You mean, Mr. Biden, you are more concerned about making sure China and Mongolia prosper than American workers?"
New Word Order.
Who will be the Government? THE RICH ELITES:
“We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years… (censorship)…It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government.
The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.”
Your point about the Democratic Party-aligned media 'juicing' Trump stories is spot on. Coming from the left, for quite a while I'd take them at their word whenever they'd summarized something Trump said. Then one day I actually watched one of the referenced clips in full and found that he hadn't said any of the things they said at all, they'd somehow projected or imagined that he had said something worse and attributed it to him. Since then, I've made a point of actually watching important clips all the way through, and frequently they don't line up with the juiced narratives that are being pushed.
For example, the hullabaloo over him telling the Proud Boys to 'stand by'. In the full exchange (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZk6VzSLe4Y) he's clearly denouncing them, but people seized on his awkward phrasing to make it sound like he wanted them to attack or something. (Katy Halper even repeated this during a Useful Idiots episode!)
To be clear, i think Trump is a dimwit and don't agree with him on a million things, but pretending he's some Grand Dragon Machiavellian Puppetmaster totally misses the point. Trump blurted out plenty of things that were disqualifying and frightening, you don't need to invent stuff. There are many more examples of this. My trust in most media has absolutely plummeted this year.
Biden said his whole campaign was based on running against Trump's "good people on both sides" comment. The biggest lie of them all...but at this point most people believe he was calling Nazi's good people.
Yes! Everyone remembers this sentence being repeated ad infinitum (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmaZR8E12bs&t=1m3s - starting at 1:03), but no one remembers that after finishing that thought, he loops back around to clarify ~20 seconds later: "...and I'm not talking about neo-nazis or white nationalists, they should be condemned totally." (1:57 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmaZR8E12bs&t=1m57s)
These fuckers are making me defend Donald Trump of all people, geez.
(Edit: removed previous comment because the link was messed up)
It is infuriating, isn’t it? I don’t care for Trump but am forced to constantly defend him from attacks by left-wing fabulists.
It is. I tried to get through the 4 years without looking at him at all.
The truly scary thing is not Trump's tweets, but the fact that the people now running the country looked at 2016, saw that we'd voted for a buffoon over their annointed candidate...and chose to learn nothing from it.
Amazing! Frightening!
Exactly! Read the full quote for yourself if you do not believe this (it can be googled). Trump was referring to "both sides" of the statue question and said Neo-Nazi's were bad in the same remarks. (and I know African Americans who think statues should be left up so some good people want them up - I think they should be taken down after a city approves it, using the rule of law, and I hope all cities approve it.
I wanted Ammendment 25 used on Trump when he did not immediately tweet "get out of the building" I thought only a person gone insane would fail to do that. He did not say "go home" for two hours. (Stay peaceful, mind the cops, is not enough). But his speech before supporters marched to the capital said:
"No we will march peacefully and patriotically to the capital"
Those of you who only watch CNN and MSNBC never hear that.
(Oh, and I think Trump went over the line into insanity - he has always been rather odd - but I think he is now sane again. No use putting the country through more misery - the 20th is coming.)
I do wish the left wing would admit it is mostly fringe groups like QAnon and Proud Boys, along with a few mentally unstable people, and a few innocent souls who literally saw open doors and thought they were allowed to walk through. It was a tiny percent of those who support Trump - all with something "wrong upstairs" I guess, but there are just as many on the left with something "wrong upstairs".
One violent protest...ok, it was in the capital...they didn't burn anything down, they didn't kill anyone. I cringe when I hear BLM would be treated differently. Yeah, that woman - and I do not blame the man who shot her!! - would be a martyr to CNN, MSNBC and BLM because she was "peacefully protesting" and trespass is not worthy of death.
Bear in mind I agree with most that Trump's behavior since the election was called has been abhorrent. He could have noted once, maybe twice, how the results didn't ring true, but that should have been it. Let his lawyers proceed. None of the "rigged", "stolen" and other incendiary language he instead chose to use. In that sense he became somewhat responsible for the nutcases who breached the Capital, albeit a result he could not have foreseen because 'MAGA' actually protest peacefully.
That said, I don't buy this mostly bipartisan narrative that his words AT the rally had anything to with the Capital break-in. I don't buy that he was even aware it was happening.
The first wave of criminals appeared at the Capitol a full half hour before Trump finished speaking at the Ellipse. Anyone spurred by Trumps words would have had to navigate from the Ellipse to the Capitol (2 miles or ~45 minutes), alongside and through an estimated 50k people, and then again through those criminals already present on the Capitol steps. What's that, maybe an hour.5 to complete trip? The Capitol was breached at 1:50, 40 minutes after Trump had finished.
There are also many people interviewed stating they had no idea how bad thing's were until they saw tear gas. All these horrific videos of the breach were shared post facto.
If anyone has evidence to the contrary I would very much like to see it, but until then, and as always, I'm not buying the narrative.
You're viewing the Trump riot with some rose colored glasses. His speech also included 'You Will Never Take Back Our Country With Weakness'. It was incendiary and poured gasoline on the fire. He deserves all of the derision heaped upon him for this one.
Ask the black cop who ran for his life up flights of stairs pursued by a fearless mob in red if it was mostly fringe groups.
I don't blame the tiny percentage of Trump supporters as much as I do Trump himself. Don't know how anyone can support him after this.
Please have a look at these videos of "peaceful freedom fighters", fully endorsed and supported by the USA congress and media, and compare:
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/07/01/hong-kong-protesters-legislative-council-matt-rivers-vpx.cnn
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-49157807
“On 1 July 2019, hundreds of protesters stormed Hong Kong's Legislative Council, (Legco), spraying graffiti and defacing symbols of the Hong Kong law-making body. The ransacking of the government building marked a turning point in a protest movement against a now suspended extradition law.”
I've discovered that it's not merely pro-Trumpers who are targets. I've been opposed to him since he first came to prominence in the 1970s and he hasn't changed anything but his party affiliation. When I criticized Democrat Trump I was attacked. Funny.
Today, I write defending constitutional rights and calling out precedents with potentially catastrophic consequences. It doesn't matter that I never support Trump; I'm accused of supporting him because I am insufficiently zealous in calling for his arrest and execution. Precedents are powerful, and we now have precedents that perjury is justified if the accused is on the wrong side of an issue, that weaponizing government is justified by being on the correct side of history, that an administration plotting the overthrow of its successor is acceptable, that fabricating evidence is acceptable, that spying on reporters is righteous, that using the tax code to silence dissent is admirable, and the list goes on.
Harry Reid established precedent doing away with almost all rights of the minority in the Senate, which wound up leaving Democrats in the hole. Andrew Johnson was impeached for violating an unconstitutional act of congress, but the real reason was his refusal to cooperate with the Radical Republicans and use Reconstruction to completely destroy all vestiges of the Democratic Party, and to reduce the entire South to a state of ruin from which it could never recover. That's the precedent now being used by the authoritarian left in efforts to abolish dissent. This is dangerous stuff.
«I am insufficiently zealous in calling for his arrest and execution. Precedents are powerful, and we now have precedents that perjury is justified if the accused is on the wrong side of an issue, that weaponizing government is justified by being on the correct side of history»
My usual quote from George Orwell, "As I Please", 1945-01-26:
“The Daily Worker disapproves of dictatorship in Athens, the Catholic Herald disapproves of dictatorship in Belgrade. There is no one who is able to say - at least, no one who has the chance to say in a newspaper of big circulation - that this whole dirty game of spheres of influence, quislings, purges, deportation, one-party elections and hundred per cent plebiscites is morally the same whether it is done by ourselves, the Russians or the Nazis. Even in the case of such frank returns to barbarism as the use of hostages, disapproval is only felt when it happens to be the enemy and not ourselves who is doing it.”
Blissex, you're suggesting that authoritarianism and all evil did not begin with Trump's election? You do know that Big Tech is watching, and they know where you live. That's only half in jest. I agree fully. We need some self-examination.
Yes to all this. And if we see an impeachment actually move forward despite zero evidence that of any incitement...then we’ll have a dangerous precedent for free speech...that you can be tried and convicted for...your tone? Imputed intent? Rather than for your words themselves.
The Trump-Johnson analogy is a good one.
Yes to all of this. He also never said to drink bleach (It’s like the media...supposedly expert writers...suddenly forgot the difference between a statement and a question. Pop quiz pearl-clutches: what’s the difference between an imperative and an interrogative?)
Nor did he say that he wouldn’t send aid to governors who didn’t thank him...nor did he ask the GA SOS to find 11,000 votes...unless you listened only to the 4 seconds the Post included and ignored the rest of the call...and I can think of a dozen other things. Most notably perhaps...he didn’t tell anyone to riot at the capitol. He didn’t even suggest it. But that won’t stop a second ridiculous impeachment attempt.
Did not vote for Trump in 2016. Voted for him while holding my nose in 2020 because I became a single issue voter...and that issue was free speech. The media sent me that direction...the more censorship I saw...the more my trust in our institutions plummeted...the more I wanted to vote for the person they disliked the most.
«take them at their word whenever they'd summarized something Trump said. Then one day I actually watched one of the referenced clips in full and found that he hadn't said any of the things they said at all»
And that is a general principle: realizing that something is hearsay and looking beyond it to the at the original sources, whether they are the actual words of someone, or the original book from centuries ago, can be amazing. Two of my favourites that I often quote here are A de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" and JK Galbraith's "The great crash 1929" and "Money".
I don't think we can come back from this division.
Indeed. We are now living in multiple "realities": those who believe their preferred msm, those who believe in conspiracy theories, and those who are independent and think everyone has lost their minds.
I agree that we are not going to come back from this.
I will say that those of us who are independent live by our principles and anyone who believes in corporate totalitarian censorship is insane. I recommend they look up the definition of "fascism."
Lol, I’m defiantly in the independent, everyone has gone bonkers category! I have Trumper neighbors that appear to be sane until any kind of politics comes up and then it’s crazy conspiracy highway. My 11 year old came in months ago from playing outside to ask me if Bill Gates was really putting microchips in people through covid tests....🤦♀️
On the flip side are my left wing friends who believe the 1st and 2nd amendment need to be revoked. They are acting extremely hateful and bigoted to Trump supporters as well. Some of the things they say about these people who not be tolerated aboyt any other group. They are every bit as intolerant (or more so) than the other side. They are acting just like the Religious Right did in the 80’s and 90’s and I suspect their self righteousness to come crashing down in the same way,
Humans seem to have a soft spot for zealotry. Self righteousness can be a drug.
The zealot rush is very good at erasing one's own inane blather from memory.
@Spiderbaby @mule Thank you both for the most lucid comments on the thread. Self-righteousness is indeed one of the key banes of the human race. I grew up with it and learned to despise this behavior in humans. It can, in those with a predisposition toward megalomania or even just solipsism, catalyze a quest for purity that destroys the ties that bind us - love, compassion, respect and the benefit of the doubt. It conveys the illusion that when we are right, we are pure, we are good, we are safe, we are powerful. It is one of the most dangerous of all of our mental proclivities for the reasons you cite. It is an emotional high like no other. It is one of the main reasons that, as a former left-leaning liberal, I deeply fear the left right now. I always thought it would be Christian zealots that would break this country, but I was mistaken. I was very poorly educated in terms of systems and politics. As I have become more educated, I now believe that it will be the far left in their hyper-reaction to the horrible unfairness and inhumanity (also driven by self-righteousness) practiced by the old moral majority over the past several centuries. The old moral majority applied their principles of Christian charity only to the select. If you didn't qualify (for a variety of reasons - skin color, sexual orientation, refusal to accept certain social norms (particularly for women), sex/gender, etc.), you were othered - which meant shaming, ostracization, dimunition of livelihood, laws passed against you, and even death.
Because it behaves like a drug in human brains, I see no way to stop it other than appealing to people's hearts and compassion. And my own attempts to change this in people have not been successful. BTW, I am a vet and care deeply about the fate of this country, which even today, at 56, I would lay down my life for. But, how do you change a "belief mob" that is committed to believing that other people should be deplatformed, cancelled, or even killed simply for not agreeing with them?
Ironically, the US was created (in part) by people trying to escape the bloody religious wars in Europe (old school belief mobs). And, here we are again - come full circle. SMH
Sanctimony is the original high. At least most religions warn their adherents against it (none too successfully, but at least it's identified as a sin). The secularists have no institutional or philosophical brakes on that addiction.
Short and sweet, you said it. A pastor of mine once said the strongest human drive isn’t for food or shelter or sex. It’s the need to know you are right 100 percent of the time. Hence, religious fundamentalists, secular humanist fundamentalists, zealots of all stripes.
Well said.
Ain't that the truth- you see it all the time.
I see no reason to believe that an arbitrary group of "lefties" (chosen at random) would be fundamentally different in knowledge or intelligence from an arbitrators group of "righties" (chosen at random) , especially if they are genuinely extreme lefties and genuinely extreme righties.
To make up for my Santa crack I'll chime in. I think political thought is one big circle. Whether you head to the right or to the left, if you stay on course long enough you eventually end up in Looney Tunes Land. Sadly that's not a retirement village for Mel Blanc, Daffy Duck & Foghorn Leghorn.
I have to agree. The urge to know you are right 100 percent of the time — a drive I expect everybody has felt at one time or another— can produce fundamentalists who can lead a “Cultural Revolution” or a Nazi war machine.
I liked your comment but there is a problem between the original statement and the final sentence. Randomly chosen v. genuinely extreme. I don't think the majority of either group are genuinely extreme. You'd find fewer extremes in a random group.
I'm not that offended by acting "bigoted" toward Trump supporters. My problem comes from default liberals hyperventilating about our SACRED this and that in reference to foundational American ideals. Since when was anything about American institutions sacred to the left? What exactly is sacred when you want to abolish the most fundamental building blocks of American representative democracy? I'm on board with removing Trump from office, but I'm not stupid enough to believe that default-liberals and the establishment press are doing it out of some altruistic adherence to 'muh democracy.
It's the same response that's shown towards conspiracy theories. Russiagate propagates like fruit flies, while QAnon & such are swatted with a virtual fly swatter.
I think that used to be called "do as I say not as I do."
Never liked that phrase.
Kids are the best! Play dates reveal a lot 🤣
No kidding! I had to be diplomatic about and be subtle in my explanation, instead of saying they’re bat sh#% crazy. Lol they’re neighbors so no need to make enemies but still.
Large companies silencing and blacklisting political opposition at the behest of one party is the definition of fascism, where companies are an arm of the state.
When I visualize fascism, it looks much worse than that. Mussolini. Hitler. And, actually, Stalin, though that is not the usual designation for him.
You know, the more I think about it, the less sure I am that I even know what fascism means anymore. Political books now tend to use more descriptive words like oligarchy or autocracy.
One of the things that security expert Bruce Schneier always likes to point out is that we tend to defend against the last threat, and lack the imagination to properly recognize what the next threat will look like.
So we tend to think of the fascism of old, from times long before the internet, global surveillance, etc. Who needs to fight people directly when you can cancel their bank accounts, have them banned from social media, pressure their employers, put them on the no fly list, and so on? Very few people are in a position to live off grid and be fully self sufficient.
that's ok. We can skipo Marriot and Blue Cross and even Ford or Fed EX if they decide to do such a thing. And we are not supporting Amazon, Apple, google, Twitter and FAcebook and we have a lot of ways to make them feel the pain. So let them try it. The right hasn't done that before, but this was before they went after freedom of speech.
Parler would disagree with you.
You individually might try to make Amazon feel pain, but it won't hurt Amazon too bad until a lot of other people are also trying to make it feel pain.
I think observing this discrepancy might feed into the original intent of antitrust laws.
Frances, I have faith that we can come back from this.
Faith, like hope or democracy, isn't a strategy. It's just a thing that one clings to, trusting that most of one's fellow human beings want the best for all of us.
Hope
is the thing
with feathers
that perches
within the soul
and sings the tunes
without the words
and never stops
at all.
Emily Dickinson
I feel a bit better every time Cornell West starts talking. And I'm a Darwin-thumping atheist.
I've always found that hope to be among the best of human qualities. Without hope humanity is truly lost.
Don't you think that the reason why everything looks like a LARP is because people are now essentially fighting over their fantasies?
Who is the "we" that cannot come back? The current US political system? The current and future inhabitants of the North American continent? The human race? This is a serious question. Arguments and political parties and governments die out; humankind goes on until the ecosystem breaks, which we all hope will not be next week.
All of America. Can you seriously think that we can come back together united when one half of the country wants to put the other into re-education camps? Are you even paying attention?
The problem is "paying attention" to mass media orgs, as MT points out.
The "re-education camp" crew are loud voices on social media. I don't think they'll get much traction in reality. Please try to have a little faith in your fellow citizens.
I think certainly yes things can improve. The conditions are pretty bad for the short term. But the conditions are changing. In some dimensions the changes have been positive.
We don't need to be united and we never were. Have you read Rick Perlstein? We've always been fighting each other.
I feel the ludicrous extremes are dominating the conversation, from Q, to storming the capitol, to the wokeist cultural revolution etc. it's just bonkers. Depressing, yes, but how long can it last? The only way forwards for these intolerant ideologies is to get more bonkers.
And I think your math is wrong. Some fraction wants to enforce reeducation. Another fraction is like me thinking it all bonkers or incomprehensible. And those two together are less than 1.
Exactly. That's the problem. Dems - and especially all these woke people - need to learn that the life models of conservative people are to be respected. Even if they despise them. Reps need to learn that the woke crowd and their life styles are to be respected. Even if they think these are crazy dangerous people. To each its own.The problem starts when 1 group applys force to change the other goups way of life / thinking. Here the main culprit is definitely this whole woke crowd with its cancel culture and often violent supression of free speach. It does'nt make matters any better that they have the might of Silicon Valley as helpfull friends.
My point is that "America" can mean various things. Our current constitutional system could fall and be replaced by another one that might be similar or might be completely different, but still called The United States of America. Could the result of that "come back"?
Our entire government could go out of business. The next country built on th ruins of the old America could be called Republic of Tears. Would that "come back"?
The USA could split into 50 separate countries. Could they come back?
Who knows?
I’m sure that’s what most Northerners and Southerners thought on 10/9 /1864, 6 months before Lee surrendered Confederate troops.
For things to improve, they often have to get worse first. As Ross Perot was fond of saying, if you can’t figure out how to solve a problem, make it bigger.
Right. When I get fearful about the US, I think of countries that have collapsed just in the period I have been alive. Humans are still living in those countries. Things get better or worse after the event. Life continues.
I think you are looking at it two-dimensionally and from a place of entitlement as an American insulated from the outside world. Real pain takes place during collapse. It's best not selected as an option.
Yes, people do survive (most do). Life continues. I grant that. Perhaps you could do some research on a recently collapsed country such as Ukraine. Check out how many people have emigrated.
There's a precedent. Until about AD 1150 Islam was the center of learning in the Old World, with the best in science, philosophy, art, literature, architecture, the works. Something happened that caused the unified state-religion to turn its back on that and rely solely on education about the Koran, and in that case it was only to memorize selected verses. It corrupted the beautiful concept of Jihad, which in Roman Catholicism is called self-examination, and in psychology introspection. Jihad was outward directed as violence toward anyone not in full agreement with the popular narrative.
Islam, which had expanded through trade, exploration and proselytizing, tried to continue expansion through warfare and destruction. This suffered a severe blow in 1492 with the expulsion of the Muslims from Spain, and died in the 1683 siege of Vienna. Islam has not yet recovered and in large parts of the world appears to continue decaying.
That was without aircraft, tanks, biowarfare and nuclear weapons. The ecosystem is far more fragile and the threat orders of magnitude greater than in 1683.
"Islam, which had expanded through trade, exploration and proselytizing, tried to continue expansion through warfare and destruction."
Might be an historical lesson here for the USA.
When did "the unified state-religion [...] turn its back on [learning] and rely solely on education about the Koran"?
Frances , when you walk into any room , you are probably the smartest person there. I know too many people who have taken sides , believe what they want to believe and disregard the rest * , have become tribal and will believe things without evidence . They are not stupid people but their conclusions based on fear and extreme bias , lack of critical thinking , and a psychological barrier to seeing what is obvious, make them appear very stupid.
I was always above average but what's going on these days , allows me to pull way back and in the end I wind up looking like a freakn' genius . Who would have thought
* Paul Simon
“A man hears what he wants to her and disregards the rest’ is the lyric from The Boxer.
Yes, "The Boxer": "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." In a sense that has to be true of all of us to some extent, because no one can process everything that comes into their ears. The key is to keep reevaluating what you want to hear.
Not sure there’s much difference between those who believe their preferred msm and those who believe in conspiracy theories, given that the MSM has pushed conspiracy theories ranging from “Trump colluded with Russia” to “Trump watches the Gorilla Channel for several hours a day”.
I think this "division" will be more of a reconfiguration. Lots of Berners and MAGAs getting together.
I hope so. I really like your optimism. Indeed, I have been white pilled by the event because I think it exposes who the real tyrants are. So far, I have been disappointed by how so many people are absolutely swept up by the Cathedral. But I'm hopeful that many more will wake up. The Great Awakening is here!
We Americans love our Great Awakenings. Is this the 5th?
I can see it. I mean, if this MAGA reads every MT article and watches every Dore show because I really enjoy them, how far off am I?
I like the man but the downside of Bernie's policies have always been the socialist angle, but the way our govt is printing money like it's toilet paper in a pandemic, how long before the word 'fiscal responsibility' becomes a forgotten concept? Kinda strange how Wang's UBI went from ridiculous to sure-why not in the space of a year.
Keep this in mind- if the poor get UBI, just imagine what the elites are going to get. I can certainly see how a number of unscrupulous individuals would like to exploit the printer of the world's reserve currency abandoning all fiscal restraint.
I know some blue collar Republicans that liked Bernie’s policies and wanted to vote for him.
It's funny how much Bernie appealed to the Reagan Democrat bloc. Crucial difference was Reagan won a national election twice and Bernie couldn't get through the Democratic primary.
Reagan didn't have his own party sabotaging his primary run though. I remember reading an article at the beginning of the primary season that said the Democrats biggest donors had informed the DNC that, should Bernie win the nomination, the donors would switch their money to Trump.
"Lots of Berners and MAGAs getting together." LOL, I howled at that. I have thought from your comments for weeks that you are a Russian troll. Your comment confirms it.
I live under a bridge in Irkutsk. I am simultaneously both a Майор in the GRU and a bot. The bot posts while the human sleeps.
I still wonder how Grigory Volkonsky 's son became a Decembrist. It might lend insight.
So the pension of a major isn't very luxurious?
Nice to meet ya...........
LOL!
You'd be surprised. I'm an ex-Berner that turned MAGA and even noticed some comments in Jimmy Dore's videos supporting the Capitol uprising. Person noted that they thought it was awesome that anyone stormed the Capitol and that the progressives should have.
The sad truth is that there is no way to have an honest and/or rational conversation with anyone indoctrinated into either Team Blue or Team Red (whether they are self-aware or not)... and that started before the Trump era. Neither side can believe that I didn't vote for their douche bag of choice... even if as a vote against one or the other. They may not be able to pillory me for being on the 'other team', but my choice is no less treasonous in their mind... and maybe worse, because I refuse to participate in their game.
Ah, yes, truth by anecdote!
geez 🙄 I won't say what think you are
I don't think grisha is a troll. Russian? Maybe.
🙄🙄🙄🙄
Agree. When Hilary won the nomination, I felt that Bernie supporters had more, or at least the same amount of, beliefs in common with the MAGA crowd. I'm a lifelong conservative, yet I'm now drawn to reading Matt and Glenn Greenwald because I care first and foremost about civil liberties. I wouldn't lose hope for the US just yet. I wasn't alive in the 1960s, but I can imagine that everyone felt pretty hopeless and divided during that time.
That is interesting. Yet I still think that Fox News has been by far the strongest agent of polarization. I might be wrong.
Wally, you have uttered the most intelligent and composed statement on this thread (much of which is a Q.E.D. of what Taibbi wrote). As I said to my dad the other night: if the poor right and the poor left ever figure things out and get together, we might have a very interesting situation on our hands. But then what.....?
There may be some overlap with some minor points of economic libertarianism and the Populist Bernie left, but the problems of racism, woke police, and indifference make this alliance fleeting at best. These two groups could partner on legislation in a few areas, but not align naturally with any sort of platform.
The point is they are all populists who have been shut out by the establishment. The enemy of my enemy and all that.
Yep. I've been saying this for at least a year before Trump won in 2016. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The MAGA were anti-war and so were the progressives.
But the progressives were so short-sighted that they didn't realize by uniting to stop the establishment we would be saving hundreds of thousands of brown and black people on the other side of the planet. As an ex-progressive, I think the progressives are dumb AF.
True... fewer enemies besides the establishment would be nice. But somewhere between Hayak and Roe/Wade, new enemies form.
Exactly!
Most libertarians (and decent/libertarianism conservatives) have zero problem with legitimate police reform-body cams, union oversight, more/better training,etc.
The problem is that D dominated. big cities don’t want the fiscal investment-they would rather pander to the mob, pay the occasional settlement, and virtue signal instead of actually improving the police and by extension their worst neighborhoods. They would rather play to the woke mob of n a virtual one party state and hope for a fiscal bailout from DC.
What is economic libertarianism?
That is true, but they hold very little sway over the right in a political sense - Enjeti talks about this all the time on Rising as he thinks it is a big barrier for the Republicans to claim more populist positions. But it is not that easy to cut Ayn Rand out of the right's consciousness --- just as the Bernie left defending Marx's criticisms of capital (some memes always get knocked into the rough, using Matt's metaphor of golf in Hate Inc (2019).
Unusual coalitions do occur and I mentioned that on certain individual policies, but it would be an uneasy long term partnership -- fraught with the possibility of getting to close to one another and then betrayal (not unlike the Scorpion and the Frog parable).
I doubt it. Censoring people like this is beyond the pale and it is absolutely infuriating half this country. They have overstepped their bounds.
In this globalist driven culture war, the biggest weapons of destruction are profit centers. Think money printing, socializing losses and privatizing gains that roll up. Currency, trade and culture wars all lead to real ones eventually.
I agree, which is sad and scary in the near term, but possibly the best thing to happen in the end. Studies of government accountability all point towards smaller governments being more accountable to their citizens.
Smaller governments as in States rights. :)
Me either. We need end this ridiculous two-party system and start anew. Fat chance.
Maybe in 5 years when people look back on what was lost between 2017-2021 and compare it to what was lost between 2021-2025, they will see that a media-driven virtual crisis where most peoples' lives improve, except their blood pressure during twitter sessions and a imbecile-driven political crisis where civil liberties and the last specks of privacy are lost while bathing in dulcet tones of social media confirmation bias.
I won't hold my breath, people only got more divided when those scenarios happened in reverse between 2009-2021.
All repair requires an honest assessment, self-reflection, and a commitment to make change as a means of not repeating past mistakes. We have a system devoid of all three - coming back (resilience) resides in our ability to change systems versus holding up our hands in disgust at the present situation.
It is hard to imagine systems changing at this moment, but if there is one display that is more powerful than those who wield economic and political dominion, it is the utter incompetence and failure of American systems rhetoric/actions to live up to the promise of what it sells. Corruption erodes trust -- this can be weaponized by smart people who resist both parties.
Come on Elon - buy CNN (it's for sale for $10b) ....and give Matt or Glen the Chief Editor's job.
"Save us, awful rich man"
Elon is the biggest narcissist to ever suck a breath. He is horrible
You don't get to be a billionaire without first being a narcissist.
really takes the sheen off people getting rich.
The action is the juice, as Tom Sizemore says in HEAT (1995)
Like maybe rich is not the holy ever lovin' king of nothin' h/t rtj
Elon Musk is awesome. Give the man some freedom and he does great things. Also, I’d be a narcissist too if I hooked up w/ Amber Heard.
Elon Musk got $10 billion from the government to to make things science fiction writers invented. He takes the government money and pays talented people to design and engineer them. He is a a con artist..........................
He is a con artist with rockets. NASA can't build rockets. That's a good con.
Rumor has it he meets earnings expectations by selling energy certificates to other manufacturers, which seems plausible since he misses his goals on actual production
"I’d be a narcissist too if I hooked up w/ Amber Heard."
How did that work out for Johnny Depp?
IMO only; I don't think either Matt or Glenn would want that job.
OK - I get it some people don't think of Elon as the model citizen so how about this for a plan..
1. Donate it to a Charitable Trust (and yes take the $10b tax deduction because you can)
2. Put people like Joe Rogan, Matt Taibbi, Jeff Gundlach, John Mauldin, Naval, Mother Teresa etc etc as the Trustees - people who aren't afraid to be different
3. Have a diverse pool of "journalists" and by diverse I mean diverse in thought. Minimal Ivy League grads, proportionate representation from all 50 states (not the coastal) and from around the world
4. No click-bait journalism
What else? Let's crowdsource this and get it to Elon. And Elon...you want to fix a fundamental problem in America right now? This is how to do it.
We need people from various socioeconomic vewpoints.
To what end?
yes...and I'm ashamed to admit I don't know of women that fit into "free thinkers". Some young people too (my list are all over 50). No "celebrities" - just solid people. With term limits.
As a reminder, his child is known as x. If I had to choose between Bezos and Musk, I would pick Musk, but he buys into the popular narratives too easily. That is just as dangerous.
Who is Glen?
Greenwald
I am uneasy about him as he seems a bit crazy but I could very easily be entirely wrong.
That’s because he sees through the DNC’s woke facade to their true dark corporate, wall street, tech monopoly center. He’s reporting on real power in Washington which happened to switch from the Republicans of the Bush oughts to the Democrats. The Democrats are the party of wall street, tech oligopoly and entertainment elites. That is where power is focusing their appeal. If they appear diverse & woke enough then maybe they won’t get broken up and the anti-trust book thrown at them.
Well, he has a history with Snowden which is relevant for ethics alone. Second, he has had his life threatened by the Bolsonaro government and stayed in Brazil to fight off the move towards a fascist Brazil (after the seedy take over from Lulu -- which has been found to be a soft coup).
Also, he did not fall for the mainstream head fake of Russiagate or Syria put out by centrists in both parties here in the US. And he has severed his relationship with the Intercept, which has proven itself to be utterly incompetent and helping the Bellingcats, CIA front operations for the US intelligence community.
I'd say his big mouth is less crazy, and more likes a scrap.
He is a guy like Matt. He's a civil libertarian guy. I am against any elitist from whatever party who thinks they can censor people like this. That includes the Lincoln Project RINO crazies.
I have found that I have that assumption about many people before I actually read their work or listen to their podcasts. I try to resist that and hear them out. It's easy for someone to be given the taint of "a bit crazy" by their rivals or mainstream media. Just listen and decide for yourself.
Oh Ralph 🙄
I was thinking the same thing!!!! Please Elon Please !
As I've said before on these pages, Matt T and I agree on very little policies, but his argument, "We need a new media channel, the press version of a third party." is 100% what is needed to bring this terribly divided country to some kind of peace resolution.
I've been saying for many many years, the mainstream media (NYT, WaPo, NBC, CBS, ABC, NPR, Academia, Hollywood) causes more division than the political parties. I believed if they weren't so one sided, Fox would never have been financially successful.
Matt & Glenn Greenwald are my heroes because of their courage and desire for honesty.
You are off target with NPR, and actually the rest, pre media consolidation and corporate news.
Matt, I am new to all of this, 67 years of age and finally paying attention. I took my freedom of speech, politics, religion for granted and now I am afraid we have lost them.
I have close liberal friends who believe there is no evidence of fraud and that Trump is a maniacal dictator. I believe that the election was stolen and is an act of treason. You described the great divide perfectly. How did we get this way?
My friends watch MSN and CNN, their parents, who are really old watch FOX. I don't watch any mainstream media, they all seem like caricatures. I like Epoch Times and Roman Balmakov on youtube, FACTS MATTER. I read lots of everything, NYT, WSJ, Time, YOU.
I agree with you - the days of coming home after work and turning on Walter Cronkite are gone. I like your idea of a new media system but how does one go about making that happen?
I am big on making a plan and breaking it down into baby steps, Tony Robbins style. The closer you come to defining your target, the greater chance you have of hitting the bullseye.
Keep up the good work.
Marcia , You have to follow the money on who owns and controls these news outlets . I'm sorry to say but the Epoch News the NYT ,WSJ and Time are not independent unbiased outlets . They are have a spin , an agenda , and have financial interests that push what you read or hear. Even in the big media there are board members that are also on the board or other companies that are unrelated to media . These board members have a financial interest not to upset the establishment elite . It's all about big money and avoiding any threat to the status quo.
Tony, I research the things that are important to me. I know that Epoch was started by Chinese Americans. Their agenda comes through loud and clear. Most of their stories are just the facts, I'm always surprised when they say what happened and then the story ends. I skip around to see what both sides are saying because I don't want an interpretation of what they said by an opposing view point.
Sort of-- big money Right wing interest "Chinese" Americans. Kind of like the "Cubans" living in Miami-- moneyed interests. Interests that want to see China be the bad guy cause China is officially overtaking the US economically.
Are they not actually Cubans and Chinese? What’s with the scare quotes?
Marcia it's easy to see your point because of Biden and Civil Asset Forfeiture, TPP, NAFTA, Ed Snowden, 2005 legislation, Crime Bill's, taxing SS, trying to cut SS 4x's, over 20k bombs dropped, and China. I didn't add it all here but Matt's work alone in the last few articles was enough.
If you don't watch right-wing media, how did you come up with your kooky belief the election was stolen? Where is the evidence that 6 states colluded in lock step to only overturn the presidential election? Why didn't they also rig the vote to elect others on the ballot in the favor? 70+ lawsuits were brought by Trump. All failed. If you still have belief there is no convincing you otherwise.
Moxie, I was a little put off by the tone of your questions so I glossed over them, I apologize for that. So now I will answer as honestly as I can because it pertains to Matt's article.
Where do I get my news?
I don't watch tv. I read conservative and liberal papers and I have subscribed to several writers such as Matt Taibbi and Glen Greenwald on substack. I subscribe to commentary on youtube. Then I start asking questions and research. I go direct to the source whenever possible, it's surprising how much you find out. For example, I listened to John Poulos testify before the Michigan legistlature - boring as hell, I heard him lie at least twice and the clueless politicians just kept going. Then I researched Dominion and found this- https://www.clintonfoundation.org/clinton-global-initiative/commitments/delian-project-democracy-through-technology I noticed the date 2014 and then I went to the notes I keep on current events and found this -2014 - Hillary starts her run for the presidency and Hunter Biden's company Rosemont Seneca was involved in raising money for Harvest Fund Management and Bohai Industrial Group, the Chinese asset manager, and Burisma appoints Hunter Biden to it's board @ $50,000 a month.
Why do I believe the election was stolen?
So many reasons but here are the main reasons.
I listened to all the people who were brave enough to give affidavits and get up and testify on camera. I believe them. People like Jesse Morgan - https://youtu.be/FAB2NVJtVVg
I listened to and read every story I could find on how the vote was stolen, all by conservatives. When I went to Reuters, ABC, etc. the rhetoric was the same, "no evidence, moving on, we rejoice that Joe Biden is the president elect and we can begin the healing."
Then things start being censored and blacked out and the masses are told over and over there is no election fraud. Biden if he had any character or love for the America people, would say "Hey Man, let's get to the bottom of this."
Big tech - 15 people donate well over 1 billion dollars to the Democrat party, I have the list from vox.com. Do you think they are going to put millions down without some kind of guarantee of Biden coming out on top?
I could go on but I feel like I'm hijacking Matt's space.
I'm thinkin' you already know the standard kooky answers to your standard questions. I have a question for you - what is the worst lie Trump has told in the past 4 years?
I think you should look into the Epoch Times before citing it as a source for anything credible? I certainly don't give them any credibility...
Where do you get your news? Who do you trust?
I, personally, go to fact checking sites - even though they often rule out things that I go in believing. Here's a Google search that returned 10: https://answers.library.american.edu/faq/282165
I most frequently visit Politifact, Snopes, Media Matters and ProPublica. You will see that I deleted something below - full disclosure: it was that I wanted to add ProPublica to my list of faves.
What has done Trump which is worse than Bush’s war crimes in Iraq or the NSA spying on American’s private conversations? A few mean tweets that some grifter didn’t like? Half million Iraqis murdered by Bush and his cronies. Liberal response? On its knees pleasuring Bush at every turn.
Bush in terms of killing people is way worse than Trump for sure. If Trump were ever to shut his big fucking mouth for 5 minutes, he would be 20% more popular. That's the issue here, like it or not.
You can't excuse Obama here either. In fact, I'd say the Obama admin was probably worse. They didn't declare a war, they just did it all in secret, and then weaponized the intelligence communities around the world to do their work, and obliterate citizens rights.
"then weaponized the intelligence communities around the world to do their work"
This didn't start with the Obama admin. It's been going on since the late '40s.
500,000 dead men, women, and children in Iraq. In your mind does that equate mean tweets?
Paul, your brand of factual illiteracy is exactly the desired effect of MSM. congratulations.
It sounds as though you are conflating evidence with proof. There is a great deal of evidence of fraud, but until it has been examined and cross-examined under rules of evidence not made up on the fly by Mark Zuckerberg, it cannot be proof. That has not yet been permitted to occur, and now it will never will. That, in turn, will be cited by kneejerk partisans as proof there was no fraud. Perfect example of "If you don't believe me, just ask me."
Paul, check this out and tell me there is no evidence of fraud. https://youtu.be/IKiyAy9vjrk
That's not evidence. That's a couple guys who downloaded election data and wrote scripts to manipulate it to prove their point. They were nice enough to post their work online so I downloaded and read through the code.
I have to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they genuinely believe their conclusions--but this is far from definitive and, as 'evidence' it's riddled with problems (think the data equivalent of chain of custody). Looking at their script, they are manipulating the source data. I'm not suggesting it's outright changes to make their argument, but a programming error (there are 1,000s of lines of code) can explain their conclusions too. Charts/graphs and spurious 'statistical impossibilities' do not make facts.
Another point: the video only shows assertions being made by one party to the lawsuit or dispute resolution meeting. Both sides of a dispute have to be heard for a judge or jury to render a decision.
I have to say just one more thing. Charts and diagrams do not make facts. They are there to show what the audit found because people's eyes glaze over when an IT person tries to explain what happened. Trumps numbers going up and then being taken away all through the count shows fraud. You can't say it was a programming error and then accept the count as legal and correct.
Yes, it is easy for IT people to lie to the general public. They should have taken it to court where they would have to present their findings under oath and go to jail if they were lying.
So you are saying that the truth can never come out because they are biased one way or another? Who do you think lies the most? Republicans or Democrats?
You aren't 1/3 as smart as you think you are.
you didn't check it out... no Durham, data scientists explain to Georgia state legislators what happened with graphs and timelines. This is not what could have happened, it was what actually happened from their audit. If you put their graphs up on instagram, they will be blacked out. Open your heart and your mind.
“There is no evidence of fraud”
https://hereistheevidence.com/
NB this site was setup (by a barrister I believe) to specifically gather information that would be *court admissible* as evidence, ie testimony in court.
Not all of it would hold up under scrutiny, but to say there is no evidence is disingenuous.
Whether it would affect the outcome would only have been known if it actually had been examined. Perhaps at some stage it still will.
BTW not American, but you guys have my best wishes.
What’s happening politically at the moment is quite deranged, from an outsiders perspective.
Please read this, Paul.
http://www.repdiamond.com/News/18754/Latest-News/PA-Lawmakers-Numbers-Don
Take a look at this and you will see that there was enough to alter the election results - https://youtu.be/IKiyAy9vjrk
Marcia, this clip is impressive - that people can go to such lengths to produce video that can be disproved in 10 minutes is amazing. let me just take one point: The presenters are discussing Fulton County, Georgia, results. They state that a voting precinct that goes more than 75 percent for a candidate is a red flag for fraud. They go on to give higher and higher percentages and the increasingly likelihood of fraud, and note that scores of precincts in Fulton County did just that. And they say it is clear evidence of fraud. And yet ... Fulton County overall went 73+ percent for Biden. So the whole county is a few votes from being a red flag. But wait. Look at every county in Georgia. There are lots that are 75%+ either Trump or Biden. And these "data scientists" assert that 75 percent in a single precinct is a red flag for fraud, even though there are hundreds of precincts in a large urban county and statistically they are going to show more variance than the county overall. It took me longer to write this comment than it did to run that down. Which I did even after Googling NTD and learning that it stands for New Tang Dynasty and that it's funded by Falon Gong. Did you even think to look? Look! They are lying to you. You need to find some new sources of information.
Thank for that, had not seen it.
Sigh ... I'm not sure why Matt and Glenn and other independent thinkers attract so much left-wing trolling. It's like the trolls aren't content with the monolithic groupthink in academia and the mainstream media, they view themselves as some kind of societal T cells tracking down all dissent and trying to stamp it out.
The rest of us see them as Stasi wannabes ...
They attract right-wing trolling too! The curse of being an independent thinker.
Ah, but does Jim think there are right-wing trolls on here or truth tellers? Tribalism at its worst.
True - but the difference is the right-wingers come to argue; the left-wing trolls come to intimidate into silence. They generally invoke the "How could you ..." or "How dare you..." or the "I can't believe ...". These are all attempts to silence. I haven't seen that nearly as much from the Right.
Bush led the murder of 500,000 men, women, and children in Iraq. He’s beloved by the likes of you and his cronies all cash big checks in liberal networks. What has done Trump that is remotely as terrible as the murder of half million Iraqis just to steal resources from that country and enrich a few American pieces of garbage?
Sold weapons to the Suadis who use them to kill civilians in Yemen. Opened up public lands to destruction by private companies. Created a humanitarian disaster at the southern border by blocking asylum seekers. Expanded the drone program. And maybe you've missed the 360,000 + Americans dead from COVID. Oh and then there's the total botching of support for small businesses during the pandemic meaning the destruction of innumerable small businesses and people's livlihoods. Other than these and a few other master strokes I'm not calling to mind at the moment, he and his administration together with Mitch and his supporters in Congress have been just amazing.
Covid is a Chinese made disaster. You and your liberal friends spent all spring babbling about social distance only to say suddenly it was coo to go out and loot. The Saudis relationship with the government is something Obama did. Bush did. All presidents do. Trump wanted less wars. And fuck it, even with your nonsense, 500,000 Iraqis and millions more displaced from their home and the Middle East on fire is more than Bush and you love him now. The grifters like David Frum, Bill Kristol and other scum making money off the pockets of naive people like you. Can’t wait for the Biden admin to kick in. This system was sold and paid for a long time ago. Can’t wait for the effeminate, ultra rich, privileged white guys in Silicon Valley to rule this country. Then you will see the tit that the cow has as grandma used to say
I guess you're referring to the migrant caravans that originated in Guatemala and points south. Legally those persons were required by international law to request asylum in the first country in which they arrived which would have been Mexico. By the time they got to our border they were not seeking asylum. Truth is these border problems had their failings in administrations going back to Bush elder. Trump was trying to get back to the rule of law.
George W Bush and his father George H. W. Bush were both Republican presidents. They were never considered liberal.
Most liberals were opposed to the Iraq war, and very much disliked George W. Bush/.
Crony capitalism is illiberal, not liberal.
I don't know... I truly and dearly hated the Cheney administration for a great many things, but it took the Obama admin to make me change my voter registration to Independent and not vote for either Dem or Republican in a presidential election ever again. In my mind each administration since Reagan has gotten progressively worse. That is the only progressiveness left in America.
The election was not stolen and the 6th was a catastrophe, but what happened on the 6th has nothing to do with the reality of what happened during the election. You connect dots like a Qanon Shaman.
I don't understand your comment, but it sounds very interesting. Could you possibly state your point in a simpler way so I might have a better chance of following along? Thank you very much.
This is the article that convinced me to become a paid subscriber. Thank you!
Don't be a suck up.
If you think being polite is sucking up, you’re saying far more about yourself than anyone else.
And you are...?
I believe he's one of the many people here who are paid subscribers but somehow are angry about almost every one of Matt's articles. This forum is kind of a strange place. But welcome!
a troll --ignore
Well, read my comments and you will know.
I'll probably come across them in time. I gave in to your snark with my own, alas—not my intent—but I see no reason not to pay compliments where I believe they are due. Nothing sucking up about it, especially since I have ZERO to gain from my comment (beyond a snarky yawp).
Me too.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED !! Lets divide the masses , keep them occupied with identity politics , Portland is burning down , Antifa terrorists , MAGA terrorists , attempted Coup , BLM terrorists , No masks-I Want my freedom Covid spreading terrorists , Putin stole the vote , millions voted twice terrorists , a muslim behind every rock .........and the band played on . Now while you are preoccupied with all that stuff allow me to continue with the greatest transfer of wealth in human history . I could use another house in the Hamptons . RIP the middle class.
"another house in the Hamptons". Yes, they do, plunking down millions in cash like it's nothing. Nothing shows the corruption of this society quite like spending time in the Hamptons these days.
PERFECT summary--
There are alternatives -- until the social media giants shut them down. Bret Weinstein this weekend on one of his podcasts spoke of how social media companies are ignoring centuries of debate about free speech. They act like the issue just arose and are working through Free Speech 101.
There are others, here at Substack or with podcasts, who aren't in the business of catering to "the left" or "the right," though they might be guilty of catering to "the intelligent" (which SHOULD be an identity group). But who knows how long they will be allowed to exist? Weinstein has already been deplatformed once.
[I'm more than a little surprised you spent so much time on Fox News in the wake of Amazon pulling the rug out from under Parler. This is a pretty huge moment. Can cable companies, local or national, now abruptly dump networks under the pretext of violence instigation or hate speech? (Remember the cable networks showing the man in Ferguson urging the crowd to "burn it down"?) The implications are far-ranging.]
"Pulling the rug?" Amazon's actions were legal, a fact that will hold up in any court. They were not 'sudden' but a result of continued efforts to request compliance with terms of service. Parler's was a failure of risk and technical strategy. Amazon does not 'owe' them hosting on their platform when their actions are not conforming to a terms of service they signed when they paid to host their product there. There are hundreds of other hosting platforms for technology companies (which include building your own infrastructure). By Parler CEO's own admission, they need to re-write their platform due a dependence on AWS services. Creating their product in this way and selecting AWS was Parler's choice.
So let's be careful about hyperbole on this front. Parler owes its customers continuous service, Amazon owes Parler service pursuant to contracts that Parler signed.
Read Amazon's letter:
https://www.gadgetsnow.com/tech-news/read-amazons-letter-to-social-networking-app-parler-on-its-removal/articleshow/80206778.cms
No one disputes that it was legal, but there's this whole weird realization that the biggest companies are becoming a sort of world government in control of the public square
If a company can't get hosting it can't operate and leaving AWS is not the same has just popping your files onto another host.
I supposed I'm cursed with having had that realization years ago... I just think the way it's being framed is a lot of high drama. The internet is still the most free forum for expression in history. The problem now is not with the technology or infrastructure, it's entirely possible for me to serve up a website in any number of ways that avoid obligations to Big Tech--I can even use Open Source code that all of the major players donate for free to the world. The problem now is that Big Tech has made it so cheap and easy for new players to enter that they leap down the path of building products that will only work on a particular framework. I write software for a living, I'd consider it a significant risk to pin my product to any framework I don't control.
I can assure you that the problem with Parler is not that it "can't get hosting", it's that they made a business decision to tether themselves to Amazon. It's a fatal flaw in strategy that all companies need to consider. But maybe to illustrate my 'high drama' point better, can you imagine the equivalent of Parler sprouting up in other industries like Banking, Internet Service Providers, or even your local hardware store? Relatively speaking, Tech is still very wide open industry to competition. Whether regulatory action needs to be taken against the few players that have the most revenue is a reasonable discussion--but my 2 cents is that we are better off regulating data privacy than crying foul in a case where Amazon has a rock solid case with service agreements and protecting its own interests.
Privacy regulation is the magic bullet that does a vast public good while reducing outsized power.
Hey I don’t really disagree with you. I guess I’m just coming out to say it’s kind of crappy rather than saying… I don’t know… End Amazon or whatever
There is this big censorship vector that’s all private and it sucks
At least for myself, I don’t mean then that the FTC should intervene (or whatever)
I just think it’s creepy
They just hosted with AWS - they didn't, according to Parler's CEO, "tether" themselves to Amazon in terms of using the built-in Amazon tools. So they can simply move their own database and files to a new server and be back online without having to rebuild from scratch.
I'll dispute that it was legal - if you have a 30-day cancellation notice that you void, AND other customers are engaging in the same behavior (Twitter is also hosted on AWS), you don't cancel them?
Breach of contract is illegal.
If, as Parler is alleging, Amazon conspired or coordinated with Twitter on this decision, now you have antitrust violations.
I noticed the 30 day bit too in an article describing the suit (after my OP). They may have grounds there, but if it were that simple why didn't Parler file a simpler suit that would get them back up faster and running for 30 days?
Admittedly I'm reading tea leaves here as not all the source materials are public yet, but most T&Cs for AWS-like services also have a termination for breach contract. Amazon has not responded yet other than to say it's meritless, but that does seem to be the strongest claim in the suit. I'd expect they counter it directly.
For what it's worth, I'm not an Amazon fanboy and am not really vested in my analysis as far as an opinion goes. I'm just weighing in as someone who has signed a lot of technical service agreements both as a vendor and provider. Their suit definitely feels like a longshot.
The public square needs to be moderated - just like the freeway has highway patrol - simple. By the way, a real public square doesn’t replicate my Nazi sympathizer views (just a hypothetical example) millions of times - I get to reach 59 peoples ears...maybe...with a megaphone or by speaking into the inside of a paper towel roll.
Hey, I don't really care if Amazon had a right to. WE have a right to get rid of them. I probably spend at LEAST $5K/year buying shit from them and I just switched to Walmart, Costco, Home Depot and Lowes online. Let's see $5K x 80 million people. I know Amazon doesn't get all that, but it'll add up pretty well. I will keep them for JUST my movies I've bought and will buy no more, use Netflix or somebody else. So we'll see how that works out for them. I've passed around my recommendations to all my conservative friends. Let's see how that goes.
I’ve been trying my best to not use amazon since the lockdown. Last night I had enough and canceled my prime and all subscriptions. I’m ashamed to reveal how much money I was wasting on channel subscriptions that I never watch and had forgotten about. I’m sure amazon won’t notice but my bank account will.
For the record Parler wasn’t great, I had an account to see what it was about and it was a bunch of crazies repeating the same stuff but even crazy people deserve free speech. I didn’t see any threats besides the occasional “get your guns ready” type of stuff. To me that’s not a real threat but I guess others could see it differently.
There are lots of kind of people on Parler just like on Facebook and Twitter. The point is freedom, right? So when that idiot woman holds Trump's head up on Twitter and Joe Biden talks about beating him up and other memes show people beating him up, and Madonna talks about blowing up the capitol? And BLM and Antifa burn down our cities. Oh, and for four years they called Donald Trump illegitimate with NO evidence. And calle dhim Hitler and a racist and a bunch of other total lies, THAT wasn't insurrection, of course. Nancy Pelosi did it herself and so did Hillary Clinton over and over. Let's talk about fucking crazy. They weaponized the justice dept. and used opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton to get illegal (even by their own admission) FISA warrants to spy on an American president and they changed emails and framed Carter Page. NONE of that is crazy? They say this crazy shit EVERY DAY on tv. Rachel Maddow called Trump a RUSSIAN AGENT, and SHE isn't fucking crazy? God, that pisses me off. Get a grip. Let's talk about crazy.
And I could go on and on about assholes like Robert DeNiro and Rob Reiner and all the rest of those "inciting" insurrection. How dare they. THEN they censored us, censored the information about the Biden crime family so people didn't even know it -- called THAT Russian disinformation. Those assholes. THEY are responsible for every bit of this and they have gotten away with it. (Other than those cowardly Republicans who should have stood up en masse for an investigation into this mess of an election.) That has to stop, too. If they think they are going to keep doing what they are doing, they are going to see America split in two.
Parler is like Twitter, only conservative. I picked and choose who I follow - mostly fellow jazz and blues fans, and Catholic and Eastern Orthodox groups. When they come back, I'll be back on, and will keep on avoiding the crazies.
"It’s our view that this nascent plan to use volunteers to promptly identify and remove dangerous content will not work..."
Their view? That's my point. There's a problem when obviously-biased corporations are making such arbitrary decisions.
It is extremely telling that Parler is not suing on violation of terms of service grounds. They are suing on anti-trust grounds. That tells me they don't have a strong counter argument to Amazon's case (supporting evidence of which was likely couched in the letter).
I read Parler's policies last night before they were removed. Their privacy policy is as bad as any in Big Tech with respect to selling personal data, for what that's worth. The community guidelines they require users to consent to were aligned with Amazons T&Cs--and included significant coverage of incitement to violence, essentially hinging on an interpretation of 'fighting words' for the internet. Reasonable people could probably pick at fringes of the policy, but generally the policy is/was beyond reproach. But policy is one thing, enforcement is another. Amazon's issue is with policing, they don't have to substantiate their view much when they made prior requests to Parler were not complied with at all or in a timely manner.
This is a legal matter first, I'm simply stating that based on precedent and fairly straightforward legal argument, Amazon is acting well within its rights.
But my argument is two-fold. If you have Parler's mission statement, do you think it's wise to hitch your technology approach to a provider that you have a) No control over and b) You have reason to believe will effect an active bias against you?
Amazon has a major problem in that even a private business has to enforce its contracts consistently. Given that Twitter is also hosted on AWS, and that every allegation against Parler is doubly true of Twitter, cancelling Parler's contract in violation of the 30-day contractual stipulation is breach.
The anti-trust argument does allow for triple damages, however. ;-)
Most companies want to farm out their servers, along with responsibility for backups, UPS generators, etc. Once upon a time, companies did their own hosting, but not much any more. I imagine the Amazon sales people were telling Parler exactly what they wanted to hear.
I don't know what parleys Amazon has singled out, but reading sections 6.1.1 and 6.1.2, it seems there is a lot of room for interpretation, especially around the word "intent."
This is not the first time we've seen violence result from online activity (assuming that's true). Shutting down the platform seems harsh and out of line with what we've seen with others in similar cases.
Yes, you can point out Amazon's hosting is distinct from everything else we are seeing in the social media world, but I'm pretty good at pattern recognition -- and I'm also aware who owns the very anti-Trump Washington Post -- so I don't think it's far-fetched to lump this in with the others.
Cached versions of the policies mentioned above:
Privacy Policy
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MhblZqYusbsJ:https://legal.parler.com/documents/privacypolicy.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Community Guidelines
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rikfE6Q-XSoJ:https://legal.parler.com/documents/Elaboration-on-Guidelines.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
The legality of it will be sorted out by the jury, not by either you or me.
As to the moral issues that's a whole new topic.
Why stop at parler? Why not unplugging for the firms engaged in debt collection too?
Let's wait until Parler's lawsuit is considered before treating Amazon as a moral and rational organization
We know Parler's relationship with Amazon or any internet infrastructure organization must be contractual in nature. But does Parler have a contractual relationship with customers under which Parler guarantees a certain level of service to those customers?
Highly unlikely, the only real enforcement for uptime SLAs is typically refund of fees. How do you compensate customers who are paying you with their personal data, content, and ad clicks?
At least from Amazon's letter, their requests for Parler to comply with its own community guidelines had been ongoing for weeks. Seems obvious that last Wednesday is an event that raised exigent circumstances for Amazon's leadership.
And yet, according to Greenwald, ZERO pre-riot activity has been tied to Parler. What has been ID'd so far were posts on Twitter, FB and Twitter.
So much for "exigent circumstances" ...
I think Amazon is betting that their lawyers, and their paid-for help in Congress, will protect them from any kind of repercussion.
Well I think cable companies must have the discretion to choose the channels they offer, and might legitimately decide to reject a channel that was consistently dishonest or that urged viewers toward violent behavior. I don't see an alternative to choosing high-quality fare.
Yes, and stores and service providers should have the discretion to select the people who buy from them and to reject those who are a risk to society.
Signed
Jim Crow
No, you have it backwards. Stores, and cable companies, get to decide who they BUY from (candy bars, TV shows) but NOT who they sell to -- which is everyone, by law, if the store or cable service falls into the category of a "public accommodation."
I am trying to figure out what is wrong with your reply - are you unaware of what Jim Crow means and therefore miss the sarcasm or do you really think Amazon did not sell its services to Parler?
Soon enough conservatives will need to lay their own cable or perhaps we'll just go back to public square or satellite dishes...and even ham radio?
https://arizonahistoricalsociety.org/museum/arizona-history-museum/barry-goldwater-ham-radio-station/
I'm talking about unceremoniously tossing them off the air, contract be damned, with a claim about instigating violence. If you don't like my example, I'm sure you can come up with scores of others where a company might want to void a contract.
Is that fundamentally different from choosing channels initially? Channel content and management might change and need reevaluation. Is your purpose to exclude snap judgements, just giving in to the latest witch hunt?
Somewhat, but it's more about the arbitrariness of it all. In my original post, I pointed out the cable news nets fanning the flames in Ferguson: "No violence today, but it usually starts after dark. We hope there isn't any, but usually the violence starts after dark. Let me repeat -- violence after dark. Though we hope there is none." And I pointed out the coverage of the Brown family member calling for people to "burn it down."
Consistency is key. Lacking that, when you have pretty-obviously-biased social media companies calling the shots, you get what we've seen the past few months.
I think we can imply that Matt agrees with what they’re doing to parler as he didn’t even mention it as you point out. part of his plan to pretend news organizations haven’t merged with political parties I suppose.
I believe Matt has written extensively about the negative externalities of the politicization of news media -- a book called "Hate, Inc." comes to mind as a single but by no means isolated example.
Maybe that's why this article seems so 2019. Perhaps he just copied and pasted?
Matt, whatever else he is or is not, certainly qualifies as a respected writer. His reputation would suffer if he repeated material from previous books or columns.
Which news organizations would you say have merged with which political parties?
Any corp qualifying as MSM. Overall its the "corporate oligarchy party," but since 2016 till now it's more the DNC wing.
Do you have any particular companies in mind?
yes, podcasts! maybe if Matt can get his fucking head out of the 80s he might be able to suggest something relevant.
Heh is that really necessary? Some of us just like newsprint and physical reading. I also love podcasts and gasp! do both -- I know very weird
Only people who listen to podcasts all day and have their favorite podcasts and are socially networked to their podcast heroes think podcasts are somehow of crucial relevance at the present moment.
Amen. The histrionic reaction to the riots on Jan 6 and the weird about-face embrace of police violence in response was so sickeningly hypocritical. There's a reason I subscribe to this website and not the NYTime, or National Review, or any other mainstream source. They're all hot garbage these days.
Someone (not me, no tech skills unfortunately) should launch a service called “Yesterday’s News” that literally takes the top stories from yesterday and then points out what is factual and what is opinion. You could also have one right and one left commentator give their view on the opinion side and then readers would have the facts and both sides presented in the same place so that could make their own independent determination.
Not a bad idea. I think you could go a step further and have "Last Month's News." Most stories would be dismissed with, "Why did anyone even care about that?"
You could call it "Both Sides Now," and the theme song would be Joni Mitchell's "Clouds," as sung by Judy Collins. :)
Decent name. In discussions with friends and family, it is amazing people in this era struggle with the idea that two things can be true at the same time. Facets of issues. A truth does not negate all other truths.
Jimmy Dore is a master at pulling up the old vids to own the pols.
Had a similar idea...it will happen.
«“Yesterday’s News” that literally takes the top stories from yesterday and then points out what is factual and what is opinion.»
For an experience of something like that, about economic news and commentary, Dean Baker's (old style socialdemocrat, honestly so) "Beat the press" is something I like:
https://cepr.net/blog/dean-bakers-beat-the-press/
Great idea
In the mid 1980s after trekking around Europe, I got a job in Germany (West Germany at the time). I listened to an eclectic radio station that had five minutes of news at the top of every hour. The news always began with three slow deep gongs — then the reporting would start. Something about the sombre tone of that gong and the serious tone of the announcer's voice always made me think that whatever was being reported was important. Since my language skills were limited I couldn't really follow the stories but the announcer's voice implied: This is serious and factual. At the time, two words I could pick out were "Afghanistan" (Russia was fighting the Afghans) and "Chernobyl" (the nuclear plant had imploded in 1986). When those words were spoken I knew that war and radiation were being talked about and that they were very serious matters.
Today the news I watch on broadband and on cable often fail to present an appropriate tone. Reporters signal their opinion with subtle gestures, eye-rolls, sighs or snide remarks. And with the explosion of "pundits, analysts, commentators, and columnists," facts and opinions can get mixed up and leave us misinformed and poorly educated about what is really going on. I agree with Matt, we need a new system. One that returns us to the unbiased seriousness that is factual reporting.
What you say makes sense, but you gloss over the differences between the approaches of both sides. Fox is mostly straight up propaganda, saturated in lies. MSNBC is not. There's a liberal point of view, but it isn't a factory of lies, as Fox certainly is. The Democratic Party is a more or less normal political party, in the model of parties in western democracies, moderately corrupt, disorganized, sclerotic, and the Republican Party is not, it's the equivalent of the far-right parties in Europe, racist and rebarbative in nearly every respect, and utterly divorced from any attachment to empirical solutions to our problems. Republicans deny climate change, pretend that tax cuts for the rich will help everyone else, that the only racism is anti-white racism, and that all regulations on business are bad and job-killing. There's no equivalent in the Democratic Party. So totally accurate and honest reporting will have to reflect this.
Didn’t MSNBC lie about nonexistent Russian collusion for four years?
Not just that, they were obsessed with Russia, Russia, Russia. Often to the exclusion of real developments of interest to their viewers. Instead, it was Pee tape, Chris Steele, and of course Mueller! Oh, Mueller. The MSNBC bots seemed genuinely puzzled that the Mueller Report didn't directly lead to Trump being frog-marched off to a Supermax.
If you keep calling out Russia, maybe no one will notice you don't call out China.
Chinagate is the the new Russiagate. Watching people get puppeteered is both sad and hilarious. "But, Doctor, I AM Pagliacci"
What lies did MSNBC tell about nonexistent Russian collusion?
That it actually existed, when in fact it didn’t
A simple test for MSNBC/NYT consumers who are unaware they are being brainwashed: ask if they find it perfectly reasonable that internet companies be regulated "like public utilities" and censored by the government. Because, of course, Russia! Russia! Russia! they're everywhere! Help! OMG!
Not to mention their hysteria when Sanders was surging.
What you said right here is what every fan of MSNBC thinks of MSNBC and every FOX fan thinks of FOX. This is the problem in a nut shell. Go back and read Matt's article again
Exactly! Please read it twice again and highlight the important parts
the problem, in a nutshell, is pretending they're the same.
Off the top of my head, MSNBC did the same thing Fox did in this election with Stacy Abrams in 2018, 50k margin iirc... red kool-aid / blue kool-aid
They are totally the same. And over the past four years, MSNBC probably has been worse. Don't know for sure because I get sick every time I try to watch it. Same way I felt about Fox during the Obama years. Matt is 100% right. Read Hate Inc. We're being made fun of. Time to give yourself a promotion from journalism to books. Just finished Rage by Bob Woodward and learned a lot.
It's actually the opposite of what you said. The problem is that both the Fox and MSNBC business models profit on getting their audiences to be afraid or angry or both. Like sugar, it keeps them coming back for more.
They are different polarizations of the same thing. Propaganda engines.
Fox has improved in the last 5 years.
MSNBC has gotten worse
Fox hasn't improved. If anything they are even worse, adopting the practice of inserting Fox opinion host rants as stories covered by Fox news to blur the line even further.
I will take your word for it on MSNBC. Not sure how they could get worse, but I am often wrong.
Sounds like you're only aware of 50% of the propaganda.
The only difference between Fox and MSNBC is that MSNBC is telling you what you want to hear. They are confirming your biases.
Give up...this person obviously doesn't get it at all. They are too far gone. If you can guess someones political side within the first paragraph of their writing, they are too far gone to be reasoned with.
nope. the difference is that MSNBC, for all its faults, is largely fact-based. Hayes, Maddow, Williams are basically journalists. Hannity and Carlson are not.
Propaganda from the right viewed. Propaganda from the left excused away
nope. no propaganda excused. conservative politics are based today on four lies: climate change is a hoax; taxes for the rich are always the answer; regulations on business are inherently job-killing and the more of them you get rid of the better; and the only racism is anti-white racism. all of these are bullshit. Fox exists to push these ideas. Ergo, Fox must tell lie after lie after lie. there simply is no equivalent in the mainstream left.
Not always: Larry Sanger, of Wikipedia, blog post this "neutral point of view" policy is "dead" due to the rampant left-wing bias of the site.
https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
So is Maddow - Rachel Maddow has seen her monthly ratings drop more than 800,000 viewers since the beginning of 2019.
Fox News will finish the year again at top of the news channels in primetime, with an average of 3.6 million viewers, up 45% from the same period the previous year. MSNBC averaged 2.2 million, a boost of 24%. CNN saw an even greater increase, as it was up 85% to average 1.8 million.
lol..."basically journalists"
Well, there appears to be a new definition of "journalism"
This person is too far gone too. Nothing you can say to this person will make them understand they have been mind controlled by "their side." They are low information people who believe one side or the other absolutely. They see the other side as evil. Total fanatics with no ability to reason properly. Cannot even read an article and come away with the basic premise of the article. Their response shows the rational among us that Matt is absolutely correct. How people can be so mind controlled is outrageous. I am guessing that about 30% of the people are mind controlled by MSNBC and CNN, and about 30% by Fox and the right wingers. About 40% of us are rational and do not allow the left or right to mind control us.
I have hope. After all, vinegar hill is posting here. This could be his/her first exposure to an alternative viewpoint.
Williams is not a journalist IMO but a news reader. Maddow lost credibility with her breathless Russia coverage drawing conclusions based on some rather disparate parts. Chris Matthews called Bernie supporters brow shirts, Joy Ann Reid brought in a body language expert; neither of those can be called bastion of truth. Chris Hayes seem ok.
Brown shirts
Those people are all commentators right? Both Fox and MSNBC have journalists doing fact based news as well.
Martin, who owns Fox, MsNBC, CNN? Who are their most lucrative sponsors on their channels? Once you understand the answers to these questions, the line between commentators and journalists goes right out the window. Owners decide what gets published or broadcasted - them the facts.
Its profits over people in the media business. That is so apparent as to be weird I have to mention it. Russiagate, Elizabeth Warren accusing Bernie of sexism, and the manipulation of the Iowa caucuses strike me as fertile places to examine DNC propaganda.
LOL Maddow is a journalist?! That's hilarious, truly.
https://nypost.com/2020/09/18/rachel-maddow-uses-obama-era-images-of-immigrant-kids-to-blast-trump/
Attorney General William Barr’s letter summarizing Mueller’s report was released on March 24 -- the final week of the quarter -- indicating that a Trump campaign-Russia conspiracy didn’t exist, contradicting Maddow’s nightly narrative, and that was that.
You can only fool some the people some the time:
Maddow’s performance in May was even more alarming among the key demographic of adults age 25-54, where she averaged 455,000 viewers to finish tied for No. 7 in cable news, behind five different Fox News shows and even one program on MSNBC’s fellow liberal network CNN.
She is one big OP ED!
So Trump WAS a Russian plant.
Got it.
See, I thought they were saying he was a "Russian PLANET". I was like, "Yeah, he's fat, but c'mon..."
Really: US citizens don't lose jobs to immigration:
Construction in Los Angeles has shifted from a heavily unionized labor force that was two-thirds white to a largely non-union one that is 70% Latino and heavily immigrant. .American construction workers today make $5 an hour less than they did 40 years ago after adjusting for inflation.
https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-construction-trump/
change in employment was about 8.8 million. Of that, the number of
foreign-born workers grew about 6.2 million jobs for 13% of the population
native-born, the number was 2.6 million for 87% of the population
Get the picture? MSNBC is the biggest FAKE NEWS site of all propaganda+
Immigrants are not on welfare? 63% Of Non-Citizens Are On Welfare
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/non-citizens-uninsured-welfare-census-data/
You're joking right? And just because someone is a journalist (which dont really exist anymore in the traditional sense), doesnt mean they're going by facts. I think the last 4 years has been pretty clear on how counterfactual reporting has become.
That is my impression as well. Again, I could be proved wrong.
It isn't. Go take a look on media fact check.
MSNBC isn't fact-based, it just chooses different facts and distortions than Fox does. MSNBC cancelled Phil Donahue's popular show because they didn't want anyone on the air who opposed the invasion of Iraq. They highlight every charge of "Russian hacking", no matter how tenuous, and never bother to take note when those charges fall apart. For some reason they were unable to recognize the coup in Bolivia for what it was. They haven't exactly stood up against the anti-Venezuelan propaganda, either. Like Fox, they refrain from showing us data or scholars who hold positions that depart from their own narratives. Very often they dovetail with each other in their efforts to hide the truth we need to see.
lol - I just spit Pepsi all over my keyboard!
Well that captures it very well. My party normal. Your party racist and all lies. Both parties have racists within them. Both have habitual liars permeating their core. MSNBC, CNN, NYT, WAPO, ABC, NBC, CBS, Yahoo, etc. are just as bad as Fox. To stick your head in the sand and pretend that rioting didn't occur during at all during the "peaceful protests" all summer, and that the Senate building wasn't stormed by leftists during the Cavanaugh proceedings, and that the Democrat party was calling the election of Trump a fraud a permeating the ongoing Russian collusion hoax narrative, is the reason that many people believe this country will heal - there is little to no ability for many people to be intellectually honest about the limitations and faults on their side of the aisle. You should have added to your last sentence: "....reflect this, and that means reporting that reflects my viewpoint"
You fail to realize that you have just illustrated Matt's point.
No, I've disagreed with it. The whole "both sides are the same" argument is just false.
How do you know? i felt the same way as you for a very long time. i watched 'Outfoxed' and read Al Franken and yada yada yada. And i agree Fox is biased! But if you truly start paying attention, you might just find that MSNBC is doing many of the exact same things now. But if you've been consuming MSNBC steadily in the Trump era, you might just be unaware of how it's been changing you all this time. i'd encourage you to go back to some key points and read up more about them in retrospect - you may find yourself surprised at how different the facts are from what you remember.
I really don't think you understood Matt's article...No drunk will ever say they are drunk.
I'm drunk.
Why are you even here? You embody cognitive dissonance. You’re the viewership he’s writing about and you’re re arguing based on the carefully curated shit you’ve been sold.
You might be right. But you have your assessments exactly backwards. You can't be watching both of those venues enough and come to that idiot conclusion.
An outright lie is not the only way to spew propaganda. The best/most successful and most commonly used propaganda is the type that’s more nuanced, less blatant, less easily detectable at first glance: it’s less about outright lies and more about the framing of the issue, the subtle spin, lying by omission, repetition repetition repetition, featuring/citing highly credentialed “experts”/authority figures and presenting them as objective commentators while failing to point out their affiliations/funding/biases, etc. I agree that MSDNC may be less blatant, more subtle, more sane-sounding in their spin, while FauxNews is less polished, cruder in its, but the underlying principle and business model is the same: 1. pick a demo and feed them exactly and only what they want to hear 24/7, 2. be in a state of permanent hysteria: every single solitary fucking day is “one of the darkest in US history”, “our Pearl Harbor”, “the new 9/11”, “Treason! Treason! Treason!”, “Fascism!”, “Communism!”...
Speaking of repetition, do people notice how often there seems to be a "key message" which is distributed in advance to a seemingly large group of "news sources", which all parrot the exact same thing? This bothers me. When I feel like I'm being force-fed a viewpoint, I reflexively assume it's a lie, propaganda, disinformation, etc.
You can never go wrong in assuming most everything you hear from the MSM is a lie, fabrication, distortion, spin etc
So who do you trust? Really, name one or two credible sources for you. I’ve asked this same question at least a dozen times in various sites — WSJ, NYT, WAPO, others. Crickets, nothing but crickets.
There apparently is (or was) a forum or mailing list of journalists (the “journolist”) where leftist MSM reporters coordinated their stories in advance.
Ha! You’ve never worked in a newsroom. Organization is not our strong suit. Really, there’s peer pressure, but the desire for a good story wins out every time. That said, I never worked in D.C.
Yes and the left is a master at doing that, and leaving out half the truth.
MSNBC, CNN, NYT etc are not the left. They are the PR arm of the Dem Party, i.e. basically the socially liberal version of the (corporate-owned warmongering) Republicans.
Best comment of the thread
I couldn’t agree more.
The racist party is the one that prevents poor children of color from attending a school of their choice. Education is the key to advancement and teachers unions which refuse to open up the schools, block school vouchers, block charter schools, insist on tying compensation to seniority, and protect failing teachers (or even teachers who molest students!!!), do more harm to the black and brown community than nearly anything else. The Democratic Party takes money from the teachers unions and does their bidding.
I work in a mostly black school district and NO ONE is preventing poor children of color from attending the school of their dreams. That is nothing but right-wing propaganda.
For the last 4 years, Rachel Maddow, one of MSNBCs most profitable shows, has convinced its audience that Trump had been a Russian asset for years. If you believe you're getting honest reporting out of a network that gets significant revenue by selling it's viewers fiction, I'm not sure you're understanding the problem. How is it that you can see this problem with Fox but not with MSNBC... other than being part of the tribe that's bought into one side of the argument.
Oh please. The nonstop propaganda and lies of MSNBC and every other mainstream channel have been well documented by Taibbi and others. The fact that you actually believe that strange caricature of the Republican Party that you wrote is evidence that the lies and propaganda have worked.
Thank you.
Oof. You read this article and still wrote this response? Could drive a Mack truck through those cognitive blind spots. 76% of Republicans say climate change is a threat to the nation - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/16/u-s-concern-about-climate-change-is-rising-but-mainly-among-democrats/
Fact. Didn't you hear that on Rachel Maddow?
The rest of your assessments are childish oversimplifications and would take more time than I'm willing to spend to go through the actual nuance, and you'd probably miss it anyway.
Actually, the one about "thinks anti-white racism is the only racism" goes beyond childish oversimplification and into "purely made-up" territory. As I've interacted with a lot of people who believe they actually ARE seeing (attempted?) anti-white racism, I've yet to encounter a single such person who thinks that's the ONLY racism. Not. One.
(bonus fact: none of them approve of racism against other people either)
Dude must've had some extra strong straw when he came up with that one.
I can't believe you would even have the gall to write this. Both sides of the news spectrum are giving us propaganda. the fact that you could read this article, then write this comment is beyond the pale. It is your type that is the problem with America. You cannot even recognize the propaganda you are being fed. Unbelievable.
I have said it before but will continue to say it ... If we could get rid of all of the folks that think Trump was our savior AND all of the folks who think Trump is Hitler, this would be a happier, more productive society. You would be included in that group.
I Don't watch much Fox or MSNBC because they both irritate me. I do think Fox occasionally trots out a left leaning personality just to give the appearance of balanced news. Hence people like Juan Williams and Donna Brazile being regulars on the channel. I can't think of anyone filling that role for right leaning perspectives on MSNBC. I may be wrong because as I said I don't watch much of either.
Oh my God. DO you WATCH Fox? For years, Shepherd Smith was a flaming liberal and now Chris Wallace? LOTS of the reporters are liberals and you have Juan and Donna and Geraldo in the middle and TONS of guests that do not get interrupted while they do their spin. Get a grip. Fox is balanced until you watch the editorial shows at night.
Oh and also, Neil Kavuto? He's liberal or if not, a never Trumper. So get a grip.
MSNBC has conservative hosts. Dana Perino. Rick Wilson is often on. Don’t watch much of it but they have conservative commentators and hosts.
Dana Perino is with Fox and Rick "re-education camps for Walmart dwellers (giggle..giggle)" Wilson is hardly a great example. Any info-tainment "host" is slanted on either side. The biggest difference I see the there is Fox on one side of the major players and everyone else on the other. Both just slinging shit through the bars at their viewers. It is nearly impossible to find a straight-up news anchor. Brett Baier actually tries very hard, but still often falls short. Personally, my outrage tank is on empty. I can't watch any of it any more - no televised news can deliver news, only things to be pissed about. I now scan headlines on the usual 10 or so sites I frequent on both sides and simply ignore any headlines that look designed to serve up outrage. Slim pickings.
Oops. I meant Nicole Wallace. I think that’s her. I honestly don’t watch much of either. Slim pickings indeed.
Climate change happens, it’s just not that big of a deal and certainly not worth killing the economy over. You are also correct that racism comes in many forms-just ask the Asians who are denied admission to Harvard or elite science HSs in NYC b/c their test scores would throw the color demographics way out of wack. As for leftism and environmentalism, why on earth is the former USSR basically one giant superfund. site?
"why on earth is the former USSR basically one giant superfund. site?"
My sympathy is with the great Soviet science fiction writers, like the Strugatsky Bros., and the great Soviet film directors, like Tarkovsky, who called this shit out at the time.
Never heard of those guys, will have to check them out.
Oh man. IMO STALKER is the best Tarkovsky, but you can't go wrong with any Tarkovsky -- if you're into long, moody depictions of plebeian human misery inflicted by elite technonarcissism.
https://www.kanopy.com/product/stalker-0
To quote Tommy Wiseau: "Haha. Great story, Mark."
As if such a thing could happen. CNN tells me these are the good people, and anyone who doubts their noble intentions must be the bad people. Can't beat in depth "authoritative" analysis like that!
Libertarian here. I was inspired by JFK to become a liberal Democrat in 1960. I was inspired by Nancy Pelosi to become a liberal independent in 2009. I have never been a Republican. I watch both Fox and MSNBC with foreknowledge of their biases. Please understand that I now have foreknowledge of your biases. So do all the rest of Matt's followers who favor reasoned discourse.
This is in response to “I watch both Fox and MSNBC ...” Response: Why? Turn the TV off and go for a walk in the park. Try leaving cable news and talk radio and other commercial news alone for a week and then see if you feel more ignorant of current events than during the weeks you sat there and watched, and listened, and seethed ... We humans do not benefit from commercial “news” outlets. It doesn’t inform, it doesn’t entertain, and it doesn’t bring you feelings of fullness, joy, and harmony with life, the universe, and everything.
Find good investigative journalism. If you don’t know where to look, ask friends or others to recommend investigative journalism podcasts. And when you find some good ones, you can always take them along on your walk in the park.
I'm exploring investigative journalism this instant on substack. I am dying, unable to walk, older than dirt and housebound. I'm at the top of the vulnerable list for COVID19 thus kept quarantined. I keep a news channel on, muted, at all times just in case of an asteroid strike or a return of the hidden Imam. I don't seethe, if you're familiar with Myers-Briggs typology I'm an INTJ. We don't have seething genes, nor do we outsource bringing feelings of fullness etc. I create that internally.
Not to claim that Myers-Briggs is a perfected system, but I've always thought it amusing that collectors strongly tend INTJ (one might rationally expect ENTJ) while analysts tend INTP. The extroversion is a fake-out.
My best wishes to you, man. Try to stay as comfortable as you can for as long as you can.
They are good entertainment and good for a laugh if you don't take them seriously. But I don't mind the walk in the park idea.
Good for you Bill. You are one of the good ones. I am opposite of you, but agree that both sides are giving us propaganda. I actually watch Fox, CNN and MSNBC and laugh at them. They are pure propaganda and I treat them as entertainment. We need to coin a new term for them: propagandtainment or something. They are utterly useless.
I don't use FB or twitter or parlour or any of that waste of time crap. Everyone should abandon these joke companies for anything except sharing recipes. Totally jokes and wastes of time. My grankids spend 12 hours a day on bullshit internet crap that is eroding their minds.
Gary,
Welcome to Earth.
If you are the opposite of me then you are not an earth-origin homo sapiens. Since you are my opposite, only one of us can be sentient, but the evidence is mixed. You've done an incredible job of mastering my language. I'm limited to terrestrial tongues.
Seriously, I've owned and run a couple of businesses as a living for about twenty years and have no social media presence. I hired a guy last year to help me use FB to generate awareness for a book I had worked on for five years, but it was a commercial flop. I'm not too old to learn, but I don't have enough lifespan left for it to be worth my while. I've never been a Twit, and the rest of it is just variations on a theme.
I mentor disadvantaged people to help them start their own businesses, the surest route out of poverty. Typical is a young Czech man I was working with to repurpose his skills and experience to start a low-investment company to meet an existing need. He decided it was too much work, and suggested we just exchange photos and cute cat videos on Whatssnapogram or whatever.
I want Al Gore arrested for inventing the internet.
You still got work to do. Start with putting a slug in the TV.
Tried that. It just left a slime trail and died. Attracted ants that ate the slug. Got any other suggestions? And, do you mind helping me get rid of the ants?
Get the ants to watch TV. It'll confuse 'em so bad they won't know what to do. Maybe they'll wander off...
I hope you are wearing a Kevlar vest
Why, Yawny's Digest? Because you're thinking of shooting me?
LOL no, I'm neither MAGA nor Antifa. I just wanted to make sure you were prepared for the incoming fire.
I look forward to the day when we don't have to put on Kevlar to have a political discussion. That may require persuading some of us that a "second amendment solution" isn't the right answer to anyone who disagrees with you. (and it is only one side of the political divide that thinks that)
Gotta be the ass that says I told you the media wasn't going to chill out after Trump lost. The media has gone mental and will not go back to being sane.
Is this the media?
Yes. Many of us here in the comments section are demonstrably less than totally mentally stable.
Objective truth has become relative in the "new media". It no longer matters what you say, if one can interpret what is meant to be wrong think, you will be censored. Words no longer have meaning. Peaceful protest means armed insurrection only if practiced by the rural minority ;-)
Matt, I enjoy your writing and am glad that journalists like you have found an outlet like Substack. If I may provide some objective criticism, however, it feels like your position on “original sin” is evolving to the left a bit. What I mean is that most of what I read from you several months ago was either pretty agnostic on the issue or didn’t even address it at all. Your most recent writings, today’s being the best example, go farther in laying the original sin at the feet of Fox News. It is my opinion that the most dangerous journalist is not the blatant ideologue but rather, the journalist with a strong bias who feigns objectivity. Nearly all traditional media post-Reagan had slid a good bit to the left (including CNN) by the middle 1990’s, but feigned objectivity - as they still do. Fox News was launched as a reaction to this trend, as Roger Ailes famously saw their market as 50% of the Country. So, it is my opinion that the original sin is the ideological slide of traditional media to the left, with Fox News being a counter and alternative to that evolution. Fox’s success lead to the reaction of the traditional media to more open bias, and the launch of dog-shit cable news sites like MSNBC, with Trump being the final excuse to letting their bias flow freely. Let’s suffice it to say that Fox News could never have been created if Walter Cronkite was what traditional media looked like in 1996. In my opinion, there is no way to understand what is needed to correct the current media bias problem if we do not correctly diagnose the original sin in how we got here.
I fail to see why it is relevant discussing who did what first. Everyone is doing it now, and engaging in fingerpointing over who did it first is something only partisan hacks would care about to deflect blame. It's like communists and fascists arguing over whether left wing totalitarian regimes slaughter more people than right wing totalitarian regimes. Who cares? They're all bad!
Because if we don’t know how we got here, we are likely to get here again. If people believe that going back to pre-Fox 1996 will get us back to objective journalism, they will miss the point. If we go back to slanted journalism simply feigning objectivity, 50% of the Country will still be looking for an alternative.
Journalism has always been to some degree biased. Go read some choice comments from Mark Twain or George Orwell if you want some examples from the past. It just so happens that most people bought into the illusion of objectivity in postwar America, but that doesn't make it truth. Ideally people should be trained in school to spot propaganda and see it for what it is.
Depending on a small group of enlightened thinkers to spoonfeed the public whatever the editors and their bosses consider important is an inherently biased process. Rather than lie about a romanticized version past that never really existed, people should learn to think for themselves and start ignoring irrelevant BS.
I will agree with your comment that “ideally people should be trained in school to spot propaganda”, but increasingly they aren’t. Also, it is a provable fact that our finest liberal arts Colleges and Universities have pushed out nearly all conservative views and professors. So, increasingly our brightest young people are getting indoctrinated into a single way of seeing the world vs. being taught to follow an objective path to reach a conclusion. The vast majority of those in traditional media were indoctrinated at these Colleges and Universities and generally believe conservative ideas are not only wrong, but evil. So, where are people to find objective information, even if they desire it?
Suppose we can all agree that it's like communists and fascists arguing about who is worse, but both are bad.
Hang on, that's not quite the same as looking back to the 1930s, 40s and 50s to argue about who WAS worse back then. This is NOW. That means we can't just say "both are bad" and close up the history book.
No, because this is now, we actually have to DO something. We have to find out where we are and where we want to go. And for the purpose of doing something, there's nothing to be gained by saying that both sides are bad.
Instead, we actually have to find something GOOD, doncha see? Or at least, not bad. Well, that good thing can't very well be either left or right, because remember, both are bad. So we need something new, or maybe we need to take parts of left and parts of right.
Now, begin over. Discuss. Argue. But don't end up telling me what is bad yet again.
Tell me what is good.
It's a much harder question.
I will take a shot at what is good, how about:
1. Freedom of speech
2. Freedom of thought
3. Respect for those with sincerely held opposing beliefs
4. Compromising to find solutions everyone can live with
5. Equal opportunity for everyone regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc.
6. Individual accountability for your actions
7. Hard work
8. Honesty
9. Sacrifice and love for your friends and family
9. Love of your Country
10. Respect for the Constitution
I could go on but this is a pretty good start.
Love this. Stealing it. ;-)
Agreed! And now... how do we get there? How do we even start to get there? That is the hard part.
"there's nothing to be gained by saying that both sides are bad." There is for Matt -- he gets to hang on to his far left core audience. I unfollowed him on twitter because all he does is post counterpoints to actually stupid outraged leftists, and occasionally retweet Greenwald. Why not just go to the source? Glenn makes relevant posts, and doesn't pull punches for his leftist friends.Just for context, I campaigned for Bernie in 2016, but not SJW Identity Politics Bernie in 2020, which was a totally different campaign.
What differences did you see between Bernie 2016 and Bernie 2020? I have never followed his (or anyone's) speeches.
Agreed. My other concerns is when we equivocate without understanding history. "He's just like Hitler" - people have very, very short memories
For the record, I think Trump is much more like Napoleon.
I didn't interpret this article as calling Fox the "original sin", just that they were the first to explicitly only go after this niche audience of the disenfranchised right wing viewer. He said, "For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties" and then listed four. You are upset about one of the four? Also the lines between left and right are constantly evolving and have changed dramatically since the 90's. There isn't some arbitrary never-changing center for the media to be "too far" to the left or right of.
It is all about proportionality, whether with respect to the 4 things Matt listed or the bias in the media. The national media bias is close to Fox News on one side and everyone else on the other, so the news most people get (particularly given the bias and even censorship in social media sites) is hardly balanced in its bias.
It's all relative. The point of Matt's article and book is that the news has splintered to give people what they want to see rather than capture a single huge audience. The vast majority of people are getting news from sources they agree with. So if you think that "most" people are getting news that is biased. That means that "most" people share that bias and you, my friend, are simply in the minority.
I am indeed.
Sliding left depends on your viewpoint. I see MSNBC and CNN as sliding rightward.
Given that comment, I will respectfully leave you with your views. No reason for us to go down the rabbit hole, there are times it is best to just agree to disagree.
I agree. :)
First let me say thank you! What you write was exactly what I was about to write, every last word. I want to say also that I work in the media, for the last 25 years. I worked at NPR, CBS, NBC, and finally FOX, and can honestly say as a liberal, FOX was a reaction to the bias of all the other networks. The liberal fix was in! I never met a conservative until I started working at FOX, and it's a great big family of Libs, Independents, and Conservatives, unlike what you will find at other MSM places. What Ailes saw was an opportunity to serve an underserved audience, to give voice to a huge part of the country not being heard. The others reacted to what he did because it was so successful. Taibbi did this in his book HATE INC., too, which I also read. He does put all the blame on FOX, and it's not a fair or honest assessment of how it went down. Nicely done.
Ah, but this is where it gets tricky. Matt a few months back did a long interview with Noam Chomsky. They talked about his 1988 book “Manufacturing Consent.” I asked for a copy for Christmas, which I haven’t read yet, because I’m a retired business journalist who remembered a time in the late 1980s when folks would ask me why I wasn’t writing about “the other side.” Based on Matt’s interview, Chomsky argued that American media had swung to the right, and that’s when my questioners were asserting. At the time, the Soviet Union was imploding, China was scrapping its economic model of backyard steel mills for state capitalism, so my reaction was, “ I think the other side just died. Why keep arguing for it?” I realize the book goes into a lot more that economics, but my point is that your view on the bias of media is usually pretty biased itself. You see it sliding left, Chomsky saw it sliding right. And to me, that argues for the humility of a traditional “objective” media model of suspending partisanship in favor of multiple viewpoints.
I don’t want to get into a back and forth down the rabbit hole with you, which from your first reply seems would be likely. It is to me a provable fact that conservatism has been pushed out of our finest liberal arts colleges and universities over the past few decades. I can site statistics on the political affiliations and donations of the professors at our most prestigious schools if you like. Those schools have produced the journalists that occupy most of our national media and leaders of our social media companies. If you believe that the journalists at the NYT, Washington Post, CNN, (NBC, CBS, ABC) and the primary social media sites are balanced in their political ideology and reporting, then we just live on different planets. If you believe that Facebook and Twitter censor inflammatory and/or false information equally, then we just live on different planets. I don’t want to insult you or deny you your right to your own opinion, but unless there is some basic agreement on our current situation, there is no point in discussing solutions.
There is what I think is an inescapable bias, but it’s less institutional than you argue. Here’s how I see it play out. Journalists-to-be consider the profession and see that it doesn’t pay tons and requires a lot of preparation if you want a good position, but do it anyway for the personal satisfaction of making a difference. See an early trend? Then one decides they want to cover government and politics, and they do this because ... they think government is the problem, not the solution? Not likely. They pick business coverage (as I did) because ... they think it’s evil, or because they find it interesting, get to meet smart people and dig into the why and how of the matter? Cover sports because it’s a hoot, or because they find it mindless and barbaric? There’s a lot of self-selection going on. But we all get run through the objectivity grinder, so sports guys never want to be “homers,” political reporters know they need to remain non-partisan, and business reporters interview labor and management, regulators and entrepreneurs. The Business Desk thinks Metro are economic ignoramuses, and Metro wonders if business reporters are really fascists. ( I should be talking in past tense, since most papers don’t have enough reporters to make up separate departments anymore. ) My point is that it’s not a monolith, although I will say the NYT seems hellbent on getting there.
I think your analysis is more appropriate for a local newspaper reporter than the national media. As Matt has pointed out, the local newspaper is quickly dying and has been irrelevant to younger people for some time. This, along with the rise of people increasingly getting their news via feeds on their social media accounts, has further elevated the national media. If you want to make an argument for the balance of reporting coming from the national media, we can stop our discussion now.
It's important, I think, to add that like all the best con-men the top media people believe their own bullshit.
I have a relative who is a genuine New York media elite. Can't talk to her at all. Trump supporters to her are drooling racists, that's it! No discussion. I try a Taibbian argument (you guys made this cake by selling drama and "narratives" while acting as corporate satraps). Nope! Wrong! I completely screwed the pooch when I suggested that Harvey Weinstein would never get a fair trial, and that should worry self-described liberals like her. Bam, no good, bad, scare bath! I added that he was a bona fide asshole from everything I'd heard and probably guilty of some if not all the shit he was accused of. My point was that he wouldn't get a fair trial. It was an ACLU-sticking-up-for-the-Nazis kind of thing. Didn't matter. She was like "how DARE you!" Suddenly I was a Trumpist, a sexist pig and a right wing Republican -- even though my politics have always been well to the left of hers.
People are parroting the behaviors they see on cable news. This is what passes for discourse these days.
Yup I have a good friend who lives in NYC (of course house in the Hamptons) and every year the list grows longer of what we cant talk about. Started with Israel, then any Republicans, then the problems of the middle and lower class.... soon it will just be the weather. So bloody sad.
The problem with the center is that no one is buying it, monetarily or intellectually. People want their juicy Hannity burger with an OAN shake, or the Maddow Supreme Pizza with some Seder cola. No one wants the Politico spinach salad with low-fat dressing.
I was watching Alex Jones trying to talk the almost-rioters off the ledge the other day and all I could think was "my god, this guy is one wrong sentence away from being shouted down as a Soros shill". One of the most wingnut conspiracy theorists in the world, and if he says something they don't like we all know many of them would instantly write him off as a sellout and move on rather than question than own beliefs. It's that easy to lose relevance.
Vox Day, the white supremecist had to flee Gab because he questioned the methods of those even further right than him. A lefty like Rogan becomes suddenly "alt-right" person non grata in humanities departments across the country because he doesn't want to see a trans-woman beating the snot out of unknowing cis-women. Tulsi Gabbard is accused of being a Russian asset for trying to utilize diplomacy rather than demonization.
Purity tests are the real driver of division.
Yep, and for this reason I have no hope in any "good side" or even any possible "good outcomes".
It's all got to burn down.
I hope for a good outcome, but I don't expect one.
Me too, but I don't really see it happening without complete upheaval... and the destruction that will probably bring.
The One World Government is poised to take over..... The Great Reset. Make the US equal to Mongolia:
Biden's New World Order. "We have to update the global rules of the road, and we have to do it in a way that maximizes benefits for everyone, because it’s overwhelmingly in our interest that China prosper, that Mongolia prosper. …We have to level ”the playing field.”
“You mean, Mr. Biden, you are more concerned about making sure China and Mongolia prosper than American workers?"
New Word Order.
Who will be the Government? THE RICH ELITES:
“We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years… (censorship)…It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government.
The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.”
David Rockefeller