Microblog Memes

In my country, basically everyone accepts climate change, except perhaps the most conservative and those who already believe in conspiracy theories. What is going on in the US?

Rings true, but the hard to swallow fact also is that they only think they’re “so busy with life” because they’re chasing the American pipe dream.

Absolutely - and I agree entirely. However - there are a lot of choices that get made with regards to words and context indicators when writing a piece (Video is a whole other box of frogs but similiar things apply).

Just sticking to text, let's say, I'm not suggesting that the NYT should write a front page article entitled Watch Out: Crazy Trump Will Kill Us All (although, that's upsettingly not a zero-percent chance either.)

What I am saying is that they need to stop giving trump the benefit of neutrality. That was a typical and to a small-extent-reasonable excuse they made in 2016. "Let's see what kind of President he'll be" and "maybe he'll grow into it" and sorts of rationalizations that I ranted against at the time and I think was extremely validated by the subesquent nightmare of an administration.

So that's over. Now, we know who he is - he's the kind of guy who lies at the drop of a hat. He'll do it by force of habit. He's incapable of empathy. He's so singularly focused on grabbing money (not 'making money' now, he doesn't care about that), and weilding power over his perceived enemies that he's an absolutely dismal choice for president. He staged a failed coup right in front of us. And still remains unrepentant. Anyone who's not a complete cult member can see that.

So the NYT writing their article can use that to leverage his latest outrageousness and limit the faux-respect (he deserves none) such as "former President". Fuck that - that's not a "fact" as much as it is an "editorial position". He's also a former game show host. He's also gone bankrupt five times. (four? five, whatever) He's never been a billionaire. These are facts. They don't use those. Why not.

Because. The tenor of the NYT is that they are "supposed" to be lofty - distanced - respectful. Well, they're failing us with that. Trump is using that against them and us.

Maggie Haberman's mom used to be trump's publicist. And she's the trump-whisperer? Fuck.

Same can be applied to any of the video-based services. (Minus the sniffly air of old money). I'll try to use a future post to dive into one of the articles and really highlight it because once you see it, it's pretty blatant they're tipping the scales towards trump. It shouldn't be close at all. It is because they're doing that. On purpose.

Both sides is a falacy since for most human subjects it's incredibly rare for there to be only two options.

Real Journalism is discussing the situation on its own implications, merits and demerits, and presenting options and explaining their pros and cons.

The whole "both sides" reporting is an artifact of it being Propaganda in a system with a Power Duopoly, so mainstream media frames all human subjects with political implications to match that polical system's own artificially reduced set of choices so as to make it seem like that political system is well suited to deal with human subject with political implications.

(I've actually lived in a couple of countries with different levels of actual political freedom, from the UK which is a lot like US and arguably in some ways even less representative, to The Netherlans which has Proportional Vote, and it's pretty much guaranteed that the way the established Press frames news closelly matches the limitations in political choices in that system)

Then if you go out of mainstream media and look at amateurs (i.e. social media posts) the way they frame subjects is also almost invariably like the Propaganda they grew up with, IMHO not because of them trying to be manipulative but because that's all they've ever known and seen all around them, though the result is still that in their parroting of a sometimes more sometimes less rationalised version of somebody else's talking points, they follow the same falacious structuring.

There are a handfull of less mainstream media who actually mostly practice Journalism and a few diamond-Journalist amongst the muck which is mainstream media, but generally well established news media will not stray away from a framing that justifies the very system that made them "established".

So he either did even remotely satisfactory in that regard or it's not a really big deal, right?

Here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we don’t have time to worry about the fall of democracy when the fall of ratings is on the line!

Sadly they are the only voices trying to keep the Dems aim to the left.

Dems kept sliding right after coopting the middle with Clinton. Basically a Good Cop-Bad Cop routine.

Now there is no left, aside from Sanders.

Authoritarian to the left, fascist to the right, here we are.

* From dingdongs who are repeating -- accidentally or on purpose -- some bullshit that was professionally constructed to emotionally resonate and sound convincing on surface level, so that when people spread it on social media it can do its job and help Trump get elected and fuck up the country absolutely beyond recognition

These groups also donate heavily to the DNC.