FallenAngelina
Well-known member
Message on YouTube from Trump about what he plans to focus on first.
Religion, politics, sex .. and other taboo subjects
- Thread starter River
- Start date
How on earth am I "responsible" for a Trump presidency? Talk about blaming the victim.
But I agree we ALL need to be writing/calling elected officials, engaging in peaceful dialogue with others with different views, peacefully demonstrating, donating, etc., and I am. But it feels hopeless. He's coming into power, and the people already in power are allowing it, and I fear that it isn't going to stop, as most of us are not inclined to take up arms and revolt.
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FallenAngelina
Well-known member
One thing that a person can and indeed should do, now more than ever, is to pay for journalism. We all know that newspapers have been losing revenue and many have closed their doors because we now have access to free information and entertainment on the internet, but much of that free content is not journalism. "The free press" doesn't mean that journalism costs nothing, it means that a basic and essential part of our political process is a press that keeps an unhindered eye on what is happening in our government and conveys that information to us. Professional journalism and thriving news enterprises are necessary aspects of our country. The press is called The Fourth Estate because it's the unofficial, but critical fourth branch of government that keeps up the checks and balances. So the first thing that anyone and everyone should do right now, today, is to stop looking for free content as a matter of course and pay for the journalism of your choice. Pay for watchdogs. Pay for the people who don't work in government, but who's profession it is to keep an eye on those who do.
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River
Well-known member
I recommend hearing the word "responsible" as "response-able". Are you able to respond to this situation? If the answer is "yes", then do so. If you are unable to respond, don't.
You may FEEL response unable. You may BELIEVE you are response unable. And if both of these are true, they are a fact for you. You are therefore simply unable to respond.
River
Well-known member
Know, however, that most folks would probably prefer to receive no-fee "news" over gotta-pay-for-it news, and that this is likely to be so pervasive that some other solution is ultimately called for.
As we await that alternative solution, let's at least acknowledge some basic facts, such as the fact that investigative journalism (the real deal, not a cheap knock off) is basically dead in the USA. And "the media" is now basically the propaganda arm of the monied interests (e.g., corporations and their bought-and-paid-for-government).
Yeah, Yeah, we still have the internet -- which is precisely how we can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the "mainstream media" simply ignores or spins stories to prop up the monied interests. "Google" the name Sophia Walinsky if you doubt what I say. She's a perfect example of wildly under-reported news in the "mainstream media" -- victim of a flash bang grenade explosion which essentially destroyed her arm at a non-violent protest in which the police totally f'd up her arm even though none (NONE) of the protesters were armed with weapons of any kind.
Hey, but it's a mult-billion dollar oil pipeline project she was non-violently opposing, so it's okay, right?
The tragedy is that most "Americans" think they live in a free country with a free press. They are so very, very wrong. It just isn't so. Instead, we live in the thrall of the word's most insane propaganda state, in which we are "free" to pretend that we are free.
River
Well-known member
As of my Google search of a minute ago, the name "Sophia Walinsky" does not bring up even a single news story in the Google search I made in the News portion of Google searches.
Is this just a Google problem, or what? Has even ONE "mainstream media" source reported about the war in Standing Rock in which the warriors one one side have weapons and the warriors on the other side are armed only with prayers?
Hey "America"! F.U.
Is this just a Google problem, or what? Has even ONE "mainstream media" source reported about the war in Standing Rock in which the warriors one one side have weapons and the warriors on the other side are armed only with prayers?
Hey "America"! F.U.
FallenAngelina
Well-known member
That's the point of my post. The idea of free news is pervasive, but it's certainly not dead. I won't argue with the rest of your post. If you think that the "system" is totally rigged, then we're in far off lands to begin with and that's a debate I'm just not interested in.
Paying for journalism means supporting educated, informed, professional investigation and distribution. Support the avenues, the writers, the perspectives that you find worth listening to. If mass media isn't to your liking, certainly there are hundreds of others from which to choose. Pay for journalism. It's essential to the American system of government.
River
Well-known member
Let's deal with eggs when talking about eggs, and trees when talking about trees. I said that our mainstream media is a complete load of bullshit -- that it does NOT provide us with an honest picture of our world in the least. I did not say that "the system" (a very vague construct, indeed) is "rigged".
You don't want to confront this or look at it in any way. It's too disturbing to consider. I get it. Okay. Pretend Land is your home then. Have fun with that.
If I'm wrong, then JUST HOW IS IT THAT A WOMAN GETS HER ARM BLOWN OFF BY POLICE IN A MAJOR CONFRONTATION BETWEEN PEACEFUL PROTESTERS AND BRUTALLY THUGISH ARMED POLICE IN AMERICA AND IT DOES'T EVEN MAKE IT INTO THE F'ING NEWS? HUH?
I'll answer that question. We do NOT have "news" in America. We have corporate propaganda instead. It's that f'ing simple.
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River
Well-known member
Please be more clear. By "free" in this context, are you referring to "news" which one does not have to pay for -- in the sense of "free of a fee"? Or "free" in the sense of "freedom of speech"?
Is it "the idea of free news" we're concerned with here, or actual free news?
We do have a kind and degree of "freedom of speech" in America, I suppose. But what I have found over and over and over and over again is that "news" which serves the interests of the establishment and the monied interests will tend to get reported in the so-called "news" while the "news" which is unfavorable to these same people simply gets ignored -- or it is spoken of only in a spin way, which spins things so that it makes the good and honest people seem like liars and bad people. It's been happening like this for so long that it's obviously not a mere coincidence -- which means that "news" is not really "news" at all. It is propaganda. It serves a few people with power, but not all people, generally.
River
Well-known member
Okay, so some folks mis-spelled Sophia Wilansky's name, which partly explains why news of her was not appearing in some searches. But, nevertheless, the only ostensibly "mainstream" news (or major news agencies) reporting on her story were The Guardian (if that counts) and Democracy Now! (if that counts ... as a major news source)....
The familiars like ABC, CBS, PBS, NYT.... did not cover it. Which may be excusable if this were just another major injury caused to an innocent person by police. BUT IT WAS NOT. it was at a major political demonstration in the USA -- not in China or Russia.... Right here in the USA. The supposed land of the free.
The familiars like ABC, CBS, PBS, NYT.... did not cover it. Which may be excusable if this were just another major injury caused to an innocent person by police. BUT IT WAS NOT. it was at a major political demonstration in the USA -- not in China or Russia.... Right here in the USA. The supposed land of the free.
FallenAngelina
Well-known member
I cut the cable cord since my teenagers haven't been interested in TV since they were pre-schoolers. The internet, one newspaper and a few magazines are our source of news in this house, so I'm not sure what you mean by "news." There are so many sources now that none dominate information dissemination to the degree that a broadcast news department could a few decades ago. I don't think you'll get much argument that all TV news is very specifically curated and intended to hold eyeballs until the commercials and for that reason, most people I know who are serious about "news" don't expect TV news to deliver much of anything worth thinking about.
I'm curious which journalism you pay for, River.
River
Well-known member
It's true that "serious" and informed "consumers" of news no longer generally rely on the "alphabet soup" (NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS etc.) broadcast "news". And my impression at the moment is that the result is a rather chaotic mess, rather than some sort of renaissance in quality journalism.
I'm hearing that a very large portion of Americans (40-50%) cite Facebook as their main source of "news," but of course Facebook is not a news source, but merely a way to disseminate links to articles and videos and such. Much of the stuff sloughed this way and that on Facebook and such is, of course, of questionable journalistic reliability. Maybe I'm just an old fogy who simply doesn't understand what's become of the role once played by what we used to call "journalism"? It was always questionable, but then again it's how folks learned about a lot of the things happening in the world, once upon a time. Now we have a hundred thousand dubious "sources" and the vast majority is even less honest and reliable than the old way of news, since "fact checking" is now among the old fashioned ideas gone the way of the dinosaurs... leaving a chaotic mess of rumors, hearsay and poppycock in its wake as it (what we called "journalism") goes.
The internet is NOT a source of news. It's a way of dispersing or distributing it, at best. And when any given search engine pulls up seven or eight bits of bullshit for every sound and honest bit it's hardly a reliable source of anything.
It's true that good journalism requires a lot of time on the part of skilled, sincere and honest people who have bills to pay. And that's worth paying for. I have a few sources I sometimes pay for -- but they tend to offer their fare without a fee. Maybe I should send them a donation from time to time. I think I may. The Guardian and Democracy Now! are worthy.
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River
Well-known member
Let me tell you just how very, very, Very bad a joke donald trump is.
The few sources of actual news we have left report that "Arctic Temperatures [are] 35 Degrees Fahrenheit Above Average" today.
trump, who for at least a decade has been spewing the meme that "climate change is a hoax"-- but waffled wildly this way and that over the last several weeks prior to, around and after election day--, is at least clear in tapping Myron Ebell to lead up the "transition" in the U.S. EPA. Ebell, as we know, doubts anything all sciency, logical and mathematical -- calling it all "a hoax". (He must therefore be as sociopathic as trump! for the man can't possibly be stupid enough to believe his own words!)
Now trump has decided that he believes in science, and in anthropogenic climate disruption -- but that he sure as all heck won't be allowing this in any way to influence policy when it comes to burning fossil fuels.
What I can't help wondering is whose psyche will tilt and slip all the way down into the darkest and most dankly fissured cavities of wacka-wacka faster -- trump's or the American public's. I'm hoping it will be trump's. They (whoever They are) can find a nice rubber room for him and play recordings of Brahms and Bach through his long night. Who needs any damn marbles, anyway.
The few sources of actual news we have left report that "Arctic Temperatures [are] 35 Degrees Fahrenheit Above Average" today.
trump, who for at least a decade has been spewing the meme that "climate change is a hoax"-- but waffled wildly this way and that over the last several weeks prior to, around and after election day--, is at least clear in tapping Myron Ebell to lead up the "transition" in the U.S. EPA. Ebell, as we know, doubts anything all sciency, logical and mathematical -- calling it all "a hoax". (He must therefore be as sociopathic as trump! for the man can't possibly be stupid enough to believe his own words!)
Now trump has decided that he believes in science, and in anthropogenic climate disruption -- but that he sure as all heck won't be allowing this in any way to influence policy when it comes to burning fossil fuels.
What I can't help wondering is whose psyche will tilt and slip all the way down into the darkest and most dankly fissured cavities of wacka-wacka faster -- trump's or the American public's. I'm hoping it will be trump's. They (whoever They are) can find a nice rubber room for him and play recordings of Brahms and Bach through his long night. Who needs any damn marbles, anyway.
We can compare Trump to Hitler and Mussolini. Some will object no one is as bad as Hitler was, frying millions of people in ovens. Fine. But it's just a matter of degree on a scale. And we haven't even begun to see what horrors he will wreak in 4 or 8 years.
But we don't need to compare him to those men from WW2. Trevor Noah of the Daily Show compares him to the present "president" of the country he grew up in, South Africa. This guy ran the way Trump did, bashing media, stirring up fear, and on the platform that he is a business man and would run S Africa like a business.
He also seemed clown-like to many, who found him quite funny. Until he got elected.
And all he has done is serve himself, just as Trump will. I don't need to cite the FACTS. Trevor does so in his piece. Right here. Listen, watch and weep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tKOV0KqPlg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FPrJxTvgdQ
But we don't need to compare him to those men from WW2. Trevor Noah of the Daily Show compares him to the present "president" of the country he grew up in, South Africa. This guy ran the way Trump did, bashing media, stirring up fear, and on the platform that he is a business man and would run S Africa like a business.
He also seemed clown-like to many, who found him quite funny. Until he got elected.
And all he has done is serve himself, just as Trump will. I don't need to cite the FACTS. Trevor does so in his piece. Right here. Listen, watch and weep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tKOV0KqPlg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FPrJxTvgdQ
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FallenAngelina
Well-known member
River
Well-known member
River
Well-known member
These are not all news stories, but they are good magazines:
http://www.motherjones.com
http://www.yesmagazine.org
http://www.motherjones.com
http://www.yesmagazine.org
Spork
Active member
Facebook epitomizes the echo chamber effect I've spoken of.
Especially in such a polarizing situation as this one. I had almost 500 friends, I didn't have to unfriend very many, but I did some, I still have over 450 friends on Facebook. There are some trump supporters in that mix, but they are quiet. They don't raise hell on my page and defend the indefensible for the sake of riling people up. They aren't trolls, in other words, which is the sort of people I needed to be rid of.
If we can have a conversation and I can say, "Look, as a woman who has experienced sexual assault, and who has soaked up the tears of other women who have experienced even worse than I have, this man and this situation is beyond horrific to me. I feel as though a large segment of my society has just smilingly hand-waved the entire concept of rape as being a non-issue, and is now telling me and other survivors we need to smile and suck it up, buttercup."
The reaction to a statement like that will tell me whether I need to jettison a "friend" or not. If they say that they are sorry I feel that way, but they disagree and they don't think that trump actually stands for that and they certainly do not, then we can talk. If they try to make jokes and upset me even one degree further or minimize the validity or importance of this as an actual thing, if they say something negative about feminism or deny rape culture...they are gone. I'm not engaging in this anymore.
Frankly, I believe that if every woman who has ever been a victim of sexual assault, or cared for a loved one who had been, turned their backs and walked away from those who say such things, they MIGHT just get the point. They are the minority, in my opinion, of Americans.
But that is just MY issue. There are of course plenty of other perspectives, but that illustrates how one individual tries to develop a personal policy to handle this shit.
But what do I end up with from doing this? Well, my sanity relatively intact and my stress levels a bit lower, certainly, but beyond that? My Facebook feed shows me mostly posts and content shared by those who have similar views to mine, which is what they are shooting for, as the whole point is to bait me to click and share and click and share, the more clicks, the higher a price the site can charge for advertising, as it gets in front of more eyeballs, and our attention has been monetized...and click and share and click and share...and mine and sell our data as we reveal through our attention what exactly our interests are...
Before you know it, all you see on your social media, passing for your "news" is echoes of whatever you will agree with or take interest in, shared by others similar to yourself. And not only are young people using this as their source of NEWS they also think that they're being really edgy and getting around the biases and spin of the "mainstream media" by doing it. They've got the wink*wink*nudge*nudge on the really TRUE truth because they found it on some fringe website blog run by this guy who is really digging up the really true secret dirt, man!
Fucking seriously.
The problem is though...anyone can write that shit. And people, at least some people, are GOING to eat it up. That be the world we live in now.
But the journalism you pay directly for...I can't believe that's without its bias or spin either. I mean, newspapers and magazines? Owned by whom exactly? What gigantic corporation? Anyone ever seen Citizen Kane? Don't tell me that giving someone money for news keeps them honest. Because all it comes down to is the monetization of human attention. Directly or indirectly, that's what we've got. That's what the media is and always has been.
"Your news appeals to me, so I shall subscribe and pay."
"Your news appeals to me, so I shall click and read, and you can then charge more for ad space."
Oh, and newspapers and magazines are full of paid ads, too. So yeah, all sort of the same shit, really. So...here's a question...what kind of news model could possibly be created that would not suffer from such a conflict of interest, and could be trusted to report honestly?
Thoughts?
Especially in such a polarizing situation as this one. I had almost 500 friends, I didn't have to unfriend very many, but I did some, I still have over 450 friends on Facebook. There are some trump supporters in that mix, but they are quiet. They don't raise hell on my page and defend the indefensible for the sake of riling people up. They aren't trolls, in other words, which is the sort of people I needed to be rid of.
If we can have a conversation and I can say, "Look, as a woman who has experienced sexual assault, and who has soaked up the tears of other women who have experienced even worse than I have, this man and this situation is beyond horrific to me. I feel as though a large segment of my society has just smilingly hand-waved the entire concept of rape as being a non-issue, and is now telling me and other survivors we need to smile and suck it up, buttercup."
The reaction to a statement like that will tell me whether I need to jettison a "friend" or not. If they say that they are sorry I feel that way, but they disagree and they don't think that trump actually stands for that and they certainly do not, then we can talk. If they try to make jokes and upset me even one degree further or minimize the validity or importance of this as an actual thing, if they say something negative about feminism or deny rape culture...they are gone. I'm not engaging in this anymore.
Frankly, I believe that if every woman who has ever been a victim of sexual assault, or cared for a loved one who had been, turned their backs and walked away from those who say such things, they MIGHT just get the point. They are the minority, in my opinion, of Americans.
But that is just MY issue. There are of course plenty of other perspectives, but that illustrates how one individual tries to develop a personal policy to handle this shit.
But what do I end up with from doing this? Well, my sanity relatively intact and my stress levels a bit lower, certainly, but beyond that? My Facebook feed shows me mostly posts and content shared by those who have similar views to mine, which is what they are shooting for, as the whole point is to bait me to click and share and click and share, the more clicks, the higher a price the site can charge for advertising, as it gets in front of more eyeballs, and our attention has been monetized...and click and share and click and share...and mine and sell our data as we reveal through our attention what exactly our interests are...
Before you know it, all you see on your social media, passing for your "news" is echoes of whatever you will agree with or take interest in, shared by others similar to yourself. And not only are young people using this as their source of NEWS they also think that they're being really edgy and getting around the biases and spin of the "mainstream media" by doing it. They've got the wink*wink*nudge*nudge on the really TRUE truth because they found it on some fringe website blog run by this guy who is really digging up the really true secret dirt, man!
Fucking seriously.
The problem is though...anyone can write that shit. And people, at least some people, are GOING to eat it up. That be the world we live in now.
But the journalism you pay directly for...I can't believe that's without its bias or spin either. I mean, newspapers and magazines? Owned by whom exactly? What gigantic corporation? Anyone ever seen Citizen Kane? Don't tell me that giving someone money for news keeps them honest. Because all it comes down to is the monetization of human attention. Directly or indirectly, that's what we've got. That's what the media is and always has been.
"Your news appeals to me, so I shall subscribe and pay."
"Your news appeals to me, so I shall click and read, and you can then charge more for ad space."
Oh, and newspapers and magazines are full of paid ads, too. So yeah, all sort of the same shit, really. So...here's a question...what kind of news model could possibly be created that would not suffer from such a conflict of interest, and could be trusted to report honestly?
Thoughts?
River
Well-known member
That's an excellent question. I'll ponder on it more before saying much more. But I'll say this for now. The really big problem in need of a solution here is the influence of money on "news". It used to be said that newspapers have a "fire wall" between the news / editorial departments and the advertising departments, but anyone who has done a lot of activism (as I have) knows this is load of horse manure. Please take special note of those large, monied interests who routinely purchase full page, color ads in newspapers and their equivalent in broadcast news and talk shows. There's an unspoken rule about these frequent, expensive ads which, if spoken, would sound something like this: "Here's some major revenue, please remember me when you select or edit your stories -- or hire/fire your reporters."
What's more, it's just generally understood in the news/journalism business that you'd better not go around poking the rich and powerful with sharp sticks. It's dangerous to your career -- or worse.
These same principles apply in politics, too, of course -- which is why neither of the two major political parties in the USA (for example) will take on the really big money folks such as the banking industry. Or international trade policies which favor the very rich but do nothing to benefit the average citizen.
We really need a whole new approach to media -- a radical reinvention of journalism and how it is produced and funded.