Religion, politics, sex .. and other taboo subjects

Spork said:
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?
Click to expand...

The Guardian, known internationally for truly fair and balanced reporting, is owned by a trust set up to fund the newspaper in perpetuity. The Scott Trust re-invests any profits back into the running of the newspaper, unlike most privately held media that dole out profits to stock holders or owners. The Guardian is also funded in part by advertising, but positions itself to be "free from commercial or political interference. No one can tell us to censor, edit or drop a story." Much more on the website regarding the publication's legacy of journalistic integrity.

Who owns The Guardian?
 
Last edited:
Spork said:
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?
Click to expand...
The Rovians have won -- a significant portion of people would now rather believe in transparent propaganda & utter nonsense than traditional news sources that are "beholden" to their sponsors, owners, & advertisers (not to mention being all kissy-kissy in pandering to their base much as would any politician).

Many of those who don't buy the BS so readily are nevertheless doubting even highly credible sources because those people HAVE bought into the Fox News notion that "all mainstream media is the same, really."

I enjoy Palast too, btw, & he told me that his work is only intended to be a beginning, that what's needed is NOT just say "gosh, ain't that awful!" then turn the page.

Last weekend, I heard an NPR interview with a guy who launched dozens of those fake-news sites, & has a staff who visit the hottest Right Wingnut pages on Facebook in order to drop these stinkbombs.

He's a registered Democrat. He started doing it in order to demonstrate how frighteningly gullible the Rightists are.

Now he does it because he's making a LOT of money from ads.

Asked why he doesn't do the same in pranking Lefties, he replied that he has. Problem is, Lefties know how to use FactCheck & Snopes & even just Google to answer the $10,000 question: "really...?" Then they tell others about the hoax, & the source loses credibility. Not much of a profit center!

Rightists whine how "mainstream media" is evil & Jew-run because they insist on painting Reds politicians as a gaggle of corrupt fanatical stumblebums -- not WRONG, mind you. That's a bulletproof echo chamber, impervious to sanity & simple logic.

If you want a "news model," I figure that's plain: one aimed at the intelligent non-Red minority in this nation, one which expects to be second-sourced by its bright, skeptical, curious readership who don't take every insincere butt-kissing lie at face value simple for the ego-stroking.

And disseminating verifiable facts in the face of a perpetual tsunami of propaganda & lies is immediately thankless, but it encourages others to think, to ask, & maybe themselves to speak out.

You don't need to actually CALL the braindead "stupid," because IME leading them to realize they are stupid will make them hate you worse. :)

As a Cummings poem said, in the voice of conscientious objector being tortured to death in a military prison:
there is some shit I will not eat
Click to expand...
 
Two films every American should watch:

Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media
https://archive.org/details/manufacturing_consent

The Corporation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSGF9JbtNac

I list films because the good ones are both entertaining AND informative -- a good mix for today's Americans, most of whom have not read a book in the last year. (Or if they did it was some pulp fiction)

For those who like to read, I recommend
A People's History Of The United States by Howard Zinn

If we do not understand how power works it rolls over us and has us for lunch. As it is so aptly doing at the moment.
 
I worked four years at the Minnesota Daily. One of the things I quickly learned is that "objective journalism" is NOT a given -- it's a Sysephian ideal that needs to be constantly approached. When it's treated like something that can be once achieved & forever held, it's a pernicious myth & clouds judgment.

I was fortunate enough to be chosen for a quarter-long seminar on media bias bracketed by lectures by (& a meet-&-greet with) Noam Chomsky. At one discussion, a fellow student from Norway totally nailed it for me. He said that, back home, everyone was aware that any given media outlet had its biases, & was able to take in their news presentation with that bias in mind & thus to understand what was being said. A newspaper run by a labor union would have a different bias from one run by a trade union, the Communists would be different again, the rightist pro-government paper moreso, & so on.

"Here," he said, "nobody seems to believe that there are biases, & so they cannot see those biases."
 
Ravenscroft said:
I worked four years at the Minnesota Daily. One of the things I quickly learned is that "objective journalism" is NOT a given -- it's a Sysephian ideal that needs to be constantly approached. When it's treated like something that can be once achieved & forever held, it's a pernicious myth & clouds judgment.

I was fortunate enough to be chosen for a quarter-long seminar on media bias bracketed by lectures by (& a meet-&-greet with) Noam Chomsky. At one discussion, a fellow student from Norway totally nailed it for me. He said that, back home, everyone was aware that any given media outlet had its biases, & was able to take in their news presentation with that bias in mind & thus to understand what was being said. A newspaper run by a labor union would have a different bias from one run by a trade union, the Communists would be different again, the rightist pro-government paper moreso, & so on.

"Here," he said, "nobody seems to believe that there are biases, & so they cannot see those biases."
Click to expand...

I agree with that. Also, it's this notion that bias inherently invalidates the source utterly. So we've got a conservative and a liberal arguing, one of them cites Fox News and one of them cites NBC and then they argue that one of them is heavily right leaning, biased, and therefore not an acceptable source, and the other says that the other one is the "liberal mainstream media" that only exists to brainwash the "sheeple" and the conversation hits a brick wall. People cling to their chosen pundits and sources, whatever confirms their own biases, rejecting everything else, even if they DO admit that bias exists.
 
Spork said:
People cling to their chosen pundits and sources, whatever confirms their own biases, rejecting everything else, even if they DO admit that bias exists.
Click to expand...

Unlike a very many people, apparently, from a very young age and up to the very present I've been very interested in what is TRUE, what is factual, what is real. These days, too many people think everything comes down to opinion, as if there were no actual facts about things.

Facts, though, never stand alone in their role in meaning-making. Meaning making is much more complex than confirming facts. But facts are crucial to meaning making which is grounded in the real world, in what really happened or is happening. Facts are indispensable to truthful meaning making.

Journalism, like history writing, is a fact-based process of meaning-making. Events have meaning and are never just a set of discrete facts laying about. One can so easily see this if one begins to sincerely, honestly investigate what's been going on at the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, for example. The meanings implicit in the collection of available facts, I think, have more than merely opinion value. Any historian worth his salt will agree with this. But both the facts and their implicit meaning are highly controversial. One has got to look at a very wide array of facts to put the story of these events in context, and without that context the meaning of what's happening at Standing Rock never comes into focus. One will have great difficulty ascertaining the facts themselves without also having a broad view of the meaning which the accumulation of facts make implicit.

One has got to understand some history -- cultural history, environmental history, the history of fossil fuel industry pipeline ruptures in the USA, the history of genocide perpetrated on native Americans (indians), ... One has got to place this event in an historical timeline which takes into account anthropogenic climate disruption and what that means for the biosphere and for humans -- what it means morally, ethically. Without such deep and rich context how will the meaning of this event be understood? It's an event of vast historical implications -- and one of the most important events unfolding on this planet at the moment. But few in the USA know the meaning of what's happening there. And I think this is largely because ours is basically an entertainment culture, in which we dabble in life superficially rather than engage in it deeply. Our capacity for ethical engagement is largely broken by this entertainment culture (in which the highest value is to "escape" and to be entertained) which results in the related lack of sincere interest in truth or meaning. Entertainment trumps both fact and value in America. Meaning has nowhere to land.

How can typical people wrap their minds around it -- the fact that the police there and the private security companies are routinely lying about particular facts of what's been happening there? -- about their violence against these unarmed, peaceful demonstrators? How can Americans begin to understand this event without reference to the history of non-violent civil disobedience from Henry David Thoreau through M. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.? -- without understanding how and why America isn't really a democracy at all, but an oligarchy and plutocracy -- and a thugishly violent one at that? -- without knowing about the Death of Journalism in America...? -- and the role of journalism in the success of historical non-violent movements of opposition? -- without knowing basic moral and ethical principles, and taking a stand for them? This is what makes what's happening at Standing Rock so important! But Americans on the whole are at a loss -- if they've even heard about these unfolding events.
 
Last edited:
It’s Worse Than You Think
Posted on Nov 11, 2016
By Chris Hedges
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/its_worse_than_you_think_20161111


"Trump is emblematic of what anthropologists call “crisis cults.” A society in terminal decline often retreats into magical thinking. Reality is too much to bear. It places its faith in the fantastic and impossible promises of a demagogue or charlatan who promises the return of a lost golden age."

"Once societies unplug themselves from reality, those who speak truth become pariahs and enemies of the state."
 
Last edited:
Guess I just don't get the whole "society in terminal decline" thing.

I mean, I know a few people who think that degeneracy, like gays getting married and people having sex for reasons other than babymakin' and you know...straying from god and wholesome values...is a signal that our civilization is on the brink of collapse.

And I know that some folks really do have it hard, and some areas have been hard hit and that some places are harder to live than others.

But again...northern Virginia 1979-1996, Cincinnati 1996-1999, Des Moines 1999-2007, Olympia WA 2007-2011, and Colorado Springs 2011-now... mine own eyes in those places and times, though some of those times were right tough for me and I was even homeless for a very short time, STILL I would never have said "society in terminal decline" at any point looking around at the world.

But I feel like I've got my eyes a bit more open than some. Like, I go outside. I talk to other people. Sun on face, wind in hair. World still a turnin'. I know so many who go to work and go home, sit and stare at screens...and I know plenty of folks who seem delusional about the world being horrible and scary outside of their front doors. My ex is one. It's silly, and I tell him so.

I got in a huge (yuge!) argument with him not long ago, because he believes that crime, violent crime, and violent crime danger to children in particular, are sky high at an all time high in American history, right now.

He's wrong.

I found the national crime database stats and gathered as much data from as credible a bunch of sources as I could, because I know the facts and figures point to my growing up years being much more dangerous than now, both locally in northern VA, and nationally. His response? "Of course the national crime stats WOULD say that, it's the government that's stealing children and it's a big conspiracy to cover it up!"

/facepalm

I surrender.

I know that my faith in humanity got dinged when Trump won the election, but after I calmed the hell down and realized it was in fact what...27% of voters that accomplished it?...I return to my basic belief that most folks are pretty decent and the world doesn't totally suck. Yet.
 
Spork said:
Guess I just don't get the whole "society in terminal decline" thing.
Click to expand...

Is that the message you're getting from reading the above-linked article by Chris Hedges? It's not the message I'm getting. I'm getting the message that America has been heading into an ever deepening fascism and that none of the institutions of our culture are doing a damn thing to forestall the headlong collapse into a fascist police state.

That's got little to do with the God-fearing moral panic of those who think gays getting married signals the terminal decline of society -- at least by way of direct comparison.

The disturbing thing is that Hedges hardly seems to be engaged in outrageous hyperbole. Yeah, trump may be backpeddling on some things he promised to the facists and white nationalists, but still he's tapped a bunch of them to lead various departments and such in his administration. Maybe he hopes to engage in a national game of good cop, bad cop, with him playing the good cop? But that makes no more sense than anything else about the man.
 
Teen becomes seventh 'faithless elector' to protest Trump as president-elect

"A teenager from Washington state has become the seventh person to indicate that she will break ranks with party affiliation and become a “faithless elector” in an attempt to prevent Donald Trump being formally enshrined as president-elect when the electoral college meets on 19 December...The renegade group believes it is the responsibility of the 538 electors who make up the electoral college to show moral courage in preventing demagogues and other threats to the nation from gaining the keys to the White House, as the founding fathers intended.....Clinton took Washington state by 53% to Trump’s 37%. Instead of following the electoral college norm of voting for Clinton, Guerra will cast what is in effect a protest vote directed at Trump – she will write in an “alternative Republican” of a more moderate political stripe than the president-elect as a way of highlighting her deep fears about his presidency in the hope of encouraging Republican electors in red states to follow suit.....Should these seven electors go through with their pledge to vote against their state’s winning candidate when the electoral college convenes on 19 December, it would mark an outpouring of political disgust at the future president that is virtually unparalleled in electoral college history. The last time more than one elector broke ranks was in 1912..."
 
FallenAngelina said:
Teen becomes seventh 'faithless elector' to protest Trump as president-elect

"The renegade group believes it is the responsibility of the 538 electors who make up the electoral college to show moral courage in preventing demagogues and other threats to the nation from gaining the keys to the White House,.....Should these seven electors go through with their pledge to vote against their state’s winning candidate when the electoral college convenes on 19 December, it would mark an outpouring of political disgust at the future president that is virtually unparalleled in electoral college history. The last time more than one elector broke ranks was in 1912..."
Click to expand...

It's not enough that these "faithless electors" make a merely symbolic protest vote. I wonder if they can vote for Hillary, instead? There's no reason they cannot, right? Now that could keep Trump out of the White house! I'm NOT enthusiastic about a Clinton presidency in the least. But trump is far worse, which is really saying something! (I'm a progressive, and we progressives are not fond of Hillary, generally.)

I'm not impressed or inspired by merely symbolic gestures. The electoral collage needs to keep trump out of the White House, not make silly symbolic gestures.
 
River said:
Is that the message you're getting from reading the above-linked article by Chris Hedges? It's not the message I'm getting. I'm getting the message that America has been heading into an ever deepening fascism and that none of the institutions of our culture are doing a damn thing to forestall the headlong collapse into a fascist police state.

That's got little to do with the God-fearing moral panic of those who think gays getting married signals the terminal decline of society -- at least by way of direct comparison.

The disturbing thing is that Hedges hardly seems to be engaged in outrageous hyperbole. Yeah, trump may be backpeddling on some things he promised to the facists and white nationalists, but still he's tapped a bunch of them to lead various departments and such in his administration. Maybe he hopes to engage in a national game of good cop, bad cop, with him playing the good cop? But that makes no more sense than anything else about the man.
Click to expand...

No I am speaking in general terms to the whole "this country is goin' to hell in a handbasket" folks, and I'm questioning if it's really THAT BAD especially compared to other times in history. The looming doom feeling of ohhh...things are getting bad...disaster is upon us... It's like the "make America great again" thing, when you talk about "crisis cults"...when exactly was America great, for anybody but a white guy? A middle class or better white guy to be precise? Preferably one popular and tough enough not to get bullied growing up, or lucky enough not to have a father or principal who beat the snot out of him, even?

I hear all the stories about police state America. I do. I agree that there are huge problems that need to be addressed. But it's been my opinion that this, and worse, has ALWAYS been happening. It's just that now we're paying attention and folks are speaking up. Like I think that cops have harassed and killed black people always, but now there is more coverage and more response than before. I think it's harder for "them" to cover up the bad shit they do. The issue is, in a society so inundated with flashy news stories...how long do things hold our attention before we turn away back to our lives?

27% elected Trump. 73% of eligible American voters more or less didn't like him well enough to vote for him, whether they voted against him or not.

Yes, this stuff is scary. I'm just not completely convinced that the bad elements we worry about...cultures of intimidation and violence and all...are really WORSE NOW than they've been in the past. Yes, we are watched and observed, recorded and spied upon. But guess what? So are they. Back before you could make a cop wear a camera, back when patrol cars didn't have dash-cams, you want to take some bets on how cops treated people? Think they used to be decent public servants? I bet that through all of human history and in all of human civilization, those in positions of power have a pretty fair chance they will abuse it and abuse others. It's not new.

I don't know what is going to happen. But the world is watching. The author of your article uses the words, "this dystopia." I think that's a bit premature. I still say that if I remove my eyeballs from a screen, I walk outside and see a decent place, and many decent people. I'm not ready to start carrying around a cyanide capsule just yet.

27%. And frankly, I suspect that a number of those, or at least many who voted third party or didn't vote at all (and therefore did not help defeat the Great Orange Menace...) were angry Bernie supporters. It's hard to forgive the DNC for this nomination, frankly.

So here is an interesting bit of speculation... I would love for Trump's win to be overturned somehow. I'd feel celebratory. But I'd also feel terrified, maybe more even than I do now. Know why? I believe that Russia is doing what it can to destabilize America. The goal is an America divided and angry and full of infighting. I can't think of a better way to accomplish that, than to steal the win out of the hands of those who now think they've got it, and hand it to Hillary Clinton. And watch the country explode. Trumpers are fewer, but in my opinion, far more violent.

Right now, we're gearing up for war with Russia. The base here is preparing for a huge deployment, word is to Europe, and (this is all over my social media right now, so it's no secret) everybody pretty much knows what's about to go down. I'm betting that Putin would rather have us busy handling a civil war, than over there messing around. So I'm worried. But not for the same reasons that your Chris Hedges is.
 
Last edited:
Spork said:
Right now, we're gearing up for war with Russia. The base here is preparing for a huge deployment, word is to Europe, and (this is all over my social media right now, so it's no secret) everybody pretty much knows what's about to go down.
Click to expand...

Oh, god, please not that! I certainly hope this isn't true. We've got enough crises as it is. And Russia has nuclear weapons. As does the USA. Also, Russia is far less democratic than our own pseudo-democracy here in the US.

I'd comment on the other things you said, Spork, but I have to run at the moment. Later.
 
River said:
I'm not impressed or inspired by merely symbolic gestures. The electoral collage needs to keep trump out of the White House, not make silly symbolic gestures.
Click to expand...

It's not a symbolic gesture, it's a real attempt to block Trump from taking the White House. The reason that they are choosing an alternate Republican is because they are trying to build a coalition with the Republican electors, none of whom would vote for Clinton. Trump was never a Republican party insider favorite and an alternate Republican would be preferable for Democrats and Republicans alike. That's the idea behind the Hamilton Electors, not a symbolic gesture.
 
Spork said:
I agree with that. Also, it's this notion that bias inherently invalidates the source utterly. So we've got a conservative and a liberal arguing, one of them cites Fox News and one of them cites NBC and then they argue that one of them is heavily right leaning, biased, and therefore not an acceptable source, and the other says that the other one is the "liberal mainstream media" that only exists to brainwash the "sheeple" and the conversation hits a brick wall. People cling to their chosen pundits and sources, whatever confirms their own biases, rejecting everything else, even if they DO admit that bias exists.
Click to expand...

That drives me crazy. Psuedo-conservatives are the worst for that. The first thing out of their mouths when you disagree with them is something about the "lamestream media". No, I look at all sorts of media and sift through it for facts. I monitor a lot of conservative "news" to get ahead of the propaganda game. I can show them facts that prove they are wrong and they will stick to their story. I swear it's a mental disorder.
 
FallenAngelina said:
It's not a symbolic gesture, it's a real attempt to block Trump from taking the White House. The reason that they are choosing an alternate Republican is because they are trying to build a coalition with the Republican electors, none of whom would vote for Clinton. Trump was never a Republican party insider favorite and an alternate Republican would be preferable for Democrats and Republicans alike. That's the idea behind the Hamilton Electors, not a symbolic gesture.
Click to expand...

It is symbolic because it won't happen. This new republican person would have to get 270 votes in order for this to work. That means 270 people will have to vote for...who?

Even if they only managed to knock Trump down to below 270, which would require at least 37 people to change their vote, the Republican led House would have to vote on it. Going against their voter's wishes would be political suicide, especially considering how rabid the trumpanzees are.

This little protest will be a mere footnote in history, but will have several repercussions present day. I could practically write the goofballs' spin myself. Hillary lost by even MORE electoral votes. The Democrats failed again. Trump's popularity surges in the aftermath of attempted Democratic coupe. Many Democrat Electors defect.

Too cynical?
 
vinsanity0 said:
... the Republican led House would have to vote on it.
Click to expand...

They do?!?

According to whom?

I'd not heard this bit of news. But, of course, there'd be no reason for me to hear it, since no one in the entire history of the USA has there been any reason to pay any real attention to the details and specifics of such a totally unprecedented occurrence.
 
River said:
They do?!?

According to whom?

I'd not heard this bit of news. But, of course, there'd be no reason for me to hear it, since no one in the entire history of the USA has there been any reason to pay any real attention to the details and specifics of such a totally unprecedented occurrence.
Click to expand...

Article II Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.

It has happened twice. In 1800 Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied. Jefferson won after some debate. In 1825 Andrew Jackson won the popular vote and the electoral vote, but did not have a majority. The House voted for John Quincy Adams. Jackson's supporters formed the Democratic Party in response to that.

The most interesting time the House chose a president was in 1877. Tilden won both the popular and the electoral. However, the republicans disputed three states. In order to resolve the dispute they made the FEC and stacked it with republicans who decided to give all the disputed ballots to Rutherford B Hayes, a republican.

Hope that didn't bore you too much. I find history fascinating.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top