05-28-2017, 05:40 AM
(05-28-2017, 02:47 AM)Galen Wrote:(05-27-2017, 05:43 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(05-27-2017, 01:03 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(05-26-2017, 03:09 PM)Galen Wrote:(05-26-2017, 12:07 PM)Eric the (insult redacted) Wrote: Apparently less than half of the apparent 700,000 registered voters voted, and most of them voted early. So this result was due to many Montana citizens not voting in a special election. Their only recourse now, if they want to have someone other than a thug represent them, is to recall him, if they can. Polls also show that they still approve of the thug in the White House who inspired Gianforte's behavior. This also needs to change, if Montana is to join the civilized world again.
Given the current reputation of the mainstream media beating up that reporter was probably helped him get elected. Newspapers have been on life support for some time and these days only the geezers watch TV news.
When political violence becomes normal, democracy dies. Political violence seems incompatible with any libertarian essay that I have ever seen.
Hypocrite! You have outed yourself.
Indeed he has, and not for the first time. Liberty and democracy are impossible without a free press. Those Trump supporters and other right-wingers like Galen are upset at the press because it tells the truth and because it wants answers to important questions, like the one which that reporter asked.
The mainstream press hasn't really told the truth in years. Even without the corporate outlets which really are the mainstream press we do have a free press. They just live on the internet rather than on TV or the newspapers. Go back and look at what the press was like in the nineteenth century sometime.
The media never can tell 'the whole story'. Much reality (as in 'the potato crop is in') may be truth, but it is not really news. With the thirty-minute (really, twenty-minutes once one cuts out the commercial breaks and scene introductions) the nightly network newscasts lack the time to discuss anything in depth. That's before I discuss the sensationalism once characteristic of Hearst newspapers as depicted in the roman-a-clef Citizen Kane, let alone such trash as the National Enquirer, the Globe, Weekly World News, etc.
'Righteous anger' is no excuse for violence. Many tyrannical leaders have used it as a pretext for shutting down criticism.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.