Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[pbrower2a]

(11-04-2016, 06:32 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(11-04-2016, 06:15 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-04-2016, 11:42 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: In case anyone has any residual  doubt about whether to vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

1. Deceit
2. Exploitative behavior
3. Lack of empathy
4. Exaggerated self-importance
5. Lack of remorse about wrong-doing
6. Recklessness
7. Superficial charm
8. Sexual predation
9. Extreme hypocrisy
10. Weakness of bonds with others

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

One of my most oft repeated points about world views and values is how groups of people can live in alternate realities.  They can be thoroughly invested in entirely different ways of perceiving the world, quite sincerely, and be incapable of questioning their own beliefs or accepting facts that conflict with their beliefs.  I have favorite examples... conservatives encountering climate science and fundamentalists encountering evolution.  Whole branches of science are thrown out or disparaged.  The notion that Trump is a speaker of truth seems a more extreme example.

To a great extent you have to say this is human.  Humans have cultures, they buy into their cultures, and it is hard for anyone to honestly evaluate or cast aside deeply held beliefs.  The Establishment Right and Establishment Republican Media have been selling a good size part of the population on small government, low taxes and the southern strategy for decades.  At this point, the Establishment Right has failed to deliver on their policies and promises for decades.  Bush 43 was an utter failure.  Still, the deplorable wing of the Republican Base would rather blame the Establishment Republican politicians for Bush 43's failures and would rather not blame the policies that led to the failures.  Thus, the door has been left open for Trump to make the same old promises only more so to the same old base.

While a lot of bluer folk trust neither the promises nor the man who would perhaps implement them.

But I'm starting to look at the Republican media echo chamber as a grave problem.  They allow and encourage the alternate right echo chamber.  They make it possible for those into the Red world view to totally immerse themselves in the Red world view, to view everything Trump says as True, and everything that conflicts with their beliefs as the result of a corrupt right wing fixed rigged media establishment.  That picket line of sincerity is the essence of the divided and dysfunctional America.

In the days of Morrow and Cronkite there was a sense of duty and responsibility in reporting the news.  This seems to have been lost, replaced by a notion that ratings can be boosted by telling a certain targeted audience what they want to hear.  Faux News and the Alt Right media outlets are clearly visible as biased sources, assuming one has a Blue world view, assuming one isn't living inside of said alternate reality.

There are a lot of fact checking organizations around, and fact checking articles are regular features of many media outlets.  I believe one thing we have to do to break America out of its divided dysfunctional funk is to encourage and demand a lot more reality from our news media.  

It is far too easy for humans to live in distorted alternate realities created to manipulate the sheeple for power, profit and ratings.  I have been railing against partisan thinking by all sorts of partisans on this forum.  I'm equally dubious about red, blue, green, fundamentalist, marxist and restorationist partisans.  Heck, I was even angry at Virgil Saari for wanting to bring back the Stuart dynasty.  All will repeat their doctrines and refuse to listen and refuse to admit that they are not listening.  In this we fans of turning theory are little different from the sheeple of the Republican base. 

Just not sure what can be done with it.  Technology has given us many cable channels and more web pages.  All the editors and writers want a market share.  The easiest way go get such a share is to tell some group what they want to hear.  At some point the spin becomes propaganda, and the propaganda becomes full of lies.  This isn't entirely new.  It can't all be blamed on many cable TV channels and the Internet.  Still, the problem is getting worse.

I used to trust Walter Cronkite.  Everybody used to trust Walter Cronkite.  He's gone.  Everything he stood for is gone.

I wholeheartedly agree. You know I never had to even think about it till I was warned that media warps the truth in America. It came as a shock to me. Media here just reports on the news and does not make everything political.

People are selecting their own realities in America. It is not surprising that people who have a surfeit of choices in entertainment and can choose what they consume as such with little discretion about the quality can do much the same withttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P74oHhU5MDkh news. People can select a fascistic bent in the news if they so desire, and FoX News is there for them. America does not have much of a radical Left, so a Marxist bias in the news (and Marxism is heavily splintered on divides between Trotskyism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc. often at odds with each other) would have too tiny an audience for a cable channel.

Since you live in New Zealand you may be unaware of what fascistic propaganda sounds like in the English language.  Here is a documentary called "Outfoxed":





Note at the end the scathing review of FoX News by the great late television journalist Walter Cronkite.

FoX News is as slick journalism as anything else... but it is about as blatant propaganda as Pravda was in its heyday.

A study some years ago attempted to correlate what news sources Americans relied upon to whether they got an objective view of the Second Gulf War. All three of these questions are objectively answered "No!"

1. Did Saddam Hussein have an active program of acquiring or building weapons of mass destruction contrary to the sanctions of the United Nations at the time of the full American invasion of Iraq in 2003?

2. Was Saddam Hussein harboring terrorists?

3. Did most of the world approve of the American invasion of Iraq?

People who relied upon radio (especially National Public Radio), the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour on PBS, The Daily Show (paradoxically a comedic treatment of the news -- but comedy can be excellent analysis), or newspapers or their websites were highly likely to get it right. Regular viewers of CNN were about as good. Those who relied on the half-hour nightly news on the three major networks (which offer only about twenty minutes of news and about ten minutes of advertising) did worse. The 30-minute half-hour news program does not offer much in-depth news as does the full hour news on PBS which can telescope the length of a newscast to fit a relevant story.

Viewers of FoX News fared worst. FoX News is deadly-serious in its presentation of news, but it fits the news to its agenda. Its viewers watch much of it, but those viewers get very little objective news. They might as well be watching televised sports because at least they are not getting deceived by what they see.