Right-Wing Media are Destroying Our Country

[svelte]

[quote=zk]

One reason I avoid video news, whether it’s msnbc or fox or cnn or any television (or other video) news is that it’s just buckets of emotion being thrown at you. And those emotions are there, usually, in an attempt to manipulate. I despise it.

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[FlyerInHi]

Yes, I agree that it’s faster to read.
I used not to watch much video news….. but casting Youtube to TV has changed my media habits. You can have background stuff playing.

I like to watch Council on Foreign Relations debates and talks by authors so I don’t have to read their books. Yuval Harriri is awesome. Yanis Varoufarkis is a great economist and has caused me to rethink the Euro crisis. On-demand TV has opened up a whole new world.

Media choice is a great benefit and a curse at the same time. The populists can find stuff that validate their views.

But overall, open media is wonderful, especially for people in developing countries who heretofore had no access. Imagine the child of an illiterate peasant learning about capitalism and becoming rich. Or learning about the admission process to US universities.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=zk]
One reason I avoid video news, whether it’s msnbc or fox or cnn or any television (or other video) news is that it’s just buckets of emotion being thrown at you. And those emotions are there, usually, in an attempt to manipulate. I despise it.
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Bernie Sanders has a good explanation as to why people are persuaded to vote against their interests. They play on emotions.

There is a lot of talk about an overlap between Trump voters and Bernie voters. I don’t believe it. Only moron Bernie supporters would switch to Trump.

The Washington post has an article about a study on ‘traditional masculinity which the right wing media has attacked. “Traditional men” are people most susceptible to manipulation by right wing media.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-traditional-masculinity-hurts-the-men-who-believe-in-it-most/2019/01/12/22d2518a-14fd-11e9-90a8-136fa44b80ba_story.html?utm_term=.52e31e017770
How ‘traditional masculinity’ hurts the men who believe in it most

[Coronita]

[quote=FlyerInHi]

(Hmmm. It’s been a few days since I tried to stir things up by starting a right versus left slapfest thread about Texas and failed miserably… Now that people probably forgot about that, let me reply to this thread twice to see if I can stir shit up here with another left versus right slapfest….. I really hope some people on the far right get angry about what I am about to post, because that’s what I count on when I post here. I’ve become chemically addicted to piggington.com’s political ranting.

I am not having that much luck pissing people off at breibart.com or foxnews.com, but at least I haven’t been banned here…again….)

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[FlyerInHi]

Unlike you, Flu, I don’t use fake quote. We know where fake news comes from, don’t we?

[FlyerInHi]

zk, Tom Nichols a conservative and a professor at US Naval College has a book The Death of Expertise.

He argues that the deplorables (my word not his) are not legitimately agrieved because what they are agrieved about isn’t true. Our media and the right wing media in particular make people believe false stuff.

Nichols put the responsibilities upon the individual deplorables themselves (again my choice of words) and not as much upon external factors. That’s because if you correct the deplorable with true information, they will tell you they will believe whatever they believe anyway because that’s an important way of how their manage their own lives.

[FlyerInHi]

For you zk an interesting article on the role of evangelicals. The churches and the right wing media together gave us Trump.

Why do white evangelicals still staunchly support Donald Trump?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/04/05/why-do-white-evangelicals-still-staunchly-support-donald-trump/?noredirect=on

[zk]

“It’s time — high time — to take Fox News’s destructive role in America seriously”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/its-time–high-time–to-take-fox-newss-destructive-role-in-america-seriously/2019/03/07/aeb83282-40cc-11e9-922c-64d6b7840b82_story.html?fbclid=IwAR12vVokfDA19RejwNs-1Zq2F18L61d0d4JUczWbUjcKRjBIJKoKR25W-tk

[zk]

Has anyone (or everyone) else noticed that most of conservatives’ opinions of who liberals are and what they want is based on what those conservatives hear from their propagandists?

If you have the stomach for it, listen to Hannity or Limbaugh or Jones or any of those idiots for a couple minutes. They’ll spend half or more of their time telling their listeners all about who liberals are and what liberals think and what liberals want. And it’s all nonsense. Almost none of it is true. All of it is at the very least exaggerated, most of it is twisted reality or half-truth, and an awful lot of it is just plain made up.

Socialism! Open borders! Take away all guns!

Those are just a few of the bigger ones. There are a million smaller accusations, insidious little ideas that propagandists plant in their marks’ heads. These lies, big and small, give conservatives a wildly inaccurate picture. And this picture is so awful that, no matter how bad conservative ideologies are for them, no matter how outrageously ignorant and incompetent (and bad for them) their man is, they’d rather take all that up the ass than vote for or side with any liberal ever.

[FlyerInHi]

Honestly zk, why did it take you this long to notice?

Trump and his kind will not stand down until they get the same “art of the deal” in return.

Conservatives love to use voters’ nativist and nationalist instincts for power grab.
“make the country great again” is very attractive to voters but will end up diminishing the country. It’s happening in the UK and USA.

I’m a rather enjoying the events in UK. In trying the make it great again, the Brexiteers may just diminish the empire to little old England.

BTW, Fox News is a flaw in democracy and will result in the ruin of us all. Socrates was right. And what happened to him?

[zk]

[quote=FlyerInHi]Honestly zk, why did it take you this long to notice?

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You seem to assume that I just noticed this. (Felix Unger was right about assuming.) I first noticed it about 15 years ago (although it wasn’t nearly as pervasive then).

I’m just not sure how many people are aware of how pervasive and persuasive and problematic and just plain huge this aspect of right-wing propaganda is. Obviously the brainwashed conservatives are totally unaware of it. Which is to be expected. The problem is that most other people, as far as I can tell, don’t seem to be aware of it. They see the vitriol and the fury that conservatives have towards liberals, and they seem to think that it’s directed towards positions that liberals actually hold. Surely a lot of centrists, even, believe that liberals in general want open borders and socialism and confiscation of all guns (and many of the million other things that right-wing propagandists tell them that liberals want). Even a lot of liberals (who don’t listen to Limbaugh and Hannity and their ilk) aren’t aware of the uncountable (and usually ridiculous) positions, attitudes, and ideas right-wing propagandists incorrectly ascribe to them.

This is a problem. Obviously the propagandists aren’t going to stop doing their job. That leaves it to…to whom? Who should be countering this aspect of the propaganda? If more liberals were aware of the positions that conservatives think they hold, maybe they could speak up and … ah never mind, the brainwashed aren’t listening to anybody.

My point is that, unless you listen to right-wing propaganda, you aren’t aware of just how persistently and aggressively and wildly right-wing propaganda misrepresents liberal positions, attitudes, and ideas. And, while I can’t think of a solution to the right-wing propaganda problem, increased awareness of all aspects of the problem can only help. And I think that most people are not aware enough of just how big this aspect of the problem is.

[FlyerInHi]

I agree zk. And i was just being facetious.

Conversatism by definition is the status quo so it gets more power than progressive ideas.
I think we liberals are collectively guilty of allowing that. Many liberals, in trying to be nice and even handed have agreed to “both sides are equal”. So that allows Trump to say the most outrageous things and the press will report “well the liberals are equal in the opposite direction”. It’s a good narrative but it’s untrue. Of course, the uneducated masses will repeat “both sides are the same”

The flaw in Western democracy is that it only takes  “leaders” like Trump or Boris Johnson to defy conventions (or nationalists in Poland or Hungary)
I would love for Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbin to win and do the same things. Then maybe there will symmetry.

I love to watch Fox News sometimes. Non stop ranting.
It’s not conservatism any more. It’s all about grievances of the deplorables.

It’s fun as an observer. Fox News is destroying conservatism before it will destroy the country.

Btw, just like you’re doing now socrates warned about the deplorables. They put him to death

[temeculaguy]

I looked up “echo chamber” in the dictionary and it had a link to this thread.

[zk]

[quote=temeculaguy]I looked up “echo chamber” in the dictionary and it had a link to this thread.[/quote]

So lazy.

First of all, if you read the whole thread, all 14 pages of it, you’ll see plenty of dissenting opinion.

Second, it’s an open forum. If you have something to say that’s relevant or interesting or better than what you’ve seen so far, let’s hear it.

Third, if I wanted an echo chamber, there are plenty of places for that. This is not one of them. Not by a long shot. There are plenty of intelligent people on this forum who disagree with me and who are more than willing to argue against what I or anyone else says.

And you try to get away with “echo chamber.”

So very lazy.

[zk]

Brian, ease up here, if you would, please. I’d like to hear from some more conservatives (or anybody who disagrees about the damage that right-wing propaganda is doing to our country). Thanks.

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