Media Bias

[ZRod]

8 minutes ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

 

The Left never liked Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, but they work with them. The radical left maintains its ideological purity by taking loud unachievable stances and staying away from actual power. 

 

There remains a netherworld of national health care, Green New Deals and police reform that are actually more practical than radical but get dismissed out of hand as extremism. Our discourse is so crippled that anything coming out of Joe Biden's mouth is considered socialism by half the nation. 

You're last paragraph is my point. None of that is extreme. For sure it's progressive (which can't be a dirty word), but it's needed change. If progressivism is deemed undeniably bad then we are doomed to fail like the societies of millennia past.

[Dr. Strangelove]

12 minutes ago, ZRod said:

But at the same time these "news" organization take advantage of the fact that most people don't have the time to sit there and fact check everything. When they get a daily gish gallop of the 24 hour news cycle it's impossible.

 

I'd like to think I do a good job of staying up to speed and fact checking events, but with work, family, and friends it's pretty difficult to always be 100% on top of the latest fad headline.

I don't disagree. But they're not children, they are fully functioning adults.

 

If Trump says "Climate Change is a hoax by China", you shouldn't have to be a member of Mensa to see that this is moronic and untrue. If Ron DeSantis says Florida is where "woke goes to die" and the viewer doesn't know what woke is (other than a super-duper-scary word that means liberal) but supports him, that viewer deserves to be mocked and criticized. If a voter supports Glenn Younkin's ban on teaching CRT in his state high schools - even though it isn't taught there - we need to criticize those voters accordingly. 

 

14 minutes ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

 

The Left never liked Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, but they work with them. The radical left maintains its ideological purity by taking loud unachievable stances and staying away from actual power. 

Liberal voters as described here need the same mocking and derision. 

 

I'm personally as annoyed by the Elizabeth Warren grift as I am the morons on the Right. While she doesn't personally extract money from voters, you described perfectly what she and Bernie Sanders do. But what kills me is that they're costing Democrats elections.

[ZRod]

5 minutes ago, Dr. Strangelove said:

I don't disagree. But they're not children, they are fully functioning adults.

 

If Trump says "Climate Change is a hoax by China", you shouldn't have to be a member of Mensa to see that this is moronic and untrue. If Ron DeSantis says Florida is where "woke goes to die" and the viewer doesn't know what woke is (other than a super-duper-scary word that means liberal) but supports him, that viewer deserves to be mocked and criticized. If a voter supports Glenn Younkin's ban on teaching CRT in his state high schools - even though it isn't taught there - we need to criticize those voters accordingly. 

Undoubtedly the average P&R poster here is smarter and better educated than people watching news all day. I mean this goes for anyone who religiously watches 24 hour news; be that MSNBC, CNN, FSN, OAN, or whatever:

 

[funhusker]

10 minutes ago, ZRod said:

Undoubtedly the average P&R poster here is smarter and better educated than people watching news all day. I mean this goes for anyone who religiously watches 24 hour news; be that MSNBC, CNN, FSN, OAN, or whatever:

 

Be careful.  I called a poster "one of the smart ones" once and got suspended for two weeks.

[Guy Chamberlin]

9 minutes ago, Dr. Strangelove said:

 

 

I'm personally as annoyed by the Elizabeth Warren grift as I am the morons on the Right. While she doesn't personally extract money from voters, you described perfectly what she and Bernie Sanders do. But what kills me is that they're costing Democrats elections.

 

You may have misinterpreted me. I don't consider Warren and Sanders the radical left.  I put them in that netherworld of ambitious but achievable progressive change. If they lean farther left than some would like, it merely nudges the currently right of center democrats closer to what the center used to be for most of the nation's history. Sanders and Warren would be considered liberal but mainstream in most other nations. 

 

The radical left took over a couple blocks in Portland. The radical right has lawmakers in Washington and an insane former President hoping to reclaim the office. 

 

Put Elizabeth Warren in a debate with Marjorie Taylor Green and this kind of false equivalency quickly falls apart. 

[RedDenver]

29 minutes ago, Dr. Strangelove said:

While she doesn't personally extract money from voters, you described perfectly what she and Bernie Sanders do. But what kills me is that they're costing Democrats elections.

This seems a lot more like personal bias and ideology than reality. Sanders and Warren aren't costing Dems elections - that's the talking points of the parts of the Dem party that disagree with them.

[Dr. Strangelove]

14 minutes ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

 

You may have misinterpreted me. I don't consider Warren and Sanders the radical left.  I put them in that netherworld of ambitious but achievable progressive change. If they lean farther left than some would like, it merely nudges the currently right of center democrats closer to what the center used to be for most of the nation's history. Sanders and Warren would be considered liberal but mainstream in most other nations. 

 

The radical left took over a couple blocks in Portland. The radical right has lawmakers in Washington and an insane former President hoping to reclaim the office. 

 

Put Elizabeth Warren in a debate with Marjorie Taylor Green and this kind of false equivalency quickly falls apart. 

I disagree, at least with portions.

 

Elizabeth Warren has repeatedly pushed Biden to cancel Student Loans, up to $50,000 worth "with the stroke of a pen", for example.  She said this knowing it's not true or achievable, but continues to tout this as reality when it isn't. 

 

Bernie Sanders has made a career out of taking positions that have no chance of becoming law.

 

That isn't too say that are the equivalent of somebody like Marjorie Taylor Green. One is an occasionally dishonest politician, the other is not smart enough to understand the world around her. 

 

When it comes to elections, I'm referring to a small number of swing districs. Because most elections aren't competitive, costing Democrats an election like NE-02 in 2020 hurts. Kara Eastman was a terrible candidate for that district, and she took a Elizabeth Warren/Sanders style of politics to a general election. Doing so allowed her to win her primary but likely cost Democrats a very winnable seat. 

[RedDenver]

5 minutes ago, Dr. Strangelove said:

When it comes to elections, I'm referring to a small number of swing districs. Because most elections aren't competitive, costing Democrats an election like NE-02 in 2020 hurts. Kara Eastman was a terrible candidate for that district, and she took a Elizabeth Warren/Sanders style of politics to a general election. Doing so allowed her to win her primary but likely cost Democrats a very winnable seat. 

This is simply wish casting. It's just as likely a Dem candidate that wasn't in the Warren/Sanders style of politics would have also lost - and possibly by more. There's no way to know. But blaming Warren/Sanders for a different candidate losing is pretty weak logic.

[Guy Chamberlin]

Here's the crazy lesson from 2016.

 

Americans were incredibly thirsty for change. The Republican establishment didn't want Donald Trump at all, but to half the thirsty electorate that by itself was reason to elect him. Presumed frontrunners like Jeb Bush turned out to have no following. 

 

The Democratic establishment had greased the skids for Hillary Clinton and did not anticipate a primary challenge. That was reason enough for the other half of the thirsty electorate to turn to little-known, openly "democratic socialist" and declared Independent Bernie Sanders who came shockingly close to derailing the Clinton machine. 

 

There was a phenomenon at the time of undecided primary voters weighing the choice of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, apparently ignoring the gulf of political ideology between them and simply recognizing them both as outsiders and agents of change. 

 

By 2020, Republicans had circled the wagons around Donald Trump, who never remotely drained the swamp while listing farther right than most would have imagined, but who had clearly branded the GOP in his name. 10 million more Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2020 than did so in 2016.

 

By 2020 Super Tuesday, Democrats were facing the choice of Bernie Sanders or Not Bernie Sanders. And when you put it that way, they flocked to the fourth place guy with the name recognition and centrist reputation. The Dems probably had a platform somewhere, but the only criterion was beating Donald Trump, and Joe Biden did that. 

 

Now that I think about it, there really isn't a lesson here. But things that were normally predictable got broken in 2016, and the change we got ended up being pretty awful. 

 

 

[ZRod]

2 hours ago, Dr. Strangelove said:

Bernie Sanders has made a career out of taking positions that have no chance of becoming law.

See that's the thing, most of his positions are common place in the rest of the developed world, and entirely achievable if a rational discussion was to be had.

[BigRedBuster]

 

[commando]

29 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

no s#!t?  who would have guessed?  that's right...all of us not in the cult knew

[Scarlet]

19 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

The focus of this lawsuit is on Fox News but virtually every right-wing source did the same thing.  They all propagated the "stolen election" lie to their mindless audiences in order to make a buck. All of them knew it was bulls#!t.  In the meantime, they pushed, and are pushing, our democracy to the brink.

 

We all know it, but when those same sources are posted here, know that those posting those sources are good with overturning democracy in favor of autocracy.  Either that our they're the ignorant who lap up the lies of the likes of Fox News and their even more right-wing counterparts.  

 

This is how authoritarianism takes hold.

[BigRedBuster]

2 hours ago, Scarlet said:

The focus of this lawsuit is on Fox News but virtually every right-wing source did the same thing.  They all propagated the "stolen election" lie to their mindless audiences in order to make a buck. All of them knew it was bulls#!t.  In the meantime, they pushed, and are pushing, our democracy to the brink.

 

We all know it, but when those same sources are posted here, know that those posting those sources are good with good with overturning democracy in favor of autocracy.  Either that our they're the ignorant who lap up the lies of the likes of Fox News and their even more right-wing counterparts.  
 

 

These lawsuits need to be huge and go deep into management of these media outlets. 
 

Back when I finally realized Fox and conservative outlets like them were lying to me and I broke from listening to them, I came to believe they, and other outlets like them, are really the biggest threat in America.  
 

They will tell you anything to keep you angry and listening more so they can make more money. 
 

The only way to fix it is in the court room. And get into their pockets…..a lot. 

[Scarlet]

2 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

These lawsuits need to be huge and go deep into management of these media outlets. 
 

Back when I finally realized Fox and conservative outlets like them were lying to me and I broke from listening to them, I came to believe they, and other outlets like them, are really the biggest threat in America.  
 

The only way to fix it is in the court room.  

Unfortunately what Carl Sagan says here is true.  For the vast majority of right-wing targets it's too late.

 

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back".