Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I love the comments to pieces like that. Sure, they’re cheap giggles, and yes, they paint a depressing picture of the average American’s intellect. But I like cheap laughs, and I’m comforted — I can still lose a whole lotta brain cells before I’ll be average.

Re: This post for Hank's pleasure.
 

I don’t wish to make the perfect the enemy of the quite good, but there’s also the 4K Americans wasted, and that $3 trillion cost. Maybe a footnote?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

It was actually hard to be here illegally for a long time. But I had a relative who managed it during the revolution. He was impressed into the British navy and then jumped ship. If the Brits every found him, he would have hung, but how would they have known who he was, anyways? The natives welcomed him and taught him Dutch.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Hey Sebby, whoever wrote this forgot the part where Pelosi explains the media is just doing what the Democrats want them to do:

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

So you think the media shouldn't report on this guy's nonsense? The Dems would like for the media not to cover him? You can't mean that- covering his shit geeks up the Dems masses.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

You make a good point -- there is no middle ground between wall-to-wall coverage, repeating his nonsense, and not reporting on him at all. Therefore, the media shouldn't cover him at all.

Funny how all of the coverage of the caravan of invading immigrants in Mexico just stopped after Election Day. Just like the Democrats planned it!

eta: There is an interesting discussion to be had about what the media does right and wrong covering Trump. Happy to have that conversation. But as a starting point, Sebby's view that the media are doing the Democrats' bidding is totally insane.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

The media loves to trash Trump. And it does.

The media can love Trump for ratings and simultaneously be biased toward Democrats and against Trump.

You’re arguing there’s no such thing as bad press. That’s a different point than noticing the obvious left bias of the media.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

No. The media and Democrats are rather stupid in their strategy. The dumb Ds go on TV and scream and yell about everything Trump does and the media uses it for ratings. It’s a symbiotic relationship of idiots playing into Trump’s hands.

The Ds and the media think they’re helping to take down Trump in doing this. The media very much thinks it’s doing the Ds bidding.

It’s really fucking stupid.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

24 news repeats what news it has for 24 hours. Here's where I learned it- the DC sniper news- we would hear there's a new shooting and put on a news station- the news would repeat what little news there was over and over- THEN repeat the history of the sniper's prior shootings. That there is 24 coverage of anything is not proof of anything, other 24 hour coverage is stupid.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Every individual politician wants air time, and many will say what they need to to get it. Because it helps them get reelected.

The amazing thing is that people watch hours and hours of shows delivering the same agitprop on a loop, when they could, for example, read any number of good more detailed articles on a topic, like, say, ISIS in Syria, or even just turn to the cooking channel and learn more about Syria through its food than they ever will through Fox News.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I don’t think cable news viewers desire to learn, particularly Fox viewers. They desire tribal reinforcement. It’s demented.

I used to read NYT and WSJ in total daily. A few years back I took Taleb’s advice and started reading more books and long form in depth articles and following news only occasionally (feed on phone, perused here and there). I feel I’ve missed nothing and gained much.

My sole guilty pleasure: a little Morning Joe on Sirius. They get decent guests and tend to be centrist. I also watch Zakaria now and again. I like his calm assessments of issues.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Yup. A more insidious analogue is online clickbait news. If I see “Here’s what you need to know” in a headline, I refuse to read further.

Buzzfeed is a uniquely atrocious sinner in that circle of miscreants. That that site is considered news proves our decline is moving at a pace multiples of what we assume. (Breitbart’s ascension to “sorta news” closes that argument, for different reasons, with a mic drop.)

I’d address Upworthy, but it trips me from rational to enraged. Everyone involved in it, everyone who likes it, is guilty of crimes against evolution and humanity in general.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Yes, everything is at it was in 2008 and nothing has changed. :rolleyes:

It's important to think about how and why Breitbart and Infowars became sorta news, which is directly related to your irrational belief that the mainstream media does the Dems bidding.

It still exists?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I’m missing your first point. Are you defending Buzzfeed as a “news” outlet?

As to your second point, Newton’s 3rd Law.

Upworthy does still exist. Not only as a site, but in its revolution changing how all sites now tailor headlines as clickbait.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

You see wall-to-wall coverage of an invasion of the US by a caravan of poor Hondurans walking through southern Mexico, right before an election, and you see bias against Trump. It's amazing that someone who is so proud of being a free thinker is can be so oblivious to the power of the way things are framed and the recurring narratives that the media repeat.