Institutional, Top-Down, Thinly-Veiled Racism
 

'"Today, the American people have to focus on something else, which is the sacrifice and the service that is given by our law enforcement officers. And they have to start showing, more than they do, the respect and support that law enforcement deserves,” Barr reportedly said.

He added that “if communities don’t give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need.”'
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This is the most disgusting, racist, irresponsible shit I've heard in a very long time. And I don't want to hear, "I don't think Barr is racist, I think [he's pandering to police] [he didn't even mention which communities he was referring to] [whatever else]." The idea that police don't have to protect citizens of this country unless they are shown what they have deemed to be proper respect is a major problem and results in policing that is more about the police's feelings than about the fucking law. The fact that the head of justice is preaching this bullshit should be enough for any asshole who "votes their wallet" (or whatever other pretextual bullshit those people use to ignore institutional racism) to wake up. Holy shit.

https://thehill.com/homenews/news/47...gQwEwR-eE0KRVk

TM

Re: More Sebby bullshit
 

Do you think if you keep repeating that I watch Fox people will believe it? You keep doing that and it's dumb. I'm happy to debate an issue with you, but that bitchy sort of stuff is tedious. You don't need to do it. So don't.

Now as to substance: Both Fox and MSNBC are news slanting machines. Maddow is a ridiculous cheerleader against anything and everything GOP. She was also a close friend of Roger Ailes (oh yes she was... look it up). He schooled her on how to be a media personality the same way he schooled the pundits at Fox. Lawrence O'Donnell at MSNBC is a completely biased bullshit artist. Strangely, Al Sharpton is probably one of then most honest pundits at MSNBC.

News is a product. It is aimed at siloed audiences. MSNBC slants for its audience, Fox slants for its audience. You'll never read it, but Taibbi actually challenges your flawed assertion that Fox is materially more full of shit than MSNBC in Hate, Inc.. He actually devotes a whole chapter to why Maddow is on the cover of the book next to Hannity, and he explains the methods by which MSNBC manipulates readers while appearing (largely to the credulous) to be a reputable news outlet.

The difference? MSNBC does indeed have more reverence for facts. They're much better at subtle spinning than Fox. Where Fox will misrepresent a fact flagrantly, MSNBC will carefully package facts that prove X as facts that prove Y.

Slanting the news is like pregnancy. Once you start doing it, you're in the liars' bucket. That one source does it more than another is worth noting. That one source does it better than another is worth noting. But if you believe MSNBC and Fox are further apart than they are aligned in their models and methods, you're in the sucker bucket. You're buying exactly what MSNBC is selling.

But don't take my word for it. Read Taibbi, or Greenwald, or Chomsky. I've been lucky, or perhaps unlucky, to have been exposed to the inside of cable news a lot over the past 15 years. What those authors, and many more like them, say about media manipulation of the masses rings true.

Re: More Sebby bullshit
 

Your mind-numbingly repetitive criticism of the dishonest media would have more credibility if you were not an open and ardent defender of lying as, among other things, an important form of advocacy.

Re: More Sebby bullshit
 

No it wouldn't. But I see what you're trying to do.

TM

Re: More Sebby bullshit
 

I was responding to a post where you professed that you knew enough to speak about Fox but not Breitbart. I assume that came from watching some Fox.

Re: More Sebby bullshit
 

If those cops are saying the racist stuff that other relative said, I'd say they're just garden variety bigots. They clearly have no economic anxiety, so they're just voting their racist tendencies. They are incurable. Forget about them.

The 800 lb gorilla in Trumpism is not the bigot, or the economically insecure person. I think, and I could be wrong, it's the smart, thoughtful person who rationally calculates that Trump is the better choice for him.

In the past this would be called a pocketbook voter. But I think it's more complex than that. I think there are a lot of smart, rational voters who look at politics, think its a dysfunctional mess and simply vote for their own interests. Rather than examine these people as parts of the population, it might be better to examine them as individual actors who no longer feel connected to the rest of the population. They are people who see our political system as a joke and thus "draw the circle smaller." They think shorter term and focus not on what's better for their community, or their state, or their party, or the country, but instead focus on simply taking care of their families.

When there's upheaval like 2000 crash, followed by the 2008 crisis, followed by inequality, volatility, and so much insecurity all over the world, people tend to hunker down. They refocus on themselves. They also don't mind authoritarians so much. They'll give anything for stability.

Those, I think, are the huge numbers of people who don't show up in Trump's polling numbers.

Re: More Sebby bullshit
 

Yup. And if there is a way to say this even more strongly, I'd endorse it.

I have an old friend who regularly shows up as a Democratic voice on Fox, and for a while I regularly tuned in when he was on, but I can't even bear that now and mostly just see the "worst of" clips that show up daily on Twitter.

Re: More Sebby bullshit
 

I don't watch Fox. But unfortunately, I am quite familiar with the people on it. How can one not be? (And Taibbi's book discusses them at length.)

My sole cable news guilty pleasure is Morning Joe. Occasionally, I listen while driving.

BTW, Howard had Hillary on this morning. Good interview. Hit a lot of subjects. Pretty open - considerable candor.

Re: More Sebby bullshit
 

I'll have to take you at your word there, because the Bell Curve seems best used as a doorstop.

He is amazingly polite in interviews. It is disarming.

Re: More Sebby bullshit
 

Joy Reid is the one most worth watching.

Re: More Sebby bullshit
 

It is the role in Republican politics that used to be covered by Bill Buckley. The polite bigot who lets suburban Republicans feel superior because he criticizes people for their skin and their grammar.

Re: More Sebby bullshit
 

Are "journalist" and "advocate" synonyms in your Thesaurus?

Re: More Sebby bullshit
 

I see no reason not to insult people over grammar or vocabulary. We've all done that. Recall I stupidly reversed objective and subjective a while back? I certainly deserved what I received for that.

You run into a lot of dumb people in my state. I'm kind of tired of hearing them speak as though they've not finished seventh grade. Younger people are the worst with it. Texting's robbed them of all capacity to formulate and express complex thought. And most of these people live in the suburbs.

Re: Institutional, Top-Down, Thinly-Veiled Racism
 

You wonder what he means when he says that communities might find themselves without the police protection that they need. It has the apocalyptic whiff of the NRA types who arm themselves to prepare for the coming anarchy.

I don't mind a political figure suggesting that the police deserve respect, so long as they also saying that the police need to earn that respect. Obviously, that's not what Barr is up to.

Re: More Sebby bullshit
 

One of the many reasons I don't engage substantively with you is that you are dishonest, and one of the more obvious and tedious ways that you are dishonest is that you constantly change the argument of the person you are arguing with, and then provide a counter-argument to your made up version of what you pretend to be arguing about. You have gone so far in the past as to "quote" (as in, with actual quotation marks) something that I never said, and then provide a strenuous argument against the "quoted" argument that I never made. This is why your debates with Ty consist primarily of: "When you said x, you're a fool." "But I never said x." "Well here is something you said that is kind of x-ish." "No it's not, we were talking about something completely different." Etc., etc., etc., etc. Arguing with liars is pointless.