Corporate-hired “reporters” are of course muzzled from doing actual reporting. The rub is that the same level of mega-corporations that now control mainstream media increasingly control government as well. Hello fascism! The idea of a fifth estate – relatively unbiased, effectively corrective forms of journalism – seems just about dead in the U.S.
Yep. And so is corporate “reporting.” Such people mostly function as sales reps for their particular corporate “news” outlets, and for themselves. And for the whole self-perpetuating status quo, which continues to funnel ever more money upward, while further degrading the living standards of the rest of us.
Well, social media and other platforms for clicktivism keep growing, of course. Sanders surely does especially well with younger voters because such voters pay less attention to corporate media, and generally distrust it. But then, so do a lot of conservative voters (who think it’s the opposite of what it actually is, chock full of leftist bias and so on).
And, the worse things get for most of us, the more we’re likely to start resisting collectively, and effectively. I think also that Sanders and his “movement,” such as it is, have done a LOT to further legitimize collective leftist dissent.
OMG IKR? I have the same problem, except it’s worse. A great many people who vote my way do so for the wrong reasons. They’re just as bad because then I have to sigh loudly and explain things, just like with people who vote the wrong way.
Yeah, this is going to be the frustrating thing now - the media has made a boatload off this dumb election, so no matter what, it’s going to be a ‘tight horserace’ until November. If Trump or Hillary is getting crushed by 30% in every single poll, they’ll find (or make) the one poll where it’s close and trumpet it endlessly.
Removing ignorant politicians would be more efficient and administratively supportable.
State and federal legislatures, governors and presidents should have minimum education requirements that can be met by taking classes to fill in any gaps. Ethics, history, economics, biology, finance, and civics are basic courses that come to mind.
Once elected, they should be required to take continuing education like most professionals.
it’s far too easy to use what seems like neutral content to push specific articles (re: facebook, et al.) certainly, they aren’t the most read articles ever – so some sort of windowing, and winnowing is at play.
( and the un-talked about issue in facebook’s case is: filtering topics that might be considered negative about facebok. )
i know it’s a bit paranoid, but when we already know facebook curates, and buy doesn’t mean buy – there’s little reason to take such things at face value.
we already know it can’t be most read – because they are all recent pieces. a truly most read list would have lots of old pieces as well. they probably also cull sporting and weather pages. that means some sort of algorithm is at play.
even though the washington post is considered reasonably trustworthy ( we assume they don’t have humans mucking with the mechanics, and we assume the same set of articles are presented to all people who visit at the same time ) maybe it’s worth being a little suspect of a source unless they explicitly spell out what that kind of phrase means.
The post is paywalled. You can only read a certain number of articles before it becomes inconvenient. So the Trolly articles get read by the outsiders, and presumably more conventional journallism gets read by the subscribers.
The problem there is that the people who are interested in spending time discussing the issues are your core supporters and volunteers who are going to vote for you regardless, so you want them out there, working on other voters. Now, among staff - yes, if information flow is too much top down then you have issues.
But I’m just talking about “the way it is.” Perhaps the bottom up model, as you put it, could bring about better results in an election where you thought you could get a lot of persuasion (as opposed to GOTV). It would be a really hard sell, to the sort of person that you’d need to buy it. I’ve worked for that person before (not this cycle), and they were good.
What has kept the United States from fascism used to be its political tradition of decentralized, limited government, together with a healthy cultural cynicism about magical ideological solutions and a commendable contempt toward those who would seek to rule over their fellows.
I say “used to be” with still a little hope that those conditions may once more return.
I like to think I’m not cynical, but after reading your reply I have my doubts. Wish I could see things from where you’re standing; it sounds like a much more hopeful and productive viewpoint.
One thing that does draw me to where you’re standing is that during the post-WWII era (1945-1960s) wages seemed to match the cost of living in the U.S., at least from how I understand its economic history (disclaimer: I am not an economist). Unionized labor was stronger and financial services and products were still intelligible to those without a master’s degree in accounting or economics.
Perhaps this period of economic stability instilled ground-level resistance to any apparent attempts by government to wrest control of the foundations of that stability. I have no idea how plausible this statement is because, again, I am not an economist.
What’s allowed the consolidation of power—that is, real (i.e. economic) power—at the federal level is the contemporary collusion of government and corporate business, the latter having done the hard work of consolidating that power during the 80s and 90s, thanks to deregulation.
What restrains me from joining you where you’re standing is that the people who supported this deregulation invoked the very U.S. political culture of decentralized government that you cite as well as a civic culture that champions anti-collectivism at least as much as individualism.
I sincerely hope I’m mistaken about everything I just wrote and that somebody can set me straight because I’m not cut out for this degree of cynicism.
