Sounds like “power through” were Hillary’s own words, so it’s going to be repeated.
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Am I really that guy to pull a Godwin here?
I don’t want to draw a direct Nazi comparison, but I think the argument brought forth by @Mitchell is not a very strong one. Historically, you can quite surely produce examples better than I could, including the backing for fascists in the late 1920s. While I don’t really think the sitting president not an apricot Duce nor an orange Führer, he and his cronies do know how to do propaganda. Shoot from the hip, set the agenda, repeat point ad nauseam, (but at least, repeat once), distract public attention, repeat cycle. Also, repeat bullet points.
What differs from other campaigns, I think, is not the repetition. Its the populists approach to quicktalk outrage into existence, then combine completely unrelated issues, and move to something else. And even if your position is utterly bullshit, return flag-waving after some time and declare you won. The combination of issues is done by other political players to move their agenda forward, too - but usually it is as a deal, and not as a form of propaganda. (Today’s DACA / border wall combination is a perfect example, as the BBC pointed out. It is just racism which binds the two together, nothing else.)
This form of propaganda is possibly not reflecting true majorities in society, but I wouldn’t underestimate it: it creates a majority, eventually. “Good and swimming” isn’t a category for Trump. It’s in office that counts. And with majority in congress and senate.
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I’d say “Service Guarantees Citizenship,” but damn, it might take a while.
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Lazy reading of news service stories probably goes back to radio announcers reading news wire stories straight off the teletype.
It’s not like local stations usually have much in the way of their own staff of investigative journalists and news analysts for handling much above the local interest stories.
That’s why I like to follow news stories in print, because the sourcing is obvious. When a whole bunch of news sites have the same text, word for word, it’s usually not part of a deliberate conspiracy, but because they’re all running the same Associated Press copy. (A biased system doesn’t have to be an organized conspiracy, just individual players acting out of their own self-interest.)
Sinclair’s mandatory-read stories are a different kettle of fish.
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Gleichschaltung really is extremely dangerous for democracy.
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This is frequently how a debate with a conservative trolley goes.
“Let’s see your proof”
“Look it up yourself, I promise you it exists”
(tries to look it up)
“It’s not as you say.”
“Look again. I won’t spoon feed you.”
If you can’t provide proof when asked, how do you expect someone to believe you? You are not backing up your claims with evidence. The onus of proof is on you, comrade.
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Are you old enough to remember what broadcast news was like under the “fairness doctrine”? I am.
What it was like: Evening national and local newscasts that were precisely pitched at 1% right of center and consisted of items carefully screened for blandness, so as to avoid any requirement to grant airtime for reply.
Late at night, there would be 60 second “editorials” followed by 60 second “rebuttals”.
If you think this was better than what we have now, you are simply wrong.
Interestingly enough, back in the forties and fifties we had lots and lots of newspapers, papers which proudly stood for one political philosophy its opposite and had no fears about letting you know. We had only a few broadcasters, who colored strictly within the center to slightly center-right lines. Now it seems to me that the positions of print and broadcast media have been reversed.
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Has anyone tried to start a not for profit news network? What would be stopping them?
And as John Oliver pointed out (video above…) the added layer of insidiousness comes from that fact. People are already suspicious of national news, and look for bias in reporting, but they reserve a different kind of trust for local news. They expect it to reflect at least the flavor of local thinking, and be less sophisticated in conspiring against the masses.
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Unexpected side effect of living in the Detroit market is that local news doesn’t have time every night to parrot the corporate talking points. Between shootings, car wrecks, corrupt politicians, rapey university doctors and sportsball, there isn’t time for much else.
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I’ve noticed this when using google news. There are usually non-paywalled sites with slight variations of the title. I rarely use up my X free articles per month on the paywalled sites.
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I’m talking about the constant repetition of the “fake news undermining democracy” meme, a close relative of the 9/11 “because they hate our freedom” meme and similar cold war memes.
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You know it took me two weeks to figure out “oh wait the local news ins’t 20 minutes of who got shot/busted for drugs/etc.” after moving to Seattle from St. Louis.
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Am I doing that? We all know that Hitler took power without a full majority (but a slight majority in a coalition government), but he was able to do so because of emergency measures after the fire in the Reichstag. The structure is different here. I’m not saying something like this can’t happen, I’m saying that what could make it happen. Even with an event the size of 9/11, the GOP couldn’t take over the entire government and end democracy as we know it. Could that happen under Trump though?
And even with that majority, what has he been able to do, other than appoint people with little experience and often outright hostility to the cabinet, appoint some judges, and try and create protectionist measures for trade - which is just bringing people to the table. I’m not saying it’s been great, but he’s not doing his base what he promised and he might lose them if he continues to be unable to do that. Oddly enough, I do think his actions matter here. The opposition is fired up, he’s dithering, and bureaucratic inertia is proving a problem for him in some places in terms of getting his agenda across - whatever agenda actually exists.
That’s I think the heart of it. He has no real agenda (other than that damn wall, which so far isn’t happening). He’s not committed to anything real, he’s merely a vessel for other’s ideas, and he just shifts to new ideas when it sounds interesting to him.
As Marx said, first as tragedy, then as farce.
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Having a different opinion than you on a subjective topic doesn’t make me wrong.
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Only problem with this statement is his base simply does not see it this way. His most ardent supporters see him as keeping his promises - which is why his support from his base has hardly dropped since the election and probably never will.
The only thing I can attribute this to is classic cognitive dissonance. They will never hold him to any real measurable standards because they just don’t want to believe.
With the prospect a Justice Kennedy retirement, we should expect them to dig in even deeper now.
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Well, there’s PBS on TV, Propublica in print, and NPR in your earholes. But my point isn’t so much that there aren’t examples, it’s just there’s such an overwhelming majority of outlets that are for-profit that it seems to have become culturally ingrained that news should be for-profit. Overwhelming to the point that when the question comes up: “How will news survive in the difficult-to-monitize (apparently) internet age?” the answer is hardly ever “pay for the work up-front through grants, donations and memberships, and then give the product to everyone” they way non-profits do.
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Some of them, but I think he has lost people over the budget. You’re right about his most ardent supporters perhaps, but if he keeps being unable to do his core promise (the wall), why would they continue to support him.
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I had the reverse culture shock moving from Oh-look-a-moose-on-route-201 Maine to NYC…
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Are you old enough to clearly remember the era of the “fairness doctrine”? If you are, I’ll definitely concede your point. What was it about that period that you liked?
