(thoughts here)
[posted on 2/5/12]
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Why do Americans hate the media
From Devilstower at DailyKos
The parts I bolded in the excerpts from Devilstower's post reminded me of why I continually have a deeply disturbing sense that the extreme right-wing is more like a cult than a political party. As I understand it, as new members are enticed into a cult, the first thing that must be done to ensure their "capture" into the cult is to isolate them. They must be completely separated from any source of information that would cause them to question the ideology and worldview of the cult.
Cult members are often required to cut off all communication with family and former friends. TV, newspapers, magazines, books (except for any written by the cult leader) are usually banned. The only "information" new members are allowed is the distorted view of reality provided by the cult itself.
Some cult members (often the women and the children) are permanently kept isolated from the wider world. However, it is difficult to impossible to completely isolate everyone in the cult from the outside. The men, for example, may be required to have jobs or the cult itself may establish businesses that require contact with their customers in order to financially support the cult. The truly isolated members may accidentally be exposed to outside sources. So it is necessary to install deep distrust of any information from outside the cult into the very brains of the cult members.
What Devilstower describes is how this is being done to millions of Americans through the traditional media. What started as conscious propaganda on the part of the extreme right has now spread to formerly more-or-less reliable sources of information. And the formerly more-or-less reliable sources are actively participating in their own erosion of credibility.
Scary, when you think about how dangerous the cult mentality can be and where it can lead. What's scary is not that most Americans are buying it. They aren't. What's scary are the horrors that can be unleashed in any society by a minority of "true believers" in the name of an ideology.
[posted on 12/27/11]
The media -- newspapers, radio, and television -- is not made up of reporters running on a sparkling field of journalistic integrity. Those reporters are instead embedded in a machine intended to do the one thing that Mr. Keen sets as the mark of professionalism -- make money. And the way the media has chosen to make money over the last few decades is, perversely, by devaluing their own product. The clearest illustration of this can be found in three massive changes that have affected news over the last two decades: the increase in radio pundits, the establishment of the Fox News Network, and the reaction of the remainder of the media to the first two events. . . .
But the right wing talk brigade doesn't exist just to build up their own or tear down Democrats. They have, from the moment they first rolled onto the air, existed to tell you that traditional news organizations are no good. The Washington Post? Inside the beltway losers out of touch with real America. CNN? The Clinton News Network. The New York Times? Please. Do you really have to ask?
Punditry has always aimed as much artillery at the people who deliver the news as it does at those who make it. There's a very good reason for this. Before you can convince someone of a lie, you need to make it more difficult for them to check your information. If you establish from the start that NPR is communist, MSNBC and CNN are slanted, and every newspaper this side of Journal's editorial page should be printed on pink paper, then any exaggeration you deliver becomes the de facto standard. Impugning the validity of other news sources is the first job of a successful pundit. They don't seek to be your sources of information by passing along reliable news. They do so by constantly assailing the legitimacy of other sources until you're left shaking your head at the absolute ignorance of everyone but Rush/Bill/Sean/Ann.
The same principles apply to an even greater degree for Fox News. Yes, the network exists to promulgate a rigidly conservative agenda, but it can't do that without first informing you that every other source of news is invalid. Fox doesn't compete with the other networks, it sneers at them. From its motto to its non-existent boundaries between opinion and reporting, Fox exists by being an instrument of destruction to other news providers. Why do those who watch Fox News continue to believe that Iraq was involved in 9/11 despite that idea having been disproved over, and over, and over? Because Fox tells them to. Because Fox's pundits repeat the lie. Because Fox has convinced them that no other source of fact exists.
Fox News Network alone has done more to devalue the whole idea of news than every supermarket tabloid, every radio ranter, and every blogger combined.
If both the institutions at blame are heavily weighted to the right, that's no coincidence. Conservative dogma has long held the idea that it must discredit the press by claiming that the Fourth Estate is in fact a Fifth Column. They have depended on their ability to defame factual sources as a means of easing the way for misinformation since well before the time of Joe McCarthy. The right has successfully extended this campaign into the realm of science, convincing people that both evolution and global warming are somehow "political issues," deserving of no more attention than alternatives despite reams of evidence.
The myth of the "liberal media" came long before the blogs. Discrediting the "nattering nabobs" of the press is not a game that originated with bloggers. Every blogger I know is fully aware that we could not survive without the legwork done by hardworking, professional reporters. Bloggers are not competition to the traditional media -- though they do, hopefully, act as an occasional check on its excesses. However, even if the Internet were entirely dedicated to the downfall of existing media, it would be only one popgun in a chorus of cannons. A large part of the traditional media is dedicated to nothing less than making war on the rest. . . .
The media is working very, very hard to make sure that you don't trust the media. Professionalism defined only by dollars dictates that they chase declining ad revenues through alleys of filth. News outlets have become devoted not to providing stories that are timely and accurate, but to providing proof that their competitors are slanted and unreliable. It's devolved into a battle in which all sides lose. And the biggest loser is the consumer looking for a reliable, authoritative source of information.
The parts I bolded in the excerpts from Devilstower's post reminded me of why I continually have a deeply disturbing sense that the extreme right-wing is more like a cult than a political party. As I understand it, as new members are enticed into a cult, the first thing that must be done to ensure their "capture" into the cult is to isolate them. They must be completely separated from any source of information that would cause them to question the ideology and worldview of the cult.
Cult members are often required to cut off all communication with family and former friends. TV, newspapers, magazines, books (except for any written by the cult leader) are usually banned. The only "information" new members are allowed is the distorted view of reality provided by the cult itself.
Some cult members (often the women and the children) are permanently kept isolated from the wider world. However, it is difficult to impossible to completely isolate everyone in the cult from the outside. The men, for example, may be required to have jobs or the cult itself may establish businesses that require contact with their customers in order to financially support the cult. The truly isolated members may accidentally be exposed to outside sources. So it is necessary to install deep distrust of any information from outside the cult into the very brains of the cult members.
What Devilstower describes is how this is being done to millions of Americans through the traditional media. What started as conscious propaganda on the part of the extreme right has now spread to formerly more-or-less reliable sources of information. And the formerly more-or-less reliable sources are actively participating in their own erosion of credibility.
Scary, when you think about how dangerous the cult mentality can be and where it can lead. What's scary is not that most Americans are buying it. They aren't. What's scary are the horrors that can be unleashed in any society by a minority of "true believers" in the name of an ideology.
[posted on 12/27/11]
The death penalty
Cacti:
If we go from 1976, the year the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court, there have been 1,266 executions.
In the same time, there have been 133 inmates who were sentenced to die, who have had their conviction overturned on appeal, and were subsequently acquitted on re-trial, or had their charges dismissed by the State, or were granted an absolute pardon. . . .
Those numbers mean, in the past 35 years, 1 in 10 deathrow inmates was tried, found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of their peers, and sentenced to die for crimes they did not commit.
Those are just the ones we know of. If the system could get it demonstrably wrong 10 percent of the time. There’s a good chance that there’s a similar number of cases where the accused wasn’t so fortunate.
[posted on 12/13/11]
If we go from 1976, the year the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court, there have been 1,266 executions.
In the same time, there have been 133 inmates who were sentenced to die, who have had their conviction overturned on appeal, and were subsequently acquitted on re-trial, or had their charges dismissed by the State, or were granted an absolute pardon. . . .
Those numbers mean, in the past 35 years, 1 in 10 deathrow inmates was tried, found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of their peers, and sentenced to die for crimes they did not commit.
Those are just the ones we know of. If the system could get it demonstrably wrong 10 percent of the time. There’s a good chance that there’s a similar number of cases where the accused wasn’t so fortunate.
[posted on 12/13/11]
Medicare
Darksyde considers his parents:
[posted on 8/16/09]
I'm lucky. Both my parents are entering their ninth decade of life and in relatively good health. They're alive, vibrant, enjoying their golden years surrounded by legions of kids, grandkids, and great grandkids.
Thanks to Medicare, my parents have survived heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, each requiring major, life saving surgery. They’ve had cataracts repaired, hold arthritis in check, and closely monitor and treat any signs of peripheral artery disease or pending stroke. That's why today they can enjoy a round of golf, shop for Christmas presents, hug their great-grandchildren, and do all the precious things more valuable to everyone in my family than any sum of money. To say that private, for profit health insurance could never offer our clan that option is a laughable understatement.
If Fox News, Newt Gingrich, or Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the lying wingnut clowns had been around when Medicare was proposed, my mother and father would be, at best, blind and crippled in a homeless shelter due to medical costs. Probably with at least one or two of their medically tapped out adult children living in a dumpster across the street. Or, more likely, they would live only in my family’s memory. And make no mistake; this Republican war on affordable heathcare is a war on my parents and yours. It's a fundamental plank in conservative ideology and includes destroying Medicare, usually disguised by widely quoted bytes like ‘ let's get the government out of healthcare.’
. . . What’s so remarkable about my parents' healthcare battles and victories isn’t that they're unique; the remarkable thing is they are the norm. Millions of senior citizens are alive, pain free, and productive today as a direct result of a core value in the progressive movement: it's time for affordable, quality healthcare to be a right, not a privilege, for everyone.
. . . If ever there was a time when pastors and priests should be reminding their congregation that "whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me," it is here. If ever there was cause worth fighting for, healthcare reform is it. Our time is now.
[posted on 8/16/09]
How they do it
One way insurance companies set people up for recission is by making the enrollment questionnaire tricky. The applicant can be being a honest as they can and still get caught up in this.
I watched these hearings as they were happening - this was my favorite part.
Watch all the way to the end . . .
[posted on 8/7/09]
I watched these hearings as they were happening - this was my favorite part.
Watch all the way to the end . . .
[posted on 8/7/09]
What is recission?
When you apply for private insurance you have to fill out pages of info about your health and any health issues/treatments you've had. You've probably had to do this. I have. This can be a source of major suckage right away. For example, when my friend Ursula was in her thirties (she's in her early 60's now) she found a lump in her breast. Her doctor told her that she was pretty sure it was just a fat deposit, but that she should have a biopsy "just to be 100% sure." So Ursula did. And it was a fat deposit. No worries, no further problems. But now most insurance companies won't cover her at all, and the one she finally found that would has very high premiums and deductible - and cancer treatment is excluded!
Anyway, that's not recisssion. Recission is when you fill it all out and then they happily take your premiums for years, but when you're diagnosed with something expensive - heart attack, cancer, etc - they pull out your original application and then comb through all of your medical records with sophisticated computer programs until they find something you didn't put on the form. At which point they say, "Aha! You didn't tell us everything! Policy cancelled!"
But of course even the most honest person in the world might not remember every single trip to the doctor for their whole life, or they might not recognize a medical term on the form for something they were treated for . . .
And then this is what happens:
[posted on 8/5/09]
Anyway, that's not recisssion. Recission is when you fill it all out and then they happily take your premiums for years, but when you're diagnosed with something expensive - heart attack, cancer, etc - they pull out your original application and then comb through all of your medical records with sophisticated computer programs until they find something you didn't put on the form. At which point they say, "Aha! You didn't tell us everything! Policy cancelled!"
But of course even the most honest person in the world might not remember every single trip to the doctor for their whole life, or they might not recognize a medical term on the form for something they were treated for . . .
And then this is what happens:
[posted on 8/5/09]
How did it happen?
Best explanation I've seen.
The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
[posted on 2/20/09]
The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
[posted on 2/20/09]
A New Day
And it's a New Year. Things are looking pretty bleak lately. It's hard not to feel overwhelmed. But if we are going to have a chance of repairing the damage that's been done in the past eight years and tackling the challenges that lie ahead, we have to have hope.
Hope is important.
[posted on 1/1/09]
Hope is important.
[posted on 1/1/09]
Mr. November
OK, there's some irony in juxtaposing pictures of Obama with the lyrics, "I'm the Great White Hope." And well, I do hope (it's about hope, right) that the refrain turns out to be true.
But, The National is my current favorite band and the visuals are great, so:
[posted on 11/1/08]
But, The National is my current favorite band and the visuals are great, so:
[posted on 11/1/08]
Local voices in Ohio
truth and hope.org created these videos. You can donate to help get these ads on the air here And check out their Mamas for Obama videos, too.
[posted on 10/24/08]
Local voices in Nevada
truth and hope.org created these videos. You can donate to help get these ads on the air here. They also have some great Elders for Obama ads too.
[posted on 10/24/08]
Local voices in Missouri
truth and hope.org created these videos. You can donate to help get these ads on the air here.
[posted on 10/24/08]
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Remember the Unitarian Jihad?
Their manifesto started out like this and only got better from there:
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Sister Divine Atom Bomb of Serene Freedom. What's yours?
[posted on 8/8/08]
Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary.
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Sister Divine Atom Bomb of Serene Freedom. What's yours?
[posted on 8/8/08]
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