Microblog Memes

Can you explain the "estate" thing like I'm a 5 year old non-American? (Only one of those is actually true, but I won't say which one)

This exactly. Well ranted.

Here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we don’t have time to worry about the fall of democracy when the fall of ratings is on the line!

This is the paradox of liberalism.

You have blue MAGA outlets like NPR that spent the last 8 years being “fair” to both sides, telling their audience the antivax fascist psychopaths are just as valid and worthy as the left trying to give people education and healthcare.

As if conservative views are even worth recognizing.

Liberalism without a STRONG left wing always ends in fascism, and the liberals are more than happy to join the fascists (see: literally all liberal discourse on Lemmy).

Guess what the US has spent the past 80 years doing. Real coincidence every time a country leans left, they are overthrown by CIA puppets.

So now you have liberals in literal tears trying to get their guy elected without even fucking understanding the issues at play. They don’t give a shit.

* From dingdongs who are repeating -- accidentally or on purpose -- some bullshit that was professionally constructed to emotionally resonate and sound convincing on surface level, so that when people spread it on social media it can do its job and help Trump get elected and fuck up the country absolutely beyond recognition

These groups also donate heavily to the DNC.

In my country, basically everyone accepts climate change, except perhaps the most conservative and those who already believe in conspiracy theories. What is going on in the US?

For those autists out there. The /s is pretty heavily implied. And we love you.

Absolutely - and I agree entirely. However - there are a lot of choices that get made with regards to words and context indicators when writing a piece (Video is a whole other box of frogs but similiar things apply).

Just sticking to text, let's say, I'm not suggesting that the NYT should write a front page article entitled Watch Out: Crazy Trump Will Kill Us All (although, that's upsettingly not a zero-percent chance either.)

What I am saying is that they need to stop giving trump the benefit of neutrality. That was a typical and to a small-extent-reasonable excuse they made in 2016. "Let's see what kind of President he'll be" and "maybe he'll grow into it" and sorts of rationalizations that I ranted against at the time and I think was extremely validated by the subesquent nightmare of an administration.

So that's over. Now, we know who he is - he's the kind of guy who lies at the drop of a hat. He'll do it by force of habit. He's incapable of empathy. He's so singularly focused on grabbing money (not 'making money' now, he doesn't care about that), and weilding power over his perceived enemies that he's an absolutely dismal choice for president. He staged a failed coup right in front of us. And still remains unrepentant. Anyone who's not a complete cult member can see that.

So the NYT writing their article can use that to leverage his latest outrageousness and limit the faux-respect (he deserves none) such as "former President". Fuck that - that's not a "fact" as much as it is an "editorial position". He's also a former game show host. He's also gone bankrupt five times. (four? five, whatever) He's never been a billionaire. These are facts. They don't use those. Why not.

Because. The tenor of the NYT is that they are "supposed" to be lofty - distanced - respectful. Well, they're failing us with that. Trump is using that against them and us.

Maggie Haberman's mom used to be trump's publicist. And she's the trump-whisperer? Fuck.

Same can be applied to any of the video-based services. (Minus the sniffly air of old money). I'll try to use a future post to dive into one of the articles and really highlight it because once you see it, it's pretty blatant they're tipping the scales towards trump. It shouldn't be close at all. It is because they're doing that. On purpose.

Both sides is a falacy since for most human subjects it's incredibly rare for there to be only two options.

Real Journalism is discussing the situation on its own implications, merits and demerits, and presenting options and explaining their pros and cons.

The whole "both sides" reporting is an artifact of it being Propaganda in a system with a Power Duopoly, so mainstream media frames all human subjects with political implications to match that polical system's own artificially reduced set of choices so as to make it seem like that political system is well suited to deal with human subject with political implications.

(I've actually lived in a couple of countries with different levels of actual political freedom, from the UK which is a lot like US and arguably in some ways even less representative, to The Netherlans which has Proportional Vote, and it's pretty much guaranteed that the way the established Press frames news closelly matches the limitations in political choices in that system)

Then if you go out of mainstream media and look at amateurs (i.e. social media posts) the way they frame subjects is also almost invariably like the Propaganda they grew up with, IMHO not because of them trying to be manipulative but because that's all they've ever known and seen all around them, though the result is still that in their parroting of a sometimes more sometimes less rationalised version of somebody else's talking points, they follow the same falacious structuring.

There are a handfull of less mainstream media who actually mostly practice Journalism and a few diamond-Journalist amongst the muck which is mainstream media, but generally well established news media will not stray away from a framing that justifies the very system that made them "established".

It's the truth

Okay it's Saturday May 11th, what are the stories from CNN, NBC, ABC, WaPo, and NYT (front pages please) which say that. I just checked and there weren't any.

There's trump-in-court, trump-in-irs-trouble, other things like "some say he shouldn't be campaigning in a blue state on his day off from court" or whatever.

It's not like a breaking news story. It's got to be folded into the telling of all the other stories about him. He tried - and failed - to stage a goddamned coup for fuck's sake.

Incompetently planned, ridiculously reasoned, as one would expect, but he did it nonetheless and I want it to say IN EVERY ARTICLE ABOUT HIM that he tried to stage a coup which failed. Interview justice officials as to what - EXACTLY- are they going to do when he does it again. What protections are in place to prevent him from gutting appointees and protections? Where are those news stories?

And why, after 2016 and everything that we're saying here happened then, would anyone need to explain this?