Former Trump DHS official, now CNN analyst, Miles Taylor got caught blatantly lying on CNN's airwaves to host Anderson Cooper, but The Most Trusted Name In News™ doesn't mind at all.
I don't think think the first example is a good example. I mean everything you say is true but ostensibly at least this is an anonymous source covering up his identity, this surely could be considered legitimate.
Again *austensibly* but you don't make a clear attempt to debunk the premise: CNN hired a whistleblower who covered up his identity. As a result it comes across disengenious. As though you are suggesting that a source can't lie to protect their identity.
I don't get it. It would be like suggesting you shouldn't have published Snowden because he lied to his employer (not at all comparable, I know, but that is the argument that I think this article opens you to).
I appreciate the point but don't agree. There's no universal, inherent right to remain anonymous. It's justified only if one will be endangered by having one's identity known, and even then only if the information is crucial. He wasn't offering crucial information, just an opinion about Trump. But even if you believe the information was crucial, and was justified in being anonymous at the time he wrote the NYT op-ed because he was still employed in the Trump administration and wanted to avoid retaliation, by the time he lied on CNN, he was no longer in the government, so there was no even arguably justified reason for him to conceal that he was the author of that op-ed and book by lying.
Until the late 1990s, the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics strongly discouraged the use of anonymous sources. As I recall (it was posted in several places in our newsroom) anonymous sources were only to be used under the following circumstances:
The topic was of great importance to the public
The information could not be gotten on the record
The source faced physical harm or professional ruination if named
The information was confirmed by at least 2 other sources
The source was also to be identified as specifically as possible without putting them in danger.
And at the newspaper I worked at (an 85,000 circulation daily in San Diego County), the editors had to know who the source was and sign off on it.
He was an DHS appointee for 2 years whose primary role was administrative like hundreds of others. Not any more “senior level official” than the supervisor of the White House grounds crew.
Additionally, his anonymous identity was more useful to the narrative he was trying to portray. If you recall people were speculating that this “senior Trump official” was a lot more senior than this guy ended up being, with some on CNN and MSNBC implying it could be a cabinet level official. The truth that this guy never met Trump and was the assistant to an underling deprives the message of a lot of oomph.
Having served as an industry association board member all I can tell you is that I have pictures with a broad variety of politicians and not one of them- less maybe Jack Kemp when he was alive- would remember me at all. Jack would have only because we played tennis several times.
If having your picture taken with the president is evidence of your high level status in an administration, then apparently I was a high level Clinton administration official. Now excuse me as I gotta go update my resume.
The whole point of adding "Senior" is that to have advanced to such a role implies that not only did you pass all the checks to get clearance, which are rigorous, but also that you have a long history of valued service to America. So your revelations would represent something beyond mere careerism. To have pretended to be a senior official and then merely get a job at CNN as a reward not only proves that Trump isn't a dictatorial monster but also that you were motivated by a rather petty political reward. And both of those points undermine everything that CNN has been doing for the last 4 years. In fact, the writer of "anonymous" is in no danger at all and never was (whereas in a real dictatorship this person would be thrown out of a helicopter into the ocean as happened in Chile and other places). Snowdon is an example of what happens to you if you are really doing something the Elites/Deep State/Swamp doesn't like. But if there is no danger, there is no need to be anonymous. So I agree with Glenn... using the name "anonymous" in this context is a complete betrayal of journalistic ethics by both the NYT and CNN. So severe that their businesses should end in my opinion.
I think the issue here is that, like many other events right now, different people are seeing different realities. While you're correctly saying that he had no reason to lie about his identity after he left the Trump administration, there are absolutely people on the left (more likely, the far left) that will say he HAD to still keep his idenity a secret because Trump is the most powerful man on the planet. If Taylor revealed his identity Trump could have sent a "dogwhistle" to his supporters to imply Taylor should be attacked.
My point is that you're correctly seeing how absurd it is in saying that Taylor had to keep his identity anonymous due to "safety reasons" but there is a decent sized swath of the US public, particularly the audience CNN is aiming for, that believes we have someone in the Oval Office that is as sinister (or more, in some cases) than Hitler. They might truly think, "Of course they believe that Taylor needs to keep his identify a secret for as long as possible. If he doesn't, he may be hunted down in the streets."
I think the real story behind this is the vastly different world views that each network creates for its audience. You see the absurdity in the "need" for the lie about Taylor's identity. But I'm sure there are people out there that believe he'd have been in real danger if he had revealed it any sooner.
I can give you 50 examples from the last 6 months alone where Trump supporters have been shot, beaten, robbed, had their businesses burned down etc all while Democrats incited violence. I cannot think of any cases where Trump has dogwhistled or encouraged supporters to attack anyone and if there were any such examples CNN and MSNBC would be playing them over and over and over and over on infinite repeat. The Left/Democrats are basically trying to provoke a reaction by doing such things as Drag Queen story hour for children and normalizing child porn and then going out to the suburbs to scream "racist" at everyone and vandalize homes. The response from the right has been extremely, extremely muted, mainly because most people accept that the police and the state have a monopoly on the use of force.
The Democrats blame others for things they are in fact doing themselves. The trick the Democrats use is to falsely accuse people first. They also completely suppress any information that reflects badly on their favored politicians or businesses. We all know in excruciating detail, however, every insult and lie the media has promoted about Trump for the last 4 years. The mainstream media is merely a propaganda wing of the Democrats, even Fox News mostly. They do not report actual facts. They do not even aspire to report factually because truth is mere power politics to them. That should terrify every thoughtful person because in the end when you are pounding rocks in a socialist gulag so that AOC can live in a penthouse apartment in NYC for free, they will not report honestly about what happened to you. That much is obvious from how the Media and the Democrats overlook the slave labor and prison camps of the Chinese government. We could give example after example of how they do this all the time.
The Republic is dead. We can all see that. Nobody knows what happens next because we are all waiting to find out how much more crap the Billionaire communists at the top of the pyramid want to dump on us.
"I can give you 50 examples from the last 6 months alone where Trump supporters have been shot, beaten, robbed, had their businesses burned down etc all while Democrats incited violence."
The above author makes many mistakes in his whole comment, including the preposterous claim that the Democrats are "left." ... I wish that were true!
"The Left" is defined - and has ALWAYS meant - those who stand up for the non-rich, non-aristocrat. And, unfortunately, 100% of the Republicans and around 80% of the Democrats support the ultra-rich "elite."
Yes, the Democratic Party leadership is horrific, but then, so is the Republican Party leadership (along with the rest of the party). What's funny is how people like the author above think that voting Republican will help their causes.
I recommend de-programming. And, here's a VERY good write up on all this AFTER the dual-graphing of politics description. It covers the history of the meaning of right and left from the inception of these terms for political use and right through to today (well, 2004, if I recall correctly). I recommend everyone read ALL of it, and especially those who think they hate "the left" or have any animosity or negative feelings about it.
One thing's for sure; if you're posting here, you're not rich. And, if you're not rich, you're making a mistake for voting for either any Republican of today, or around 80% of Democrats. Detail matters. Policy matters. And don't be fooled by the media like the poor soul who wrote the above missive.
Thank you. I have been busy and didn’t get back to reply. I am not sure whether leftists who are in denial about how awfully behaved their fellow travelers have been over the last couple of years or whether they really are just trotskyites who couldn’t care less what happens to their opponents. But all of us who are on the other side of their psychotic anger lately feel the heat turned up to 11.
Ok, now it is apparent why you are intellectually incompetent and are incapable of framing ideological categories coherently
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That article has several severe flaws:
0. it fails to explain the high correlation between leftist (postmodern deconstructive) extremism and psychological dysfunctions (nihilism)
(see John David Ebert)
0b. it fails to adequately describe the "meaning crisis" that results from postmodern, suburban consumer culture
0c. it fails to describe the collapse of psychosocial coherence and the dis-integration of the information and regulatory ecosystem in the modern corporate-nation-states due to tech disruption and globalization
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1. it fails to account completely for the early medieval origins of liberalism as religious reforms
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2. it fails to recognize genetic and cultural co-evolution after the church's early ban on cousin marriage after the Carolingian reforms (liberal personality traits and higher IQ were selected for because they increase survival rates in increasingly complex societies undergoing rapid change)
2b. nuclear family structure includes selection of ability to delay marriage and child bearing and other kinds of gratification needed to attain higher levels of literacy, numeracy, business acumen and/or skills in complex bureaucracies. few children born to parents in their 20s survive and thrive better than more children born in clans to teen age parents.
again, genetic selection for higher IQ, openness to new experience and innovation and personal restraint are key to the advances made by western civilization (the down side being loss of mystical creativity, "alchemy", and dependence of fragile, high trust insitutions)
See the WEIRD(O) model of social success:
Western
Educated
Industrialized
Rich/wealthy
Democratic
Outbred
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3. it fails to identify the shift (1492) from decentralized politics to imperial and nation-state centralized power (the modern "efficiency" promoted by Isabel-I as inspired by French philosophers)
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4. it fails to recognize the relationship between colonial economies, politics and culture and european economies, politics and culture
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5. it fails to describe the Rump Aristocracy in the US South/Confederacy as originating in the anti-Cromwellian nobility of Britain
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6. it fails to explain that Paul Ray's "political compass" model has been widely discredited, as has Ray's ideas about "Cultural Creatives", and that there are far more robust models of evolutionary psychology and sociology available* that accurately describe the current political mess in an evolutionary context
I am glad your willing to participate in the conversation and not just avoid engagement with the critics which i have seen on so many other sites and writers. Thank you.
Even if you are right about when it is justified to remain anonymous, Taylor's lie casts doubt on his credibility only if your view was widely accepted among public officials and journalists at the time Taylor did the interview. If a reasonable person could think it was acceptable for Taylor to protect his anonymity even after leaving the administration, then Taylor's lie does less damage to his credibility, and CNN's decision not to fire him looks more reasonable. You don't present any evidence that your view about when it is justified to remain anonymous was widely accepted at the time of Taylor's interview. And, to me at least, it is not obvious that Taylor had to meet some threshold for endangerment or importance of information to be justified in remaining anonymous. People publish anonymously and under pseudonyms all the time and for all sorts of reasons.
And yet Phil Donahue was fired for having the temerity to point out that the whole "Saddam has WMDs" narrative was a blatant false flag, which it was. How do you reconcile that with what you just said? Frankly, I'm beyond tired of situational ethics in journalism, where A is fine if it enhances the acceptable narrative and B is all but criminal if it doesn't. It's wrong, period.
Maybe he was contractually obliged by the publishers to remain "Anonymous" for a couple of years?
His credibility was shot the moment he took a job in the Trump administration. Outside of The Generals and maybe a few others who took jobs in order to ensure there would be adults in the room, former or current Trump officials have no credibility. CNN wants an insider, so they got one, warts and all.
There is also the idea that he, actually all three, are "owed" a high paying gig in broadcasting. RWNJ go into RW think tanks and Democrats/liberals go into broadcasting?
He could have said "I refuse to play this game Anderson. Whoever it is, they wish to remain anonymous and I won't jeopardize that by telling you what I know about the person's identity." There was no need to lie.
If you want to protect your source, you don't ask your source the question. CNN poised the question specifically. AC, may or may not have known, but the company did. If AC knew the answer was false then, he was part of the cover up. If not, then he was a patsy.
With all due respect, Glenn, we all have come to this realization. But no one talks about how society should address these issues. And that is what I would like serious and responsible journalists like yourself begin to address. Serious harm is being done by this systemic gaslighting of the American people. A conversation needs to be started about how to counter this in a meaningful and effective manner without sacrificing the protections of the First Amendment. My personal thoughts are is that entities that report "news" (based upon some reasonable legal definition) and that reach some threshhold audience are subject to higher legal standards for truthful reporting & honest contextualization of such reporting, with no limit on who can initiate such lawsuits, and damages set sufficiently high to incentivize lawsuit initiators to hold the gaslighters accountable.
The American Law system is a total joke. I think all mainstream news outlets would be bankrupt if they had to pay fines for attaching emotion (fear, joy, violence, etc) to NEWS.
American Culture is out of control, and screen addiction is our CRACK.
Adam Curtis made a film titled HyperNormalization which I think any fan of Taibbi/Greenwald would find VERY compelling.
Any anti-media philosophies (Marshal McLuhan, Neil Postman, Jerry Mander) are well worth a read as well.
This is why cherry picking what these shitty corporations posing as news outlets seems like utter madness to me...
They will always lie and they will always manipulate. Anything that relies on advertising in general is NOT to be trusted.
Anything that relies on user date is not to be trusted.
Any service that has a non-transparent algorithm is not to be trusted.
Yep, "Art" is a buffoon that spouts shallow, mindless slogans (probably from delusional protest subcultures), he understands nothing beyond that as far as I can tell.
You are incompetent and a complete failure. You have to deal with the conditions that led to law and morals becoming dysfunctional. You have not done that, instead preferring to spout shallow, incoherent, reactionary bullshit.
Yes, but when authorities are some of the gaslighters that is difficult. Soviet Bolsheviks were famous for labeling dissenters "insane" to remove their rights. That nascent process is developing here now from the less radical, for now, left.
AFTER the discussion on two dimensional graphing of politics, there's an erudite discussion of the history of left-right, going to the very origins of the terms, and bringing it forward in time to the present day in the West, including Europe and the USA.
My two criticisms of his work are, 1) he doesn't include Neo-Liberalism at all, though he does include Neo-Conservatism (though, to be fair, this is an older piece and just what Neo-Liberalism really is perhaps wasn't as clear then as it is today), and; 2) his conclusion at the end about the Left is also stale, especially since 2016, but then, this was written in 2004, IIRC.
Due to the omission I cite in 1), he would call them liberals instead of neo-liberals.
Other than that, it's fantastically well done and pretty accurate.
Thank you immensely for the comment and reference. I have been for 50 years examining exactly such things and a great deal more about cultures in general. I will examinee your reference and any links from that if referenced there.
However beware, all such references are typically opinions, not fact. Too many people assume, because learned, accomplished people are presenting the information it must be "fact" when it almost never is proven fact. Such things are from at best "soft" sciences, or not sciences at all.
don't waste your time, that framing of history is shoddy to the point that it is largely useless. I posted a few better alternative sources at the top of the comments. "Art" is a dolt that spouts shallow slogans based on self-referential bs
Try to tone down the responses. I got into a lot of trouble that way on another venue. Mine didn't help me or anybody else so and I'm trying to change my ways.
I saw most of your response to the crappy source that "Art" cited, you are correct.
What "trouble" are you talking about?
The SysAdmins at Substack aren't going to censor people that have subscribed to an author complaining about corporate censorship, are they? lol
I don't see any hazard in using vivid language to describe and respond to the idiotic comments and mindlessly shallow sloganeering from m0r0ns like "Art". (who is probably one of the sockpuppet/troll accounts on substack that have been the source of very similar inane drivel for months)
And thank YOU for your kind reply. I'll be very interested in your take after you've read it all - it's not a short read!
Know that I trained as both an aerospace engineer and computer scientist in my (much) earlier youth, starting in '77, only to give up a lucrative career in the database industry to become an Earth Scientist leading a 45 person, 7 year effort to unify the Earth Sciences, coordinated from UCB, focused on figuring out and resolving the issues of anthropogenic global warming that was suspected of driving global climate change, starting (for me) in 1995.
So, when you talk about the sciences, I am well aware and appreciate the distinctions. ... It's rare I will mis-speak about what we should consider fact versus opinion. (And, when I do mis-speak, I'm ready to acknowledge it.)
You gave me a “bio” so I’ll give you one. I’m a retired engineer with an abbreviated career in computer hardware support positions. 50 years ago, soon after I was REFRAD from the army I began examining political, religious, and economic philosophies because many people claimed they inspired wars.
I found they weren’t likely to do that, so I reversed the common belief wars were bad an unnecessary. Soon after I pretended they were good and necessary the true cause was obvious. The philosophical alignments were merely “rally flags” for gathering forces to do what most/all creatures must do as their numbers increase: capture more land and resources from other people for their future expanding generations when not enough can be confiscated just from other species.
From there I become fascinated by cultural traditions and habits that inspire alignments formed for warfare and other cooperative or adversarial activities/attitudes. To expand my studies I moved on to the general anthropological and epistemological examinations I continue today.
Redefining the Political Spectrum - R.G. Price - June 20, 2004 (abridged)
I was fascinated by the article you referenced possibly for different reasons than you were. One of the studies fascinating me initially a few decades ago is propaganda. I hope you aren’t offended by the understanding that is what you referenced, although it is a particularly superior example. It is even better than what Rachel Maddow’s had been before, so sadly, her’s recently turned into a much more trashy type.
I had intended to go through each significant section giving my opinion and correcting the relatively few erroneous definitions that helped make it propaganda (very biased information) while most of it is accurate. The best of all propaganda is all true, but with opposing views subdued or left out, loosely connected or unconnected events/attitudes stitched together (one thing Maddow does so well), and a finishing tactic of feigning fairness by opposing neutral, mild, or easily defeated opposition (something Maddow should have done but usually didn’t bother).
However, following the entire article would have made this very much longer than it is now, and unnecessarily so. Instead I will only address the erroneous stuff. You can assume I agree with his opinions, and don’t refute the remaining claims, in the vast majority of the article.
The article repetitively maligns the “right” but never criticizes the “left” at all, and even relegates what was always in the past (the original “classic”) left “liberalism” to be now “right,” and, ironically and paradoxically, equates it with neoliberalism. An even greater paradox is he uses the same, or almost the same, definition for neoconservatism he uses for neoliberalism. I suspect he does that to leave only newer, farther left progressivism and socialism, and also newer very far left Marxism, together on the left.
The following are my corrections/comments:
[“One of the major problems in American political consciousness today comes from a misrepresentation of the political spectrum. This is partly the result of a deliberate effort to put all of America's enemies (fascists and communists) into the same basket after World War II, and a deliberate effort by the American "Right” to classify everything that they oppose as “Leftist.”]
I was around, but young, when these attitudes prevailed and the “right” did not classify all opposition as “leftist.”
[After World War II the Republican Party was struggling for survival and was in the process of reinventing itself. Part of the political strategy of some Republicans was to portray the Democratic Party of Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt as "Red," thereby associating "Liberalism" with "Socialism". It was a common tactic during the 1950s to accuse Democrats of being "Communists" or "Communist sympathizers", a tactic that worked well during the McCarthy era and has had a lasting impact on how Americans view politics.]
The anti-communist right did not refer to all Democrats as “red,” although they did call many “pink” or “com-symps.”
[By the early 20th century a new "Right-wing" criticism of liberalism began to form as well, this being fascism.]
Fascism is not “right wing” but it is relegated there, as is original liberalism, by socialists and harder left because they want to divorce it from their group. However it clearly has socialist philosophies and the only connection to the old “right” is nationalism. Many of today’s right, with international businesses, embraced “globalism,” also clearly not nationalist politics.
The infamous NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) used Mussolini’s corporatist government structure to dominate all industries as all socialist practices do. His “corporatist” government policy is indicated below, but is not related to also socialist “public corporations” commonly owned as socialism defines. Private corporations are not socialist, but obviously capitalist.
Corporatism is a political ideology which advocates the organization of society by corporate groups, such as agricultural, labour, military, scientific, or guild associations on the basis of their common interests.[1][2] The term is derived from the Latin corpus, or "human body". The hypothesis that society will reach a peak of harmonious functioning when each of its divisions efficiently performs its designated function, such as a body's organs individually contributing its general health and functionality, lies at the center of corporatist theory.
Corporatization is the process of transforming state assets, government agencies, or municipal organizations into corporations.[1][2][3][4] It refers to a restructuring of government and public organizations into their administration.[2] The result of corporatization is the creation of state-owned corporations (or corporations at other government levels, such as municipally owned corporations) where the government retains a majority ownership of the corporation's stock.[1][5]
[Additionally, fascism was based on capitalist economy, unlike the feudal systems of the "old Right". This is why fascism was a "new Right" movement.]
This is a popular (among the left) but false belief. Fascism is obviously a socialist philosophy, not a capitalist one as I explained.
[This was one of the ways in which the Fascists connected with the "old Right", because the Fascists allied with the Catholic Church and re-embraced the merger of Church and State.]
Mussolini’s Fascista might have done so as necessity, just as Hitler’s NSDAP needed temporary cooperation from industrial leaders during his conquests. I’m sure Hitler would have soon nationalized industries, under typical socialist policy, if he had won the war and completed his conquests.
However, I doubt Mussolini could survive not cooperating with the Roman Church in still staunchly then Catholic Italy.
[Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power.]
That too isn’t quite true. Fascism, by philosophy, dominates national industry and economy for the benefit of the nation as a whole, as does other socialist practices, not for any individual’s particular benefit as capitalism does. Whether or not it adheres to its socialist philosophy or is “corrupted,” as most other socialist governments were/are then and now, it is still socialist by philosophy.
He also seems to allow Fascist “corporatism/corporatization” to be confused with capitalist “corporations.” Fascism has all state and no real capitalist corporation power. A Fascist state has a dictator ruling over state control of all the society’s commercial functions, at the least.
[Fascism cannot be said to have been a truly "conservative" movement per se, but it did incorporate elements of conservatism and it did ally itself with elements of the "old Right.”]
That was only as a temporary expedient as explained.
[Additionally, fascism was based on capitalist economy, unlike the feudal systems of the "old Right". This is why fascism was a "new Right" movement.]
No. That is false. It is socialist, but its left wing cousins fraudulently call it “right” trying to remove its stink from the (left wing) home they share.
[American politics today is very much shifted to the Right economically and socially, yet American society in general is relatively liberal in the social sense.]
This might have had some credibility in 2004 (when published) but today both are profoundly shifted/shifting ever more left.
[Though we now operate under the Supply-Side model of the Reagan administration, not Keynesian economics, what Reaganomics did was to amplify the role of consumerism and do away with the elements of social responsibility found in the earlier Keynesian system. ]
Of course Reaganomics is long gone now and an even more insane half-Keynesian system, worse than the earlier half-Keynesian system, is now invoked. Huge, unprecedented borrowing and currency inflation is now still escalating although Keynes warned that not repaying and deflating after the crises, as we have never done to any real extent, would ultimately devastate the economy.
[The neo-conservative, i.e. "new Right", movement in American politics today is effectively the same as the fascist movement of Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. The neo-conservatives are embracing the use of State power to control both the economy and religion, and the use of war to expand imperial power with the intention of using the State to control and secure resources to benefit the wealthy-elite, all the while building on a middle-class appeal and creating a corporate police-state.]
All of that is completely false. The right is not doing any of that and wasn’t in 2004 either. Those are common delusions of paranoid people on the left.
[Many people have claimed that Fascism and Communism are the same or similar, or they have characterized far Right and far Left as being the same.]
That’s a classic “straw man” argument. I have never heard anyone do that. I, however, have compared Marx’s impossible dream of anarchic-communism with my impossible dream of anarchic-capitalism.
[To the Marxist Left, these things may be considered expressions of objectification and consumerism. From the standpoint of Left criticism, body piercing is an example of how capitalism causes people view themselves as objects and seek attention through individualistic expression because of their lack of a satisfying social bond with their community, which is caused by alienation and commodity fetishism.]
That’s a horrendously bigoted assumption with no solid support.
[The founding fathers of America, for an example of Liberalism, played lip service to equality, yet most owned slaves.]
Most did not own slaves. Slaves were owned by a minority. Slavery was world wide and very common in Africa then where the ones here were originally sold to traders.
Some slave holders, including Jefferson, recommended abolition as part of the new constitution changing the US from a confederacy (1783-1789) to a federation.
Summary
[The "conservative" movement in America today is greatly misguided because it aligns itself economically with the interests that contribute to the social conditions that the conservative movement opposes.]
I’m not sure about this one but if I interpret it properly it might not be very far off.
[Liberal, post-modernist, American society is not "Leftist" in the least. There is no significant Left in America at all. What is called the "Left" in America today are either Liberals or Left Fascists, those who support Leftist social regulation through cooperation with the establishment Corporate-State. These are not "Leftists”.]
I’m not sure if this had any relevance in 2004 but it certainly doesn’t now. Quite the opposite now. The society is very leftist and getting ever more so.
George, I was writing you a reply this morning and had written quite a lot when the web page suddenly reset and shrunk your comment I was replying to into a new “new replies” reduction in number of comments on the page, and when I expanded it and then went to re-reply to your comment, I found it had in fact deleted my comment entirely. That's very frustrating and I'll be writing the substack people about issues with their comment software sometime soon.
Meanwhile, a shorter reply as I don't have as much time now, but I'll try and hit the points I had made before, only more succinctly:
Practically all communication between humans is propaganda of some sort, trying to convince people to either believe or do what we'd like them to believe or do. This guy's “propaganda” comes from his viewpoint, and there's no such thing as a no-viewpoint communication.
It happens that while I don't agree with everything he wrote, and while I don't share his exact viewpoint, much of what he said, especially about our (relatively) modern times, rings true from my more than fifty years of being politically aware.
That said, I don't agree with you regarding a supposed lack of criticism of the left. For example, he talked about the use of violence by the left, though not in recent times. But then, he notes in his concluding paragraphs he doesn't think there IS any left in the USA at the time of his writing. And while the scientist in me says that that kind of use of an absolute is definitely false, as a practical matter, he has a point. That has changed since '04 when he wrote it, but if there isn't a left, what's to criticize about the left?
Instead, I wonder if you're confusing liberals and neo-liberals for “left.” But that's where I'll have to leave the discussion for now as I'm out of time.
Decades ago climatologists announced we were leaving 200 year period of relatively stable weather and entering a 200 year period of relatively unstable weather.
I still have a little trouble understanding why greedy capitalist CO2, at .03%-.05% and absorbing sunlight at a narrow band, matters so much while H2O vapor, at 10 times that concentration and absorbing sun energy at most of the spectrum, apparently doesn't matter.
We can solve almost completely anthropogenic climate affects, pollution effluence, species extinction from habitat confiscation, and most warfare by reducing our population by near 90% over a reasonable amount of generations. Will you help me promote that almost certain real panacea?
I forgot that the entire "solid [Democrat] South" was largely populist nationalists, not progressive internationalists like the North. A lot of the Southern Democrats were also anti-communist back then.
I believe my recommendation below is the ONLY way.
In my strategy, you can or do whatever whenever, just as you can today, you just cannot call it "news" (or equivalent that implies it's definitely true, such as "information" since, in my view, "information" cannot be a lie) on the grounds of false advertising; the problem wouldn't so much be the lie but that you called it "news."
You are an idiot. The concept of "news" does not exist in the Constitution.
You have failed to coherently define what is wrong with collective sense making and information ecosystems, so the chances that you have any useful "solutions" (beyond the obvious) is close to ZERO.
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“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
It is absolutely ridiculuous that a certain segment of the American political system owns the MSM. It allows such things as: 1) a clearly bogus campaign to take down a president; and 2) a campaign to blatanlty ignore, with no investigation whatsoever, compelling evidence that one side's candidate for president has made millions, perhaps billions of dollars selling access to the White House.
When these things can happen, how far, really, are we from a day when ownership of the media can permit the extermination of a race or class of human beings?
Already we see people on one side push the idea, with no pushback whatsoever, of prosecuting citizens based upon how they vote.
Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right
[---]
The future of the US, or the future “post-US” or the “future of the Western world” or “the future of the global order, will be
[=>] rule by the techno-oligarch/new clerisy alliance,
where neoliberals constitute “conservatism” and progressives/SJWs constitute “liberalism.” Everyone, including the historic WASP culture, will be a minority. We will have a
[->] highly stratified Latin American-style class system with the Rainbow Culture as its self-legitimating state ideology.
The emerging ruling class will also have a world empire, a military industrial complex and a police state that it will have inherited from previous regimes.
re: "no one talks about how society should address these issues"
Wrong, I've seen people talk about the issues since the era of the Whole Earth Catalog, late 1960s, early 70s. There are obscure (but known) fields of research and activism that have been at work for many decades: Esalen and 100s of other similar new age groups (most now gone, but the kids of the founders are still working on the topics, including embodied consciousness), Science of Consciousness (the "hard problem" is now mainstream, see Orch-OR, etc), evolutionary psychology, gene-culture co-evolution, and so forth.
The somewhat more well known recent variations are:
1. IDW (Eric and Bret Weinstein and many others)
2. GameB (Jim Rutt, Jordan Hall and many others)
You can follow the people that Glenn and Matt Taibbi network with and look for most of the connections to the major "heterodox" thinkers that have taken various stands against conformist and increasingly totalitarian "left corporate-state" institutions.
Consider that the entire structure, including the psychosocial scaffolding of the US Constitution, is at a threshold of evolution (cultural) transition. Tweaking the 1st amendment to account for network effects might be a necessary but not sufficient "fix" without a comprehensive model and a shift to anti-fragile modes of:
1. interior/individual consciousness
2. moral and ethical collective sense making that is effective under postmodern conditions (account for deconstructive nihilism and the "meaning crisis")
3. science and economics that are not institutionally corrupt, dysfunctional, parasitic and predatory*
4. systems that are suited to planetary problems and conditions
(I'm back here gathering up text for my Art-vs-George file)
Follow up:
re: "no one talks about how society should address these issues"
As noted above, that is incorrect, there have been a variety of discussions.
Going further back in history there was intense anxiety for 100s of years about the loss of "social order" that resulted from what Nietzsche stated, "god is dead ... and we killed him", the loss of collective intelligence (sense making) as it had been constructed around mythic culture.
Myths such as the idea that the world is impure, full of evil, sin and suffering, and that good people were somewhat protected by spiritual and supernatural order, the hand of god (an immunological bubble of culture) from the Lacanian "real", were eroding as a result of genetic changes that selected for "liberal" personality traits, from techno-economic disruption, from the advance of science and rationalism, etc.
Mythic beliefs and values that were great advances 3,000 years ago when they came about after the Bronze Age collapse, that strengthened the culture of empires and unified them against attack, were increasingly seen as unable to satisfy the coherence needs of emergent culture.
See the Galileo anti-myth, illiberal and anti-rationalist myth being defeated by objective, scientific rationalism, facts, evidence.
Or see Milton's _Paradise Lost_, a deep critique of how institutional religion had become corrupted by politics.
As disruption from liberal-capitalist-democratic culture unfolded, more anxiety built up, and Romanticists such as Rousseau tried to push back in the same way that the Counter Reformation had. Then there was Sturm und Drang, which was followed by the great flowering of German Idealism and the idea that "progress" was the new missionary religion, which was followed by classical anarchism, the industrial revolution, and then Marxism, then Fascism, then finally the 1900s rise of the Managerial Corporate-State (which is what we have now) and the Deep State.
So, we can see at least 500 years of intense focus on "How society should address these issues" (or at least the earlier, underlying causes that led to the current version of the "crisis of meaning").
I would argue that there is really 3,000 years of debates, wars and techno-economic disruptions that inform how people have addresses issues, with a central feature of disagreement being between natural-rational pragmatists in the Greco-Roman tradition vs supernaturalists, the Purity Myth religions (Abrahamic faiths, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam), the Dharma traditions, Zoroastrianism and so forth.
(The Eastern, Dharma traditions put less emphasis on Buber's I-Thou version of the sacred {"We"} and more emphasis on the unconditioned sacred, Emptiness, "It")
Neoplatonism was an attempt to mash up naturalistic philosophy and supernatural mysticism, and it became the dominant high form of thought in the golden age of Islamic philosophy and esotericism (and by extension medieval Europe).
Completely agree. I just hope Glenn and Matt don't waste too much talking about shitty the mainstream alternative is... I think it's more effective to collect converts.
Actual adults who don't realize CNN/NYT/ETC are trash... they are one degree away from being "Trumpers".
Deeply brainwashed by SCREENS.
Anyone here I am assuming is taking an assertive and intentional role in truth already?
"Right Wing Nut Job" - which I personally reserve for people who such horrific propaganda victims that they have vitriolic anger at things they don't even understand and there's probably no hope they'll ever have reality based opinions in anything like "my lifetime."
Cut the cord. Give your dollars to Glenn, Matt, and other honest journalists. The corporate liars can’t survive without viewers. Hard to imagine a group of people more dishonest. “Fake news” - 45 was right again!
Glenn, your subscription system isn't working. I tried earlier & it claimed I'd paid, also I received a thanks email from you...But, they never asked for my credit card info to actually charge the $50. I need to pay up; you're more than worth it! Jean
If you're already a paid subscriber to Taibbi (for instance), then you can subscribe here and it won't ask for your info again. Same thing happened to me, I clicked "Subscribe", it didn't ask for my info, but it still charged my account.
One of the most disturbing recent trends to me is that, as you mentioned, these former heads of the security apparatuses are now high paid members of the media.
I'm not particularly optimistic about any outcome in this election, but one of my concerns is that these people are going to move back into government or continue in their media jobs as an arm of the state.
To be clear, John Brennan and James Clapper are both criminals. They have both committed violations of civil liberties (among other things) domestically and human rights abroad. Regardless of peoples political affiliations, regardless of who people want to win, I do not understand how people like this - operatives of the security state - can be held up as people that we should listen to or that should in any way be involved with the operation of our government. They, and their ilk, are disgusting, despicable human beings.
I hope I'm wrong and I hope things change, but I'm not optimistic about it. In my opinion what's likely to happen is that these Bush-era war criminals (including the cadre of neo-cons) will be welcomed back into the fold and nobody will bat an eye, because 'Trump has been defeated, so everything's great now'. There's already whispers of this with the new reports of Biden proposing GOP members for his cabinet.
I guess it wouldn't be surprising and it won't be anything new. But, it is depressing and I just wish that we had something else to look forward to.
"I do not understand how people like this - operatives of the security state - can be held up as people that we should listen to or that should in any way be involved with the operation of our government."
Simple; this is what the ultra-rich WANT.
The only way out of this is to wrest control from the ultra-rich.
I know this is kind of off topic, but I'm starting to feel some elation that what Glenn's done may start a movement. Seriously, how many ethical journalists are employed by newsrooms all over the country/world that try to live with the cognitive dissonance that the liberal corporate newsroom has instilled. I'm sure there's ton's of new journalism grad (though most writers on SM don't have journalism degrees) suckups ready to get those jobs, so nobody wants to step out of line as they're simply a commodity.
How do we start the new journalism model? The first step is to pledge an independence from political bias. Facts are facts and should be reported without subjective terms.
I'd like to see Glenn start a Worker's Cooperative made up of like-minded journalists as equals, sharing resources as appropriate and beneficial to all.
In my view - educated only by decades working for / with corporations - that the Corporate Model is what did The Intercept in. The Corporate Model ALWAYS has a dictatorial organizational structure. Instead, a worker's cooperative is the right way...
I'm helping a community college student with his writing. For a small research based presentation he HAS to use only 'reliable' sources of information: The NYT, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, CNN or NPR.org. To think that a college prof. thinks these places are legit is amazing. Luckily, yours truly is there to run interference.
So goes the bigotry of stratospheric ivory tower idealist academics. They have now successfully indoctrinated the younger two generations in the western world, particularly Gen Z, from kindergarten on. Our countries will crash and burn as past ones all have under those delusional fairy tale ideals impossible for the non-ideal people far down on earth to operate over or under. The academic horrendous bigots will still force their delusions no matter how many countries they destroy.
And, the comment section could use some improvements, such as not using "1 reply", "1 new reply" and "replies" for new comment commentary since it makes finding the new stuff require three searches instead of just one.
In hopes that this will trickle up to whomever may be interested in improving the experience: It's also difficult to read comments where there is no way to clearly indicate when one is block quoting (aside from quotations marks, which are fine, but can be overlooked), and where there is no way to emphasize the particular part of a quote one finds compelling (e.g. bolding/italics). Without block quoting, an extensive response to an unsupported assertion can be easily misunderstood. Without the ability to emphasize, specific points can be more easily missed.
Our eyes - especially older eyes (like mine) - can find uninterrupted blocks of text tiring (at the least) and dauntingly challenging to wade through (at worst). Also, for those whose brains work in alternative ways (not limited to dyslexia, etc), the additional breaks/clues provided by bolding, italics etc can be invaluable in just perceiving a writer's intent and/or in facilitating participation in the conversation.
IOW, I am carrying forward some of the Great Lamentations that so many of us engaged with in earlier times and places on our itinerant journey with Greenwald across his years-long pilgrimage. 😂
Thanks, Ped, solid recommendations ("lamentations?" If you say so!), and I'm thinking that later when I have time I'll put together an email to them - Glenn already gave us the email address. (THANKS GLENN!)
And the nesting of replies in ever-narrowing columns is super-lame.
The people running substack, and the writers publishing here, would be wise to consider that many readers paying directly for the platform are going to expect (demand?) quality commenting software. Failing to provide that is fairly likely to negatively impact the revenue stream.
I haven't ever had cable, so I never got hooked on CNN, though I have seen its content occasionally online.
That said, this reporting just adds to the huge stack of facts that basically tell us that the Main Stream Media is untrustworthy and a huge fraction of it is nothing more than propaganda, designed to manipulate us.
I have a lot of respect for your work, but this piece is kind of like saying that water is wet. Would love for you to report on big tech's censorship of anyone who dares to question official COVID narratives (including physicians and scientists). It is not healthy for a democracy to discourage scientific debate and discussions.
>>> "Would love for you to report on big tech's censorship of anyone who dares to question official COVID narratives (including physicians and scientists)."
Could you provide specific examples of what you see as censorship?
Scientists have been de-platformed on Youtube or have had videos removed because they disagreed with the lockdowns. Twitter will stop you from posting certain articles. This was a really interesting conversation with 2 Stanford doctors (1 of them also has a PhD in economics) that talk about the danger of censorship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_COvdCujaA&ab_channel=ZDoggMD
Yes, the media distorts his views. The Great Barrington Declaration is important for people to be aware of. I think even crazy conspiracy theorists shouldn't be de-platformed. Removing their voices makes people believe there actually is a conspiracy theory.
He is an expert in public health. In a situation like a pandemic you need someone like this instead of giving the keys to an epidemiologist. Epidemiologists understand the disease, but not how to deal with the national impact of confronting it. This has been my position since March. I was a hospital CEO for 30 years, and when Trump allowed Fauci (who would have told you a year ago that we should wear masks and social distance) to make the calls I knew we were screwed.
No, he is not. And you offer no evidence to the contrary. Epidemiologists are the appropriate experts for infectious diseases and pandemics. One does not, after all, reasonably seek out an ophthalmologist to treat their heart disease.
No, but you don't ask your doctor how to invest your stocks. Fauchi was competent to advise on the risk of the disease, not on how to set national/state policy to address it. he should be a member of a team, not the leader. Also, I worked with epidemiologists for 30 years, and love them. But they're not genetically predisposed to dealing with crisis.
Yes, of course. Neither the declaration nor Atlas have been censored. They have been roundly dismissed as misguided, dangerous, etc., because both the declaration and Atlas' offerings are entirely at odds with the consensus opinions of actual experts.
And Atlas is definitely *not* an epidemiologist. Nor is he an infectious disease specialist. Nor is he a virologist.
The Great Barrington Declaration was prepared by three of the top epidemiologists in the world, Professors at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford Universities.
So "both the declaration and Atlas' offerings are entirely at odds with the consensus opinions of actual experts." makes no sense at all. The three leaders of the Declaration are the very definition of "actual experts" You hardly could find three others who have more knowledge of epidemiology than they do.
Two of the three are epidemiologists, but none of them can be described as among the top in the world. Not even close.
The declaration is sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian outfit with headquarters in Great Barrington, Mass. Thus the title. The document, its authors and sponsors are all more concerned with the economy than they are with public health and I assure you that investigating their backgrounds will make that clear.
Actually understanding the reality of the pandemic will also make it clear that the declaration's prescription would be as dangerous for the economy as it would be for public health.
These people are outliers whose "strategy" has been and continues to be roundly denounced by the vast majority of subject matter experts.
"The Great Barrington Declaration was prepared by three of the top epidemiologists in the world, Professors at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford Universities."
Further, even if three epidemiologists endorsed this "Report," that would not be persuasive as against the *consensus* of the vast, vast majority of worldwide scientists in the relevant fields.
Herd Immunity Is 'Pixie Dust Thinking,' Infectious Disease Expert Says
[. . .]
“It is not based on any good science suggesting that somehow you can bubble the well people ... and those who have underlying risk factors that would have serious illness. It's just pixie dust thinking,” says Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
The medical community is in an uproar over the petition because it’s “just plain dangerous,” he says. “We could expect to see three to four times the number of deaths that we've already had in this country if that were to play out.”
"That's what's needed, more than an epidemiologist."
I've seen no evidence that Scott Atlas holds any "public health" expertise, and certainly not in infectious diseases. The notion that a neuroradiologist is a better guide for managing a pandemic than is the world consensus of epidemiologists is as unhinged a view as I've see in this new space.
Are you concerned about general public health decline and the fact that deaths from non-covid causes are increasing, apparently due to "lockdowns"? I am. The idea that an epidemiologist should run national health policy is flawed. Input, yes. Control, no. Greater than 90% of American deaths/yr have nothing to do with Covid19 (2.8 mm/yr). In fact, co-morbidities are a huge issue as we continue to argue about "died due to covid19 vs died w covid19" and the rising death rates due to lockdowns (cancer, heart attacks, strokes, suicide, etc).
The lockdowns also seem to favor white collar workers who can stay at home and "shelter in place" and lecture the working class from their safe space on twitter/facebook etc while "zooming" in to work. Hourly workers MUST GO TO WORK, restock shelves, clean hospitals, drive trucks, deliver groceries, pick fruits and vegetables and so on. The positive AND negative impacts of public policy must be weighed by a range of medical, economic and public policy experts. Epidemiologist don't do that. They focus on infections disease not public health or economic/social policies for the greater good.
There is a larger picture in the USA and world wide (now the WHO is pointing to rising starvation and lack of immunization due to the lockdowns) that is being missed by focusing only on epidemiology. BTW, Fauci is an immunologist, not an epidemiologist. I think it's appropriate to critique the source of Barrington funding, but let's not forget the impact of lockdowns including horribly flawed models sponsored by Bill Gates et al that have been wrong every time, often by an order of magnitude, causing public policy to over correct. Same with the FDA and CDC. These are the same organizations that fueled the climb in US obesity by saying that Fat is bad and that massive amounts of sugar/carbs are ok. Breakfast cereals? Come on now. Statins get rid of "high" cholesterol? Meanwhile, American obesity is on the rise while the pharmaceutical industry cranks out pills. All approved by the FDA/CDC.
The Great Barrington Declaration is the closest to a "world consensus of epidemiologists" as we are likely to have, as the three leaders are Professors of Epidemiology at Oxford, Harvard and Stanford Universities.
The state of journalism today is as credible as the tabloids were when I was growing up in the 60s-70s. The difference is that back then all but the extremely naïve knew it was BS. The difference is that now most believe what they are told.
I won't watch CNN anymore because they are both disingenuous and biased. And, they are not the only one. I've read entire articles in the NYTimes which were based entirely on disinformation. And the moderated comments, sometimes hundreds of them, discussing the various facets and details of the disinformation and often lauding the people who were described as participants in the (near imaginary) event. We are increasingly building a society based on falsehoods, much like the old Soviet Union which finally collapsed, in large part due to its duplicity.
I commend CNN for their transparency. People know what they are getting when they tune in and I sometimes watch it myself to determine what is not true. Those who saw Miles Taylor deny it on CNN got the inside scoop on the identity of Anonymous.
The skeptical will ask, "What if CNN mixes in the truth sometimes, just to catch people off guard?" This is over-thinking things. It might happen occasionally, but in general, CNN is one of the most reliable negative indicators out there.
I don't think think the first example is a good example. I mean everything you say is true but ostensibly at least this is an anonymous source covering up his identity, this surely could be considered legitimate.
Again *austensibly* but you don't make a clear attempt to debunk the premise: CNN hired a whistleblower who covered up his identity. As a result it comes across disengenious. As though you are suggesting that a source can't lie to protect their identity.
I don't get it. It would be like suggesting you shouldn't have published Snowden because he lied to his employer (not at all comparable, I know, but that is the argument that I think this article opens you to).
Love your work and wish you all the best
I appreciate the point but don't agree. There's no universal, inherent right to remain anonymous. It's justified only if one will be endangered by having one's identity known, and even then only if the information is crucial. He wasn't offering crucial information, just an opinion about Trump. But even if you believe the information was crucial, and was justified in being anonymous at the time he wrote the NYT op-ed because he was still employed in the Trump administration and wanted to avoid retaliation, by the time he lied on CNN, he was no longer in the government, so there was no even arguably justified reason for him to conceal that he was the author of that op-ed and book by lying.
Until the late 1990s, the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics strongly discouraged the use of anonymous sources. As I recall (it was posted in several places in our newsroom) anonymous sources were only to be used under the following circumstances:
The topic was of great importance to the public
The information could not be gotten on the record
The source faced physical harm or professional ruination if named
The information was confirmed by at least 2 other sources
The source was also to be identified as specifically as possible without putting them in danger.
And at the newspaper I worked at (an 85,000 circulation daily in San Diego County), the editors had to know who the source was and sign off on it.
Those days are long gone ...
By design
I think the bigger lie, frankly, is that he was a senior Trump administration official.
How is that a lie? Wasn't he Chief of Staff to the Homeland Security Secretary as claimed?
He was an DHS appointee for 2 years whose primary role was administrative like hundreds of others. Not any more “senior level official” than the supervisor of the White House grounds crew.
Additionally, his anonymous identity was more useful to the narrative he was trying to portray. If you recall people were speculating that this “senior Trump official” was a lot more senior than this guy ended up being, with some on CNN and MSNBC implying it could be a cabinet level official. The truth that this guy never met Trump and was the assistant to an underling deprives the message of a lot of oomph.
Your point is valid, though Taylor certainly met President Trump long enough to take a picture with him.
Having served as an industry association board member all I can tell you is that I have pictures with a broad variety of politicians and not one of them- less maybe Jack Kemp when he was alive- would remember me at all. Jack would have only because we played tennis several times.
If having your picture taken with the president is evidence of your high level status in an administration, then apparently I was a high level Clinton administration official. Now excuse me as I gotta go update my resume.
The whole point of adding "Senior" is that to have advanced to such a role implies that not only did you pass all the checks to get clearance, which are rigorous, but also that you have a long history of valued service to America. So your revelations would represent something beyond mere careerism. To have pretended to be a senior official and then merely get a job at CNN as a reward not only proves that Trump isn't a dictatorial monster but also that you were motivated by a rather petty political reward. And both of those points undermine everything that CNN has been doing for the last 4 years. In fact, the writer of "anonymous" is in no danger at all and never was (whereas in a real dictatorship this person would be thrown out of a helicopter into the ocean as happened in Chile and other places). Snowdon is an example of what happens to you if you are really doing something the Elites/Deep State/Swamp doesn't like. But if there is no danger, there is no need to be anonymous. So I agree with Glenn... using the name "anonymous" in this context is a complete betrayal of journalistic ethics by both the NYT and CNN. So severe that their businesses should end in my opinion.
If CNN and the NYT succeeds in this, we all lose.
Thanks for the question and the answer. I was wondering this myself as I didn't understand the timeline of employment. So gutless.
I think the issue here is that, like many other events right now, different people are seeing different realities. While you're correctly saying that he had no reason to lie about his identity after he left the Trump administration, there are absolutely people on the left (more likely, the far left) that will say he HAD to still keep his idenity a secret because Trump is the most powerful man on the planet. If Taylor revealed his identity Trump could have sent a "dogwhistle" to his supporters to imply Taylor should be attacked.
My point is that you're correctly seeing how absurd it is in saying that Taylor had to keep his identity anonymous due to "safety reasons" but there is a decent sized swath of the US public, particularly the audience CNN is aiming for, that believes we have someone in the Oval Office that is as sinister (or more, in some cases) than Hitler. They might truly think, "Of course they believe that Taylor needs to keep his identify a secret for as long as possible. If he doesn't, he may be hunted down in the streets."
I think the real story behind this is the vastly different world views that each network creates for its audience. You see the absurdity in the "need" for the lie about Taylor's identity. But I'm sure there are people out there that believe he'd have been in real danger if he had revealed it any sooner.
I can give you 50 examples from the last 6 months alone where Trump supporters have been shot, beaten, robbed, had their businesses burned down etc all while Democrats incited violence. I cannot think of any cases where Trump has dogwhistled or encouraged supporters to attack anyone and if there were any such examples CNN and MSNBC would be playing them over and over and over and over on infinite repeat. The Left/Democrats are basically trying to provoke a reaction by doing such things as Drag Queen story hour for children and normalizing child porn and then going out to the suburbs to scream "racist" at everyone and vandalize homes. The response from the right has been extremely, extremely muted, mainly because most people accept that the police and the state have a monopoly on the use of force.
The Democrats blame others for things they are in fact doing themselves. The trick the Democrats use is to falsely accuse people first. They also completely suppress any information that reflects badly on their favored politicians or businesses. We all know in excruciating detail, however, every insult and lie the media has promoted about Trump for the last 4 years. The mainstream media is merely a propaganda wing of the Democrats, even Fox News mostly. They do not report actual facts. They do not even aspire to report factually because truth is mere power politics to them. That should terrify every thoughtful person because in the end when you are pounding rocks in a socialist gulag so that AOC can live in a penthouse apartment in NYC for free, they will not report honestly about what happened to you. That much is obvious from how the Media and the Democrats overlook the slave labor and prison camps of the Chinese government. We could give example after example of how they do this all the time.
The Republic is dead. We can all see that. Nobody knows what happens next because we are all waiting to find out how much more crap the Billionaire communists at the top of the pyramid want to dump on us.
This is a CLEAR sign of a propaganda victim:
"I can give you 50 examples from the last 6 months alone where Trump supporters have been shot, beaten, robbed, had their businesses burned down etc all while Democrats incited violence."
The above author makes many mistakes in his whole comment, including the preposterous claim that the Democrats are "left." ... I wish that were true!
"The Left" is defined - and has ALWAYS meant - those who stand up for the non-rich, non-aristocrat. And, unfortunately, 100% of the Republicans and around 80% of the Democrats support the ultra-rich "elite."
Yes, the Democratic Party leadership is horrific, but then, so is the Republican Party leadership (along with the rest of the party). What's funny is how people like the author above think that voting Republican will help their causes.
I recommend de-programming. And, here's a VERY good write up on all this AFTER the dual-graphing of politics description. It covers the history of the meaning of right and left from the inception of these terms for political use and right through to today (well, 2004, if I recall correctly). I recommend everyone read ALL of it, and especially those who think they hate "the left" or have any animosity or negative feelings about it.
One thing's for sure; if you're posting here, you're not rich. And, if you're not rich, you're making a mistake for voting for either any Republican of today, or around 80% of Democrats. Detail matters. Policy matters. And don't be fooled by the media like the poor soul who wrote the above missive.
The material you are referencing, which you posted in other subthread, is full of gross errors and inaccuracies.
But is is useful in that it explains why your opinions are crap deflections and full of self-referential nonsense.
Thank you. I have been busy and didn’t get back to reply. I am not sure whether leftists who are in denial about how awfully behaved their fellow travelers have been over the last couple of years or whether they really are just trotskyites who couldn’t care less what happens to their opponents. But all of us who are on the other side of their psychotic anger lately feel the heat turned up to 11.
OOPS, I seem to have left out the link! My mistake! Here:
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/redefining_the_political_spectru.htm
Ok, now it is apparent why you are intellectually incompetent and are incapable of framing ideological categories coherently
-----
That article has several severe flaws:
0. it fails to explain the high correlation between leftist (postmodern deconstructive) extremism and psychological dysfunctions (nihilism)
(see John David Ebert)
0b. it fails to adequately describe the "meaning crisis" that results from postmodern, suburban consumer culture
0c. it fails to describe the collapse of psychosocial coherence and the dis-integration of the information and regulatory ecosystem in the modern corporate-nation-states due to tech disruption and globalization
---
1. it fails to account completely for the early medieval origins of liberalism as religious reforms
---
2. it fails to recognize genetic and cultural co-evolution after the church's early ban on cousin marriage after the Carolingian reforms (liberal personality traits and higher IQ were selected for because they increase survival rates in increasingly complex societies undergoing rapid change)
2b. nuclear family structure includes selection of ability to delay marriage and child bearing and other kinds of gratification needed to attain higher levels of literacy, numeracy, business acumen and/or skills in complex bureaucracies. few children born to parents in their 20s survive and thrive better than more children born in clans to teen age parents.
again, genetic selection for higher IQ, openness to new experience and innovation and personal restraint are key to the advances made by western civilization (the down side being loss of mystical creativity, "alchemy", and dependence of fragile, high trust insitutions)
See the WEIRD(O) model of social success:
Western
Educated
Industrialized
Rich/wealthy
Democratic
Outbred
---
3. it fails to identify the shift (1492) from decentralized politics to imperial and nation-state centralized power (the modern "efficiency" promoted by Isabel-I as inspired by French philosophers)
---
4. it fails to recognize the relationship between colonial economies, politics and culture and european economies, politics and culture
---
5. it fails to describe the Rump Aristocracy in the US South/Confederacy as originating in the anti-Cromwellian nobility of Britain
---
6. it fails to explain that Paul Ray's "political compass" model has been widely discredited, as has Ray's ideas about "Cultural Creatives", and that there are far more robust models of evolutionary psychology and sociology available* that accurately describe the current political mess in an evolutionary context
-----
* https://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451576d69e2011168a90e6f970c-pi
The above is intellectually bankrupt.
Number of Trump critics / people with dirt on Trump who've ended up dead: 0
Number of Clinton critics / people with dirt on HRC or Bill who've ended up dead: A whole lot more ...
That makes sense. I don't think I managed to pick up on that when I read through. Thank you.
I am glad your willing to participate in the conversation and not just avoid engagement with the critics which i have seen on so many other sites and writers. Thank you.
Plus, he could have said that he'd rather not answer.
Even if you are right about when it is justified to remain anonymous, Taylor's lie casts doubt on his credibility only if your view was widely accepted among public officials and journalists at the time Taylor did the interview. If a reasonable person could think it was acceptable for Taylor to protect his anonymity even after leaving the administration, then Taylor's lie does less damage to his credibility, and CNN's decision not to fire him looks more reasonable. You don't present any evidence that your view about when it is justified to remain anonymous was widely accepted at the time of Taylor's interview. And, to me at least, it is not obvious that Taylor had to meet some threshold for endangerment or importance of information to be justified in remaining anonymous. People publish anonymously and under pseudonyms all the time and for all sorts of reasons.
And yet Phil Donahue was fired for having the temerity to point out that the whole "Saddam has WMDs" narrative was a blatant false flag, which it was. How do you reconcile that with what you just said? Frankly, I'm beyond tired of situational ethics in journalism, where A is fine if it enhances the acceptable narrative and B is all but criminal if it doesn't. It's wrong, period.
Maybe he was contractually obliged by the publishers to remain "Anonymous" for a couple of years?
His credibility was shot the moment he took a job in the Trump administration. Outside of The Generals and maybe a few others who took jobs in order to ensure there would be adults in the room, former or current Trump officials have no credibility. CNN wants an insider, so they got one, warts and all.
There is also the idea that he, actually all three, are "owed" a high paying gig in broadcasting. RWNJ go into RW think tanks and Democrats/liberals go into broadcasting?
He could have said "I refuse to play this game Anderson. Whoever it is, they wish to remain anonymous and I won't jeopardize that by telling you what I know about the person's identity." There was no need to lie.
If you want to protect your source, you don't ask your source the question. CNN poised the question specifically. AC, may or may not have known, but the company did. If AC knew the answer was false then, he was part of the cover up. If not, then he was a patsy.
With all due respect, Glenn, we all have come to this realization. But no one talks about how society should address these issues. And that is what I would like serious and responsible journalists like yourself begin to address. Serious harm is being done by this systemic gaslighting of the American people. A conversation needs to be started about how to counter this in a meaningful and effective manner without sacrificing the protections of the First Amendment. My personal thoughts are is that entities that report "news" (based upon some reasonable legal definition) and that reach some threshhold audience are subject to higher legal standards for truthful reporting & honest contextualization of such reporting, with no limit on who can initiate such lawsuits, and damages set sufficiently high to incentivize lawsuit initiators to hold the gaslighters accountable.
I agree and have long advocated this very simple solution:
No news media outlet of any kind shall knowingly publish a lie under penalty of law. The key here is "news media".
We can also reestablish the Fairness Doctrine.
Law = Media = Government = Corporations
The American Law system is a total joke. I think all mainstream news outlets would be bankrupt if they had to pay fines for attaching emotion (fear, joy, violence, etc) to NEWS.
American Culture is out of control, and screen addiction is our CRACK.
Adam Curtis made a film titled HyperNormalization which I think any fan of Taibbi/Greenwald would find VERY compelling.
Any anti-media philosophies (Marshal McLuhan, Neil Postman, Jerry Mander) are well worth a read as well.
This is why cherry picking what these shitty corporations posing as news outlets seems like utter madness to me...
They will always lie and they will always manipulate. Anything that relies on advertising in general is NOT to be trusted.
Anything that relies on user date is not to be trusted.
Any service that has a non-transparent algorithm is not to be trusted.
ANALOG EARTH CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER HUMANS.
Stuff like that.
Yep, "Art" is a buffoon that spouts shallow, mindless slogans (probably from delusional protest subcultures), he understands nothing beyond that as far as I can tell.
You are incompetent and a complete failure. You have to deal with the conditions that led to law and morals becoming dysfunctional. You have not done that, instead preferring to spout shallow, incoherent, reactionary bullshit.
My guess: ASD
Yes, but when authorities are some of the gaslighters that is difficult. Soviet Bolsheviks were famous for labeling dissenters "insane" to remove their rights. That nascent process is developing here now from the less radical, for now, left.
No, those aren't left, they're Neo-Liberals.
Recommended reading about this mislabeling:
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/redefining_the_political_spectru.htm
AFTER the discussion on two dimensional graphing of politics, there's an erudite discussion of the history of left-right, going to the very origins of the terms, and bringing it forward in time to the present day in the West, including Europe and the USA.
My two criticisms of his work are, 1) he doesn't include Neo-Liberalism at all, though he does include Neo-Conservatism (though, to be fair, this is an older piece and just what Neo-Liberalism really is perhaps wasn't as clear then as it is today), and; 2) his conclusion at the end about the Left is also stale, especially since 2016, but then, this was written in 2004, IIRC.
Due to the omission I cite in 1), he would call them liberals instead of neo-liberals.
Other than that, it's fantastically well done and pretty accurate.
Thank you immensely for the comment and reference. I have been for 50 years examining exactly such things and a great deal more about cultures in general. I will examinee your reference and any links from that if referenced there.
However beware, all such references are typically opinions, not fact. Too many people assume, because learned, accomplished people are presenting the information it must be "fact" when it almost never is proven fact. Such things are from at best "soft" sciences, or not sciences at all.
don't waste your time, that framing of history is shoddy to the point that it is largely useless. I posted a few better alternative sources at the top of the comments. "Art" is a dolt that spouts shallow slogans based on self-referential bs
Too late. I already did.
Try to tone down the responses. I got into a lot of trouble that way on another venue. Mine didn't help me or anybody else so and I'm trying to change my ways.
I saw most of your response to the crappy source that "Art" cited, you are correct.
What "trouble" are you talking about?
The SysAdmins at Substack aren't going to censor people that have subscribed to an author complaining about corporate censorship, are they? lol
I don't see any hazard in using vivid language to describe and respond to the idiotic comments and mindlessly shallow sloganeering from m0r0ns like "Art". (who is probably one of the sockpuppet/troll accounts on substack that have been the source of very similar inane drivel for months)
"Art" is vomiting cheap, mindless slogans and using crappy references to bad history to support his idiocies.
And thank YOU for your kind reply. I'll be very interested in your take after you've read it all - it's not a short read!
Know that I trained as both an aerospace engineer and computer scientist in my (much) earlier youth, starting in '77, only to give up a lucrative career in the database industry to become an Earth Scientist leading a 45 person, 7 year effort to unify the Earth Sciences, coordinated from UCB, focused on figuring out and resolving the issues of anthropogenic global warming that was suspected of driving global climate change, starting (for me) in 1995.
So, when you talk about the sciences, I am well aware and appreciate the distinctions. ... It's rare I will mis-speak about what we should consider fact versus opinion. (And, when I do mis-speak, I'm ready to acknowledge it.)
You gave me a “bio” so I’ll give you one. I’m a retired engineer with an abbreviated career in computer hardware support positions. 50 years ago, soon after I was REFRAD from the army I began examining political, religious, and economic philosophies because many people claimed they inspired wars.
I found they weren’t likely to do that, so I reversed the common belief wars were bad an unnecessary. Soon after I pretended they were good and necessary the true cause was obvious. The philosophical alignments were merely “rally flags” for gathering forces to do what most/all creatures must do as their numbers increase: capture more land and resources from other people for their future expanding generations when not enough can be confiscated just from other species.
From there I become fascinated by cultural traditions and habits that inspire alignments formed for warfare and other cooperative or adversarial activities/attitudes. To expand my studies I moved on to the general anthropological and epistemological examinations I continue today.
Redefining the Political Spectrum - R.G. Price - June 20, 2004 (abridged)
I was fascinated by the article you referenced possibly for different reasons than you were. One of the studies fascinating me initially a few decades ago is propaganda. I hope you aren’t offended by the understanding that is what you referenced, although it is a particularly superior example. It is even better than what Rachel Maddow’s had been before, so sadly, her’s recently turned into a much more trashy type.
I had intended to go through each significant section giving my opinion and correcting the relatively few erroneous definitions that helped make it propaganda (very biased information) while most of it is accurate. The best of all propaganda is all true, but with opposing views subdued or left out, loosely connected or unconnected events/attitudes stitched together (one thing Maddow does so well), and a finishing tactic of feigning fairness by opposing neutral, mild, or easily defeated opposition (something Maddow should have done but usually didn’t bother).
However, following the entire article would have made this very much longer than it is now, and unnecessarily so. Instead I will only address the erroneous stuff. You can assume I agree with his opinions, and don’t refute the remaining claims, in the vast majority of the article.
The article repetitively maligns the “right” but never criticizes the “left” at all, and even relegates what was always in the past (the original “classic”) left “liberalism” to be now “right,” and, ironically and paradoxically, equates it with neoliberalism. An even greater paradox is he uses the same, or almost the same, definition for neoconservatism he uses for neoliberalism. I suspect he does that to leave only newer, farther left progressivism and socialism, and also newer very far left Marxism, together on the left.
The following are my corrections/comments:
[“One of the major problems in American political consciousness today comes from a misrepresentation of the political spectrum. This is partly the result of a deliberate effort to put all of America's enemies (fascists and communists) into the same basket after World War II, and a deliberate effort by the American "Right” to classify everything that they oppose as “Leftist.”]
I was around, but young, when these attitudes prevailed and the “right” did not classify all opposition as “leftist.”
[After World War II the Republican Party was struggling for survival and was in the process of reinventing itself. Part of the political strategy of some Republicans was to portray the Democratic Party of Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt as "Red," thereby associating "Liberalism" with "Socialism". It was a common tactic during the 1950s to accuse Democrats of being "Communists" or "Communist sympathizers", a tactic that worked well during the McCarthy era and has had a lasting impact on how Americans view politics.]
The anti-communist right did not refer to all Democrats as “red,” although they did call many “pink” or “com-symps.”
[By the early 20th century a new "Right-wing" criticism of liberalism began to form as well, this being fascism.]
Fascism is not “right wing” but it is relegated there, as is original liberalism, by socialists and harder left because they want to divorce it from their group. However it clearly has socialist philosophies and the only connection to the old “right” is nationalism. Many of today’s right, with international businesses, embraced “globalism,” also clearly not nationalist politics.
The infamous NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) used Mussolini’s corporatist government structure to dominate all industries as all socialist practices do. His “corporatist” government policy is indicated below, but is not related to also socialist “public corporations” commonly owned as socialism defines. Private corporations are not socialist, but obviously capitalist.
Corporatism is a political ideology which advocates the organization of society by corporate groups, such as agricultural, labour, military, scientific, or guild associations on the basis of their common interests.[1][2] The term is derived from the Latin corpus, or "human body". The hypothesis that society will reach a peak of harmonious functioning when each of its divisions efficiently performs its designated function, such as a body's organs individually contributing its general health and functionality, lies at the center of corporatist theory.
Corporatization is the process of transforming state assets, government agencies, or municipal organizations into corporations.[1][2][3][4] It refers to a restructuring of government and public organizations into their administration.[2] The result of corporatization is the creation of state-owned corporations (or corporations at other government levels, such as municipally owned corporations) where the government retains a majority ownership of the corporation's stock.[1][5]
[Continued]
[Continued from above]
[Additionally, fascism was based on capitalist economy, unlike the feudal systems of the "old Right". This is why fascism was a "new Right" movement.]
This is a popular (among the left) but false belief. Fascism is obviously a socialist philosophy, not a capitalist one as I explained.
[This was one of the ways in which the Fascists connected with the "old Right", because the Fascists allied with the Catholic Church and re-embraced the merger of Church and State.]
Mussolini’s Fascista might have done so as necessity, just as Hitler’s NSDAP needed temporary cooperation from industrial leaders during his conquests. I’m sure Hitler would have soon nationalized industries, under typical socialist policy, if he had won the war and completed his conquests.
However, I doubt Mussolini could survive not cooperating with the Roman Church in still staunchly then Catholic Italy.
[Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power.]
That too isn’t quite true. Fascism, by philosophy, dominates national industry and economy for the benefit of the nation as a whole, as does other socialist practices, not for any individual’s particular benefit as capitalism does. Whether or not it adheres to its socialist philosophy or is “corrupted,” as most other socialist governments were/are then and now, it is still socialist by philosophy.
He also seems to allow Fascist “corporatism/corporatization” to be confused with capitalist “corporations.” Fascism has all state and no real capitalist corporation power. A Fascist state has a dictator ruling over state control of all the society’s commercial functions, at the least.
[Fascism cannot be said to have been a truly "conservative" movement per se, but it did incorporate elements of conservatism and it did ally itself with elements of the "old Right.”]
That was only as a temporary expedient as explained.
[Additionally, fascism was based on capitalist economy, unlike the feudal systems of the "old Right". This is why fascism was a "new Right" movement.]
No. That is false. It is socialist, but its left wing cousins fraudulently call it “right” trying to remove its stink from the (left wing) home they share.
[American politics today is very much shifted to the Right economically and socially, yet American society in general is relatively liberal in the social sense.]
This might have had some credibility in 2004 (when published) but today both are profoundly shifted/shifting ever more left.
[Though we now operate under the Supply-Side model of the Reagan administration, not Keynesian economics, what Reaganomics did was to amplify the role of consumerism and do away with the elements of social responsibility found in the earlier Keynesian system. ]
Of course Reaganomics is long gone now and an even more insane half-Keynesian system, worse than the earlier half-Keynesian system, is now invoked. Huge, unprecedented borrowing and currency inflation is now still escalating although Keynes warned that not repaying and deflating after the crises, as we have never done to any real extent, would ultimately devastate the economy.
[The neo-conservative, i.e. "new Right", movement in American politics today is effectively the same as the fascist movement of Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. The neo-conservatives are embracing the use of State power to control both the economy and religion, and the use of war to expand imperial power with the intention of using the State to control and secure resources to benefit the wealthy-elite, all the while building on a middle-class appeal and creating a corporate police-state.]
All of that is completely false. The right is not doing any of that and wasn’t in 2004 either. Those are common delusions of paranoid people on the left.
[Many people have claimed that Fascism and Communism are the same or similar, or they have characterized far Right and far Left as being the same.]
That’s a classic “straw man” argument. I have never heard anyone do that. I, however, have compared Marx’s impossible dream of anarchic-communism with my impossible dream of anarchic-capitalism.
[To the Marxist Left, these things may be considered expressions of objectification and consumerism. From the standpoint of Left criticism, body piercing is an example of how capitalism causes people view themselves as objects and seek attention through individualistic expression because of their lack of a satisfying social bond with their community, which is caused by alienation and commodity fetishism.]
That’s a horrendously bigoted assumption with no solid support.
[The founding fathers of America, for an example of Liberalism, played lip service to equality, yet most owned slaves.]
Most did not own slaves. Slaves were owned by a minority. Slavery was world wide and very common in Africa then where the ones here were originally sold to traders.
Some slave holders, including Jefferson, recommended abolition as part of the new constitution changing the US from a confederacy (1783-1789) to a federation.
Summary
[The "conservative" movement in America today is greatly misguided because it aligns itself economically with the interests that contribute to the social conditions that the conservative movement opposes.]
I’m not sure about this one but if I interpret it properly it might not be very far off.
[Liberal, post-modernist, American society is not "Leftist" in the least. There is no significant Left in America at all. What is called the "Left" in America today are either Liberals or Left Fascists, those who support Leftist social regulation through cooperation with the establishment Corporate-State. These are not "Leftists”.]
I’m not sure if this had any relevance in 2004 but it certainly doesn’t now. Quite the opposite now. The society is very leftist and getting ever more so.
George, I was writing you a reply this morning and had written quite a lot when the web page suddenly reset and shrunk your comment I was replying to into a new “new replies” reduction in number of comments on the page, and when I expanded it and then went to re-reply to your comment, I found it had in fact deleted my comment entirely. That's very frustrating and I'll be writing the substack people about issues with their comment software sometime soon.
Meanwhile, a shorter reply as I don't have as much time now, but I'll try and hit the points I had made before, only more succinctly:
Practically all communication between humans is propaganda of some sort, trying to convince people to either believe or do what we'd like them to believe or do. This guy's “propaganda” comes from his viewpoint, and there's no such thing as a no-viewpoint communication.
It happens that while I don't agree with everything he wrote, and while I don't share his exact viewpoint, much of what he said, especially about our (relatively) modern times, rings true from my more than fifty years of being politically aware.
That said, I don't agree with you regarding a supposed lack of criticism of the left. For example, he talked about the use of violence by the left, though not in recent times. But then, he notes in his concluding paragraphs he doesn't think there IS any left in the USA at the time of his writing. And while the scientist in me says that that kind of use of an absolute is definitely false, as a practical matter, he has a point. That has changed since '04 when he wrote it, but if there isn't a left, what's to criticize about the left?
Instead, I wonder if you're confusing liberals and neo-liberals for “left.” But that's where I'll have to leave the discussion for now as I'm out of time.
Decades ago climatologists announced we were leaving 200 year period of relatively stable weather and entering a 200 year period of relatively unstable weather.
I still have a little trouble understanding why greedy capitalist CO2, at .03%-.05% and absorbing sunlight at a narrow band, matters so much while H2O vapor, at 10 times that concentration and absorbing sun energy at most of the spectrum, apparently doesn't matter.
We can solve almost completely anthropogenic climate affects, pollution effluence, species extinction from habitat confiscation, and most warfare by reducing our population by near 90% over a reasonable amount of generations. Will you help me promote that almost certain real panacea?
I forgot that the entire "solid [Democrat] South" was largely populist nationalists, not progressive internationalists like the North. A lot of the Southern Democrats were also anti-communist back then.
What you desire to see cannot be done consistent with the First Amendment.
And your reasoning is.....
I believe my recommendation below is the ONLY way.
In my strategy, you can or do whatever whenever, just as you can today, you just cannot call it "news" (or equivalent that implies it's definitely true, such as "information" since, in my view, "information" cannot be a lie) on the grounds of false advertising; the problem wouldn't so much be the lie but that you called it "news."
You are an idiot. The concept of "news" does not exist in the Constitution.
You have failed to coherently define what is wrong with collective sense making and information ecosystems, so the chances that you have any useful "solutions" (beyond the obvious) is close to ZERO.
-----
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
― Edward Bernays, Propaganda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/275170.Edward_L_Bernays
What's wrong with MY solution, Mona (one comment below)?
I want to add the following...
It is absolutely ridiculuous that a certain segment of the American political system owns the MSM. It allows such things as: 1) a clearly bogus campaign to take down a president; and 2) a campaign to blatanlty ignore, with no investigation whatsoever, compelling evidence that one side's candidate for president has made millions, perhaps billions of dollars selling access to the White House.
When these things can happen, how far, really, are we from a day when ownership of the media can permit the extermination of a race or class of human beings?
Already we see people on one side push the idea, with no pushback whatsoever, of prosecuting citizens based upon how they vote.
https://attackthesystem.com/2019/02/18/the-coming-dystopia/
excerpt:
February 18, 2019
The Coming Dystopia?
by Keith Preston
Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right
[---]
The future of the US, or the future “post-US” or the “future of the Western world” or “the future of the global order, will be
[=>] rule by the techno-oligarch/new clerisy alliance,
where neoliberals constitute “conservatism” and progressives/SJWs constitute “liberalism.” Everyone, including the historic WASP culture, will be a minority. We will have a
[->] highly stratified Latin American-style class system with the Rainbow Culture as its self-legitimating state ideology.
The emerging ruling class will also have a world empire, a military industrial complex and a police state that it will have inherited from previous regimes.
...
re: "no one talks about how society should address these issues"
Wrong, I've seen people talk about the issues since the era of the Whole Earth Catalog, late 1960s, early 70s. There are obscure (but known) fields of research and activism that have been at work for many decades: Esalen and 100s of other similar new age groups (most now gone, but the kids of the founders are still working on the topics, including embodied consciousness), Science of Consciousness (the "hard problem" is now mainstream, see Orch-OR, etc), evolutionary psychology, gene-culture co-evolution, and so forth.
The somewhat more well known recent variations are:
1. IDW (Eric and Bret Weinstein and many others)
2. GameB (Jim Rutt, Jordan Hall and many others)
You can follow the people that Glenn and Matt Taibbi network with and look for most of the connections to the major "heterodox" thinkers that have taken various stands against conformist and increasingly totalitarian "left corporate-state" institutions.
Consider that the entire structure, including the psychosocial scaffolding of the US Constitution, is at a threshold of evolution (cultural) transition. Tweaking the 1st amendment to account for network effects might be a necessary but not sufficient "fix" without a comprehensive model and a shift to anti-fragile modes of:
1. interior/individual consciousness
2. moral and ethical collective sense making that is effective under postmodern conditions (account for deconstructive nihilism and the "meaning crisis")
3. science and economics that are not institutionally corrupt, dysfunctional, parasitic and predatory*
4. systems that are suited to planetary problems and conditions
-----
* https://www.reddit.com/r/IntellectualDarkWeb/comments/fg2lyh/rebel_wisdom_bret_and_eric_weinstein_broken_mice/
(I'm back here gathering up text for my Art-vs-George file)
Follow up:
re: "no one talks about how society should address these issues"
As noted above, that is incorrect, there have been a variety of discussions.
Going further back in history there was intense anxiety for 100s of years about the loss of "social order" that resulted from what Nietzsche stated, "god is dead ... and we killed him", the loss of collective intelligence (sense making) as it had been constructed around mythic culture.
Myths such as the idea that the world is impure, full of evil, sin and suffering, and that good people were somewhat protected by spiritual and supernatural order, the hand of god (an immunological bubble of culture) from the Lacanian "real", were eroding as a result of genetic changes that selected for "liberal" personality traits, from techno-economic disruption, from the advance of science and rationalism, etc.
Mythic beliefs and values that were great advances 3,000 years ago when they came about after the Bronze Age collapse, that strengthened the culture of empires and unified them against attack, were increasingly seen as unable to satisfy the coherence needs of emergent culture.
See the Galileo anti-myth, illiberal and anti-rationalist myth being defeated by objective, scientific rationalism, facts, evidence.
Or see Milton's _Paradise Lost_, a deep critique of how institutional religion had become corrupted by politics.
As disruption from liberal-capitalist-democratic culture unfolded, more anxiety built up, and Romanticists such as Rousseau tried to push back in the same way that the Counter Reformation had. Then there was Sturm und Drang, which was followed by the great flowering of German Idealism and the idea that "progress" was the new missionary religion, which was followed by classical anarchism, the industrial revolution, and then Marxism, then Fascism, then finally the 1900s rise of the Managerial Corporate-State (which is what we have now) and the Deep State.
So, we can see at least 500 years of intense focus on "How society should address these issues" (or at least the earlier, underlying causes that led to the current version of the "crisis of meaning").
I would argue that there is really 3,000 years of debates, wars and techno-economic disruptions that inform how people have addresses issues, with a central feature of disagreement being between natural-rational pragmatists in the Greco-Roman tradition vs supernaturalists, the Purity Myth religions (Abrahamic faiths, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam), the Dharma traditions, Zoroastrianism and so forth.
(The Eastern, Dharma traditions put less emphasis on Buber's I-Thou version of the sacred {"We"} and more emphasis on the unconditioned sacred, Emptiness, "It")
Neoplatonism was an attempt to mash up naturalistic philosophy and supernatural mysticism, and it became the dominant high form of thought in the golden age of Islamic philosophy and esotericism (and by extension medieval Europe).
Short version:
There have been three major paradigm shifts that correspond, as per Marx, with modes of economic production:
0. ancient nomadic hunting/gathering
1. Premodern and Medieval cultures
agrarian settlements that began to expand populations after the end of the ice ages
mythic awareness / communion values
2. Modernism
the industrial revolution, as preceded by the Enlightenment and Renaissance
rational awareness / agentic values (individual achievement)
3. Postmodernism
information revolution, digital culture
pluralistic and relativistic, planetary awareness / neocommunion
See Jean Gebser's _Ursprung und Gegenwart_ (The Ever Present Origin)
thank God for Glenn and Matt... wisps of sanity in a maelstrom of unethical unprincipled garbage from the MSM
Completely agree. I just hope Glenn and Matt don't waste too much talking about shitty the mainstream alternative is... I think it's more effective to collect converts.
Actual adults who don't realize CNN/NYT/ETC are trash... they are one degree away from being "Trumpers".
Deeply brainwashed by SCREENS.
Anyone here I am assuming is taking an assertive and intentional role in truth already?
Oh, there appear to be more than one RWNJs commenting here already, very disconnected from reality, "and the night is young."
What does RWNJ stand for?
"Right Wing Nut Job" - which I personally reserve for people who such horrific propaganda victims that they have vitriolic anger at things they don't even understand and there's probably no hope they'll ever have reality based opinions in anything like "my lifetime."
Your understanding of "propaganda" is a self-referential pile of greasy dog excrement, and is pathetic.
Cut the cord. Give your dollars to Glenn, Matt, and other honest journalists. The corporate liars can’t survive without viewers. Hard to imagine a group of people more dishonest. “Fake news” - 45 was right again!
Already did.....
Glenn, your subscription system isn't working. I tried earlier & it claimed I'd paid, also I received a thanks email from you...But, they never asked for my credit card info to actually charge the $50. I need to pay up; you're more than worth it! Jean
Thank you, Jean. Please contact Support@substackinc.com and they will help you. I really appreciate the support.
If you're already a paid subscriber to Taibbi (for instance), then you can subscribe here and it won't ask for your info again. Same thing happened to me, I clicked "Subscribe", it didn't ask for my info, but it still charged my account.
One of the most disturbing recent trends to me is that, as you mentioned, these former heads of the security apparatuses are now high paid members of the media.
I'm not particularly optimistic about any outcome in this election, but one of my concerns is that these people are going to move back into government or continue in their media jobs as an arm of the state.
To be clear, John Brennan and James Clapper are both criminals. They have both committed violations of civil liberties (among other things) domestically and human rights abroad. Regardless of peoples political affiliations, regardless of who people want to win, I do not understand how people like this - operatives of the security state - can be held up as people that we should listen to or that should in any way be involved with the operation of our government. They, and their ilk, are disgusting, despicable human beings.
I hope I'm wrong and I hope things change, but I'm not optimistic about it. In my opinion what's likely to happen is that these Bush-era war criminals (including the cadre of neo-cons) will be welcomed back into the fold and nobody will bat an eye, because 'Trump has been defeated, so everything's great now'. There's already whispers of this with the new reports of Biden proposing GOP members for his cabinet.
I guess it wouldn't be surprising and it won't be anything new. But, it is depressing and I just wish that we had something else to look forward to.
"I do not understand how people like this - operatives of the security state - can be held up as people that we should listen to or that should in any way be involved with the operation of our government."
Simple; this is what the ultra-rich WANT.
The only way out of this is to wrest control from the ultra-rich.
I know this is kind of off topic, but I'm starting to feel some elation that what Glenn's done may start a movement. Seriously, how many ethical journalists are employed by newsrooms all over the country/world that try to live with the cognitive dissonance that the liberal corporate newsroom has instilled. I'm sure there's ton's of new journalism grad (though most writers on SM don't have journalism degrees) suckups ready to get those jobs, so nobody wants to step out of line as they're simply a commodity.
How do we start the new journalism model? The first step is to pledge an independence from political bias. Facts are facts and should be reported without subjective terms.
I'd like to see Glenn start a Worker's Cooperative made up of like-minded journalists as equals, sharing resources as appropriate and beneficial to all.
In my view - educated only by decades working for / with corporations - that the Corporate Model is what did The Intercept in. The Corporate Model ALWAYS has a dictatorial organizational structure. Instead, a worker's cooperative is the right way...
Today, an amazing journalist died - Robert Fisk - he wrote and spoke about similar media issues - here is what he said nearly ten years ago https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2010/5/25/journalism-and-the-words-of-power
Thanks for the heads-up. Fisk was a treasure.
Damn.
I'm helping a community college student with his writing. For a small research based presentation he HAS to use only 'reliable' sources of information: The NYT, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, CNN or NPR.org. To think that a college prof. thinks these places are legit is amazing. Luckily, yours truly is there to run interference.
So goes the bigotry of stratospheric ivory tower idealist academics. They have now successfully indoctrinated the younger two generations in the western world, particularly Gen Z, from kindergarten on. Our countries will crash and burn as past ones all have under those delusional fairy tale ideals impossible for the non-ideal people far down on earth to operate over or under. The academic horrendous bigots will still force their delusions no matter how many countries they destroy.
Here's a list that The Powers That Be don't want you using, so I'm sure many are pretty good!
http://TheTroyPress.com/links.html
Superb article and this Substack platform is great. Wishing you much success and looking forward to reading more, even if we disagree.
Substack's privacy policies are a concern.
And, the comment section could use some improvements, such as not using "1 reply", "1 new reply" and "replies" for new comment commentary since it makes finding the new stuff require three searches instead of just one.
In hopes that this will trickle up to whomever may be interested in improving the experience: It's also difficult to read comments where there is no way to clearly indicate when one is block quoting (aside from quotations marks, which are fine, but can be overlooked), and where there is no way to emphasize the particular part of a quote one finds compelling (e.g. bolding/italics). Without block quoting, an extensive response to an unsupported assertion can be easily misunderstood. Without the ability to emphasize, specific points can be more easily missed.
Our eyes - especially older eyes (like mine) - can find uninterrupted blocks of text tiring (at the least) and dauntingly challenging to wade through (at worst). Also, for those whose brains work in alternative ways (not limited to dyslexia, etc), the additional breaks/clues provided by bolding, italics etc can be invaluable in just perceiving a writer's intent and/or in facilitating participation in the conversation.
IOW, I am carrying forward some of the Great Lamentations that so many of us engaged with in earlier times and places on our itinerant journey with Greenwald across his years-long pilgrimage. 😂
I second the motion to resurrect the Great Lamentations.
<a href="https://greenwald.substack.com>Test link</a>
Thanks, Ped, solid recommendations ("lamentations?" If you say so!), and I'm thinking that later when I have time I'll put together an email to them - Glenn already gave us the email address. (THANKS GLENN!)
<b>Testing</b>
<i>Testing</i>
Maybe the old way works .... or not.
So, Pedinska has demonstrated that HTML tags don't work. How about BBCode?
[b]This should be bold.[/b]
[i]This should be italicized.[/i]
[u]This should be underlined.[/u]
Nope, not BBCode, either.
And the nesting of replies in ever-narrowing columns is super-lame.
The people running substack, and the writers publishing here, would be wise to consider that many readers paying directly for the platform are going to expect (demand?) quality commenting software. Failing to provide that is fairly likely to negatively impact the revenue stream.
Emoji check:
🦀 🎶 ⚓️
Looks like the full Unicode character set is supported. That's good.
So the answer to that would be "No". 🙄
Thank goodness we can copy/paste emojis or I'd be done for. 😆
Yeah, I tried that on my second post here! ☹️
By the way, there's a great page full of emojis you can cut and paste here:
https://getemoji.com/
I haven't ever had cable, so I never got hooked on CNN, though I have seen its content occasionally online.
That said, this reporting just adds to the huge stack of facts that basically tell us that the Main Stream Media is untrustworthy and a huge fraction of it is nothing more than propaganda, designed to manipulate us.
I have a lot of respect for your work, but this piece is kind of like saying that water is wet. Would love for you to report on big tech's censorship of anyone who dares to question official COVID narratives (including physicians and scientists). It is not healthy for a democracy to discourage scientific debate and discussions.
>>> "Would love for you to report on big tech's censorship of anyone who dares to question official COVID narratives (including physicians and scientists)."
Could you provide specific examples of what you see as censorship?
Scientists have been de-platformed on Youtube or have had videos removed because they disagreed with the lockdowns. Twitter will stop you from posting certain articles. This was a really interesting conversation with 2 Stanford doctors (1 of them also has a PhD in economics) that talk about the danger of censorship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_COvdCujaA&ab_channel=ZDoggMD
Have you seen or heard of the Great Barrington Declaration? Or Scott Atlas other than some 'fact check' that says he's not an epidemiologist?
Yes, the media distorts his views. The Great Barrington Declaration is important for people to be aware of. I think even crazy conspiracy theorists shouldn't be de-platformed. Removing their voices makes people believe there actually is a conspiracy theory.
Atlas, in fact, is a neuroradiologist. As such he holds no expertise in infectious diseases.
He is an expert in public health. In a situation like a pandemic you need someone like this instead of giving the keys to an epidemiologist. Epidemiologists understand the disease, but not how to deal with the national impact of confronting it. This has been my position since March. I was a hospital CEO for 30 years, and when Trump allowed Fauci (who would have told you a year ago that we should wear masks and social distance) to make the calls I knew we were screwed.
"He is an expert in public health."
No, he is not. And you offer no evidence to the contrary. Epidemiologists are the appropriate experts for infectious diseases and pandemics. One does not, after all, reasonably seek out an ophthalmologist to treat their heart disease.
No, but you don't ask your doctor how to invest your stocks. Fauchi was competent to advise on the risk of the disease, not on how to set national/state policy to address it. he should be a member of a team, not the leader. Also, I worked with epidemiologists for 30 years, and love them. But they're not genetically predisposed to dealing with crisis.
Yes, of course. Neither the declaration nor Atlas have been censored. They have been roundly dismissed as misguided, dangerous, etc., because both the declaration and Atlas' offerings are entirely at odds with the consensus opinions of actual experts.
And Atlas is definitely *not* an epidemiologist. Nor is he an infectious disease specialist. Nor is he a virologist.
The Great Barrington Declaration was prepared by three of the top epidemiologists in the world, Professors at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford Universities.
So "both the declaration and Atlas' offerings are entirely at odds with the consensus opinions of actual experts." makes no sense at all. The three leaders of the Declaration are the very definition of "actual experts" You hardly could find three others who have more knowledge of epidemiology than they do.
Two of the three are epidemiologists, but none of them can be described as among the top in the world. Not even close.
The declaration is sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian outfit with headquarters in Great Barrington, Mass. Thus the title. The document, its authors and sponsors are all more concerned with the economy than they are with public health and I assure you that investigating their backgrounds will make that clear.
Actually understanding the reality of the pandemic will also make it clear that the declaration's prescription would be as dangerous for the economy as it would be for public health.
These people are outliers whose "strategy" has been and continues to be roundly denounced by the vast majority of subject matter experts.
= = = =
Researchers Blast 'Dangerous' COVID-19 Herd Immunity Strategy
— "Practically impossible and highly unethical," group argues
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/89127
"The Great Barrington Declaration was prepared by three of the top epidemiologists in the world, Professors at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford Universities."
I don't believe that is the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration#Authors
Further, even if three epidemiologists endorsed this "Report," that would not be persuasive as against the *consensus* of the vast, vast majority of worldwide scientists in the relevant fields.
Herd Immunity Is 'Pixie Dust Thinking,' Infectious Disease Expert Says
[. . .]
“It is not based on any good science suggesting that somehow you can bubble the well people ... and those who have underlying risk factors that would have serious illness. It's just pixie dust thinking,” says Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
The medical community is in an uproar over the petition because it’s “just plain dangerous,” he says. “We could expect to see three to four times the number of deaths that we've already had in this country if that were to play out.”
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/10/14/herd-immunity-coronavirus
He's a public health expert. That's what's needed, more than an epidemiologist.
"That's what's needed, more than an epidemiologist."
I've seen no evidence that Scott Atlas holds any "public health" expertise, and certainly not in infectious diseases. The notion that a neuroradiologist is a better guide for managing a pandemic than is the world consensus of epidemiologists is as unhinged a view as I've see in this new space.
Are you concerned about general public health decline and the fact that deaths from non-covid causes are increasing, apparently due to "lockdowns"? I am. The idea that an epidemiologist should run national health policy is flawed. Input, yes. Control, no. Greater than 90% of American deaths/yr have nothing to do with Covid19 (2.8 mm/yr). In fact, co-morbidities are a huge issue as we continue to argue about "died due to covid19 vs died w covid19" and the rising death rates due to lockdowns (cancer, heart attacks, strokes, suicide, etc).
The lockdowns also seem to favor white collar workers who can stay at home and "shelter in place" and lecture the working class from their safe space on twitter/facebook etc while "zooming" in to work. Hourly workers MUST GO TO WORK, restock shelves, clean hospitals, drive trucks, deliver groceries, pick fruits and vegetables and so on. The positive AND negative impacts of public policy must be weighed by a range of medical, economic and public policy experts. Epidemiologist don't do that. They focus on infections disease not public health or economic/social policies for the greater good.
There is a larger picture in the USA and world wide (now the WHO is pointing to rising starvation and lack of immunization due to the lockdowns) that is being missed by focusing only on epidemiology. BTW, Fauci is an immunologist, not an epidemiologist. I think it's appropriate to critique the source of Barrington funding, but let's not forget the impact of lockdowns including horribly flawed models sponsored by Bill Gates et al that have been wrong every time, often by an order of magnitude, causing public policy to over correct. Same with the FDA and CDC. These are the same organizations that fueled the climb in US obesity by saying that Fat is bad and that massive amounts of sugar/carbs are ok. Breakfast cereals? Come on now. Statins get rid of "high" cholesterol? Meanwhile, American obesity is on the rise while the pharmaceutical industry cranks out pills. All approved by the FDA/CDC.
The Great Barrington Declaration is the closest to a "world consensus of epidemiologists" as we are likely to have, as the three leaders are Professors of Epidemiology at Oxford, Harvard and Stanford Universities.
The state of journalism today is as credible as the tabloids were when I was growing up in the 60s-70s. The difference is that back then all but the extremely naïve knew it was BS. The difference is that now most believe what they are told.
You're forgetting a key fact: You're comparing "tabloids" to Main Stream "Journalism."
Well, that's actually what I was trying to point out, but I guess I missed.
I won't watch CNN anymore because they are both disingenuous and biased. And, they are not the only one. I've read entire articles in the NYTimes which were based entirely on disinformation. And the moderated comments, sometimes hundreds of them, discussing the various facets and details of the disinformation and often lauding the people who were described as participants in the (near imaginary) event. We are increasingly building a society based on falsehoods, much like the old Soviet Union which finally collapsed, in large part due to its duplicity.
I commend CNN for their transparency. People know what they are getting when they tune in and I sometimes watch it myself to determine what is not true. Those who saw Miles Taylor deny it on CNN got the inside scoop on the identity of Anonymous.
The skeptical will ask, "What if CNN mixes in the truth sometimes, just to catch people off guard?" This is over-thinking things. It might happen occasionally, but in general, CNN is one of the most reliable negative indicators out there.
I was immediately turned off by CNN when they made their bones during the Gulf War of the early 1990s pushing drooling war porn.
Fox News is like slogging through an acre if manure to find a pearl.
MSNBC? Started watching in 2008, stopped afterward. Morning Joe is now their best show???
Heck, lying when directed to is probably a job requirement, just one they don't advertise too often.