The corporate news organizations masquerading as reliable and non-partisan are, in fact, as hyper-partisan as any sites on the internet, and spread as much misinformation.
Agreed. And this indicates that the problem runs so much deeper in the American mind and culture. Critical thinking, logical reasoning and analytical skills are severely lacking, even among those who supposedly received training and hold positions, some very high-ranking, in these fields.
This LACK OF TRAINING is what passes as a college education these days. If you voice a differing opinion with your professor you will be down graded....or flunked. Better to study something science based where 2+2 still Equals 4.
I was removed from the applied music program of a college in my last semseter before transfer, because....I was paying for and studying with an non institutional guitarist, whom my institutional instructor was jealous of.
The department head asked me to suck it up and not cause trouble, since I was going to a better school the following semester, I did so very reluctantly.
American 'higher' learning institutions except in hard sciences have been committing egregious mental malpractice for decades.
They are threats to these people so, these people having public platforms affording them the ability to widely broadcast their own opinions, lend those opinions to degrading critical thinking, reasoning, analysis.
What is worse is that we have passed a critical point where enough of those supposed leaders who do possess such skills actively suppress them out of fear, thereby adding their weight to the wrong side of the freedom versus authoritarian scale. This is how democracy devolves into totalitarian oligarchy.
Who knows what they believe. I think it likely that the two political parties have set up a false narrative around fictionalized differences between themselves to distract from the fact that republicans and democrats alike are on the same team. (I don't really count Trump in this narrative because he is an outsider and too self-involved to help his party spin this narrative.) News media can choose to be a mouthpiece for either team but their message must remain on point.
I said that once we realized that there was not going to be a strong independent candidate this year. This year would have been the perfect time to bring in real political change via an independent.
Unfortunately that analogy is completely lost on me. All I know about the Globetrotters is that they occasionally helped Shaggy and Scooby solve mysteries. :-)
Yes! From cradle to grave, the institutional incentives are there for one to think and behave in a way that benefits the ruling coalition under the threat of indignity, humiliation, homelessness, poverty, etc. They're working as "top journalists" simply because they were "selected for" according to their ability to compartmentalize their thinking just enough.
It makes me think of the legal field: working for Big Law doesn't typically mean "I'm benefitting society," but it does mean your'e at the top of your field. Meanwhile, legal practice that might be more associated with "social good" doesn't pay as much and certainly doesn't imply high career status.
Yeah, but when I wonder why they're hyper-partisan democrats and then read their work, the certitude they have of their positions becomes glaringly obvious. They are as hard core true believers as any participant in the Spanish Inquisition (studied it in HS/College). I'll assume that the Cultural Revolution in China demonstrated a similar mind set. Check out Glenn's interviews w/ Krystal Ball & Nathan Robinson on YTube (if it's still there) Listening to Robinson's word salads is a remarkable example of the thought processes in real time of the certitude of the hyper-left. THEN watch Joe Rogan's interview w/Dan Crenshaw (just the first 30 mins or so) and you'll see the identical thought processes but w/ a different outcome.
The irony is that I subscribed to Robinson b/c of his appearances on Rising, but after seeing the video, it was easy peasy to let my subscription lapse.
Glenn makes a great point that if you are a "journalist" and 90%+ of your consumers identify towards a particular political affiliation, you will be sympathetic to their cause and actively cater towards them to keep them in favor. Perhaps more dangerous than these news outlets is the woke leftist mobs who attack on a dime anything that challenges their view. We started to see a bit of this on the right as they turned on Fox after the Wallace debate. The fact that Sen. Feinstein had to apologize for being civl to Sen. Graham after the ACB hearings highlights this. These outlets will never turn on their golden goose which makes any semblance of balanced news impossible.
What I really appreciate is how the left/liberal axis is always telling me about what new thing I need to be afraid of today, especially when they come up with the "solution" for me tomorrow.
Given all the things that were going to kill all of us during the last 20 years it is quite amazing that any of us are alive at all. Neo-nazis, far right extremists, plagues of frogs, bible belters, gun-clingers and various others in the basket of deplorables. And who could have guessed that the answer to all these problems would be to hand absolute silencing power to a group of unelected corporates themselves dominated by left/liberal sentiments? Wow, what a truly astounding coincidence!
But what I find supremely ironic is that the return of actual nazi legislation in Germany is completely elided. For example on November 18 of this year the German parliament voted in favour of changes to the Infection Protection Act (Infektionsschutzgesetz) which gives the government the power to issue any edicts it wants under the guise of protecting public health. This is a distinct echo of the similarly approved Enabling Act of 1933, which granted the government the authority to issue any edicts it wanted to remove the distress of the people.
I looked in the Washington Post, but ... crickets.
(Well, OK, there WAS one article at the War Post that referenced the act but it was about a protest against it and how the police soaked people with cold water in November in Berlin because they were afraid they would catch a flu otherwise. The tone of the article suggested approval of the government's enforcement rather than their authoritarian legislation and behaviour. So it didn't really meet my standard of "speaking truth to power", IYKWIM.)
Notice that the left never solves problems, they only increase them, like homelessness or crime. Their policies are designed to make the problems so bad that normies will submit to their real goals, a total restructuring of society/economy to serve their totalitarian goals. Goals that no one voted for, they were never advertised to their gullible constituents. It also allows them to keep enlarging the bureaucracy because "problems" always continue to "grow". It's bad enough on a state level but that's why they need the power on the federal level to impose on red states so that there is no place to escape to.
Having people living successfully and differently next door is not something any tyrant wants. Remember how the Soviets tried so hard to stop people watching West German television and listening to Western radio?
Highly reminiscent of all the russia-gating going on here now. Don't watch that, it's all bad and wrong! Watch this! Listen to me! You don't want to be thought of as crazy or backward or evil, do you?
It's quite fascinating how the advocates of diversity and inclusion are simultaneously the most vociferous and fanatical advocates of crowd-think and exclusion, eh?
Do you really think that the "unlected corporates" are "dominated by left/liberal sentiments"? That is just spin-nonsense in a world where the meaning of words has become so twisted by corporate and right-wing propaganda to have become meaningless.
Do I think they are sincere? Not for a femtosecond.
The woke dogmas of the left are a tactical convenience to the tech giants, the media, the academy, and all the other netherworld dancing toys of the would-be world rulers. Remember George Carlin?
"They don't give a fuck about you!"
Well, they don't care about muslims, refugees, trannies, women, the climate, whales, polar bears, or anyone else, either. All these sentiments are merely fig-leaves behind which they hide their naked ambitions.
Nonetheless, today it is (mostly) the right/conservatives that are suffering under this fake dogma, being demonised, silenced, de-platformed, banned, dis-employed, assaulted, and murdered. That is, I observe, already at a peak and is visibly reversing. As I have stated in previous comments, I expect it to swing back faster and farther to the right. There's nothing I relish in that prospect - it's merely the unavoidable consequence of pushing the pendulum to the left. There's not way to stop it now, it is already in motion.
This is what they want, to set the people to fighting each other. It has many advantages to them but the two major ones are, (1) they remain safe from the people's wrath, and (2) as the conflict escalates it increases the demands for the state to take more powers as "necessary" to establish order.
As Pitt the Younger observed:
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
It's not the woke utopia of the left they want to establish, nor is it the Stepford utopia of the right - it's simply and only the attainment of more power.
As the Oracle tells Neo:
"What do all men with power want? More power."
Or as Orwell warned us about revolutions:
“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
This is what is happening all across the West today. The seeds of revolution are sprouting all around, the violence is escalating, the polarities are strengthening while the centre weakens, and the inevitable result is a dictatorship "to restore law and order".
I'll give you one more prediction though: in our lifetimes I expect to see this dictatorship take on a religious aspect. We already see signs of it in the way that climate concerns have become a neo-religious fervor among many on the left, and an apostate Christianity is rising to oppose it on the right. But I expect it to be far more overt, far more militant, far more destructive of all that we now enjoy. In every age of empire religion has been seen as a unifying force of great utility to the emperor, and I do not expect our modern crop of "world leaders" to miss this trick. On the contrary, I expect it to be more aggressively dogmatic, more violently proselytizing, more savagely brutal, than ever before.
You used to take up a lot of time and space at Salon and UT before that. I think you're confusing the fact that there IS NO LEFT in the United States what has been RE-BRANDED as "left" largely by the right wing media/internet and "liberals" by the neoliberals and neoconservatives themselves. Even the most remotely legitimately leftist ideas and personalities are silenced or de-platformed WAY before Alex Jones or any of the righties like Milo and the rest claiming censorship. So without specifics, I'm going to assume you're falling victim to the same right leaning, always oligarch/war machine/fossil fuel friendly propaganda that so many on the right do these days. Are you an American, BTW?
There's both left and right in the USA. The problem is that both of those elements that have any power are fundamentally authoritarian. That's what binds Trump, Biden, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Nixon, et al, together, and always has. They believe in power and that victory legitimates all policies.
There's no power centre that is essentially liberal in the classic sense of defending the freedom and civil rights of the powerless against the constant encroachments of the powerful.
As for taking up time and space: yeah, I put a gun to your head and forced you to read my comment. Fucksake.
You're not an American, you don't understand what makes ANY American demographic "tick" and you're just throwing hot air out into cyberspace about it. Centre? This isn't England or New Zealand, mate. And no shit...ya don't say. There's no power center essentially LEFTIST (which your kind equates with liberal) that defends the freedom and civil rights of the powerless. Duh. But it would help a lot to understand your opinions if we knew what fucking country or part of the world you're dealing with cuz it ain't the fuckin' USA.
I'd like to add here that as a leftist I don't really feel represented by any of this. I understand anti-racism and so on, but as soon as it becomes cancelling people, that's the end of it for me. I'm ready to put the whole left-right thing aside, embrace open debate and stop trying to take chunks out of people I largely agree with. We have a shared enemy, many shared values and common cause.
You were asked: "Do you really think that the "unlected corporates" are "dominated by left/liberal sentiments"?"
To which you said yes. Period. And then you launched into some bullshit Morpheus Matrix Neo nonsense couched in the idea that even the messages provided by the inverted totalitarian AMERICAN corporate owners were intended to be 1) left leaning and 2) sincere.
I stopped paying attention for a while because I felt so afraid when I did. Funny how that works to the benefit of the political class! Can't say I'm proud of that, but it is what it is.
It's perfectly normal. None of us want to accept that the social myths we grew up in are not only fake but diametrically opposed to the truth. Many of them are so common and so un-spoken that we're not even aware they exist unless something prompts us to serious search and examination and analysis.
But "we" in the West are not a shining city on a hill. We might have been, once, but we have not only abandoned those things that made us great, we (as a culture) are actively fighting them now.
Notable individuals (like our host here) notwithstanding, we are largely unwilling to even contemplate the possibility that our self-image is a self-serving delusion and the horrific reality, when even once glimpsed dimly afar off, tends to scare most of us back into the safety of our crowd-sourced madness.
All I can say is that, after 30 years of constant re-examination and re-evaluation, the improved clarity of vision is worth it.
It never stops though; none of us see ourselves as clearly as we see others. But self-deceit is also a never-ending process and in my experience it is both far more exhausting and far less rewarding.
I agree with all of this. As someone naturally from way over on the left, it's been profoundly depressing to see ranks of people I used to associate with completely drop the ball on opposing corporate power and supporting free speech at the critical moment. These concentrations of power that Glenn is now describing are entirely to blame. Breaking them down is now, surely, the most important goal for people in the US - and just as important the rest of us around the world who are also badly affected by it. The effort to build around has begun in earnest. But we still need to see much more legal action, against the censorship (which is only going to get worse, I assume, driving more and more people onto other platforms) and with aggressive antitrust actions.
I mean seriously - do you think that these corporate/Silly-cone Valley elites favor LEFTIST policies? LMFAO - universal health care? reducing wealth inequality? rights for American workers? ending the drug war and racialized policing/prison system? Environmental protections that actually mean something? You're confusing "liberal" and "left" - they are not the same. I don't GAF about ID politics. I'm a real leftist who understands that it is the left which has always been smashed down, killed, censored and destroyed in this country. Maybe if you were an American (or still lived here) you'd get that. Plus, please can the straw man bullshit about "bible belters" coming to kill us. That was never a thing. Just full of right wing tropes you are, and again, I bet you aren't even an American. Probably in New Zealand or something.
No, dipshit. I want to know if you are American living in the United States for the past 30 years or not. I DGAF "who" you are. Just whether any of your commentary on the U.S.A. has any grounding in the reality of, ya know, actually fucking living here. If that's too much for you, then kindly fuck off yourself.
Fuck you if you can't even provide the most basic of identifying information. It's not like I'm trying to fucking doxx you moron. I just want to know if you're an American citizen living in the USA for all the bullshit you have to talk about the situation from what you're portraying as an expert's perception. Yeah, deal. Go fuck yourself and I'll ignore DF out of you from now on. Like I did at Salon and UT.
how do you reduce wealth inequality AND end the drug war, AND put up environmental protections? The last two contribute to the first. Are you in favor of the US reentering the paris climate accords? Why does universal health care help us more than what we have now? And what rights do you want american workers to have? I'm genuinely curious about "leftist" policies. They're always spoken about in very vague terms.
You say the left has been smashed down - well, maybe they've just changed, and you've been left behind. It has a lot of sexy slogans, and perhaps its been coopted by bad actors and grifters.
And, obviously, the corporate elites have no problem saying all the right things while at the same time contributing to the misery of our increasing wealth gap.
I'm not here to attack - I'm genuinely curious about the policies of the left. How does it work? What's the practical foreseen outcome?
The corporate elites don't just "say the right things." They DEFINE what is "right" and "wrong" through long-running, deeply entrenched propaganda programs that run through public school curricula, the mass media and American domestic and foreign policy. Occasionally the messaging is altered to fit the times, but the underlying goals of the programs are manifold and rock steady:
1) Convince American workers that the late stage capitalist economy we've got is the best system in the world.
2) Convince Americans in general that the foreign wars for resources or to pry open otherwise "socialist" economies for Western Private finance are "humanitarian" interventions so that "we" can give "them" the benefit of our economic system.
3) Keep the various strata of working and middle class people divided along cultural or religious or racial lines so that they don't wake up and unite to end the oligarch/private finance/corporate/military industrial complex stranglehold on our government.
The corporations that you say are "saying the right things" will do so no matter what the message happens to be, and depending on the target audience. There is nothing leftist about any of these corporate and corporate media PR campaigns - they have found a way to monetize division and will always stand for inverted totalitarian authoritarianism over collective bargaining, environmental rights, and most of all to protect their ill gotten billions from the unwashed masses. To do this, they have convinced "the right" that government (always) = BAD and the erstwhile "woke left" that it's more important to end racial inequalities than it is to empower workers of all types so that each faction within the working class has the wherewithal (money, influence, presence in the government) to actually address the racial and other grievances that legitimately do exist.
"To do this, they have convinced "the right" that government (always) = BAD and the erstwhile "woke left" that it's more important to end racial inequalities than it is to empower workers of all types so that each faction within the working class has the wherewithal (money, influence, presence in the government) to actually address the racial and other grievances that legitimately do exist" i agree to this. i think ultimately, the power comes from the people, communities, and how we treat each other. targeted govt safety nets, where there is a need. but limited govt. pls. we need each other, not govt.
Wow, you really don't seem to understand American history and you look like you're going out of your way to avoid the kinds of information you're accusing me of not having simply because you're apparently not aware of it. Frankly I don't have time to educate you on the history of the American pro-labor left, but I can always suggest a few articles or white papers.
How do you reduce wealth inequality? Too many ways to count. None of them vague in the least. Same thing with ending the Drug War and enacting protections for the working class against the corporate behemoths that dictate the self-serving laws to our "elected representatives".
What does universal health care help that the current system isn't helping? I'm sorry but are you even serious? Ask the tens of millions of working people who don't have health insurance and can't qualify for any of the major assistance programs. Ask the hundreds of thousands or lower and middle class who have filed for bankruptcy due to a serious health condition - or died.
On top of that, one might presume to think that in order to fund such a universal health care system, the (phony) money might have to come out of another 'program's' budget. Say the Drug War or "Defense" Department? That, and the fact that corporate profits would suffer, are why it will never happen. Because once the people realize how much they like universal health care, they'd never again vote against it.
I mean really. If you can demonstrate some level of understanding of how all of those things have contributed to not only the crushing of the left in the USA, but also to the wealth inequality, mass incarceration, and the current state of the environment, we can start getting into these policy specifics that you seem to think don't exist.
You're right - i didn't know much about the history of the left. It's a rich one. But practically, how does that change the facts? How do the policies translate into reality?
These policies you're putting out are still extremely vague, and missing nuance. How can you input universal healthcare without crushing the 100 million people on private healthcare? How would that not raise taxes on millions of middle class individuals? How would you implement such a large scale change on an enormous system - the united states. we have 50 states and 330 million people with diverse needs. Universal healthcare is like shoving 330 million people into an entirely centralized one-size fits all system. If you look at the staterun systems we already have in place, they're a LOT worse in quality than what private companies have achieved. (Come to Brooklyn to find out why.) so why would you want to bring down the level of healthcare for everyone when targeted programs can do what you're saying, without the enormous cost and loss of quality? I'm sure what we have now isn't adequate to fulfill everyone's needs, but we don't live in a perfect world. That's an impossible goal. the more you aim to reach perfection the more it will elude you. And, if you want to reduce wealth inequality, look into the economics of universal health care. Would that contribute to or reduce wealth inequality? i know obamacare is hurting the middle class. there's good to it, but it's not helping to reduce wealth inequality. it's helped insurance companies tho. But it's not a total bust. But look at the pitfalls of medicareforall lite, before you go all in.
Also, let me remind you that what we have in America is far from capitalism. It's interventionism. Meaning, government intervention. Some have helped - like targeted social safety nets (to an extent, and the jury is really still out on whether its helped more than its hurt the poorest of americans) and most have hurt working class americans - like cronyism, bailing out the huge corporations. As well as the government shut downs which is killing the middle class and enriching the ultra rich. government regulations on businesses, which hurt small business but not corporations, which can afford to pick up and go to another country (china) with looser regulations. a higher set minimum wage is what really kills small businesses.
Globalism and open borders, which is not anti capitalist, have also destroyed the working class to a large extent, but if the government wanted to intervene, they should have done it here - mainly, stopping both, stop the bleeding of globalism, and work to bring back jobs to America. Well we can all thank the last 40 years for that, and a lot of other crap. Bush and Obama should have done something, not made it worse. Well, they made it worse.
Also, history really can show you how socialism (aka the end result of leftist policies aiming to weaponize the state to help the worker) plays out in real time. so go around and talk to people whose parents lived in those countries, or go look up the history of these countries. If you have, and you still believe in what you're doing, then kudos. But I just think if you're coming with the mindset of "lets radically change the way the state controls the economy" then the burden is on you to put forth the proof of why it works, and go through the complexities of where it might go, what might go wrong, and why it's still a defensible position to hold.
"There is nothing leftist about any of these corporate and corporate media PR campaigns" - oh, i agree with you. So why do they love to take up your campaign slogans? They just end up enriching themselves. So how does that work. It's almost like they're using you.
And fossil fuels have decreased wealth inequality in countries like india. They're actually a really cheap option, especially for struggling families. So what's the problem. You can fight climate change and you can fight wealth inequality, but i don't think you can do both. especially right now. climate change is a rich people's problem. It's hurt the most vulnerable population in the process. I'm all for conservation, and looking into practical solutions, and using the free market to switch to energy efficient alternatives, but i don't think anyone knows what they're doing in regards to climate change, but they're destroying real lives in the process. But again, it's progressive policies that the elite can get behind and use to say "look how great a person i am!" while destroying people's livelihoods in the process, while they themselves are absolutely not affected. And this has already happened.
How about we spend less on the "defense" of this country and more on the defense of its people and our health? Besides, the taxes issue has been brought up and shut down so many times, that all I can really say is you should look at Bernie Sanders' most recent platform regarding universal healthcare and then we can discuss just how much taxes on the "middle class" would go up (they won't, unless you define middle class as households making more than about $300K).
"How would that not raise taxes on millions of middle class individuals? How would you implement such a large scale change on an enormous system - the united states. we have 50 states and 330 million people with diverse needs. Universal healthcare is like shoving 330 million people into an entirely centralized one-size fits all system."
You do realize that having universal healthcare provided by the government doesn't, in any way, make it illegal for private hospitals and insurers to continue operating their businesses, right? What it DOES do is provide a cheaper, easier alternative that makes these guys shiver in their boots which is why they have spent tens of billions of dollars on PR and lobbying alone in the past 3 decades to prevent it from happening. Nobody would be "shoving" anyone into anything. Think of it in terms of Medicare/Medicaid. Many older folks have some sort of private insurance as well as Medicare. You do realize that you can have both at the same time right? Like I was saying before, it's almost like you're already convinced that a basic single payer option can't work and/or that private insurance and for-profit hospital systems couldn't compete even while there is a perfect example of it right under our noses.
Not trying to be rude but I stopped after this question because it's so late at night and I am on a crummy laptop that makes typing long responses difficult.
"How can you input universal healthcare without crushing the 100 million people on private healthcare?"
By what logic does having universal BASIC healthcare crush anyone who's paying for private BASIC healthcare? It doesn't. It crushes the insurance industry and private hospital corporations' bottom line and shareholder value. I'll get back to the rest of your post tomorrow, but in the mean time I really would like to hear the logic behind how something that would provide healthcare to every taxpayer/worker and remove the burden of providing that healthcare from small, medium and large businesses - including the red tape, constant changes and negotiations and of course the cost, which is ALWAYS rising because.....majority shareholder returns.
Let's start with the fact that everyone already enjoys free healthcare in our current system:
"Everyone in America, including illegal aliens, can receive “free” healthcare from hospitals that take Medicare patients, which means just about all hospitals. This started in 1986 with EMTALA, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. With EMTALA, America has had universal healthcare for 29 years.
The problem with EMTALA is that there were no payment provisions; the feds didn’t provide any funding. What that necessitates is that hospitals must charge paying patients more in order to cover the costs of care for the non-paying patients. It’s called “cost-shifting.” "
Okay, so the issues are now that private citizens are paying for the healthcare of people who don't pay for insurance, whether they are citizens or not. So what would happen if the govt pays for it all - replaces the for profit insurance system, and decides to take over our healthcare system. So I took a look at Bernie's plan:
"In Sanders’ proposal, everyone who is a US resident, including undocumented immigrants, gets coverage. That would be a likely point of contention with this plan. There is a prohibition on traveling to the US for free medical care."
So his plan incentivizes illegal immigration in america, who already are incentivized to emigrate, and who hurt the american worker and the american poor economically. Also, it's illegal. Why is this in the bill? Does he care about the wealth gap? Or just about wasting taxpayer dollars? I don't understand. Also, they already receive free healthcare. ???????
"Medicare for All is meant to be an extremely egalitarian proposal in which everyone has access to any provider. That’s certainly not the current system in the US, in which there are extreme differences based on the quality of a patient’s insurance and wealth."
that's sweet, except this medicare for all plan would most likely end up eliminating the differences between providers re quality so this is meaningless over time.
"This is the nationalization of an industry in an unprecedented way. It’s important to note here that about one-third of the American seniors who currently get Medicare get it through private Medicare Advantage plans offered by health insurance companies. Those plans would go away." - just a small inconvenience. It's okay, they'll thank Bernie for the lower quality of care they'll receive, the longer wait times, and their higher taxes.
" he gives states the ability to set their own standards under Medicare for All as long as they are not less generous than the federal system." sweet of him also. What if state budgets can't afford it? It doesn't matter. And they won't be able to afford it . the system WOULD collapse.
"While providers would have protections under the plan, they would also have responsibilities. And it is an either-or scenario. Either they enroll as a Medicare for All provider or they go outside the system." forcing providers into a one size fits all system is great for improving health in general, i'm sure.
"This would be a massive new federal bureaucracy, replacing, by some estimates, 2 million US insurance and health industry jobs. Setting up, enforcing and evolving a health care system for about 320 million people and transitioning more than 200 million from a private system to a public one would be a gargantuan undertaking. Sanders’ proposal imagines a regional administration system that would coordinate individual states and filter up to the HHS secretary, who would be in charge of setting policies. An official ombudsman would collect and hear grievances." centralizing the care of hundreds of millions of diverse americans with different health needs, not to mention to ones giving the care. what could go wrong?
"When the federal government takes over trillions of dollars in spending, there is a real danger of waste, fraud and abuse" gee.
"By replacing the entire health insurance industry, the government could displace 2 million workers, according to some estimates. Some of those would find jobs in the new government systems. Others could be eligible for up to five years of temporary assistance." obsessed with this new plan. As long as I rely on the govt for everything, I'll be fine. This is worth it?
It's not worth it. Every american and non american is entitled to free healthcare already. It's unconstitutional, it raises prices for the average american, but they have it. Because America is that nice. every american providing healthcare is entitled to a measure of autonomy in giving the care, and how much money they'll make. This plan would strangle hospitals and doctors providing care, would dramatically lower the standard of care, higher the wait time...Hospitals in this plan would have no incentive to treat patients outside the standards put to them by the state. This would be a disaster. We're sick enough as it is. This would lower the quality of what everyone's getting, and for what? It makes absolutely no sense.
and it would cost TRILLIONS. we're already drowning in debt. Yes, defund the military industrial complex. 1000% and then use that money to pay off our debt. not more government interference in our lives. LESS. why would we put our health in the hands our incompetent politicians? they got us into costly and wasteful wars and lied about it for years. you trust these guys? or are you waiting for the right group of guys to come around to overhaul an enormous system, with enormous repercussions. its not gonna happen. Our healthcare system isn't perfect but it's far from broken. this would break it.
I can't understand the allure of government control.
Some say that having universal healthcare would lower costs because other (smaller with a more uniform population) countries do it, and the government would be free to set prices because theyd just cut out the insurance company and the drug companies. That's it. So, that's what you're basing this on. The efficiency of our government.
The only question we should be asking is how do we lower the cost of spending on healthcare in our govt? And we do have to tackle the insurance and drug industries, to lower the cost for everyone in the long run so more people can afford and enjoy private insurance, and this would definitely improve gov spending habits re healthcare. maybe repeal the ACA...idk. Something like that. Trump's already taken steps in lowering drug prices (the exorbitant prices a result of other countries relying on the nationalization of healthcare who also rely on america for all their drugs ironically...they can't afford to make their own. america innovates and pays the cost.) That made the drug companies big mad. I'd say that'd raise costs for people on private insurances, but might lower costs across the board, especially on govt spending. It's a slice of nationalization, but far more targeted, and not likely to work thanks to big pharma. If they'd lower costs on their own, or raise the price with other nations, we'd be better off. But naw.
I was a registered democrat in 2016, but didn't vote for Clinton, didn't vote for Trump. Didn't vote. People who supported Trump were indifferent to my decision, which was not true of those who supported Clinton. I live In New York and it is a very pro-democratic state, but the rage that was directed at me, by a brother, a friend, a cousin, all Clinton supporters, caused a significant rift in our relationships. Never spoke to my cousin again after his abusive tantrum, and he died in 2018. I have a marginal relationship with my brother and the friend is someone to whom I no longer speak even though we knew each other from Junior High. She was incredibly abusive, and what do they all have in common is they watch CNN, MSNBC and read the NYT. I don't because I know all three are highly biased and at the time basically depended on news sites on the net, many of which during the Trump years lost their independence and shifted to the dems side and view of things. My only take on my experience is that not only do the news sites mentioned take sides, but engender divisiveness and hate, a powerful weapon they use to control people. Now with a democratic win they'll be more dependent on lies.
Of course not, they have closed the door on that, Biden won. Even if there was substantial evidence it wouldn't be accepted. You can see their mark on Facebook. Biden, is their savior, saved them from the devil himself. Their comments sometimes make them sound like religious zealots.
There's a reason Trump and Trump-friendly Republican pollsters and influencers called his base "the silent majority" before the 2016 election. That wasn't so much the case in 2020, but in 2016 Trump was viewed as a joke by Hillary and the DNC, hence they and their friendly media organs colluded to ensure that Hillary got the Democratic nomination and Trump was nominated by the Republicans. They "knew" that Hillary would win easily over Trump. For that reason, it was to be expected that people who planned to vote for Trump in 2016 not only didn't respond, but also lied to pollsters and mostly kept quiet. Again, not so much the case in 2020 by which time Trump's supporters had become the very loud (slight) minority and those who planned to hold their nose and vote for Biden mainly kept quiet and out of sight. Trump voters were still not responding, not being included and in many cases lying to pollsters again, which I believe contributed to the polls once again missing the mark badly in terms of Biden's projected margin of victory.
All of that said, we'll see if your prediction holds that MSM will be more dependent on lies to keep the divisiveness going now that a democrat administration is in power. I haven't decided whether I believe that the corporate center and erstwhile "left" leaning media like the ones you mentioned find times of domestic tranquility or domestic unrest more profitable. My argument at this point is that they probably have models for both, so it doesn't really matter anymore. They've always told lies, whether a Republican (Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, Trump) or Democrat (Carter, Clinton, Obama) were in the White House, so I don't think the "divisiveness" angle is as shallow as your prediction would seem to make it. Orange Man Bad was definitely great for business no matter how you slice it, so maybe you're in fact right - they have learned that hate and disgust are as profitable or moreso than relative calm, but I have a hard time imagining what they're going to come up with to make that happen in terms of NEW lies that haven't already spanned every administration I named.
Last thing, and to clear up my stance on this - You say the NYT, MSNBC, NPR, CNN, etc. are biased, which is true - they are biased toward the hawkish, pro-Wall Street center of the Democratic Party (but they're cool with a Bush/Cheney administration and their wars too, actually), so it will be interesting to see how that bias plays out under Biden/Harris barring any major societal upheavals, (false flag?) terror attacks domestically, or new foreign wars with boots on the ground.
Hatred in the cause of righteousness burns with the heat of a thousand suns. Progressivism is the new religion on the block, and the Woke are born again. Such is the irony of evangelical atheism.
Well, during the Trump years I've heard a great deal of hate from so called progressives, and it's interesting that only a few seem to be able to write an article about Trump's policies without initially attacking him with childish assaults, then proceed in the full belief their articles will be perceived by their audience as non-biased. With a background in science this is indeed odd to me.
I'm sorry you were subjected to such hate and abuse. I hope you see the illiberal left and the Democratic Party through which it exerts its power clearly for what it is now, though. It is no longer a place for those who value freedom of thought (or freedom of much anything else, for that matter).
I subscribe to the NYT, still. It's good to know what is consumed en masse. It does feed its audience, the way I feed my dog. You like bacon? Here's more bacon. Wow, the dog really loves this bacon. Let's give it more. Always more. Pretty soon, if you don't get bacon, you get pretty darn angry.
Glenn: the above link is to a letter written by four Democrat Senators--Robert Menendez, Mazie K. Hirono, Gary C. Peters and Amy Klobuchar--asking YouTube to eliminate "misinformation" from its website. And using rationale that would make Orwell blush, they're asking YouTube to do so because some videos posted on the site "seek to undermine our democracy and cast doubt on the legitimacy of President-elect Biden’s incoming administration.”
In short, anything that doesn't accrue to the progressive agenda is “misinformation” and must be removed. If you’re OK with that, you’re either brain dead, a totalitarian--or one of four United States Democrat Party Senators.
People are learning as more of the Biden team is announced that they voted for corporate lobbyists and tech donors running agencies that will have an negative impact on their life. The NY Times, PBS, CNN, and MSNBC will hype these people as serious, experienced, and almost benevolent replacements to the prior regime. The WH Press Corps will return to cheerleading the Biden team even more than they did Obama, after all they had much more to do with the victory. They need real journalists to be shut down to keep the power they believe they deserve. The opposite will happen, alternative sites and new media will scrap away the audiences they do have. Legacy media will be a shell of itself by the next election.
The irony (a favorite dish of mine) is that Trump rescued these corporate newsmongers from bankruptcy, not by giving them taxpayer's monies as Obama had mooted, but by giving them something to rail against. His defeat will be their death.
They'll go back to writing lies about what a great success the president is, and everyone will stop paying attention to them again, and they will go bankrupt again. Either get handouts from the same president they've been publicly fellating, or they'll all become the personal blogs of the billionaires (as was already underway).
Everybody knew that before the election, and they don't care. What they voted against was the ultimate evil of Trump's boorish behavior. That's how shallow Biden voters who aren't outright neocons are. The legacy media will not be destroyed. They will just become more of an echo chamber as the disaffected more to alternative sources. What we will see is rabid attempts to suppress and discredit those other sources. Distopia, here we come!
Unfortunately, I doubt that overwhelming majority of those who voted for Biden are capable of learning anything at all that isn't "fact-checked" by the usual suspects. They're always happy to buy a pig in a poke (as long as the purchase is made with other peoples' money, that is).
In the "good old days" of Operation Mockingbird one needed to keep track of the journalists and fake journalists who were shills for the CIA. The secret held at the absolute highest levels of organizations, most especially the NYT. On the bright side, at least we simply know what news organizations to dismiss in their entirety.
Mr. Greenwald, thank you for being a beacon of truth.
I wonder if folks recruiting for that program- or whatever superseded it- just get lists of journalism students from colleges or something creepy to recruit.
Much of this acceptance of suppressing thought appears to be due to the view that certain differences of opinion are illogical, divisive, and potentially dangerous. I thought it interesting that Obama spent his time during the Colbert interview this week to weigh in on that subject.
“You couldn’t make up some of the stuff that you’re seeing,” Obama said. “And it is to the detriment of the country, but it also runs contrary to what would have been smart politics if the Republicans wanted to maintain the White House.”
“And that in some ways is more troubling because now it’s no longer even strategic,” he continued. “You’re drinking your own Kool-Aid in a way that I think is troublesome. And one of the big challenges that Joe Biden is going to have is to figure out how to puncture that information bubble that, not just Republican officials, but a sizable portion of voters are in right now.”
At a certain point (and this seems true of both Team Red and Team Blue) the belief that your opponent is no longer loyal opposition but dangerous opposition becomes a justification for the suppression of ideas. The real danger is that suppression of ideas historically leads to other forms of suppression. The talk of prosecuting Trump or blacklisting supporters being an example.
Obama sure has used this election cycle to promote himself lecture us all, hasn't he? I am so sick of this egomaniac. “You’re drinking your own Kool-Aid in a way that I think is troublesome." I'm sure he does not include MSNBC, NYT, CNN or NPR viewers and listeners in this.
Hey, Obama. You have been a willing participant in and creator of the kind of disinformation you are lecturing us all about. Take your smug certainty and just retire already. What a gas-lighting gasbag.
Brilliant comment. They expect and demand a docile population. The U.S. political elites give lip service to the Constitution, but in actuality see it as a major impediment to implement the levels of control they desire.
"How dare the peasants drink their own Kool-Aid! They're only supposed to drink OUR Kool-Aid." The smug arrogance exuded by Obama is astounding. It is even worse when he presumes to speak for establishment Republicans (which he does quite effectively here, funnily enough).
Not to worry, though. Good 'Ol Working Class Joe Biden has called for unity. Compliance is mandatory. Salvation is at hand.
The "calmer and nicer" narrative is also flooding social media right now, where public figures are keen to add a return to "decency" with the Biden administration. Besides what you so excellently bring to light in this article, I think it's necessary to dig deeper into why - beyond the top-down control and ownership of the news organizations - we have seen and are seeing such massive bias among media operatives (the term "journalists" seems completely inappropriate). For example, what ties and loyalties do they have to other private and public entities? If it didn't seem so utterly hopeless in the current environment, one would have wished for the establishment of professional standards and ethical vetting of those who, through their positions in the media, have the power to influence public opinion. But I doubt that actual journalism can make a comeback in the mainstream as long as the influence of postmodern theories and relativism are so pervasive. If everything is relative and everyone is entitled to their own version of the truth, this invalidates the very foundation and basic premise of journalism - the relentless and unconditional pursuit of the truth.
Oh, but not everyone is entitled to their own version of the truth. Only the Right People. Our return to "decency" requires careful curating of the Truth by the Right People.
One of the mortal dangers to DNC and security state is any exposing of the Russia-gate hoax -- the "gate-keepers" of corporate media and surveillance state must at all cost prevent that.
Clapper, Brennan & Hayden trio were among former 50 intelligence officials stating that Hunter-laptop is classical “Russian disinformation”.
- They were also key promoters of the three-year Russia-gate hoax.
- They were also key intelligence executives in Obama/Biden/Hillary government – the government which hunted Snowden (forcing Bolivian plane with Bolivia’s president to land to search it) and armed Al Qaeda (including “white helmets” hoax) and staged all chemical attacks in Syria to remove its government.
Trump’s utter incompetence in handling Covid-19 created the human and economic catastrophe that will be called - Trump-virus; he brought into government religious extremism and racism.
It is 1000% certain that the Russia-gate hoax and Ukraine-impeachment “entertainment” was concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors, i.e., the imperial War party
What an "utterly" stupid statement - "Trump’s utter incompetence in handling Covid-19 created the human and economic catastrophe that will be called - Trump-virus; he brought into government religious extremism and racism." I can only assume you are joking in which case - apologies. NONE of that statement is supported by any facts or rational analysis that would give it any credibility. If sincere, It is an NPC statement by someone who thinks they're way smarter and objective than they are.
Free speech is only guaranteed to those who own an internet platform. The tech overlords may currently appear to be favoring the Democrats, but people should have faith (especially as artificial intelligence tools for controlling speech become more sophisticated) that they will place their finger on the other side of the scale when necessary to restore balance. High-tech feudalism should be given a proper chance to demonstrate its effectiveness in producing productive and compliant citizens.
Thanks! I just ordered my internet platform on Amazon. It should arrive by 8 pm tomorrow at the latest. I promise to use my thumb only for good, never for evil.
I completely agree that there is a significant push to suppress some of the misinformation that is being spread by small media outlets, there are a few I have come across in which I (sadly) agree should be removed from circulation. I am conservative, but I also see some of the things that my family shares on FB and I am shocked by the obvious spin. That being said, I subscribe to the NYTs and WaPo and their bias is equally obvious.
To me, it seems like we are a nation full of people that lack critical thinking skills. We need to have lessons taught on how to detect bias in word choices, in political leanings, and in the lack of alternative perspectives in articles. We do not get to tell tech that they do not get to control us, but then turn around and try to control media. So to me, educating the population on critical thinking and the ability to find bias in reporting is our only reasonable solution.
If the general population were capable of critical thinking, it would be evident by now. I think we have reached the point where absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
Presumably the high tech overlords, who by their accumulation of enormous wealth have demonstrated their capacity for critical thinking, can do the thinking for us. They will digest the truth from the swamp of dubious claims and then regurgitate it for the general citizenry. We should be thanking them for their beneficence rather than complaining about the suppression of free speech.
When you have at least 40% of the population believing that Trump is a fascist, and another 40%+ believing that Biden is a far left liberal, it is obvious that the population can be convinced of *anything* with a little help from the corporate-controlled mainstream media.
While I very well agree that there are lapses in critical thinking skills, I prefer to stay hopeful. There are many intelligent (and many not so intelligent) people that surprisingly do not seem to be able to read things objectively. I do not recall being taught that skill in school. I am naturally cynical, so I taught myself. I am hopeful that if we attempted to teach that skill, it would at least reduce the amount of blind trust in the media.
I tried to teach myself critical thinking, but my conclusions were often at odds with the approved consensus. I finally gave up since it was frustrating and unproductive.
For those, like me, who don't want to waste time with critical thinking, just make sure that you are getting your news from the same sources as your friends and coworkers.
Google has for some time, been complicit in suppressing the free speech rights of Chinese citizens, as a price for massive profit from operating in that market. How can this not lead to this practice being seen by Google management as "normal"? The developments highlighted by Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald (open calls for censorship by NYT, Google, etc), are (shockingly), not seen by these companies as anything out of the ordinary.
A compliant citizenship, with no free speech rights, and massive surveillance - the Chinese model - is exactly what the oligarchy would like to bring about in the US.
The sales pitch given before allowing decades of massive trade deficits, was that free trade with China would lead to more free speech within China.
It doesn't take too much cynicism to suspect that the goal of oligarchs all along, was to make the US more like China. And if that is not possible in the short term, then that might be made much easier, if one were to weaken the US economically, ship critical industries overseas, make citizens less prosperous, less financially secure - and thus easier to turn against one another.
The resulting demonization of each other, has the power to make citizens more willing - even eager - to suppress the free speech of the "other".
Here is one example of the partisanship of the New York Times: In 2016, when Mike Pence was named as the Vice Presidential choice by Donald Trump, the NY Times put a 3-inch single-column article about it at the bottom right side of the front page, with no picture on the front page. In 2020, when Kamala Harris was named as the Vice Presidential choice by Joe Biden, the NY Times covered the entire top half of the front page with the announcement, including a large picture.
That's about 3 square inches for the Republican, and at least 100 square inches for the Democrat.
The irony here is that it has been left-leaning and anti-war sites which have long been the canary in the censorship coal mine. Matt Taibbi talks with the editor of the World Wide Socialist Website about how Google and other platforms have censored them, CommonDreams, Alternet, and other leftist/anti-war publications recently here: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-andre-damon
But the fact of the matter is, the mainstream media is owned by, controlled by and pushes the interest of the corporate America, Pentagon and private finance establishment "center" - which skews ever so slightly right - especially on financial and foreign/military policy; definitely not "far left" as it is often portrayed in rightwing media/cyberspace.
Let that sink in - Yes, Alex Jones and some of the farther fringe righties have been de-platformed recently - and - the big tech firms have started de-prioritizing or hiding right-leaning content online recently, but this was the inevitable result of centrists (not to mention the right) not joining the left in decrying the censorship and de-platforming that was happening to leftist and anti-war publications (like Yellow Times https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0020831/) and personalities (Phil Donahue - first man I can think of to be de-platformed for political reasons) in the early 2000s while right and far right publications were mostly left alone, in part to expose some of them to sunlight.
That's my recollection of the "recent" past, anyway. Here's another's recollection of the previous long and sordid history of the censorship of American leftist/labor/anti-war movements and publications, which is in fact a major reason that the right can get away with calling politicians like Obama and Joe Biden "radical leftists". https://thetexasorator.com/2019/10/18/censorship-of-the-left-a-history/
"But the fact of the matter is, the mainstream media is owned by, controlled by and pushes the interest of the corporate America, Pentagon and private finance establishment "center" - which skews ever so slightly right - especially on financial and foreign/military policy; definitely not "far left" as it is often portrayed in rightwing media/cyberspace."
True. It might have been worthy of note in Greenwald's piece that by skewing so heavily in favor of Democrats, all of NPR, CNN and the NYT are not skewing LEFT. Those outlets detest progressives -- the Sanders and "The Squad" contingent, and those still more left -- at least as much, if not more than, they do Trump and/or the GOP.
As the Matt Taibbi article you link to shows, Google has long been disappearing leftwing outlets. The left has suffered more and earlier censorship than has the Trump right. (Greenwald has essentially observed all of this before.)
Never mind that nobody has tried to refute what I wrote. GG has a bunch of new righty, Trump, Q fans that really have no idea how badly the left has been destroyed and in how many ways or for how long in the not-so-distant past.
You have articulated the historical long-view admirably. A sufficient number of data points being necessary to determine if there is a statistically meaningful trend; one must first divorce themselves from the low-hanging fruit that is tribal affiliation and learn to look at the evidence in an unbiased and critical manner. Well done.
"That's my recollection of the "recent" past, anyway."
Mine too. Leading up to the millennium, the worry that y2k would herald a technological apocalypse with airplanes crashing covered up a far more sinister reality. The Project for a New American Century (PNAC), aka a blueprint for eternal warfare, came to fruition when its architects got Bush/Cheney installed. The rest, as they say, is history.
I suspect San Francisco and Seattle will soon be vying for the contract to place "wrongthink fine" kiosks on their sidewalks, where neighbors or passersby can report others for their abusive actions. It will be called the KK, the Karen Kiosk, and will generate huge sums for the socialist governments of the cities that install them.
What's most frightening to me is that these guys really believe they are objective journalists.
Agreed. And this indicates that the problem runs so much deeper in the American mind and culture. Critical thinking, logical reasoning and analytical skills are severely lacking, even among those who supposedly received training and hold positions, some very high-ranking, in these fields.
I'm starting to think it's even worse than that...critical thinking, reasoning, and analyzing are not only lacking, but discouraged.
This LACK OF TRAINING is what passes as a college education these days. If you voice a differing opinion with your professor you will be down graded....or flunked. Better to study something science based where 2+2 still Equals 4.
I was removed from the applied music program of a college in my last semseter before transfer, because....I was paying for and studying with an non institutional guitarist, whom my institutional instructor was jealous of.
The department head asked me to suck it up and not cause trouble, since I was going to a better school the following semester, I did so very reluctantly.
American 'higher' learning institutions except in hard sciences have been committing egregious mental malpractice for decades.
They are threats to these people so, these people having public platforms affording them the ability to widely broadcast their own opinions, lend those opinions to degrading critical thinking, reasoning, analysis.
That too.
What is worse is that we have passed a critical point where enough of those supposed leaders who do possess such skills actively suppress them out of fear, thereby adding their weight to the wrong side of the freedom versus authoritarian scale. This is how democracy devolves into totalitarian oligarchy.
Who knows what they believe. I think it likely that the two political parties have set up a false narrative around fictionalized differences between themselves to distract from the fact that republicans and democrats alike are on the same team. (I don't really count Trump in this narrative because he is an outsider and too self-involved to help his party spin this narrative.) News media can choose to be a mouthpiece for either team but their message must remain on point.
I said that once we realized that there was not going to be a strong independent candidate this year. This year would have been the perfect time to bring in real political change via an independent.
Unfortunately that analogy is completely lost on me. All I know about the Globetrotters is that they occasionally helped Shaggy and Scooby solve mysteries. :-)
Your analogy is spot-on. D or R might as well be sports teams, fodder for the masses.
Yes! From cradle to grave, the institutional incentives are there for one to think and behave in a way that benefits the ruling coalition under the threat of indignity, humiliation, homelessness, poverty, etc. They're working as "top journalists" simply because they were "selected for" according to their ability to compartmentalize their thinking just enough.
It makes me think of the legal field: working for Big Law doesn't typically mean "I'm benefitting society," but it does mean your'e at the top of your field. Meanwhile, legal practice that might be more associated with "social good" doesn't pay as much and certainly doesn't imply high career status.
What is most frightening to me is that half the empire apparently agrees.
No they don't. They know exactly what they are, hyper-partisan democrats.
Yeah, but when I wonder why they're hyper-partisan democrats and then read their work, the certitude they have of their positions becomes glaringly obvious. They are as hard core true believers as any participant in the Spanish Inquisition (studied it in HS/College). I'll assume that the Cultural Revolution in China demonstrated a similar mind set. Check out Glenn's interviews w/ Krystal Ball & Nathan Robinson on YTube (if it's still there) Listening to Robinson's word salads is a remarkable example of the thought processes in real time of the certitude of the hyper-left. THEN watch Joe Rogan's interview w/Dan Crenshaw (just the first 30 mins or so) and you'll see the identical thought processes but w/ a different outcome.
The irony is that I subscribed to Robinson b/c of his appearances on Rising, but after seeing the video, it was easy peasy to let my subscription lapse.
Glenn makes a great point that if you are a "journalist" and 90%+ of your consumers identify towards a particular political affiliation, you will be sympathetic to their cause and actively cater towards them to keep them in favor. Perhaps more dangerous than these news outlets is the woke leftist mobs who attack on a dime anything that challenges their view. We started to see a bit of this on the right as they turned on Fox after the Wallace debate. The fact that Sen. Feinstein had to apologize for being civl to Sen. Graham after the ACB hearings highlights this. These outlets will never turn on their golden goose which makes any semblance of balanced news impossible.
What I really appreciate is how the left/liberal axis is always telling me about what new thing I need to be afraid of today, especially when they come up with the "solution" for me tomorrow.
Given all the things that were going to kill all of us during the last 20 years it is quite amazing that any of us are alive at all. Neo-nazis, far right extremists, plagues of frogs, bible belters, gun-clingers and various others in the basket of deplorables. And who could have guessed that the answer to all these problems would be to hand absolute silencing power to a group of unelected corporates themselves dominated by left/liberal sentiments? Wow, what a truly astounding coincidence!
But what I find supremely ironic is that the return of actual nazi legislation in Germany is completely elided. For example on November 18 of this year the German parliament voted in favour of changes to the Infection Protection Act (Infektionsschutzgesetz) which gives the government the power to issue any edicts it wants under the guise of protecting public health. This is a distinct echo of the similarly approved Enabling Act of 1933, which granted the government the authority to issue any edicts it wanted to remove the distress of the people.
I looked in the Washington Post, but ... crickets.
(Well, OK, there WAS one article at the War Post that referenced the act but it was about a protest against it and how the police soaked people with cold water in November in Berlin because they were afraid they would catch a flu otherwise. The tone of the article suggested approval of the government's enforcement rather than their authoritarian legislation and behaviour. So it didn't really meet my standard of "speaking truth to power", IYKWIM.)
Notice that the left never solves problems, they only increase them, like homelessness or crime. Their policies are designed to make the problems so bad that normies will submit to their real goals, a total restructuring of society/economy to serve their totalitarian goals. Goals that no one voted for, they were never advertised to their gullible constituents. It also allows them to keep enlarging the bureaucracy because "problems" always continue to "grow". It's bad enough on a state level but that's why they need the power on the federal level to impose on red states so that there is no place to escape to.
Having people living successfully and differently next door is not something any tyrant wants. Remember how the Soviets tried so hard to stop people watching West German television and listening to Western radio?
Highly reminiscent of all the russia-gating going on here now. Don't watch that, it's all bad and wrong! Watch this! Listen to me! You don't want to be thought of as crazy or backward or evil, do you?
It's quite fascinating how the advocates of diversity and inclusion are simultaneously the most vociferous and fanatical advocates of crowd-think and exclusion, eh?
Do you really think that the "unlected corporates" are "dominated by left/liberal sentiments"? That is just spin-nonsense in a world where the meaning of words has become so twisted by corporate and right-wing propaganda to have become meaningless.
Yes, I do.
Do I think they are sincere? Not for a femtosecond.
The woke dogmas of the left are a tactical convenience to the tech giants, the media, the academy, and all the other netherworld dancing toys of the would-be world rulers. Remember George Carlin?
"They don't give a fuck about you!"
Well, they don't care about muslims, refugees, trannies, women, the climate, whales, polar bears, or anyone else, either. All these sentiments are merely fig-leaves behind which they hide their naked ambitions.
Nonetheless, today it is (mostly) the right/conservatives that are suffering under this fake dogma, being demonised, silenced, de-platformed, banned, dis-employed, assaulted, and murdered. That is, I observe, already at a peak and is visibly reversing. As I have stated in previous comments, I expect it to swing back faster and farther to the right. There's nothing I relish in that prospect - it's merely the unavoidable consequence of pushing the pendulum to the left. There's not way to stop it now, it is already in motion.
This is what they want, to set the people to fighting each other. It has many advantages to them but the two major ones are, (1) they remain safe from the people's wrath, and (2) as the conflict escalates it increases the demands for the state to take more powers as "necessary" to establish order.
As Pitt the Younger observed:
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
It's not the woke utopia of the left they want to establish, nor is it the Stepford utopia of the right - it's simply and only the attainment of more power.
As the Oracle tells Neo:
"What do all men with power want? More power."
Or as Orwell warned us about revolutions:
“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
This is what is happening all across the West today. The seeds of revolution are sprouting all around, the violence is escalating, the polarities are strengthening while the centre weakens, and the inevitable result is a dictatorship "to restore law and order".
I'll give you one more prediction though: in our lifetimes I expect to see this dictatorship take on a religious aspect. We already see signs of it in the way that climate concerns have become a neo-religious fervor among many on the left, and an apostate Christianity is rising to oppose it on the right. But I expect it to be far more overt, far more militant, far more destructive of all that we now enjoy. In every age of empire religion has been seen as a unifying force of great utility to the emperor, and I do not expect our modern crop of "world leaders" to miss this trick. On the contrary, I expect it to be more aggressively dogmatic, more violently proselytizing, more savagely brutal, than ever before.
You used to take up a lot of time and space at Salon and UT before that. I think you're confusing the fact that there IS NO LEFT in the United States what has been RE-BRANDED as "left" largely by the right wing media/internet and "liberals" by the neoliberals and neoconservatives themselves. Even the most remotely legitimately leftist ideas and personalities are silenced or de-platformed WAY before Alex Jones or any of the righties like Milo and the rest claiming censorship. So without specifics, I'm going to assume you're falling victim to the same right leaning, always oligarch/war machine/fossil fuel friendly propaganda that so many on the right do these days. Are you an American, BTW?
There's both left and right in the USA. The problem is that both of those elements that have any power are fundamentally authoritarian. That's what binds Trump, Biden, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Nixon, et al, together, and always has. They believe in power and that victory legitimates all policies.
There's no power centre that is essentially liberal in the classic sense of defending the freedom and civil rights of the powerless against the constant encroachments of the powerful.
As for taking up time and space: yeah, I put a gun to your head and forced you to read my comment. Fucksake.
You're not an American, you don't understand what makes ANY American demographic "tick" and you're just throwing hot air out into cyberspace about it. Centre? This isn't England or New Zealand, mate. And no shit...ya don't say. There's no power center essentially LEFTIST (which your kind equates with liberal) that defends the freedom and civil rights of the powerless. Duh. But it would help a lot to understand your opinions if we knew what fucking country or part of the world you're dealing with cuz it ain't the fuckin' USA.
I'd like to add here that as a leftist I don't really feel represented by any of this. I understand anti-racism and so on, but as soon as it becomes cancelling people, that's the end of it for me. I'm ready to put the whole left-right thing aside, embrace open debate and stop trying to take chunks out of people I largely agree with. We have a shared enemy, many shared values and common cause.
You were asked: "Do you really think that the "unlected corporates" are "dominated by left/liberal sentiments"?"
To which you said yes. Period. And then you launched into some bullshit Morpheus Matrix Neo nonsense couched in the idea that even the messages provided by the inverted totalitarian AMERICAN corporate owners were intended to be 1) left leaning and 2) sincere.
God, what a moron.
Fuck off nobody
LOL. Were you trying to hurt my feelings, Mr. Nobody, by calling me a "nobody"? FOAD, emphasis on the D.
Neo-liberals are simply conservatives who fake compassion well.
True conservatives believe in free speech and small govt. You're thinking of Neo-cons, who are actually neo-libs, but with #war.
I have some bad news for you about neo-liberals. They also come with #war.
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/march-study-points-to-pervasive-mental-illness-among-white-american-liberals/
They may actually be Scottish
😆
If it's not Scottish, it's crap!
Neo-liberals are simply conservatives who fake compassion.
#FTFY.
Here's a red pill for all of you. What their policies will most likely lead to.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/11/24/boston-authorities-contemplate-private-property-confiscation-under-guise-of-covid-compliance/
what could possibly go wrong?
I stopped paying attention for a while because I felt so afraid when I did. Funny how that works to the benefit of the political class! Can't say I'm proud of that, but it is what it is.
It's perfectly normal. None of us want to accept that the social myths we grew up in are not only fake but diametrically opposed to the truth. Many of them are so common and so un-spoken that we're not even aware they exist unless something prompts us to serious search and examination and analysis.
But "we" in the West are not a shining city on a hill. We might have been, once, but we have not only abandoned those things that made us great, we (as a culture) are actively fighting them now.
Notable individuals (like our host here) notwithstanding, we are largely unwilling to even contemplate the possibility that our self-image is a self-serving delusion and the horrific reality, when even once glimpsed dimly afar off, tends to scare most of us back into the safety of our crowd-sourced madness.
All I can say is that, after 30 years of constant re-examination and re-evaluation, the improved clarity of vision is worth it.
It never stops though; none of us see ourselves as clearly as we see others. But self-deceit is also a never-ending process and in my experience it is both far more exhausting and far less rewarding.
So fight. Don't give in. There's still good out there
There's still good IN there, too.
You know the story of the two wolves and which one will win?
The one we feed.
I agree with all of this. As someone naturally from way over on the left, it's been profoundly depressing to see ranks of people I used to associate with completely drop the ball on opposing corporate power and supporting free speech at the critical moment. These concentrations of power that Glenn is now describing are entirely to blame. Breaking them down is now, surely, the most important goal for people in the US - and just as important the rest of us around the world who are also badly affected by it. The effort to build around has begun in earnest. But we still need to see much more legal action, against the censorship (which is only going to get worse, I assume, driving more and more people onto other platforms) and with aggressive antitrust actions.
I mean seriously - do you think that these corporate/Silly-cone Valley elites favor LEFTIST policies? LMFAO - universal health care? reducing wealth inequality? rights for American workers? ending the drug war and racialized policing/prison system? Environmental protections that actually mean something? You're confusing "liberal" and "left" - they are not the same. I don't GAF about ID politics. I'm a real leftist who understands that it is the left which has always been smashed down, killed, censored and destroyed in this country. Maybe if you were an American (or still lived here) you'd get that. Plus, please can the straw man bullshit about "bible belters" coming to kill us. That was never a thing. Just full of right wing tropes you are, and again, I bet you aren't even an American. Probably in New Zealand or something.
Have I not already answered that question?
Yeah, you don't give a fuck about identity politics but you want to know where I'm from and who I am and ...
You're about as leftist as Beria.
Just fuck off.
No, dipshit. I want to know if you are American living in the United States for the past 30 years or not. I DGAF "who" you are. Just whether any of your commentary on the U.S.A. has any grounding in the reality of, ya know, actually fucking living here. If that's too much for you, then kindly fuck off yourself.
Sure. I'll make you a deal: don't talk to me and I won't talk to you.
Fuck you if you can't even provide the most basic of identifying information. It's not like I'm trying to fucking doxx you moron. I just want to know if you're an American citizen living in the USA for all the bullshit you have to talk about the situation from what you're portraying as an expert's perception. Yeah, deal. Go fuck yourself and I'll ignore DF out of you from now on. Like I did at Salon and UT.
how do you reduce wealth inequality AND end the drug war, AND put up environmental protections? The last two contribute to the first. Are you in favor of the US reentering the paris climate accords? Why does universal health care help us more than what we have now? And what rights do you want american workers to have? I'm genuinely curious about "leftist" policies. They're always spoken about in very vague terms.
You say the left has been smashed down - well, maybe they've just changed, and you've been left behind. It has a lot of sexy slogans, and perhaps its been coopted by bad actors and grifters.
And, obviously, the corporate elites have no problem saying all the right things while at the same time contributing to the misery of our increasing wealth gap.
I'm not here to attack - I'm genuinely curious about the policies of the left. How does it work? What's the practical foreseen outcome?
The corporate elites don't just "say the right things." They DEFINE what is "right" and "wrong" through long-running, deeply entrenched propaganda programs that run through public school curricula, the mass media and American domestic and foreign policy. Occasionally the messaging is altered to fit the times, but the underlying goals of the programs are manifold and rock steady:
1) Convince American workers that the late stage capitalist economy we've got is the best system in the world.
2) Convince Americans in general that the foreign wars for resources or to pry open otherwise "socialist" economies for Western Private finance are "humanitarian" interventions so that "we" can give "them" the benefit of our economic system.
3) Keep the various strata of working and middle class people divided along cultural or religious or racial lines so that they don't wake up and unite to end the oligarch/private finance/corporate/military industrial complex stranglehold on our government.
The corporations that you say are "saying the right things" will do so no matter what the message happens to be, and depending on the target audience. There is nothing leftist about any of these corporate and corporate media PR campaigns - they have found a way to monetize division and will always stand for inverted totalitarian authoritarianism over collective bargaining, environmental rights, and most of all to protect their ill gotten billions from the unwashed masses. To do this, they have convinced "the right" that government (always) = BAD and the erstwhile "woke left" that it's more important to end racial inequalities than it is to empower workers of all types so that each faction within the working class has the wherewithal (money, influence, presence in the government) to actually address the racial and other grievances that legitimately do exist.
"To do this, they have convinced "the right" that government (always) = BAD and the erstwhile "woke left" that it's more important to end racial inequalities than it is to empower workers of all types so that each faction within the working class has the wherewithal (money, influence, presence in the government) to actually address the racial and other grievances that legitimately do exist" i agree to this. i think ultimately, the power comes from the people, communities, and how we treat each other. targeted govt safety nets, where there is a need. but limited govt. pls. we need each other, not govt.
Wow, you really don't seem to understand American history and you look like you're going out of your way to avoid the kinds of information you're accusing me of not having simply because you're apparently not aware of it. Frankly I don't have time to educate you on the history of the American pro-labor left, but I can always suggest a few articles or white papers.
How do you reduce wealth inequality? Too many ways to count. None of them vague in the least. Same thing with ending the Drug War and enacting protections for the working class against the corporate behemoths that dictate the self-serving laws to our "elected representatives".
What does universal health care help that the current system isn't helping? I'm sorry but are you even serious? Ask the tens of millions of working people who don't have health insurance and can't qualify for any of the major assistance programs. Ask the hundreds of thousands or lower and middle class who have filed for bankruptcy due to a serious health condition - or died.
On top of that, one might presume to think that in order to fund such a universal health care system, the (phony) money might have to come out of another 'program's' budget. Say the Drug War or "Defense" Department? That, and the fact that corporate profits would suffer, are why it will never happen. Because once the people realize how much they like universal health care, they'd never again vote against it.
How has the left been smashed down? Come on. Seriously pick up a history book. It's all related. From the brutal suppression of worker strikes since the 1830s (https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/history_of_labor_unions.html) to the "Red Scares" of Joseph McCarthy (and the Palmer Raids - https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/12/red-scare-industrial-workers-of-the-world-iww) to the Drug War (https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-shocking-and-sickening-story-behind-nixons-war-on-drugs-that-targeted-blacks-and-anti-war-activists/) to the outsized influence and coddling of giant fossil fuels companies (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516302828).
I mean really. If you can demonstrate some level of understanding of how all of those things have contributed to not only the crushing of the left in the USA, but also to the wealth inequality, mass incarceration, and the current state of the environment, we can start getting into these policy specifics that you seem to think don't exist.
You're right - i didn't know much about the history of the left. It's a rich one. But practically, how does that change the facts? How do the policies translate into reality?
These policies you're putting out are still extremely vague, and missing nuance. How can you input universal healthcare without crushing the 100 million people on private healthcare? How would that not raise taxes on millions of middle class individuals? How would you implement such a large scale change on an enormous system - the united states. we have 50 states and 330 million people with diverse needs. Universal healthcare is like shoving 330 million people into an entirely centralized one-size fits all system. If you look at the staterun systems we already have in place, they're a LOT worse in quality than what private companies have achieved. (Come to Brooklyn to find out why.) so why would you want to bring down the level of healthcare for everyone when targeted programs can do what you're saying, without the enormous cost and loss of quality? I'm sure what we have now isn't adequate to fulfill everyone's needs, but we don't live in a perfect world. That's an impossible goal. the more you aim to reach perfection the more it will elude you. And, if you want to reduce wealth inequality, look into the economics of universal health care. Would that contribute to or reduce wealth inequality? i know obamacare is hurting the middle class. there's good to it, but it's not helping to reduce wealth inequality. it's helped insurance companies tho. But it's not a total bust. But look at the pitfalls of medicareforall lite, before you go all in.
Also, let me remind you that what we have in America is far from capitalism. It's interventionism. Meaning, government intervention. Some have helped - like targeted social safety nets (to an extent, and the jury is really still out on whether its helped more than its hurt the poorest of americans) and most have hurt working class americans - like cronyism, bailing out the huge corporations. As well as the government shut downs which is killing the middle class and enriching the ultra rich. government regulations on businesses, which hurt small business but not corporations, which can afford to pick up and go to another country (china) with looser regulations. a higher set minimum wage is what really kills small businesses.
Globalism and open borders, which is not anti capitalist, have also destroyed the working class to a large extent, but if the government wanted to intervene, they should have done it here - mainly, stopping both, stop the bleeding of globalism, and work to bring back jobs to America. Well we can all thank the last 40 years for that, and a lot of other crap. Bush and Obama should have done something, not made it worse. Well, they made it worse.
Also, history really can show you how socialism (aka the end result of leftist policies aiming to weaponize the state to help the worker) plays out in real time. so go around and talk to people whose parents lived in those countries, or go look up the history of these countries. If you have, and you still believe in what you're doing, then kudos. But I just think if you're coming with the mindset of "lets radically change the way the state controls the economy" then the burden is on you to put forth the proof of why it works, and go through the complexities of where it might go, what might go wrong, and why it's still a defensible position to hold.
"There is nothing leftist about any of these corporate and corporate media PR campaigns" - oh, i agree with you. So why do they love to take up your campaign slogans? They just end up enriching themselves. So how does that work. It's almost like they're using you.
And fossil fuels have decreased wealth inequality in countries like india. They're actually a really cheap option, especially for struggling families. So what's the problem. You can fight climate change and you can fight wealth inequality, but i don't think you can do both. especially right now. climate change is a rich people's problem. It's hurt the most vulnerable population in the process. I'm all for conservation, and looking into practical solutions, and using the free market to switch to energy efficient alternatives, but i don't think anyone knows what they're doing in regards to climate change, but they're destroying real lives in the process. But again, it's progressive policies that the elite can get behind and use to say "look how great a person i am!" while destroying people's livelihoods in the process, while they themselves are absolutely not affected. And this has already happened.
How about we spend less on the "defense" of this country and more on the defense of its people and our health? Besides, the taxes issue has been brought up and shut down so many times, that all I can really say is you should look at Bernie Sanders' most recent platform regarding universal healthcare and then we can discuss just how much taxes on the "middle class" would go up (they won't, unless you define middle class as households making more than about $300K).
"How would that not raise taxes on millions of middle class individuals? How would you implement such a large scale change on an enormous system - the united states. we have 50 states and 330 million people with diverse needs. Universal healthcare is like shoving 330 million people into an entirely centralized one-size fits all system."
You do realize that having universal healthcare provided by the government doesn't, in any way, make it illegal for private hospitals and insurers to continue operating their businesses, right? What it DOES do is provide a cheaper, easier alternative that makes these guys shiver in their boots which is why they have spent tens of billions of dollars on PR and lobbying alone in the past 3 decades to prevent it from happening. Nobody would be "shoving" anyone into anything. Think of it in terms of Medicare/Medicaid. Many older folks have some sort of private insurance as well as Medicare. You do realize that you can have both at the same time right? Like I was saying before, it's almost like you're already convinced that a basic single payer option can't work and/or that private insurance and for-profit hospital systems couldn't compete even while there is a perfect example of it right under our noses.
Not trying to be rude but I stopped after this question because it's so late at night and I am on a crummy laptop that makes typing long responses difficult.
"How can you input universal healthcare without crushing the 100 million people on private healthcare?"
By what logic does having universal BASIC healthcare crush anyone who's paying for private BASIC healthcare? It doesn't. It crushes the insurance industry and private hospital corporations' bottom line and shareholder value. I'll get back to the rest of your post tomorrow, but in the mean time I really would like to hear the logic behind how something that would provide healthcare to every taxpayer/worker and remove the burden of providing that healthcare from small, medium and large businesses - including the red tape, constant changes and negotiations and of course the cost, which is ALWAYS rising because.....majority shareholder returns.
Let's start with the fact that everyone already enjoys free healthcare in our current system:
"Everyone in America, including illegal aliens, can receive “free” healthcare from hospitals that take Medicare patients, which means just about all hospitals. This started in 1986 with EMTALA, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. With EMTALA, America has had universal healthcare for 29 years.
The problem with EMTALA is that there were no payment provisions; the feds didn’t provide any funding. What that necessitates is that hospitals must charge paying patients more in order to cover the costs of care for the non-paying patients. It’s called “cost-shifting.” "
Okay, so the issues are now that private citizens are paying for the healthcare of people who don't pay for insurance, whether they are citizens or not. So what would happen if the govt pays for it all - replaces the for profit insurance system, and decides to take over our healthcare system. So I took a look at Bernie's plan:
"In Sanders’ proposal, everyone who is a US resident, including undocumented immigrants, gets coverage. That would be a likely point of contention with this plan. There is a prohibition on traveling to the US for free medical care."
So his plan incentivizes illegal immigration in america, who already are incentivized to emigrate, and who hurt the american worker and the american poor economically. Also, it's illegal. Why is this in the bill? Does he care about the wealth gap? Or just about wasting taxpayer dollars? I don't understand. Also, they already receive free healthcare. ???????
"Medicare for All is meant to be an extremely egalitarian proposal in which everyone has access to any provider. That’s certainly not the current system in the US, in which there are extreme differences based on the quality of a patient’s insurance and wealth."
that's sweet, except this medicare for all plan would most likely end up eliminating the differences between providers re quality so this is meaningless over time.
"This is the nationalization of an industry in an unprecedented way. It’s important to note here that about one-third of the American seniors who currently get Medicare get it through private Medicare Advantage plans offered by health insurance companies. Those plans would go away." - just a small inconvenience. It's okay, they'll thank Bernie for the lower quality of care they'll receive, the longer wait times, and their higher taxes.
" he gives states the ability to set their own standards under Medicare for All as long as they are not less generous than the federal system." sweet of him also. What if state budgets can't afford it? It doesn't matter. And they won't be able to afford it . the system WOULD collapse.
"While providers would have protections under the plan, they would also have responsibilities. And it is an either-or scenario. Either they enroll as a Medicare for All provider or they go outside the system." forcing providers into a one size fits all system is great for improving health in general, i'm sure.
"This would be a massive new federal bureaucracy, replacing, by some estimates, 2 million US insurance and health industry jobs. Setting up, enforcing and evolving a health care system for about 320 million people and transitioning more than 200 million from a private system to a public one would be a gargantuan undertaking. Sanders’ proposal imagines a regional administration system that would coordinate individual states and filter up to the HHS secretary, who would be in charge of setting policies. An official ombudsman would collect and hear grievances." centralizing the care of hundreds of millions of diverse americans with different health needs, not to mention to ones giving the care. what could go wrong?
"When the federal government takes over trillions of dollars in spending, there is a real danger of waste, fraud and abuse" gee.
"By replacing the entire health insurance industry, the government could displace 2 million workers, according to some estimates. Some of those would find jobs in the new government systems. Others could be eligible for up to five years of temporary assistance." obsessed with this new plan. As long as I rely on the govt for everything, I'll be fine. This is worth it?
It's not worth it. Every american and non american is entitled to free healthcare already. It's unconstitutional, it raises prices for the average american, but they have it. Because America is that nice. every american providing healthcare is entitled to a measure of autonomy in giving the care, and how much money they'll make. This plan would strangle hospitals and doctors providing care, would dramatically lower the standard of care, higher the wait time...Hospitals in this plan would have no incentive to treat patients outside the standards put to them by the state. This would be a disaster. We're sick enough as it is. This would lower the quality of what everyone's getting, and for what? It makes absolutely no sense.
and it would cost TRILLIONS. we're already drowning in debt. Yes, defund the military industrial complex. 1000% and then use that money to pay off our debt. not more government interference in our lives. LESS. why would we put our health in the hands our incompetent politicians? they got us into costly and wasteful wars and lied about it for years. you trust these guys? or are you waiting for the right group of guys to come around to overhaul an enormous system, with enormous repercussions. its not gonna happen. Our healthcare system isn't perfect but it's far from broken. this would break it.
I can't understand the allure of government control.
Some say that having universal healthcare would lower costs because other (smaller with a more uniform population) countries do it, and the government would be free to set prices because theyd just cut out the insurance company and the drug companies. That's it. So, that's what you're basing this on. The efficiency of our government.
The only question we should be asking is how do we lower the cost of spending on healthcare in our govt? And we do have to tackle the insurance and drug industries, to lower the cost for everyone in the long run so more people can afford and enjoy private insurance, and this would definitely improve gov spending habits re healthcare. maybe repeal the ACA...idk. Something like that. Trump's already taken steps in lowering drug prices (the exorbitant prices a result of other countries relying on the nationalization of healthcare who also rely on america for all their drugs ironically...they can't afford to make their own. america innovates and pays the cost.) That made the drug companies big mad. I'd say that'd raise costs for people on private insurances, but might lower costs across the board, especially on govt spending. It's a slice of nationalization, but far more targeted, and not likely to work thanks to big pharma. If they'd lower costs on their own, or raise the price with other nations, we'd be better off. But naw.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/03/politics/medicare-for-all-annotated/
I was a registered democrat in 2016, but didn't vote for Clinton, didn't vote for Trump. Didn't vote. People who supported Trump were indifferent to my decision, which was not true of those who supported Clinton. I live In New York and it is a very pro-democratic state, but the rage that was directed at me, by a brother, a friend, a cousin, all Clinton supporters, caused a significant rift in our relationships. Never spoke to my cousin again after his abusive tantrum, and he died in 2018. I have a marginal relationship with my brother and the friend is someone to whom I no longer speak even though we knew each other from Junior High. She was incredibly abusive, and what do they all have in common is they watch CNN, MSNBC and read the NYT. I don't because I know all three are highly biased and at the time basically depended on news sites on the net, many of which during the Trump years lost their independence and shifted to the dems side and view of things. My only take on my experience is that not only do the news sites mentioned take sides, but engender divisiveness and hate, a powerful weapon they use to control people. Now with a democratic win they'll be more dependent on lies.
And not one of them is covering the PA Legislature Election hearing currently going on which will be a game changer.
Of course not, they have closed the door on that, Biden won. Even if there was substantial evidence it wouldn't be accepted. You can see their mark on Facebook. Biden, is their savior, saved them from the devil himself. Their comments sometimes make them sound like religious zealots.
Have you read the complaint. 75 pages, but interesting.
No, and not sure what you mean.
Referring the various lawsuits filed by Sidney Powell, interesting reading https://defendingtherepublic.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Michigan-Complaint.pdf
Here is Georgia...easy to find and read. https://defendingtherepublic.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/COMPLAINT-CJ-PEARSON-V.-KEMP-11.25.2020.pdf
There's a reason Trump and Trump-friendly Republican pollsters and influencers called his base "the silent majority" before the 2016 election. That wasn't so much the case in 2020, but in 2016 Trump was viewed as a joke by Hillary and the DNC, hence they and their friendly media organs colluded to ensure that Hillary got the Democratic nomination and Trump was nominated by the Republicans. They "knew" that Hillary would win easily over Trump. For that reason, it was to be expected that people who planned to vote for Trump in 2016 not only didn't respond, but also lied to pollsters and mostly kept quiet. Again, not so much the case in 2020 by which time Trump's supporters had become the very loud (slight) minority and those who planned to hold their nose and vote for Biden mainly kept quiet and out of sight. Trump voters were still not responding, not being included and in many cases lying to pollsters again, which I believe contributed to the polls once again missing the mark badly in terms of Biden's projected margin of victory.
All of that said, we'll see if your prediction holds that MSM will be more dependent on lies to keep the divisiveness going now that a democrat administration is in power. I haven't decided whether I believe that the corporate center and erstwhile "left" leaning media like the ones you mentioned find times of domestic tranquility or domestic unrest more profitable. My argument at this point is that they probably have models for both, so it doesn't really matter anymore. They've always told lies, whether a Republican (Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, Trump) or Democrat (Carter, Clinton, Obama) were in the White House, so I don't think the "divisiveness" angle is as shallow as your prediction would seem to make it. Orange Man Bad was definitely great for business no matter how you slice it, so maybe you're in fact right - they have learned that hate and disgust are as profitable or moreso than relative calm, but I have a hard time imagining what they're going to come up with to make that happen in terms of NEW lies that haven't already spanned every administration I named.
Last thing, and to clear up my stance on this - You say the NYT, MSNBC, NPR, CNN, etc. are biased, which is true - they are biased toward the hawkish, pro-Wall Street center of the Democratic Party (but they're cool with a Bush/Cheney administration and their wars too, actually), so it will be interesting to see how that bias plays out under Biden/Harris barring any major societal upheavals, (false flag?) terror attacks domestically, or new foreign wars with boots on the ground.
No one hates like a progressive. Its just true.
Hatred in the cause of righteousness burns with the heat of a thousand suns. Progressivism is the new religion on the block, and the Woke are born again. Such is the irony of evangelical atheism.
Well, during the Trump years I've heard a great deal of hate from so called progressives, and it's interesting that only a few seem to be able to write an article about Trump's policies without initially attacking him with childish assaults, then proceed in the full belief their articles will be perceived by their audience as non-biased. With a background in science this is indeed odd to me.
I'm sorry you were subjected to such hate and abuse. I hope you see the illiberal left and the Democratic Party through which it exerts its power clearly for what it is now, though. It is no longer a place for those who value freedom of thought (or freedom of much anything else, for that matter).
Thank you I appreciate that. Good term illierbal left. I'll use in referencing them.
Trust me you are better off. Group think is a dean end.
I don't really like putting labels on myself, since I would rather have the intellectual wiggle room to evaluate things for myself.
Agreed. There is so much granularity in most people, but it is difficult to manipulate that, so two sides is what the propagandists go for.
I subscribe to the NYT, still. It's good to know what is consumed en masse. It does feed its audience, the way I feed my dog. You like bacon? Here's more bacon. Wow, the dog really loves this bacon. Let's give it more. Always more. Pretty soon, if you don't get bacon, you get pretty darn angry.
https://www.menendez.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/YouTube%20Letter%20on%20Misinformation%2011242020%20APM%20DA.pdf
Glenn: the above link is to a letter written by four Democrat Senators--Robert Menendez, Mazie K. Hirono, Gary C. Peters and Amy Klobuchar--asking YouTube to eliminate "misinformation" from its website. And using rationale that would make Orwell blush, they're asking YouTube to do so because some videos posted on the site "seek to undermine our democracy and cast doubt on the legitimacy of President-elect Biden’s incoming administration.”
In short, anything that doesn't accrue to the progressive agenda is “misinformation” and must be removed. If you’re OK with that, you’re either brain dead, a totalitarian--or one of four United States Democrat Party Senators.
Intellectual pygmies, all, especially Mazie Hirono. I've yet to hear anything fall out of her perpetually open mouth that isn't astoundingly stupid.
True. It's just bewildering how such a dim bulb was elected to the Senate.
Central American Dictator guidebook! ;-)
People are learning as more of the Biden team is announced that they voted for corporate lobbyists and tech donors running agencies that will have an negative impact on their life. The NY Times, PBS, CNN, and MSNBC will hype these people as serious, experienced, and almost benevolent replacements to the prior regime. The WH Press Corps will return to cheerleading the Biden team even more than they did Obama, after all they had much more to do with the victory. They need real journalists to be shut down to keep the power they believe they deserve. The opposite will happen, alternative sites and new media will scrap away the audiences they do have. Legacy media will be a shell of itself by the next election.
The irony (a favorite dish of mine) is that Trump rescued these corporate newsmongers from bankruptcy, not by giving them taxpayer's monies as Obama had mooted, but by giving them something to rail against. His defeat will be their death.
More irony will be when all the reporters that complain about opinions they do not agree with being published will be looking for jobs.
What will the media write about? Assuming of course that Biden ascends. The fat lady is warming up, but she isn't singing yet.
They'll go back to writing lies about what a great success the president is, and everyone will stop paying attention to them again, and they will go bankrupt again. Either get handouts from the same president they've been publicly fellating, or they'll all become the personal blogs of the billionaires (as was already underway).
Everybody knew that before the election, and they don't care. What they voted against was the ultimate evil of Trump's boorish behavior. That's how shallow Biden voters who aren't outright neocons are. The legacy media will not be destroyed. They will just become more of an echo chamber as the disaffected more to alternative sources. What we will see is rabid attempts to suppress and discredit those other sources. Distopia, here we come!
Unfortunately, I doubt that overwhelming majority of those who voted for Biden are capable of learning anything at all that isn't "fact-checked" by the usual suspects. They're always happy to buy a pig in a poke (as long as the purchase is made with other peoples' money, that is).
One can hope. It is certainly true for me.
In the "good old days" of Operation Mockingbird one needed to keep track of the journalists and fake journalists who were shills for the CIA. The secret held at the absolute highest levels of organizations, most especially the NYT. On the bright side, at least we simply know what news organizations to dismiss in their entirety.
Mr. Greenwald, thank you for being a beacon of truth.
I’m convinced that Betsy Reed is a participant.
I wonder if folks recruiting for that program- or whatever superseded it- just get lists of journalism students from colleges or something creepy to recruit.
Much of this acceptance of suppressing thought appears to be due to the view that certain differences of opinion are illogical, divisive, and potentially dangerous. I thought it interesting that Obama spent his time during the Colbert interview this week to weigh in on that subject.
“You couldn’t make up some of the stuff that you’re seeing,” Obama said. “And it is to the detriment of the country, but it also runs contrary to what would have been smart politics if the Republicans wanted to maintain the White House.”
“And that in some ways is more troubling because now it’s no longer even strategic,” he continued. “You’re drinking your own Kool-Aid in a way that I think is troublesome. And one of the big challenges that Joe Biden is going to have is to figure out how to puncture that information bubble that, not just Republican officials, but a sizable portion of voters are in right now.”
At a certain point (and this seems true of both Team Red and Team Blue) the belief that your opponent is no longer loyal opposition but dangerous opposition becomes a justification for the suppression of ideas. The real danger is that suppression of ideas historically leads to other forms of suppression. The talk of prosecuting Trump or blacklisting supporters being an example.
How ironic that Obama used the phrase "drinking your own Kool-Aid after having taken a sip of water in Flint and telling people that it was safe.
Obama sure has used this election cycle to promote himself lecture us all, hasn't he? I am so sick of this egomaniac. “You’re drinking your own Kool-Aid in a way that I think is troublesome." I'm sure he does not include MSNBC, NYT, CNN or NPR viewers and listeners in this.
Hey, Obama. You have been a willing participant in and creator of the kind of disinformation you are lecturing us all about. Take your smug certainty and just retire already. What a gas-lighting gasbag.
Brilliant comment. They expect and demand a docile population. The U.S. political elites give lip service to the Constitution, but in actuality see it as a major impediment to implement the levels of control they desire.
See the Chris Hedges postscript / corollary: https://scheerpost.com/2020/11/23/chris-hedges-the-ruling-elites-war-on-truth/
You couldn't make up some of the stuff that Obama did.
"How dare the peasants drink their own Kool-Aid! They're only supposed to drink OUR Kool-Aid." The smug arrogance exuded by Obama is astounding. It is even worse when he presumes to speak for establishment Republicans (which he does quite effectively here, funnily enough).
Not to worry, though. Good 'Ol Working Class Joe Biden has called for unity. Compliance is mandatory. Salvation is at hand.
"You couldn't make up some of the stuff that you're seeing..." you mean something like this? https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/pee-tape-trump-mueller-report-823755/
The "calmer and nicer" narrative is also flooding social media right now, where public figures are keen to add a return to "decency" with the Biden administration. Besides what you so excellently bring to light in this article, I think it's necessary to dig deeper into why - beyond the top-down control and ownership of the news organizations - we have seen and are seeing such massive bias among media operatives (the term "journalists" seems completely inappropriate). For example, what ties and loyalties do they have to other private and public entities? If it didn't seem so utterly hopeless in the current environment, one would have wished for the establishment of professional standards and ethical vetting of those who, through their positions in the media, have the power to influence public opinion. But I doubt that actual journalism can make a comeback in the mainstream as long as the influence of postmodern theories and relativism are so pervasive. If everything is relative and everyone is entitled to their own version of the truth, this invalidates the very foundation and basic premise of journalism - the relentless and unconditional pursuit of the truth.
Oh, but not everyone is entitled to their own version of the truth. Only the Right People. Our return to "decency" requires careful curating of the Truth by the Right People.
Decency and Biden in the same sentence. Seeing this a lot from the good liberals. Disinformation itself.
One of the mortal dangers to DNC and security state is any exposing of the Russia-gate hoax -- the "gate-keepers" of corporate media and surveillance state must at all cost prevent that.
Clapper, Brennan & Hayden trio were among former 50 intelligence officials stating that Hunter-laptop is classical “Russian disinformation”.
- They were also key promoters of the three-year Russia-gate hoax.
- They were also key intelligence executives in Obama/Biden/Hillary government – the government which hunted Snowden (forcing Bolivian plane with Bolivia’s president to land to search it) and armed Al Qaeda (including “white helmets” hoax) and staged all chemical attacks in Syria to remove its government.
Trump’s utter incompetence in handling Covid-19 created the human and economic catastrophe that will be called - Trump-virus; he brought into government religious extremism and racism.
It is 1000% certain that the Russia-gate hoax and Ukraine-impeachment “entertainment” was concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors, i.e., the imperial War party
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/were-in-a-permanent-coup
What an "utterly" stupid statement - "Trump’s utter incompetence in handling Covid-19 created the human and economic catastrophe that will be called - Trump-virus; he brought into government religious extremism and racism." I can only assume you are joking in which case - apologies. NONE of that statement is supported by any facts or rational analysis that would give it any credibility. If sincere, It is an NPC statement by someone who thinks they're way smarter and objective than they are.
Free speech is only guaranteed to those who own an internet platform. The tech overlords may currently appear to be favoring the Democrats, but people should have faith (especially as artificial intelligence tools for controlling speech become more sophisticated) that they will place their finger on the other side of the scale when necessary to restore balance. High-tech feudalism should be given a proper chance to demonstrate its effectiveness in producing productive and compliant citizens.
It is not that simple. VERY few people own an internet platform. An example: The Conservative Tree House is a respectable site (https://theconservativetreehouse.com/) that mainly presents videos of speeches and press conferences, with the transcripts often added when available. They are conservative but not very much so. Recently their platform, WordPress.com/Automattic, told them that they must leave by early December. They will have to spend a huge effort to transfer 10 years of posts, including 7 million comments, to a new platform. https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/11/24/update-treehouse-2-0-migrating-site-after-deplatforming-by-wordpress-automattic-2/ and https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/11/15/the-treehouse-is-deplatformed/
Thanks! I just ordered my internet platform on Amazon. It should arrive by 8 pm tomorrow at the latest. I promise to use my thumb only for good, never for evil.
I completely agree that there is a significant push to suppress some of the misinformation that is being spread by small media outlets, there are a few I have come across in which I (sadly) agree should be removed from circulation. I am conservative, but I also see some of the things that my family shares on FB and I am shocked by the obvious spin. That being said, I subscribe to the NYTs and WaPo and their bias is equally obvious.
To me, it seems like we are a nation full of people that lack critical thinking skills. We need to have lessons taught on how to detect bias in word choices, in political leanings, and in the lack of alternative perspectives in articles. We do not get to tell tech that they do not get to control us, but then turn around and try to control media. So to me, educating the population on critical thinking and the ability to find bias in reporting is our only reasonable solution.
If the general population were capable of critical thinking, it would be evident by now. I think we have reached the point where absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
Presumably the high tech overlords, who by their accumulation of enormous wealth have demonstrated their capacity for critical thinking, can do the thinking for us. They will digest the truth from the swamp of dubious claims and then regurgitate it for the general citizenry. We should be thanking them for their beneficence rather than complaining about the suppression of free speech.
When you have at least 40% of the population believing that Trump is a fascist, and another 40%+ believing that Biden is a far left liberal, it is obvious that the population can be convinced of *anything* with a little help from the corporate-controlled mainstream media.
While I very well agree that there are lapses in critical thinking skills, I prefer to stay hopeful. There are many intelligent (and many not so intelligent) people that surprisingly do not seem to be able to read things objectively. I do not recall being taught that skill in school. I am naturally cynical, so I taught myself. I am hopeful that if we attempted to teach that skill, it would at least reduce the amount of blind trust in the media.
I tried to teach myself critical thinking, but my conclusions were often at odds with the approved consensus. I finally gave up since it was frustrating and unproductive.
For those, like me, who don't want to waste time with critical thinking, just make sure that you are getting your news from the same sources as your friends and coworkers.
And what a wizard's beard on that Jack Dorsey! Only a very wise man could cultivate such a specimen. I trust him without reservation.
😆
It’s almost like people need priests to arbitrate the truth. A power like that needs to be regulated by the gods. 😀
Google has for some time, been complicit in suppressing the free speech rights of Chinese citizens, as a price for massive profit from operating in that market. How can this not lead to this practice being seen by Google management as "normal"? The developments highlighted by Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald (open calls for censorship by NYT, Google, etc), are (shockingly), not seen by these companies as anything out of the ordinary.
A compliant citizenship, with no free speech rights, and massive surveillance - the Chinese model - is exactly what the oligarchy would like to bring about in the US.
The sales pitch given before allowing decades of massive trade deficits, was that free trade with China would lead to more free speech within China.
It doesn't take too much cynicism to suspect that the goal of oligarchs all along, was to make the US more like China. And if that is not possible in the short term, then that might be made much easier, if one were to weaken the US economically, ship critical industries overseas, make citizens less prosperous, less financially secure - and thus easier to turn against one another.
The resulting demonization of each other, has the power to make citizens more willing - even eager - to suppress the free speech of the "other".
Here is one example of the partisanship of the New York Times: In 2016, when Mike Pence was named as the Vice Presidential choice by Donald Trump, the NY Times put a 3-inch single-column article about it at the bottom right side of the front page, with no picture on the front page. In 2020, when Kamala Harris was named as the Vice Presidential choice by Joe Biden, the NY Times covered the entire top half of the front page with the announcement, including a large picture.
That's about 3 square inches for the Republican, and at least 100 square inches for the Democrat.
The irony here is that it has been left-leaning and anti-war sites which have long been the canary in the censorship coal mine. Matt Taibbi talks with the editor of the World Wide Socialist Website about how Google and other platforms have censored them, CommonDreams, Alternet, and other leftist/anti-war publications recently here: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-andre-damon
But the fact of the matter is, the mainstream media is owned by, controlled by and pushes the interest of the corporate America, Pentagon and private finance establishment "center" - which skews ever so slightly right - especially on financial and foreign/military policy; definitely not "far left" as it is often portrayed in rightwing media/cyberspace.
Let that sink in - Yes, Alex Jones and some of the farther fringe righties have been de-platformed recently - and - the big tech firms have started de-prioritizing or hiding right-leaning content online recently, but this was the inevitable result of centrists (not to mention the right) not joining the left in decrying the censorship and de-platforming that was happening to leftist and anti-war publications (like Yellow Times https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0020831/) and personalities (Phil Donahue - first man I can think of to be de-platformed for political reasons) in the early 2000s while right and far right publications were mostly left alone, in part to expose some of them to sunlight.
That's my recollection of the "recent" past, anyway. Here's another's recollection of the previous long and sordid history of the censorship of American leftist/labor/anti-war movements and publications, which is in fact a major reason that the right can get away with calling politicians like Obama and Joe Biden "radical leftists". https://thetexasorator.com/2019/10/18/censorship-of-the-left-a-history/
"But the fact of the matter is, the mainstream media is owned by, controlled by and pushes the interest of the corporate America, Pentagon and private finance establishment "center" - which skews ever so slightly right - especially on financial and foreign/military policy; definitely not "far left" as it is often portrayed in rightwing media/cyberspace."
True. It might have been worthy of note in Greenwald's piece that by skewing so heavily in favor of Democrats, all of NPR, CNN and the NYT are not skewing LEFT. Those outlets detest progressives -- the Sanders and "The Squad" contingent, and those still more left -- at least as much, if not more than, they do Trump and/or the GOP.
As the Matt Taibbi article you link to shows, Google has long been disappearing leftwing outlets. The left has suffered more and earlier censorship than has the Trump right. (Greenwald has essentially observed all of this before.)
Never mind that nobody has tried to refute what I wrote. GG has a bunch of new righty, Trump, Q fans that really have no idea how badly the left has been destroyed and in how many ways or for how long in the not-so-distant past.
You have articulated the historical long-view admirably. A sufficient number of data points being necessary to determine if there is a statistically meaningful trend; one must first divorce themselves from the low-hanging fruit that is tribal affiliation and learn to look at the evidence in an unbiased and critical manner. Well done.
"That's my recollection of the "recent" past, anyway."
Mine too. Leading up to the millennium, the worry that y2k would herald a technological apocalypse with airplanes crashing covered up a far more sinister reality. The Project for a New American Century (PNAC), aka a blueprint for eternal warfare, came to fruition when its architects got Bush/Cheney installed. The rest, as they say, is history.
I suspect San Francisco and Seattle will soon be vying for the contract to place "wrongthink fine" kiosks on their sidewalks, where neighbors or passersby can report others for their abusive actions. It will be called the KK, the Karen Kiosk, and will generate huge sums for the socialist governments of the cities that install them.
Like this? https://www.dhs.gov/see-something-say-something
What's your problem, man? Don't you want to Be Safe?
Why do you hate Safety?!!!
😆👍
Yikes! So now all that's missing are the Demolition Man-style kiosks on the sidewalk!
Pardon Ed Snowden!
What a Dr. Strangelove level troll of the Establishment that would be if Trump was to leave that as a parting gift on his way out! I hope he does it.