Eager to obtain vindication for the pre-election falsehood they spread about the Hunter Biden story, journalists falsely claim that the CIA blamed Russia for it.
I heard this sloppily reported "story" on NPR this morning, and wondered how long it would take to be debunked . . . Ha! Less than 12 hours! I believe that's a record.
Conservative Media usually catches these lies immediately and they usually get it from a non media conservative source, AKA, conspiracy theorist on Twatter. But so much effort has been put into discrediting these patriots that the story immediately devolves into a fight between Left/Right media personalities while the actually true story is ignored or obliquely mentioned. I have seen this exact scenario play out dozens of times.
Another (very frigging) impressive chronicling of a large amount of information on the media deception occurring.
No doubt the timing (late October near the election) exposed many alleged “standards” or ethical standards of journalism to be complete and utter BS. Half of the country was willing to lie or promote lies or be complicit in lies to change an election outcome. And willing to censor anyone and anything.
They were going to steal the election regardless. They even told us they were going to do it. No honest reporting on a Biden scandal could ever compete with literal truck loads of Biden only ballots delivered in the dead of the night in the swing states.
Intuitively speaking, one would have to be a zombie to not expect that what your saying about the ballots is probably true to some extent or some variation. Clearly this was going to be a DNC victory come hell or high water. Personally I suspect the CIA was involved in the whole capitol riot BS, although I obviously concede I have no direct evidence. I have a fair amount of objectivity because I didn’t especially like DJT or his policies.
Yet court after court basically concluded there was no evidence of what you are asserting. Are you just surmising this (like myself) or do you believe there is direct evidence?
That’s not what the courts said. No court ever heard any evidence. SCOTUS couldn’t even grow the balls to hear such important cases. If you have a moment, read Justice Clarence Thomas dissent on SCOTUS refusing to hear the Pennsylvania case from couple weeks ago. He covers it very well.
Courts magically always discover “no standing” whenever they don’t want to take a case. Absolute cowards and a menace to society.
This is why trump supporters were and are rightfully outraged- no court even gave them the respect to hear out the evidence. Why would anyone trust such a court system?
I’m not disputing that, since I did not follow it closely. But are you saying they never reached the point of looking at evidence? Because the suits lacked standing?
Unless I am mistaken they did hear evidence and concluded it was circumstantial or insufficient to conclude it had a material effect on the election.
Lack of standing, or no jurisdiction or no "material effect"... Sort like ignoring evidence of fraud because the election is over, which is kind of like ignoring a murder because the victim is already dead.
This is false information, and an astoundingly bad analogy. From one of Trump's appointees - "“Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy,” wrote Judge Stephanos Bibas, who was appointed to the court by Mr. Trump. “Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
Does that sound like "ignoring the results because an election is over"? Gtfo with that dishonest BS. I wish he won too, but you can wish in one hand and shit in the other, and neither one changes the reality that Trump didn't lose because of voter fraud. Media fraud, maybe.
I continue to come back to the original question- where is the evidence?
Sworn affidavits of what? I mean you could have 10,000 sworn affidavits and they could be truthful but that in and of itself doesn’t mean anything.
I still have yet to see a single shred of actual evidence. One would think if it was that compelling, those filing the various suits would have by now made it publicly available.
There was a great deal of evidence available; evidence means nothing until it is examined and cross-examined. Then it can become proof. Most claims of "no evidence" really are claims of "no proof," which is correct. It cannot become roof until examined, and none has been permitted to be examined. The fix was in long ago, and there is nothing we can do about it.
New info today from JusttheNews. The site is run by a legit, decorated, journo, John Solomon. He simply is on the "wrong side" nowadays with his mildly right-biased viewpoint. Like Sharyl Attkisson, his reporting is legit and sources are trustworthy, he just has the traditional normal slight bias of topic selection and outlook, comparable to what the MSM had for decades before they went off the rails.
Yes, that's generally right. For example, Maricopa County (AZ) simply fought the AZ State Senate's attempt to subpoena their computer equipment for inspection. By the time the Senate could have gotten access to actually take a look, according to our election rules the state would have to certify the results.
All of it basically takes the form of Bush-Gore 2000: we can't figure it out in a fair way in time, so let's just stop where we are.
Just so the misinformation doesn't continue to spread, I'll repost for you what I posted in response to the OP elsewhere, from one of his own links - "judges, lawyers, and other observers described the suits as "frivolous"[4] and "without merit".
Trump's own judicial appointments said things like - “Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
I voted for Trump twice btw. Don't fall for the partisan hype like OP and others did.
What the fuck does it matter if someone "described" something as frivolous? You can describe shit to someone however you want. Im sure Harvey Weinstein described his accusers as "full of shit" that didn't make it so.
I never voted for Trump, and care more about fair elections than any candidate. And you're whitewashing it too much. For example, in Wisconsin, the SC vote was 4-3 with four GOP-appointed judges and three Dem-appointed. The one GOP judge who voted against, ending the case, explicitly said that there might be a case on the merits, but it would have had to have been brought in Oct 2020 before the election. He explicitly decided at least a major part of the case (regarding allowing late ballots I think) on laches (not acting soon enough), not merits. Plus see the links I sent below about where status of many cases is.
I watched at least 40 hours of different state election fraud hearings from which not one single sworn affidavit(don’t know the proper noun for that) from a poll worker alleging fraud has been charged with perjury. Real ballot audits have been fought tooth and nail in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan. Judges are beginning to allow real audits to take place and judges are finally starting to admit election process changes were unlawful although little is to nothing is being done as it relates to the 202 election.
More will be coming out slowly and will continue to be ignored by the MSM. It happened. The Time story admitted how they did it. It will happen again. Democrats are passing laws making every election fraud tactic they used legal going forward.
Both sides stretch the law to help their side. The Democrat ballot harvesting is no more "fraud" than the republican gerrymandering. There were no ballot dumps of all Biden ballots. Perjury is incredibly common but trials are so incredibly rare as to be statistically non-existant. Saying no one has been tried for perjury is irrelevant.
You don’t think a politicized judicial system which has spent the last 5 years going after everyone remotely connected to Trump would have easily gone after one of the thousands of signed affidavits if they could prove they lied on the affidavit? C’mon dude. Signed affidavits are literal court admissible.
How do you "prove" someone lied when they say they saw ballots being double-counted? Or *say* they saw anything? It's not a question of provable facts, never has been. And no, I don't think they're going to convince an AG in East bumfuck, PA to go after every, or any, random pollwatcher grandma, as readily as they'll be able to deputize a minion in the DC swamp to go after Mannafort or Stone. Not even close.
Ballot tabulating machines that can print ballots in order to achieve a goal-seeked result. In the manual. America's elections are designed for corrupt outcomes.
What OP stated is straight out of the Voting machine manual which can be read on secretary of states websites. I researched this myself and read it.
And no, I am not a fan of mike lindell or Sidney Powell. I think Sidney made the situation worse by taking attention away from real cases and putting them on crazy theories.
Did a quick search, the actual wording is "expected results", and it's a test mode. Printed ballots are randomly generated (not programmable), then checked to confirm correct operation before voting even starts. USA Today is certainly biased but the check here seems pretty airtight - https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/3973030001
Your non-stop defense of fraud and of anything any Democrat ever did is getting old. The media fraud was real; the conspiracy was real, as Time magazine proudly boasted. Your argument that the people who benefited from all of it, and who refuse to allow any closer look at what happened, are without sin does not pass the laugh test.
Try reading the rest of the thread before you make an ass of yourself next time, Bill Heath. The post I was responding to is objectively, demonstrably false. but here you come in on your white horse to save the day to defend another half baked conspiracy theory. Mr "anti-fraud"! And you say I don't pass the laugh test? Break out a mirror, pal. Who do you think you're fooling?
Almost like in 2014 the party that was in power didn't care. What party had the President in 2014? Oh right the racist politician hanging out with anti-semite Louis Farrakhan.
Yes. As I wrote below it's very clearly referring to a test setting. It explicitly says the ballots are RANDOM, which is useless for controlling an outcome. The manual wording is "expected" results, not "goal seeking" or whatever. As in, the machine generates random ballots, stores the results in internal memory, counts the ballots it just printed, and compares the results against the stored, "expected" results to ensure internal integrity.
I mean, just on the face of it, you really think if they were goin to make the machines able to control the outcome of an election, they'd write it in the manual? C'mon my man...
I posted a similar comment today at Taibbi’s piece today, but will repeat the point here.
I think it’s near or maybe past time honest journalists like Greenwald, Taibbi and the handful of others (across the political spectrum) who still do look for evidence and cite to it in their reporting, stop paying attention to and analyzing the lies of the liars in the mainstream media and on Twitter and Facebook.
In a perverse way, highlighting their lies and how they cover for each other seems to be feeding the beast, when starving it might well be more effective at building the spaces and audiences for the truth tellers.
There is a massive audience that completely tunes out the liars, and (as part of that audience) I’d like to hear less about the liars, and more about the substantive things that coverage of the liars is stealing attention from.
I guess I just think the people who want to believe the lies will continue to believe them no matter how many times the lies are pointed out to them, and the rest of us already know the liars lie, ignore them as much as we can, seek out truth-tellers, and want to move past the liars and let them rot in their own disgusting juices in their echo chambers of irrelevancy together.
Plus I think it would be super-funny if Taibbi, Greenwald, and the handful of others more or less simultaneously announced that they’re done with media-liar-coverage and actually stopped following the liars antics on social media and in the pages of the WaPo and New York Times and HuffPost and the Atlantic and so on.
Maybe I’m totally wrong, but I think the people who care about the inbred liberal media types and their circle-jerks of lies are a tiny minority, and a very large majority is hungry for whatever is not that.
I can empathize with your position, but I happen to disagree. I think it's extremely important for writers like Greenwald, Taibbi, Tracey and outlets like FAIR.org to catalog and ridicule the lies and false narratives of the corporate media. I simply has to be done. The other thing is that OCCASIONALLY there is good journalism from SOME of those outlets - The Atlantic (despite the neocon in charge) has put out some decent stuff over the last decade (along with other not-so-decent stuff).
This stuff has to be on record and available for future readers to reference when explaining to friends and family why the corporate establishment media cannot be trusted, and that it's co-opted by MIC, corporate, and bankster interests and spooks.
"Catalog the lies" of Corp Media, YES. it would be great to have access to an Exel Spreadsheet documenting ALL LIES, by Journalist, Media Outlet, Date, Link to Lie, Link to Info demonstrating it is a lie. Unfortunately those same people who tweet and retreat TWO SENTENCES worth of false info., are NOT gonna take the time nor will they have the interest to read a well thought out, well investigated piece of journalism as in Greenwald and others' articles. Sad but true
I wondered about that rose thing today too, seeing it for the first time. It either indicates I’m a paying subscriber and the date I subscribed, or that I have my own SubStack, both of which are true.
I was thinking something similar the other day. Maybe ignoring them and not saying their names will decrease the incentive to lie like many suggest doing with serial killers(that comparison is applicable).
But then I thought - someone with integrity and credibility has to chronicle our nation’s collapse so GG is one of the only ones qualified to do that job.
I do also wonder what scandals and stories they are spiking. Conservative media, at least the ones that can be trusted, catch a lot of them which is why so much effort is put into discrediting the Conservative media as an institution. I have read so much fake news over the least several years that I can catch what is misleading. But that talent took a lot of reading, cynicism and open mindedness which this content is explicitly meant to diminish. Apparently enough people are learning how to do this that the media has begun to tell us not to do that! That gives me hope.
The vast majority of the political and corporate class in this country has not yet been woken up to the falsehoods perpetrated by the mainstream media. Thus, while I often feel the same as you, I think it's vital that people like Greenwald and Taibbi continue documenting the evidence upholding traditional journalistic standards. That kind of reporting won't be outright dismissed quite as easily by those still hypnotized by mainstream media, and may occasionally break through. There should be more people documenting this clearly and carefully.
Also, crazy how nobody mentions the fact that the Biden laptop emails were authenticated using DKIM signatures.
My point is that’s the vast majority of that insider class will not change their minds, because they are in on the long con and benefitting from it.
Course correction will not come from that cohort. It will be up to the outsiders who currently ignore the propaganda machines and are ignored by the MSM but have very limited good alternative sources (Greenwald, Taibbi, etc.) with which to learn about each other and ideas that might have potential to make useful change.
Adding to the growing pile of evidence that the outsiders are correct in their contempt for the overlords is less helpful at moving things along, in my view, than putting the time now spent documenting the insiders’ MSM corruption than putting that time into documenting other things, about what the outsiders are doing to fight back or create alternatives , for example, that’s ignored by MSM.
Maybe the outsiders aren’t doing anything so there’s nothing to report and MSM ignorance of the lowly peasants is justifiable.
Or maybe the lowly peasants are more interested in secrecy for their resistance movements than growing by attracting new recruits, so they avoid talking to any media, alternative or MSM.
I don’t know. I just know more attention slathered on MSM assholes by really good reporters seems like a tragic waste of the reporters’ time and their readers’ time.
Maybe I just need to skip reading those pieces. But sometimes it seems like it takes up 25-30% of their time and energy, and it’s sad to think about what else that time and energy could be put into, and how those other things could be more effective toward changing things for the better.
I absolutely agree. Many have simply turn off news media altogether. Disgusted by falsehood and contradictions from liberal to conservative outlets, making it an endeavor to get to the truth. In Twitter, I follow some journalists with proven integrity. But being capable of impartial assessment is going out of style replaced by “I feel”.
Great comment, however I think this is a type of Renaissance moment, hopefully, and that a lot more people, sheeple, are starting to realize the level of control that these media conglomerates carry over them. I do agree and think that more substantive pieces will come out, however this is possibly the most important shift in modern journalism, also I do truly enjoy watching these MSM hacks getting dragged to the literary woodshed.
I understand where you are coming from, and sometimes get tired of another article dealing with the topic, but I certainly don’t want to follow these people yet do like to know what lies or just crappy reporting is being passed around and believed. As others have mentioned as well, these articles (or the information they contain) are good for sharing with others we can hope might open their eyes. While I trust Glenn on these issues, depending on the topic, I’m still going to try to verify or get another view - but these articles help speed that process up a lot.
How anyone, after the lies of Iraq, including liberals can believe the reportage emanating from the corpress courtier media is beyond me. They're simply manufacturing and catering to narratives now. When MSNBC fired Phil Donahue and the NYT let Judith Miller get away with lie after government-spoon-fed lie about WMDs, I wrote off the establishment press/media for good.
At this point all of corporate media has adopted the Fox News model: Censor or ignore stories harmful to The Party and repeat convenient lies often enough to firmly cement them into the viewer/reader's mind.
The New York Times has long been derided as the Langley Times because no matter who's President, they're going to be publishing things that excuse or glorify US military interventions and/or sanctions and/or coup attempts in countries whose democratically elected leaders aren't opening up their markets and resources quickly enough for the kleptocrat/oligarch class that controls most major media outlets. The targets are invariably leftist reformist administrations or leaders of secular, reasonably well-to-do majority Islamic countries like Syria and Libya and Iraq (all of whom owe/owed much of their misery to decades of American sanctions and sabotage).
The NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, Fox and everyone else all agree on two things:
1) Aggressive US foreign policy aimed at toppling leaders of countries with things the oligarch class want.
2) Tacitly defending the surveillance state here at home by distracting the public with stories about China or North Korea.
When it comes to foreign policy reporting, literally every single one of those outlets exists to explain to their audiences the righteousness of the MIC and surveillance state and to run cover for their excesses.
We’ll take a bar’s license, fine the living shit out of them and possibly convict the bartender and owner to prison time for simply letting a drunk person drive off and cause a wreck.
Why don’t we treat the liars in the media the same? If they lie and cause wrecks; in our economy, our psychology, our national security, our elections, etc... Shouldn’t they lose their media license doing this shit repeatedly? Shouldn’t they be fined?
The only time you see people getting fired from the media is when they refuse to lie for them or to spread their lies. Glenn is a great example in fact though I think he quit with his dignity intact.
So many times Trump said stuff that seemed to go to be outrageous or inappropriate, then slowly as time ticks by it made more sense. The media that deliberately misleads the people IS the enemy of the people.
democrats love using women, blacks and browns, trans as pawns by placing them at strategical positions to make any criticism of their policies sexist, racist, misogynist, transphobic etc. Speak against bombing Middle East? That’s racist against the black dept of defence secretary. Want $2000? Don’t want Wall Street to get richer? That’s sexist and misogynist against the first woman treasury secretary. Speak against the covid policies? That’s transphobe against the trans health secretary. It’s actually quite genius and evil politics.
That the Intercept was part of suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story is painful for me. I had such high hopes that it would take the WikiLeaks work even further. But now it's a Deep State fakes factory, like much else of the Western MSM. I thought at one point they should stop calling themselves the Intercept, as governments here in the West have nothing to fear from them intercepting anything. Then I realized that the name still applies, as now they help Intercept truthful information about government actions from the public, who needs to know what these officials are doing now more than ever. Epic Fail.
But also The Intercept still has all the Snowden documents IIRC and have gone quiet on releasing any more of them to the public. I forget what Glenn Greenwald's stated position on this is, but along with the Reality Winner burn, the adoption of the Syrian regime change party line, the censorship of Biden coverage, and of course Risen's constant moaning about Russia, I have enough reasons not to click there anymore.
I don't go there. I don't seek out information from places I know I can't trust. They could be telling some great truth in a great article but they've lied so much how could I know? I only go to information providers that I identify as at least trying to get things right and tell the truth.
Yeah, I don't go there unless someone sends a link or a casual search for news brings up one of the articles there NOT written by James Risen. Some of the local level reporting they do is interesting, such as the story about the lady who got surrounded by about 100 law enforcement officers with guns drawn in Austin, TX because of some sticker she had on her car or something. Otherwise I stay away. Been burned too many times.
The problem with The Intercept is that they still have some great journalists who still do great work. With all the editorial problems caution is advised, but guys like Fang and Scahill, and a few others, still do vital journalism.
I can't remember the last time I saw a Scahill article, especially like his old series on the dirty wars. All he does is the Intercepted podcast now, and I only know that because sometimes we listen to it in the car on road trips.
But don't you miss the articles about Peter Handke? Every two weeks - like a clockwork - there was another hilarious outrage cry how Peter (a "Milosevic apologist") got a Literature Nobel Prize! It was so entertaining, better that even the Onion :-)
Certainly not a popular view here, but I think there are still a lot of excellent journo's over at The Intercept: Ryan Grimm, Liliana Segura, Natasha Lennard, Lee Fang and others. I generally steer clear of any political reporting, but they continue to do great work on criminal reform, the surveillance state and corporate corruption that is barely covered by other outlets. Loosing Mr. Greenwald was a great loss, but there are other great journo's over there as well.
The problem isn't the quality of the journalists it's the editorial shackles now placed upon them. If bosses can violate the working agreement on editorial independence of a founding member what are they not allowing the remaining journalists to cover? Corporate corruption is only part of the story and is a branch of a rotten tree, the heart of which is centered on American violations of International Law, the bombings and overthrow of governments that Washington doesn't like and the control of information and mythical narratives which are aided by journalistic malpractice in hiding the details of who is doing what to whom.
I agree editorial bias is a risk, but so is journalistic bias and bias comes in many forms. I'm not certain having an editor make a bad call in one area means they will make a bad call on every topic.
The editor became a thing in journalism because it never hurts to have someone objective check your work. Sometimes editors make bad calls, or make decisions based on things we don't see. Some editors are terrible and should be doing something else.
Editorial review is not just top down, but can also be lateral. I have tremendous respect for Mr. Greewald. After his departure from The Intercept a journalist I enjoy reading complimented Mr. Greenwald and thanked him for bringing her to The Intercept, but also pointed out that he once asked her to kill a story on behalf of Betsy Reed. I don't know what the story was so cannot comment if it was a good or bad call, but people make editorial decisions for a host of reasons both good and bad and it's very domain dependent. An editor is capable of making excellent decisions on say criminal justice, or environmental coverage, but terrible decisions on their political coverage.
The corporate stuff is more nuanced and difficult to call, but if you have not read The Intercept's coverage on the Dakota Pipeline's and how it affects Indigenous people it's worth reading. You may agree or disagree with their coverage, but I don't sense corporate, or editorial bias in their reporting. They cover a series of corporate corruption stories where I feel they are credible, but I am always open to someone pointing out specifics on where they got it wrong and I should not trust them.
A format like Substack presents it's own challenge. Here we need to assume the writer is either excellent at detecting their own bias, or has an editor for their work we don't see. Either way, no one is above scrutiny. Not even a journalist I respect as much as Mr. Greewald.
Nobody would suggest that Glenn or others on Substack don't have biases or make errors... the difference between these independents and the others is the fact that they let the facts interpret the story, not the story interpret the facts. It is obvious by now that much of the media only tells the story it believes its audience wants to hear, and frames it in a way that doesn't always include factual evidence.
The reporting on the Rub-n-Tug Murders in Atlanta, for instance. There is not one shred of evidence that the women killed in Atlanta were targeted out of Anti-Asian/White Supremacist hate... but that hasn't stopped NYT and WaPo from "flooding the zone" with exactly that narrative.
The fact that the Intercept is looking at the Dakota pipeline from the viewpoint of the "oppressed" tribes, rather than the cost/benefit analysis of many factors (union jobs, local economics, climate change tradeoffs - pipeline v. tanker) doesn't impress me. There are always multiple variables in decision making. If our leaders aren't looking big picture, it is the responsibility of the press to make sure that the people understand this.
I agree that no one is above scrutiny. I believe that Glenn Greenwald has said that his readers should hold him to the same standards as they would hold any journalist, which is admirable.
Related to your point about the reliability of reporting in different fields, I think the New York Times is a case in point. They are clearly biased in favor of Democrats, and much of their "news" is propaganda (often propaganda by omission), but they also have some excellent investigative journalism and interesting articles on science, the arts, and other fields.
That's a great example. The New York Times does have some excellent investigative journalists, but I think we would agree that they days when a story had credibility simply because it was in the New York Times is long gone.
I do agree with you, and I think it's a shame that we cannot trust major newspapers to try to be accurate and fair in whatever stories they choose to report on.
actually, the "other" sections are even more woke than the op-ed page. Just try looking for last night's scores in the NCAA tournament... you'll more likely find articles about sexist weight rooms and unpaid labor issues.
I don't read about sports, so I can't comment on the NY Times' coverage of that topic. In the areas I mentioned, I don't think there's usually any particular political bias in evidence.
For the last 17 years I have run a small manufacturing company. I design the products and am largely responsible for their production and marketing. I guess I am fortunate that I never acquired a liberal arts degree (or any other degree), because when I have problems with my customers or my sales I make the effort to find out what is wrong and do what I can to rectify the issues. I certainly don't sit around blaming the industry in which I work.
I never had any student loans, either.
I guess I'm just privileged to have never spent much time in college, a rite of passage that seems to have completely fucked up the values of many of the elite one quarter of Americans who possess a degree. Or maybe it was something else . . .
America's colleges started being strongly infected with socialism during the period right after WWII. The infection became a systemic disease beginning with the anti-war movement of the 60's and 70's. Here's what happened:
“The threat of Hitler’s Germany drove the Frankfurt School (of Socialism) out of Europe and into the welcoming arms of America’s left-wing colleges. Most to all of the leading practitioners…and their Institute came to New York City, specifically to the campus of Columbia University, already a hotbed of communism.
Pleading the case for them at Columbia was John Dewey, founding father of American public education, progressive fool, and communist sympathizer. Thus, their primary area of operation would be the educational system — the schools, the universities, and particularly the teachers’ colleges. It was no coincidence that Columbia housed the nation’s top teachers’ college — a creation of John Dewey.
From there, the cultural Marxists spread their ideas to campuses nationwide. Their insane notions would sweep up the ’60s New Left, to which the likes of Herbert Marcuse became an ideological guru to the radicals who today are tenured at our universities.”
Excerpt from: The Ways of This World by Paul Kengor, Professor of Political Science at Grove City College in The American Spectator, May 4, 2018
The teenagers in college in the 1960's and 70's became the teachers of today's colleges and universities. That's what happened to America. A few little seeds were planted and they yielded a huge crop of weeks! See Jesus's comment on this all end up...Matthew 13:24-30.
Baby-boomer liberals are not socialists or communists. They vote for Democrats, who vehemently oppose universal health care, adamantly support predatory U.S. foreign policy, etc. They may have had "socialist" leanings in their youth, but the grew older and wealthier, and their viewpoint changed. Youthful enthusiasms often give way to a desire for comfort and security.
It depends on WHEN you'd have gone to college, liberal arts or not. I graduated college in 79, and law school in 82. NONE of the crap going on now was prevalent. There were a few kooks around who were ignored by almost everyone. Now they're running the asylum. Education then did what it was supposed to do. Provide you with a wealth of new ideas and experiences, and giving you the tools to think for yourself. I don't have kids, but I worry so much about my grand niece's and nephews, and the future they face.
Yes, the "liberal" class has for several decades been drifting further and further toward intolerance, closed-mindedness, and contempt for anyone who does not share their worldview in its entirety. It's been disturbing to witness. Perhaps younger generations are different, though in many ways they seem to be even more subject to authoritarian thinking.
No you are onto something. The universities are predominantly intellectual cess pools. It’s four years of collectivism indoctrination and venom-dripping-from the-mouth-hatred for anything remotely associated with someone like yourself being productive (how dare you) and independent of the collective (how dare you). Not to mention economic thinking *lower* than that of five year olds.
It’s in the business schools as well so it isn’t limited to liberal arts.
Is it their college degrees that's a problem, or the values they have adopted? I was in a small group discussing a certain topic, not important, and during a break 3 of us remained. The other 2 were doctors, and were bemoaning the fact they made a lot less money then their colleagues that were in private practice, and both felt like failures. Almost in unison they told me that I must really feel like a failure being a teacher, because I made so little money. No, I said, I taught kids biology and taught them to value the living world, etc, so no I didn't feel like a failure. I then said one would think they went into medicine to help people, and yet they are solely concerned about money, and in my book that makes them failures. Maybe some, maybe many, go into journalism and initially have high minded values, but things change. Ambition begins to drive them, and too often becomes their first priority, truth be damned.
Hey, now, I resent this mudslinging at holders of liberal arts degrees or other degrees. I've got two of them but haven't managed to become elite yet. It's never too late, however, to grease some elite palms palms at some elite institutions.
What does your going to college or not going have to do with Glenn's article on the prostitution of journalism? Maybe if you had a more well rounded education, you might have been able to make a comment in near proximity to the content of the article. Perhaps you should borrow some money and go back to school. Interest rates are rising, so perhaps you should lock in now.
Simply because it is clear to me the twisted values presented here and in many of Glenns's other articles about the American media (this is the context) are being learned in college. The lunacy Glenn describes on Substack has been visible for decades in academia, and we all laughed about it then. Once it moved off campus and became entrenched in newsrooms across the media it wasn't so funny any more, was it?
I've done very well for myself without having gone to school, thanks. Believe it or not, I absorbed many of the values that enabled and shaped my future success at a series of entry-level jobs when I was a teenager, a step I notice is these days avoided by the expensively-degreed elites. If I did want to go back to school (the only conceivable reason would be to get a credential to teach in my state), I wouldn't need to borrow any money.
In fact, I also learned a long time ago (outside of college) to avoid debt whenever possible. My reluctance to borrow was one reason I never got a student loan and so could not afford to continue college. I guess that preconception served me pretty well, too, in the end.
You protest too much. I am guessing we mostly agree, but your aversions to debt and education have nothing to do with the self-immolation of the media. Post-modernist critical theory in the late '50's and '60's gave rise to the idea that there are no facts, which federal student loan guarantees then whored out to the masses by enabling academia to hire ten incompetent administrators to every single competent professor (see how I am bringing this back around to your debt allergy, which I kind of agree with you on). We all need more education, not less.
Seems as though Trump was right: The election was rigged. Would Trump have won the election if this story had been properly reported? I don't know but it seems quite possible. Before everyone piles on, I am not a Republican or conservative, not a Trump supporter, and-why this is necessary- but, not a right-wing nationalist or white supremacist. (I am very sad that I feel the need to insert that last sentence.)
The crazy thing is immediately after the elections were over TIME puts out an article bragging about how they successfully rigged the elections - just like ‘delusional’ Trump said they were: “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election”. And people don’t see a problem with that? They call that democracy?!
Your characterization of the Time article doesn't seem accurate. The article, by Molly Ball (February 4, 2021, linked below), claims the following motivation for the conspiracy:
"The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted."
The author also writes: "They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it."
In the author's view, the conspiracy was not one that used illegal or unethical tactics for nefarious motives, but one that used legal and ethically justifiable methods.
Note that I'm not claiming that I share Ms. Ball's opinion, and I didn't read much of the article. I'm merely pointing out that it's not accurate to say that Time bragged about "rigging" the election in the usual sense of the phrase "to rig an election".
"They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it."
"Fortifying" is a propaganda term. Propaganda is the art and science of shaping perceptions. Language comprises the arsenal of propaganda. Words are weapons.
That’s just the part they are openly admitting to. What else much bigger stuff did they not admit to?
Also I will believe in Santa Claus before I believe Biden got 81 million real votes, 12 million more than Obama (hate the dude but he at least was popular).
I couldn’t agree more. No way this past election wasn’t rigged by the Democratic machine! They got surprised in 2016. It’s never going to happen again! Why bother to vote?!? Just get in line and take the crumbs you’re given.
My reply to Daniela Ferreira was specifically about her characterization of the claims made in the Time article, not a judgment of the attempts by Democrats (or Republicans) to influence the election. One might claim to have illegitimately influenced an election, or one might claim to have legitimately influenced an election, for what one believes is a noble cause. Those are two different kinds of claims. The Time article makes the second kind of claim (whether or not it's sincere or accurate), while the phrase "bragged about how they successfully rigged the election" implies the second kind of claim (in my opinion). That's what I was commenting on. Personally, it's clear to me that both major parties are willing to use illegitimate means to get their way.
Democrats accused Donald Trump of inciting violence when he told the people at a rally to go to the Capitol to peacefully protest. They claimed that he was being disingenuous and really meant that they should violently protest.
The claim that Molly Ball's article brags about "rigging" the election similarly ascribes hidden meaning to words that, on the face of it, contradict that claim.
I don't know whether Molly Ball is sincere or deceptive, but her article, taken at face value, does not brag about "rigging" the election. To claim it does is to misuse language. If someone wants to show that her words cannot be taken at face value because she's proven herself in the past to be disingenuous, that would be a different kind of claim.
I straight up felt like every word was bragging when I read it. “In a way, Trump was right. There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.”
From Axios:
“That's the message being sent by a broad coalition of CEOs who are silencing Trump and punishing his acolytes in Congress.”
“CEOs have long put themselves forward as the people able to upgrade America's physical infrastructure. Now it's time for them to use the trust they've built up to help rebuild our civic infrastructure.”
“ Reversing the decline (of our trust in MSM) is a monster task — and one that some journalists and news organizations have taken upon themselves. They're going to need help — perhaps from America's CEOs.
I didn't claim I supported the actions described in the Time article (in fact, I don't). I simply pointed out that the author claimed that the actions were legitimately done in defense of democracy. There's a difference between someone openly stating that they "rigged" an election in the usual sense of that term and their saying that they worked to ensure that the election was fair.
Of course, each person can judge for themselves whether or not the author was being sincere and whether the actors in question were sincere. I suspect that the author probably was sincere, as most Democrats I know sincerely believe that they are always doing the right thing. Again, that doesn't mean I agree with her (I don't).
Molly Ball reported on events and secret collaborations that many people would consider as "rigging the election," though Ball did not characterize it that way herself.
That's fair enough, but that doesn't contradict my point that it's a misrepresentation to say that the article brags about rigging the election. That phrasing implies that the article itself represents the Democrats' actions as "rigging the election", which isn't true.
I replied to Daniela Ferreira's comment because I think it's important to try to accurately characterize what others say and write, regardless of what one thinks of the person or their opinions. I felt the same way when mainstream liberal media would mischaracterize something Donald Trump had said, as they often did, even though I viewed him as a reprehensible individual and an incompetent president.
A more important question, in my opinion, is whether Democrats did in fact "rig" the election. It's clear that both major parties are willing to rig elections in their favor - recall Hillary Clinton and the DNC undermining Bernie Sanders' candidacy in the 2016 elections (to avoid misunderstanding, I am not implying that I supported Sanders), or consider gerrymandering and voter suppression laws used in some Republican-run states.
I don't believe there was widespread electoral fraud, but after reading through the court decisions regarding Republican claims of illegitimate election policies in Pennsylvania and Georgia, it became clear to me that the media's insistence that all the Republicans' claims were entirely without merit was simply not true. There is evidence that some of the changes to state election laws that allowed increased voter participation were in violation of state constitutions, and in fact the courts' rejections of the lawsuits were not based on denying the truth of those claims. This issue was neatly swept under the rug, despite the fact that it should be of concern to everyone who values fair elections. On the other hand, it was also clear that the Republicans who brought the lawsuits would throw anything they could think of at the court in hopes that it would stick, for purely partisan reasons.
Yes. I wasn't arguing against you; just supplementing your point with my two cents. I am most troubled by the media manipulation. Trump...is a thing of the past, but the problem with the media and the election integrity (and the appearance thereof) will certainly come up again every 2-4 years.
Even though "journalists" on both sides engage in propaganda, I am more weary of the left because, presently, the left also dominates information technology, education, and entertainment.
Dominance in tech grants the power of censorship and de-platforming. Dominance in education and entertainment grants influence over the minds of the young. Dominance in higher education grants unequal control in industries that require professional training and licensure (law, healthcare, STEM, etc).
I worry about the concentration of power into one faction of society.
One could say that many things killed Trump's campaign. Remember, he only lost by a few thousand votes in AZ, GA, MI, WI, PA, etc..
If the COVID had not happened, Trump would have probably cruised to victory. (We can argue later about the extent to which the COVID exposed Trump's incompetence.)
If Trump had managed COVID slightly better, or at least appeared to be doing so, he probably could have picked up enough of those states to get the win.
How am I supposed to get any work done when you keep writing articles inevitably followed by (mostly) excellent commentary from other acolytes?
I heard this sloppily reported "story" on NPR this morning, and wondered how long it would take to be debunked . . . Ha! Less than 12 hours! I believe that's a record.
Conservative Media usually catches these lies immediately and they usually get it from a non media conservative source, AKA, conspiracy theorist on Twatter. But so much effort has been put into discrediting these patriots that the story immediately devolves into a fight between Left/Right media personalities while the actually true story is ignored or obliquely mentioned. I have seen this exact scenario play out dozens of times.
Divide and conquer.
I have caught so many lies at NPR that i just walked away- back to my music
Another (very frigging) impressive chronicling of a large amount of information on the media deception occurring.
No doubt the timing (late October near the election) exposed many alleged “standards” or ethical standards of journalism to be complete and utter BS. Half of the country was willing to lie or promote lies or be complicit in lies to change an election outcome. And willing to censor anyone and anything.
It worked.
They were going to steal the election regardless. They even told us they were going to do it. No honest reporting on a Biden scandal could ever compete with literal truck loads of Biden only ballots delivered in the dead of the night in the swing states.
Intuitively speaking, one would have to be a zombie to not expect that what your saying about the ballots is probably true to some extent or some variation. Clearly this was going to be a DNC victory come hell or high water. Personally I suspect the CIA was involved in the whole capitol riot BS, although I obviously concede I have no direct evidence. I have a fair amount of objectivity because I didn’t especially like DJT or his policies.
Yet court after court basically concluded there was no evidence of what you are asserting. Are you just surmising this (like myself) or do you believe there is direct evidence?
That’s not what the courts said. No court ever heard any evidence. SCOTUS couldn’t even grow the balls to hear such important cases. If you have a moment, read Justice Clarence Thomas dissent on SCOTUS refusing to hear the Pennsylvania case from couple weeks ago. He covers it very well.
Courts magically always discover “no standing” whenever they don’t want to take a case. Absolute cowards and a menace to society.
This is why trump supporters were and are rightfully outraged- no court even gave them the respect to hear out the evidence. Why would anyone trust such a court system?
Most courts, if not all, ruled "no standing", not "no evidence".
I’m not disputing that, since I did not follow it closely. But are you saying they never reached the point of looking at evidence? Because the suits lacked standing?
Unless I am mistaken they did hear evidence and concluded it was circumstantial or insufficient to conclude it had a material effect on the election.
Lack of standing, or no jurisdiction or no "material effect"... Sort like ignoring evidence of fraud because the election is over, which is kind of like ignoring a murder because the victim is already dead.
This is false information, and an astoundingly bad analogy. From one of Trump's appointees - "“Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy,” wrote Judge Stephanos Bibas, who was appointed to the court by Mr. Trump. “Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
Does that sound like "ignoring the results because an election is over"? Gtfo with that dishonest BS. I wish he won too, but you can wish in one hand and shit in the other, and neither one changes the reality that Trump didn't lose because of voter fraud. Media fraud, maybe.
That’s not what no standing means
I continue to come back to the original question- where is the evidence?
Sworn affidavits of what? I mean you could have 10,000 sworn affidavits and they could be truthful but that in and of itself doesn’t mean anything.
I still have yet to see a single shred of actual evidence. One would think if it was that compelling, those filing the various suits would have by now made it publicly available.
There was a great deal of evidence available; evidence means nothing until it is examined and cross-examined. Then it can become proof. Most claims of "no evidence" really are claims of "no proof," which is correct. It cannot become roof until examined, and none has been permitted to be examined. The fix was in long ago, and there is nothing we can do about it.
And then there is this....
https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/17/medias-entire-georgia-narrative-is-fraudulent-not-just-the-fabricated-trump-quotes/
New info today from JusttheNews. The site is run by a legit, decorated, journo, John Solomon. He simply is on the "wrong side" nowadays with his mildly right-biased viewpoint. Like Sharyl Attkisson, his reporting is legit and sources are trustworthy, he just has the traditional normal slight bias of topic selection and outlook, comparable to what the MSM had for decades before they went off the rails.
Anyway, he's reporting on this: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/thumonths-after-trump-complaints-some-courts-are-finding-illegalities
Yes, that's generally right. For example, Maricopa County (AZ) simply fought the AZ State Senate's attempt to subpoena their computer equipment for inspection. By the time the Senate could have gotten access to actually take a look, according to our election rules the state would have to certify the results.
All of it basically takes the form of Bush-Gore 2000: we can't figure it out in a fair way in time, so let's just stop where we are.
Here's a (highly imperfect) breakdown: https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/11/courts-repeatedly-refused-to-consider-trumps-election-claims-on-the-merits/
Just so the misinformation doesn't continue to spread, I'll repost for you what I posted in response to the OP elsewhere, from one of his own links - "judges, lawyers, and other observers described the suits as "frivolous"[4] and "without merit".
Trump's own judicial appointments said things like - “Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
I voted for Trump twice btw. Don't fall for the partisan hype like OP and others did.
What the fuck does it matter if someone "described" something as frivolous? You can describe shit to someone however you want. Im sure Harvey Weinstein described his accusers as "full of shit" that didn't make it so.
FOH!
I never voted for Trump, and care more about fair elections than any candidate. And you're whitewashing it too much. For example, in Wisconsin, the SC vote was 4-3 with four GOP-appointed judges and three Dem-appointed. The one GOP judge who voted against, ending the case, explicitly said that there might be a case on the merits, but it would have had to have been brought in Oct 2020 before the election. He explicitly decided at least a major part of the case (regarding allowing late ballots I think) on laches (not acting soon enough), not merits. Plus see the links I sent below about where status of many cases is.
I despise both “parties” and the probability of me falling for partisan hype is precisely 0%.
I watched at least 40 hours of different state election fraud hearings from which not one single sworn affidavit(don’t know the proper noun for that) from a poll worker alleging fraud has been charged with perjury. Real ballot audits have been fought tooth and nail in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan. Judges are beginning to allow real audits to take place and judges are finally starting to admit election process changes were unlawful although little is to nothing is being done as it relates to the 202 election.
More will be coming out slowly and will continue to be ignored by the MSM. It happened. The Time story admitted how they did it. It will happen again. Democrats are passing laws making every election fraud tactic they used legal going forward.
Both sides stretch the law to help their side. The Democrat ballot harvesting is no more "fraud" than the republican gerrymandering. There were no ballot dumps of all Biden ballots. Perjury is incredibly common but trials are so incredibly rare as to be statistically non-existant. Saying no one has been tried for perjury is irrelevant.
Since when do Democrats not redraw district lines when they are in power?
Is ballot chain of custody is a joke to you?
Oh they try, they just aren't nearly as effective at it on the whole. This isn't a partisan position, it's fact.
You don’t think a politicized judicial system which has spent the last 5 years going after everyone remotely connected to Trump would have easily gone after one of the thousands of signed affidavits if they could prove they lied on the affidavit? C’mon dude. Signed affidavits are literal court admissible.
More than what Christine blasey Ford even had.
How do you "prove" someone lied when they say they saw ballots being double-counted? Or *say* they saw anything? It's not a question of provable facts, never has been. And no, I don't think they're going to convince an AG in East bumfuck, PA to go after every, or any, random pollwatcher grandma, as readily as they'll be able to deputize a minion in the DC swamp to go after Mannafort or Stone. Not even close.
The first jury also found the Rodney King police innocent. Who the fuck ever thinks lawyers or the courts get it right every time?
The entire legal system is a joke designed to protect those in power anyways.
Ballot tabulating machines that can print ballots in order to achieve a goal-seeked result. In the manual. America's elections are designed for corrupt outcomes.
You mean, like where a DNC election official just walks into the voting booth and pulls the lever repeatedly because a DNC candidate paid him to?
Weird we didn't hear about this during the "election stuff".
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-philadelphia-judge-elections-convicted-conspiring-violate-civil-rights-and-bribery
Mike Lindell tell you this? He heard it from someone who read the hammer and scorecard book with 5 star reviews on Amazon, so it must be true!
What OP stated is straight out of the Voting machine manual which can be read on secretary of states websites. I researched this myself and read it.
And no, I am not a fan of mike lindell or Sidney Powell. I think Sidney made the situation worse by taking attention away from real cases and putting them on crazy theories.
Did a quick search, the actual wording is "expected results", and it's a test mode. Printed ballots are randomly generated (not programmable), then checked to confirm correct operation before voting even starts. USA Today is certainly biased but the check here seems pretty airtight - https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/3973030001
Your non-stop defense of fraud and of anything any Democrat ever did is getting old. The media fraud was real; the conspiracy was real, as Time magazine proudly boasted. Your argument that the people who benefited from all of it, and who refuse to allow any closer look at what happened, are without sin does not pass the laugh test.
Try reading the rest of the thread before you make an ass of yourself next time, Bill Heath. The post I was responding to is objectively, demonstrably false. but here you come in on your white horse to save the day to defend another half baked conspiracy theory. Mr "anti-fraud"! And you say I don't pass the laugh test? Break out a mirror, pal. Who do you think you're fooling?
As someone who wasn't in your little two person argument, you come off terribly here "justin".
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-philadelphia-judge-elections-convicted-conspiring-violate-civil-rights-and-bribery
I suppose that conviction is fake too? How are things over at the Brock social media machine these days?
Yea, 2014! You sure showed me, Einstein.
Almost like in 2014 the party that was in power didn't care. What party had the President in 2014? Oh right the racist politician hanging out with anti-semite Louis Farrakhan.
Have you read the manual?
Yes. As I wrote below it's very clearly referring to a test setting. It explicitly says the ballots are RANDOM, which is useless for controlling an outcome. The manual wording is "expected" results, not "goal seeking" or whatever. As in, the machine generates random ballots, stores the results in internal memory, counts the ballots it just printed, and compares the results against the stored, "expected" results to ensure internal integrity.
I mean, just on the face of it, you really think if they were goin to make the machines able to control the outcome of an election, they'd write it in the manual? C'mon my man...
Am I the only one that finds it incredible he sells that many pillows?
Especially at that price 😲
Thank you. It’s a crazy business model
Dewey defeats Truman. Still relevant 75+ years later because the crooks never left politics.
Not exactly. The election was stolen.
I'd say that ALL of the country was willing to take chances in order to win the election.
U wot m8? Talk about a non-sequitur.
For now...
I posted a similar comment today at Taibbi’s piece today, but will repeat the point here.
I think it’s near or maybe past time honest journalists like Greenwald, Taibbi and the handful of others (across the political spectrum) who still do look for evidence and cite to it in their reporting, stop paying attention to and analyzing the lies of the liars in the mainstream media and on Twitter and Facebook.
In a perverse way, highlighting their lies and how they cover for each other seems to be feeding the beast, when starving it might well be more effective at building the spaces and audiences for the truth tellers.
There is a massive audience that completely tunes out the liars, and (as part of that audience) I’d like to hear less about the liars, and more about the substantive things that coverage of the liars is stealing attention from.
I guess I just think the people who want to believe the lies will continue to believe them no matter how many times the lies are pointed out to them, and the rest of us already know the liars lie, ignore them as much as we can, seek out truth-tellers, and want to move past the liars and let them rot in their own disgusting juices in their echo chambers of irrelevancy together.
Plus I think it would be super-funny if Taibbi, Greenwald, and the handful of others more or less simultaneously announced that they’re done with media-liar-coverage and actually stopped following the liars antics on social media and in the pages of the WaPo and New York Times and HuffPost and the Atlantic and so on.
Maybe I’m totally wrong, but I think the people who care about the inbred liberal media types and their circle-jerks of lies are a tiny minority, and a very large majority is hungry for whatever is not that.
I can empathize with your position, but I happen to disagree. I think it's extremely important for writers like Greenwald, Taibbi, Tracey and outlets like FAIR.org to catalog and ridicule the lies and false narratives of the corporate media. I simply has to be done. The other thing is that OCCASIONALLY there is good journalism from SOME of those outlets - The Atlantic (despite the neocon in charge) has put out some decent stuff over the last decade (along with other not-so-decent stuff).
This stuff has to be on record and available for future readers to reference when explaining to friends and family why the corporate establishment media cannot be trusted, and that it's co-opted by MIC, corporate, and bankster interests and spooks.
P.S. what's the little extra rose on your avatar?
"Catalog the lies" of Corp Media, YES. it would be great to have access to an Exel Spreadsheet documenting ALL LIES, by Journalist, Media Outlet, Date, Link to Lie, Link to Info demonstrating it is a lie. Unfortunately those same people who tweet and retreat TWO SENTENCES worth of false info., are NOT gonna take the time nor will they have the interest to read a well thought out, well investigated piece of journalism as in Greenwald and others' articles. Sad but true
In fact it is doable, all what is needed a shrewd and interested programmer in Python to make such "dig, document and compile" spreadsheet.
It would be a great point of reference
I wondered about that rose thing today too, seeing it for the first time. It either indicates I’m a paying subscriber and the date I subscribed, or that I have my own SubStack, both of which are true.
I think it's the substack account of yours. I believe you have to be a subscriber just to comment.
It can mean you’re a super-subscriber, paying more than the basic subscription price, or a founding subscriber.
Let's see....test.
It's not founding.
I thought it denoted a “founding member”, but I joined that club not long ago and don’t have one. So no longer sure.
I was a late subscriber elsewhere just today, but paid for a higher subscription level and instantly got the rose.
Traitor! :)
I’m a slut, what can I say.
I don’t see a rose for you.
He means the other subscription
I thought that too. Maybe because your whole avatar is so red it wouldn't be seen ;)
Reckon this Breveland Clowns fan will have to give up hating on the Steelers.
Thankfully our current situation is so f’d I no longer need the clowns to remind me that life can be disappointing!
I was thinking something similar the other day. Maybe ignoring them and not saying their names will decrease the incentive to lie like many suggest doing with serial killers(that comparison is applicable).
But then I thought - someone with integrity and credibility has to chronicle our nation’s collapse so GG is one of the only ones qualified to do that job.
I do also wonder what scandals and stories they are spiking. Conservative media, at least the ones that can be trusted, catch a lot of them which is why so much effort is put into discrediting the Conservative media as an institution. I have read so much fake news over the least several years that I can catch what is misleading. But that talent took a lot of reading, cynicism and open mindedness which this content is explicitly meant to diminish. Apparently enough people are learning how to do this that the media has begun to tell us not to do that! That gives me hope.
The vast majority of the political and corporate class in this country has not yet been woken up to the falsehoods perpetrated by the mainstream media. Thus, while I often feel the same as you, I think it's vital that people like Greenwald and Taibbi continue documenting the evidence upholding traditional journalistic standards. That kind of reporting won't be outright dismissed quite as easily by those still hypnotized by mainstream media, and may occasionally break through. There should be more people documenting this clearly and carefully.
Also, crazy how nobody mentions the fact that the Biden laptop emails were authenticated using DKIM signatures.
My point is that’s the vast majority of that insider class will not change their minds, because they are in on the long con and benefitting from it.
Course correction will not come from that cohort. It will be up to the outsiders who currently ignore the propaganda machines and are ignored by the MSM but have very limited good alternative sources (Greenwald, Taibbi, etc.) with which to learn about each other and ideas that might have potential to make useful change.
Adding to the growing pile of evidence that the outsiders are correct in their contempt for the overlords is less helpful at moving things along, in my view, than putting the time now spent documenting the insiders’ MSM corruption than putting that time into documenting other things, about what the outsiders are doing to fight back or create alternatives , for example, that’s ignored by MSM.
Maybe the outsiders aren’t doing anything so there’s nothing to report and MSM ignorance of the lowly peasants is justifiable.
Or maybe the lowly peasants are more interested in secrecy for their resistance movements than growing by attracting new recruits, so they avoid talking to any media, alternative or MSM.
I don’t know. I just know more attention slathered on MSM assholes by really good reporters seems like a tragic waste of the reporters’ time and their readers’ time.
Maybe I just need to skip reading those pieces. But sometimes it seems like it takes up 25-30% of their time and energy, and it’s sad to think about what else that time and energy could be put into, and how those other things could be more effective toward changing things for the better.
I absolutely agree. Many have simply turn off news media altogether. Disgusted by falsehood and contradictions from liberal to conservative outlets, making it an endeavor to get to the truth. In Twitter, I follow some journalists with proven integrity. But being capable of impartial assessment is going out of style replaced by “I feel”.
Great comment, however I think this is a type of Renaissance moment, hopefully, and that a lot more people, sheeple, are starting to realize the level of control that these media conglomerates carry over them. I do agree and think that more substantive pieces will come out, however this is possibly the most important shift in modern journalism, also I do truly enjoy watching these MSM hacks getting dragged to the literary woodshed.
I agree
I understand where you are coming from, and sometimes get tired of another article dealing with the topic, but I certainly don’t want to follow these people yet do like to know what lies or just crappy reporting is being passed around and believed. As others have mentioned as well, these articles (or the information they contain) are good for sharing with others we can hope might open their eyes. While I trust Glenn on these issues, depending on the topic, I’m still going to try to verify or get another view - but these articles help speed that process up a lot.
How anyone, after the lies of Iraq, including liberals can believe the reportage emanating from the corpress courtier media is beyond me. They're simply manufacturing and catering to narratives now. When MSNBC fired Phil Donahue and the NYT let Judith Miller get away with lie after government-spoon-fed lie about WMDs, I wrote off the establishment press/media for good.
At this point all of corporate media has adopted the Fox News model: Censor or ignore stories harmful to The Party and repeat convenient lies often enough to firmly cement them into the viewer/reader's mind.
The New York Times has long been derided as the Langley Times because no matter who's President, they're going to be publishing things that excuse or glorify US military interventions and/or sanctions and/or coup attempts in countries whose democratically elected leaders aren't opening up their markets and resources quickly enough for the kleptocrat/oligarch class that controls most major media outlets. The targets are invariably leftist reformist administrations or leaders of secular, reasonably well-to-do majority Islamic countries like Syria and Libya and Iraq (all of whom owe/owed much of their misery to decades of American sanctions and sabotage).
The NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, Fox and everyone else all agree on two things:
1) Aggressive US foreign policy aimed at toppling leaders of countries with things the oligarch class want.
2) Tacitly defending the surveillance state here at home by distracting the public with stories about China or North Korea.
When it comes to foreign policy reporting, literally every single one of those outlets exists to explain to their audiences the righteousness of the MIC and surveillance state and to run cover for their excesses.
If "truth in advertising" were a thing, the WaPo's motto would be "The Darkness Where Democracy Dies".
The NYT motto would be "IdPol News, Printed In Fits".
Not entirely original.
If they don't obey they will have work for their news. No free narratives. Put down the cocktail and hit the pavement.
Plus you get free ballgame tickets if you push their propaganda.
We’ll take a bar’s license, fine the living shit out of them and possibly convict the bartender and owner to prison time for simply letting a drunk person drive off and cause a wreck.
Why don’t we treat the liars in the media the same? If they lie and cause wrecks; in our economy, our psychology, our national security, our elections, etc... Shouldn’t they lose their media license doing this shit repeatedly? Shouldn’t they be fined?
The only time you see people getting fired from the media is when they refuse to lie for them or to spread their lies. Glenn is a great example in fact though I think he quit with his dignity intact.
So many times Trump said stuff that seemed to go to be outrageous or inappropriate, then slowly as time ticks by it made more sense. The media that deliberately misleads the people IS the enemy of the people.
And then they wrote bragging about it 🤷🏻♀️
And if Neera Tanden gets her way, they’ll be paying us to occupy them too! $$$$
democrats love using women, blacks and browns, trans as pawns by placing them at strategical positions to make any criticism of their policies sexist, racist, misogynist, transphobic etc. Speak against bombing Middle East? That’s racist against the black dept of defence secretary. Want $2000? Don’t want Wall Street to get richer? That’s sexist and misogynist against the first woman treasury secretary. Speak against the covid policies? That’s transphobe against the trans health secretary. It’s actually quite genius and evil politics.
"It’s actually quite genius and evil politics" - devil's not known to be a stupid dude.
Democrats are great at co-opting. What starts as movements against the establishment end up as their door mat.
That the Intercept was part of suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story is painful for me. I had such high hopes that it would take the WikiLeaks work even further. But now it's a Deep State fakes factory, like much else of the Western MSM. I thought at one point they should stop calling themselves the Intercept, as governments here in the West have nothing to fear from them intercepting anything. Then I realized that the name still applies, as now they help Intercept truthful information about government actions from the public, who needs to know what these officials are doing now more than ever. Epic Fail.
But also The Intercept still has all the Snowden documents IIRC and have gone quiet on releasing any more of them to the public. I forget what Glenn Greenwald's stated position on this is, but along with the Reality Winner burn, the adoption of the Syrian regime change party line, the censorship of Biden coverage, and of course Risen's constant moaning about Russia, I have enough reasons not to click there anymore.
I don't go there. I don't seek out information from places I know I can't trust. They could be telling some great truth in a great article but they've lied so much how could I know? I only go to information providers that I identify as at least trying to get things right and tell the truth.
Yeah, I don't go there unless someone sends a link or a casual search for news brings up one of the articles there NOT written by James Risen. Some of the local level reporting they do is interesting, such as the story about the lady who got surrounded by about 100 law enforcement officers with guns drawn in Austin, TX because of some sticker she had on her car or something. Otherwise I stay away. Been burned too many times.
The problem with The Intercept is that they still have some great journalists who still do great work. With all the editorial problems caution is advised, but guys like Fang and Scahill, and a few others, still do vital journalism.
I can't remember the last time I saw a Scahill article, especially like his old series on the dirty wars. All he does is the Intercepted podcast now, and I only know that because sometimes we listen to it in the car on road trips.
But don't you miss the articles about Peter Handke? Every two weeks - like a clockwork - there was another hilarious outrage cry how Peter (a "Milosevic apologist") got a Literature Nobel Prize! It was so entertaining, better that even the Onion :-)
Regarding The Intercept, two words: Pierre Omidyar
Certainly not a popular view here, but I think there are still a lot of excellent journo's over at The Intercept: Ryan Grimm, Liliana Segura, Natasha Lennard, Lee Fang and others. I generally steer clear of any political reporting, but they continue to do great work on criminal reform, the surveillance state and corporate corruption that is barely covered by other outlets. Loosing Mr. Greenwald was a great loss, but there are other great journo's over there as well.
The problem isn't the quality of the journalists it's the editorial shackles now placed upon them. If bosses can violate the working agreement on editorial independence of a founding member what are they not allowing the remaining journalists to cover? Corporate corruption is only part of the story and is a branch of a rotten tree, the heart of which is centered on American violations of International Law, the bombings and overthrow of governments that Washington doesn't like and the control of information and mythical narratives which are aided by journalistic malpractice in hiding the details of who is doing what to whom.
I agree editorial bias is a risk, but so is journalistic bias and bias comes in many forms. I'm not certain having an editor make a bad call in one area means they will make a bad call on every topic.
The editor became a thing in journalism because it never hurts to have someone objective check your work. Sometimes editors make bad calls, or make decisions based on things we don't see. Some editors are terrible and should be doing something else.
Editorial review is not just top down, but can also be lateral. I have tremendous respect for Mr. Greewald. After his departure from The Intercept a journalist I enjoy reading complimented Mr. Greenwald and thanked him for bringing her to The Intercept, but also pointed out that he once asked her to kill a story on behalf of Betsy Reed. I don't know what the story was so cannot comment if it was a good or bad call, but people make editorial decisions for a host of reasons both good and bad and it's very domain dependent. An editor is capable of making excellent decisions on say criminal justice, or environmental coverage, but terrible decisions on their political coverage.
The corporate stuff is more nuanced and difficult to call, but if you have not read The Intercept's coverage on the Dakota Pipeline's and how it affects Indigenous people it's worth reading. You may agree or disagree with their coverage, but I don't sense corporate, or editorial bias in their reporting. They cover a series of corporate corruption stories where I feel they are credible, but I am always open to someone pointing out specifics on where they got it wrong and I should not trust them.
A format like Substack presents it's own challenge. Here we need to assume the writer is either excellent at detecting their own bias, or has an editor for their work we don't see. Either way, no one is above scrutiny. Not even a journalist I respect as much as Mr. Greewald.
I don't a
Nobody would suggest that Glenn or others on Substack don't have biases or make errors... the difference between these independents and the others is the fact that they let the facts interpret the story, not the story interpret the facts. It is obvious by now that much of the media only tells the story it believes its audience wants to hear, and frames it in a way that doesn't always include factual evidence.
The reporting on the Rub-n-Tug Murders in Atlanta, for instance. There is not one shred of evidence that the women killed in Atlanta were targeted out of Anti-Asian/White Supremacist hate... but that hasn't stopped NYT and WaPo from "flooding the zone" with exactly that narrative.
The fact that the Intercept is looking at the Dakota pipeline from the viewpoint of the "oppressed" tribes, rather than the cost/benefit analysis of many factors (union jobs, local economics, climate change tradeoffs - pipeline v. tanker) doesn't impress me. There are always multiple variables in decision making. If our leaders aren't looking big picture, it is the responsibility of the press to make sure that the people understand this.
I agree that no one is above scrutiny. I believe that Glenn Greenwald has said that his readers should hold him to the same standards as they would hold any journalist, which is admirable.
Related to your point about the reliability of reporting in different fields, I think the New York Times is a case in point. They are clearly biased in favor of Democrats, and much of their "news" is propaganda (often propaganda by omission), but they also have some excellent investigative journalism and interesting articles on science, the arts, and other fields.
That's a great example. The New York Times does have some excellent investigative journalists, but I think we would agree that they days when a story had credibility simply because it was in the New York Times is long gone.
I do agree with you, and I think it's a shame that we cannot trust major newspapers to try to be accurate and fair in whatever stories they choose to report on.
actually, the "other" sections are even more woke than the op-ed page. Just try looking for last night's scores in the NCAA tournament... you'll more likely find articles about sexist weight rooms and unpaid labor issues.
I don't read about sports, so I can't comment on the NY Times' coverage of that topic. In the areas I mentioned, I don't think there's usually any particular political bias in evidence.
For the last 17 years I have run a small manufacturing company. I design the products and am largely responsible for their production and marketing. I guess I am fortunate that I never acquired a liberal arts degree (or any other degree), because when I have problems with my customers or my sales I make the effort to find out what is wrong and do what I can to rectify the issues. I certainly don't sit around blaming the industry in which I work.
I never had any student loans, either.
I guess I'm just privileged to have never spent much time in college, a rite of passage that seems to have completely fucked up the values of many of the elite one quarter of Americans who possess a degree. Or maybe it was something else . . .
America's colleges started being strongly infected with socialism during the period right after WWII. The infection became a systemic disease beginning with the anti-war movement of the 60's and 70's. Here's what happened:
“The threat of Hitler’s Germany drove the Frankfurt School (of Socialism) out of Europe and into the welcoming arms of America’s left-wing colleges. Most to all of the leading practitioners…and their Institute came to New York City, specifically to the campus of Columbia University, already a hotbed of communism.
Pleading the case for them at Columbia was John Dewey, founding father of American public education, progressive fool, and communist sympathizer. Thus, their primary area of operation would be the educational system — the schools, the universities, and particularly the teachers’ colleges. It was no coincidence that Columbia housed the nation’s top teachers’ college — a creation of John Dewey.
From there, the cultural Marxists spread their ideas to campuses nationwide. Their insane notions would sweep up the ’60s New Left, to which the likes of Herbert Marcuse became an ideological guru to the radicals who today are tenured at our universities.”
Excerpt from: The Ways of This World by Paul Kengor, Professor of Political Science at Grove City College in The American Spectator, May 4, 2018
The teenagers in college in the 1960's and 70's became the teachers of today's colleges and universities. That's what happened to America. A few little seeds were planted and they yielded a huge crop of weeks! See Jesus's comment on this all end up...Matthew 13:24-30.
Baby-boomer liberals are not socialists or communists. They vote for Democrats, who vehemently oppose universal health care, adamantly support predatory U.S. foreign policy, etc. They may have had "socialist" leanings in their youth, but the grew older and wealthier, and their viewpoint changed. Youthful enthusiasms often give way to a desire for comfort and security.
"That is because the dominant strain of American liberalism is not economic socialism but political authoritarianism."
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-show-of-monopolistic
It depends on WHEN you'd have gone to college, liberal arts or not. I graduated college in 79, and law school in 82. NONE of the crap going on now was prevalent. There were a few kooks around who were ignored by almost everyone. Now they're running the asylum. Education then did what it was supposed to do. Provide you with a wealth of new ideas and experiences, and giving you the tools to think for yourself. I don't have kids, but I worry so much about my grand niece's and nephews, and the future they face.
Yes, the "liberal" class has for several decades been drifting further and further toward intolerance, closed-mindedness, and contempt for anyone who does not share their worldview in its entirety. It's been disturbing to witness. Perhaps younger generations are different, though in many ways they seem to be even more subject to authoritarian thinking.
Yup. An entire world on "social credit" is the best-case outcome, I think. Unfortunately.
No you are onto something. The universities are predominantly intellectual cess pools. It’s four years of collectivism indoctrination and venom-dripping-from the-mouth-hatred for anything remotely associated with someone like yourself being productive (how dare you) and independent of the collective (how dare you). Not to mention economic thinking *lower* than that of five year olds.
It’s in the business schools as well so it isn’t limited to liberal arts.
Is it their college degrees that's a problem, or the values they have adopted? I was in a small group discussing a certain topic, not important, and during a break 3 of us remained. The other 2 were doctors, and were bemoaning the fact they made a lot less money then their colleagues that were in private practice, and both felt like failures. Almost in unison they told me that I must really feel like a failure being a teacher, because I made so little money. No, I said, I taught kids biology and taught them to value the living world, etc, so no I didn't feel like a failure. I then said one would think they went into medicine to help people, and yet they are solely concerned about money, and in my book that makes them failures. Maybe some, maybe many, go into journalism and initially have high minded values, but things change. Ambition begins to drive them, and too often becomes their first priority, truth be damned.
Well said. The richest person is the one who makes a living doing what they love; feeling like they never had to work a day in their life.
Thanks Jeff.
Hey, now, I resent this mudslinging at holders of liberal arts degrees or other degrees. I've got two of them but haven't managed to become elite yet. It's never too late, however, to grease some elite palms palms at some elite institutions.
What does your going to college or not going have to do with Glenn's article on the prostitution of journalism? Maybe if you had a more well rounded education, you might have been able to make a comment in near proximity to the content of the article. Perhaps you should borrow some money and go back to school. Interest rates are rising, so perhaps you should lock in now.
You could have made a pro-education post without oozing douchebaggery.
Simply because it is clear to me the twisted values presented here and in many of Glenns's other articles about the American media (this is the context) are being learned in college. The lunacy Glenn describes on Substack has been visible for decades in academia, and we all laughed about it then. Once it moved off campus and became entrenched in newsrooms across the media it wasn't so funny any more, was it?
I've done very well for myself without having gone to school, thanks. Believe it or not, I absorbed many of the values that enabled and shaped my future success at a series of entry-level jobs when I was a teenager, a step I notice is these days avoided by the expensively-degreed elites. If I did want to go back to school (the only conceivable reason would be to get a credential to teach in my state), I wouldn't need to borrow any money.
In fact, I also learned a long time ago (outside of college) to avoid debt whenever possible. My reluctance to borrow was one reason I never got a student loan and so could not afford to continue college. I guess that preconception served me pretty well, too, in the end.
You protest too much. I am guessing we mostly agree, but your aversions to debt and education have nothing to do with the self-immolation of the media. Post-modernist critical theory in the late '50's and '60's gave rise to the idea that there are no facts, which federal student loan guarantees then whored out to the masses by enabling academia to hire ten incompetent administrators to every single competent professor (see how I am bringing this back around to your debt allergy, which I kind of agree with you on). We all need more education, not less.
Nope. That is definitely it and sadly, by design. I hope your business survives the current regime.
Seems as though Trump was right: The election was rigged. Would Trump have won the election if this story had been properly reported? I don't know but it seems quite possible. Before everyone piles on, I am not a Republican or conservative, not a Trump supporter, and-why this is necessary- but, not a right-wing nationalist or white supremacist. (I am very sad that I feel the need to insert that last sentence.)
The crazy thing is immediately after the elections were over TIME puts out an article bragging about how they successfully rigged the elections - just like ‘delusional’ Trump said they were: “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election”. And people don’t see a problem with that? They call that democracy?!
I read the article. To be fair, what it describes can be summed up as "better organizing".
Your characterization of the Time article doesn't seem accurate. The article, by Molly Ball (February 4, 2021, linked below), claims the following motivation for the conspiracy:
"The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted."
The author also writes: "They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it."
https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
In the author's view, the conspiracy was not one that used illegal or unethical tactics for nefarious motives, but one that used legal and ethically justifiable methods.
Note that I'm not claiming that I share Ms. Ball's opinion, and I didn't read much of the article. I'm merely pointing out that it's not accurate to say that Time bragged about "rigging" the election in the usual sense of the phrase "to rig an election".
"They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it."
"Fortifying" is a propaganda term. Propaganda is the art and science of shaping perceptions. Language comprises the arsenal of propaganda. Words are weapons.
That’s just the part they are openly admitting to. What else much bigger stuff did they not admit to?
Also I will believe in Santa Claus before I believe Biden got 81 million real votes, 12 million more than Obama (hate the dude but he at least was popular).
I couldn’t agree more. No way this past election wasn’t rigged by the Democratic machine! They got surprised in 2016. It’s never going to happen again! Why bother to vote?!? Just get in line and take the crumbs you’re given.
My reply to Daniela Ferreira was specifically about her characterization of the claims made in the Time article, not a judgment of the attempts by Democrats (or Republicans) to influence the election. One might claim to have illegitimately influenced an election, or one might claim to have legitimately influenced an election, for what one believes is a noble cause. Those are two different kinds of claims. The Time article makes the second kind of claim (whether or not it's sincere or accurate), while the phrase "bragged about how they successfully rigged the election" implies the second kind of claim (in my opinion). That's what I was commenting on. Personally, it's clear to me that both major parties are willing to use illegitimate means to get their way.
From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rig:
1 : to manipulate or control usually by deceptive or dishonest means rig an election
2 : to fix in advance for a desired result rig the contest
"They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it." is the most blatant use of doublespeak I can think of.
Democrats accused Donald Trump of inciting violence when he told the people at a rally to go to the Capitol to peacefully protest. They claimed that he was being disingenuous and really meant that they should violently protest.
The claim that Molly Ball's article brags about "rigging" the election similarly ascribes hidden meaning to words that, on the face of it, contradict that claim.
I don't know whether Molly Ball is sincere or deceptive, but her article, taken at face value, does not brag about "rigging" the election. To claim it does is to misuse language. If someone wants to show that her words cannot be taken at face value because she's proven herself in the past to be disingenuous, that would be a different kind of claim.
Right, they call it "fortifying" the election to ensure the proper outcome is achieved.
Some of call that rigging. If you don't that's cool.
You seem to think I'm defending Molly Ball's point of view. I'm not. My comment had nothing to do with my personal political opinions.
I straight up felt like every word was bragging when I read it. “In a way, Trump was right. There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.”
From Axios:
“That's the message being sent by a broad coalition of CEOs who are silencing Trump and punishing his acolytes in Congress.”
“CEOs have long put themselves forward as the people able to upgrade America's physical infrastructure. Now it's time for them to use the trust they've built up to help rebuild our civic infrastructure.”
“ Reversing the decline (of our trust in MSM) is a monster task — and one that some journalists and news organizations have taken upon themselves. They're going to need help — perhaps from America's CEOs.
https://www.axios.com/ceos-fourth-branch-government-trump-7eee851f-0027-4bfa-a2c0-58ec254e2dbe.html
https://www.axios.com/media-trust-crisis-2bf0ec1c-00c0-4901-9069-e26b21c283a9.html
See the problem? I do!
I definitely do. The problem odd THAT IS NOT DEMOCRACY!
I didn't claim I supported the actions described in the Time article (in fact, I don't). I simply pointed out that the author claimed that the actions were legitimately done in defense of democracy. There's a difference between someone openly stating that they "rigged" an election in the usual sense of that term and their saying that they worked to ensure that the election was fair.
Of course, each person can judge for themselves whether or not the author was being sincere and whether the actors in question were sincere. I suspect that the author probably was sincere, as most Democrats I know sincerely believe that they are always doing the right thing. Again, that doesn't mean I agree with her (I don't).
Molly Ball reported on events and secret collaborations that many people would consider as "rigging the election," though Ball did not characterize it that way herself.
That's fair enough, but that doesn't contradict my point that it's a misrepresentation to say that the article brags about rigging the election. That phrasing implies that the article itself represents the Democrats' actions as "rigging the election", which isn't true.
I replied to Daniela Ferreira's comment because I think it's important to try to accurately characterize what others say and write, regardless of what one thinks of the person or their opinions. I felt the same way when mainstream liberal media would mischaracterize something Donald Trump had said, as they often did, even though I viewed him as a reprehensible individual and an incompetent president.
A more important question, in my opinion, is whether Democrats did in fact "rig" the election. It's clear that both major parties are willing to rig elections in their favor - recall Hillary Clinton and the DNC undermining Bernie Sanders' candidacy in the 2016 elections (to avoid misunderstanding, I am not implying that I supported Sanders), or consider gerrymandering and voter suppression laws used in some Republican-run states.
I don't believe there was widespread electoral fraud, but after reading through the court decisions regarding Republican claims of illegitimate election policies in Pennsylvania and Georgia, it became clear to me that the media's insistence that all the Republicans' claims were entirely without merit was simply not true. There is evidence that some of the changes to state election laws that allowed increased voter participation were in violation of state constitutions, and in fact the courts' rejections of the lawsuits were not based on denying the truth of those claims. This issue was neatly swept under the rug, despite the fact that it should be of concern to everyone who values fair elections. On the other hand, it was also clear that the Republicans who brought the lawsuits would throw anything they could think of at the court in hopes that it would stick, for purely partisan reasons.
Yes. I wasn't arguing against you; just supplementing your point with my two cents. I am most troubled by the media manipulation. Trump...is a thing of the past, but the problem with the media and the election integrity (and the appearance thereof) will certainly come up again every 2-4 years.
Even though "journalists" on both sides engage in propaganda, I am more weary of the left because, presently, the left also dominates information technology, education, and entertainment.
Dominance in tech grants the power of censorship and de-platforming. Dominance in education and entertainment grants influence over the minds of the young. Dominance in higher education grants unequal control in industries that require professional training and licensure (law, healthcare, STEM, etc).
I worry about the concentration of power into one faction of society.
I think the points you made are very important, and I share your concern.
You're right, it wasn't bragging.
It was straight up wanking.
One could say that many things killed Trump's campaign. Remember, he only lost by a few thousand votes in AZ, GA, MI, WI, PA, etc..
If the COVID had not happened, Trump would have probably cruised to victory. (We can argue later about the extent to which the COVID exposed Trump's incompetence.)
If Trump had managed COVID slightly better, or at least appeared to be doing so, he probably could have picked up enough of those states to get the win.
If Trump had made