MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Hits of the Day
Democrats are falling for fake news about Russia
By Michael Wolraich on Tue, 05/23/2017 - 5:54pm |What you’ve got are prominent media figures, political operatives, scholars, and even US senators being taken in by this stuff — in addition to the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of ordinary people consuming it on Twitter and Facebook. These people, too, are letting their biases trump interest in factual accuracy.
This is the key danger: that this sort of thing becomes routine, repeated over and over again in left-leaning media outlets, to the point where accepting the Russiasphere’s fact-free claims becomes a core and important part of what Democrats believe.
“Normal people aren’t reading extensively about what Louise Mensch claims someone told her about Russia,” Nyhan says. “The question now is whether Democrats and their allies in the media — and other affiliated elites — will promote these conspiracy theories more aggressively.”
That’s how the GOP fell for conspiracy thinking during the Obama years. There’s nothing about Democratic psychology that prevents them from doing the same — which means the burden is on Democratic elites to correct it.
URL:
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/5/19/15561842/trump-russia-louise-mensch
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Comments
Yeah, it's really important to find out why people are following a blogger duo hyping Trump's Russian connections and implosion, rather than why Trump's Taj Mahal money laundering convictions and Russian loans went unreported over the campaign, as were half his team's visits to Moscow and his Russian loans in Toronto elsewhere, or why the New York Times & Washington Post partnered with Steve Bannon's fraudulently named Government Accountability Institute to pimp the Clinton Cash hatchet job lies straight to their readers.
Great keeping eye on the ball.
Maybe if WaPo and NYTimes upheld some standards and did timely, accurate and pertinent journalism rather than hyping fraudulent news itself and *OVERTLY CLAIMING THE FBI COULDN'T FIND ANY RUSSIAN CONNECTION TO TRUMP 1 WEEK BEFORE THE ELECTION*, only to get burned by Buzzfeed's 'unprofessional' release of the 6-month old Steele dossier in January, people wouldn't be looking for ragtag news elsewhere.
Even now, as an example, Melissa from Shakesville noted back in Jan/Feb that Pence responded officlally to Cummings official letter, so couldn't plausibly deny receiving it as he's trying now, just 1 of so many relevant details that mainstream press seems challenged to report, and *SHE'S NOT A REPORTER*, nor does she pretend to be. And don't forget all the embarrassing interviews and roundtables over the last 2 years where the press was just completely unable to refute and quickly follow up on blatant lies real-time, allowing guests to weave bullshit out of whole cloth, over and over again.
As people are screaming out DO YOUR JOB at town halls across the US, they should be doing the same to the press (the obviously lying partisan rag of Fox News excluded as won't change anything). If the $2 billion+ "liberal" grey lady and the billionaire Bezos-backed WaPo are pushing Fake News themselves, why are we amazed or worried about twitterers? Seems like funny concern trolling to me - we liberals might damage our already completely destroyed reputation?
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 5:30am
CNN's Jeff Zucker deserves a shout out for cynically hiring Trump's Lewandowski as a talking head to help them mine Trump's diarrhea mouth for a cool $1 billion 2016 profit - no bias/journalistic malfeasance there (Lewandoski's heading back to Trumpland now that pushing around women is last year's news), along with tepid debate coverage and various Godawful announcers like their moonlighting Chris Cillizza who managed 50 blog pieces on HIllary's emails/server in 6 months, beating Gail Collins for her focused awfulness by mentioning Mitt Romney's dog on the roof in every column over a 1-2 year span. And as Bob Somerby notes over and over, most nights Rachel Maddow can't be bothered getting around to the news, and the way she welcomed the hateful and conniving Greta von Susteren with all that "let's not bicker over who killed who" amnesia was plain sinful. Surely the modern press corps isn't held to any standards, and nothing they say 1 week holds over to the next (except maybe Dan Rather getting set up by the administration - probably a Karl Rove trick - for that there are no second chapters).
And then Infowars just got a White House press pass yesterday to cover the unhinged GOP President.
But let's worry about whether some fringe left-of-center blogger (or actually conservative turned kind of left-of-center while spouting lots of conservative patriotism filler) is giving some on the left a woody over possible Trump dump.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 8:36am
Despite our manifold and well-explored differences PP, I will always cheer you on when you criticize Rachel Maddow.
by HSG on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 8:51am
Anti-Clinton bias claims based on an opinion piece in John Podesta and Neera Tanden's "Think Progress" are inherently dubious.
by HSG on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 8:45am
Well fuck a duck - it doesn't matter what I write - it's just more neoliberal bias if it touches any friend of Hillary, eh? Forget actual content of the reference or ThinkProgress's actual journalistic reputation - it's just "shoot the messenger".
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 8:59am
There's no question that the media screwed the pooch (continuing the bestiality theme), but that doesn't justify or mitigate the danger of peddling fake news.
by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 10:03am
What danger? No one's articulated what the big problem or damage is. Grand juries and FBI investigations are going forward anyway; investigations and Congressional hearings and Russia-tainted news re: Trump, Pence, Flynn, Sessions, Nunes, Chaffitz, Manafort, Kusher, Carter Page, et al, seem to be moving forward whatever social media says. Whatever privy information the FBI/CIA/NSA/GCHQ/etc have, they have whether there's an accurate leak or not. And people make fun of Democrats & the left no matter what (see the bit about the loaded sociology journal article). Mensch *did* correct her article about the 15-year-old being fake, which is more than The Hill did.
In any case, it's like people are discovering for the first time what people do on Twitter. Like talk about Seth Rich - I've been doing my best to avoid it, but doesn't it bother you when Sean Hannity and Newt Gingrich parrot what Bernie fans started?
But there's no Tea Party on the left that I've seen; no one's selling off their belongings to move with Louise to the Guyana rain forest. I'm been listening to Keith Olbermann pontificate for years with no obvious damage except the occasional migraine. Alec Baldwin's been parodying Trump for a year now, and I see it as roughly the same thing as the Twitter pile-on, a bit of Nancy Drew for post-pubescents. I find much more dangerous the fake news that Trump was a real businessman, that he understood middle America and the problems that ail of us have, that he could run an organization legally and efficiently (much less the whole US executive branch) or balance a spreadsheet (much less a federal budget), that he hasn't been bound at the hip to ugly corrupt Russian underground/criminal/shady intelligence figures for decades... while somehow avoiding any charges from the multitude of investigations over the years - that, not Louise, has me worried - that he really could shoot someone down in the street and walk away, the Overton Window shifted to make room for privileged Don who gives the mainstream media such a thrill up their legs they can't remember to ever ask him a single difficult question like "where did you bury all the bodies?"
And of course none of Mensch's group tweetathons compares even 1/100th the efficiency, money, mass rote repetition of the great conservative propaganda machine, much less Trump's Twitter operation numbering 20 million, not 250,000. Compare just one story - the Planned Parenthood supposed video of a post-term abortion. Outlandish, brazenly deceitful, shared complicity among almost every GOP presidential candidate and congressional leader. Call me when Mensch reaches 1/100th that kind of influence, when her Twitter cohorts are pulling off or even considering illegal stunts like James O'Keefe.
For people complaining about Mensch having hair on fire, they seem to have their hair on fire as well. Maybe we all just need a good Scream.
Yes, if Vox is really trying to pull off a review that will scare us, maybe they can start with this one: How to Deconstruct a Horror Movie, aka Scream III: The Political Junkie Edition.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 10:40am
Actually, the Vox piece does articulate the problem...
To this, I would add that spreading lies is inherently wrong, even if there were no political repercussions.
by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 11:11am
Sigh -
"we should worry about kind of pattern being repeated" - dude, if the Democrats could message and coordinate and not commit internecine warfare, they (we) wouldn't be where they are already. This is as important as worrying how I'm going to spend my lottery jackpot and which color suit I should wear if I get the next James Bond role.
"Pollutes the party itself" - WTF, you guys have been telling me the party's so thoroughly polluted for the last 2 years that we had to start over from scratch - you mean we hadn't hit bottom?
"shameless hucksters who know nothing about policy but are willing to spread misinformation in the service of gaining power" - don't look now, but we passed that turnoff a few miles back.
"derailing and discrediting the legitimate investigation into Russia investigation" (presumably by the Redundant Department of Investigations Department...) - well, yes, possible, but considering FinCEN is pulling up bank records, and the FBI is working off wiretaps and careful memos, and probably the NSA & GCHQ et al have some other surveillance to exploit, and there's subpoenas of Flynn's business records, and then there's those strange self-incriminating public statements and actions that Trump, Pence, Ryan, Flynn, Sessions, Nunes and Chaffetz have all engaged in, PLUS we started with no one fucking believing any of this before Mensch even got involved back when the MSM couldn't be bothered to vet a single factoid off the Steele Dossier - so I don't quite see how Congressmen and the FBI and Schneiderman are going to be derailed by a lone insignificant tweeter saying all these Republicans are fucked and talking about unlikely SWAT teams of Marshals spreading out across the city. "Oh, we caught you cold illegally funneling money from Russians into real estate and casinos, but there's this lady writing crazy shit, so we'll let you go with a warning this time..." Somehow I think Warren, Franken, Feinstein, Cummings, Schiff (sp?), along with the actual FBI won't lose the thread that easily (and I imagine Trump's made a lot of enemies at the FBI, so even if Sessions tried to shut things down, it's likely to be an 8-armed octopus, including at New York's state level. Poor Robbie's going to have to grow him a pair - and two more.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 11:52am
Sigh, cough, sneeze, slobber. You missed/ignored the point.
by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 12:14pm
Lying is wrong, we should tell the truth, stick to the facts or wash our mouths/fingers out with soap. You never get a second chance to make a good first impression. When they go low, we go high. Your reputation precedes you. Trist is your best business card. Etc.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 2:04pm
Let me try again - no, I don't think there is any point - if there is, please write it clearer.
We just passed a 2 year period of collusion between the GOP, the press, the Russians, and the supposed alternate left spouting out insane lies that got enough traction to defeat the well-qualified Democratic candidate with a GOP candidate roughly akin to Caligula's horse - worse, Caligula's horse wasn't guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, and may have higher reading ability.
- the Democratic candidate was investigated again and again by Congress over a made up scandal about Benghazi accusing her of killing 4 State Department employees through huge negligence
- the Democratic candidate had her and team's and DNC and DCCC emails and policy planning positions all stolen and published drip drip drip on the internet and by the mainstream press/network TV.
- the mainstream press amplified some of the worst GOP/Russian lies through it all, including that HIllary was suffering from Parkinsons Disease, that she was running a pedophilia ring out of a pizza joint, that her non-profit charity was on the take for hundreds of millions of dollars (trillions if you include WaPo's misleading headline), or the wackier stuff like killing DNC worker Seth Rich because he supposedly leaked some rather innocuous emails to WIkileaks who inflated them into supposed scandal....
- the mainstream press focused incessantly on what was a fairly obvious and innocuous need during the Democrat's time as SoS, a relatively well-run email server that was never proven hacked unlike EVERY FUCKING OTHER EMAIL SYSTEM OUT THERE THAT WAS HACKED AND RELEASED ON THE INTERNET: gmail (Colin Powell?), State Department's, US military, French candidate, etc. And what seems to have not been noticed was these were 4-8 years later, a lifetime in terms of internet tech & practicies.
- let's place this last item in terms of news - it had 0, ZERO, nil value as a journalistic piece - there was absolutely no investigative value aside from leaking whatever the FBI investigation was doing. Everything else printed in any form was simply speculating, opinionating on why oh why Hillary Clinton might have done this. 1 1/2 years of speculation and guessing and writing long long long opinion pieces in the absence of any new facts. Hundreds of pages of content-free front column space writing big words about an investigation that didn't budge an inch for a year.
- meanwhile, the mainstream press couldn't report on the basics about her opponent - how big/small his organization was (for a billionaire, his org is tiny - nowhere near serious enterprise experience), how many times his casinos had been fined for money-laundering *OVER A 20 YEAR PERIOD*, how much Russians and Deutsche Bank had loaned him for various pet projects, how a Russian buddy had bought his house that had been unsold on the market for 2 years for *double* its asking price, how many Russians as tenants in his building, along with he & Jared's past as slumlords, etc., etc.
- while still giving the Planned Parenthood video and other GOP outrages prime time exposure
- and when the FBI started leaking heavily distorted & spun info about Hillary's investigation, the press (or Obama or Comey it seems) couldn't be bothered figuring out who was leaking info to Giuliani and Roger Stone
- and then we learn that the Russians have been putting $1 billion annually into hacking and fake news, making bloggers to make up stories and man the comments sections & large numbers of social media sites, and coordinating with the GOP including a major GOP donor (Mercer) who's been building up analytics capabilities for years to help throw elections worldwide (Cambridge Analytica and its parent company SCL), including money/collusion that wasn't declared for the watered down FEC requirements (along with illegally coordinating with Brexit factions)....
And now I find out the Louise Mensch, a blogger with 250,000 followers rather than the millions following Fox, Trump, whoever, has been saying stuff that's as crazy and stupid as say Rachel, or Joe & Mika, or Susan Sarandon (a regular alt left conspiracy mouthpiece), or maybe even the nightly rantings and propaganda from Fox News, Rush LImbaugh's national (and Armed Services Network) syndicate.
And what's she blogging on? how Trump & Co + extended GOP took Russian money for his business and colluded with them for the elections including hacking - a position that's been largely borne out, with more info each and every day, and the only really scandal part of what she's writing is whether the methods of how they did it are exact, and whether this or that indictment has been issued yet. In other words, roughly the same as William Safire saying Hillary was going to be indicted, as did Giuliani and Erik Prince and countless other Republicans and media figures. With the subtle difference that Louise Mensch may still be proven partially right, even if her SWAT teams didn't go forward, while Safire proclaimed Hillary going to jail 20 years ago and has been dead for 8 years now (though somehow still admired?) and Hillary's prosecution and Parkinsons came and went, just like her Body Count of murdered friends and accomplices, and still nothing - not even a misdemeanor, only a disappointed scolding from the head of the FBI.
Hey, my kid plagiarized a piece on the elections and said Trump was purple - must discipline, or might pollute the party and derail the Russian investigation [you do realize that Brendan Nyhan's whole faculty researcher schtick is "worry" about what this and that and every other issue in the media, and here's his summary re: vaccination:
But Mensch isn't an "elite" - she's a relative nobody. We've jumped line on the top 200 suspects, and gone straight to a largely unknown blogger known better for chicklit and being a former British conservative MP for 2 years before moving to New York 5 years ago cause she got married. Great job, Vox, holding the media elite's feet to the fire. Meanwhile, Bob Somerby tells anecdotes of Ted Koppel (I believe) "interviewing" Colin Powell and then taking a spin in his Ferrari (or whatever) - hard hitting questions, I'm sure, as half of the media figures & politicians can vacation together in Martha's Vineyard, talk about their kids' college & internships, and we end up with the "but Scooter Libby's a nice guy" roster of establishment types who lined up to excuse his behavior (George Bush to his credit didn't completely pardon Libby).
I fight with Hal all the time because he's here, but I don't consider what I see as big holes in his logic and reporting to be anything special or noteworthy in media - Pacifica Radio - or on the internet - Kos bloggers et al. Lulu is regularly quoting Consortium and Counterpunch and the Intercept, which I consider just as dodgy or dodgier with much more influence on say followers of Bernie. But I don't say to shut them down or expect them to be censured or whatever people are proposing for Mensch.
The only 2 things I can get out of this is are
1) that part of the left is wedded to this socialist-granddaddy ideal of Russia as patron saint and upholder of correct liberal anti-US values world-wide, and got burned big time after the election when with all the hand-waving of "see, Trump won fair, Hillary's just a loser, so let's move on" it turned out there really was a heap of Russian influence coming out, and Mensch symbolizes that focus only on the Russians and Trump's demise without being distracted by much else - i.e. dog-with-bone, and
2) this still laughable idealism of the state of American journalism and the rules/mores/ethics that supposedly should exist, in stark contrast to the every-increasing cesspool partially caused by Ailes/Murdoch/Rush in collusion with the GOP ever since roughly the effort to depose Bill Clinton and the consolidation & dumbing down of internet-fed media that he ironically helped accelerate, but also the the general slide into ever more infotainment by these same corporate-backed news outlets of whatever supposed political persuasion. I've known some badass journalists, and this crappy showtime way of powderpuff interviews guaranteed to walk away with more questions than answers along with the interviewee getting to spew their sound bite one more time, is simply not journalism, yet our whole news system is permeated with it.
So as for Vox's "point", I think it's exaggerated way out of proportion, and worse, it's self-defeating, as these rules that they're suggesting do nothing to combat the "a lie can travel the world while the truth is still putting on its sneakers" used continuously and to great effect by *everyone* on the other side, instead tying 1 hand behind our backs, and while Mensch may be wrong in many of her details, she's at least staying on point in her blogging, and we'll eventually find out which parts were true, unlike most of the constructed dross of the typical news cycle.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 2:11am
Conservative media is indeed a cesspool. It is not a solution to turn progressive media into a cesspool too.
by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 10:52am
There is nothing to suggest a progressive media cesspool.
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 10:55am
I really don't get when I see evidence, like on this thread, of people wanting to root for one side or the other when it concerns media. Everyone should be against cesspool and lies, no matter how many or how few. Everyone should hope for an ideal of unbiased media. Media should not be part of politics, it should report on and decode the politics. I most value the sources that attempt to decode spin rather than produce more of it. I just don't get the approach of supporting certain media because they are on "our side", by doing that one is contributing to making a bad situation worse.
Perhaps an example will help explain what I am getting at. One TV anchor I really admire is Don Lemon on CNN who strives to be as non-partisan as possible. By doing so, he inevitably exposes to anyone with a brain that there is currently more spin and lies and absurdities coming from the spin on the right.
I should say that I see this issue as having gone somewhat off-topic from the topic raised by the article you posted. That is more about the habit of conspiracy theorizing that has been fed mightily by the rise of the internet. It runs the gamut of the political spectrum. I just think certain people's brains are more prone to like it than others. A rare few use it responsibly, as inspiration to think outside the box, to figure out a situation or story. That's not me, I find it a waste of time, I have enough patience to wait until an outlet I respect as to getting things right most of the time has dug into facts. Don't see any reason to follow crazy lines of thought when there is so much better stuff out there that I don't have time to read. Once in a while it can be a fun diversion, but it is simply not efficient.
by artappraiser on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 11:36am
It's not even our side vs their side. Mensch is a pro-Brexit conservative funded by Murdoch; I suspect that she is driven by a hunger for attention rather than politics. But she says what progressives want to hear, so they give her a pass on credibility. It's classic confirmation bias.
by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 3:25pm
Really? Well that's scientific. Me, I see all the "he's a patriot" nauseous bits plus "he's a traitor" and figure she could turn on someone quite easy. After a few days of "this will break tomorrow" pass, I recognize the predictions are far from rock solid. Am I so unique? Nor does Brexit surprise me - I never figured I shared her politics. You think you've discovered the valley where the Children of Hamlin ended up, serenaded & hypnotized by Pied Piper Louise?
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 3:55pm
She is a pied piper of sorts though not nearly as effective as the pied pipers of the right. If she really wants to become the Alex Jones of the left, she should expand her repertoire.
In any case, though Mensch may not represent a clear and present danger to the Republic, her writing is pernicious, and I hate to see it propagated.
by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 9:30pm
Hate to see it propagated? You're new round here, ain't ya? it's what the internet was built on - here's to my old friend Serdar Argic, rumored at one time to be producing 1/5-1/4 of all internet traffic.
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 12:59am
Yeah, there's a lot toxic crap on the internet. We try to keep most of it off dagblog.
by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 8:32am
"She says what progressives want to hear." Are the bloggers who most strongly defend her at this site "progressive?"
by HSG on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 4:05pm
Dagblog, shmagblog. Mensch has 280K twitter followers. Don't tell me they're Trump supporters
by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 9:36pm
I don't equate Trump opponents with progressives. Every true progressive opposes Trump of course. But plenty of neocons and neolibs as well as Democratic insiders, like David Brock and Donna Brazile, with no fixed ideology, oppose him too. I would posit that Mensch's followers come as much or more from the second cohort of Trump opponents because her feverish Russian conspiracy theories provide an attractive explanation to them for Hillary's loss.
Michael Sainato is a strong progressive and Bernie supporter who scathingly attacked Mensch in Jared Kushner's Observer on April 20. I mention that Kushner owns the Observer because he obviously has a personal and financial interest in debunking Mensch. Feel free therefore to take Sainato's observations with the appropriate grains of salt. Still, his piece is well-sourced and his conclusions seem consistent with the ongoing debate here over Mensch's worth. From it:
by HSG on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 8:41am
Unfortunately, Twitter does not offer a progresso-meter, so I'm unable to calculate the mean progressive score of Mensch's followers based on the Ginsberg Scale of True Progressive Ideology. Sainato apparently has access to these analytics. Either that or he's talking out of his ass.
(Regardless, this is irrelevant to the question of whether Mensch's conspiracy peddling is bad for Democrats and the country in general.)
by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 11:10am
It's bad. For Democrats to regain power (which would be good for the country), they must be both better (perhaps much better) than Republicans on economic issues and more credible. Republicans have several electoral advantages including a much greater ability to exploit our bigotries. Personalities closely identified with the Democratic Party, like Donna Brazile, who adopt Mensch as a - well - mensch damage the party's credibility and suggest that chasing conspiracy theories matters more to Democrats that improving the economic conditions of the working class.
I responded quizzically to your declaration that Mensch "says what progressives want to hear, so they give her a pass on credibility" for the following reasons: A) As a self-identified progressive, I took it as an insult. B) Mensch's Russia-baiting is not, in my experience, what progressives want to hear. C) You did not back up the assertion.
Notwithstanding the sarcasm in your reply to my response, I do appreciate your apparent recognition that you over-reached in the acknowledgement that you are "unable to calculate the mean progressive score of Mensch's followers."
by HSG on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 12:36pm
If people see the connections between the Trump team and Russia, the profit making schemes of the Trump family using the White House as a piggy bank, and the Russian attack on the Clinton campaign and conclude that Donna Brazille is the problem, the republic is lost. Democrats are not the problem. If Democrats have to meet an unobtainable standard (that is in constant motion), there is no point in trying. The voters of the United States have failed us.
by rmrd0000 on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 7:20pm
BTW, didn't Glenn Greenwald push roughly this same article 2 months ago? But none of these folks have anything to say about why Jill Stein and Mike Flynn and a similar German fellow traveller were sitting with (and paid by) Putin in Moscow.
Just concern that Democrats are falling for fake news about Russia, bless their considerate little hearts.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 3:25am
Has there been as much of mainstream media backlash against Sean Hannity and his crackpot conspiracy about the murder of a DNC worker as the blogger is receiving? If media is going to scream, they need to go after big media outlets as well as the small fish. Hannity should be fired.
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 11:16am
Please
https://www.google.com/#q=hannity+%22seth+rich%22&tbm=nws
by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 11:35am
Hannity has a large audience. He consistently spouts nonsense, yet rarely gets the pushback that he is getting now. The reason this is happening is because Fox is weakened after Ailes, O'Reilly, and Shine had to depart. On the Left, it seems that people are pointing out flaws in Mensch's storyline. People on the Left apologized. I don't see any signs that there will be propaganda outlets like Conservative talk radio, Fox, and now Sinclair-Tribune. At this point, the Left is self-correcting. I never saw that on the Right.
Edit to add:
I admit that I really haven't been following Mensch's posts.
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 11:51am
Michael I don't know what your point is, RMRD is spot on. Look at the second link at your link on Hannity, Variety:
Hannity, at $29 million a year is the highest paid person in TV News.
Zach at Vox or the lefty Palmer blog are not even squashed bugs on Hannity's private jet window as far as their significance and impact.
Fox News and the right wing GOP echo chamber is blowing more smoke than ever
by NCD on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 10:45pm
People on the Left are always criticized by others on the Left. The Clinton Foundation should close because despite doing good work, it "looked bad". Obama receives $400K from corporations, therefore voters are unable to tell the difference between the party who lost seats after passing healthcare reform and the party that wants to end healthcare for over 20 million people. When we find a competitive candidate in Georgia, we are told he is not Progressive enough. The GOP is acting as a front for Russia, destroying the safety net, and selling off property for pennies on the dollar..........but, but the Liberals are bad. Nonsense.
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 8:37am
What is your definition of being "on the left?" The Clintons don't meet mine. In some areas (the ACA), Obama does. In others (drone attacks, cutting social security, spying on Americans), he doesn't.
by HSG on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 8:48am
Obamacare puts Obama on the Left. President Clinton would not be trying to take healthcare away from 20+ million people. That puts her on the Left.I put Sanders on the Left despite having zero faith that he would focus on issues of race. Sanders wouldn't be taking away healthcare. Obama, Hillary, and Sanders are on the Left.
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 9:33am
Weird - ACA is basically Hillary's health care program. How come Obama gets a pass for basically passing Hillary's plan, but Hillary doesn't meet your standards with her own plan?
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 10:04am
The ACA came as much from the Heritage Foundation as from anywhere else. Pretty tough to swallow that crew as leftist. On a broader note, all of us are an ever-evolving constellation of opinions, beliefs, and actions. You add them all up and divide by the number of opinions to get an average score. With perhaps one or two exceptions, no one opinion or action can define an individual as a member of the left, right, or center. But when you look at an individual's views on a wide range of issues, you can place her or him on the political spectrum with a fair degree of accuracy. Recognizing of course that one's place on the spectrum changes - sometimes markedly - over time as one's beliefs change over time and depending on what issues are most important at any given moment.
by HSG on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 11:44am
Here is the late Senator Ted Kennedy 's view of how healthcare came to be
http://www.newsweek.com/ted-kennedy-and-health-care-reform-82011
Edit to add:
538 looked at Hillary's record. Hillary is a liberal.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/hillary-clinton-was-liberal-hillary-...
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 12:38pm
Ted Kennedy's reminiscences are incredibly valuable. They don't prove the Affordable Care Act represents a truly progressive solution or that much of it didn't come from right-wingers like the Heritage Foundation. That said, I acknowledged that Obama's push for healthcare reform did demonstrate some leftist chops.
Regarding Clinton, I did not ask for 538's opinion of her political bent, I asked for your definition of "being on the left" since you defend both her and Obama from criticism from the left on the ground that they are "on the left." Yes many perceive her to be a liberal and 538 says she is one. But the terms (liberal and leftist) are certainly not synonymous in today's political environment where the neo-con Washington Post is often called a liberal newspaper.
by HSG on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 1:19pm
Interesting piece. It's worth noting that the three issues on which they measure her position in relation to polled voters are: gay marriage, immigration and criminal justice reform. I.e. more the civil-rights kind of progressive issues than economic issues. It's on the latter that Sanders supporters would raise doubts about the label "leftist" as applied to Hillary Clinton. I don't think anyone doubts her credentials on civil rights issues.
On the economic issues you have for instance decent majorities in favor of single-payer or tuition-free college, yet Clinton isn't in favor. So it's hard to call her "leftist" if she is to the right of a majority of Americans. Not that she, nor many of her supporters, want to apply that label to her.
by Obey on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 1:21pm
The support for single-payer is not as clear cut as you suggest.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/03/27/how-do-americ...
538 looked at Hillary compared to her Democratic colleagues.Hillary is Liberal.
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 1:49pm
I find the links here to the research more useful.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sorry-republicans-but-most-people-support-single-payer-health-care/2017/04/17/f0919bb6-23a6-11e7-bb9d-8cd6118e1409_story.html?utm_term=.43e8fd7cce3f
64% in favor of Medicare-for-all especially impressive
by Obey on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 2:03pm
There is support, but it decreases when people realize that the government is involved.
From your link
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 2:19pm
RMRD - Let's say that Hillary looks at the polls and she sees that most Democrats support single-payer. She looks around the world and sees that most countries - and every other developed one - has some form of single-payer healthcare which results in better and cheaper outcomes for their citizens. But, she says to herself, Americans are naturally anti-government so therefore it's going to be a tough sell against determined and well-funded adversaries who have an awful lot to lose. So fuhgeddaboutit.
Does that sound like the view of somebody who's "on the left"?
by HSG on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 2:24pm
Let's suppose President Clinton had a Republican Senate and House. Trying to get single-payer means putting literally everything on the table to construct single-payer. In that hostile environment, would it be wise for a person on the Left like Hillary to put the health care of millions at risk?
40% of the country still supports Trump. A guy charged with assaulting a reporter may win a Congressional seat in Montana. I am skeptical of single-payer being easy.
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 2:39pm
So your argument is that Clinton was being a pragmatic realistic politician promoting a moderate half-a-loaf is better than none solution - does that sound like a politician "on the left"?
In any event, I reject your premise. In fact, promoting single-payer healthcare is precisely how to reach people in Montana. Calling them "deplorables" is precisely how not to.
by HSG on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 2:56pm
See below
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 3:21pm
So "on the left" = "can't strategize worth shit"? Good to know. I never would have guessed they were equivalent. I thought "left" had something to do with stances on policies and issues, not a penchant for masochism.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 3:10pm
Yes big surprise that the washington post has an opinion piece opposed to single payer. ;0)
by Obey on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 2:48pm
60% of democrats in Congress now in favor of single-payer. I don't see Hillary hypothetically being among them.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/676/cosponsors?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22676%22%5D%7D&r=2
by Obey on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 2:09pm
A punditfact rating of "half true" equals "came as much from the Heritage Foundation as from anywhere else". Okaayy....
BTW, no religious exemptions in Hillarycare, but I expect that won't resonate at all, because by being Hillary, she's simply right wing.
BTW, back in 2008 it was noted that Hillarycare v 2.0 had a lot in common with Romneycare for Massachussetts. Was that part & parcel with Heritage too? she was also going to have the rich pay for it (getting rid of their deductions)
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 1:41pm
I wrote: "The ACA came as much from the Heritage Foundation as from anywhere else."
From the article I cited: "The Heritage Foundation, the granddaddy of the right-wing think tanks, fumed when President Barack Obama said it was the source of the concept of the health insurance marketplaces where people could shop for the best deal. (We rated Obama's claim Mostly True.)"
by HSG on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 1:48pm
If you care, HillaryCare v 2.0 overview from Oct 2007
Hillarycare background from 1993 - RollingStone (including the problem with ornery "Democrat" Pat Moynihan plus the pain of Robert Byrd)
SCHIP from 1997
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 2:00pm
I supported and continue to support the Affordable Care Act. It's certainly better than what we had before, although nowhere near as good as universal single-payer. The ACA is progressive to the extent that it increases the number of poor, working, and middle-income Americans who are protected by decent health insurance. I don't remember very well 1993 and the fight over HillaryCare except for the devastating and despicable Harry and Louise ads. I did support HillaryCare then and wish it had come to pass. None of this means the various healthcare plans that Hillary, Romney, and Obama promoted, don't have conservative underpinnings even if their net effect was (or would have been) on balance salutary.
In the past, I have lauded Hillary's work on s-Chip. But, as I mentioned in an earlier comment, we are all a constellation of opinions, beliefs, and actions - many of which are contradictory. Hillary's progressive (and good) work with Orrin Hatch (conservative) and others in the 90s does not outweigh in my mind the many conservative (and harmful) things she has done and said throughout her life.
by HSG on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 2:11pm
Sorry for this 2nd post but I neglected to respond to this question: "back in 2008 it was noted that Hillarycare v 2.0 had a lot in common with Romneycare for Massachussetts. Was that part & parcel with Heritage too? she was also going to have the rich pay for it (getting rid of their deductions)"
The answer is yes at least according to the house organ of both Hillary's campaign manager and one of her closest advisors - Neera Tanden. Per Think Progress, "[b]ut before Democrats took up the mantle of reforming health care on the national level, Heritage experts boosted former Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) health reform plan in the Bay State. In numerous pieces posted on the Heritage website before 2008, Heritage took a markedly different approach to health reform than it does now[.]"
by HSG on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 2:00pm
Does that sound like he was just using the old Heritage plan?
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 2:03pm
It sure does since the piece quotes Romney approvingly for "conced[ing] that the only real difference between the plans was" that his was bipartisan.
by HSG on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 2:16pm
Obviously, Hannity's conspiracy theories are despicable. We all know that at dag. There is no point in saying it. I merely disputed rmrd's suggestion that Mensch was getting more critical coverage than Hannity in MSM. That's a joke, not even remotely close to reality. Hence the google news link with 400,000+ articles about Hannity and Seth Rich (compared to 15,000 total about Louise Mensch).
And ftr, I wouldn't have bothered to mention Mensch either if one my co-bloggers weren't promoting her work.
by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 10:47am
"promoting" - that's pretty disingenuous - I've been quite careful *NOT* to reference her or Palmer Report at all except for a specific comment (not blog piece, not News of the Day) DIRECTLY TO YOU in which I caveated it big time with "of course can be totally wrong".
And the specific piece was claiming that Trump might have a) sent someone to grab data off Comey's computer the day Trump fired Comey while he was on travel in California - hardly "pigs can fly" kind of speculation, and b) then gave the data to the Russians (who he met with in the Oval Office - much more unbelievable.
Unbelievable except that he also publicly said he divulged classified info to the Russians re: Syria that day, info "considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government", for which the Israelis seem royally pissed.
So considering it was amazing that he was stupid enough to overtly meet the Russians in the White House - including the well toxic Kislyak for half Trump's campaign team - the day after firing the head of the FBI over pursuing a Russian collusion investigation, and then leaked sensitive info to them, I can't say Mensch is wackier than Trumpian reality or whether handing data over on a flash drive is beyond Trump or team's possibilities (especially from us knowing that he had Nunes leak him sensitive details of the ongoing Congressional investigation of his own White House in the infamous midnight run).
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 11:17am
It's not about wackiness. It's about credibility and accountability. Mensch has neither. Call your links to her what you want, but you seem unwilling to to admit that there is anything wrong with citing her as a source. I would say the same thing if you sourced Hannity or Alex Jones.
by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 11:26am
Mensch is all about conspiracy theorizing. I do see it as properly described as wackiness. It is about throwing all kinds of wild stuff out there and seeing what sticks. It's an addiction of people with suspicious minds, people go hunting for stuff, then then they get a thrill when something sticks.
I do get the appeal because in the pre-internet days, I remember nothing so thrilling in grad school as spending hours in the stacks hunting and cross referencing footnotes, trying to find correlations, get inspiration for my next paper.
That's cheating as a scholar, it's only the start of being one. Once you've gone through a rigorous grad school program or written a book like you have, you realize that. And you recognize the thought and wisdom part and value that in your sources, people who have accumulated mass quantities of info. and then sifted it all BEFORE publishing.
The difference with the Mensch types on the internet now is this: it is working on the principle that the hive or crowd will act as the brain sorting and analyzing mass quantities of unsifted data input. That is dangerous, always has been. But also inherent in that is the same belief that our founders had: that "the people" can handle very messy partisan free speech, that eventually the truth will out, that they don't need elites to figure out the truth.
by artappraiser on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 12:03pm
This is not a college paper. It's war & politics by other means. It's eat or be eaten, except we're always so close to winning we're lulled into thinking we're almost not losing.
There are elections being stolen, there are good policies being killed and bad ones being created, and just because we've made a slight dent in righting the record doesn't mean we're terribly succeeding or that the system isn't broke or needs a drastic update to function well in 2017.
There's a meetup of a rigged media factory, politicians in permanent state of collusion, a bigger influx of money than we ever thought possible, then came a new-found acceptance of blatant lies as both palatable and even a positive to rally behind, and now hacking by a foreign government both stealing and spouting out fake "news" on a broad top-to-bottom scale to make it even worse, yet supposedly we just need to stay grownup and write the truth and we'll prevail. Not even much done on the psychological Kahnemann/NLP/other alternative ways of understanding how we digest (& don't digest) information and are easily deceived.
We sat there reassured last Fall that Hillary had at least won the 3 debates overwhelmingly, except that in checking audience reactions, for people who thought the debates important or crucial for voting (or some such phrasing), Trump actually won among that group. How? People just see stuff different - it's no use trying to explain it unless we're going to dive into it to see what actually forms opinion, not just reeks of "the truth".
The recent article by the activist on OWS was noting that nobody ever asked "is what we're doing advancing our agenda?" - instead it was all phrased in finding and fighting always for the exact policy, and with it defining who's in, who's out.
We've taken the old journalist model and just plopped the internet/Facebook/Twitter on top, with an expectation that the same rules will always apply, that J School 1923 equals J School 2017, even as media giants have come and gone, been merged, been decimated, been coopted by General Electric and Microsoft and Amazon and Murdoch tied to a new generation of likes and sharing and mixing social entertainment with hard news, interactive opinion tied to mud slinging & internet free-for-alls, etc. As the line from Butch Cassidy went, "Rules? What Rules?"
Nate Silver talks over and over about the liberal bubble, and few actually listen to him. His problem with pollsters and similar reporters was that they kept ignoring the cross-pollination across near borders, between similar papers, etc. - folks may think they're independent, but they ignore the interdependencies that bias the data, and multiply that in 4 different disregarded ways we can be working with 60-70% uncertainty - i.e. worse than a coin toss - rather than the 2-3% "margin of error" we typically see stamped on.
From scientific work, sometimes a system works better with *more noise* injected into the system, not less - a bit too much analogically like the old intermarried royal families of Europe.
Here's more Silver:
Now this is a bit different from running a political movement or the art of modern reporting, but there are seeds of the same ideas in all. There's some chaos needed in political movements - especially in fast moving modern times - or ideas and approaches become brittle and old-fashioned, even in as short a period of 5 years. Our idea of journalism is all on-the-record, properly vetted and run through the right brand stuff, and we don't seem troubled that we're all quoting the same NYTimes/WaPo/Huffpost/CNN/Guardian 95% of the time, and the journalists we're referencing are reading the same articles or carefully cultivated similars.
The Titanic was not to be predicted by a manual on "Proper Operation of Steamships Under Typical Sailing conditions". Referencing Kahneman, we seem to be masturbating our Fast Thinking brain regularly, and leaving our Slow Thinking analytical mind starved for real convoluted, contradictory, difficult to process brain food, basically the coarse fiber that would cleanse the gut, instead assuring ourselves that pre-processed nuourishment is a healthier diet than complex foods.
We're being lied to all the time, and if not, the ones giving us info are making huge mistakes that are barely acknowledge except on page 27 next to the crossword. We're better off with a healthy mistrust of the system - political, journalistic, philosophical, economic, social. Instead of a semiconductor clean room to eat our dinner in, we need healthier metabolisms that aren't so sensitive to impurities, be they disease or fraud.
I remember a friend in Tokyo saying he could walk across a dance floor bumping into people and no one would complain - and then did just that. In a society of hyper-agreeable, non-confrontational people, it's easy to see how they're setting themselves up like Asia before the Mongol Hordes.
But we're doing much the same way in acclimatizing ourselves to losing, and all the ways we can enable and justify that outcome. Yes, the end frequently justifies the means, and not every use of that equation is a slippery slope to Nürnberg or Soviet show trials. We need to embrace power and persuasion a bit better than just an appeal to cold intellectual reason.
Many get inspired by Bernie wanting to shake up the party, yet curiously resist the similar needed change in other spheres. The DNC *is* slow, outdated, not helpful enough, not enough on the ball, etc. - as is government including law enforcement, journalistic establishment, and other stalwarts of our stable, conservative society.
PS - and yes, it's ironic and paradoxical that I would use such a classical form of long-winded literary response that will literally persuade no one that doesn't already agree. Still not post-modern despite all my efforts.
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 7:23am
wow I'm glad what I said inspired this long-winded literary response! Rich with brain food. Especially on "wisdom of crowds" and the Silver stuff. (Comes to mind, I remember MJ Rosenberg once commenting on a discussion thread about Obama's popularity without knowledge of his policy thusly: "what's wrong with populism?: I hope he gets it now.)
Welcome to the 21st century, not like they promised us on "The Jetsons." Change has been the most popular campaign keyword since Clinton/Gore in 92. That promise has finally been fulfilled, has it ever! Sometimes my head just aches, give up, want a rocking chair.
Edit to add: best to just let go of the PoMo thing, I've learned they are not teaching it in (online) college anymore, it's so yesterday. We are now PoPoPoMo.
by artappraiser on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 11:29am
So what's the new PoMo?
PS I agree, interesting comment by PP that unexpectedly appeared deep in this odd thread
by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 1:22pm
it's more like it won, there's nothing to replace it, there's nothing to compete with it, it is all there is, nothing to argue about, nothing to explain, they are it and it is them, 100% accepted. Everyone "CURATES" their own persona and their own truth, reality and history of the world. Should you want to express that to others (not that you expect that to change anyone else's own curated reality, but simply to SHARE your own existence) you do that with "NARRATIVES".
by artappraiser on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 1:39pm
Physician, curate thyself. Mashing up Narrative with Narrenschiff, we end up on a fool's errand, while "SHARE your own existence" reminds me of the guitarist for Betty Blowtorch, Sharin Needles. Nope, as we've tried for centuries, it will be replaced, one more opinion to get in the last word, then another, and another, our little corner of culture will fade quick, summoning up that short story I read eons ago set in an arid desert, the only sign of the previous civilization was some signpost or bust or something saying "Moses", or looking a bit closer & digging a bit deeper, "Robert Moses". Nietzsche's eternal recurrence is just a bad internal monologue of things you could have said but didn't for one reason or another, meanwhile someone else will say it better and more succinctly and successfully and what not, Paradise Lost becomes In-a-Gadda-da-vida become Ricky Nelson's Garden Party becomes Cinema Paradiso. Plagiarism - we're always picking the bones of the past until its pristine with beauty and insight. Yes, it will be replaced - we're all replaceable. Maybe this time even with machines, if we live that long.
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 2:00pm
Thanks, went ahead & published as a diary. Just wait til I tell all my friends on Twitter, I'm fahmous!!!
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 1:50pm
Fake News has a double cousin. What to call it Hidden News?
by A Guy Called LULU on Wed, 05/24/2017 - 8:26pm
The news outlets you mention have definitely reported on Saudi brutality even if they did not mention it when reporting on the recent arms deal and have tended to downplay Saudi inhumanity. Understandably, the NYT is not included in this list. From the Grey Lady (May 17) "Seven million people in Yemen are facing starvation and 17 million people are in need of urgent humanitarian relief after two years of fighting between a Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels."
The Washington Post on March 8 had a good article on Trump's planned resumption of arms sales to Saudi Arabia despite its ongoing bombing campaign against Yemen.
In general, though, your point is very well-taken. The corporate media consistently underreports/ignores human rights abuses by the United States and our allies.
by HSG on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 8:29am
The right response to kinda center-moderate corporate-influenced but extraordinarily accurate and comprehensive news outlets like the NYT, WaPo, and CNN (pretty darn accurate not so comprehensive) is not to embrace charlatans and hustlers.
by HSG on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 8:30am
If it were up to those " extraordinarily accurate" news outlets, we wouldn't even be discussing Russia now, because they assured us the FBI wasn't investigating, and it's quite possible that without the spotlight, Trump could have shut down the inquiry without the scandal. Mensch tweeted the leak about the FISA warrant on Carter Page & possibly other Trump members in early November just after the elections (i.e. too late) about 2 weeks after the NY Times ran a front page "no FBI investigation of Russians" front page article the week before the elections. It wasn't until Buzzfeed dropped the by-then 5-month-old Steele Dossier on the public to much gnashing of teeth over lack of journalistic ethics that we found out there was much more to the story than we were being told - all the major "extraordinarily" and "pretty darn accurate" news outlets had passed on the story, and when it did drop, they predictably focused on the sensational golden showers bit and largely ignored the rest.
(another point they focused on was whether Cohen, Trump's lawyer, had been in Prague as claimed. Cohen showed a picture of the outside of his passport, saying "I've never been in Prague, and I was in California at the time". THat "at the time" was much larger than Cohen pretended, the outside of the passport proves absolutely zero, and when Buzzfeed was allowed to see his passport, it turns out Cohen had been in Rome during the stated period, which is 2 hours flight time to Prague and has no border checks (and wouldn't be traceable if done by a $5000 private charter flight)
Perhaps that'd be blowing things out of proportion, but now it turns out that Flynn and Sessions and Kushner all forgot to list meetings with Russians in their security applications, and that despite Trump saying he has no Russian investment it turns out there was a $850 million Russian investment in a Toronto project that's still in the midst of falling apart, among other funny Russian business & ties to Russian money laundering, etc.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 11:40am
You write: "If it were up to those " extraordinarily accurate" news outlets, we wouldn't even be discussing Russia now, because they assured us the FBI wasn't investigating, and it's quite possible that without the spotlight, Trump could have shut down the inquiry without the scandal."
The source for your claim that the news outlets "assured us the FBI wasn't investigating" is apparently this article from the NYT which you cite earlier in the thread. In fact, the Times article does not at any point say the FBI isn't or wasn't investigating the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. It says just the opposite over and over.
-------
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It is true the paper writes that the FBI says that Trump is not a target and that "[l]aw enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government." But, as far as I am aware, that statement was true then even if Trump himself is now a target - if only because of his ham-fisted attempts to stifle the overall investigation. Indeed, Politico's extensive March 2017 charts detailing Trump's relationship to Putin does not contain any conclusive or direct link between Trump and the Russian government during the Presidential campaign.
by HSG on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 2:53pm
Hal, we've gone far afield from the ordinal post
But regarding healthcare, Democrats lost seats after it's passage
Regarding Montana, the Republican still has the edge
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/montanas-special-election-could-giv...
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 3:25pm
Yes and we may well lose Montana even though the Republican candidate is a thug. That said, Clinton lost Montana by over 20 percentage points pursuing her centrist brand of liberalism. Let's see how Quist does.
by HSG on Thu, 05/25/2017 - 4:02pm
Interesting article. I'm never going to understand why the investigative work by WaPo, NYTimes, CNN and a growing variety of reputable publications reporting on the Trump kakistocracy aren't good enough. Whether it is progressives or liberals or conservatives, the constant verbal assaults on the press and their untrustworthyness has forever altered our relationship with legitimate reporting and has a growing minority demanding and reveling in the most salacious, rumor mongering and all around ridiculousness. Debord nailed our penchant for craving, needing ultimately being destroyed by the spectacle. Mensch and the others are merely taking their turn as they see, in the fire, the spectacle, the fame or infamy that comes from being the spectacle. The question becomes how does this end? Certainly, people should be rejecting these obvious charlatans selling their impeachment elixir, but they don't, that is how ingrained the spectacle is in current civil society, sometimes even the smartest people fall for absolute bullshit.
by tmccarthy0 on Fri, 05/26/2017 - 1:31am