New York Times: Sources: the US DOJ is probing whether ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox News violated antitrust law by briefly suspending their White House pool coverage of Trump — Major TV networks were notified on Friday that the department was looking into whether they violated antitrust laws when they suspended pool coverage of President Trump.
That’s why there’s no reasoning with them. They care nothing for truth, logic, consistency, anything.
Maybe they’re just as impotent and upset as you are. Maybe this is hell?
Putting aside calling me impotent… :P
They are. They are frustrated. In their worldview, fed to them by the fascists, everything is also wrong. It’s just that they are told that fascism will fix things. I know a lot of them put blind faith in that, but a lot of them also get tired of the repeated lies. The problem is that they are led to believe that both sides lie equally, so they might as well go with the side that panders to their hate and reassures them that they are right and better than everyone else.
I do have some sympathy for them on one level. And frankly, the problem we should face is the oligarchs and Citizens United. If we were able to solve our oligarch problem, we would have to figure out how to properly educate MAGA, becasue frankly, MAGA is also a wedge issue the oligarchs use to divide us.
So while MAGA wants to kill people like me, I view them as victims of propaganda, although they do choose to live in that world as well.
Impotent as in helpless against our oppressors, I’m sure you’re really good at sex :p
This really is one of the calmer, better reasoned takes I’ve encountered online recently, thanks for sharing it. There’s something I’d like to expand on more than debate though. Really more about my own fixation on that propaganda than anything. Even the oligarchy and obvious corruption are themselves symptoms of the worship of wealth that drives our civilization. Even if every decision maker were replaced with a benevolent humanist the systems we’ve built exist to make number go up, not quality of life. Our morality, our cultural values, our very perception is constructed around the idea of more being better and the inevitability of the process of coercive extraction through which we’re all meant to compete in consolidating our hoards at one another’s expense. We’re strung out and impotent (yes, all of us) and addicted to intensity of experience itself. Red team/blue team were arbitrary divisions to capture tribal identity long before MAGA or even KKK coalesced as focal points, and I don’t think it’s wise to approach them as a root cause or core issue. The “MAGA” that wants you dead is a freakish abberation amplified and presented to you because of the utility that has to the status quo. It’s an essentially nonexistent bogeyman, a narrative counterpoint to the transwoman scheming to make your kids gay. A division, an escalation, a distraction. KKK was likewise not an organic groundswell of hatred but carefully orchestrated political theater. I highly recommend looking into their history, these things are often much clearer from a distance. We are all victims of propaganda, like Garfield tshirt says “you are not immune”. Even the miserable billionaires with every material luxury and still no contentment. Especially them, in a sense. They’re certainly the least connected to humanity and most thoroughly processed of us. I spend a lot of time on the street and can promise 1/3 of the country does not want you dead. The vast majority of us all want the same thing, and it’s lot more like a hug and a sandwich despite all efforts to the contrary.
I kinda lost whatever point I may have been trying to make, but thanks for the opportunity to ramble. Going to cut it off here before I start going on about AI as a way for capital to replicate human output convincingly enough to directly manufacture consent, and the consequences of atomization and the escalation between engaging in more and more granular subcultures on heavily monitored platforms and just each engaging with the machine directly, and 9/11 being used to establish a near-omniscient surveillance apparatus and covid being used to force its adoption, and how… I need to touch grass.
was joke :)
“Ramble” is not intended as an insult, mind. I have severe ADHD and ramble quite a lot. Rambling can be useless, but it can also be working through all of the foundational stuff, all of the possibiliites. Simply the antithesis of speaking in soundbites.
I find a lot to agree with, but it’s always boring to just say “Oh, I agree with this and this and this” and easier to point out where I disagree, so… allow me to express some disagreement, even while I agree with a large part. :)
First, while there is merit to viewing red/blue as bullshit political theatre, there is also a critical difference: The red team tends towards wanting to take away human rights, to impose their worldviews on the rest of us. Their “religious freedom” involves taking away our rights. Whereas if the blue team completely won - and I mean progressives, not so much the establishment Democrats - sure, we’d have some laws on our books that meant some of the red team wouldn’t get to do things they want to do - like oppress people. Blue team wins and we have social safety nets, protection of human rights. Sure, the Christian nationalists can’t impose the death penalty for abortion of LGBTQ+ people for existing, but I think that’s fair and a Good Thing™. So I’m just saying that while there is team politics, there is also a legitimate difference.
Second, while I also won’t argue that there’s not political theatre with racism, the simple fact is that racism absolutely exists, and lynchings continue into the present time. Sndown cities still exist. Redlining still exists. Systemic racism absolutely exists. And while the Republican party might not be racist, it is also true that the extreme vast majority of racists find a home in the Republican party.
So while I still argue that wealth inequality is still the root of our problems, a lesser root is foreign interference (especially Russia’s influence - they are fighting the second Cold War that we deny exists), and a lesser root is the Christian Nationalism that has taken root in the US as well. There are plenty of other problems, but some of those problems (e.g. Citizens United) are secondary (i.e. the root problem there is wealth inequality).
Some of what you touched on - the inherent problems in our system - can be changed. Seeking wealth is not the problem; rather, allowing wealth to accumulate excessively is. Having rich people is fine if social safety nets mean none go without the basics. The problem is allowing oligarchs to exist. And progressive taxation of wealth is one of the ways to combat that. The more wealth you accumulate, the harder it is to keep amounts over certain amounts. Like how the lowest paid people pay less in federal income taxes, but as you go up that ladder, you pay more - not on the base, but on the excess. Similalry, we don’t make it impossible for, say, millionaires to exist, but we make it extremely difficult for billionairs to exist, and essentially impossible for trillionaires to exist. In the same way that we purport to prevent monopolies, we should prevent what is essentially a monopoly class of extreme wealth.
Of course, there’s also what we can do theoretically, and what we can accomplish practically.