Misinformation Nation (Staying Alive In 2021)
"I just want to say, in Florida there will be no lockdowns, there will be no school closures," Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said late last week. "Floridians have been, are and will remain free to choose what’s best for themselves and their families."
While no one can say "what's best" for someone else and their family (in Florida or anywhere else), what we can say is that contracting a dangerous virus typically doesn't make the cut when people conjure mental lists of good outcomes. And Flori
A weak rebuttal plays into the hands of those with the strong challenge. It also gives Mitch political cover saying that he was a voice of reason. In that line of reasoning Mitch is simply cementing the right’s attack on reality well simultaneously quietly building his own power. I see not a sliver of decency or altruism ever emanating from Mitch McConnell. The Sith may even have been modeled after him.
That. The guy is simply covering his ass saying some bland stuff the few remaining sane Republicans can hide behind… while doing nothing/continuing to profiteer from their loony base.
Dear H – can I share the following? https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/07/american-anger-polarization-fox-news/
I think this makes it pretty clear who the real culprit is in all of this… I understand it pushes back on narratives around foreign interferences and social media guilt but, IMHO, it fits the facts better. Of course, it doesn’t have to be an either or story. Everything can be (partly) responsible for the deleterious state of our political discourse. But, from a potential remedy pov, it would pay to concentrate on the biggest culprit.
Yeah, I allow links to reputable, reliable sites, so the link is obviously fine.
But if I recall, I’ve replied to you (or to someone anyway) before: Fox quite plainly doesn’t have the reach of Facebook or Twitter, and as I’ve mentioned a thousand times previous, people generally don’t recognize propaganda and foreign influence campaigns when they see them. That’s the whole point. And some things are simply not in Fox’s wheelhouse. For example, when Trump bombed Syria, a handful of well-known (to people who study propaganda, anyway) Twitter personalities (two of them strikingly beautiful young women) unleashed a torrent of pro-Assad, anti-Trump tweets to their hundreds of thousands of followers across the English-speaking world. One of those young ladies masquerades as a “political scientist” and regularly appears on fringe podcasts, etc. She’s quite plainly part of the Kremlin’s extended network of influencers, no different (in kind, anyway) from an Instagram influencer recruited by a fashion brand to promote the latest trend in shoes. In fact, she started an Instagram account a few years back. 🙂
I’d just reiterate that to pretend Fox News has the influence of Facebook when it comes to the dissemination of propaganda on a global scale is patently ridiculous. Fox is Fox. Exhaustive analyses of the network are pointless at this juncture. Anyone who knows anything (at all) about Roger Ailes can tell that story backwards and forwards, inside and outside. There’s nothing left to tell. It’s poison.
If you could somehow hack Mark Zuckerberg in such a way that compelled him to tell you the honest-to-God truth for an entire 10-minute interview and during that interview you were to suggest to him that Fox News is more powerful than Facebook, “Honest Mark” would laugh you out of the room. And on your way out, he’d shout after you that he knows what you what you had for breakfast, what kind of dental floss you use, what song you listened to when you went for a jog the previous day, your driver’s license number and your blood type.
And yet, as politics are concerned north of Copiapo, Chile, most of my neighbors say “Who gives a s___? They are all loser A_______.”
I come to this site for a perspective relating to the movement of money.
The US is either 17th or 45th, depends on the survey.
Glad we left, the food and work culture is better here.
Wishing you all good luck with the next waves.
Thanks, Tom. We’ll try to stay alive. 🙂