Paper Lies

It's a sign of the times
We believe anything and nothing

Paper lies

When you kill the truth
You can make a killing
You might just make losing look like winning - Marillion (1994)

Despite Trump's assertion that he invented the word fake, it actually has been in use a long time (since at least the 18 century).  And the idea of fiction, falsity and bias in news reporting has been around for a long while as well (someone even mentioned it in a song in 1994). Trump's statement is a fascinating example of irony that displays what it is attacking.  We used to even have a more-than-one-syllable word for it: propaganda.  As such, propaganda attempts to close any open, unresolved elements to ensure a complete, monologic transmission of thought.  That is, to force a conclusion without question.  It is a mode of ideology in operation.

The problem isn't news that's fake, it's use of the term itself.  Fake news is a term that is used to shut down a debate and enforce ideology over facts. And it's used by, and to describe, people who don't want to think for themselves.  Other than the noise created by negative chaos of social media and deliberate lying manipulation by memes, and organizations so deprived, evil and so ridiculously stupid that only a true moron would follow them [1], which aren't news at all, but lies meant to incite: psychological warfare, there isn't much fakeness.  The news reported is based on real events, it's the presented fields of interpretation that add There is a responsibility on the part of the receiver to understand these fields and discern some levels of relevancy and accuracy.  In this information age, it is easier than ever to fact check on one's own an d to stay current.

As American landscape has changed over the last 10 years, there has been a lot of blame put onto the  media, lamenting the loss of objective reporting and accusing the of inserting bias.  But this is just a surface reaction.  To understand the real issue requires a look at the subject of what is being reported.  It isn't the media that has changed -fundamentally - but the political landscape itself.  Changes in the media are only a response, a a reaction to that.

As Fareed Zakaria has noted "Politics is about tribal affiliation. It's not about issues anymore. In the old days is was about issues, it was really about economic issues, and economic issues you can comprise on . . . When you get into these cultural,social issues which are really more about core identity, how do you compromise? . . . These have become issues on which people see the world differently. we have become Sunnis and Shiites . . . for the last ten years there has been no compromise"

The culture has become so split that no news report could be completely objective in the perspective of both parallax views.  But, that does not mean both sides are equivalent.  Not all forces of persuasive discourse are equal.  Power systems must be factored in and the existing dominant structures recognized.  Reporting that challenges the power structure is not the inverse of reporting that promotes it.  Challenges still leave an open space for understanding.  But, reports that mimic what leadership wants one to believe closes space for debate and argumentation.  

In the case of Fox vs CNN there is a difference. First Fox is very monologic, with talking heads spouting ideology to force conclusions inline with their desired power structure.  When the head of power is on the left, they attach to figures on the right that form an opposition.  In the case of CNN, first there is active debate.  Panels made up of three to three on the left/right are common, sometimes 2 on the left against 3 on the right . The balance of left/right on CNN is even more distorted to the right  than it was to the left during Obama's term, with the placement of panelists who have been paid members of the Trump team.  With panelists like Lewandowski, Jeffrey Lord, Kayleigh, Ed Martin, Andre Bauer, there is a direct defense of Trump's establishment and hence, CNN cannot be monologic. The debate raises issues that the viewer can contemplate.  Secondly, while the channel does challenge  Republican administrations, it also heavily criticizes Democratic ones as well.  For instance, Erin Burnett would at times lead with three stories attacking the Obama administration.

With each swing of the pendulum, the challengers in the social discussion adopt tactics that the former side used and there is further escalation.  What is needed is not a draining of the swamp, but a return to the establishment, when policy makers were professionals and worked in terms of policy primarily rather than cultural ideology.  When the debates become once again anchored on facts and not judgment, then the competing arguments can be presented and evaluated in objective and comparable terms.

[1] Pure non-sense like Info-wars and Alex Jones which de-evolve any view into childish fantasy and result in evil, rather than misinformed bad arguments.

Jeremiah Blues 2017.10 Part 2

After listening to more mental gymnastics by the right today, I have to revisit yesterday's controversy.  First, the backlash against the CBS lawyer who was unsympathetic to the shooting victims is being framed to make her into some kind of liberal poster child while calling for her perpetual firing (and probably worse if many conservatives had their way).  She is no spokesperson for the left. And second, they have tried to tie her disrespectful attitude into some larger view coextensive with the mainstream media. She isn't a representative of the popular view either. But in this new paradigm it's their fault. And hers. And ours.  But never theirs.

I would urge conservatives who think that media reporting has become uncivilized, and yearn for some long lost detachment from the public sphere, to look back at where this started.  One only needs to look back to the 1990s to see the fragmentation of public discourse into uncivilized confrontation. with the start of Fox News and the rise of Rush ( and a demeaning attitude toward the presidency).  The right started this de-evolution.  Anyone who finds Geftman-Gold's posts distasteful better check that they have not supported all of the vile things spewed nightly on Fox from Hannity, O'Reilly or Coulter, who have said things just as bad.

Even worse, I have to again refer to an advisor to our very own president, Mr Scumbag Alex Jones who has said things far worse.  But yet, I never heard calls for his immediate firing or exile from the American community. No, he got promoted to presidential advisor.  His disgusting fake accusations against the children of Sandy Hook should have got him excommunicated from the human race. So, before I hear one more word of bitching from conservatives, they better take at look at their own closet of past sins and denounce those which they have been complicit with.

Furthermore, it is amazing how the right has twisted and distorted events to make themselves look good.  It is what they do well, and they are far better at preemptive psychological warfare than  liberals.  Now, in their perverse narrative, the left has become the Fascists, inciting violence and waging war on: whites (dafuq?). To illustrate, they cite Charlottesville.  So although one of their Neo-Nazis killed an innocent person, the left are (now) the totalitarian aggressors.  The cognitive dissidence is strong.  But this is the danger, that their outrageous lies will become the recognized narrative.  Conservatives are the masters of fake news, and they are becoming masters of identity politics, driving a wedge between traditional Christian whites and everybody else, and trying to divide liberals into white/non-white conflict as they make the idea of  a white liberal a contradiction (although I imagine that numerically whites are still a significant majority of the left).

This outrage on the right is just a mask to cover the monstrosities currently emerging, but it may take down the entire country.

Jeremiah Blues 2017.10

So, here we are once more. From the unlikely hyper-real world of Las Vegas, a land of entertainment and escape, we are once again confronted with the definition of terrorism.  With no "other" here, we are left with only one of us, as definitively us as one can be, with no clear political motive.  Response to the 2016 St Cloud "attack" was a strong assertion of "terrorism,"  even though this individual had no explicit ideological motive.  The result was no fatalities and only minor injuries, although people expressed that they would not go to the mall anymore.  This would have clearly been just a crime, perpetrated by a lone-wolf deranged individual, if not for the otherness of his being.  So now, without otherness, we are, predictably, hearing about a mass-shooting, but not the T word.  It seems, however, that the scale of an action, even without ideological or political motive, can elevate an event into terrorism.  If a non-fatal knife attack can be terrorism, this certainly is.  The fact that someone could shoot 600 people, in an expectably innocent location, was unthinkable. Now it's not and we have to recognize how far gone we are before the next one happens - and it's bigger.

The responses today were completely predictable, from "Hillary's attack of the 2nd Amendment is wrong," (without any reasons given), "there's nothing you can do to stop this," to "it's the price of freedom." Well, that's some great freedom we have.  We are clearly paying too much.  Not all rights are equal: when they come into conflict the right to life must come first, it is a higher right, without prominence no other rights can even be sustained. Furthermore, there are, of course, things that can be done.  It is indeed the job of government, the very reason for its existence, to provide reasonable protection.  That is why we have everything from local police to the military. [1] Certainly, you can't stop all crime (although we still take proactive measures), but there has to be attention to protection, and mitigation, of mass public events. As Robert Reich stated: "This is a crisis of public health and safety."  This event clearly refutes the pro-gun arguments, or myth, that you only need good guys with guns to shoot back.  There was no possibility of that helping here (and the band even had guns).  Even police were not equipped to fire back, it would have required a sniper of supreme skill. Only preventative measures pertaining directly to firearms can help mitigate such future events. The hypocrisy of the right is astounding.  No expense is too great to protect us from them, you know, the real terrorists, no matter how small the event.  Walls, travel bans, trillions of dollars on wars that cost millions of lives (theirs, not ours) - it's all necessary.  We can lock ourselves in, but none of that makes us safer, because the danger is already here - in us.

It's time the government does its job serving the people.  And stops being a hostage to that portion of Americans who worships guns as a religion, as they place their empty, mythical, "rights" above actual reasons, debates, and practicalities.  If the country is serious about protecting us from terrorism, then gun regulation has to be a part of that.  Otherwise this whole elaborate structure of keeping America safe is just a sham.

Regarding the CBS executive and her inappropriate post, she's probably not a person one wants to defend. However [2], her classless response reminds one of another high-profile tweeter.  But, in this case CBS fired her, so there is thankfully a system to compensate. Despite the poor sentiment, deliberately unsympathetic and not retaining the humanitarian position she would apparently hope to hold, an interesting consideration emerges.  One is responsible for the world they create, even if they become victims of their own negative effects.  These terror events are not precisely equal, there are degrees of difference.  As horrific it as this one has been, the Sandy Hook event contained a further dimension that I don't think needs explanation.  And, this event may be a layer removed from a concert filled with teenage girls.  It seems likely that the majority of attendees do support extensive, or unlimited, gun rights, it is a view consistent with the country subculture. I would seriously be interested in statistical information on that. Additionally, we have an extreme example of white on white violence here. What if this concert was a rap one where a gang shootout result in similar deaths?  Would anyone on the right care? Or would they say that the moral decadence of that subculture was to blame?  What if it was an NRA convention?  Surely the dominant views of the participants play a role when they are directly relevant to the outcome.

In terms of other obnoxious responses, Alex Jones has once again called this a false-flag event.  At least he's consistent. But, it's odd that before he made such ridiculous accusations as an attack on the president (as head of the deep state).  Now he seems to be ranting against the deep state because of its detachment from the presidency (and his savior) But, Scumbag Jones can't have it both ways. Either the president has control of government, or he doesn't. That doesn't change because one approves of one and not the other.  However, I think he might be somewhat right even in his ludicrous delusion.  If the deep state perpetrates events to manipulate the population, it will certainly happen during conservative administrations as much as liberal ones.  And, I would wager any draconian moves would really happen in a conservative era.  The smoke and mirrors show is enacted to place the blame on the left  (look at how well the gun industry did under Obama, for instance, as opposed to now).  If Jones wants to fight the deep state, he's on the wrong side. But, he doesn't. He just wants to promote his own brand of authoritarianism.

[1] Of course, that's only a minor function of their existence. Preserving power structures, it could be argued, are their rai·son d'ê·tre.  However, we should still try to get these entities to provide service to the citizenry that maintains them.

[2] After hearing the mental contortions of conservatives trying to defend Mnuchin's use of taxpayer money when their own party and current administration are (in theory)  built upon ending such corruption, as well as Trump's "very fine people" remarks, it seems that everyone is defend-able these days.