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Paul Krugman: Conscience of a Liberal
The Confluence
Suburban Guerrilla Ian WelshThis is beyond dispute:
Democrats can tend to be a bit cold blooded, looking at the facts dispassionately and objectively.
Republicans let their hearts lead. “When your heart’s on fire, you must realize, smoke gets in your eyes”
It probably wouldn’t hurt if both looked at the truth without blinking and shed a few tears for what all of us Americans have lost.
Filed under: General |
Corrente (Lambert) Avedon’s Sideshow
The Confluence 
Tom the Dancing Bug:
What if TV talking heads had existed in WW2?
IBW, that is a brilliantly disturbing cartoon, and I think that this is exactly what would have happened with today’s network coverage.
Oh, what are Spammy’s knickers twisted about NOW? 🙄
RD, of course that lovely song is about how romantic passion can perhaps cause one to be impervious to realities. As for the Republicans, their only “truth” is what they want, which is winning and power. So they are not missing the facts because of their passion, they have no interest in the facts. For the last few years, their representatives proudly said that they weren’t going to read the Mueller Report, or follow the House hearings, or read the transcripts of the witnesses. This is the height of arrogance, and aversion to facts. They put their fingers over their ears, close their eyes, and bellow our their self-righteous statements.
The media, which should be some kind of arbiter, and was during an earlier era, now has turned into a “both sides” monitor. There are two sides to every issue, here is the Democrats’ side, here is the Republicans’. “The Democrats say that Trump extorted Ukraine to help him attack Biden; the Republicans say, nyah, nyah, you Democrats are traitors, and Trump did nothing wrong, and even if he did, so what, Hillary’s emails and Obama, and Remember the Maine.” That’s pretty much where we are now.
I am trying to watch less of the TV news now, though still some. It seems that the one cable news hope, MSNBC, is backsliding, maybe Andrew Lack is doing it. Today they had a interview by Pete Williams with AG Barr. I was about to say a few weeks ago how much I disliked Williams, who for years has posed as some kind of legal expert, and always makes sure to tell us that “liberals really didn’t win anything in this decision, it will not help their cause.” Well, I read that his interview with Barr was horrendous, that he did not push back a bit, let Barr spew out one lie and distortion after another. Then we see Jake Sherman of Politico getting more and more air time. This is the guy who kept telling us that Democrats are the ones who may get defections ion am impeachment vote, not the Republicans.”
And one can quickly see that, the new narrative is what Trump and his allies are saying about how much of a witch hunt this is; and how the Senate will certainly acquit, etc. In other words, they covered the Democrats for a while, they had their turn, now it’s the Republicans’ turn at bat. All of what this is about–the call to Zelensky, the testimony of all the brave and stalwart people like Fiona Hill and Colonel Vindman–does not matter much; all that matters is who wins, and…”it looks like it’s going to be the Republicans once again! Good try Democrats, we have some nice parting gifts for you.” The media is not the protector of truth, they are just the ones who provide the arena for the arguments. The protectors of truth are out there, but they have trouble being portrayed as anything but combatants from a particular side.
Exactly, and social media is by far the worst offender here
Oh, the media put their foul thumbs on the scale, for the obvious reason:
The owners and higher-ranking employees of the mainstream media are either affluent or downright rich, just like the owners and higher-ranking employees of the wingnut media.
Hence, they want the Treason Party (fka GOP) to keep power so they can keep those consistently low taxes the Treason Party gives them.
Occam’s Razor and all that.
Humans have many flaws. The one wonderful thing that we supposedly had was the ability to observer reality, and learn and develop from it. There was a vast storehouse of human knowledge. We learned about nature, how to plant and grow, how to protect ourselves from the elements, and to help animals, too. We learned about the oceans and the stars. And we learned about history, which brings intellectual and emotional knowledge: how to do things better, who were the heroes and the villains. Of course we realize that the victors wrote much of the history, and that the further we go back, the less chronicled it is. But the idea that there are truths to learn, is central to humanity.
Now we have a full assault on the idea of observable, empirical truth. “Both sides” is a terrible concept. Climate change should not be a political debate. Whether a hurricane is going to hit Alabama should not be in question. Who hacked our election is not just a fun back-and-forth debate. We have a President who lies about 99% of the time, and his political aides do it, too. But he and they are not capable of destroying the entire product of the Renaissance, the Age of Reason, and the Enlightenment, without the support of millions of Americans who apparently do not want to observe, or learn, hate education and “intellectuals,” and have a version of reality which is fabricated to meet their own wishes.
I remember first seeing the movie version of “Inherit the Wind,” about the Scopes Trial in 1925. I was amazed and horrified to see all those Tennessee people hating and fearing the teaching of evolutionary science, and I thought how far we had come since then. But it turns out that we haven’t come very far, because we have the same people denying science when it matters most; and following a propaganda network which was created for the purpose of turning them into obedient slaves of those who own it. I never watch Trump rallies, for many reasons, but chiefly because the contorted faces of those abysmally stupid and proudly ignorant people spewing their hatred against various “others,” and soaking up all the lies fed to them, because they fear and despise actual facts, causes me to greatly despair about the future of the human race. I’ve seen many pictures of the Hitler rallies. I wish someone would juxtapose those with the Trump rallies, and show it as a last warning as to what we could become, if we no longer can separate the truth from lies. This is not some kind of interesting game shown to us by the media for our amusement.
The Trump campaign just depicted Trump as a genocidal Marvel Comics cosmic super-villain who loses in the end.
As Dave Barry would say, I Am Not Making This Up.
https://www.joemygod.com/2019/12/trump-tweets-bonkers-clip-of-himself-as-marvel-villain-who-got-killed-by-the-good-guys-in-the-last-movie/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=cd2800adcfb88d0cc59c7b158fc6b54eeab16555-1576024211-0-AapWJc14Za7aX8kbe3axrNAVfAjc0ZdEuYRcAXU2gD_NQcGc6ftZP6eQHskcJXc2hv_-NpVV13kIc7qgTldp_eOQB3v8ORkFVAkrcVT2q1mW2tw4Hh7BHF7oQRwrhJwA-dALXdWNko6TvgVOf2hvK-HNI4k2kRwM4Z6F1rswOMzfd0aTkPcN8O5fCIP9LSZIFuRf_4EOJC9mar7IuLj5Hbm6Yr_SnvJbLioT6KPjcKhCBiVuvYYuW79TicvbY6TaIEOzqQKgv5hjmfA0DMsYiSGib7p4KHOIMMcibgDUs4_7zrwVZKluYdXoXP_fkrkv4RzX_m8qUrMXYvjFth20zbcmyvKsoCQaGqWecz0tBvzZwDzHHFwUCWa928q_bkjA762EElELJq8xuwczkv7E_a9Rxri36RSUEigQ0YO_k3gR