#war on truth

[eugenedebs1920]

I’ve said it before, I’ll probably have to say it again. Who doesn’t want to be fact checked? F*ckin liars! These claims by Elon musk, a South African immigrant and nationalized Canadian citizen, a man who’s wealth was inherited through his father’s exploitation of black South Africans in his jewel mines, not an inventor or engineer, not some genius businessman, potentially the most infamous and successful welfare queen in American history, who made billions on government subsidies for electric vehicles, a trust fund kid, spreading lies to mislead the American people.

It’s an absolute disgrace the way the right abuses our Constitution. They decry this anthem of free speech. Then use that privilege to deceive and lie. They tout the importance of the first amendment. Then molest it in the most inappropriate manner.

This is what I’m talking about when it comes to the Republican Party. They have no regard for what they pretend to hold dear. To them everything is just a means to an end. Honor, integrity, and truth be damned.

If one were to truly respect the first amendment they wouldn’t use it to spread falsities and mistruths. If one were to revere the Constitution they wouldn’t test the very limits of its meaning. If one truly loved their country, they wouldn’t attempt to transform it into something it’s not simply to form it to their agenda.

The most disheartening aspect is that we have become so polarized, so divided, that nearly half the population doesn’t give a damn regarding the manipulation and mistreatment of the documents, laws and norms that have guided this nation for centuries.

People like Rush Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch, Newt Gingrich, led to people like, Donald Trump, Elon musk, and Charlie Kirk, peddling lies or at best half truths. Poisoning American against American in a campaign of deception designed to divide and distract, creating the necessary conditions to enact their oppressive agenda.

Some are just pawns, talking heads in this conspiracy of division, others are the brainchild behind the plot. All betraying the United States in their relentless pursuit of wealth and power.

The vast majority of the American people are the victims in this contorted scheme laid out by those who hold no reverence to the core principles of this nation. Yet we act as the expendable soldiers, essential to its fruition, not realizing that the one way to overcome the barriers that shackle us to an existence of mediocrity and a modern form of indentured servitude lies in our united rising against the forces that bind us.

We will never truly be free, we will never live up to the potential granted to us, we will never know liberty until we understand that we can only obtain these fundamental truths when we relinquish the manufactured rift that separates us.

We were gifted with such possibility, squandered in the ongoing culture wars and animosity built to keep us down.

I don’t mean to be a pessimist but the notion of this unshackled prison break from the interests poised to benefit from our segregation appears nothing more than a pipe dream.

Yet if we could become self aware to the villains purposefully pinning us against one another and find that the similarities we have far outweigh the differences limelighted to make us perceive otherwise, all our lives would be exponentially more fulfilling and easy, and mutually beneficial.

I beg of my fellow Americans. Please comprehend that when hate, anger and malcontent are being promoted, stop and contemplate who seeks to benefit from this spread of animosity. When you are being coaxed to harbor distrust and malice against your American counterpart, who will reap the reward of your calloused, untrustworthy view which you were coerced into seeing. Then step back and reflect, does this media personality truly have mine and my country’s interest in mind? Does this person truly reflect the soul of the nation? Is my American counterpart that ideologically opposed to what I consider to be American values.

If you truly internalize it, and mull it over, the answer is we are more alike than we’re portrayed to be. That we have the same goals, hopes, and aspirations, not only personally, but for our nation as a whole.

We will never know freedom until we end the turmoil that enslaves us.

[usindistress]

Fascism

Ultranationalism- interest in one state above all others "Make America Great Again much?"

Hierarchialism- belief that certain people are placed above others, (Alpha males vs. Tradwives, Christians vs. Muslims, race hierarchy etc.)

Dictatorial leader- Trump duh.

Centralized autocracy- Trump and the Trump family.

Cooperation of Corporate and State power- crony capitalism under Trump, Biden is pro-labor, corporations HATE that!

And in addition to also being anti-union and VERY anti-immigrant which are also typical of fascist governments. And they LOVE to twist the definitions of words as you have been doing.

@gloomwalkers I'm talking to you, this is your education time. These are characteristics of fascism. We don't care if Biden's whole family goes to prison, as long as it is for ACTUAL crimes, he is just there as a wall against a fascist takeover. Leftists tend to be globalist, humanitarian, egalitarian, ideological, democratic, integrationist and anti-corporate. The OPPOSITE of fascism in nearly every way.

[because--palestine]

Palestine solidarity protesters occupy the lobby of the New York Times building in Midtown Manhattan, denouncing the paper for its journalistic malpractice and slanted coverage they are calling "the NYT-backed war on Gaza." This action coincides with the paper’s annual "State of the Times" conference.

[toshootforthestars]

From the essay, posted 5 Jan 2025:

The private equity goons did not eviscerate [Gawker Media] because of their political beliefs. They did it because they only valued making money. This is the standard incentive in most industries, but in journalism, it has the effect of turning a publication into shit.

Journalism is not a business that responds well to the usual American capitalist imperative to treat your customers as victims to be tricked and sucked dry. The overall health of the free press is therefore a handy barometer to tell how the balance of power between humanism and cutthroat capitalism stands at any given moment in history.

Right now, that balance is tilting in the bad direction. In the past few months, the billionaire owners of both the LA Times and the Washington Post quashed anti-Trump presidential endorsements. In LA, Patrick Soon-Shiong has made it clear he intends to meddle in, at least, the opinion section to make it more right wing. Jeff Bezos must be a bit more circumspect with the Washington Post because of its institutional heft, but it is equally clear that he has concluded that nothing about his newspaper is worth pissing off Trump, who could retaliate against Bezos’ other, real business. Yesterday the Post’s longtime editorial cartoonist Ana Telnaes resigned after a cartoon mocking Bezos and other billionaires was killed by her editor. The editor, David Shipley, claimed the cartoon was just too repetitive, but Telnaes, who has been at the paper long enough to know, said it was the first time in her career that she’d had a piece rejected “because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary.”

We’re not really on the slippery slope at this point. We’re sliding.

The only choice is when to jump off. What Telnaes did was heroic. Most journalists, regular people who need jobs to live, would (for good reason) think long and hard about quitting their jobs when they are unlikely to be able to land a comparable one.

The important takeaway here, though, is: This is how it happens. This is how nations decline. You don’t always turn into Nazi Germany. You turn into Russia, or Hungary, or other creaky and corrupt strongman states where everything is kind of a scam and everyone is hustling to please the gangster in charge. That, my friends, is the path we are on here.

America’s basic problem is that we have an economic system that concentrates great wealth in few hands and we have a political system in which money is allowed to buy political power in a straightforward way and now, on top of that, we have a President who fully embraces—who lives for—the opportunity to make the world bow to him by exploiting those systems.

It’s a bit surreal watching this all unfold right in front of us. This is the script of imperial downfall, of a mighty nation that has been teeing itself up to crumble by having no moral scruples finally jumping onto the garbage chute with both feet. Watching all of the highly respected CEOs of America’s most powerful and respectable and, according to a widespread characterization, “liberal” companies donate millions of dollars to the Trump inauguration, unalloyed bribes paid for political protection, is just—it’s not subtle. Detecting the grand direction of America has never required less insight.

I mean, 40 years ago, looking at Carter and Reagan deregulate industries and cut taxes, watching union power slowly decline, watching the public’s embrace of celebrity over substance, if you looked ahead and said, “Hey, over the next few decades, this is really going to eat away our shared prosperity and cause an inequality crisis that will ultimately obliterate the very legitimacy of America’s leading institutions”—well, that would be a canny call. That would require some real analytical foresight. But analyzing what is happening right now requires nothing but the ability to describe events accurately without succumbing to delusion.

We have a dozen people in this country who are worth more than $100 billion each and the richest one of all has teamed up with a gutter con man to buy the White House and now everyone who does not kiss the ring will be targeted for retaliation. This is the final form of unregulated capitalism, where fantastically rich and often childlike titans run the world’s most powerful nation for their own pleasure, and what was once thought of as “civil society” cowers in the corner in an effort to avoid provoking the beast..

* * * *

Even though I have spent years writing about all the ways that the mainstream press has failed and all the reasons why the New York Times sucks, I retain my sentimentality about the press. Where else, in this scam-ridden country, can you bring down the rich and powerful and corrupt with nothing but words?

Journalism, for all the flaws in the way it is practiced, is a great thing. To see high quality publications bought and broken by rich people is like watching a drunk hedge fund dickhead throwing up on a Picasso that he hung in his yacht. It’s just a fucking shame.

As you watch this all accelerate over the next four years, just remember that the slow decline of the public’s belief in journalism was not an accident. It was an assassination. I hope we all make it out the other side.

[usindistress]

On 9/11 almost 3000 people died in a day. While the objective of slavery wasn't to specifically kill people, beatings and executions were used to enforce it (in a time before antibiotics to boot) and it lasted almost 300 years in the US alone. I'm going to go out on a limb and say more than 10 slaves a year died of slavery related conditions. God people are dumb and have unearned confidence.

[eugenedebs1920]

God damn Trump is genius when it comes to public relations. Does anyone remember earlier, this past fall when Boeing had a technical malfunction and couldn’t get the astronauts? Biden was still in office and asked spacex if they could assist. They agreed and the astronauts decided to stay up and do some more work.

In December spacex, NASA, and the Biden administration come together and work out that sometime in early spring, between February and March, spacex would retrieve them.

This was already set! Long before Trump took office! This was already scheduled!!!

Now Trump is taking credit for it?!! And NPR and nearly all the news outlets seemed to have forgotten?

I mean… I know I may consume too much current events but I clearly remember both these occurrences.

This administration is going to test the limits of what’s true and real, versus what’s completely made up and fictional…

[gwydionmisha]

This is a direct assault of the Freedom of the Press.

[because--palestine]

The illusion of aid in Gaza

The United States' airdrops of aid into Gaza are a textbook case of cognitive dissonance on the part of the US administration - dropping food while continuing to send Israel bombs with which to pulverise Gaza. And the gulf between what’s happening on the ground and the mainstream media’s reportage continues to widen.

Censorship of news coverage and suppression of public protest in Egypt

Since Israel launched its assault on Gaza, the war has been a delicate subject for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The war has led to censorship of news coverage and suppression of public protest.

Israel's cultural annihilation in Gaza

The Listening Post has covered Israel’s war on Gaza through the prism of the media, including the unprecedented killing of Palestinian journalists. But there’s another level to what’s unfolding in Gaza: the genocidal assault on Palestinian history, existence and culture.

[usindistress]

Religion is the opiate of the masses, indeed. This also contributes to why conservatives live in a world of alternate "facts" and can't be reasoned with.

homeschooling in the US needs to be regulated but this is one of those conversations that immediately gets crushed by extremist conservatives and even well-meaning liberals will pipe up to be like "well some homeschooling is good!" when that's absolutely not relevant. regulation will not change anything for the homeschooling families who are serious about their children's education. the people who need to be regulated are the fringe extremists

[usindistress]

Was arguing with a conservative in the comments section about Republican voter suppression and got blocked by the OP.

So now I know what its like to try to take the argument into a conservative controlled post. Spreading truth gets you blocked. Also, clearly not the fault of the person I was actually debating, I can still see their account.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

Of the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept 11 attacks:

15 were from Saudi Arabia (a powerful/oil-rich country the U.S. works hard to maintain diplomatic relations with)

2 were from the United Arab Emirates (also a powerful/oil-rich country the U.S. works hard to maintain diplomatic relations with)

1 was from Egypt, 1 from Lebanon.

None of the hijackers were from Iraq.

None of the Sept 11 hijackers were Iraqi.

None of the 9/11 hijackers were from Iraq.

[eugenedebs1920]

Trump is the most dishonest, corrupt, self serving, manipulative president of all time. He is high in the ranking worldwide. What has he done since he got into office? He fired almost 20 inspectors general. He gutted the aviation security agency, TSA, and FAA. He pardoned his shadow white supremest militia. He fired dozens of FBI employees. He’s purged DOJ. He’s allowed a foreign billionaire to hack the Treasury Department, giving access to every Americans personal information and access to the $6 trillion dollars of U.S. taxpayer dollars. He nominated and the Republican senate confirmed, known authoritarian murdereous dictator sympathizer, Tusi Gabbard, a woman who was on a flight watchlist regarding associations with American adversaries, to lead our intelligence agencies.

He’s asking for the resignation of 3,000 CIA agents now, demanding documents from the FBI, on behalf of his involvement in the January 6th 2021, election interference and seditious conspiracy, riot case, that he promoted, organized and led, be turned over, and requesting any agent that worked on the case be fired, mind you this was the largest criminal investigation ever undertaken due to its sheer scale and size, and threat that its impact would have to our representative democratic constitutional republic, that this was the first attempted seizure of the capital since the early 1800’s, who’s primary legal obligation was to make an example for the consequences that occur when one assaults an officer of the law, when one desecrates a federal building, particularly the capital, and when one tries to stop a constitutionally mandated congressional procedure, in an attempt to overturn the election, a case that in one way or another involved hundreds of agents on over a 1,000 separate cases, which accounts for almost 75% of the workforce would have had contact with it. (Wew! That was quite a sentence! 😅)

Less than a month ago if id told you this story it would have been interpreted as the ramblings of a crazed liberal, brainwashed by the vast and all powerful left wing media apparatus that had warped my mind into some Marxist sphere of delusion.

Yet here we are…

You don’t need to be a top notched intelligence expert to see what’s going on. This lunge towards coverup and away from accountability is clearly visible. Why would someone oppose fact checking? Because they want to lie. Why does someone remove individuals tasked with investigating fraud and corruption? Because you wouldn’t want to get caught committing fraud and corruption. Why does someone want to eliminate those tasked with asserting whether you committed crimes or not? If you were innocent wouldn’t you await the day you could clear your name? You do that when you want to hide what your involvement was.

Why would someone violate the Constitution, dissolve essential agencies and fill them with loyalists, take over independent law enforcement agencies with loyalists, and release a shadow military force through pardons? Because they intend to overthrow and usurp an entire country’s constitutional government and claim rule of it as an emperor.

This is a coup.

He’s not a king, he just plays one in TV. Just because he’s a criminal doesn’t mean he can break the law. He’s not a dictator but a clown in a circus of his own making. The executive branch is but one part of a multilayered system. Remember when Biden declared that the equal rights act was “officially the law of the land.”? That was an executive order also and everyone just blew it off as non binding and ceremonial. His EO’s are the exact same thing.

Just a criminal trying to get away with crimes. Just a conman working his con. Just a clown in the circus.

[because--palestine]

Iran had legal right to counter-attack Israel in self-defense

Israel attacked Iran's embassy in Syria on April 1, in a blatant act of war. Iran had a legal right to respond in self-defense, according to article 51 of the UN Charter, which is exactly what it did by launching missiles and drone strikes on April 13. But Western governments are absurdly portraying Tehran as the aggressor.

[toshootforthestars]

How different would things be out there in America if, 15 or 20 years ago, some rich liberal or consortium of liberals had had the wisdom to make a massive investment in local news? There were efforts along these lines, and sometimes they came to something. But they were small. What if, instead of right-wing Sinclair, some liberal company backed by a group of billionaires had bought up local TV stations or radio stations or newspapers all across the country? Again, we can’t know, but we know this much: Support for Democrats has shriveled in rural America to near nonexistence, such that it is now next to impossible to imagine Democrats being elected to public office at nearly any level in about two-thirds of the country. It’s a tragedy. And it happened for one main reason: Right-wing media took over in these places and convinced people who live in them that liberals are all God-hating superwoke snowflakes who are nevertheless also capable of destroying civilization, and our side didn’t fight it. At all. If someone had formed a liberal Sinclair 20 years ago to gain reach into rural and small-town America, that story would be very different today. There has in recent years been an impressive growth of nonprofit media outlets, led nationally by ProPublica and laying down roots everywhere, from the aforementioned Baltimore, where the Baltimore Banner has sometimes been scooping the Sun, to my home state of West Virginia, where Pulitzer Prize–winner Ken Ward’s Mountain State Spotlight is doing terrific reporting. These outlets are welcome indeed. They do sharp and necessary reporting. But they’re nonprofits, which, under IRS rules, cannot be partisan. They have to be apolitical. What we used to call “the progressive infrastructure” has grown in the two decades since (Rob) Stein was showing his PowerPoint around town. Donors got together at Stein’s behest to create the Democracy Alliance. It helped seed the Center for American Progress, designed as liberalism’s answer to the Heritage Foundation. It helped grow groups like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. On the media front, it funded Media Matters for America, the broad left’s leading media watchdog outfit. But there is one job liberal benefactors have refused to take on (with a few exceptions, starting with the owner of this very magazine). The cost has been enormous. And by the way—this story isn’t over. By a long shot. I’m certain David Smith wants to buy more struggling newspapers and turn them into MAGA sheets. And there are surely mini-Sinclairs in formation. Prager University’s right-wing misinformation videos are gaining a foothold in some public schools. Right-wing outlets have zero interest in sharing the “media space” with the mainstream media. They want to crush it. And I fear that they probably will. There’s a story in the Times today about three moguls who bought prominent media properties, most notably Bezos with the Post, and the many millions they are losing. That’s sad. But what did they expect? You don’t buy a newspaper expecting to make money. You buy a newspaper because you want influence. You are passionate, as Murdoch is, about pushing the country in a certain direction. You either learn to live with the losses or you find a way to cover them. To those who say it’s impossible, I point out that somehow, the rich men of the right have figured this out. And so Bezos, who has no discernible public passion, will probably tire of it all and sell someday—and maybe to David Smith, whose public passion is very discernible indeed.

If you can’t imagine the Post as a right-wing rag, you’d better start smelling the coffee that’s been brewing for 20 years.

Michael Tomasky: "The Right-Wing Media Takeover Is Destroying America"

The New Republic | 19 Jan 2024

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