#war on truth

[eugenedebs1920]

There’s the children’s story the boy who cried wolf. I assume we’re all somewhat familiar. Shepherd boy gets bored, yells about an imaginary wolf, the whole town gets riled up, yada yada yada, when there is a real wolf no one believes him because he lied so many times before.

I don’t trust Donald Trump. In turn, I don’t trust those who grovel at his feet. In his first term it was calculated that he lied or made misleading statements over 30,000 times. Then there was the “big lie”. His crusade of revenge, his malignant Narcissism, his need to be right all the time (ie sharpiegate). He is an untrustworthy person. Even before he was president.

The way he is trying to alter history about January 6th, how he said he didn’t even know what project 2025 was and definitely wasn’t appointing anyone involved in that, that he didn’t have sex with a pornstar who was under an NDA from him. There’s 30,000 reasons not to trust him.

This time around he has a score to settle, a vendetta against the truth, an absolute NEED to make it seem like he wasn’t wrong.

This is where that concept of authoritarians versus the truth comes in. Because honestly, it’s going to be hard to believe anything coming out of this administration. That lands me in the same boat as maga. Everything is a conspiracy and everyone is a lier. Thats where the bureaucratic state comes in.

These civil servants, a bunch of researchers and statisticians, scientists and doctors, pencil pushers and nerds who work for the federal government, not any particular administration, continuing on from one to the next despite the incoming administration’s affiliation. This group of nonpartisan bureaucrats are, or were, the a-political guardrails tasked with producing facts and conducting research for the public good.

What Trump is doing with this schedule F dictatorial decree is replacing these office workers who are beholden to no one but the general public and the facts as diagnosed, with sycophants who will obey the orders from their higher up.

This is dangerous. I saw this headline and thought to myself, I don’t believe it. Why now? What a coincidence that what tanked Trumps chances for reelection in 2020, all the sudden, when he illegitimately regains power, there’s this groundbreaking evidence that it was all a vast conspiracy against his presidency and reelection bid. To tell you the truth I didn’t read the article because in my mind it’s all bullshit. That makes me just like maga!! It sucks!

There is not a doubt in my mind that there will be headlines like, ‘Jan 6th was Democratic plot against Trump’ or, ‘Dr. Fauci suspected of creating SARS’ some ridiculous shit. This is not good! This is a war on truth!

There’s going to be 30,000 or more, even more elaborate lies, at least, coming from this new administration. Be vigilant. Use critical thinking. Be weary of nearly anything this administration says.

Trump may have fooled us once, it’s up to ourselves if we’ll allow him to do it again. I just hope when there really is a wolf, we will know the difference 😬

[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.

[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]

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.

[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

[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.

[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

(source)

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[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.

[usindistress]

[usindistress]

Like the migrant caravan, the moment the election is over, it just goes awry like magic. They are going to be touting their day 1 economic numbers too.

JD Vance lied about his Ohio constituents. So much trauma and violence was heaped on these innocent people by shitty MAGA racists.