How to Read Western News
My AOC thread highlighted the disagreement between people who still put some modicum of trust in the corporate media (or in individuals touted by them) and those who have completely given up on the corporate media as toxic.
In one of the last comments in the two-day thread (Wed, 01/09/2019 - 4:09pm) I argued for complete distrust of the corporate media
Essentially, Americans with brains have to read the NYT/WaPo the way Soviets with brains read Pravda/Izvestia. We have to look at the emphasis given, not the facts. We have to see who is on the podium at the May Day parade. The corporate media is now as big a propaganda exercise as the Soviet media.
So imagine how vindicated I felt when, six hours later (Wed, 01/09/2019 - 22:35 according to their time stamp) I find this on ZeroHedge:
It's all rather Soviet in fact.
So, in a world where the Integrity Initiative is spending our tax dollars (pounds actually) to make sure that we never have a doubleplusungood thought or are tempted into crimethink, (and maybe they created the entire Skripal story – more revelations by the minute), what are we to make of our Free Media™? Well, that all depends on what you're interested in....Coverage of certain subjects are almost 100% false: Putin, Russia, Syria and Ukraine stand out. But much of the coverage of China and Iran also. Many things about Israel are not permitted. The Russia collusion story is (privately) admitted to be fake by an outlet that covers it non stop...PC is shutting doors everywhere and the Russian-centred "fake news" meme is shutting more. Science is settled but genders are not and we must be vigilant against the "Russian disinformation war". Every day brings us a step closer to a mono media of the One Correct Opinion. All for the Best Possible Motives, of course.
The author offers the same advice given by many in the AOC thread:
1. Read between the lines
2. Notice what they are not telling you,
3. Most of the time, you'd be correct to believe the opposite.
----
The purpose of this brief essay is to create a reference that I will point at in the future, that I will use as shorthand, whenever people engage with my complete distrust of our (owned by 5 or 6 mega-corporations) media (propaganda) environment and our surveilled social media, run by Google, Facebook, and Twitter (funder and actor in the "fake Russian bots in the Roy Moore campaign" scandal). This essay, itself, is shorthand for the discussion in the AOC thread.
Of course, the goal of a propaganda environment like our corporate media is to "differentiate, demonize, and destroy"(DDD). The idea is to force opponents of the regime to expose themselves by their words (differentiate), to spotlight those people and label them as CTers, Putin lovers, deplorables, or other terms that turn people into pariahs (demonize), and to eliminate them from the discussion space by banning or smear campaigns(destroy). Witness esteemed, long-time Russia scholar and advisor to President GHW Bush, Stephen Cohen, being demonized as a Putin lover.
We here at C99P are already differentiated. We have been kicked off fake left boards like DU or GOS or JPR. Some of us have been kicked off all three of them for doing nothing more than standing by the facts and the evidence. I applaud JtC and the others who keep such DDD tactics off this board.
It would be complete hypocrisy on my part to run a DDD campaign against those who still buy some of the claims of the corporate media. My policy is to agree to disagree, and to discuss facts instead of lobbing ad hominems. One must tread carefully, as there is always some truth to be found in the CM, because 24/7 lying is so obvious as to be ineffective. So, its really important to follow the three points of advice given above.
I also want to emphasize that its counterproductive to start writing off anyone at C99P who fails to acknowledge the reality of the "total immersion propaganda" of our corporate media. The strongpoint of C99P is its tolerance and its dialogue. If you felt insulted (as opposed to debated with) by me in the AOC thread, I apologize for any harshness. I will try to remember that people are not one dimensional and should not be pigeonholed based on their stance on one single topic. Dialogue that recognizes people are complex is difficult. DDD is easy. We don't do DDD here. That's why C99P is such a treasure.
BTW, snoopydawg's post today, Russia Gate's Hidden Agenda is a perfect example of DDD and of the corporate media octopus that runs it.
Comments
What are DDD tactics? DDD stands for what? /nt
https://www.euronews.com/live
Differentiate, demonize, and destroy
I will edit the post to add that acronym at the spot I introduced it.
Sorry for the confusion.
Thanks for the explanation - never had seen that before/nt
https://www.euronews.com/live
diff/demon/destroy is not my coinage.
I read it somewhere and somewhen in regards to propganda. Perhaps Jacques Ellul, although the English aliteration strikes me as foreign to Ellul's style.
yes!
the first question to ask is "why did this outlet print this?" which leads to "what is this outlet's bias?"
I believe the only time the mainstream media (for want of a better term) prints anything of value, anything truthful, is when they're confused and don't understand that what they're reporting is real. The "shiny new object that is AOC" isn't actually AOC, it's the media pushing her and, in my opinion, it's not because they approve but because what's being said has what they consider to be shock value. Same with Rashida Tlaib. At some point, again in my opinion, they, the media, will either turn against the two women (and any others saying anything that I might agree with) and demonize them or else portray them as clowns with a large dose of misreprentation.
You nailed it, Shah ~
I completely agree with your comment.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
The shock value excuse vaporized after 911
Once again, I disagree. What the early Bernie Sanders had to say had "shock value". The CM buried it and cranked up the Bernie Bros smear campaign against him. They have invested a lot of air time in AOC. They publicize because they do approve. Only CM approved "shock" statements are air time.
IMHO, this Rashida Tlaib person first shows up on my radar using a vile curse word? Gee, maybe she is there to discredit the left, and to make AOC look "moderate" by comparison. This good leftie/bad leftie racket has been around forever.
Feel free to think what you want. I do not buy your premise at all. The media is controlled, and shock value is just one of the many excuses they trot out when called on their biased coverage.
This is one of your most important essays, IMO.
Thank you for publishing it. I find myself returning often to look for what I missed at first.
Interesting. Was just re-reading "Expanded Universe"
By Robert Heinlein. In it he has a description of his time in Russia during the height of the Cold War.
It's eerily familiar. You don't want to be a jerk to the nice young person "Just doing their Job". The only way to get anything done is to cause a scene in public, otherwise you'll be ushered into a back office, where the police will take care of you quietly...
Just spooky. His description of the way their media worked is extremely familiar, especially when it came to the official "Pravda". Over here, we call it PC.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Thanks for the reminder
Of course, with any open forum, we are not going to agree with everything that is said here. Smart people are particularly complex and we have an abundance of that here to be sure.
With that in mind, for me personally, dialogue as it relates to the media is one of the more challenging topics of conversations I have with people. Not necessarily here, but just in general. My low tolerance for those who are not equally repelled by what passes for investigative journalism is rooted in the diminishing experience of watching once respected news organizations transform into Borg like versions of the news (or should I say the app approved "green-rated" news?) right before my eyes. My contempt for the corporate news media who are intent on subjugating people's critical thinking skills only increases each time I find myself in a conversation with the very people they have subjugated. Alas, my efforts do no good. But without dialogue, what is there?
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
I get scared when people I've known for decades swallow this...
koolaid.
These are educated, sophisticated people. Yet they can't see that PBS, NPR, The Nation, The Atlantic, Huff Post (the woman was always a rightwinger, just camoflauged it.) are just Potemkin villages of "liberalism".
And, pushing my POV beyond one or two sentences gets me an eyeroll, where I can see them just writing me off. Its also extremely difficult, in that narrow window of a few sentences, to differentiate your objections to the corpo-Dems from being a Trumptard. That's the beauty of the "fake left" stance. When someone calls them on their shit, they just scream Putin lover or Trump lover, and the conversation is at an end.
It never ends well for me in those conversations
I get eye rolls too. Or the accusations that I'm enabling both Trump, Putin, and the end of our world as we know it. So now I just nip it right in the bud and say I don't want to talk about politics.
Dialogue shut down. Mission accomplished.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
It doesn't end there
Many of the "propornot" sites that were attacked seem to have
gotten the message to kneel.
And for me it's family that has swallowed the koolaid, life
is hard.
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
I think a lot of the current distrust stems from
...the unintended consequences of government sponsored fake news. It eventually undermines the government itself.
Their lies just will not die. The become Godzillas.
Perhaps the reply to accusations of "fake news" is...
"zombie lies". I liked that coinage, but it seems to have disappeared.
Russiagate is a zombie lie. The Skripal saga is a zombie lie. Syrian gas attacks are a zombie lie. Stories that, no matter how many times they are refuted, mocked, or attacked, will never disappear from the corporate media.
"Total immersion propaganda" (where the propaganda comes at you from many channels) spreads zombie lies in stand-up comedy routines, in off-hand remarks on barely related topics (e.g., in a story about the dangers of Facebook, the fact that they were "infiltrated by Russian trolls" is casually mentioned.)
We truly live in a propaganda state that is rapidly becoming a total surveillance state. Big Brother was crude nonsense compared to what they are doing to us today.
This is what concerns me
It happens so fast while point to point logical refutation goes at a snails pace.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Yeah its a Gish Gallop of lies.
I don't have a solution, except to maintain my own sanity.
A task unto itself sometimes
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Ah, yes, Zombie is a better description
...for these lies, custom made for the Americans people.
In the end, they are probably harmless and comforting. It will give them someone foreign to blame and hate for the economic crisis that will impact so many. I might sit this one out in Panama.
Russiagate and the New Cold War are hardly "harmless"
Propaganda exists to control the masses and guide them into the agenda of the rulers. In this case, the zombie lies are there to justify a massive military buildup, to put the entire US media under surveillance with censors (Atlantic Council), to hide our constant provocations and violations of national sovereignty around the world.
Words are to violent deeds as the desire to pull the trigger is to the gunshot. It is all mental preparation for the deed.
Not harmless.
I am referring to the lies and effort to cover-up
.... the exposure of the original false-flag propaganda, like the Russian Hoax. That, of course, is utterly preposterous propaganda launched by the Intelligence Agencies to cover their crimes during the 2016 elections. Like many, I've spent the past two years successfully debunking the propaganda. It's dead, except to the stupid or the evil. The world knows what happened there.
These cover-up lies and the fake news censorship are just panicked back-fill by the same Intelligence Agencies. I call them harmless because they don't change anything. The obvious truth of the desperate false-flag propaganda about Russia collusion and election meddling was never going to reach the American leftovers, the brain damaged, and very low IQers. Let them have their hate. My work is done. I'm not the strawman you are looking for.
Thanks for the clarification
I'm not looking for strawmen to bash. I didn't see any mention of "coverup" in what you wrote, so thanks for providing that additional fact.
It's more slick than that
A significant percentage are mostly true.
Even their lies contain a grain of truth.
The real deception is in what is NOT said.
That's where the falsehoods exist.
True. It is the second action proposed in the article I quoted
Still, it takes a fair amount of knowledge of current events, political and economic philosophy, and history to figure out "what is not said".
The generation raised on the Internet doesn't seem interested in "ancient" stuff like the history of the Cold War and its excesses, like McCarthyism. That is, they just don't have knowledge.
Also, as the internet is increasingly censored, even looking for such knowledge becomes problematic. Politically related topics on Wikipedia have long since gone to the dark side. Now Facebook (which is apparently how most people get the news) is in the hands of the Atlantic Council.
How to watch western news
Don't.
I do believe the corporate oligarchy media should be shunned as much as possible, particularly on the TV. I can see those who know better still reading corporate oligarchy news, while applying the principles laid out here, but to me the stuff on the TV is even more dangerous because of the nature of that medium and most of the American sheeple who watch it. TV news should absolutely be boycotted.
I haven't watched, other than a very few times, for about 8 years now, but when I have I find it almost unreal how much outright propaganda and lies are told on the TV news and political shows. Of course it's the same thing with the print media but it seems that TV is an even more effective propaganda dispenser.
Heh. We are approaching 70
and have not even had a television since we married. I have difficulty visiting friends and relatives who have their TV on all the time. I am such a misfit.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
I always have to
ask to turn the volume down on their 'shows', and to mute it during commercials. If the volume is left up on commercials I go into an immediate rif on the vapidity, Stupidity, and just plain ig'nce of the whole thing.
Music Usually ensues.
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
one of the first changes i made when my wife and
i split a decade ago, was that i never again turned on the television unless i was planning to sit down in front of something and watch. no more turning it on first thing in the morning to provide background noise. how sweet that was.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Is there another way to see a human give local weather?
TV is the only way I know of to get a human telling me what to expect, and approximately when, that particular day regarding weather.
I worked with a woman and her daughter who had an "app" but all it did was tell them the high temp. They showed up in dresses and sandles. I watched the weather on TV, and knew that the high was as I walked out the door, and a cool front was arriving mid morning. I dressed accordingly and asked them about watching the weather.
Apps don't cut it, and neither does looking at weather sites. I'm sticking with the meteorologist on the devil box. Too bad I can't just order it a la carte.
Does anyone still give the MSM
even a shred of credibility? Even in meat space, I know very few who do and are under 85 years old.
Good Lord, these are the same institutions that post fake nude pics of AOC (Daily Caller), or send reporters around with cash to try and bribe her friends and family for embarrassing stories about her (Daily Mail).
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
The free press died
after it's coverage of the war in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. It's puffed up corpse was on display during the Clinton impeachment. What's left is the Capitalist News Network. An informed citizenry is just too dangerous to the 10%.
Right after the Powell Memo, they started shutting down...
the media. Live reporting from Viet Nam was responsible for ending that atrocity. TPTB vowed never again. They switched to a volunteer army and "embedded" (self-censoring) "reporters". The NYT became a war cheerleader, hiring hack provocateurs like Judith Miller. Genuinely leftwing reporters like Sydney Schanberg were quickly shown the door.
Yeah, the media has been gone for decades. I agree.
But, I do want to disagree with one thing you said:
I don't like the 10% meme. In fact, I wrote an entire diary about it. Here's a snip:
I think that the 10% probably represent the majority of people who have the time and resources to be "informed". They have the resources to fight. IMHO, it is the 10% who are dangerous to the 0.1%. Therefore, it is the 10% who have been boiled like frogs by the media (psyops like PBS, NPR, and all the cutesy little shows like Market Watch or This American Life or Wait! Wait! - which has at least three Russian bashing jokes every episode), so that they attack "deplorables", love Shilary, and want their tax breaks.
As I said at length in the OP just snipped, the goal of the meme "the 10%" is to hide the ownership of the 0.1%'s malignant policies behind their servants, the "10%". The goal is to stir up a fight between deplorables and professionals while the 0.1% continues to loot the world and laugh their asses off at how stupid the proles (including the professional proles) are.
I ask you to reconsider your usage of "the 10%". I find it to be solidarity breaking.
Hmm....
Then I'm not sure what percent to use. I keep writing that at a certain point if wealth, no matter how liberal or conservative you are you will be living cheek by jowl with those you profess to despise. In living cheek by jowl you will come to tolerate those opposing views. Your pricey neighborhood, the top schools for you kids, the country clubs and churches, the ivy league universities where their and your kids will go, and wealth, will bind you. As offensive as the republicans will seem, most of their policies will benefit you also. As to the democrats policies.....they won't help us.
If they are a democrat they'll support the causes, of race and women's rights and immigration. Maybe host a few open houses/fundraisers. But also know they have a certain contempt for those that look like them and are in need. They weren't clever enough, or worked hard enough. They covered themselves with tatoos and neglected their teeth and health, did poorly in school. They deserve contempt. The POC need their help...except, well that affirmative action kid that took Sallys place at Harvard. I know some of these people. They aren't evil, or bad. I had Thanksgiving at a million dollar lakeside second home with them. I won't be going to a relatives wedding, not because I hate this percent, but because we can't afford the money to partake of the formality of the of the event. There is no way we would fit in, either.
There is an attitude that transcends politics that only wealth can nurture. You can see it any successful pop star, athlete, entertainer or dot com entrepreneur. The shedding of who they used to be, and the ascension into capitalist heaven, reborn. I don't know, maybe we scare them, that if they fall they will become us. So, maybe 10% is the wrong number, but it's more than 1%.
Very well expressed. Its got me thinking.
My attitude is probably related to my age. For a brief decade or two, the road to the top was open to anyone with talent - good secondary public education, affordable college plus lots of scholarships and #3% student loans.
ON EDIT: There was a comment from the 60s that stuck with me. Someone pointed out that, in photos taken of the Kennedy families at leisure, they had the same brands of middle class consumer goods as any schmo could by. This was when it was still mass production, not class consumption. Before the economy got Nieman-Marcus-ed, and they started cranking out ridiculously expensive things for the super rich to flash around to flaunt their wealth.
I think the gap you mention just hadn't opened up yet.
END EDIT
I came from a working class background, but got into elite schools. Although the place was crawling with arrogant, rich creeps, there was also a significant plurality of newbies from the working class.
It was a different world. Perhaps my thinking about these numbers is out of date.
Let me consider this and get back to you. It might not be right away.
Thanks for your comment.
I thought you'd nail me
for being totally subjective, which I am, mostly. I 100% think it's about being from a different time. I feel it strongly, too. I can't puzzle out if the inoculation of wealth is a cure or a virus for people. One thing it seems to do is induce an amnesia of who they were and where they came from. It seems to mirror the evolution of democratic party.
My problem with the "Pull Yourself Up By The Bootstraps"
Thinking is in the framing. I worked down in Wall Street as a graphic designer for many years and had quite a few stupefying conversations related to how they see their privilege. That the elites seem to look at the rest of us from their inherited perches as if our lack of wealth and access was a character flaw is not news to me. But what I found particularly odious about that falsehood is the privileged assumption that we were all competing in the race of life from the SAME starting point and had simply failed to either work hard enough or smart enough.
Here's a hypothetical that's fun to contemplate. Let's strip the elites from all their access, wealth, and family connections, dump them in a household that was surviving from paycheck to paycheck and measure their wealth 20 years later. I for one would be SHOCKED if they were in the same place as they were before. Just once I would like to see one of those Wall Street snot nosed bastards who liked to refer to themselves as the "creme de la creme" have to go on a job interview and sit across some prick without the benefit of their wealth and status. What a rude awakening that would be for them.
Moreover, I think that they would be stunned to discover that apart from the benefit of financial security, I neither seek nor covet that kind of wealth simply because I do not want to have to do the things people have to do to accumulate that kind of ill gotten gains.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Aye, Wall Streeters
are something else. Any contact I ever had with them was a long time ago. This is how I will always remember them...
http://onecompellingimage.tumblr.com/post/123637862295/there-was-pandemo...
As a curvy girl myself
I can attest to their colossal dickness. I was once asked not to use a printer by the Options desk while they had clients in their office because I was too "distracting". And the guy who said it actually thought it was a compliment. I pretended not to know what the fuck he was talking about and walked away shaking my head. But that's an entirely different set of stories.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
"Trading places", except the Dan Ackroyd character...
is a repulsive shmuck who gets no help from the lower class because he arrogantly dismisses them. That would be some schadenfreude!
As a techie, I've never encountered a company with the culture of elitism that you have experienced. Techies who are there for the tech just don't have that attitude. At one company, the CSO was already a multi-millionaire, but he still worked like a navvy. When it was time for a company party, he brought in the stuff from his wine cellar that was aging off. Hundreds of bottles of really good wine. Of course, now that I think of it, he was a worked-his-way-up-from-nothing guy from the time frame I talked about previously.
I believe you about the elitist attitude, because its been on public display since the 80s, with clowns like Michael Milken.
Because I was good at what I did
I had the "privilege" of being requested as a dedicated designer for various desks on the floor. One day I might work with the investment bankers on the Equity desk, another day I might work with brokers on Swaps. I worked for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Bros., and Banque Paribas.
Late hours working on presentations lent to a conversational relationship with bankers where I'm sure they assumed I agreed. Each place was the same. These people were obtusely myopic about their privelege and all the opportunities that were handed to them while they crowed about "earning" their place, which was usually depicted as the Viking baby being left on the mountaintop metaphor. Unfuckingbelievable. They'd last 2 minutes in a working class neighborhood before someone beat the shit out of them.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
The NYT might not have always been a war cheerleader but...
when I was quite a bit younger, well, I remember my deep surprise reading the NYT account of the overthrow of Allende. There was zero mention of US involvement, zero mention of the CIA. And yet the Times had to know who was behind it. They knew and thus deliberately chose to not mention it.
(which reminds me...I'm flabbergasted when I bring up what the CIA has done when talking to certain friends who then tell me "the CIA has changed. So has the FBI".)
One of these days I want to revisit that Jon Stewart "can't we get along" rally. I hate that guy. There was a time when he was being credited as the only true source of news in America. Which we know wasn't true then. Yeah....my point is that it's not only mainstream news that's propaganda. It's also a LOT of alternative sources too.
I can't speak to the NYT coverage of Allende
I can believe it, I just can't recall it.
At the time, I was busy reading Marchetti and Marks' "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence" and going to on-campus lectures by John Stockwell. Those sources and others kept me informed on Chile. So, I knew that, yet again, Kissinger showed himself to be a lying Machiavellian murderer. The only other facts I remember concern ITT and Dita Beard. My memory of the NYT on that topic is zilch. But I can believe it.
----
However, the John Stewart complaint? I am clueless. I tried googling for attacks on Stewart and all I could get were attacks from the right. I never saw any criticism of him from the left. I watched the show religiously while W was president, because it saved my sanity from the Corporate Media coverage. And, yes, that NYT coverage I do remember; and it sucked.
Could you please expand on why you hate Stewart and why you think he is just a propagandist? Please explain it to me. Why is he such a strong negative for you?
Now, Colbert? He gets on my nerves. He is so smart its scary. His "pretend" rightwinger was so real that he had fan mail from rightwing nutbags. He could have confused a panel of Jesuit inquisitors. Then he just cashed it all in to get the Tonight Show, where he faithfully tows the CM line. Colbert was always problematic.
Maybe it was this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rally_to_Restore_Sanity_and/or_Fear
Or if wiki is too worthless, try:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/30/jon-stewart-rally-restore-...
But maybe it was something else entirely.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
I remember being unimpressed by that rally...
So, are you saying Stewart was a sheepdog? That he kept the left-right pot boiling, but he never called out Pelosi for "taking impeachment off the table"? That he never blistered Obama for selling us out to Wall St.?
I would have to go back and find out exactly which Democrats he did not attack, even though they deserved it.
I must admit that after that rally, which was just before the 2010 election debacle for the Dems, I tuned out Stewart and Colbert. I was never comfortable with Colbert's shtick, but Stewart really seemed to like him. I did feel that the rally sort of de-energized the left right before the election. I had long since decided Obama was the enemy within the gates, and this rally sure didn't attack Obama.
So, the more I talk, the more I see that, after 2008, one can genuinely argue that Stewart was sheepdogging.
Am I on the right track here? Or still missing the point? Do people think he was a sheepdog from day one?
I wasn't sure about Stewart, but I KNEW Maher was.
From the very first time I saw "Politically Incorrect" on Comedy Central, I was amazed by how he managed to completely miss political points in favor of inciting random dictatorial statements from his guests.
Still remember the VERY first line I associate with him. Rosanne Barr announcing to applause on his show that every woman should be issued a machine gun and given immunity for all murders of men. This was in the 90's I might add...
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
various reasons, including that "rally"
Stewart, over and over again, was extremely kind to Republicans that he had on his show. At first I thought it was because he was trying to avoid coming across as a liberal. I'm talking about guys like McCain. He was much tougher when interviewing Democrats...except Liz Warren. He liked her. Incidentally, that was the first time I'd ever seen her and I was done with her about 20 seconds after she started talking. Oh...and Tim Geithner. Also a soft interview.
Now as to the "rally"....there was talk about how it was sucking the life out of a separate, more left rally. As far as I can tell the "left" one was questionable but was still better than the "we can get along" one. Others might have clearer memories of this conflict of dates than I do. The Stewart/Colbert rally told us we're all one happy family and we should stop sniping at one another and, I assume, not notice the bombing of other countries and the blue tarps of the homeless.
Overall he's some sort of rich moderate. I suppose on the "like" scale I have him ahead of Rachel Maddow. So that's something.
You'll have to ask Shahryar.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Signs are arising that the people are awakening
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan19/truth-fail1-19.html
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley