I came across this article that examines the protests and focuses specifically on the media narrative of violence and looting. It gives us a good jumping off point to further discuss points brought up in comments in some of the most recent essays on the protests.

In this article, the writer interviews

Its my opinion that national politics has become hallucinogenic. The corporate media and the political elites do not discuss reality, but rather discuss manufactured nonsense. TPTB have realized that their fake liberal shtick just isn't playing in Peoria anymore. After Obama, people are "not going to get fooled again" by the likes of Harris or Booker or Biden. So, it seems that they decided to make democracy completely irrelevant by making the national political discourse insane.

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.

That's the title of a fairly philosophical essay at Counterpunch about why rational people are increasingly frustrated by the current forms of "argumentation". Because facts just don't matter any more, as we have seen repeatedly: DNC cheating, Hillary's emails, Syrian gas attacks, Skripal poisoning, Iran agreement withdrawl, accusations of unprovoked Iranian attacks (in the face of 100 self-admitted Israeli attacks on Iranian forces). The facts just don't matter.

Bernie Sanders has come out saying Donald Trump should consider resigning over his own past sex harassment actions

Last night I went to a dentist appointment and they had the ubiquitous big flat screen tv which was tuned to CNN. If I had just entered a restaurant I probably would have walked out; if obliged to sit in a waiting room more often than not I ask if anyone is watching it, and either ask to switch it off or to change the channel. There was even a flat screen tv in the patient's room where I had my teeth cleaned.

Image Credit: World Wildlife Fund