I don't pay attention to either of them.

Oculus Spirit [97961]

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Apr 24, 2022, 11:53 AM

If MSNBC lies, that doesn't mean OAN tells the truth. And vice versa. They're both equally dead to me.

But it is a seriously POOR state of affairs when a "news" organization that was a former mouthpiece of the Kremlin, can come in and inform Americans of the truth. That's a ###### bad and dangerous spot to be in IMO. And the Russia's and China's of the world, as they sit and watch us implode, can come in and expose truth, and that just makes us even more aware of our own domestic political propaganda.

RT doesn't have to manufacture false stories about the US. I mean they do sometimes, but they don't NEED to. They can sit back and just insert themselves selectively to show us our own propaganda with the truth. It has an even greater return on creating a destabilizing effect.

I see this all the time with covid stuff, even climate stuff. Our news is no better right now than Russia or China. In fact, in some respects it's worse. They have complete control of their news. They can therefore control the people. We are "free" however to publish whatever we want, and that means the net management of disinformation, the net quantity of disinformation, from both sides, is extremely destabilizing and far "worse" because it is not controlled (it once was controlled far better in the US btw).

And communists and socialists lap this stuff up. A true communist or socialist will point out that American "freedom" is essentially a phallacy or an illusion. We are "free", but that freedom is actually an illusion brought about and managed under a very controlled system. And they have a very good point. One of history's best lessons on the value, and dangers, of "freedom" can be seen in the birth of our nation. The US and France both overthrew monarchs at around the same time, using the same Enlightenment philosophies that promoted freedom and democracy. And both France and the US set about creating structures for democracy to thrive, and governments to thrive on "freedom". But the US and France ended up taking completely different paths. Our path worked because our method of controlling "freedom" was superior to that of France. France reverted back to dictatorship under Napoleon. We thrived in our own system because it was created by wiser men of a different faith. Protestants founded the United States. Catholics handled France's transition into freedom. That is one of the key differences in trajectories IMO.

But back to the point, we're not free. We live in a system we all see as floundering. Historians know exactly why (one reason history is so poorly taught in the US, historically). And here we are today, with kids who can be taught that Heather has two mommies, but they will never be taught how to balance a checkbook or how financing, interest, and banks make money or how the economy works. Along with the management of knowledge through education, we also manage ignorance through omissions in education as well. This keeps the "system" intact. And this is why such an emphasis has been placed on "higher education" to "get ahead". In higher education, you can be exposed to information and knowledge NOT TAUGHT in state and federal schools. You get a perspective on how things work that allows you to succeed where the tools to create that perspective are not given in high schools. High schools are intended to churn out workers. People who think you work for money, and then are paid money for your work. A higher education adds an awareness of HOW that money comes to be, and how to make more of it in more useful applications, and how to waste less of it as well.

We need workers. Elites know that. But with more and more Americans having a "higher education", the workers have declined to dangerously low levels. This is what communists know. So they step up and offer us their workers, and then in exchange for their people's labor, we get cheaper stuff to offset our loss of workers. They then take our money, which we have tons of because we are so much more "educated" today, they take that money and finance their own infrastructure and improvements. This is the long ball China is playing. They know if they can harness all of our demand for workers, and at the same time use our dollars to create military and infrastructure improvements, when we eventually collapse due to reliance on foreign workers, they will be left on top. This is the plan of China. I promise. Why else would a country so opposed to the US, work so hard "for us".?

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I don't like the agendizing the MSM does. I don't like the selective, seemingly deliberate omissions the MSM does. A lot of that, though, seems oddly reactive, a panic response to and overcompensation for to the insidious and relentless nature of the attacks by Russian disinformation and "conservative media" - selling the public on that name was the Mother of all PR scoops, "conservative" media is for the most part just anti-media, State TV, pure propaganda.

A lot of the MSM plumb lost their sh!t and their objectivity. Certainly a whole lot more of their owners and editors seem to have.

That said, good reporting is still good reporting...and there's still a bunch of sources that didn't follow the lurch to the left, or have quietly moved in to fill the gap in the middle that CNN and MSNBC created with their leftward lurch. I mean, you don't like CNN or MSNBC? Watch NewsNation, or even Newsy. Basically BBC-style news, just made in America.

And saying "both are equally dead to me" is troublesome. Even CNN, flawed as it is - and don't get me started, I've got a lot to say there - is infinitely better than OAN. And there's a whole lot of really good, really smart, really informed people in the news industry. Is it fair to just disregard them, or should we try to increasingly curate the good rather than just throwing up our hands and going: "it all sux." Because it doesn't. I really believe that. Maybe I'm naive.

One thing you mentioned that I find intriguing, and I very much do agree with. There's too few workers, too many educated people with essentially worthless degrees. It goes to what some have speculated might be the real problem with America right now: too many elites. When there's too many educated candidates and too many folks with inherited wealth competing for too few spots in our corporate hierarchies and especially our institutions, those institutions become bloated and top-heavy, upward mobility is severely curtailed, and what ends up happening is the rise of "counter-elites". Tucker Carlson is sort of the ultimate example, a blue-blood who makes his living stirring populist sentiment...against other blue-bloods.

I also agree that filling this void is China's plan. I do not believe they will succeed because there are serious structural problems in their own economy that their lack of transparency and incessant propagandizing hide, and we don't tend to see those cracks until they split wide open. And when macro-scale, planned economics go wrong...they tend to go seriously wrong, and there's plenty of evidence where those fault lines in China's own economy could be, yes? Their artificial housing market - that has created vast ranks of unoccupied "ghost cities" for people who will never exist as China's population shrinks massively in the coming decades - is one such. Ditto for the collapse of that economically unfeasible high-speed train system they're so proud of...that's due to become a truly massive white elephant in their economy in coming years as it ages. There's countless other examples, that they may be out way ahead of their skis.

Our own system isn't wonderful and I worry myself sick about it...but I wouldn't trade hands with the Chinese, either.

They would know, they are coordinating them

Re: They would know, they are coordinating them

Are you disputing the facts?

Re: Are you disputing the facts?

Rhetorical question......

Re: Rhetorical question......