The media is a disgusting creature. Journalists as a group are stupid, terrible at their jobs and liars. And right now it's so bad that my eyes are crossing. Here are some examples of things that are just driving me nuts. Each of the following is from actual "news" stories:
The evil US (and the lessor evil "rich nations in the West") need to finally step up and stop hoarding vaccines and help the poor people who are dying by the trillions from COVID. Why won't we lift a finger to help them? The racist US in particular is bad and heartless. BUT the US is sending 60 million doses of vaccine to the third world. The more noble Europeans are promising 20 million doses. Nobody else is promising sh*t.
The Chinese and Russians are winning the vaccine war because poor countries are choosing to rely on their vaccines. BUT Russia has only produced 20 million doses total... all used in Russia. Evil capitalist Pfizer produces 100 million doses a month. The effectiveness of the Chinese vaccines is below 50%. There are doubts the Russian vaccine is even that.
Those darn white conservative Christians are the problem because 30% of them say they won't take the vaccine. BUT 70% of blacks won't take it, and somehow that's the fault of white doctors. Only 25%... uh, 10% of Russians have taken it, but the US still has the worst rate in the world. Actually, the US has the highest innoculation rate because we hoard vaccines.
Those evil capitalist drug companies only do this for money. No sh*t, right? WELL Russia and China are SELLING their vaccines, yet that's considered charity somehow. Pfizer is donating 20 million doses to sh*thold countries... for free. ALSO, no public interest firm has yet produced a vaccine or hand out a single dose.
Why hasn't someone done something to help India? WELL a few weeks ago, the same media was touting how India was handling this better than all you white capitalist countries. Also, India has contracts with Russia to produce 100 million doses of its vaccine each month and claims it can take care of itself. Total doses produced so far are zero... and we're the bad guys.
It makes the head spin, doesn't it?
The evil US (and the lessor evil "rich nations in the West") need to finally step up and stop hoarding vaccines and help the poor people who are dying by the trillions from COVID. Why won't we lift a finger to help them? The racist US in particular is bad and heartless. BUT the US is sending 60 million doses of vaccine to the third world. The more noble Europeans are promising 20 million doses. Nobody else is promising sh*t.
The Chinese and Russians are winning the vaccine war because poor countries are choosing to rely on their vaccines. BUT Russia has only produced 20 million doses total... all used in Russia. Evil capitalist Pfizer produces 100 million doses a month. The effectiveness of the Chinese vaccines is below 50%. There are doubts the Russian vaccine is even that.
Those darn white conservative Christians are the problem because 30% of them say they won't take the vaccine. BUT 70% of blacks won't take it, and somehow that's the fault of white doctors. Only 25%... uh, 10% of Russians have taken it, but the US still has the worst rate in the world. Actually, the US has the highest innoculation rate because we hoard vaccines.
Those evil capitalist drug companies only do this for money. No sh*t, right? WELL Russia and China are SELLING their vaccines, yet that's considered charity somehow. Pfizer is donating 20 million doses to sh*thold countries... for free. ALSO, no public interest firm has yet produced a vaccine or hand out a single dose.
Why hasn't someone done something to help India? WELL a few weeks ago, the same media was touting how India was handling this better than all you white capitalist countries. Also, India has contracts with Russia to produce 100 million doses of its vaccine each month and claims it can take care of itself. Total doses produced so far are zero... and we're the bad guys.
It makes the head spin, doesn't it?
13 comments:
And this isn't even getting into how for the longest time you still had to mask up (two recommended) and keep your six foot distance even after getting jabbed, except now it's OK to go back to normal two weeks after one if you did. And apparently they're getting desperate enough to sell the thing to partner with dating sites to give you shiny badges and perks if you register that you've had it. They couldn't be coming off more like the bastard spawn of a two-bit petty tyrant and shady used car salesman if they tried with crap like this. Can we please climb back out the rabbit hole already?
Daniel,
Two points. First, I've said before that COVID was initially spread by the rich and famous. All the conflicting garbage and overreach and then strange exemptions etc., I believe was a smokescreen meant to focus the anger about COVID on the government and away from the people who spread this.
Secondly, what you're seeing in the article is how unhinged the media has become. They push agendas regardless of the facts, even when the facts are obvious.
And sadly it worked, giving us this godawful moral panic that caused so much damage. I can't even think about it for long without getting royally pissed off at the people who whipped this up, especially considering they're probably never going to pay for it. If anything, they look stronger and richer than ever and they even have the usual useful Twits praising Big Pharma profits for one more contradiction on the pile. True about the media as well. It's hard to stay hopeful in all of this.
Andrew; Very late to the party but so glad that you're back! I was very worried. I missed your insights, your facts, your ammunition for my social media wars and confidence builders for my political outlook. I missed having a place to disagree with somebody about politics without immediately going into the mud. But most of all I was very worried about you. I am just flat elated that you are healthy enough to come back and post. All the best and welcome back. looking Forward to more.
GypsyTyger
Daniel, you said it. This is a moral panic, not a health crisis. Of course, now I have to prostrate myself and declare that the virus is real, because to suggest it is anything less than a crisis is to deny its very existence. See? Moral panic.
And, of course, what good is a moral panic if it doesn't force us to see the error of our ways. Sadly for the MSM, it looks like America is doing everything right, which is terribly confusing for them. They lash out by trying to confuse the rest of us.
Thanks GypsyTyger, It was honestly close. I've had three different doctors say they are shocked I didn't die based on my numbers. It's not clear how I didn't. Pretty lousy time. So I'm glad to be back.
Glad I could help with the politics! You are always welcome to disagree. I'm only 97.2% right, so there is that 2.8% lol Just kidding, feel free to disagree whenever.
Daniel, It's shocking how well it's worked. The celebrity media shifted blame. They made cognitive dissonance seem normal. They made conspiracy theories seem like wisdom. They triggered the left and fringe right like Pavlov's dogs to cover up for the robber baron elites. They re-plantationed black people. Corporate America made a mint and further crushed consumers and employees. They made kids even dumber and more malleable, which didn't seem possible. It's shocking.
tryanmax, This moment should be a celebration of the America built by conservative principles but they just won't drop the narrative. America is evil and racist and only acts to do evil. Ridiculous.
I was just repeating an observation from a man far wiser than I, tryanmax. :) It almost seems like the fog is starting to clear but I'm definitely not going to make any predictions in that direction, not when people who have shown repeatedly that all they want is power and they'll do absolutely anything to get and keep it stand to lose from not having the Winnie the Flu scourge to flog the normies with anymore, or at least having a weaker version of the scourge. Andrew, that's the most depressing observation of all, how a media that was supposedly on its last legs of credibility drove all of this and led us to this sorry state. Your observation about how all of this screwed the black community is sad as well, not that they'd want to hear it from a privileged old honkey like me. Any concrete, or at least something close to it. signs of hope that either of you are you're seeing? Right now a bunker in the ass-end of Wyoming is sounding pretty damn good...
Daniel, for me the hope lies in observing that Democrats continue to push hard on bucket-list items and rejiggering rules to make it easier for themselves to win. Those are not the actions of an ideology that enjoys healthy support. It's not at all weird for a political party to maximize the influence they have, but look: Democrats have the Washington bureaucracy, 90% of the press, most of education, Hollywood, Big Business, Big Tech, helluva lot more churches than they should, and yet they're still running around like they're patching holes on a sinking ship. That tells me see their grip as razor thin, and they should know better than anyone. Look at another thing. Dems are acting like Biden has an FDR-sized mandate. The reality is that he has the thinnest support of any Democrat holding both houses of congress since the third party system began. Personally, I think the popular cascade-preference has already shifted to Republicans, Dems are only propped up by their institutional power. And they've stupidly infected everything with a CRT virus that eats everything it infects from within.
Thanks, tryanmax. I still have a lot of worries about this, and sorry in advance if I end up rambling. I haven't had many opportunities to get all of this out of my head in a place where I can get any useful feedback Anyway, I know we've had similar discussions before with regards to the Dems' behavior and other people whose judgement that I trust have reached similar conclusions: they're acting out of desperation, not confidence. HR 1, the good old For(nicate) the People Act, is a prime example of this. If they had the normies all locked up why would they want to throw the doors right open for levels of fraud that would embarrass a banana republic dictator, especially in light of all the questions about how much fraud they were up to in the last few elections? Still, that institutional power is a big part of what worries me, especially when it comes to things like HR 1 and the new noises about court packing. That's a lot of power they can bring to bear, which brings me to my other worries.
First, even accounting for the fog created by the Winnie/Floyd moral panics I'm not sure where the public is in all of this. Granted I'm not the best at reading people or trends anyway (there's a reason I'm not in either yours or Andrew's profession, much as learning yours would help me in a few ares), but when predictions of the public finally having enough of the latest left/Democrat insanity never come to pass, which the left/Dems then take as a sign to push harder, it's enough to make me wonder what I'm looking at. Even accounting for the devil you know discussion from a while back it's still unsettling to see, especially in light of the way COVID was used to justify so many civil liberties violations, and that brings me to my other big worry.
Unfortunately the right/GOP has such a bad tendency to sabotage itself I sometimes wonder if Pinhead and the Cenobites from Hellraiser aren't the ones really running things. Dealing with the left/Dems's institutional power, sophistry, constantly acting in bad faith, outbursts of (self-)righteous indignation, and other things and doing so in a way that wins over the normies is no easy task even if you're adept at this sort of thing. That it ended up being Donald Trump of all people who stepped into that void says a lot about the state of the right/GOP, for all the good it ended up doing him. His agenda, fighting spirit, and willingness to reach out to average people are all absolutely necessary, but aside from DeSantis I'm not seeing many who are building and improving on that, and almost nobody is engaging in the culture. Gina Carano, maybe, to the extent her circumstances and social media posts can be considered as such but near as I can tell The Mandalorian and Disney are carrying on just fine without her. I definitely have to give Larry Correia credit on the book front, too, from being unashamedly libertarian and writing so many fun books that he managed to build himself a mountain estate bigger than the Obamas' place at Martha's Vineyard. He definitely gets the importance of culture, too, as I've seen him respond to critics telling him that his political writings are more important that his books that his books are what actually reaches all kinds of people. Still, the right is very far behind on this, and I'm not sure they're going to take the right lessons on getting involved with education either.
On CRT, agreed completely on it being destructive and toxic to the average person, as well as institutionally destructive. Then again, we are talking about a group of people who would be perfectly happy ruling over charred ruins as long as they're the ones in charge. It's how to effectively counter this that's nagging at me, especially since it's perhaps the best current example of all the rhetorical trickery and dishonesty they get up to.
Whew, sorry about that everyone.
Daniel, if it helps ease your mind in any way, the invention of the computer is the historical equivalent of combining the steam engine with the printing press. Politics has been trying to catch up to the tech revolution from the beginning.
A similar thought actually occurred to me today, tryanmax, and it's something else that comes up in other places I frequent too. Even aside from politics there's tremendous potential for a new revolution, from the age of mass everything to an age of indie, though I have to give credit to Sarah Hoyt for that observation/prediction. That would certainly make Big Business and Tech nervous at least, though I can't say how that may or may not work out. The thought nagging at me was about Facebook in particular, though. Whatever his actual politics and ambitions may be Zuckerberg angered the right with his treatment of Trump, yet as Andrew observed the left doesn't like him or see him as one of their own either and he's proven to be quite mockable in memes too. Add in all the stories of data sales, leaks, and increasingly nonsensical post/comment deletions and stints in "Facebook jail" and it seems like Facebook itself might be due for a stumble soon. I'm not sure how that might play out, though, especially since Instagram still appears to be well-liked but is under their umbrella nonetheless. So yeah, my head's finally clearing up a bit. :)
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