I said many years ago that there were about 15 minutes of actual news in any typical day. A lot of that could be spent on self-reeducation on various issues.
I stand by that statement.
Cable news was already huge overkill as far as anything useful. Talk radio, garbage no matter who was producing it. I include non-political sports talk radio, again not that much news, what’s on sports talk radio is mainly arguing and the actual insightful stuff doesn’t get aired.
Internet is no different. Get off the damn Internet and look at what’s going on around you.
Honestly, have none of you been on the other side? Have you never been in a position where you are the one being called a moron, a neanderthal? Really? You line up with the liberal consensus on every single issue, no matter how small? Even the fringe liberal consensus? Do you want to go to a Coronavirus reddit and be called stupid for not continuing to socially distance and wear your N95 everywhere?
I was just in Houston. OMG how did I ever survive that horror show. /Sarcasm. It’s a big city. The homeless were noticeable. That mattered more than anything.
I had someone on here who obviously lived on the Internet more than in real life rip into the town I grew up in. This place has always been Republican but it’s clear the poster was living on the Internet more than in the actual town. And people here, also living on the Internet, agreed with him.
It used to be you could have a difference of opinion and it didn’t paralyze dialog. Now Voting in the house and senate is 100% Red or Blue, every time, and if you don’t agree with any of the 12 things that make up my political ideology, you’re a baby eater and need to be strung up. (at least that’s what Twitter leads me to believe.)
Yeah, that’s why not much legislation gets passed any more.
But the same thing happens with people not in Congress. They have their list of points and are offended and disgusted if other people don’t share all of them.
For example, I am involved in a liberal church. There are people who are going to be offended by that and insult me because of it. Even though I might align on most other issues. Because they’re obsessed with everyone agreeing with them on every point.
Internet is horrible at encouraging this sort of attitude. People are getting too used to the sound of their own voice. Even when no one else cares.
The news used to be the “morning paper” or 30 minutes after work. As said, not much happens on any given day.
With continuous news cycles, much of the “news” is people’s naive opinions on stuff, often on topics they have never seriously considered, been exposed to, or learned much about. Everybody has an opinion on every topic. So what? I don’t generally care what you thought of Vanna White’s outfit or whether you perceive the shirt to be yellow or green… what you are for breakfast…
Taking a complex topic, asking uninformed guy A his opinion, finding uninformed guy B who has an opposite opinion (unless the station or network has an opinion, in which case A and B are the same or only one of A or B seems credible)… this is not news. People would prefer to be informed. This sort of malarkey is not harmless - it got Brexit passed (voting by an uninformed public on a complex topic) and Trump elected (false equivalence between scandals and irrelevant opinions on opponents) and maybe re-elected (false equivalence between concerns with classified documents). It has made politicians much more extreme than most of the public.
If I know eating a triple-cheeseburger is bad for me, I have a choice to make if I want to eat it, or get something else. I am the only one who puts food in my mouth. The same can be said for consumption of news and other media - I get to choose what info I expose myself to. We all have the same choice. Which is why I mentioned taking a break from news and info consumption. It really is not that difficult. However, I think it’s unreasonable to lock yourself away from all news, but if you limit it to your local nightly news if you want to see it on TV, or limit your written sources to only those you can reasonably trust, and limit your time there, it will only be good for you. You will be much happier and less stressed about things.
Having cut cable a few years ago I find much less news and infotainment available to me, and for the better. This is one area of control each of us has for dealing with overflow of junk information (like junk food). You get to choose what food you put in your mouth, as well as what information you consume.
The last few years have been a bit rough, but the broad decadal trends are largely positive, in the United States and around the world.
Life expectancy is rising. Infant mortality is declining. Species that were on the verge of extinction have recovered.
Sixty years ago, interracial marriage was controversial, and illegal in some places. Now, polling firms don’t even bother asking about it. Gay marriage is still controversial in some places, but legal in every state.
This is true. One may, however, not be able to insulate oneself (and/or one’s loved ones, neighbors, etc.) from things that are actually happening by ignoring news about those things.
Rationing the amount, being selective about the accuracy and tone of sources, and taking occasional breaks all make a lot of sense. – maybe the food analogy is good after all; you can choose what and when and how often to eat, but you’d better eat something.
Oh, I’m a fan of Hans Rosling. The fact important things really are improving makes this outbreak of anti-democratic sentiment - and both real and rehearsed anger at things of relatively little consequence - both disturbing and puzzling. Not everybody sees progress as progress. Not everybody sees the future as friendly. The truthiness? Some would prefer to go back to the way things never were.
That’s so true. I watch local news only for the weather, and things like CNN not at all unless there is actual story.
First, on local news all the stories are killings, rampages, etc., etc., so you might think the streets are filled with blood. And many seem to. And you’re stuck with it. With a newspaper you can skip the crap. And I get the Times, so I can read in-depth stories about stuff that seems important.
This isn’t conservative or liberal. Even on MSNBC, before I stopped leaving when my wife turned it on, every day the lead story was supposedly a big giant deal.
Social media is this writ large.
Know what this can do to you? My daughter used to play with the daughter of a cop. He was a good guy, and our city is one of the safest in California. He insisted on walking he ten year old kid around the block to our house. When we took her to Disney on Ice he insisted on coming too, and I’m damn sure he didn’t do it because he thought we were awful. He lived in fear, and I’m sure it was because of his job. I can’t imagine how police in really violent places must feel. We’re a;; turning into fearful people, and we know that isn’t good.
It seems like the messaging of today’s society is laser-focused on what we should be offended by, boycott, be outraged about, and so forth. Even when it’s in a good cause, like LGBTQ rights, it’s very rarely along the lines of “Hey- look at this great thing going on that you can support and participate in.”, but rather along the lines of “You have to be pissed at Chick-fil-A because their owner is a Christian conservative and isn’t on board with gay marriage.” Or that I have to go spend effort to go keep up on whatever silly-assed term du jour is being used for a dozen or more groups/concepts/etc…
It’s absolutely wearing- nobody can really keep track of it all, and it’s all in a rather demanding fashion- you can’t be ambivalent- you have to choose a side and be all-in, or at least that’s the implication. And it’s always implied as more of a bundle sort of thing- you can’t be for one thing, and against another if you want to be part of the club. And (GASP!) you can’t actually see both sides of the issue as valid. I mean, abortion IS essentially murdering babies, but yet it IS a woman’s body and her right to choose. I don’t know the answer, but I do know that neither side is categorically wrong in my estimation. But I’ll be damned if society wants to push me into one box or the other.
I don’t subscribe to the nonsense that the country’s approaching collapse. I think that’s very Chicken-Little thinking. But again, the political types on both sides of the aisle profit from claiming the sky is falling, and assigning the blame to their opponents. What better way to get voters out and motivated than to claim the country’s going to pot because of the other party’s fundamental viewpoint?
That’s how I’m feeling these days too. I’ve started looking at politics as much more of a game than I used to- the maneuvering and game-playing is kind of fascinating to watch.
I have a close friend with very different political views. He was bemused with the most recent election that both Democrats and Republicans were claiming a vote in their favor would save democracy.
I said, “Hey, either way you get to save democracy. Win-win!”
The problem is, widespread exposure to unhealthy food doesn’t directly impact me if I chose to eat healthy. A bunch of my neighbors getting fat, and maybe even dying from poor food choices has little direct impact on me. But widespread exposure to bad news sources? Sure, I personally can ignore them, but if 51% of the population is listening to “news” shows that are nothing but lies and fake outrage, that can directly affect me, because those people are voting in elections.
There are a lot of real problems in society right now, but a lot of elected officials are simply ignoring those issues, because the people who voted for them only care about Pedophile Pizza Parlors and Hunter Biden’s laptop.
I come by my views honestly, having grown up in a conservative family across the board, and then having sort of grown past that into someone who is firmly a Democrat these days, although not a progressive either. Both sides are remarkably similar in their breathless claims that the other side is a threat.
The Republicans couch it in terms of culture war, specifically between rural/suburban people and urban/foreigners/effete intellectuals, and that the latter’s poisonous views are going to change the country for the worse and/or destroy Christianity and people’s freedoms.
The Democrats or at least the Left, tend to couch it in ways that are honestly, more conspiracy-theory sounding. Stuff like “here’s how the Republicans executed their plan to do X”, where the plan is some sort of 4-dimensional master plan taking place over 40 years. If that’s not verging on conspiracy theory, I don’t know what is.
But I’m supposed to be outraged that the urban Liberals are trying to fix the climate (which we all know doesn’t need fixing) at the expense of hardworking people in rural Nebraska by raising gas taxes, passing environmental standards, and thereby making it hard to be a farmer. And I’m supposed to be outraged that the Republicans have done all this mustache-twirlingly bad and nefarious plotting and actions over a long period of time to set the stage for Trump and whatever follows.
In reality, I suspect neither is actually true, or is only true through a partisan lens with a very narrow field of view. I doubt the GOP has the sort of long-term follow-through to engineer some sort of media manipulation over more than an election cycle or two. Instead, I think they have a bunch of cynical opportunists who never miss a chance to defame their opponents and manipulate their supporters, and build on what their cynical and opportunistic predecessors did.
Similarly, I think the Democrats are pretty distraught about the effects of their environmental policies on people’s livelihoods, but see it as being considered an unfortunate necessity because of a “bigger fish to fry” mentality w.r.t. climate change.
I never ever watch TV news. However, I subscribe to a print daily local newspaper. I read it every morning, so I know what’s going on. Then I try to forget about it the rest of the day.
Mm. I’m pretty sure they were playing the long game with the Supreme Court.
The simple fact of the matter is Republicans have always used better strategy, at least since they picked up left-wing activist Saul Alinsky’s playbook. They also have the advantage in that they don’t have a pluralist coalition to satisfy. But in general they seem better at planning and coordinating virtually everything.
I fall in line with the Simpsons’ take on this:
Republicans: We hate everyone!
Democrats: We can’t govern!
I vote, grudgingly, for the party that can’t govern.
All I’m saying is that, for me, “Democrats have been plotting this for decades!” is a harder sell than “Republicans have been plotting this for decades!”
Though I think Trump was an honest-to-goodness curveball for the Republicans, they pivoted effectively. Horrifically, but effectively.
I don’t doubt that their plan was to stack the Supreme Court when they could, so that hopefully they could eventually repeal Roe.
What I’m talking about is when mostly on Reddit, but occasionally on here, people attribute some sort of super-diabolical 4d chess playing to the GOP- like somehow, their plan all along was to set up the right-wing media via talk radio, then Fox/Newsmax/etc… and thereby pry their base away from the mainstream media.
I have a hard time believing that they had the foresight and intelligence to engineer a plan like that, and stick with it for 30 some-odd years. Rather, I think that Rush Limbaugh happened to strike untapped gold in talk radio, so they rolled with it, and introduced more hosts. Then eventually said “Hey, why don’t we just make Fox news partisan?”. Then when that worked, “Why don’t we make our own network?” and so forth. And in parallel, you had cynical assholes saying “Why don’t we introduce confusion on our networks about the validity of factual information?” When that worked, they just decided to double down and politicize everything.
What happened was basically capitalizing on success, not some sort of super long-term diabolical plot to end up in the current state. But to hear some people tell it, they had this goal all along, as opposed to a sort of vague “Wouldn’t it be awesome if…” sort of thinking.
I do agree that the Democrats seem uniquely scattered and not singing from the same hymnal. And it makes them appear weak and ineffectual. Every time AOC (to use an prominent and outspoken Democratic politician with their own agenda) goes off and trumpets her own political views, it basically weakens Biden and the party in general’s position, and introduces a fairly large degree of confusion among the Democrat voters- is the party line the Green New Deal, or is it that stuff Biden campaigned on? It’s unclear, and the fact that she can do that unfettered makes the party look disunified, and makes Biden as the ostensible head of the party look ineffectual at controlling the messaging.