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Apt reply!
<div class=""> Where do most get their information from? NYT, WP, WSJ, USA Today <span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="">set the stage for newspapers. CNN, MSNBC, Fox, NPR, cover simlilar ground. There seems to be no
<i class="">significant</i> media antidotes. So how do most get to know what really is happening around the world, and </span><font color="#000000" class="">domestically? It’s too facile to attribute it to nihilism, although given the current dreadful <span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="">situation,
nihilism is a result. </span></font></div>
<div class=""><font color="#000000" class=""><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class=""><br class="">
</span></font></div>
<div class=""><font color="#000000" class="">Who has the money and the power? These largely control the levers, and that goes for the educational system also. I recently attended a coarse propagandistic “lecture” at OLLI on the subjsect of Ukraine given by
a UIUC faculty member. One can’t imagine how bad it was and sadly its attendance was gleeful, or silent, and large. <br class="">
</font>
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<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">On Jan 17, 2020, at 2:07 PM, David Johnson via Peace-discuss <<a href="mailto:peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net" class="">peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net</a>> wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<div class="">
<div class="">" The press ideally should sift fact from fiction and give the public the<br class="">
information it needs to make enlightened political choices. "<br class="">
<br class="">
I absolutely agree. The problem is that CORPORATE OWNED MEDIA does NOT sift<br class="">
fact from fiction. It produces and repeats corporate propaganda fiction and<br class="">
ignores and buries the facts.<br class="">
<br class="">
" If you short-circuit that process by saturating the ecosystem with<br class="">
misinformation and overwhelm the media's ability to mediate, then you can<br class="">
disrupt the democratic process. "<br class="">
<br class="">
So they are saying that there is too much information, therefore anything<br class="">
but corporate owned and financed media should be banned.<br class="">
<br class="">
The corporate media does NOT " mediate " and in fact is one of the largest<br class="">
impediments to REAL democracy in the U.S. and the rest of the world as well.<br class="">
<br class="">
Why do you think so many people have been deserting corporate media as their<br class="">
info source ( especially people under 40 ) for the last 15-20 years and<br class="">
turning to REAL independent journalists on the internet and YouTube ?<br class="">
...Weapons of mass destruction anyone ?<br class="">
<br class="">
Journalists like ; Glen Greenwald, Abby Martin, Max Blumenthal, Jimmy Dore,<br class="">
Aaron Matte, Chris Hedges, etc.. Who are banned from corporate media.<br class="">
<br class="">
Lastly Ron.....Look at your source for this article ...." VOX " - The<br class="">
corporate hipster magazine for Neo-Liberalism and the U.S. corporate empire.<br class="">
<br class="">
David J.<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
-----Original Message-----<br class="">
From: Peace-discuss [<a href="mailto:peace-discuss-bounces@lists.chambana.net" class="">mailto:peace-discuss-bounces@lists.chambana.net</a>] On<br class="">
Behalf Of Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss<br class="">
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2020 1:40 PM<br class="">
To: <a href="mailto:peace-discuss@anti-war.net" class="">peace-discuss@anti-war.net</a><br class="">
Cc: peace-discuss<br class="">
Subject: [Peace-discuss] The futility & nihilism factory<br class="">
<br class="">
"Flood the zone with shit": How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy<br class="">
The impeachment trial probably won't change any minds. Here's why.<br class="">
<br class="">
By Sean Illing @seanilling <a href="mailto:sean.illing@vox.com" class="">sean.illing@vox.com</a> Jan 16, 2020
<br class="">
<br class="">
No matter how President Trump's impeachment trial plays out in the<br class="">
Senate, one thing is certain: Despite the incontrovertible facts at the<br class="">
center of the story, the process will change very few minds.<br class="">
Regardless of how clear a case Democrats make, it seems likely that a<br class="">
majority of voters will remain confused and unsure about the details of<br class="">
Trump's transgressions. No single version of the truth will be accepted.<br class="">
This is a serious problem for our democratic culture. No amount of<br class="">
evidence, on virtually any topic, is likely to move public opinion one way<br class="">
or the other. We can attribute some of this to rank partisanship - some<br class="">
people simply refuse to acknowledge inconvenient facts about their own side.<br class="">
But there's another, equally vexing problem. We live in a media ecosystem<br class="">
that overwhelms people with information. Some of that information is<br class="">
accurate, some of it is bogus, and much of it is intentionally misleading.<br class="">
The result is a polity that has increasingly given up on finding out the<br class="">
truth. As Sabrina Tavernise and Aidan Gardiner put it in a New York Times<br class="">
piece, "people are numb and disoriented, struggling to discern what is real<br class="">
in a sea of slant, fake, and fact." This is partly why an<br class="">
earth-shattering historical event like a president's impeachment has done<br class="">
very little to move public opinion.<br class="">
The core challenge we're facing today is information saturation and a<br class="">
hackable media system. If you follow politics at all, you know how<br class="">
exhausting the environment is. The sheer volume of content, the dizzying<br class="">
number of narratives and counternarratives, and the pace of the news cycle<br class="">
are too much for anyone to process.<br class="">
One response to this situation is to walk away and tune everything out.<br class="">
After all, it takes real effort to comb through the bullshit, and most<br class="">
people have busy lives and limited bandwidth. Another reaction is to retreat<br class="">
into tribal allegiances. There's Team Liberal and Team Conservative, and<br class="">
pretty much everyone knows which side they're on. So you stick to the places<br class="">
that feed you the information you most want to hear.<br class="">
My Vox colleague Dave Roberts calls this an "epistemic crisis." The<br class="">
foundation for shared truth, he argues, has collapsed. I don't disagree with<br class="">
that, but I'd frame the problem a little differently.<br class="">
We're in an age of manufactured nihilism.<br class="">
The issue for many people isn't exactly a denial of truth as such. It's<br class="">
more a growing weariness over the process of finding the truth at all. And<br class="">
that weariness leads more and more people to abandon the idea that the truth<br class="">
is knowable.<br class="">
I call this "manufactured" because it's the consequence of a deliberate<br class="">
strategy. It was distilled almost perfectly by Steve Bannon, the former head<br class="">
of Breitbart News and chief strategist for Donald Trump. "The Democrats<br class="">
don't matter," Bannon reportedly said in 2018. "The real opposition is the<br class="">
media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."<br class="">
This idea isn't new, but Bannon articulated it about as well as anyone<br class="">
can. The press ideally should sift fact from fiction and give the public the<br class="">
information it needs to make enlightened political choices. If you<br class="">
short-circuit that process by saturating the ecosystem with misinformation<br class="">
and overwhelm the media's ability to mediate, then you can disrupt the<br class="">
democratic process.<br class="">
What we're facing is a new form of propaganda that wasn't really possible<br class="">
until the digital age. And it works not by creating a consensus around any<br class="">
particular narrative but by muddying the waters so that consensus isn't<br class="">
achievable.<br class="">
Bannon's political objective is clear. As he explained in a 2017<br class="">
Conservative Political Action Conference talk, he sees Trump as a stick of<br class="">
dynamite with which to blow up the status quo. So "flooding the zone" is a<br class="">
means to that end. But more generally, creating widespread cynicism about<br class="">
the truth and the institutions charged with unearthing it erodes the very<br class="">
foundation of liberal democracy. And the strategy is working.<br class="">
<br class="">
<snip><br class="">
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span>#<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">
</span>#<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>#<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
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