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Murdoch

Fox News Is Staffed By Gibbering Lunatics

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1 hour ago, Murdoch said:

 

Well put and very true. We need to fight our desire to only seek out those which validate our beliefs but at the same time questioning everything is ridiculous too. There's one YouTuber whose name escapes me that SciManDan frequently features. His basic premise seems to be that literally everything is a hoax. He even thinks penguins are a hoax. He is either a masterful, dedicated troll or he is going to be on the news soon for shooting up his local McDonalds. It's scary levels of paranoia and that has a tendency to not end well. Healthy skepticism is good. Check multiple sources. Try to be objective as you can. But disbelieving everything is just stupid.

 

 

Spot on. Something as relatively harmless like Flat Earth is oft-times a conspiracy "Gateway drug" into beliefs that can be genuinely damaging. An alarming number of people seem to think "If I can't understand it, it's fake". Ignorance is not evidence. Flat Earth can be debunked simply by watching the path across the sky over a fine day and engaging your brain, and yet still people cling to it like it's some kind of emotional security blanket. The insanity around vaccines is a good example of a genuinely damaging conspiracy that has unquestionably killed children. And the former often leads to the latter, if the person was not there already. It plants the seed of doubt that can then be manipulated by con artists or other "believers".

That's actually a quote I took from Sacha Baron Cohen. As part of an act for The Ali G Show, he performed a song called "Throw a Jew Down the Well" in a (iirc) southern bar. Most of the patrons in the bar started laughing and singing along. The point was to show that the people in the bar probably weren't actively racists, but they were open to the idea of being racist if someone else perpetuated it. When you have people who are indifferent, they are easily influenced by others. The actual quote was "the road to Auschwitz was paved with indifference". People who haven't made up their own minds and developed their own morals leave others to do it for them, and can be easily swayed by whatever point of view is presented to them first, or whatever point of view they see that a lot of other people have, for better or worse. Often worse, because people who think for themselves are usually smart enough to know right from wrong.  

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Call me dumb but I'm pretty sure all of mainstream media is filled with gibbering lunatics, regardless if it's Right or Left wing.

 

It's why I prefer to look up independent viewers and combine like 30-50 different people (sometimes more, sometimes less) before I make an opinion on something political. I just want the facts. :l

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I'm not american, but media it's not more diverse there's, as fox news it's not the only tv channel?

 

I'm comparing as my country we usually only have selected media in the tv to covers the polítical topics and it's mostly filter by this it's normal, and it's nothing's bad.

 

Like not having gasoline for like 1 month

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4 minutes ago, jamondemarnatural said:

I'm not american, but media it's not more diverse there's, as fox news it's not the only tv channel?

 

I'm comparing as my country we usually only have selected media in the tv to covers the polítical topics and it's mostly filter by this it's normal, and it's nothing's bad.

 

Like not having gasoline for like 1 month

On my basic cable package, in terms of news outlets I have FOX, CNN, NBC, ABC, PBS, C-SPAN, Vice, Bloomburg, and probably at least ten others I can't think of. Out of all those, PBS and C-SPAN are the only ones that aren't terrible, and that's only because they aren't "real" news outlets. And this is not even including local news channels.

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Reminder that Qanon is actually a dangerous Christian DEATHCULT (the exceptionally dangerous variant where Doomsday is literally more important than Jesus Christ) that's literally awaiting the Apocalypse.

 

These motherfuckers are essentially your homebrew Christian Taliban.

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2 hours ago, ChopBlock223 said:

Both Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon wete widely compared to Adolph Hitler (for all their faults and misdeeds, still an absurd notion), and there's people who to this day think that JFK was some sort of heavenly savior we were all cruelly deprived of (when he did the typical crooked and evil shit presidents do up until his murder), an image frequently perpetuated by media. The political climate in the US has been ridiculous for a very long time. 

 

There will always be extremism, but it used to be more around the edges. It was NOT always this bad. We didn't used to have a major political party sympathetic to neo nazis and groups like Q that are convinced their political opponents are drinking the blood of children. It's so absurd that it almost defies belief. We haven't had a president behave like Trump in 150 years, since Andrew Johnson. And we've had some *bad* presidents in the last century, but we're at 19th century levels of absurdity and madness right now.

 

You're also dead wrong about JFK, ChopBlock. He was one of our best presidents. He kept us out of war with Cuba, helped us avoid nuclear holocaust in October 1962, and he was trying to get us out of Vietnam when he was assassinated. The 1960s was a very different era than now, the CIA was basically a rogue entity and even Eisenhower warned about the military–industrial complex in 1961. Read about Lyman Lemnitzer and Operation Northwoods if you don't believe me. JFK was surrounded by vipers and he was doing everything in his power to push the country forward and also away from war. JFK also served in WW2 and put his life on the line to fight the nazis. The only legitimate criticism of JFK is that he was, uh, not a faithful husband. He made some questionable votes as a senator but the actual reasons for those votes is a little more complex, and as president he easily righted any wrongs from earlier.

 

From my view, JFK is the last truly great president the United States has seen. Eisenhower, Truman (for all of his flaws) and FDR was the greatest run of presidents this nation ever had, too, and they're a big reason why the USA was in waayyyyyy better shape in 1963 than it was in 1933.

 

2 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

It both exaggerates the crimes of the person they are comparing to Hitler, and downplays the true, unadulterated evil of Adolf Hitler. 

 

I'm glad that at least some people online are still willing to call Hitler pure evil. I am seeing too many people who are sympathetic to Hitler these days, believing that he was "misunderstood" or that his crimes are "exaggerated" (if anything they are under-exaggerated). The nazi genocide didn't kill 6 million people, it killed 17 million. Nearly 50 million died in Europe during World War II. There's a brilliant 1985 film called COME AND SEE that recently got a Criterion release, and it shows the nazis for what they were. I highly recommend it. The Eastern Front was a bloodbath. Also look at what happened in Wola in Poland, or with the Ustaše in Croatia.

 

However, with that said, real history is messy and complex, and most historical events do NOT break down into pure heroes and villains. Before Game of Thrones went off the rails, that fantasy show was actually pretty good at depicting the way real history unfolds. It is not simply about heroes and villains... even though we often try to turn it into that with hindsight. There are complex things motivating people, and there are good people caught on the wrong side of history and bad people on the right side of it. Trump might be an absurd figure, but we've had bad presidents who weren't so openly villainous as well. There were even "good" nazis, like John Rabe, who saved tens of thousands of lives (if not more) and also eventually turned against nazi ideology.

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2 hours ago, FractalBeast said:

Reminder that Qanon is actually a dangerous Christian DEATHCULT (the exceptionally dangerous variant where Doomsday is literally more important than Jesus Christ) that's literally awaiting the Apocalypse.

 

These motherfuckers are essentially your homebrew Christian Taliban.

Second reminder that all Christians await the apocalypse, some of them just don't talk about it much. It's there in the Bible.

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22 hours ago, Marn said:

To understand Fox you must realize that their whole shtick is to hijack the viewer's amygdala and dopamine receptors with outrageous headlines to get them addicted. For those who are susceptible it's crack in TV form.

 

That's a tactic of all American media, not just Fox.

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55 minutes ago, Mr. Duk said:

However, with that said, real history is messy and complex, and most historical events do NOT break down into pure heroes and villains. Before Game of Thrones went off the rails, that fantasy show was actually pretty good at depicting the way real history unfolds. It is not simply about heroes and villains... even though we often try to turn it into that with hindsight. There are complex things motivating people, and there are good people caught on the wrong side of history and bad people on the right side of it. Trump might be an absurd figure, but we've had bad presidents who weren't so openly villainous as well. There were even "good" nazis, like John Rabe, who saved tens of thousands of lives (if not more) and also eventually turned against nazi ideology.

 

Extremely well put.

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1 hour ago, AinuTheTaken said:

Second reminder that all Christians await the apocalypse, some of them just don't talk about it much. It's there in the Bible.

All people of the Abrahamic religions*

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35 minutes ago, InDOOMnesia said:

All people of the Abrahamic religions*

Wrong. Jews don't believe in an apocalypse and I don't remember about Muslims. 

 

Punishment in hell can be traced back to Jesus, one of the shittiest preachers who ever opened his mouth. Jews don't believe what Jesus said. It gets complicated when you ask precisely what Jews believe. They only really take the first five books of the Hebrew Bible seriously and they believe in a concept called olam ha something or other, the life to come and maybe in a place called sheol. 

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21 minutes ago, waveplay said:

Good to know that dw is full of ridiculous, hateful leftist shills who hate Christians. 

Cheer up, Christian mate! Pay no attention to these people. From time to time, they show their intolerance but in general they're quite chill.

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Welp, I guess it's time to close this topic now, I knew this would happen the moment religion was brought into discussion. Don't do it, it never ends well.

 

It was sooner rather than later ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .

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Nah it did spark some pretty good discussions actually, there's thoughtful material here.

 

But someone rained on the parade, so now it's DOOMed.

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1 hour ago, waveplay said:

Good to know that dw is full of ridiculous, hateful leftist shills who hate Christians. 

Is your idea of hating Christians exposing Christian hate in the media and elsewhere? That's why somebody mentioned the apocalypse, because of your religion making it an issue. By the way I consider it sad your hit and run post got three likes. 

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Fox News, Breitbart and many other dishonest media of the far right were specifically founded with the mission to bend and weave the narrative instead of simply reporting and analyzing it, because then your homeboys often look bad when they're caught doing wrong things. Roger Ailes was proud of this, so it ain't no secret knowledge. It's hilarious to see secret consumers of this drivel bend over backwards to paint everything else with the same brush. "Both sides are baaaahd" -Tucker lovers.

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1 minute ago, dew said:

Fox News, Breitbart and many other dishonest media of the far right were specifically founded with the mission to bend and weave the narrative instead of simply reporting and analyzing it, because then your homeboys often look bad when they're caught doing wrong things.

I would argue the same for the left-wing media.

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Yeah, this whole "the left and right are equivalent" argument is complete bullshit. That's not to say that the right wing parties and media (or even centre-right ones, in more reasonable countries) have a monopoly on corruption, dishonesty, gerrymandering and bad practice, but they're so egregious and blatant about it now precisely because they can blur the margins and point fingers to try and build this false equivalence, which any number of people seem willing to lap up.

 

We should demand better of all public servants and public services (including media), but not use one side's indiscretions to excuse the other's crimes. If you're pushing the "yeah, but they're just as bad!" line, then you've been sucked in by the bullshit and have become part of the problem.

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23 minutes ago, Phobus said:

We should demand better of all public servants and public services (including media), but not use one side's indiscretions to excuse the other's crimes. If you're pushing the "yeah, but they're just as bad!" line, then you've been sucked in by the bullshit and have become part of the problem.

 

110% yes. Biden vs Trump is a classic example. Fights between fans of both sides can ultimately be summarised as an argument as to who is the least awful. And anyone with a heart and half a brain should find that truly depressing.

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53 minutes ago, Phobus said:

Yeah, this whole "the left and right are equivalent" argument is complete bullshit. 

Then maybe stop using the terms right and left, as if there's always a right and a left side to X issue. Instead, use colors, beautiful red and gaudy blue, or just call them by their names, Republicans and Democrats. 

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The media not telling the full stories may be the reason why these conspiracy theories are being trolled around online in the first place (notice I said trolled).

 

wait what is this about again

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10 minutes ago, AinuTheTaken said:

Then maybe stop using the terms right and left, as if there's always a right and a left side to X issue. Instead, use colors, beautiful red and gaudy blue, or just call them by their names, Republicans and Democrats. 

As I'm not American, that would make the descriptors even more unrelated to what's going on. I do agree that splitting it up along arbitrary, not necessarily accurate ideological lines is a dumb approach, but it's the one we have.

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13 minutes ago, AinuTheTaken said:

Then maybe stop using the terms right and left, as if there's always a right and a left side to X issue. Instead, use colors, beautiful red and gaudy blue, or just call them by their names, Republicans and Democrats. 

 

there is no left in the main american political parties. Just right and righter. (at least by european measure and that's where the division left/right comes from)

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41 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

 

110% yes. Biden vs Trump is a classic example. Fights between fans of both sides can ultimately be summarised as an argument as to who is the least awful. And anyone with a heart and half a brain should find that truly depressing.

 

What's truly depressing to me is the number of people who take this statement - that Biden and Trump are both awful people, similar in degree and similar in nature - at face value, who repeat it unexamined as though it's self-evident fact, and don't stop to consider that "Biden is just as awful as Trump" is an argument that originates in the Republican sphere of thought as a talking point that they're desperately pushing to depress voters and voter turnout now that their attempts to pretend that Trump isn't awful have stopped carrying water with anyone who isn't deep in the card-carrying Republican if-it's-got-an-R-in-front-of-its-name-I'll-vote-for-it tribal base.

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2 minutes ago, kalaeth said:

there is no left in the main american political parties. Just right and righter. (at least by european measure and that's where the division left/right comes from)

Not sure where you're going with that. Europe is globalist in many respects, but not all of them, so their measure may or may not be useful. Just consider how most of Europe supported the war in Afghanistan and did nothing in reaction to the war in Iraq except wag their fingers a lot. I don't believe Europe has much independence from America right now.

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Just now, AinuTheTaken said:

Not sure where you're going with that. Europe is globalist in many respects, but not all of them, so their measure may or may not be useful. Just consider how most of Europe supported the war in Afghanistan and did nothing in reaction to the war in Iraq except wag their fingers a lot. I don't believe Europe has much independence from America right now.

 

I mean that the "dangerous communist" Bernie Sanders would be considered at most center-left in most Europe in regards to worker rights, healthcare, etc. 

You gave two examples and even in both of those there were countries that didn't go for it (remember when french fries were changed to freedom fries? Despite being Belgian and having nothing to do with France?). Europe is not one single country, there's several of them and they don't agree with a lot of things, but there isn't a country here that would consider the democrats "left". 

(although that has been getting worse here as well, far-right has been climbing in the polls and succeeding in shifting the center to the right)

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2 minutes ago, kalaeth said:

Europe is not one single country, there's several of them and they don't agree with a lot of things, but there isn't a country here that would consider the democrats "left". 

(although that has been getting worse here as well, far-right has been climbing in the polls and succeeding in shifting the center to the right)

Sorry but you seem to be stoking the flames of paranoia to my mind since you continue to use these problematic terms right and left.

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