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Murdoch

Fox News Is Staffed By Gibbering Lunatics

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Ultimately whoever is defending the status quo the most strongly has to lie more. The status quo can never be perfect, so defending it will always require at least some amount of dishonesty. 

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Basically, you'll find gibbering lunatics on both sides of the spectrum.

 

The media, on the whole, definitely has a leftist bent (but far more mildly to the left than the conservative media would put it), but the fact it was that is what let these conservative outlets form in the first place. When it seems like nobody has your voice, and you have money and power, you create an outlet to espouse that. The internet has democratized that now; hence the rise of stuff like QAnon. Now all you need is a Facebook or a Twitter, and enough true believers.

 

That said, the media in this country has generally always had wavering degrees of political influence. Go back about 125 years and we're smack dab in the middle of the yellow journalism era. Go back 50 years before then and basically newspaper editors and chiefs simply didn't publish stories that didn't advance their prerogative.

 

We are inching our way towards being better, but simply put, one side has decided that the other side is the enemy and deserve to be shut down. Which side is the one that decided? Ask your friends. Expect different answers.

 

Simply put, the problem isn't really bias. That's always going to be there; we're human. The problem is that nobody teaches people critical thinking or judging for yourself anymore. Without that, you're susceptible to peer pressure, and if you're weak-willed, you will go along with the crowd - whether that's "This face mask infringes my rights" or "Defund the police."

 

And it's just fucking sad no matter how you put it. It's gonna take a generation, maybe even two, to clean this shit all up.

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9 hours ago, Mr. Duk said:

 

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.

The Klu Klux Klan had wide support by the Democratic party at their height, and they were far worse than a bunch of QAnon idiots.

 

9 hours ago, Mr. Duk said:

 

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.

Kennedy also approved of Operation Ranch Hand, signing off on the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam.

 

As for who kept the US out of Nuclear war, I'd say that rests on Vasily Arkhipov for refusing to authorize employing Nuclear torpedoes at that incident, while his fellow officers insisted on their use:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov_(vice_admiral)

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48 minutes ago, AinuTheTaken said:

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.

How else are we going to define it then? In European terms (atleast in Dutch terms), Left, Right, Middle have had far less impact than how Americans and Media define it. Right and Left have more nuanced and subtle definitions all way around.

 

And Kalaeth has a point there - The US Democrats ''Left'' would be analogus to the Dutch ''right'' here for a lot of things.

 

Besides, i thought we weren't doing poltical threads on DW.

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12 hours ago, Mr. Duk said:

 

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.

 

Nazism is pure evil, but I don't see Hitler as the progenitor of it. I hate those "What if we killed Hitler as a child" dilemmas because it thouroughly ignores the role of a sick society in the formation of psychopaths. He was a bumbling idiot who deserved to get cured of his ideas with crowbars, but the pure evil that nazism comes with the mass communication, industrialism and amorality, and of course, an undefined evil which is both deadly and convenient, paving the way for a neverending emergency state. All markers which seem strangely close to the way our society is wired ("certified news", "realpolitik", "terrorism", "War on *idea*"), which is probably why Nazism isn't studied or denounced seriously for his totalitarian aspects that lead to the death of dozens of millions. Instead we get an acausal condemnation of those deaths, since the Western world doesn't want to get reformed into what it pretends to be.

I saw Come and See once years ago. I don't think I'm going to see twice. The baby scene still hurts me to this day.

 

Before this thread gets out of hand and locked, I wanted to make this reaction a pretext to dump my favorite Huxley excerpt:

XRAX2Yk.png

There is no good cause to lose your individuality into.

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6 hours ago, waveplay said:

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

Yeah, its not like they haven't done anything that warrants that kind of hate, right?

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5 minutes ago, DSC said:

Yeah, its not like they haven't done anything that warrants that kind of hate, right?

 

I agree in theory and have little respect for organized religion but replying to the tone makes you what you fight and allow the whiny persecution rhetoric to thrive.

I know it can be seen as wordplay but I think it's important. No haughtiness intended.

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1 minute ago, Sunnyfruit said:

 

I agree in theory and have little respect for organized religion but replying to the tone makes you what you fight and allow the whiny persecution rhetoric to thrive.

I know it can be seen as wordplay but I think it's important. No haughtiness intended.

I just replied with a slight sarcastic tone, didn't really want to sound like an asshole...

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1 minute ago, DSC said:

I just replied with a slight sarcastic tone, didn't really want to sound like an asshole...

 

I'm sure of it. Just wanted to chime in before someone else pretends you did :)

But maybe it was superfluous. This is the most mature forum I've visited in 20 years and yet it's about ripping and tearing.

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Christian here. I enjoy it when people confuse denominations and get angry at me for things I never did and positions I don't hold. A+ entertainment. 

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11 minutes ago, Mr. Freeze said:

Christian here. I enjoy it when people confuse denominations and get angry at me for things I never did and positions I don't hold. A+ entertainment. 

"So you're an orthodox, eh? Could bet all my money you would have supported those bloodthirsty crusaders..."

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Whenever I see Americans claiming Democrats are "left", I'm reminded of that test scientists did, showing that American highschool students are on average about as smart as Finnish gradeschool students.

 

Checks out, lol.

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Most of the people posting here seem very, very confident in their views. I just have to ask... where is everyone actually getting the bulk of their information, these days? I ask because I'm genuinely finding it difficult to rely on information lately when it's being hurled from every conceivable direction, and running into anyone with a lot of conviction always makes me wonder what they're finding (that I'm not). Are the majority of these views coming from a place of credence, or genuine knowledge? I'm not trying to start shit, and I have no underlying motive here. It's an earnest question.

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I follow The Wall Street Journal and Mother Jones, along with a Democrat subreddit for up-to-the-second news and Twitter happenings. 

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There's no good source of news.

 

Social networks act as echo chambers, isolating people into little bubbles thanks to intellectual laziness. What matters for the network is getting clicks; this is done through clickbaity titles that agree with the user's confirmation bias. And this leads to progressive radicalization as efficient clickbait needs to go progressively further and further away into insanity.

 

This is how absurd conspiracy theories have evolved from "haha, look at the weirdoes!" in the 90s when shows like the X-Files made them fun, to something that is actively derailing society now.

 

And traditional medias cannot compete with the instantaneity and gratification that social network news bring. So they race to the bottom. Can't afford to have reporters, just get some unpaid intern to trawl through Twitter and Instagram feeds to get coverage from whatever event. Try to get views by broadcasting outrageous opinion pieces, since this is what sells.

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31 minutes ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

Most of the people posting here seem very, very confident in their views. I just have to ask... where is everyone actually getting the bulk of their information, these days? I ask because I'm genuinely finding it difficult to rely on information lately when it's being hurled from every conceivable direction, and running into anyone with a lot of conviction always makes me wonder what they're finding (that I'm not). Are the majority of these views coming from a place of credence, or genuine knowledge? I'm not trying to start shit, and I have no underlying motive here. It's an earnest question.

Depends on what you mean by news. Just a tracking of the events of the day? Literally what's happened? Then there's plenty of fairly reputable news outlets that will give a decent account of world events.

More nuanced indepth stuff? Well that's a bit more tricky. Try to find some good investigative journalists. And then apply critical thinking to the information being presented. What are the sources? Are there any monied interests buried behind the scenes (hello Heritage Foundation, fancy seeing you everywhere). I can point you in the direction of a couple if you want. Being well informed takes effort and time, and even after you've been presented with reams of info, it's usually a good idea to maintain a degree of skepticism about everything. Pays to keep in the back of your mind that you might be shown to wrong on a topic later on, which there is nothing wrong with.

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There's a lot of misinformation being posted here, so if you're a random person reading through this, I would be careful taking any of it too seriously. I was going to write a big long post, but there's really no point.

 

A few bullet points...

 

1) I'd avoid posting wikipedia articles as "proof" of your points. That's not to say wikipedia is all lies. In fact, it's often a good starting point if you're interested in something, but it's still wikipedia.

 

2) The major parties in America flipped. The Republicans of old are the Democrats of today and vice versa. The "radical Republicans" of the 1850s/60s would be the "Bernie Bros" of today. The Democratic Party was essentially founded by Andrew Jackson, who chose the jackass as its symbol as a joke in 1828. Remember: Donald Trump put up Andrew Jackson's portrait in the Oval Office at the suggestion of Steve Bannon. The parties started to switch sides with Teddy Roosevelt, who left the Republican Party and formed the Progressive "Bull Moose" Party and ran for office again in 1912 (he came in second place despite being a "third" party). The switching sides continued with FDR, and ended once LBJ helped push through the Civil and Voting Rights Act of the mid-1960s. The South didn't really change their views, but they did change parties. George Wallace was probably the last of the "old school" Democrats. Today someone like him would be considered alt right. That's not to say the switch was automatic. Woodrow Wilson was a huuugggeeeeee KKK-supporting racist, but he would be considered progressive by other metrics. Calvin Coolidge was very conservative, but he also spoke very eloquently about race and his views hold up pretty well by modern standards. By the end of the 1960s, though, the flipping of the party ideologies was pretty much complete.

 

3) Hitler was not the creator of nazi ideology, and in fact eugenics had a big hold in a lot of circles around that time (Teddy Roosevelt was a firm believer). However, Hitler was the fire that ignited from the spark, and it's very possible that without him we could have put an end to eugenics politics without a massive war. We cannot underestimate how much damage Hitler *himself* did, even if the tinder already existed in the hatreds and prejudices of people of the time. Hitler is perhaps the single most destructive person who ever existed in human history, partly because the nazis had tools of destruction and weapons of war that did not exist for earlier tyrants to use on people. (Side note: the nazis created the first ballistic missiles, and then a lot of those scientists helped America reach the moon a few decades later. It's called Operation Paperclip, if you're interested in learning more. I feel like I need a Starship Troopers style interlude right now.)

 

4) A lot of documents about JFK and that era have been unsealed in the last 20-25 years. They paint a very clear picture of what was happening behind the scenes, with the CIA basically making major foreign policy decisions by itself and acting as a rogue entity. Do not put the blood of their actions on the hands of JFK without real evidence. JFK was doing a lot behind the scenes to try and stop this warmongering, and during the Cuban Missile Crisis he had multiple people pushing him to make a first strike with nuclear warheads. In my opinion, JFK was one of our greatest presidents, and he's in fact quite underrated. He was only president for about 3 years and yet he did so much for this nation, from the Peace Corps to NASA. *No* president is perfect, of course... not Washington, Lincoln or FDR.

 

5) I would suggest that you try to take in a variety of news sources. NEVER rely on just one thing. I find that mainstream papers like the New York Times and Washington Post -- for ALL of their flaws -- are still better than the major networks (CNN, MSNBC, FOX News etc.) However, there are so many sources you should use, such as:

 

https://foreignpolicy.com/

 

https://theintercept.com/

 

https://www.axios.com/

 

https://thehill.com/

 

https://reason.com/

 

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/

 

https://www.democracynow.org/

 

https://www.currentaffairs.org/

 

https://www.americamagazine.org/

 

https://www.bbc.com/

 

https://www.npr.org/

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/

 

And many, many more. @RonnieJamesDiner

 

Last but not least...

 

6) Watch out for misinformation. It's so easy for people to just post their opinions as "facts". Also do your own research. There aren't just "two" sides, there are hundreds of sides and hundreds of different opinions and political beliefs. Don't be fooled into thinking it's either A or B and there are no other opinions or nuances to people's POV. Capitalism comes in many different flavors, as well, so don't be fooled by people yelling "COMMUNIST!!!" at people who support capitalism but a different form of it. If you like chocolate ice cream but not vanilla, that doesn't mean you hate ice cream.

 

EDIT: I guess this was a "big long post" anyway.

Edited by Mr. Duk

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7 hours ago, Sunnyfruit said:

I hate those "What if we killed Hitler as a child" dilemmas because it thouroughly ignores the role of a sick society in the formation of psychopaths.

 

With all of my above post said, I think this is a good take from @Sunnyfruit...

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Nah, it actually takes an interesting turn once more after a mini-drama episode.

 

Let's make use of it while it still lasts. Considering the subject at hand, it's a matter of time before a flame war begins.

 

4 hours ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

I just have to ask... where is everyone actually getting the bulk of their information, these days?

 

As many as possible, I think that's pretty much the only answer to give.

 

Multiple, with verified sources, and especially different from one's own views, to have something to contrast and compare after having the facts. If you seek only material you already agree with you'll never expand your knowledge and understanding.

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5 hours ago, fraggle said:

The Christian persecution complex is alive and well

 

8 hours ago, DSC said:

Yeah, its not like they haven't done anything that warrants that kind of hate, right?

 

3 hours apart. Could probably save a bit of hosting money by moving the forums to Reddit, it's already there in spirit.

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6 hours ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

Most of the people posting here seem very, very confident in their views. I just have to ask... where is everyone actually getting the bulk of their information, these days? I ask because I'm genuinely finding it difficult to rely on information lately when it's being hurled from every conceivable direction, and running into anyone with a lot of conviction always makes me wonder what they're finding (that I'm not). Are the majority of these views coming from a place of credence, or genuine knowledge? I'm not trying to start shit, and I have no underlying motive here. It's an earnest question.

@Mr. Duk's response was pretty damn good (though fairly US-centric for me as an European). Here's an extra challenge: go to RCP and watch the fireworks. RCP presents itself as a news aggregator with a slight right-wing bias. That bias is actually quite enormous when you read their original editorials. With this knowledge, you can start to decypher the game: they try their best to pair up articles on the same issue from a left and right perspective, so you'll see CNN vs. Fox, or the Daily Beast vs. the American Spectator, or the Vox vs. Breitbart.

 

I must repeat: overall, the entire RCP operation leans right heavily and tries to shift the Overton window with ridiculous "match-ups", but it's still an interesting spectacle to watch. I often click the most ridiculous headlines, because holy crap, do they really mean it that Hunter Biden is a pedophile lizard alien cuck crack-addict from Planet X? It seems so weird, yet RCP is considered as solid for polling aggregation as Nate Silver's project548. As a heavily leftist person, I use it to "know my enemy", but mostly I just laugh.

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4 hours ago, dew said:

@Mr. Duk's response was pretty damn good (though fairly US-centric for me as an European).

 

A fair criticism. Actually, I'd be curious to know how many nationalities visit Doomworld. I'd guess it's probably a pretty large amount. I know many mappers/modders are Australian, Swedish or Brazilian, and I'm guessing this site gets traffic from a ton of people from all over the world.

 

(I was born in Yugoslavia, but raised in the US.)

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I think old-school media is in a steady decline, and people are moving to more independent online news sources or even just getting it from YouTube or something. Be patient, guys; it is a trainwreck, it's just in slow motion! Society is slow, the President up there in the US is slow, so we should be as well! I promise we'll still watch the unraveling of the very fabric of us humans as a global capitalist society unfold.

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9 hours ago, Gustavo6046 said:

or even just getting it from YouTube or something

 

And that's a **major** part of the problem. Waaayyyyy too many people are out there spouting their opinions like they're facts. People get into these bubbles and they refuse to leave. "Mainstream" news has its problems (think about the NYT shilling for the Iraq invasion in 2002-03) but YouTube news is far, far worse. You should never just take in one source of information, regardless of where it comes from or how much you like it.

 

If we abandon facts and evidence, we end up an ignorant and broken society. There are good and bad ways to debate an issue. Shouting and yelling about conspiracy theories is the bad way.

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42 minutes ago, Mr. Duk said:

 "Mainstream" news has its problems (think about the NYT shilling for the Iraq invasion in 2002-03) but YouTube news is far, far worse. You should never just take in one source of information, regardless of where it comes from or how much you like it.

 

At least YouTube started regulating... I'm sorry, infriging-the-freedom-of-speech of the most egregious e-newscasters here. The lastest Alex Jones news are so crazy I don't even dare to post a screenshot here, even ironically. I hope this reckless unconstitutional censorship continues as I'm pretty sure we will have achieved World Peace when the last channels standing will be only Doom and Fortnite-related.

As a European, I also wanted to say that it's not better here, no matter how the media loves to depict the regressive US against progressive Yurop. The local Twitter trends are an insult to democracy and the rule of law.

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