Meanwhile, at the Twitt House. …
“Forgive me, Your Extreme Loathsomeness, but there’s a moving van out front, Vader has signed on with Cotton 2024, and the Emperor isn’t returning our calls.”
Tags: 2020 presidential election, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Out
Mad Blog Media 
November 8, 2020 at 6:31 am |
We are worried what rump will do until Biden takes over. We’re still worried Biden will not do what’s needed to fix all the things screwed up. Media is one of the first things to fix. If we still have Faux Snooze and buddies lying without repercussion, we are in the same mess. Clinton’s 1994 Communications Act along with no more fairness doctrine makes media like what Goebbel’s had. You can easily convince half the country white is black with that. We will continue to get run over at Zebra crossings until that’s fixed.
November 8, 2020 at 6:52 am |
We don’t know who we are, and we don’t have time to think about it.
“Are we the Empire or the Rebellion? Good question, but shit, man, I got to get to work. The wife got laid off again, Mom’s got The Bug®, and Junior … fuck, don’t talk to me about Junior. Three years of college and he — pardon me, “they” — is living in our basement, “working” on a “graphic novel.” It smells like weed and feet and I can’t bear to go down there to shoot a little pool anymore.
“Anyway, with two jobs and a little Uber on the side, who has the time? Gotta run! See ya. …”
And now, here’s Bill McKibben with a little attaboy for the folks who made this one, big, first step possible.
November 8, 2020 at 8:03 am |
The only thing I can think of that would be worse than FAUX News would be Federal censorship by whatever name you call it. Plus, it would probably lose on First Amendment grounds. The main issue is the Dumbsters who buy that shit. If its not on FAUX, it will be on the Internet or in underground publication. Propaganda works because its what people want to hear. Instead of Living in the Material World, its Living in the Insulated Bubble. Some on our side do that too, sadly.
I think the best thing for patching up the country is having elected a reasonable person like Joe Biden who will prove, hopefully, that this election will not result in that dreaded KOMMUNISM (at least until Kamala “Rosa Luxemburg” Harris takes over), but just a return to the normal give, take, stalemate, and grumbling of politics. Maybe, maybe not. But Joe was a senator for a long time and I hope he has remembered his horse trading and sausage making talents. Let’s see how the Senate shakes out and even if it is narrowly GOP, there are worse things than that.
Its over, though. End of an Error.
November 8, 2020 at 8:34 am |
Billy Hearst owned more than one, and he made plenty mischief with ’em. When I was starting out, even hick towns like Bibleburg had two newspapers, one “conservative,” the other “liberal.” There were national news services — UPI, AP, NYT, and others — but no truly national newspaper. No Pravda, as in the Soviet Union.
Well, now we have our Pravda. It’s electronic and ubiquitous, and comes with its own Two Minutes Hate (which is now on the hour, every hour, rather than only once per diem). In B-burg you couldn’t walk into a governmental office without it blaring from the teevees in the waiting areas.
Nothing else in the media market has come close. There is no lefty equivalent. What Fox sells, people buy (check the numbers in this NYT story). Ice-cold horseshit sold as delicious ice cream; commentary dressed up as journalism, yapping being a good deal cheaper than newsgathering. The solution is teaching the customers to know the difference. I don’t know how we get there without starting way, way, back, in the kindergartens and elementary schools.
The left is pushing GMO-free, sustainably raised, fair-trade, union-picked, all-organic broccoli; good for you, but a tough sell. It can be done. But we have to try harder. Maybe a little melted cheese?
November 8, 2020 at 8:59 am |
Interesting bits here.
https://www.journalism.org/2016/07/07/the-modern-news-consumer/
November 8, 2020 at 9:00 am |
And social media.
https://www.journalism.org/2020/07/30/americans-who-mainly-get-their-news-on-social-media-are-less-engaged-less-knowledgeable/
November 8, 2020 at 9:09 am |
Social media are just the Fox delivery system for people who claim they don’t watch Fox. A vector for transmitting viral insanity. The equivalent of neighbors arguing over the fence without the risk of having one’s teefers pounded out the arsehole after the “debate” gets too personal.
“Snowflake!”
“Fascist!”
“Faggot!”
“Nazi!”
(Hilarity ensues, with the sound of sirens in the distance.)
I’m less worried about the retailer than the wholesaler. Stupidity needs a source. I just don’t know how we cork that particular bottle.
November 8, 2020 at 10:03 am |
I rarely take anything on social media seriously. It mainly exists for my comic relief. There are a few serious folks I follow on Twitter, both on the L and R. But its a small voice lost in an amphitheater of noise. Most of what gets put up on social media is the virtual equivalent of a stale beer fart.
November 8, 2020 at 10:01 am |
Propaganda multipliers. They, people and machine networks, makes propaganda much stronger and effective. Any HUMINT specialist will tell you that. Putin is one of the best specialists at it. And he knows how to use it. And he did. On us. And he is laughing his ass off. As far as he is concerned nothing has changed. Four more years of partisan gridlock. Just what he wanted. He will continue to use what he knows about trump, to blackmail him. Don’t expect the trump Twitter universe to collapse. The dumpster cult will live on.
November 8, 2020 at 10:17 am |
True enough. I had never even heard of Rush Limbaugh when I was in grad school but my first job at the U of Hawaii had me in the machine shop a lot my first year making equipment for the clean lab. It was fun, I Iearned to use milling machines and other cool stuff, and the staff was nice, but Tom was a real Limbaugh fan. The tirades on the radio got tiresome, though. Now its a whole network of positively reinforcing outlets on TV, radio, and the Innertubes. I guess the riot where they pulled down the Obelisk in Santa Fe was organized over Facebook Left according to the local fish wrappers.
As you say, and I concur, propaganda multipliers work. We did it ourselves during the Cold War and instigated some revolutions and coups d’etats (or however you spell the plural). I guess what goes around comes around.
Apparently about two hundred fifty Angry Trump Supporters (speaking of redundancy) showed up to protest at the Roundhouse yesterday, many carrying their smokepoles. It was in today’s paper. Sigh. I imagine that will result in several bills being introduced and then these assholes can complain about that too, although they bring it on themselves.
November 8, 2020 at 8:58 am |
The world can’t afford 4 years of slow incremental change that the new administration and congress will provide. It’s simply too slow. There are no large systemic changes coming. If the gang in the beltway get the novel corona virus under control, no community spread, I will be happy. Then they can fuck around, point fingers, and kick those cans down the road until we have a catastrophic failure in a essential system. We barely managed to avoid one in our medical system.
November 8, 2020 at 9:15 am |
Yeah, we’re looking at another janitorial job here, same as in 2008, only worser. By the time the pub gets cleaned up, all the broken glass replaced and the burglar alarm rewired, it’ll be time for the next punch-up. A bar fight in a burning building.
We haven’t quite dodged that medical crisis yet here in New Mexico. The numbers are all wrong and we’re running out of hospital beds.
November 8, 2020 at 9:26 am |
We are not out of the woods with Covid by any means and that might break the medical system yet.
If I had my druthers, I would want two things.
One, some form of Medicare for All, whether it be an expanded public health system or Something Else(tm) in the hopes that it cuts down on people being bankrupted by medical costs and hopefully, goaded into improving their health profiles. But you know what Larry’s wife used to say.
The other would be choke down reality and institute a gradually progressive carbon tax. We don’t know the CO2 equilibrium or transient climate sensitivity factors better than a factor of three and last time I read up on it that translated into at least an order of magnitude difference in social costs and what a C tax should be, which is one logical reason to argue about it (there are plenty of illogical reasons). But start somewhere and plow the money into R and D of sustainable energy and carbon capture. A side effect might be to lessen the public’s desire for the newest and irrrelevant shiny object made with coal power and shipped halfway across the world to be delivered to your door by a brown box truck. Also might help change diets since some of our worst dietary offenders also have a high carbon footprint.
But like Pat said, none of this is likely to happen even if I think both are moderate ideas. More likely, I’ll retire to Bedlam instead.
November 8, 2020 at 8:31 am |
#StupidPOTUS I have not used the t word in 3.5 years. I don’t like to swear in front of kids. #StupidPOTUS
November 8, 2020 at 8:57 am |
More like #POOTUS, an ambulatory wet fart. The aroma will be with us for a while yet.
November 8, 2020 at 11:53 am |
Also, my term for Shitler: POSPOTUS .
November 11, 2020 at 5:14 am |
Trump will burn Rome.