So...Trump had the brilliant (sarcasm) idea of publishing the crimes committing by immigrants to inflame anti immigrant sentiment in the United States. This is....wow. I can't believe we're actually having this discussion. I hate to play the Nazi card since it's so overplayed with Trump, but this idea really is reminiscent of the Nazis publishing crimes of the Jews, as others have pointed out.
But don't worry, I don't plan on just calling this idea fascist and leaving it at that. I want to dissect why this is a stupid idea. So, say we publish a list of crimes committed by illegals every week. There are 11 million or so illegal immigrants in the US right now. Say 1% of these guys commit crimes over the course of a year, that's 110,000. That means if there were a weekly newsletter detailing their crimes, each news letter would contain a list of 2115 crimes a week. That seems like a lot of crime, and taking it in all at once, the reader of these newsletters who are already skeptical of illegal immigrants will confirm their bias that illegal immigrants are horrible people who should be deported. They'll talk about how X person murdered so many people, or how Y person broke into their house. They would point to the victims of these crimes and talk about how if we had decent immigration policy we wouldn't have had all these problems. The message of the newsletter will paint illegal immigrants, and arguably immigrants in general in a bad light, and stoke xenophobia in the masses.
But here's the problem with that. If 1% of illegal immigrants committed crime in the United States, that's really not that bad. Translated to crime rates, it would be 1,000 people per 100,000 people. Meanwhile the most recent statistics put violent crime at 373/100k people, and property crime at 2487/100k people. Combined, that means that a little less than 3% of people commit crimes or so. Which would make immigrants in this hypothetical scenario more peaceful than your average American.
Before going into what the actual illegal immigrant crime rate is, I'm going to point out that I'm trying to demonstrate just how irrational it is to post a newsletter full of names and the crimes they committed. It paints this horrible picture of immigrants that just is not necessarily true when looked at statistically. It's very misleading and plays on peoples' emotions. For all we know, sure, illegal immigrants might commit more crime, but they might also commit less, or they might commit the same amount, and if they're not committing significantly more then it's kind of stupid to blame a whole group over crimes when the overwhelming majority of people who are illegal immigrants are peaceful and harming no one. Even worse, to actually get into the real rates, they actually do commit less than native born residents. Oh crap.
This is the faulty logic of xenophobia, so many of their arguments just aren't based on statistics. They base their views on emotions and anecdotes, often with incomplete information, and this can present a misleading picture. It only takes one nut like the San Bernardino shooter to argue that migrants from Muslim countries are bad. That one guy will put an image in peoples' heads and get them scared, and it doesn't matter if there are tens of thousands of good examples for every bad one, people will focus on the bad one and base their entire argument on that. Same with welfare. I already did an article on that. I always hear how illegals are sucking up our welfare, but once again, such an argument is not necessarily based on data. These people don't care about data, or statistics, or facts. They're making their decisions based on fear and emotion. And that's exactly what this proposed newsletter would accomplish too. It would stoke peoples' fears of immigrants, ignoring the fact that the overwhelming majority of them are law abiding, and even though they actually commit fewer crimes than people born in the US.
That said, this is a stupid, dangerous, harmful idea that will fan the flames of xenophobia unnecessarily. Not only is this idea that illegal immigrants commit these crimes based on anecdotes and emotions, but it does not paint a good picture of what's going on with crime within the illegal immigrant population statistically. All the person will see is a list of crimes and the kneejerk reaction to that will be "how horrible, we must be something". In reality, illegal immigrants seem to commit less crime than native born residents, and policies implemented to publish their crimes will create a false image of the problems with illegal immigrant crime in our country. This is some scary stuff.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Thursday, January 26, 2017
The democrats have gone off the deep end
So, I've been criticizing the democrats for a while. I go after them more than Trump all things considered. But it's necessary being a leftist who is pretty independent in my thinking and whose views are separate from the democrats.
I've been echoing a lot of the sentiments I'm going to discuss here for a long time, but never really in this exact way. Quite frankly, the way a lot of people who follow the democrats and the mainstream media closely are starting to scare me, with Trump taking office. They're scaring me just as much as Trump all things considered, because this is what the opposition to Trump is shaping up to be.
The democrats are whipping people up into a frenzy over Trump. I mean, some of them are really going all out. They're more polarized than I've ever seen, more group thinky than I've seen, and many of them are LITERALLY defending violence. I try to engage in dialogue with some of these people and am called a so called "nazi sympathizer" simply for disagreeing with them or being part of their little hive mind of a cult. They're so buying into this idea that Trump is the apocalypse, that Trump is like Hitler, that Trump is an existential threat to them, that they're behaving more and more radically.
One way in which they do this is political correctness and that whole BS. Once again, let me restate my views, so we are clear. I'm not necessarily opposed to the goals of political correctness. Heck, I'm quite supportive of treating people with respect and like human beings, but the way people are using it is a way to control people. If you aren't giving these particular liberals and their pet causes all of the attention they are, or expressing the proper amount of outrage, or posting as many tweets and facebook statuses about how evil Trump and the alt right are, you're with them or something, apparently. If you think it's bad to hit a nazi because you believe society should act civilly in its debates, you're in league with them. If you're not with them, 100%, you are with the enemy. And they treat you as such. This is NUTS. Look, I shouldn't have to perpetually be in a state of outrage and tweet incessantly about how Joe NeoNazi thinks black people are bad. I really shouldn't. Just like I don't constantly talk about how water is wet. I work with that assumption implicitly, and quite frankly, it's insulting for people to insinuate I support them just because I don't make meaningless symbolic acts of opposition against them. Same with hitting nazis. I don't advocate for that because I'm generally against violence. I oppose the means of revolutionary socialists who want riots to seize the means of production, and I'm against people who think it's okay to hit people for having differing views, no matter how horrible they are. But hey, screw saying this right? Apparently it makes me privileged (yes, actually been called that), apparently it makes me a Nazi sympathizer (been called that too).
This is what pisses me off about the PC movement. It's well meaning, I support the same goals, but this kind of hive mind is quite frankly, dangerous. These people have given up their critical faculties to this mess of emotion, passion, and constant outrage. They're so against Trump, and so against the alt right, and so carried away by passions, that they're attacking people who would otherwise agree with them for not being extreme enough. Geez, and they say we "Bernie Bros" are bad. Look, I just got done bashing Trump and saying everything he's done so far outside of killing the TPP is bad. Okay? That's a pretty strong statement there. I don't approve of Trump or the alt right, or the republicans, I dislike them just as much as the rest of the left does. The difference? I still have my wits about me. I'm not so passionately out of control I start advocating for violence to achieve my goals and say anyone who doesn't think exactly like I do, even if they agree with me 90% of the time, are the bad guys.
The worst thing about this is I get the impression that this is what the democratic establishment wants. Keep in mind guys, the republicans aren't the only problem. The democratic establishment is too. And I get the impression they're pulling the strings here. They don't want people to think critically, they don't want people to have their own agendas, they want people to accept theirs. So what they do is whip everyone up into a frenzy, act like Trump is an existential threat, and get people so riled up in their passions they freaking forget that the democrats are a problem too. Which is what this is really about. The democrats don't want people to focus on them. They don't want people to focus on the bad crap they do. They don't want people to focus on the loss and demand better of them. They just want people to attack Trump, without really having an alternative people can get behind. They're counting on people to be so pissed and outraged against Trump they forget all about the divisions within the party. It's the same crap Clinton tried in the election all over again.
And the worst part is this is costing the left supporters as well and leaving people pissed off and disillusioned with them. Some people, like me, become resentful of both sides. Others (and I've actually seen people do this) get so fed up with the perpetual manufactured outrage and with us or against us mentality that they go on a crusade against these people and join the alt right themselves.
Look, I'm not saying we shouldn't oppose Trump or the alt right. I just condemned Trump's presidency literally 20 minutes ago. I can't stand Trump. He's shaping up to be the worst president in modern American history (I can't say the worst ever, as we had some really bad ones in the 1800s, but likely the worst in our lifetimes). But we need to act peacefully, and we need to act rationally. We need to keep a clear sight on our goals, and not get whipped up by manufactured outrage and the corresponding passions. The democrats are morphing into this angry mob of pure hate and outrage right now, and it's scaring the crap out of me. This outrage has no good end. And when you come down from this high, you will regret how you're acting. This is the same kind of anger and outrage that led to the formation of the tea party and how awful the modern GOP is. It's the same kind of outrage that made the public so receptive to invading Iraq without evidence. This level of anger and outrage is also responsible for many violent revolutions that ended very badly, with the people just as bad off as, if not worse off than they were before.
That being said, people need to calm the fudge down, take a chill pill, and look at this situation rationally. We need an opposition of Trump that's worth fighting for. But the democrats suffering from what some call "Trump derangement syndrome" isn't it. As Caitlin Johnstone said (read the above article I posted), until the democrats cobble together an actual alternative to Trump, they're not really a "resistance", they're just complaining. We need to stand for something different, something better, and we need to push for it thoughtfully, rationally, and peacefully. As I said in my last article, I believe we are witnessing the self destruction of the GOP. But unless we can put forward some solid progressive goals, what comes next won't be much better. Even if rational, we'll go back to the same old oligarchic democratic party...after all, they're the ones getting you so pumped up to begin with. They're trying to keep politics partisan and keep you as focused on "the other" as possible. We need change, not more of the same. Please, look at the big picture. Think this though. Don't act out of radical passion. I feel like the left is going to the "dark side" so to speak when it needs to be the voice of the light, the voice of reason.
I've been echoing a lot of the sentiments I'm going to discuss here for a long time, but never really in this exact way. Quite frankly, the way a lot of people who follow the democrats and the mainstream media closely are starting to scare me, with Trump taking office. They're scaring me just as much as Trump all things considered, because this is what the opposition to Trump is shaping up to be.
The democrats are whipping people up into a frenzy over Trump. I mean, some of them are really going all out. They're more polarized than I've ever seen, more group thinky than I've seen, and many of them are LITERALLY defending violence. I try to engage in dialogue with some of these people and am called a so called "nazi sympathizer" simply for disagreeing with them or being part of their little hive mind of a cult. They're so buying into this idea that Trump is the apocalypse, that Trump is like Hitler, that Trump is an existential threat to them, that they're behaving more and more radically.
One way in which they do this is political correctness and that whole BS. Once again, let me restate my views, so we are clear. I'm not necessarily opposed to the goals of political correctness. Heck, I'm quite supportive of treating people with respect and like human beings, but the way people are using it is a way to control people. If you aren't giving these particular liberals and their pet causes all of the attention they are, or expressing the proper amount of outrage, or posting as many tweets and facebook statuses about how evil Trump and the alt right are, you're with them or something, apparently. If you think it's bad to hit a nazi because you believe society should act civilly in its debates, you're in league with them. If you're not with them, 100%, you are with the enemy. And they treat you as such. This is NUTS. Look, I shouldn't have to perpetually be in a state of outrage and tweet incessantly about how Joe NeoNazi thinks black people are bad. I really shouldn't. Just like I don't constantly talk about how water is wet. I work with that assumption implicitly, and quite frankly, it's insulting for people to insinuate I support them just because I don't make meaningless symbolic acts of opposition against them. Same with hitting nazis. I don't advocate for that because I'm generally against violence. I oppose the means of revolutionary socialists who want riots to seize the means of production, and I'm against people who think it's okay to hit people for having differing views, no matter how horrible they are. But hey, screw saying this right? Apparently it makes me privileged (yes, actually been called that), apparently it makes me a Nazi sympathizer (been called that too).
This is what pisses me off about the PC movement. It's well meaning, I support the same goals, but this kind of hive mind is quite frankly, dangerous. These people have given up their critical faculties to this mess of emotion, passion, and constant outrage. They're so against Trump, and so against the alt right, and so carried away by passions, that they're attacking people who would otherwise agree with them for not being extreme enough. Geez, and they say we "Bernie Bros" are bad. Look, I just got done bashing Trump and saying everything he's done so far outside of killing the TPP is bad. Okay? That's a pretty strong statement there. I don't approve of Trump or the alt right, or the republicans, I dislike them just as much as the rest of the left does. The difference? I still have my wits about me. I'm not so passionately out of control I start advocating for violence to achieve my goals and say anyone who doesn't think exactly like I do, even if they agree with me 90% of the time, are the bad guys.
The worst thing about this is I get the impression that this is what the democratic establishment wants. Keep in mind guys, the republicans aren't the only problem. The democratic establishment is too. And I get the impression they're pulling the strings here. They don't want people to think critically, they don't want people to have their own agendas, they want people to accept theirs. So what they do is whip everyone up into a frenzy, act like Trump is an existential threat, and get people so riled up in their passions they freaking forget that the democrats are a problem too. Which is what this is really about. The democrats don't want people to focus on them. They don't want people to focus on the bad crap they do. They don't want people to focus on the loss and demand better of them. They just want people to attack Trump, without really having an alternative people can get behind. They're counting on people to be so pissed and outraged against Trump they forget all about the divisions within the party. It's the same crap Clinton tried in the election all over again.
And the worst part is this is costing the left supporters as well and leaving people pissed off and disillusioned with them. Some people, like me, become resentful of both sides. Others (and I've actually seen people do this) get so fed up with the perpetual manufactured outrage and with us or against us mentality that they go on a crusade against these people and join the alt right themselves.
Look, I'm not saying we shouldn't oppose Trump or the alt right. I just condemned Trump's presidency literally 20 minutes ago. I can't stand Trump. He's shaping up to be the worst president in modern American history (I can't say the worst ever, as we had some really bad ones in the 1800s, but likely the worst in our lifetimes). But we need to act peacefully, and we need to act rationally. We need to keep a clear sight on our goals, and not get whipped up by manufactured outrage and the corresponding passions. The democrats are morphing into this angry mob of pure hate and outrage right now, and it's scaring the crap out of me. This outrage has no good end. And when you come down from this high, you will regret how you're acting. This is the same kind of anger and outrage that led to the formation of the tea party and how awful the modern GOP is. It's the same kind of outrage that made the public so receptive to invading Iraq without evidence. This level of anger and outrage is also responsible for many violent revolutions that ended very badly, with the people just as bad off as, if not worse off than they were before.
That being said, people need to calm the fudge down, take a chill pill, and look at this situation rationally. We need an opposition of Trump that's worth fighting for. But the democrats suffering from what some call "Trump derangement syndrome" isn't it. As Caitlin Johnstone said (read the above article I posted), until the democrats cobble together an actual alternative to Trump, they're not really a "resistance", they're just complaining. We need to stand for something different, something better, and we need to push for it thoughtfully, rationally, and peacefully. As I said in my last article, I believe we are witnessing the self destruction of the GOP. But unless we can put forward some solid progressive goals, what comes next won't be much better. Even if rational, we'll go back to the same old oligarchic democratic party...after all, they're the ones getting you so pumped up to begin with. They're trying to keep politics partisan and keep you as focused on "the other" as possible. We need change, not more of the same. Please, look at the big picture. Think this though. Don't act out of radical passion. I feel like the left is going to the "dark side" so to speak when it needs to be the voice of the light, the voice of reason.
So...my opinion on Trump so far
This isn't going to be long. If I went into every single thing Trump did that I don't like, I'd never shut up, and I don't have the energy to do so. If you want to look for compilations, you will find some good articles on the mainstream liberal media about it, and you will also find some good stuff on this guy's facebook page, he seems to make daily images listing everything this guy has done so far that's bad.
Quite frankly, my opinion is very one sided. He's horrible. The only good thing he's done so far is kill the TPP, and that's because I actually align with him somewhat on trade issues. Other than that, it's all bad, between moving to repeal Obamacare, to silencing federal agencies from talking about science, to making his own inauguration day some sort of despotic patriotic holiday, to assaulting womens' rights, Trump's presidency so far sounds a bit like a cartoon villain. He is like, the epitome of everything wrong with America right now, and I honestly don't think the country will tolerate him for long. His approval rating is already historically low entering office, and I would be shocked and would lose all faith in humanity if it actually went up from here given his current policy agenda.
I may occasionally pick apart an individual policy or two, but I've concluded there's just too much to cover in terms of Trump's escapades, and there is no way I can realistically cover all of it. He just does so much bad stuff. All I can do is hope the public realizes what's going on and is outraged by this presidency, and that this kills conservatism as we know it in America. I don't expect the GOP to go away completely, but much like the GOP of the 30s and 40s and the democrats of the 80s, I expect them to have to take a good hard look at themselves and reform themselves dramatically in the face of a new political paradigm. We really are reaching the Hoover/Carter stage of party realignments it seems. I just hope this is worth it and we get a FDR/Reagan out of it, rather than another lukewarm Clinton or Booker like candidate.
This is a necessary evil, I guess. I still believe that. If Clinton had won, the republicans would continue to obstruct, the democrats would continue to twiddle their thumbs, and we would face this situation in 4-8 years anyway. And if someone else won, say, Cruz, or Rubio, or Kasich, or Jeb Bush, then we might be facing someone with a similar agenda hostile to the American public, but who would be more masterful in spinning it to their benefit. At least now we get to see the GOP self destruct in its full glory, with a president too stupid and too into himself to even try to hide what he's doing. It's all out in the open, all the corruption, all the nepotism, the ignorance of science, the radical agenda. And with the dems in the weakest state since 1928, whatever comes next will be squarely on the GOP. The republicans won't be able to shift blame, or attack the democrats any more, this is all on them. This is their show and they're screwing up hard. Let them have their fun, they're digging themselves into a hole with the American public, and I doubt it will be something we forget any time soon.
Quite frankly, my opinion is very one sided. He's horrible. The only good thing he's done so far is kill the TPP, and that's because I actually align with him somewhat on trade issues. Other than that, it's all bad, between moving to repeal Obamacare, to silencing federal agencies from talking about science, to making his own inauguration day some sort of despotic patriotic holiday, to assaulting womens' rights, Trump's presidency so far sounds a bit like a cartoon villain. He is like, the epitome of everything wrong with America right now, and I honestly don't think the country will tolerate him for long. His approval rating is already historically low entering office, and I would be shocked and would lose all faith in humanity if it actually went up from here given his current policy agenda.
I may occasionally pick apart an individual policy or two, but I've concluded there's just too much to cover in terms of Trump's escapades, and there is no way I can realistically cover all of it. He just does so much bad stuff. All I can do is hope the public realizes what's going on and is outraged by this presidency, and that this kills conservatism as we know it in America. I don't expect the GOP to go away completely, but much like the GOP of the 30s and 40s and the democrats of the 80s, I expect them to have to take a good hard look at themselves and reform themselves dramatically in the face of a new political paradigm. We really are reaching the Hoover/Carter stage of party realignments it seems. I just hope this is worth it and we get a FDR/Reagan out of it, rather than another lukewarm Clinton or Booker like candidate.
This is a necessary evil, I guess. I still believe that. If Clinton had won, the republicans would continue to obstruct, the democrats would continue to twiddle their thumbs, and we would face this situation in 4-8 years anyway. And if someone else won, say, Cruz, or Rubio, or Kasich, or Jeb Bush, then we might be facing someone with a similar agenda hostile to the American public, but who would be more masterful in spinning it to their benefit. At least now we get to see the GOP self destruct in its full glory, with a president too stupid and too into himself to even try to hide what he's doing. It's all out in the open, all the corruption, all the nepotism, the ignorance of science, the radical agenda. And with the dems in the weakest state since 1928, whatever comes next will be squarely on the GOP. The republicans won't be able to shift blame, or attack the democrats any more, this is all on them. This is their show and they're screwing up hard. Let them have their fun, they're digging themselves into a hole with the American public, and I doubt it will be something we forget any time soon.
Sunday, January 22, 2017
A brief discussion on condemning violence and advocating for nonviolent ways of protest
So...Trump is officially our president. I don't like it. Its gonna be a long four years, but the time is now to resist him and his agenda. And resist him we shall. Any bad legislation trump or the republicans out forward should be vigorously opposed. And we need protests in a mass scale like we've been seeing to voice opposition against him. Make no mistake, I support using every legitimate means possible to oppose a trump agenda.
But...we need to have a talk about something first. Some people seem to think violence is the answer. The amount of people I see supporting and advocating for violence against a Trump administration and supporters is too darned high. Learn from the women's march yesterday. Millions of people protesting and you know what? They did it peacefully. And they outnumbered the amount of people to support Trump at his inauguration. That is great. That is what a real show of force from a peaceful perspective looks like and everyone who participated should be proud.
What isn't okay though is the use of violence. I watched some of the protests against Trump get violent where people did things like threw stuff through Starbucks' windows and set cars and trash cans on fire. And I've also seen people assaulting white supremacists as well.
This is not okay. Keeping our discourse civil and respecting people's right to their views is important for the future of freedom of speech in this country. There can be no freedom of speech if people are afraid to speak up for fear of being assaulted. It is fundamentally dangerous for an angry mob to start burning things in response to an election outcome they don't like. The rule of law is an important part of our society and without it we are just bands of raving lunatics who need to live in fear of one another. The first imperative for society is to push for an environment in which people are safe. If we don't have that, we have nothing. And when you advocate and support political violence against other human beings, you are disrupting that first imperative of civil society.
You are not moral if you supporting "bashing the fash" or breaking things. You are threatening the order of society and bringing it dangerously close to a full scale breakdown. And not in a good way. As Bruce Willis once pointed out in Die Hard 4, the "system" is people, and bringing it down means bringing down the people.
I have a lot of grievances against our society. And people who oppose the alt right and other similar movements have their hearts in the right place. And you know what? We deserve to air these grievances. We have a right to protest, make our voices heard, and try to change the system in a peaceful way. There is a lot to oppose to a Trump presidency on all fronts. Socially, economically, morally.
Socialists, social democrats, etc. Our views are outside of the political spectrum. People fear us. They do. How would you like it if the alt right started beating us up for holding the views we do? Well, by beating them up, you're confirming that we are something to be feared, something that threatens the order and fabric of civil society. And people will fear us,and people will fight us. The American public does not have a stomach for violent protests. They don't sympathise with the causes of the agents acting violently. And they just make things harder for the rest of us, who want to change the system from within. Who respect law and order and civil society. Because now we have to deal with the idea that we are violent extremists.
Even worse...the critics of violence are correct. Since most of this violence takes place on the left, let me remind people what happens when the militant left gets its way. Russia, China, Cuba, north Korea. What do they all have in common? They were all born of left wing revolution. The people rose up, acting as a mob, overturned the system, killed the dissidents, the people in charge formed dictatorships, and became repressive toward the people. When I see the far left advocating for violence, I see the seeds of a violent communist revolution that only will end in violence and repression. This is not the path I wish for society to take. We must make our change a peacefully, incrementally, in the stability of a civil society. And we must never act violently against those who disagree with, as repulsive as they may be. Those who live by the sword die by the sword. Those who live by the law generally live long peaceful lives. Our system is flawed, but its not so unbelievably tyrannical and broken it warrants violence to correct. The risks and costs simply outweigh the benefits.
As such, protest, oppose trump, oppose the alt right as you feel is right. You have a right to do it. Call them out on their bs. Protest by the hundreds of thousands. Filibuster them, organize against them, run for office. But don't advocate for violence. Violence is bad. Violence is a threat to the very fabric our society is built on. It is sometimes a necessary evil, but this is not one of those times.
Thursday, January 19, 2017
A brief analysis of RT
So, after my last post, I decided to take a look and watch some RT myself. After all I got a Roku now and RT is available to watch on it. So I sat down and watched it like I used to watch CNN and MSNBC when I still trusted them as media outlets.
So, first the good. They have a lot of progressive outlets on RT. I already knew about Lee Camp and Thom Hartmann who I sometimes listen to in terms of podcasts and the like on YouTube, but I also got to watch Ed Schultz, who I used to watch on MSNBC. So a lot of progressives on there, left wing bias on domestic politics.
However, watching Ed Schultz really told me all I need to know about the network from a bias perspective. Ed Schultz, who used to toe the democratic party line on MSNBC, is now pushing the narrative of attacking the democratic attacks on "fake news." Seeing how I watched Lee Camp going on for a half hour about the same thing before that, it is quite clear that RT was pushing a narrative. I got similar vibes from RT that I got from MSNBC or CNN. That there was a bias, a slant, a narrative, and it was pushing propaganda.
Even though I at least in part agree with RT on the whole fake news thing and do agree its an attempt to censor outlets like RT, this doesn't excuse the fact that it was a narrative nevertheless. It is quite clear RT wishes to deflect from the possibility of Russian interference in the election and even if they say similar stuff that me and other Sanders supporters have been saying a lot, we need to remember that like corporate media, this is an outlet owned by certain interests and will not be willing to cross those interests. Seeing Ed Schultz go from dancing for the democratic party and MSNBC's owners to RT's owners and the Russian government really shows how much a narrative and being in someone's service can change a man.
Still, regardless, the similarities are there. And considering the outcry RT gets,how its called a propaganda outlet relentlessly, this is worth discussing. RT is clearly biased, and its words should be taken with a grain of salt and its interests in mind. But its no worse than corporate media outlets, and if RT is sooo bad, and is fake news, and propaganda, and blah blah blah, where does that leave CNN and MSNBC, let alone fox news? Aren't they propaganda outlets? Don't they have narratives? Or should we turn a blind eye to it where its only bad when the dirty evil Russians do it because hooray, tribalism? That's what it is. When other countries push narratives and propaganda, we act like they're so evil and manipulative, but then when powerful American interests do it, it's suddenly okay? If RT is fake news and propaganda, then mainstream outlets are too. And they should be approached with the same skepticism and criticism. Let's do away with double standards and allow both kinds if outlets to thrive in a country based in free speech, while criticizing the biases of both.
Because honestly, RT and mainstream corporate media are two sides of the same coin. They both have narratives, owners, biases, and things they they can't discuss in an objective way. And they should be treated similarly. What the mainstream media fears from a foreign media network in terms of brainwashing and indoctrination is constantly done by our own American media outlets, and people don't even bat an eye. What people see in RT is what I see when I watch CNN, for example. It's ALL propaganda to me. Yes, RT deserves its share of criticism. But it does not deserve censorship. Likewise, mainstream media deserves similar criticism for brainwashing the American public.
The fake news witch hunt and censorship: Facebook blocks Russia Times
So, as we know, there's a huge outcry against "fake news" in response to the whole Pizzagate thing. And while there are concerns with fake news sources misleading people, I can't help but feel that this push is really about censorship of other perspectives. Case in point, Facebook is now blocking RT (Russia Times) from its website.
On the surface, this sounds like a logical extension to the crackdown on fake news. The democrats are worried about Russia influencing people, so they go after a network that is essentially owned by Russia. But honestly, I can't help but feel that this was either done out of ignorance, or done out of some nefariousness.
Look, it's pretty clear that RT is going to be biased at times. It probably can't be trusted in dealing with issues related to Russia. I mean, going to Russia times for objective coverage on Russia's involvement in the world is like going to CNN to hear objective coverage about the democratic primary.
....which is kind of my point. Where's the outcry against CNN being "fake news"? Trump made the argument but then the left freaks out about it and goes on about how this is an attack on the press by the alt right. But honestly, I don't trust CNN as far as I can throw them. Doesn't mean I'd censor them in particular unless we just full on brought back the fairness doctrine and applied it to everyone. Hopefully all the people on the left freaking out about Trump going after CNN is why I'm freaked out about going after RT.
And honestly, I can't say I watch RT often, but from the small clips here and there I've seen, RT seems to mostly be home to a lot of progressives and people who can't make it on corporate news networks for not pushing their narrative. I see a lot of good stuff from people like Lee Camp and Thom Hartmann. People like Larry King, Ed Schultz, and Jesse Ventura are also on RT. So....perhaps RT isn't as bad as we think it is and that calling it "fake news" is just a blatant attempt at censorship of viewpoints outside of the mainstream?
Again, I'm not claiming RT is perfect. It probably isn't. But no news network is. They're all biased in different ways. And honestly, unless they are so egregiously over the top with falsehoods that are leading to real tangible harm in the real world (say, hate speech or something), I don't see why we should be banning specific viewpoints off of certain sites at the top level. Individual debate groups or subreddits in Reddit's case, fine. But on a site wide level? Unless there is a compelling reason to ban something that can be defended and is acceptable to a good proportion of reasonable people, I don't see why we should allow social media to be manipulated like this. It's just flat out censorship to do so. We should want a greater scope of media in America. The "mainstream" networks are all owned and bought and paid for by a small minority of corporations and as such, censoring other networks as fake news in order to prop up these networks seems like a blatant attempt to give these guys an oligopoly over the accessibility of the press in America. This is scary. This is how freedom dies in this country. This attempt to muzzle the media should be resisted by the public and supporters of more independent media.
On the surface, this sounds like a logical extension to the crackdown on fake news. The democrats are worried about Russia influencing people, so they go after a network that is essentially owned by Russia. But honestly, I can't help but feel that this was either done out of ignorance, or done out of some nefariousness.
Look, it's pretty clear that RT is going to be biased at times. It probably can't be trusted in dealing with issues related to Russia. I mean, going to Russia times for objective coverage on Russia's involvement in the world is like going to CNN to hear objective coverage about the democratic primary.
....which is kind of my point. Where's the outcry against CNN being "fake news"? Trump made the argument but then the left freaks out about it and goes on about how this is an attack on the press by the alt right. But honestly, I don't trust CNN as far as I can throw them. Doesn't mean I'd censor them in particular unless we just full on brought back the fairness doctrine and applied it to everyone. Hopefully all the people on the left freaking out about Trump going after CNN is why I'm freaked out about going after RT.
And honestly, I can't say I watch RT often, but from the small clips here and there I've seen, RT seems to mostly be home to a lot of progressives and people who can't make it on corporate news networks for not pushing their narrative. I see a lot of good stuff from people like Lee Camp and Thom Hartmann. People like Larry King, Ed Schultz, and Jesse Ventura are also on RT. So....perhaps RT isn't as bad as we think it is and that calling it "fake news" is just a blatant attempt at censorship of viewpoints outside of the mainstream?
Again, I'm not claiming RT is perfect. It probably isn't. But no news network is. They're all biased in different ways. And honestly, unless they are so egregiously over the top with falsehoods that are leading to real tangible harm in the real world (say, hate speech or something), I don't see why we should be banning specific viewpoints off of certain sites at the top level. Individual debate groups or subreddits in Reddit's case, fine. But on a site wide level? Unless there is a compelling reason to ban something that can be defended and is acceptable to a good proportion of reasonable people, I don't see why we should allow social media to be manipulated like this. It's just flat out censorship to do so. We should want a greater scope of media in America. The "mainstream" networks are all owned and bought and paid for by a small minority of corporations and as such, censoring other networks as fake news in order to prop up these networks seems like a blatant attempt to give these guys an oligopoly over the accessibility of the press in America. This is scary. This is how freedom dies in this country. This attempt to muzzle the media should be resisted by the public and supporters of more independent media.
Oh hey, look! Rick Perry realizes the government does things!
So, it looks like Rick Perry has made a realization that is, at this point, an assumption in my left wing "statist" worldview. He now realizes that the government does things...important things critical for the proper functioning of society, and that we would be worse off if we start mindlessly cutting agencies without looking at their core functions.
Rick Perry has once said he wanted to cut the department of energy in his quest for smaller government. This was appealing to his anti government right wing base, but it lacked any understanding of what the department of energy does, and why it is important for society. Since Perry was named head of the department, he has gotten an intimate understanding of its functions very quickly, and now regrets saying he wants to cut it, citing he didn't understand what it did.
My response? No crap, Shirlock. I mean...this is how I perceive the right in general. And this is how I was when I was a member of the right when I was younger. The right doesn't understand just how important government functions are. They complain and moan about all their hard earned tax dollars being stolen from them to fund these departments they don't understand, but then when they start learning what these departments do and why they're necessary, they suddenly realize that their existence is actually very reasonable. This was really the first step I took in abandoning conservatism. I realized that the government did things, important things, that many people don't understand the workings of, and push for abolishing out of sheer ignorance.
Here's the thing. The right hates "government." I use quotes because honestly, it's more of an ideal than a practical perspective. They hate the idea of government. So they try to cut it out of principle. They want to reduce its functions, and its scope, and they want to lower taxes. The less government, the better. Government is a dragon, and it must be slayed. It is a Leviathan, and it was the founding fathers' intentions to keep it as limited as possible. So they go on this crusade to just cut "government" without learning to understand what exactly government is.
But let's be real here. The government, when done correctly, is us. It's an entity that does things that cannot be entrusted to individuals to do properly otherwise. And we are all better off for it. I'm not going to say there can't be debate over the scope of government and what its functions should be, I think that that particular issue is still a dividing line between the right and the left, but the right wing perspective of hating government just because is so stupid. It really is. And the sad thing is, so many people on the right have this idea that if you aren't one of them, you are for "big government" and want it to run everything, as if the opposing view is the exact opposite of their extremism. But it's not. Government agencies and functions come about normally as a form of problem solving. The people find problems developing from a lack of regulations or whatever, so they make rules to solve problems. Murder is a problem for a society, we so ban it. Same with theft. And then we get into more nuanced issues. We deal with land usage and whether some dude who lives up river has a right to dump toxic waste into said river, poisoning everyone else. We deal with whether the government should step in to regulate exchanges in the free market to protect the exploitation of workers, or making dangerous products that hurt people. The government is a TOOL. The opposite of being anti government isn't being mindlessly pro government. It's just being for using the government to solve problems in society. And often times when we start talking about repealing stuff without replacing it properly, people get hurt, and people can even die. Because we're re-introducing problems that were supposed to have been solved.
This is why, for example, a lot of people on the right are starting to have an "oh crap" moment when they realize that Obamacare and ACA are the same freaking thing (really guys? you didn't know that?) and that if the republicans repeal it without replacing it, as they're trying to do right now, that oh crap, they might lack health insurance, oh crap, they might get sick, oh crap, they might even die. No crap shirlock. We could've told you this before the election and heck the last 6 years in general but no one listened.
This is why I think the republicans are going to not last long in Washington, and that we might be one republican controlled government away from a complete paradigm shift. Because honestly, the right should look like the democrats do, because they actually believe in the government performing core functions of society, and the left should be to their left. Our problems in society exist because half the country doesn't even believe in the freaking government they rely on to live a decent life, and the other half seems to believe government should perform some core functions necessary in society but is afraid to push forward and is pretty conservative in their outlooks. Believe it or not, the way I see it, the democrats are conservative, as in, they want to conserve the system largely as it is and make mild changes at best, and the right is regressive, as in, they want to undo the system to return to a mythical simpler past time that never was that great to begin with.
And this is why this paradigm sucks. The democrats introduce band aids that kind of fix the problems, and the right just ignores the problems exist and tries to undo legislation done over the years by democrats, which in turn re-introduces past problems and sends our society backwards. I really hope over the next four years right wingers start to realize that government actually does things, and that these things are good for society. Even if they fail to support my progressive vision for America, I hope that they at least move toward where the democrats are so we as a society can all be on the same freaking page about the uses of government. In an advanced society, we shouldnt even have to debate whether the government is actually useful at solving problems. It definitely is. The real debate should be over what problems we want to solve and how. And there is, admittedly, room for disagreement there. But it would be a huge step over a radical right that doesn't believe in the very concept of government.
So way to go Rick Perry, a bit late to the party, but hey, you're learning, just like I did. I hope you and the rest of the right half of America expand their education on this subject over the next few years. We might actually be able to get crap done for once if you do.
Rick Perry has once said he wanted to cut the department of energy in his quest for smaller government. This was appealing to his anti government right wing base, but it lacked any understanding of what the department of energy does, and why it is important for society. Since Perry was named head of the department, he has gotten an intimate understanding of its functions very quickly, and now regrets saying he wants to cut it, citing he didn't understand what it did.
My response? No crap, Shirlock. I mean...this is how I perceive the right in general. And this is how I was when I was a member of the right when I was younger. The right doesn't understand just how important government functions are. They complain and moan about all their hard earned tax dollars being stolen from them to fund these departments they don't understand, but then when they start learning what these departments do and why they're necessary, they suddenly realize that their existence is actually very reasonable. This was really the first step I took in abandoning conservatism. I realized that the government did things, important things, that many people don't understand the workings of, and push for abolishing out of sheer ignorance.
Here's the thing. The right hates "government." I use quotes because honestly, it's more of an ideal than a practical perspective. They hate the idea of government. So they try to cut it out of principle. They want to reduce its functions, and its scope, and they want to lower taxes. The less government, the better. Government is a dragon, and it must be slayed. It is a Leviathan, and it was the founding fathers' intentions to keep it as limited as possible. So they go on this crusade to just cut "government" without learning to understand what exactly government is.
But let's be real here. The government, when done correctly, is us. It's an entity that does things that cannot be entrusted to individuals to do properly otherwise. And we are all better off for it. I'm not going to say there can't be debate over the scope of government and what its functions should be, I think that that particular issue is still a dividing line between the right and the left, but the right wing perspective of hating government just because is so stupid. It really is. And the sad thing is, so many people on the right have this idea that if you aren't one of them, you are for "big government" and want it to run everything, as if the opposing view is the exact opposite of their extremism. But it's not. Government agencies and functions come about normally as a form of problem solving. The people find problems developing from a lack of regulations or whatever, so they make rules to solve problems. Murder is a problem for a society, we so ban it. Same with theft. And then we get into more nuanced issues. We deal with land usage and whether some dude who lives up river has a right to dump toxic waste into said river, poisoning everyone else. We deal with whether the government should step in to regulate exchanges in the free market to protect the exploitation of workers, or making dangerous products that hurt people. The government is a TOOL. The opposite of being anti government isn't being mindlessly pro government. It's just being for using the government to solve problems in society. And often times when we start talking about repealing stuff without replacing it properly, people get hurt, and people can even die. Because we're re-introducing problems that were supposed to have been solved.
This is why, for example, a lot of people on the right are starting to have an "oh crap" moment when they realize that Obamacare and ACA are the same freaking thing (really guys? you didn't know that?) and that if the republicans repeal it without replacing it, as they're trying to do right now, that oh crap, they might lack health insurance, oh crap, they might get sick, oh crap, they might even die. No crap shirlock. We could've told you this before the election and heck the last 6 years in general but no one listened.
This is why I think the republicans are going to not last long in Washington, and that we might be one republican controlled government away from a complete paradigm shift. Because honestly, the right should look like the democrats do, because they actually believe in the government performing core functions of society, and the left should be to their left. Our problems in society exist because half the country doesn't even believe in the freaking government they rely on to live a decent life, and the other half seems to believe government should perform some core functions necessary in society but is afraid to push forward and is pretty conservative in their outlooks. Believe it or not, the way I see it, the democrats are conservative, as in, they want to conserve the system largely as it is and make mild changes at best, and the right is regressive, as in, they want to undo the system to return to a mythical simpler past time that never was that great to begin with.
And this is why this paradigm sucks. The democrats introduce band aids that kind of fix the problems, and the right just ignores the problems exist and tries to undo legislation done over the years by democrats, which in turn re-introduces past problems and sends our society backwards. I really hope over the next four years right wingers start to realize that government actually does things, and that these things are good for society. Even if they fail to support my progressive vision for America, I hope that they at least move toward where the democrats are so we as a society can all be on the same freaking page about the uses of government. In an advanced society, we shouldnt even have to debate whether the government is actually useful at solving problems. It definitely is. The real debate should be over what problems we want to solve and how. And there is, admittedly, room for disagreement there. But it would be a huge step over a radical right that doesn't believe in the very concept of government.
So way to go Rick Perry, a bit late to the party, but hey, you're learning, just like I did. I hope you and the rest of the right half of America expand their education on this subject over the next few years. We might actually be able to get crap done for once if you do.
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