Discussion seems to be just a straw man within another straw man.
What is “unsayable”? lol
I NEVER trusted medical Doctors. Even from the age of 12 I took the advice of “Always be your own Primary Care Physician. The rest are just consultants.” Doctors, dentists, surgeons my whole life I have always treated them as consultants.
Many a doctor has wanted to cut me open for one reason or another, and Dentists’ eyes flash when they see my Wisdom Teeth. I hear a little slyness when they mention them - it could be several thousands in their pocket if they play their cars right, lol.
I have friends with a medical, psychiatry or other practices, and know lots of people with PhD’s.
I’ve known people whose doctors had just been plain - wrong and messed up the people’s lives permanently as a result.
I have always known doctors prescribe medication unnecessarily and get some kind of financial reward.
All this means … questioning medical authorities and “fact checkers” didn’t suddenly appear in 2021.
Yet - I have also always used medical Doctors and medication when I needed it - or even just “to be on the safe side”.
I really see this whole COVID vaccine discussion as a “where’s the beef” story. The medical and pharmaceutical industry ahs always been suspicious - and people have always had to decide between 100% and 0% acceptance, because both extreme 100% acceptance and 0% acceptance positions have been stupid ones to take my entire 50 year lifetime.
I really don’t see where the issue here is. The tobacco industry presented experts that said smoking did not cause cancer and a half dozen other problems, and other doctors presented evidence saying it was a health risk. In the end some people smoke but the vast majority know it is unhealthy.
It obviously makes more sense to get a COVID vaccination than to not get one. The hospitals are not filled with people who got vaccinated. Maybe a few. That’s just the facts. But hospitals are filled with people who did not get vaccinated.
The rest is all just hyperbole and ideological masturbation.
Here are a few of the Existential Threats that we are living in fear of today that we are using to rationalize major structural changes:
Gun Deaths - 0.0036% per year
Auto Deaths - 0.011% per year
Abortion - 0.19% per year
Cancer - 0.14% per year
Covid19 - 0.01% per year
Avoid Antifa riots, dealing drugs in inner cities, frequenting abortion clinics, smoking cigarettes, drunk driving, wash your hands and you vastly reduce your chance of becoming one of these statistics.
Your brain seems to be flying all over the place and I can’t seem to make rhyme or reason about what you are trying to say with the percentages.
Gun deaths - Your figure seems pretty small. I don’t own a gun, so that number seems like a very uncerning number for me. If I did own a gun, that percentage would be much higher. So yes, with a higher number I could see how a gun owner might be more concerned about his own safety being shot by his own gun.
But also, I have made life choices. Choices have consequences. I live in a liberal state with strict gun laws, reducing my fears of being gunned down by neighbors.
Auto deaths - again, this is another category where certain behaviors increase the risks dramatically and skew the averages. Using a vehicle has a risk-benefit ratio I’m willing to accept, and I don’t tempt the fates with risky behavior.
Abortion ??? What reason could I possibly have to fear abortion? Why would I possibly live in fear of abortion? I’m not a fetus and nobody I know is a fetus. Again, if you are talking about concern - that is a different matter but I am far more concerned about living babies starving or being malnourished and undereducated than the unborn.
Cancer - a legitimate concern and of course I take steps to eat less red meat, processed foods and so on and try to live a less carcinogenic lifestyle.
COVID - Please give numbers for vaccinated vs unvaccinated mortality rates. Again, since I have made decisions to reduce my risk of COVID by using a vaccine, you numbers don’t actually apply to me or any of my immediate friends (anyone I’ve associated with face to face in the past 6 months)
So I repeat - “where’s the beef”?
You seem to be overly influenced by media spin. Kind of like when we were kids there was always one guy who thought WWF Wrestling was real? You’re that guy, but you have traded in WWF for purple Cool Aide. (mixing up “red” and “blue”, lol)
ah, someone wrote an academic paper outlining something that is pretty obvious and I see in the majority of @FermentedAgave posts.
Rather than address their own internal dissonance between their religious and political views, the tendency seems to be to shout down this internal conflict with a constant stream of anti-left propaganda - most of it being of dubious quality.
Our survey data speak to the dissonance that contemporary American Christians, whether liberal or conservative, confront between their own political views and the traditional teachings and tenets of their faith.
How do American Christians of the left and right deal with discrepancies that remain between important tenets of their religion and their politics? Liberals can comfortably embrace the fellowship message of the Gospels—even conceding that they personally fall short of its demands—and insist that the Christian Right’s pronouncements on homosexuality and abortion are not the tenets of Christianity that they choose to embrace or the ones most emphasized in the teachings of Jesus. Conservatives, especially insofar as they report their faith and their personal relationship with Jesus to be so central to their identity, face a more difficult dilemma. They can hardly claim that their allegiance is less to the New Testament, which is the main authority for their cultural views, than to the Old Testament.
Does the heated rhetoric that conservatives use in derogating liberals—including fellow Christians—and the energy they devote to proselytism reflect further attempts at dissonance reduction? In this context, it is worth recalling that, before the 1970s, Christian political movements in the United States were largely progressive. Notably, the Christian leaders in the North were the most vocally opposed to slavery in the New World; and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, headed by Martin Luther King, was similarly associated with the left in its efforts at desegregation and addressing the needs of minorities and the poor. Elements of the Catholic Church in America (including the Catholic Workers Party founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933) similarly have long been associated with workers’ rights and antiwar movements.
Hey Ray - Just ran across a couple of things that would like to get your feedback on that I think might help coalesce a few things.
My horribly quick synopsis is that their are two psychological approaches:
Compare yourself (or the world) to a fantastical person (Stephen Hawkings, Usain Bolt,…) or accomplishment (sub-4 minute mile
Compare yourself to you last week - passing Quantum Physics or shaving 5 seconds off that mile time
Psychologically one can enable being somewhat at peace, while the other might drive you mad or perhaps you become a high achiever.
Specifically how this relates to this discussion and my statistics is that Progressives tend to focus on (perhaps invent?) meta/existential/cataclysmic “issues” due to how fucked up the world is proposing wholesale (aka radical) “fixes” (aka gun violence/control, covid/vaccines, etc). Meanwhile Conservatives tend to have gratitude for the world, the ideas that have worked very well for decades or millennia and look for responsibility and accountability through national, state, local and even to the individual to make incremental changes.
Here’s an interesting audio cast that @WillE shared. The first 6 minutes describe this much better than I can.
These are tropes, and artificially biased at that. Honestly I see the “gratitude” of Conservatives as relativist. It used to be fairly consistent but since around 2008 I’ve seen conservatives grateful or hostile towards the exact same policy depending on who is in charge of various branches of government. I do not see that conservatives have taken responsibility at all. More truthfully they pass the buck and spin, spin, spin.
And if you think conservatives aren’t focusing on the end of the world - you’ve obviously never talked to “preppers”, the vast majority of these preppers are the new “conservative”.
The progressives in my social circle don’t “focus on” issues. We are aware of them. But honestly in mixed company the most likely to bring up politics is the conservative. Unless you think saying “Sorry, we’re vegan” when offered a steak is an opening for political debate?
This is what I see day in and day out - and honestly what you display day after day in this forum. There are lots and lots of liberals on this forum, but they aren’t nearly as outspoken compared to you, for example. You seem to be the one to constantly focus on these artificially created “news” stories and IDK - you just can’t seem to stop thinking of people as more than one dimensional. Corey said something that triggered you and you spent the next few months accusing him of being a Marxist and a dozen other things.
Towards a Deeper Conservativism
It’s nice that some conservatives might have some kind of image of themselves - but when the reality doesn’t match the dialogue I call B.S.
So if you are going to develop yourself into a Deeper Conservative, more power to you. I don’t think that involves following the mass conservative media unthinkingly.
Yet even in this “Deeper Conservativism” - the speaker just COULD NOT go 5 minutes without forming at least a token position contra to liberalism, but essentially if I look at his specific words, liberalism and new conservativism are the same? Conservativism before 2012 used to mean “Averse to change or innovation”, but according to the speaker the new conservativism is:
respect the past —> innovate and see what to change —> create a better world
While liberalism is
recognize faults of the past —> innovate and see what to change —> create a better world
So we see that apparently conservatives have transformed into a more liberal frame of mind (change) and liberals and conservatives have essentially the same goals, but conservativism seems to not be able to stand on its own feet without artificially creating liberalism as an enemy.
Here’s the thing you are constantly missing: Liberalism in 2021 is very different from 1990, but you and conservatives seem to be focused on Liberalism 1990.
Ok, the next 10 or so minutes he talks about gay issues and educating conservatives. This furthers my point - the “Deeper Conservativism” is basically Liberalism. Finally 50 years after Liberals “figured it out” and fought conservatives tooth and nail on gay rights (and racial equality and a dozen other issues) now someone is describing a new “Deeper Integral Conservativism” and lawdy lawdy, it sounds to me like the Old 1990’s Liberalism, lmao. Yet even today Conservatives still love to bash alternative culture via dog whistles, so it isn’t even genuine.
Did progressives “invent” that gays should not be beaten up or indeed murdered just for being gay, should not be subjected to “conversion therapy”, should not be fired for what they do outside the workplace, should not be kicked out of the military etc etc. If it is as you say and this was just yet another “eta/existential/cataclysmic “issues” due to how fucked up the world is” and that liberals proposed “fucked up” fixes … then why are conservatives now patting themselves on the back that they are “Deeper” for just finally coming to the same conclusion 50 years after Liberals? (don’t hate gays)
Excellent insight into journalism route to power and influence.
Not intending this to be a Left-Right slug fest but focus on epistemology, hubris, power, influence, ego associated with the “perceiving” domains.
“There’s something uniquely fascinating about the persona of the journalist who betrays his or her professional ethics. There is no medical malpractitioner of historic notoriety, no lawyer so inept or corrupt that their infamy elicits international derision a century later. In fact, it might be only in the field of espionage that we find a parallel. The reason is that, like a nation’s spies, a citizenry loans journalists its most precious asset: trust. This is even more true in secular societies where social institutions take on the characteristics of religious bodies, guiding belief and shaping public perception of reality.”
So again - the complete hypocrisy of unherd is astounding.
Were they even remotely anything other than just “infotainment” themselves, they would instead do a much more in-depth analysis of FOX News - the leader of the pack in a steady stream of willful errors and inaccuracies for 30 years.
Newspapers and Media “leaning” to the left or right has always been the case. Most cities always had one newspaper that was slightly left and another that was slightly right. To single out the New York Times is essentially just kowtowing to a Trump driven narrative.
FOX News was the first major media to openly admit on air that they are not journalists - they are commentators and thus not bound by journalistic rules of professionalism or integrity. They say “fair and balanced” but it’s been documented that they get told what to report and what not to report and the slant to spin it with every morning - along with all the other major right wing media they have a coordinated propaganda effort. This isn’t theory - it’s been corroborated several times over the past two decades.
Then you remember when Obama won in 2012 and Rush Limbaugh and several other so-called News outlets actually said they deliberately misled their audiences to think they would win easily but they completely lost. I was astounded. For months all major conservative news outlets claimed to have deliberately lied to and manipulated their own audiences rather than admit that they had just been wrong.
This leads in a direct line to the feeling on the right that there is massive voter fraud. The right wing propaganda machine led by FOX News manipulates their audience time and time again into believing they should win, and when they lose they think Democrats must have cheated.
This “unheard” website is just more of the same propaganda machine and marches in lockstep with the same exact stories, spin and talking points while giving their readers a feeling that they are not part of the “herd” when they completely are the definition of her mentality.
So again - the most egregious violators of journalistic ethics writing such a story is hypocritical.
The website is clearly propaganda
The article is clearly hyperbolic opinion. EVERY STORY? “Every Story” includes even the Right Wing media, ironically including this website, lol.
Again, again, again - selective myopia. They don’t actually want journalistic greatness or even American Greatness.
Again - Straw man.
You really are unable to think outside of tropes.
Truth be told, I was just thinking it might be better in the long run if Republicans to win both chambers again in 2022 and immediately dig into trying to create a totalitarian government - it would give voters a reminder of what another Trump presidency would be like, but this time without any restrictions.
For about a decade I was saying that the worst thing for the Republican party would be if they actually get o be in charge and implement their whacko ideologies - and we saw that in 2016-2020 Americans resoundingly voiced their opposition to it at the polls in 2020 and Trump was beat down by a patsy.
Or indeed - let Trump get elected in 2024 with another Republican controlled Congress and let him push the failing American political-socio-economic system to collapse. Let there be rioting in the streets again and let Trump again try to quell it with jack-booted thugs. If I were a Marxist, I would see this as a great opportunity. Nothin rallies the proletariat like a bit of death, war, famine and plague. Are you looking forward to meeting the 4 Horsemen? Or do you actually think you will ascend in the Rapture and be spared the consequences of your own bad ideas and decidedly unChristlike attitudes?
@raybennett Chappelle’s Juicy Smollett skit is gut busting funny. “The gay community even accused Black’s of being homophobic. But what they didn’t know is that we knew he was CLEARLY lying.” Lol
@corey-devos. What details in the article are not factual?
I think the “strong loaded words” is something that people just don’t think about today because it’s become the “normal” to use clickbaity language to gain a larger readership. Those media that use clickbait headlines get more clicks and so get more revenues than without clickbait titles.
And such a small percentage of the population has ever had a strict Freshman English 101 Professor rip through their term paper with a red pen noting all instances of biased langauge.
Also one interesting thing is that my first Masters Degree was at an Australian University where the professors imposed a rubric system with a maximum word limit as opposed to the US norm where they give minimum word requirements. I think the US system leads to lazy and wordy writing with lots of unnecessary words (see what I just did in this sentence, lol). With the Australian Rubric system I really had to consider every word and hone each paragraph.
I see this also in youtube, where people spend an hour or more dealing with a topic that could have been dealt with in 10 minutes and in my opinion will require the full attention of the audience for them to “keep up”.
Does “every story” include stories about the GOP-led bipartisan commission’s conclusion that Manafort shared sensitive data with Kilimnik, and that Putin was responsible for the DNC hack?
But really, I’m just pointing out that you posted a plainly biased source with a mixed record of truth telling in a thread about propaganda and info warfare.
If it’s pretending the bipartisan commission did not exist, then yeah, it’s probably more on the propaganda side of the street :-/
But that’s why they are ranked as “mixed” when it comes to truth-telling, which I care about far more than bias. They might have some more-or-less accurate pieces on their site, but the legitimacy of those pieces are immediately called into question by the propaganda pieces sitting next to them. Which is usually how the most effective propaganda works these days.
Plus, you know, it’s an op-ed. Gotta take those with a grain anyway
