base698

Almost none of those are conservative books, and some are probably considered far left in most circles. Media corruption used to be a left issue before Trump took it over with his fake news.

What actions of the US government in the last 40 years look like the actions of a democracy to you? NAFTA? Iraq War 1 and 2? Bank bailouts? Destabilizing the Middle East? Quantitative easing through the Fed?

You absolutely cannot raise taxes out of it. Taxing the top 10% ($160k a year average) at 90% gets you 2.7 trillion. Our debt payment alone is $1 trillion. You have to cut deep, raise taxes, and explore other income options (tariffs, war, expanding the tax base) if you want to turn it around.

At the time it did not seem that way, I predicted enough pressure I would have to lie or quit. You gaslighting like it wasn't a huge fucking scary thing to those of us that aren't pharma bros is insulting.

They instituted a vax mandate which I got around for remote workers, partly because of the pushback myself and another person gave. Another company I was at had a attestation that you could check in a portal that they did not verify. My wife's company which was a startup would have fired her over it but she left the workforce due to kids. I was never fired over it. I've never actually been fired at all. I expect that to change when all of the fallout from the return to office in the government and all the fallout from the funding pools and government workers getting fired bleeds into the private sector.

Everyone has priors. And yes there is media hijacking to influence and propagate stories. You can search the payments on government websites for internews. Maybe they were paying $490 million for something other than directly influencing and censoring media narratives, but it looks pretty damning. Especially in light of the internet censorship that we saw 2016 to about 2022 coupled with what Zuckerberg himself has stated was done to meta to get them to comply with censorship. Also, Elon but you probably don't believe the Twitter files story. In addition, on Reddit, every single subreddit, including ones not related to politics, were completely spammed with Kamala and pro DNC messaging.

I believe the theory "the iron law of oligarchy" is more correct than "we live in a democracy (or even republic." There are various cases made and discussions about why this is the case in "The Machievellians" which is regarded as one of the most insightful books on politics in the 20th century. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy#:~:text=The "iron law of oligarchy" states that all forms of,large groups and complex organizations. What career failings do you mean? I was a director of engineering at fortune 5 companies and owned two airplanes. I recently had my third kid and am working remotely at a fortune 20 while I spend time with them. As for DOGE we are close to debt spiral and running off a cliff. Someone had to do something.

I remembered the Sinclair piece and looked it up after I saw the USAID and more specifically InterNews thing (which was going around 2 months ago). I assumed it was related, since the InterNews story is that they promoted the idea of disinformation and as a justification censored content online. I've read numerous books on the media (some of which I listed previously*), taken a couple of courses in both media and history. I've been involved in ad campaigns at small startups and one of the largest companies known for its marketing. Books: Trust Me I'm Lying Amusing Ourselves to Death Technopoly Propaganda Alchemy Presuasion Beyond Belief The Captive Mind Culture of Narcissism The Righteous Mind Manufacturing Consent Media Control And more!

Not simpletons, but if you've only seen the takes on the corporate press (NYT, NBC) you miss a huge part of the picture. Accusations of, "oh he got that on Fox." No young person, or anyone under 60 watches Fox. Most cable news now just parrot things that are on Twitter and Reddit. The corporate press is no longer controlling the narratives and the ones they try to control (on the left and right) look forced and unauthentic if you aren't in that bubble. In addition, any "news Article" from basically 99% of outlets lack nuance or counterpoints. Almost every sentence will be misleading and the frame is always something negative, without any counterbalance. This used to be the hall mark of Fox, but today it's any corporate press article. Consuming content like that, even if you're thinking critically some of the time, is what's caused this general hysteria. This frame of racism and white nationalism barely registers in the online world. No one cares, it's not persuasive and the people on the right (and even the nuanced left accounts) are not motivated by it. The online nuanced left seems to understand it doesn't work as an attack except to this shitlib group I mentioned. You see racism in the dark corners of 4chan, but it's not what's driving the new right. > seem to have, I don't know, blind spots? You know, the same sorts of ones we shitlibs have when we are trying to understand our conservative brothers I did not vote Trump in 2016, but I didn't vote Hillary either. My transition, HA, was recent and I would say Covid radicalized me. It shocked me greatly this group, which probably exposed themselves to danger more in a weekend of jumping, drinking, and electric stars, than getting Covid 10 times were so hysterical. I understood normies that didn't have the capacity to understand risk and had never been in a dangerous situation outside of driving a car would be afraid.

It's pretty old. I'd define it as Tumblr views from 2012 teenagers had to be weird that morphed into popular left consensus by 2020. An obese blue hair with septum piercing advocating for trans surgery would be an extreme example. Urban dictionary: Person with no core beliefs or values, other than supporting institutional power. Prefers slogans & optics to actual policy. "partisan hack"

There is certainly only one possible frame in a political discussion. No other possibilities exist outside of standard 2021 shitlib viewpoints.

I was assuming whatever shitlib thing you agree with that is not considered wrong think by the politburo would have somewhere between 90% agreement and 98% agreement with reasonable people. I picked 98% because somewhere between 1-3% of the population is antisocial or psychotic. I assume you believe a rational person would believe the way you believe. I then extrapolated to show a random sampling of papers and media could be as unlikely as a small fraction of a percent to at best 1 in 3 (definitely possible). If you don't agree there has been immense pressure across corporate, media and academia for left leaning views since at least Trump i don't really know what to say. Guess we are done. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem > A Fermi problem (or Fermi question, Fermi quiz), also known as an order-of-magnitude problem, is an estimation problem in physics or engineering education, designed to teach dimensional analysis or approximation of extreme scientific calculations. Fermi problems are usually back-of-the-envelope calculations. Fermi problems typically involve making justified guesses about quantities and their variance or lower and upper bounds. In some cases, order-of-magnitude estimates can also be derived using dimensional analysis. A Fermi estimate (or order-of-magnitude estimate, order estimation) is an estimate of an extreme scientific calculation. I admitted I was wrong about the Sinclair case I don't know why you keep referring back to it.

I'm not talking individual instances but the set. Remember the joint probability of independence is the product of all said event. So take 50 views, what's the probability these are all the same? If it's 90% they would agree because only perfectly rational people have your preferred view it's 0.005%. If it's 98% (let's call the 2% the white nationalist ignorance factor), then it's 36% they would all agree.

I picked a source that a liberal would take. Yarvins isn't a shit poster given the depth of his writings. He's half Jewish. He's written a lot about Thomas Carlyle who was contemporary with Walt Whitman. People without nuance take his discussions about what an 1850s writer says and conclude he's racist. I don't know why you keep saying, "you don't believe that" when you can take practically any 2021 liberal issue: trans kids, George Floyd, vax mandates and see that NYT, NBC, Harvard, and Yale will have the exact same take with a narrow Overton Window. Some theory is needed to explain it.

That's a little unfair and not being charitable at all and even a little cunty to the only person engaging with you. The concept I was describing and thought the Sinclair clip showed was this: https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/16/24266512/jd-vance-curtis-yarvin-influence-rage-project-2025 > For Yarvin, democracy is an illusion: elections make people think they have a say in what happens, but the Cathedral, his catchall term for journalistic institutions and elite universities, runs everything. Monarchy, in this theory, is the only honest government. The Cathedral refers to all institutions not just ones owned by one man. The idea being it's not the Cathedral but explicit messaging unification from InterNews.

I simply looked at the video talking disinformation and I remembered it when it went around. Has disinformation been a smear against the left or right? Trump's preferred term is fake news. He would have, I assume at the time, not claimed that social media and the Internet was disinformation. He reserved that for the mainstream media. I am happy to be wrong that was protrump messaging. The main point I made with it was the media was in lockstep with messaging since at least Trump and maybe before even in publications and TV news that should have had some ideological diversity. The prevailing theory was an abstract concept called the cathedral (or iron polygon) which is decentralized. If there was a direct funding it was in fact centralized.

For sure, short and medium term that will probably be worse, especially for small to medium sized manufacturing businesses. Fox, like every other network, is trash. I've said that before. My take on TV news comes from "Amusing Ourselves to Death" I have a bridge to sell you. Rental and housing market nearly everywhere I track are still out of control, with some exceptions. If you compare to pandemic here, then yeah, but if you go back to 2018 prices are still 2-3x. Groceries and restaurants are particularly egregious. Look at jump tickets! There is definitely some wage growth in low wage work. I know i see what looks like a lot of money for that posted on job openings but it doesn't help if you're paying $2000 a month for rent, $400 a week on groceries.

My wife's company did not care if you were tested they enforced it as vax only. Several other companies I was familiar with similar. Mine gave a quasi way out, where you could attest you had a vax but didn't have to show proof. The practical implementations, especially in blue areas, were more severe. You don't think the government spending and printing money, tripling the money supply, causes prices to increase? If the government didn't have to print money to pay these people and their vast patronage network you think they would print money indescriminitely as they have since 2008?

I said I don't want to pay $100 for a hamburger I'm not flying in a 100LL airplane to get. I don't want the money supply tripled again so we can pretend to pay for gay trans musicals in Gaza while lining people's pockets with tax money.

Seriously? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59989476 Disinformation on social media was Trump's thing?

The media did cause 40 somethings whose risk from Covid was roughly on par to a weekend of skydiving to act like they were playing Russian roulette by walking their dog. I saw a person run into traffic because someone got 20 ft away from them. These people that believed normal society was now Russian roulette were made that way by the media that conflated a high IFR in 80 year olds with the general population risk. Biden directly tried to force private companies under OSHA to fire people unwilling to vaccinate. I know people who worked at companies remotely that were impacted.

How could you not believe it?

Can you explain how when wages remain constant and prices for housing, insurance, education and food triples everyone is supposed to afford life and basic necessities? Anecdotally I'm paying the same or more in a medium cost of living city as I did living in Santa Monica 7 years ago. The decision is between 2-4 million possibly impacted (if you add contractors) and all 170 million labor age people in the country losing the ability to pay for basic necessities. I worked/do work in the private sector, so I don't really see the comparison. I just wanted to be left alone. This USAID/InterNews system seems to have been weaponized directly at many people. Just from the media and Internet censorship and narratives that caused Covid and to make people hysterical, yeah I want anyone involved in that to go back to working in Starbucks so they can't wield power over anyone ever again.

What specifically? The fact every media org had the same messaging (even ones that should have had differing views) seems like a good indicator it's not bullshit. If you look here I voted for Elon and Vance over Trump so yeah, this is what I was hoping would happen. Whether it sticks and isn't just performative is another matter. I'd rather the $100 hamburger not be because our country has been looted for the last two decades. Make the $100 hamburger an aviation thing again. Something had to be done about this chart.

They've been fairly clear all political sides benefit from this. Benz specifically pointed out InterNews turned domestic after 2016 and he is right leaning. But the data shows tons of Republicans benefited from the payments USAID made. For Benz ended up focusing on internet censorship I don't remember the reasons.