What has become of conservatism?

[Alydael]

There's a reason people bring up Fox; your conspiracy theory conveniently ignores the existence and popularity of conservative media outlets. It's also self-defeating to double down on claiming every media outlet is in the bag for the Democrats, and then demonstrate that you don't know what you're talking about in the next sentence.



Generally speaking, Fox has always killed CNN in ratings for one simple reason: CNN sucks.

Although, it is impressive in a way how Fox has managed to dominate cable news since the early 2000's. Fox was one of the first cable networks that realized consumers weren't all that interested in seeing real news; they wanted feel-good stories that matched their values and scandals that massaged their moral outrage glands. Let's not forget the entertaining pundits who provided reassurance that you weren't American unless you were a flag worshiping, God-fearing defender of the words Merry Christmas. Fox knows how to market to their audience quite well. There's a reason Bill O'Reilly has his Talking Point Memos on the screen and reads along with them; the age demographics that watch him most likely can't a hear a fucking word he's saying.

I honestly can't blame Fox either, they responded to demand that nobody else was meeting. America had just come off a brutally long decade of scandals and frenzy: The O.J Trial, Clinton sex scandals and defamation of women, the school shooting at Columbine and the effect it had on schools everywhere, etc. America was like a junkie in desperate need of some smack.

And then it was September 11, 2001.

Fox stepped up to the plate and delivered what people wanted to hear back in those days: America's got this. It's a good thing too because not many stations were interested in saying it at that time. We had great educators and free thinkers like bell hooks, who passive-aggressively accused the government of state terrorism less than a month after the planes hit. And who could forget my favorite ethically blind lefty Michael Moore, who claimed the "insurgents" in Iraq--the same people who used IEDs on our soldiers and blew up Shia Mosques--were comparable to the Minutemen during the American Revolution. It's anyone's guess if Moore ever figured out that he was praising Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but I digress. I honestly liked Fox back then, not so much for the opinion stuff, but because they had some decent reporting, and still do to be completely honest.

Regardless, many will pretend that it wasn't all the rage back then to whine about the duplicity of media and blame the Military Complex, Capitalism, and the Right for it. I remember very well what news was like before and after 9/11, and it's hilarious to me how the tin-foil hats reassign ownership of the shadowy cabal that "controls" the mainstream media when their party loses favor. Then again, all one has to do is "swallow the red pill" to realize how the theory of "globalist control" is just a watered down substitute for something much more intellectually pathetic and sinister, and can be found on the far left and the far right.






Yeah, real crystal.



I can see why you like Trump so much. He, like you did here, injects unintelligibility into the conversation, rather than making a coherent argument and supporting it with rational thought.



You sound like a solid objective thinker. A real Sherlock Holmes, if you will.

It's a shame you didn't chase down the facts on that dancing Wolf Blitzer video you mentioned as evidence of liberal media bias earlier. You would have realized that an American conservative writer of all people, debunked that fatuous "story" months ago.

https://spectator.org/drudge-gets-wo...nn-party-too/#

I didn't have to chase the Wolf Blitzer story, I actually watched it on tv because I was listening to Hillary's speech on the final night. As she was thanking people by the front of the stage, the camera panned over to what appeared to be Wolf Blitzer dancing with a glass of wine in his hand. Ok, "dancing" might be a stretch but he was trying his best! He was swaying back and forth, trying to dance. The article does not doubt that facts, just whether he was celebrating all his hard work or Hillary's nomination.

The article you posted is a perfect example of why I trace all the stories back to the facts and make my own opinion. I am not going to let some journalist at the spectator tell me what I saw. Not only is he telling you what you saw, he is telling other papers/ sites that they are wrong. There is the arrogance of the press on full display. "No, no, no- you didn't see what you saw; this is the right way to look at it: " Yeah, thanks, but no thanks.

As for the press bias being a "conspiracy." Keep telling yourself that. By the end of the election the majority of the press was not even bothering to hide their bias. Just look at some of the newspaper covers from the Wash post and Daily news. The bias is on full display.

For many of Trump's speeches, he tried to speak from the heart. Sometimes you come off a little convoluted when you do that. I would rather have somebody try to speak from the heart and stumble, then have some plastic, fake speech written up by some writer to be totally politically correct.

But to call Trump an idiot or something like that is just total nonsense. He created a billion dollar enterprise in real estate, tv and construction. Sure, he started with some money from his father, but that is no garuntee of any success.

I used to work construction and I can't tell you the number of times I saw the son totally ruin the father's company when they took over. More often they ruined it then built it. Trump took something worth a couple of million and turned it into billions, billions. His record spans back decades. It is hilarious to watch the talking heads in the media insult him. What have they done? Report their take on news to a camera? Yeah, they are real gems..... We are so lucky to have their opinions in our society, they really contribute a lot.

Whether you like him or not, calling him names is not only totally childish, but it just isn't born out by his record.

[Endus]

As for the press bias being a "conspiracy." Keep telling yourself that. By the end of the election the majority of the press was not even bothering to hide their bias. Just look at some of the newspaper covers from the Wash post and Daily news. The bias is on full display.

Your problem is that you don't understand what "bias" means.

Journalists are not required, nor even expected, to not have political opinions. Having those viewpoints does not make them biased. It makes them people. It's only "bias" in a journalistic sense if they're misleading people with their writing, as to the facts, it does not include expressing their own opinion or preferences, it does not include giving equal consideration in every instance, and so forth.

You've invented a nonexistent requirement that journalists be your definition of "fair", by which you mean "give equal treatment to all parties regardless of the facts", and then you're blaming the journalists for your nonexistent requirement being balls-out silly as a concept.

If two candidates are asked "what is 2+2", and the first answers "4", and the second says "5", it isn't "bias" to point out that Candidate #2 is a bumbling idiot that can't add 2+2.

[bladeXcrasher]

Your problem is that you don't understand what "bias" means.

Journalists are not required, nor even expected, to not have political opinions. Having those viewpoints does not make them biased. It makes them people. It's only "bias" in a journalistic sense if they're misleading people with their writing, as to the facts, it does not include expressing their own opinion or preferences, it does not include giving equal consideration in every instance, and so forth.

You've invented a nonexistent requirement that journalists be your definition of "fair", by which you mean "give equal treatment to all parties regardless of the facts", and then you're blaming the journalists for your nonexistent requirement being balls-out silly as a concept.

If two candidates are asked "what is 2+2", and the first answers "4", and the second says "5", it isn't "bias" to point out that Candidate #2 is a bumbling idiot that can't add 2+2.

Thanks for the laugh, using a math example as an analogy to political opinion.

[Endus]

Thanks for the laugh, using a math example as an analogy to political opinion.

In a lot of instances, it's just as clear.

Take climate change. This is "math". It's objective reality as we know it. And yet, it's kicked around as a political football in the USA. Denying anthropogenic climate change is fundamentally equivalent to insisting that 2+2=5, and the media pointing out the idiocy of the position is not "bias".

[Glorious Leader]

In a lot of instances, it's just as clear.

Take climate change. This is "math". It's objective reality as we know it. And yet, it's kicked around as a political football in the USA. Denying anthropogenic climate change is fundamentally equivalent to insisting that 2+2=5, and the media pointing out the idiocy of the position is not "bias".

If the steelers win the game and the sports journalist says the red skins won its not an opinion its a lie. The media should call out lies but the problem is when they do this politicians the politicians will just stop giving them access.

This serves to erode the publics trust in the media. When you can succesfuly cast doubt and frame issues of truth merely as opinion then institutions which could thwart the neo liberal project become incappable of doing so. Science, the media, unions, the church, the legal system all pillars the could represent a collective force againt this rampant individualism that seems to be the prevailing neoliberal philosophy. This is very much born of post modernism. You get this truth and moral relativism from people lile focault and derrida who would.be shocked at its abuse but are none the less responsible for the intellectual philosophy behind it. Its all well and good when youre undermining institutions like segregation but if you apply the post modern critique to every sphere of life then nothing can be trusted.

[Vatez]

It is indeed a mess.

[downnola]

I didn't have to chase the Wolf Blitzer story, I actually watched it on tv because I was listening to Hillary's speech on the final night. As she was thanking people by the front of the stage, the camera panned over to what appeared to be Wolf Blitzer dancing with a glass of wine in his hand. Ok, "dancing" might be a stretch but he was trying his best! He was swaying back and forth, trying to dance. The article does not doubt that facts, just whether he was celebrating all his hard work or Hillary's nomination.

The article you posted is a perfect example of why I trace all the stories back to the facts and make my own opinion. I am not going to let some journalist at the spectator tell me what I saw. Not only is he telling you what you saw, he is telling other papers/ sites that they are wrong. There is the arrogance of the press on full display. "No, no, no- you didn't see what you saw; this is the right way to look at it: " Yeah, thanks, but no thanks.

As for the press bias being a "conspiracy." Keep telling yourself that. By the end of the election the majority of the press was not even bothering to hide their bias. Just look at some of the newspaper covers from the Wash post and Daily news. The bias is on full display.

The problem with conspiracy theories are two-fold: They base their claims on spurious information, and their proponents maintain that their theory is unfalsifiable, regardless of what's said to question them.

You're asking me to accept your version of what happened at the DNC based on what you saw on television, without the ability to prove the accuracy of your memory. I'm also supposed to disregard statements from a journalist who was there, because according to you, he's trying to alter my perception of reality.

Perhaps it would be better just to ask you what it would take to disprove your theory. What kind of evidence would it take for you to question your perception of reality? Anyone can mold "facts" to justify an argument without realizing their bias is affecting their judgment. Nobody can prove what is or isn't bullshit until people ask how the theory could be wrong and scrutinize claims made to support it. You can't expect people to do this for themselves at all times; it's a hard thing to do, no matter how smart one thinks they are. That's why cliche's like "the facts speak for themselves" are so intellectually rotten. Facts rarely speak for themselves; they have to be analyzed and interpreted to explain anything.

Ultimately, this is why free speech is so important for political discussion. Do you trust anyone to tell what you should or shouldn't read? Do you trust anyone to tell you what claims you can or can't question? If the answers to those questions are no, you should be just as opposed to Trump's assault on the freedom of the press as I am.

Do you think Trump doesn't have any bias? Are we assuming that he is somehow less biased than any other mammal? I certainly hope not. Nobody, not even the President of the United States, should be able to bully the press into one-sided reporting because they criticize him. That's a move you would expect from Fidel Castro, not the POTUS.

Whether you like him or not, calling him names is not only totally childish, but it just isn't born out by his record.

Trump has no problem calling people names and insulting them on Twitter. The difference between him and me, though, is that he's going to hold the highest office in United States government and that requires a standard of professionalism. The consequences of his actions matter a good deal to the survival of civilization. That may sound hyperbolic to you, but as you know, there was a time when Kennedy almost killed all of us. Imagine Trump in that same scenario and tell me with a straight face that thought doesn't make you even slightly nervous.

- - - Updated - - -

Thanks for the laugh, using a math example as an analogy to political opinion.

Aside from the detail that you can explain most of what we know of the universe in mathematical terms, logic plays a significant role in political argument and arithmetic.

[Caolela]

I gave three examples in their article that were wrong, one of them required them to be mind readers and the ability to mind read is not an actual thing, they also made a claim that millions of people will be hacked, without any evidence that the legislation allows that, let alone that it will happen.

What three examples? I must have missed them before you whined to the mods about getting "flamed" when it wasn't directed at you specifically.

[Kalis]

What three examples? I must have missed them before you whined to the mods about getting "flamed" when it wasn't directed at you specifically.

The three examples I have mentioned multiple times, that you seem to struggle remembering from one post to the next and I can't be arsed to go over yet again.

And I didn't report you.

[Caolela]

The three examples I have mentioned multiple times, that you seem to struggle remembering from one post to the next and I can't be arsed to go over yet again.

And I didn't report you.

You've simply posted opinions "multiple" times while ignoring the reality of the surveillance state.

[Dsc]

We've decided to leave the RINOS, Cucks, and Commies wayside. We call it Americanism now.

[Wells]

Nothing has "become" of conservatism. This is what its always been. We're just seeing the mask pulled back. The GOP hasn't governed as conservatives when it power for decades.

[Elegiac]

We've decided to leave the RINOS, Cucks, and Commies wayside. We call it Americanism now.

All while relying on the Russians to get you elected. Pro strategy right there.