US Politics - A Society in Meltdown

Is it gone that bad on all sides? So you would just watch the channel of whatever political persuasion you are no wonder the country is so polarised.

The country is so polarized largely because of the mainstream media, who long ago gave up their role to report the news but now see it as their responsibility to push an agenda and tell people what to think. Fox obviously set the standard during the Obama years, but CNN and MSNBC are now just as bad, or actually worse as their idea of debate is five people on a panel agreeing with each other.

Luckily about 40% of the population identify as Independents, which would give you some hope from the madness.

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https://twitter.com/titaniamcgrath/status/1098670635792912385?s=21

:grinning:

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It was satire.

I’m aware.

Here’s a bit about another prominent Fox “personality”, and what her brother thinks of her.

“I think she’s a monster,” Curtis repeatedly said in an interview with The Daily Beast.

And off Twitter, Curtis doesn’t have much better to say about his sister.

In a telephone interview with The Daily Beast, the soft-spoken older brother criticized Laura’s show, described her personality as “destructive,” and characterized her as generally “extremely angry.”

“She’s very smart, she’s well spoken, but her emotional heart is just kind of dead,” he said. “And you see it in her face when you see her on TV. She’s ready to destroy. She does not listen to understand—she listens to respond. And her response is always an attack.”

The point of the Twitter account, Curtis said, is not to air out his sibling rivalry or resentments. Rather, he uses it to point out how she has disappointed her older brother.

“The reason I’m sharing these details is because of what is happening in our country,” Curtis said. “I feel like a bit of a whistle-blower in trying to unveil hypocrisy.”

He added: “Our country has been thrown into this divisive state. So now I feel like I have got to speak out, I’ve got to speak out for my own sanity.”

Curtis said he didn’t always believe his relationship with his sister would be adversarial, even though she held political views that he disagrees with. At one time, Curtis said, he and Laura were “very close,” vacationing together, spending time in Washington, D.C., and sharing personal details about their lives.

But he acknowledged that they have “very limited contact at this point,” which he attributes to political differences rooted particularly in her past statements about the LGBT community.

As a student at Dartmouth in the 1980s, Ingraham ran the school’s right-wing newspaper, The Dartmouth Review , which had been known for its controversial statements about race. She infamously assigned a reporter to attend and secretly record a gay students’ association meeting in which some closeted students shared their experiences. The paper published excerpts and quotes from the meeting, which ended up outing at least one student, and labeled gay students with offensive slurs.

In a 1997 op-ed apologizing for her actions, she attributed her changing opinions about issues including same-sex marriage to her experience witnessing her brother’s loving relationship with his longtime partner, who died of AIDS.

Curtis told The Daily Beast that, at the time, he was moved by the piece.

But he said Laura became more religious in subsequent years, and began to waver in her newly empathetic positions on LGBT rights. In private conversations with her brother about issues like same-sex marriage, she said she would have to “agree to disagree” with him.

He told The Daily Beast that, to him, Laura’s change of heart on LGBT issues and gay marriage at the time constituted a betrayal.

“That goes against my ethics,” he recalled thinking. “You’re destroying me. It’s hideous, it’s hideous behavior.” He added: “That’s what I’m trying to unveil here, the hypocrisy. ‘Family’s first, I know about gay rights, my brother is gay.’ It’s all a sham.”

Curtis said that for a long time he chose to publicly overlook their sharp political differences.

But the addition of her incendiary show to the Fox News prime-time lineup and the stark oppositional politics of the Trump era prompted him to break his silence.

“The divisiveness in this country has cut through not just friendships, but it’s cut through families,” he said. “I was doing that dance with my sister for a while, we were very tight, her anger was funny to me back then.”

Curtis said he is saddened by how his sister’s outspoken punditry has destroyed their relationship.

“It is not easy for me,” he said. “My heart has been bruised, it has been kind of irreparably bruised. But I’m trying to illuminate and shed a light on hypocrisy.”

What do you think of this? I was a big NPR fan back in the day

I’ll have to dig it up but I read an article on peoples perceptions of media outlets which was interesting. A lot of it was obvious like Republicans regarding CNN as biased and Democrats the same for Fox. Both regarded Breitbart and VOX as biased which is at least encouraging.

A mate of mine went to dungannon academy when monsignor dennis faul was in charge. He told them they were in the perfect position to understaand how the media worked- they were experts in what was happening in the six counties, they should read the papers accordingly.

News media have perfected the art of appealing to confirmation bias. To hell with pursuit of the truth.

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This should be your mantra going forward. It’s already been the reality for at least as long as you’ve been on this forum.

“A good newspaper should console, congratulate and infuriate in unequal measure”. Can’t remember who said it, but i’d say they’d a keen sense of irony.

The Guardian is much further left than in that graph. It’s opinion pieces are shrieking messes of ‘progressive’ nonesense on a daily basis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYiwrUbfw1A

this thread

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Hella 'tegrity out of this lad. Would ye do yere ould fella like that in court?

This ties in nicely with Trump’s Labour secretary Alexander Acosta striking a pathetically lenient plea bargain for Jeffrey Epstein’s paedophile ring when he was a US Attorney in Florida, without even informing the victims, which was ruled illegal yesterday.

One wonders why Alan Dershowitz is such a shill for Trump, one can make an educated guess.

Lovely exhange here


There is no difference between satire and reality when you’re dealing with the authoritarian left.
Anyone committed to armed peaceful protest must clearly be taken seriously.

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For decades one of the few pieces of satire on the left was Monty Python. Not anymore.

Here’s Texas Republican senator John Cornyn quoting Mussolini.

As you do, like.

What he describes could well be the current US regime.

His attempt to explain what he meant hasn’t gone well.

It’s hard to believe this stuff is actual real politics in the US today, not satire.