It's becoming damned near impossible to blog about politics these days, because the political world is chock to the brim with unreliable narrators. I can't trust anything I read about Trump in the MSM, because they aren't even trying to be objective about what's happening. The right-wing media is either completely on board with whatever Trump is doing, or the few NeverTrumpers around are still fulminating about disputes that were resolved months ago.
Until and unless we start to get some clarity, I'm not sure what to do. I suspect we may be changing gears around here, at least for a while.
7 comments:
Please, we need YOUR clarity. We know you have clear opinions about what SHOULD be happening. Just contrast news reports with that and let us sort out the inconsistencies. For example, most of us know the "Muslim ban" is a lie, so what do we think of a policy that begat such a lie?
It's been difficult for decades, in my view. Yes, the right did a better job covering the chicanery of Clinton and Obama than it does now for Trump, but I've had to read between the lines of articles for decades. The original documents are still out there, no matter how badly the AP and others mangle it.
There are certainly some peculiar trends in the news lately. For example, the Star Tribune has taken to reporting the most recent Saturday Night Live skits on the front page. I've also noted the grammatical construction "Trump White House" when reporting on this administration. I don't remember habitual references to the "Obama White House". It's not scientific, but I googled Trump White House in quotes and found 3.97 million references. When I googled Obama White House, the total was 546,000. That is after 8 years of the latter administration, and one month of the present one.
there is nothing to be trusted. i just now was able to sus out the truth of what really happened per the 'muslim ban'... and its an old story now.
Absolutely right, BB, about "reading between the lines." I gave up the Star and Sickle because it would take me hours every morning to sort through the bias and the grammar, spelling and contextual errors. It was too difficult to dig out what the real facts were amidst all the loaded language, and you still did not know what facts had been deliberately left out. Now if you could get two or three sources, preferably including some conservative blog (ahem...) to agree on the basic fact, you could consider yourself "informed" on that issue. And if you depended on something like the Star and Tribulation you were just plain ignorant, or perhaps even MISinformed.
Jerry, I'd go a slightly different tack, and suggest that all is not lost in even the most biased news sources. You can distort the lede, but there will be corollary facts that the journalists won't think to change that, when viewed in context, totally contradict the first few sentences.
And to get to that point, I've found that my best resources are not journalists of any type, but simply points of reference that do not move--older volumes of history, the basic principles of physics and chemistry, and the like. Bloggers can be great, but they are no substitute for a good liberal education. (in the old sense, of course)
Very true. Each of us must be our own "fact checker" and the more we know, the greater our sensitivity to the "smell test" in news reportage. Although that has become pretty overloaded lately and we are, like the commercial, becoming "nose blind" to headlines like "Muslim ban" to the degree there is almost no point in reading further. Likewise with "hottest year ever."
It is bad enough when the politicians tell you we must do something to avert catastrophic warming, and then have the government scientists themselves tell us that this "something" will amount to a lowering of "average global temperature" over 100 years of something far LESS than the measurement error. Yes, if you can find the facts you can dismiss the headline, but that unfortunately doesn't stop the misinformation or the perverse policy-making.
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