I’m confused about this version of events that some are supporting. In your view, why does the media have a motive to engage in a secret conspiracy to not present any solutions other than an endless shutdown? How would that benefit ‘The media’?
It's not a secret! Many media outlets and government officials have been very explicit about it: shutdowns are the only option for us, it's irresponsible to demand a date when they'll end, and it's very offensive to ask whether they're worth the cost.
I do share your confusion about why the media would say such things, but they are.
I'm not at all confused about why journalists relay information such as that, because generally it is combined with a very reasonable logic about why we're doing that.
Like Dr Fauci said, the virus decides the timetable, not us. Nobody knows when it will be safe to reopen.
Many businesses are simply not safe for people to mingle in. Many people don't want to understand or take the distancing guidelines seriously, if they're even adequate.
As far as whether they're worth the cost, there's plenty of room for speculation about that. I do think that reducing a potential overload on hospitals is a wise plan.
The media is not monolithic, but a large subset of it is fervently against Trump, against Trump supporters, and against Republicans in general. The worse the pandemic and shutdown get, the more this subset of the media can use it to bash Trump, Trump supporters, and Republicans. Generally speaking, the worse the economy gets, the less likely that the incumbent president will be re-elected. I don't think that this media slant is the result of a conspiracy, though, at least not for the most part. I'd guess that probably most of the slant comes from subconscious bias, not conscious intent.
I'm against Trump too, for various reasons - for example, I don't like his authoritarian mindset, his stance on torture, his stance on surveillance, and his foreign policy towards Iran - but I'm not a fan of the constant hysterics of the anti-Trump media either. Some of those people would claim that Trump was somehow being deceitful and evil even if he just said that 2 + 2 = 4.
There are, I'm sure, other sources of media bias on this matter as well, but this is the one that immediately comes to my mind.
How do you feel about the right-wing media that was obsessively critical about Obama for strangely irrelevant things such as his choice of mustard or color of suits?
It seems to me that almost all of the criticism of Trump is well justified by his incoherence, rudeness, anti-intellectualism, blatant nepotism, lack of structure, refusal to divest, repeated untruthful statements, lack of logical consistency, questionable policies, and apparent tendency towards cronyism.
>How do you feel about the right-wing media that was obsessively critical about Obama for strangely irrelevant things such as his choice of mustard or color of suits?
I feel that it was idiotic propaganda.
>It seems to me that almost all of the criticism of Trump is well justified by his incoherence, rudeness, anti-intellectualism, blatant nepotism, lack of structure, refusal to divest, repeated untruthful statements, lack of logical consistency, questionable policies, and apparent tendency towards cronyism.
The problem as I see it is too many Trump haters go beyond the many valid reasons to hate him and instead, due to conscious or subconscious bias, start to do things like take things he says out of context, or read more into those things than is necessarily justifiable, or try to paint him as a uniquely evil figure even though we have had presidents in recent memory who literally supported death squads in third world countries... etc.
I don't really have enough karma to be able to waste responding, but I'll make an exception for you, since you asked more politely than most.
First, there's not much secrecy involved. It isn't a secret at all that, Hollywood, the American mainstream media, and the political left are all on the same side. It's been obvious for 30 years now.
What we are currently living through is a left-authoritarian consolidation of power. Like other similar consolidations in the 20th century.
That is why, within 24 hours of the first house-arrest orders, propaganda about how our old lives of freedom are gone forever because they were "irresponsible", and how we must all get used to "the new normal" began.
Dr. Fauci says that physical human contact is a thing of the past ("nobody will ever shake hands ever again"), governors, especially those of "blue states" have all acted to either make their house-arrest orders indefinite (like in CA) or to declare that they will continue for multiple years (as VA announced yesterday, for example).
Enforcement is gradually increased everywhere, and citizens are increasingly encouraged to snitch.
Political protests are banned. Even organizing them online is being locked down, with states pressuring Facebook and Google into deleting people's accounts if they even mention the existence of a protest.
The thing is, it takes time to take a society used to freedom and fully consolidate it.
The house arrest orders are the start -- now, when the government eventually let's people out of their houses, but only on conditions (like wearing a tacking wristband, showing your papers to any government official, having to have "a legitimate purpose"), people will be so desperate to leave home that they'll agree.
With "contact tracing" apps and "mandatory isolation", the government will be able to declare any person they need to silence as "contaminated", and they go back to imprisonment, with no recourse, no due process, no burden of proof. Even better, having communicated with a "contaminated" person automatically adds you to the list of the unpersoned.
The economic disruption has already made 1 in 4 Americans dependent upon government handouts to survive. Every week, another 4-5% join them. An authoritarian government needs it's people to be dependent for survival, in order to ensure cooperation.
Meanwhile, the food supply is being turned off. We already have a third of our food production offline, and are most of the way toward driving all independent farmers and ranchers into bankruptcy. We are pretty much guaranteed to have widespread hunger by the fall. This will leave the way for a government takeover of food production.
But, in order for the consolidation to work, they have to keep us all imprisoned willingly until they finish consolidating enough power to make it permanent, or we will all just go back to our lives as free people, the economy will recover, and people won't be dependent upon the would-be dictators for their continued survival.
The next 3-6 months are critical to breaking the back of the capitalist system and soften everyone up to accept the new freedomless world. It will take that long to drive enough people to poverty, hunger, and desperation for them to be willing to go to the authoritarians and beg to be ruled.
This isn't a secret, and it isn't really new. It's more or less how every current left-authoritarian state was formed -- only with more technology and fewer guns.
It's interesting to see the effect of a strong confirmation bias at play. I appreciate you taking the time to respond, and would challenge you to think through your perceptions if you started from a different assumption.
Narratives drive how we see the world. In concrete, objective, measurable terms -- what do you mean by a "left-authoritarian consolidation of power"? From my perspective, the right is the one really good at consolidating and protecting their power, while the left is a little ADD about what they care about. (And are thus less effective at being in charge, even if more Americans profess those beliefs.)
>USSR, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia. These are all successful left-authoritarian power consolidations from the 20th century.
> Other than the WW2 Axis powers, there aren't many major successful right-authoritarian consolidations from last century.
Can you see how you hand-waved the other side away here?
>Many parts of the right are fundamentally opposed to government power, which makes creating a united right-wing front to consolidate totalitarian power really difficult.
Is Trump not considered right-wing? Didn't he recently state that he has ultimate power? Isn't he the one joking about removing term limits, and isn't it the people on the right meming about a Trump dynasty?
> Unlike the American left, which works practically in lock-step, the right is a fractured, fractious mess that can hardly agree on anything, except maybe that the other side is bad sometimes.
I have a 180 degree opposite viewpoint. The left seems to champion smaller clustered causes. The right is unified under a delusion of freedom, controlling women's bodies, and... guns maybe? Saying things to piss off the other side?
It used to pay lip service to being a moral bastion, but lost that argument.
> Even when the Republicans controlled all branches of government from 2016-2018, they couldn't accomplish anything, because unlike in the Democratic party, there's just no unity.
What they accomplished was a restructuring of tax systems to increase the wealth concentration of the richest Americans, at the expense of the entire country.
From there, your comment devolves into repeating talking points without any supporting evidence. They are so removed from my perception of reality, that I'm too tired to even respond to your vague and unsupported thoughts.
That's the power of owning the education system, the media, and all of the big tech businesses.
You don't need the presidency when you can make the presidency meaningless. Look at Trump -- every time he tries to take any position at all, he gets wrecked and ultimately loses. The media destroy him, the tech companies disband any gatherings of his followers.
Besides, unlike the left, the right and Republicans are a fractious, disunited lot. They can't hardly agree on anything -- too many incompatible viewpoints -- so they're almost completely ineffective anyway.
