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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Don't trust anybody in a position to be influential--lawyer, politician--who says the Internet is making anybody "stupid." The Internet is a channel. The info pours, you sift, you compare, you do the research. You know sure as hell truth is a possibility, as it never is in the press. How long did the establishment hide the Northwoods thing? Cover up the war crimes of Kissinger and Nixon? The assassinations? Weapons of mass destruction? Because of the internet, I knew things four years ago that are only becoming mainstream info now. Maligning the internet is a ploy to get people to accept censorship and control.
As this Administration lurches its way to hell, dragging us all in its fulsome wake, I have wondered how it could be? I know things from reading on the Internet that are never NEVER revealed in the establishment press. Who the f@#k owns the press? Who owns the publishing houses? Who owns the cable and news stations? The tv stations? Hello--is anybody there? When the channels of communication are owned by a handful who are all in with each other, how much "information" are we really going to get? We are going to get what "they" want us to get.
I rarely read newspapers, mainstream mags, nor do I watch mainstream tv. Cable I view with wariness, though it comes through from time to time.
The Internet is not making us "stupid" any more than newspapers, magazines, books, or any other form of communication.
The only reason certain people say that is because they want desperately to undermine peoples' faith in their last resort to truth. Not everything is truth, but if you look carefully, you can find it. You'll never find it in the NYT or WaPo unless one them had an accident.
Case in Point
Cass Sunstein seems to believe the people represent the greatest danger to Democracy...
I guess the pundit sage class figures their phony baloney jobs are jeopardy.
As I recall, O'Reilly was downright vicious to someone on his show who'd lost a family member to 9/11, but questioned the President Bush's hair-trigger reaction.
And I've heard O'Reilly now and then, on other occasions. He is far from civil toward people who disagree with him.
Its requires very little effort. The internet amplifies stupidity. It connects the stupid with their likeminded peers.(So does talk radio.)
Sifting facts and thinking is harder and takes more time. The internet is the greatest tool ever for gathering information, learning and forming opinions.
Maybe stupid, lazy and angry people will be more likely (probability) to be polarized by the net.
What the author seems to miss is that left and right in the blogosphere are NOT the same. Take Salon, ThinkProgress or the Huffingtonpost - ANY rightwing "troll" is welcome to go on there and participate in the discussion, which they do lustily. But we on the left are NOT welcome to participate in the discussion on a comparable rightwing site such as Redstate. The second their narrow views are challenged, my account is banned, and if I keep trying, my IP address is banned.
Al Gore recently said it best, that the "on one hand, on the other hand" approach to treating differing opinions as simply 2 sides of the same coin is not constructive. Please, Mt. Sunstein, stop insulting us by saying we are just like the Republicans, we just have different opinions. We are not. We have had total control of the government many times before and nothing like what is happening now has ever happened. Our political leanings are as much about our interaction with other citizens than anything else. And that is not nearly the same.
The Blog Report each day lists selected blogs from both sides. I regularly click through, and occasionally comment on the righty blogs.
And, how would Sunstein deal with John Cole at Balloon Juice? Mr. Cole was a righty, but to me only occasionally descended into wingnuttery, at least the links from Salon didn't go to the really crazy Michelle Malkin/Who Killed Vince Foster area. Not long ago he left the republican party and became a democrat. I occasionally posted mild comments questioning his entries, and so did others, and it could conceivably be that those commenters from the left played some small role in his change of mind.
"Its not that the Democrats are too partisan, they're NOT PARTISAN ENOUGH in fighting against what has emerged as a neo fascist ethic from the right."
If the internet really made people stupid the right would have passed a law by now making it compulsory to use the internet. The problem is exactly the opposite: the internet informs people in an unfiltered way and makes them question the political status quo. That's the problem conservatives have with it. Having spent about 200 years forming a tame, bland, dysfunctional media that's wedded to the right, they now find an empty barn and a horse that's bolted. Sometimes I watch 'Today' on TV for about 5 minutes and then I think 'Why an I doing this to myself?' and turn it off. The amount of money that's spent on a show that sets out never to inform anyone about anything is scandalous. Yes, if you want to find a medium that really makes people stupid try 'current affairs' TV. It takes all my self control not to hurl a very large hammer at the screen as they babble about the perfect barbecue and what shape handbag everyone will have this spring. And then some conservative stooge comes on and lies his or her head off and you sit there thinking, 'What's wrong with these people,don't they know we know they're lying?' Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
From 1960 to 1992 I voted Republican - always. Except sometimes in Boston and then Providence there might not have been a Republican candidate, so I voted for the Dem.
In 1992, I moved to a suburb east of Kansas City and saw for the first time what the Religious Right had done to the GOP and from that time on I have voted for Democrats. My point is that I know both sides and I feel I have legitimate reasons for voting as a Liberal.
What has gone is any hope of a meeting of the 2 sides. Even now when Republians know how their constituents feel about the war, they will not go against Bush. Hopefully their supporters will turn them out of office, but I don't see that happening.
It seems as though the worst thing you can do is to agree with someone from the other party.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
