Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors

They wanted a culture war and a culture war is what they got.

What happened last Wednesday was the apotheosis of the Hate Inc. era, when this audience-first model became the primary means of communicating facts to the population. For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties, from the advent of the Internet to the development of the 24-hour news cycle to the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the Fox-led discovery that news can be sold as character-driven, episodic TV in the manner of soap operas, the concept of a “Just the facts” newscast designed to be consumed by everyone died out.
 
News companies now clean world events like whalers, using every part of the animal, funneling different facts to different consumers based upon calculations about what will bring back the biggest engagement kick. The Migrant Caravan? Fox slices off comments from a Homeland Security official describing most of the border-crossers as single adults coming for “economic reasons.” The New York Times counters by running a story about how the caravan was deployed as a political issue by a Trump White House staring at poor results in midterm elections.
 
Repeat this info-sifting process a few billion times and this is how we became, as none other than Mitch McConnell put it last week, a country: “drifting into two separate tribes.” . . .

We cancelled our cable last week. It’s a start.

Related @EpochTimes: #WallStreetJournal @WSJ retracted a claim that InfoWars founder #AlexJones was among those encouraging the storming of the #USCapitol on Jan. 6.

47 Replies to “Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors”

  1. The big problem is the internet. No matter how weird and disgusting your desires are, instead of being discouraged from engaging in your urge to lick vomit from the feet of morbidly obese women, you can find a group online that talks about it all the time and organizes sessions to engage in! (no, i really have no idea, I’m making a guess that something as sick as I can think of actually exists). There’s no such thing as mental illness or wrong or evil, it’s just “different”.

    Instead of polite conversation face to face and keeping our deepest evil thoughts where they belong, we can find a group that says exactly what we’re thinking and is going to do something about it. And the news media and political campaigns tap right into that evil in all of us.

  2. Well, it’s been going on for a long time now and it’s not only “the news”. Try “sports”.
    Solution? I certainly don’t have one. Read an annual report, even that’s affected these days.

    And bravo for ditching the cable. I’ve been toying with that lately, too.

    1. Ditched our satellite tv seven years ago and haven’t missed it one bit. Now if only I could get a couple of family members off it and CNN.

    2. Cancelled our cable, but then Shaw gave us a fancy deal for our Internet that included cable basically for free for two years. (Downside is my wife can and does watch CNN, ugh).

      Back to Texaco Brave. In 1972 I was the Porter (sorry, forgot the position name). Started in April. Ship was still at winter dock on Cherry St in Toronto. First load out of Texaco Port Credit refinery (believe it’s torn down now). Then loading out of Sun Oil in Sarnia to Sault St Marie, Bing Inlet, etc. Only worked until end of June I think, then was in Texaco office in Montreal for rest of summer. (Six degrees of separation here). Lived on Hornell in Pointe Claire.

      1. ntadatrdr: We booted SHAW years ago and got a better deal with TELUS. Three set top boxes, gratis. Going on 15 years or more, now. We own enough TELUS shares, to offset the charges with dividends. I bought my first bunch at $9.

        I got on the Brave in early Oct 1972, that’s why we never crossed paths. Shipped out on the Chief February 1973 and got off in December 1974. Compared to the Brave, laid down 1929 (a classic engine room) the Chief was a floating hotel. The Brave was held together with paint. We lost our steering once on the Chief, just outside Halifax harbor, blew the pump room up in Chatham NB and set the deck on fire down in refinery row in Montreal. Other than that a pretty routine operation.
        When I lived in Pointe Claire…..Glanlynn Road, up from the Pointe Claire station. The brick factory was still in operation, in those days.

        1. I remember that – I lived in Valois and used to cycle through the woods near the brick yard before mountain bikes were invented.

          1. They’d shoot at us with salt rounds, if we got too close to the brick works. My route to school went through those woods. There was a creek/watercourse that drained under Glanlynn Rd, that emptied into Valois Bay. In the spring it would be a raging, sucking torrent. They lost a few kiddies that played too close and they’d find them out in Valois Bay after.

          2. You are so right. I think the “big” summer of the “pits” I had probably just turned 14 (the legal drinking age was still 21 (as you said, as if that meant anything in Quebec) and did not go to 18 until about 1972?), so Caboose at the Mapes and Pub at the Edgewater was probably starting the winter a year later, so 15 going on 16. Probably ran into you there. Ultimately settled in backroom at Dag’s in village.

        2. The Brickyard “Pits” became our weekend nights underage “party” spot before we could get in the bar. Probably 50-100 kids there at times.

          1. You must have been very young then given Quebec’s reputation whereby the legal drinking age was just a suggestion. My first beer in a bar was at the Edgewater during an automobile ice race – I think I was either 15 or 16. I practically grew up at the Green Hornet.

    3. BRAVO Kate…welcome to the Streaming world..!!

      Buy yourself an NVIDEA Shield….BEst Streaming Device around. (2019 version) is around $220….the 500gb is significantly more.

      …once hooked up, you can install pretty much any Streaming app going. Two very good ones are KODI – STREMIO along with U-tube – Netflix and all the others should you so desire.

      About the only thing you might miss..?? Weather Channel…lol.

      1. Been w/o TV cable since 2014. Can’t imagine why people would be so retarded by still paying for garbage on boob tube.
        Toss your money my way.

      2. Netflix is more insidious than cable.

        I cancelled Netflix and ditched cable 8 years ago. I know I need to ditch Amazon, I’m working on it.

  3. Divide and conquer.
    Its easy when most people are looking for confirmation bias rather than the truth.

  4. The pie in the sky here is a mile high. Taibbi is to be admired for his continuing and quixotic efforts to bridge the abyss but he indulges in a false equivalency that always emerges when discussing the broken state of journalism and the role of Trump. What was done to Trump by Democrats was outrageous. It started before he was elected and continued every hour of every day. There was never any intention to “come together” – not for an instant. Fox partisanship was a far cry from the viciousness of the mainstream media. The much-touted unity of Democrats was a unity of evil proportions. All they ever had were the extreme aspects of personality Trump exhibits. Without that egotism and so-called narcissism, Trump wouldn’t have lasted past the first torpedo. What stands are the many and varied accomplishments of Trump’s presidency.

    In domestic disputes, it is necessary for partners to put aside questions of blame, forget about who was more wrong and more right, if they are to recover. But they have love on their side. Political disputes are another matter.

  5. Facts and the truth matter- I have been floored about the narratives that are being pushed in the MSM that are absent of facts (many about law enforcement, the folks that protect us and risk much / earn very little for doing so).

    Cancelled cable, sold big tech stock and big media stock, cancelled Amazon.

    Time to reevaluate all business arrangements and sources of truth..

  6. We do a 6 month “seasonal break” from May 1st to November.
    It’s always good to get your nose further away from the canvas.

  7. Kate, reading just that snippet, once again I find myself yelling to anybody who will listen, stop playing their game! They are children with no morals, never been hungry or without. The adult doesn’t run around the playground countering every ridiculous claim a child makes. Leading by example and discipline for egregious behavior is how we make children acceptable to polite civilized society.

    I posted at Viva/Barnes:

    “They have no morals so lying, cheating, stealing even murder, the end justifies the means. Brainwashed with communist propaganda all through their formative years, living with cognitive dissonance on every subject, never having gone hungry, or without anything they desire, they are still children, playing Lord Of The Flies V2.0.
    Republicans make the mistake of giving in to a spoiled brat every time. Instead of being the adults in the room and saying “No that is unacceptable behavior, these are the consequences for that type of behavior. The Golden Rule, The Ten Commandments, the Rule Of Law, whatever morals make up the Constitution Of The United States, based on a Judeo-Christian heritage, these are what have governed this civilization for centuries, made it prosperous, and allowed you the leisure to sit there and criticize it. Criticize if you will, but there are laws for slander, libel, theft, fraud and murder and just as children are taught how to behave in polite society. through example and discipline so must the Left be taught.”

    In the above snippet we are trying to argue against the childlike want of Open Borders, Immigration, Daca, etc. We know why the children want these candies but they are illegal (mostly) and morally wrong because of the damage to a Nation and hence its citizens, they cause.

    The fact both side are rationalizing or even discussing an invasion of a country by non-citizens is ridiculous. The children can have all the temper tantrums they want but the Rule Of Law must prevail. For every lie, fraud, slander and violent act the Left throws out there in pursuit of their proven deadly agenda, we chase around attempting to dispute each one individually. So they just come up with more and more ridiculous, immoral anti-social proclamations that we try to rebut one after the other.

    They think they want communism believing it to be equality and an easy life. The Right needs to take control by using our Judeo-Christian Rule of Law based on morality, stop chasing every squabble in the playground, and elucidate on what the consequences are for breaking those laws and the benefits of upholding them.

    I don’t know if I am explaining this properly. The Left has us chasing our tails trying to parse every detail of their ridiculous, outlandish immoral behaviour instead of us simply saying that is childish and wrong. Not acceptable, what adult stuff can you bring to the table?

    1. Rick, you’ve explained it very well. I’ve referred to the mindset of the left as suspended adolescence for years now. That’s what was needed when Ilse, She-wolf of the SS, I mean Greta Thunberg, came on the scene. Let her do her little “shame on you” speech with her vacuous mug all screwed up in hatred, then have someone with the biggest, most booming orator’s voice stand up and bellow, “Shut the FUCK UP, kid!” and let the standing ovation begin.

      That idiot lance tried comparing ideas like this with the left’s cancel culture – but that’s because he’s a drooling microcephalic. Nobody has suggested removing leftist channels of communication or persecuting leftists; it’s just that we need genuine adults running the western world, not overgrown kids, or indignant humorless stick-up-ass schoolmarms, or contemptuous power-mad elitists.

  8. Good on you Kate!!! I cut the cord some 10 years ago…bought a cheapass antenna and well whaddya know? 10 channels coming in clear as a bell.
    Of course that wears thin after a while too because I can only stomach so much of CTV and Global schlock.

  9. I stopped watching legacy news media several years ago.  It’s done wonders for my blood pressure and sense of equanimity.  Twitter got nuked nine years ago (I was on it for less than a week before I realized that it was an absolute cesspool).  Blew LinkedIn away awhile ago, when I finally admitted that I almost never used it.  Facebook’s been the hardest to get rid of, because there were certain contacts with my extended family overseas that worked best with FB (although many of my older rellies don’t have any social media presence, and don’t want it).  Anyways, it’s gone now, too.  Good riddance.
    If you’re having trouble getting away from Amazon, remember that sites like Walmart have become major marketplace aggregators for third-party vendors, where you can find many of the same things you could find through Amazon.  And when things go wrong (as they did for me recently with an order), you can take your stuff back to a physical Walmart store and get your money back.
    There’s always alternatives, though they’re harder to find nowadays.
    Oh, and I switched to the Brave browser, away from Firefox.  I should’ve done that a while ago, too.  Live and learn!

  10. First: What about NPR? and PBS? Weren’t these “neutral” platforms supposed to be above the fray? Intellectual ? Not serving “cartoon” news as the writer described Fox. Shame on this writer for ignoring the supposed remedy for extreme partisan News for Profit. The Socialist (not for profit) NPR and PBS. Why does the writer ignore Public Broadcasting? Because it is just as tainted with extreme partisanship as FOX or CNN. Seems there is more than just the Capitalistic profit motive at work here. This socialist writer inconveniently ignores the 600lb gorilla in the room.

    Second: At the heart of this “commodification” of the News … is Moral Relativism. This concept provides the intellectual underpinning for every outrageous and illogical headline ever written. The concept suggests there is no “right” and no “wrong”. Therefore … EVERY … News story can be written from “differing” perspectives. Anything goes. WRONG! The same people who claim to follow “science and data” … gleefully claim that men can “become” women and vice versa. Or … a BLM riot (sorry, not a peaceful protest) is justified … because the latest black criminal wasn’t really resisting arrest. And it is a black man’s “right” to resist arrest because slavery happened 200 years ago.

    Does this mean there is only black and white? No shades of gray? Of course not. Well … except when it comes to race … then there’s ONLY white … and everything else. The problem is we have turned our backs on TRUTH … God’s Truth … and allowed everything to become “opinion”. And now, the tech platforms (that have accelerated a witches brew of “opinions”) … now want to SILENCE one side of those opinions. The Moral Relativism they’ve unleashed and prayed-to … now needs to be crushed as THEY BELIEVE they hold the “Truth”.

    As with all things on the Godless Left … they have reversed one of the central tenets of their religion of the “self”. Now … They lay claim to the black or white “Truth”.

    1. Kenji. NPR and PBS gets hundreds of millions of dollars from government, therefore the rabid liberal/socialist/communist bias.

      1. Yet the Fox-hating author glossed over the “intellectual news” … the “unbiased news” of Public Broadcasting. They still persist in believing themselves to be neutral arbiters of truth and information. They’re no such thing. But the reason they aren’t, doesn’t fit the author’s premise that ‘biased news is driven by capitalism’. Rubbish. It’s driven by ideology, and bad intent.

    2. I stopped supporting the PBS station we get here in Edmonton several years ago.

  11. Taibbi is good, though he perhaps is guilty of not holding the leftist media such as the NYT in as much disdain as he seems to hold the right such as Fox. He correctly points out that the former have indulged in a form of Trump Derangement Syndrome since before Trump was even elected, and he even points to this style of “news reporting” having its roots in the emergence of the 24-hour news cycle corresponding to the rise of CNN, but he never goes down the opposite road to touch, say, the coverage of Obama during his time in office. NYT, CNN, et al could never stop fellating the man; I’d say they’ll do the same for Biden but that’s a disgusting mental image. They’ll wait until Harris is installed before resuming that level of fawning presidential coverage. They’ll just run cover for Biden during his abbreviated term.

    I’ve largely had to stop watching any form of world news on the networks, period. It’s getting to the point I ask my wife to turn it right off or I leave the room. I’ll watch local news, maybe a bit of national; the rest I’ll just read, mostly through blog links.

    Not sure at this point how it will or can ever get better.

    1. “It’s getting to the point I ask my wife to turn
      it right off or I leave the room.”

      exact opposite here, my wife couldn’t stand to
      be in the room with me as i shouted back at
      the idiot box.

      she said, why don’t you try doing without the
      daily news if it makes you so crazy?

      did it and never looked back. i can select my
      trusted news sources and the possibility of
      a burst aneurysm has declined majorly.

      *

      1. NEO, when my wife wants to watch MSM news I tell her to wear headphones because not only do I not want to see it, I don’t want to hear it, she has caught on.

      2. Neo … I had the same routine with 60 Minutes … as I would shout out the questions they should have been asking. My wife and kids had to leave the room … Hahahaha ha

        Now, just like with Sat. Night Live … 60 Minutes NEVER appears on my telly

  12. The guy is trying to save himself from the socialist onslaught by damning Fox.
    It is a necessary preamble to criticizing the socialist extremists.

    One can come to realization that those that are called conservative are severely normal people with no agenda. The basic position being live and let live and make life better.
    It can be said, as Limbaugh often offers, that facts of life are conservative. Which in big scheme of things is actual reality.
    The socialist/fascists would like to label people so as to project some kind of negativity to normal behavior.

    Let’s look at one thing, there is a man and a woman. They will be a man and a woman in spite of the ideologues forcing the political/mass media confab to insist that there are other options.
    One really doesn’t care if a guy wants to be a woman or the other way around, hey, go ahead, knock yourself out, nobody pays attention though you are exposing yourself to ridicule.
    It remains a fact that a guy that wants to be a woman is a guy.

    Of course, the problem arises where everyone is, under the penalty of law, forced to agree or be fined or put in prison. This is the insidious way of the totalitarian dicktators (sic) to insist for you to agree, little bit by little bit by little bit to every idiotic thing they come up with while knowing that those are idiotic things, they just need the agreement from the masses that would support their diktat.
    Masses being what they are will agree to just about anything you throw at them if you have a dicktator with a gift of gab.

    Yeah, the guy goes on and on with the screed, though it is also possible that he may agree with normal people, it just is impossible to do that and remain in a position that he now occupies.

    And right wing or conservatives are none such, they are the most realistic people on the planet.

    Those on the other side are selfish, arrogant, morons, however long they went to school. They have learned only one thing, how to talk sophistry disguised a Sophia.

    Hey … I’m glad to put the world in the proper perspective, you’re welcome …heh.

    1. Taibbi is an honest leftist. Very rare, one in a million, but they do exist. He really does hate Fox News, he hates the right, but he also can’t stomach what the left has become.

      There are other leftists speaking out like Glenn Greenwald. The media ignores them.

    2. Hey Lev, After reading your post, I really felt good about me. Besides me thinking I am a conservative, and normal, You confirmed it. Thanks, I was beginning to lose my grip, these last few weeks. 🙂

  13. Shows the youth and inexperience of the writer.
    I had a very dim view of Progressives long before Fox Television existed.
    Now I have an even lower opinion of Bureaucrats,Media lickers and political creatures.

  14. Human foibles comes to mind. Harping, carping, pissing and moaning, chiding and scolding are all part of the human condition.
    Of course, the media is provocative. Inflammatory, controversial, melodrama drives click bait and IS their revenue stream. How conveniently manipulative is the maudlin sob story, inane sky is falling, or piling on with the witch hunt mob. Sometimes it looks like they can barely contain their glee when they have a tragedy or controversy to exploit or a chance to gin up a war, like they did with Iraq, which they did as shills for the Entrenched bureaucracy, aka the Deep State.

    They pretend the wild eyed geezer drivel of a few people as the serious consensus of the many. They stereotype with abandon. The media seems preoccupied with selectively presenting the damming and omitting the exculpatory and/or other key details. They contrive false controversy by reporting rumors, false or not. Selective is the key word here as they selectively edit their presentations and can even make it appear as though someone said something that they didn’t. Then they ask the accused for a reaction, on the pretense that they are providing their prey with an opportunity to correct the record or defend themselves. Really, they are just trying to up the ante, and playing their targets against one another. If they can create ever more outrageous round robins of accusations and outrage so much the better. I suspect most reporters are not above fabricating or selectively misrepresenting an accusation or off hand remark into something more provacative. In fact, not only do I think a lot of news is contrived/fabricated, I think the reporters and the media insert themselves into much of what passes for news. It seems like bomb throwing, gotcha games, and acting as a provocateur are now acceptable practice in journalism. So much of the news seems about as reliable as the information derived from the childrens’ game “Broken Telephone”.
    I don’t think it is a conspiracy or that everyone in the media is unethical, but even if they are ethical. the temptation to fudge a little to present a coherent, tidy, dramatic, human interest story must be difficult to resist, especially if it is what you want to see and believe.

    1. Ex, no one ever seems to want the “wild eyed geezer drivel” from this geezer, I guess truth is never wanted these days. As one fellow said, I had to get new conspiracy theories as the old ones all came true.

      1. LOL, I visualize a geezer as the mumbling sot, who is in his cups at the end of the bar. Age is not the criteria.

  15. I have been posting that conservatives have to build up their own media, through various forms, such that the expanded conservative media cannot be shut down by the jackbooted left. I agree with the posted author that an objective, honest media — fair to both sides — would be ideal. Indeed, the left-wing med falsely claims that they are “fair” and that they follow industry rules as to content fairness, but of course they do not.

    They left-wing media cartel emulate the social-science and humanities departments at universities: they forcibly exclude all conservatives from employment and speaking, to force consumers to watch only one point of view. Knowledge is power, and the left wants all the power. These days they nearly have all the power.

    Consequently, any “neutral” media will soon be subverted into a propaganda agency (e.g., the CBC). So conservatives must build and run their own media. This is what Ezra Levant is doing.

    1. Yes. We used to believe that the media was fair and reporting responsibly, I did as well, until I became involved in politics at the party level. It did not take me too many years to realize that bullshit was still bullshit even if it came from the party I was involved with. I am too old now to worry about it , even though it does concern me. I hope Ezra gets the kind of support he needs to wake Canadians up, and they sure do need waking up.

  16. “drifting into two separate tribes.” Bifurcating the remainder of all social interaction on cultural and political lines is no formula for civil society. Sharing a common governance is already becoming increasingly intolerable. The end game is either civil war or secession. The former would likely be result in genocide while the later would result in immigration and exodus within both regions, a much more civil outcome.

    The blame for loss of civil society is academia. It’s where all bad ideas originate from protected ideologues within ethereal bubbles who bear no exposure to nor consequence from their implementation.

  17. I ditched PBS funding years ago when I saw them leaning left. They hound me to this day with phone calls and letters begging for donations.
    Pared down my Cable and am trying to convince myself to cut it off completely. Shaw/Telus both rip off artists – no deals with them even if you fight tooth and nail.

    1. They hound me to this day with phone calls and letters begging for donations.

      I take it you’re referring to KSPS Spokane. Yeah, I know all about it.

      I used to be an avid viewer and supporter. About 15 or so years ago, I started cutting my yearly donation until it was next to nothing, maybe $5/year. Then, about 3 or 4 years ago, I simply stopped.

      The station didn’t get the message. I kept getting letters from it and I simply bundled up the material, put it into the enclosed return envelope and sent it back. It still didn’t catch on. Then I finally had enough. I took one of the forms, wrote in large letters, using a Sharpie, that I was no longer supporting the station.

      I haven’t heard peep from that place ever since.

      1. BA, Aha! A sharpie attack in bold letters, great. Now if I could only do something similar with annoying scams on my phone….

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