Over the years I've developed a pretty good set of "antenna" that filter out or set off an alarm when I hear untruths or ridiculous statements. Biden is a dictator? Please...that one is both. Add the WSJ to the do not trust list.
Dec 13, 2023·edited Dec 13, 2023Liked by Steven Beschloss
Rupert Murdoch and Elon musk
Appear to be unstoppable in there focussed media resources on destroying the USA as we know it. Like Brexit people will wake up are too late and the damage will have been done permanently if Trump is reelected.
Dec 13, 2023·edited Dec 14, 2023Liked by Steven Beschloss
If MAGA wins, we will never know what the truth is. Thank you, Steve, for bringing this to us. It's pretty scary. The more I read, the more I find the uber rich and the people they fund to be very greedy and cruel. There was an informative article in The Hartmann Report today about billionaires who want to rewrite our Constitution. Scary stuff.
Dec 13, 2023·edited Dec 13, 2023Liked by Steven Beschloss
I'm getting to the point of some rule that says everyone from first grade on must be able to define "false equivalency" at a grade-appropriate but still accurate level.
Over and over I repeat: the reasoning failure that most affects the nation is the inability of people to DISTINGUISH between superficially similar things that really have important differences. Big Bird was able to do it with "one of these things is not like the other" so it should not be hard to start this off at the very elementary level.
It's rich that the Journal is accusing Biden of projection! That all Trump does, 24/7. I never believe anything the Journal puts out as an editorial, and little as news. Anything Murdock is associated with is suspect.
Under Murdoch the WSJ has become the NY Post in a better suit. It used to be a highly respected paper focused on business and industry. The same is true of Maria Bartiromo at Fox. She has fallen so far, it’s a shame.
Telling people that they shouldn’t believe what they see or hear is the same attempt that TFG and the republicans are trying to sell.
Please write a column assuming your audience believes some of the MAGA stuff, or likes some of Trump's ideas you enumerated. I have friends who are leaders in the R party. When we talk, we do exchange political views (sometimes I bite my tongue; probably they do, too). You need to try a column after walking in their shoes--they really believe Biden is the threat to democracy. They are not Trumpers, but are conservative R. The motivation for this came from my sharing this on TikTok or Instagram. I stopped myself, not because I disagree with anything, not because of your style or tone-which is always civilized. I stopped myself because these conservatives will stop reading or listening. I have done this with some other journalists covering the Prez campaigns here in Iowa. I have shared some of their insight with my R friends.
Alyssia Finley has been an unthinking mouthpiece of the extreme right, oblivious to facts, since her college days at Stanford. I don’t understand how she survives in journalism.
So now the media is copying the primitive defense mechanism constantly used by the orange sadist: Projection. As a psychiatrist, I recognized what the orange sadist was doing from, literally, Day 1. Why it took the media 4+ years to call it out is either deeply shameful, or incredibly stupid.
I could be wrong, but my guess is roughly 30% of voters will vote for Trump. Those are the hard-core Trump fans who are actually living in an alternate reality--like a young woman I saw on a brief video
gushing about Trump being “Godly.”
A number of things can happen that might persuade
more voters to vote for Trump. I’m thinking of things like “bombshell” info repubs dig up/manufacture that would persuade people to not vote for Biden.On the other hand I think there are fewer gullible people than there were when Trump was “elected” in 2016.
There’s no question that corporations and news outlets controlled by corporations are doing things
to help Trump, and like Sue R. I’m “wildly irritated”
by them too. It’s as if they are all operating in information silos with blinders on. In other words
all new information is automatically rejected in order for them to keep their eye on the prize of ever bigger profits.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to foresee
serious problems ahead. Although corporations
are likely to disagree, they exist as part of what makes up the American social fabric that has now been unrelentingly battered by Trump and his fellow republicans. What I’m getting at is this...corporate
leaders have a responsibility to American society,
which is the mileu in which they operate, but they
act like pirates who exist only to plunder as much of
our American wealth as they can and then disappear
until the next raid.
Their attitude creates an ‘us v them’ mentality.To
corporate leaders we exist to provide them with
money in exchange for a good or service they sell
us. If we’re dumb enough to buy deliberately overpriced products or services, so be it.They’re
patting each other on the back in celebration of
their success. They take no responsibility for
pulling the wool over our eyes or for helping to create the skewed economy that favors them at
our expense.
The unfairness of it isn’t their problem, nor is the skewed economy in which they operate. Any relationship with us other than the buyer/seller relationship is studiously avoided in order to retain
their plundering pirate mindset. But if they take off their blinders and look around, they might notice the
trajectory of the economy is unsustainable, largely because of them and the obsequious republicans eager for their share of corporate largesse that is their reward for skewing things in favor of
corporations. It’s a “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” mentality and the American public is the loser.
It’s this type of economy that eventually results in some sort of financial collapse. This collapse will be
because of increasing income inequality. So much wealth will be concentrated at the top of the income
distribution curve that there will be a tipping point, at which most Americans will be unable to participate in commerce. The economy requires
commerce or what most people call buying and selling in order to thrive.
Here’s the really big problem with this scenario. The people at the top of the income distribution curve will survive an economic collapse just fine, which means they have no incentive to change their ways.
That’s why it’s so vital that enough democrats get
voted into office that they’re the majority in both the House and the Senate. Then, assuming we also have a Dem president, legislation can be passed that it
heads off financial collapse just in time.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Scenarios exist in which we can all thrive, instead of the “winner takes all” attitude among republicans and corporate CEOs.
America is a wealthy nation, but we still operate with an antiquated healthcare system, no affordable, safe and decent child care, a system of public education
that has been so methodically plundered by right wing extremists that it’s on life support. Thanks to republicans we now have a system of private prisons
that have no incentive to ever let prisoners out because their income will go down proportional to the number of inmates. There also s new use for private prisons and it’s to launder money. Naturally
it’s republicans who are using private prisons to launder money.
What all of the above boils down to is a massive amount of corruption. We can still turn it around,
but it’s like climate change. There’s a point past which it will be nearly impossible to do anything
That IS embarrassing. Shame on whomever it was who let this op ed voice loose. (Worse, whomever it was who put it on the Editorial Board.) Mark and Steven: Do you see newsrooms moving away even a tiny bit from the time-honored tradition of lobbing a couple of opposition views into the op ed pages? I don't subscribe to the WSJ but get wildly irritated by what I view as token contrarians on outlets like the WaPo? Not by their existence but by their content going "unchecked." Desperate times call for desperate measures and I'm of the firm opinion that this *must* be brought up to speed with at the very least some contemporaneous fact-checking footnotes.
Wondering about the state of journalism in America today. Journalism schools teach their students not to accept what a politician tells them at face value, or accept outright lies in particular. They are taught to look behind the scenes and search for the truth. There are tens of thousands of journalism students and professionals who look up to Woodward & Bernstein. But very few have the balls to dig for the truth as they did. Huge opportunity for young journalists to shine today! Don't let your editors hold you down! Shine a light on Donnie's Big Con and keep shining!!!
Over the years I've developed a pretty good set of "antenna" that filter out or set off an alarm when I hear untruths or ridiculous statements. Biden is a dictator? Please...that one is both. Add the WSJ to the do not trust list.
Rupert Murdoch and Elon musk
Appear to be unstoppable in there focussed media resources on destroying the USA as we know it. Like Brexit people will wake up are too late and the damage will have been done permanently if Trump is reelected.
If MAGA wins, we will never know what the truth is. Thank you, Steve, for bringing this to us. It's pretty scary. The more I read, the more I find the uber rich and the people they fund to be very greedy and cruel. There was an informative article in The Hartmann Report today about billionaires who want to rewrite our Constitution. Scary stuff.
I'm getting to the point of some rule that says everyone from first grade on must be able to define "false equivalency" at a grade-appropriate but still accurate level.
Over and over I repeat: the reasoning failure that most affects the nation is the inability of people to DISTINGUISH between superficially similar things that really have important differences. Big Bird was able to do it with "one of these things is not like the other" so it should not be hard to start this off at the very elementary level.
It's rich that the Journal is accusing Biden of projection! That all Trump does, 24/7. I never believe anything the Journal puts out as an editorial, and little as news. Anything Murdock is associated with is suspect.
it is just unbelievable.
It feels like really there is Earth 1 and Earth 2.
The WSJ was always conservative, but this is a moral principle of simple honesty.
Amazing.
Under Murdoch the WSJ has become the NY Post in a better suit. It used to be a highly respected paper focused on business and industry. The same is true of Maria Bartiromo at Fox. She has fallen so far, it’s a shame.
Telling people that they shouldn’t believe what they see or hear is the same attempt that TFG and the republicans are trying to sell.
Please write a column assuming your audience believes some of the MAGA stuff, or likes some of Trump's ideas you enumerated. I have friends who are leaders in the R party. When we talk, we do exchange political views (sometimes I bite my tongue; probably they do, too). You need to try a column after walking in their shoes--they really believe Biden is the threat to democracy. They are not Trumpers, but are conservative R. The motivation for this came from my sharing this on TikTok or Instagram. I stopped myself, not because I disagree with anything, not because of your style or tone-which is always civilized. I stopped myself because these conservatives will stop reading or listening. I have done this with some other journalists covering the Prez campaigns here in Iowa. I have shared some of their insight with my R friends.
Alyssia Finley has been an unthinking mouthpiece of the extreme right, oblivious to facts, since her college days at Stanford. I don’t understand how she survives in journalism.
So now the media is copying the primitive defense mechanism constantly used by the orange sadist: Projection. As a psychiatrist, I recognized what the orange sadist was doing from, literally, Day 1. Why it took the media 4+ years to call it out is either deeply shameful, or incredibly stupid.
Thank you for this media misses, but I wish we could have heard Mark Jacobs tell us why the WSJ editorial board is a bunch of Rupert Murdock puppets.
The posting of videos without a transcript shuts out those who are hearing impaired or deaf
I could be wrong, but my guess is roughly 30% of voters will vote for Trump. Those are the hard-core Trump fans who are actually living in an alternate reality--like a young woman I saw on a brief video
gushing about Trump being “Godly.”
A number of things can happen that might persuade
more voters to vote for Trump. I’m thinking of things like “bombshell” info repubs dig up/manufacture that would persuade people to not vote for Biden.On the other hand I think there are fewer gullible people than there were when Trump was “elected” in 2016.
There’s no question that corporations and news outlets controlled by corporations are doing things
to help Trump, and like Sue R. I’m “wildly irritated”
by them too. It’s as if they are all operating in information silos with blinders on. In other words
all new information is automatically rejected in order for them to keep their eye on the prize of ever bigger profits.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to foresee
serious problems ahead. Although corporations
are likely to disagree, they exist as part of what makes up the American social fabric that has now been unrelentingly battered by Trump and his fellow republicans. What I’m getting at is this...corporate
leaders have a responsibility to American society,
which is the mileu in which they operate, but they
act like pirates who exist only to plunder as much of
our American wealth as they can and then disappear
until the next raid.
Their attitude creates an ‘us v them’ mentality.To
corporate leaders we exist to provide them with
money in exchange for a good or service they sell
us. If we’re dumb enough to buy deliberately overpriced products or services, so be it.They’re
patting each other on the back in celebration of
their success. They take no responsibility for
pulling the wool over our eyes or for helping to create the skewed economy that favors them at
our expense.
The unfairness of it isn’t their problem, nor is the skewed economy in which they operate. Any relationship with us other than the buyer/seller relationship is studiously avoided in order to retain
their plundering pirate mindset. But if they take off their blinders and look around, they might notice the
trajectory of the economy is unsustainable, largely because of them and the obsequious republicans eager for their share of corporate largesse that is their reward for skewing things in favor of
corporations. It’s a “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” mentality and the American public is the loser.
It’s this type of economy that eventually results in some sort of financial collapse. This collapse will be
because of increasing income inequality. So much wealth will be concentrated at the top of the income
distribution curve that there will be a tipping point, at which most Americans will be unable to participate in commerce. The economy requires
commerce or what most people call buying and selling in order to thrive.
Here’s the really big problem with this scenario. The people at the top of the income distribution curve will survive an economic collapse just fine, which means they have no incentive to change their ways.
That’s why it’s so vital that enough democrats get
voted into office that they’re the majority in both the House and the Senate. Then, assuming we also have a Dem president, legislation can be passed that it
heads off financial collapse just in time.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Scenarios exist in which we can all thrive, instead of the “winner takes all” attitude among republicans and corporate CEOs.
America is a wealthy nation, but we still operate with an antiquated healthcare system, no affordable, safe and decent child care, a system of public education
that has been so methodically plundered by right wing extremists that it’s on life support. Thanks to republicans we now have a system of private prisons
that have no incentive to ever let prisoners out because their income will go down proportional to the number of inmates. There also s new use for private prisons and it’s to launder money. Naturally
it’s republicans who are using private prisons to launder money.
What all of the above boils down to is a massive amount of corruption. We can still turn it around,
but it’s like climate change. There’s a point past which it will be nearly impossible to do anything
about it.
That IS embarrassing. Shame on whomever it was who let this op ed voice loose. (Worse, whomever it was who put it on the Editorial Board.) Mark and Steven: Do you see newsrooms moving away even a tiny bit from the time-honored tradition of lobbing a couple of opposition views into the op ed pages? I don't subscribe to the WSJ but get wildly irritated by what I view as token contrarians on outlets like the WaPo? Not by their existence but by their content going "unchecked." Desperate times call for desperate measures and I'm of the firm opinion that this *must* be brought up to speed with at the very least some contemporaneous fact-checking footnotes.
Wondering about the state of journalism in America today. Journalism schools teach their students not to accept what a politician tells them at face value, or accept outright lies in particular. They are taught to look behind the scenes and search for the truth. There are tens of thousands of journalism students and professionals who look up to Woodward & Bernstein. But very few have the balls to dig for the truth as they did. Huge opportunity for young journalists to shine today! Don't let your editors hold you down! Shine a light on Donnie's Big Con and keep shining!!!
Thank you this is a great interview.. thank you as always