Do you know what would go a long way towards slowing the spread of dangerous conspiracy theories? A mass media system that doesn't lie. Journalists and pundits who are genuinely honest, who operate from a position of morality and integrity, and who are not influenced by money and power to distort what they tell us.
How ridiculous is it? Supposedly when it came to global warming, the media's fixation on "objectivity" is what led them to going to "both sides" of a non-existent scientific debate, giving equal time to global warming deniers and actual scientists, causing the public to believe that the issue was still under dispute in the scientific community. "Objectivity." "Objectivity" gone wrong! It's telling though, that when it comes to reporting on the lead-up to a war, this noble, but wrong-headed commitment to letting "both sides" of an issue have their say disappears. Not only are opponents of war ignored, they're silenced. Proponents of peace in the media can lose their jobs for trying to allow the antiwar side to have a voice.
How sincere is your commitment to a principle (in this case "objectivity") when your adherence to it depends upon the relative wealth and power of the people whose views you choose to communicate?
So right there we see dishonesty and distortion on the part of the media. Most famously there were Saddam Hussein's "Weapons of Mass Destruction." The Bush 43 Administration pushed a false story (among several false stories) about how the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was defying his legal obligations to dismantle his chemical weapons program and was in fact covertly building a nuclear weapons program. And the media credulously reported on this lie and enthusiastically endorsed it. At the very least, in doing this, the corporate media showed themselves to be staggeringly incompetent. At worst, they just showed themselves to be partners in a campaign of deception to advance an imperialist agenda that suits their owners and advertisors.
The US media consistently distorts reality to defend the parasitical private health insurance industry, portraying medicare for all as unaffordable (when every other industrialized country has it and consequently spends less per capita on healthcare) and normalizing a system that produces hundreds of thousands of household bankruptcies and tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths annually.
In the polarized US political culture, when justifiable disgust with Donald Trump easily mutates into "Trump Derangement Syndrome" there is a tendency to reflexively side with the corporate megaphones of the USA's mainstream news media when Trump attacks them as "enemies of the people." Because that term is used by authoritarians, including murderous totalitarians like Joseph Stalin. But what else should we call a privileged group of professional liars who willfully, deliberately lie their countries into shameful, ruinous, murderous wars, obstruct efforts to provide healthcare for millions of people, and deflect energies away from solving the existential crisis of global warming? If Donald Trump, Joseph Stalin or Pol Pot told me that the sky was blue and that water is wet, I'd agree with them. I'd agree with them without having to agree with anything else they said or did.
The US newsmedia consistently failed in its responsibilities while covering Bernie Sanders' two runs for the Democratic Party's nomination in 2016 and 2020. In the first one they pointedly ignored him except to run brief flurries of smears against him from time-to-time. The second-time they could not justify such behaviour so instead they convicted him of sexism and lying and screamed how if he won his supporters would be executing rich people in Central Park among other stupidities.
Again, the point is that the media lies. This isn't to say that the media doesn't make errors. Occasional errors are one thing. The media willfully distorts in favour of the wealthy and powerful. And, here's the thing: Some of Donald Trump's supporters are NOT among the wealthy and the powerful. (Oh sure, many of them are racist and/or ignorant. But that's not the same thing.) And when the newsmedia blatantly lies and distorts, it demolishes their credibility with the public, including right-wing Trump lovers.
The problem is that neo-liberalism has been destroying people's living standards for forty years (minimum) and people feel under threat. And right-wingers/conservatives feel under threat in the most normal of circumstances. Economic distress and the distortions of the toxic right-wing information bubble (FOX News and their shit-head internet channels) make these cowardly, emotional-mental basket-cases retreat into their own worlds of distortions and witless conspiracy theories.
And make no mistake about it: These people are CRAZY. "Global warming is a hoax." The fact that most places on Earth (including Southern Ontario) have gotten warmer on average (no more "white Christmases") and that the Arctic ice has melted enough to make talk of shipping lanes realistic doesn't matter. It's simply a liberal con-job inspired by hatred of cars and beef and whatever. "'Black Lives Matter' is a terrorist movement funded by George Soros (hint: 'Jews') to sow conflict between US-Americans and undermine public order for reasons too sinister to talk about. The fact that mountains of video evidence and official documents and statistics show that the US justice system is brutally racist doesn't matter. The fact that proponents of this conspiracy theory consciously hate Black and Brown people and see them as inherently criminal doesn't register.
And now we have "COVID-19 is a hoax!" It was simultaneously created by China to kill people and make Donald Trump look bad while also being no more harmful than the ordinary flu. Totalitarian elites are trying to get people to war masks so that pedophiles can kidnap children in broad daylight. But Trump (who admits to ogling teenaged beauty contestants at his pageants and lusted after his teenaged daughter) is trying to stop them. The pandemic is a hoax and the CDC is in on it. The World Health Organization. Every public health authority who endorses it in every country around the world, ... at the national, state/provincial, municipal level, ... they're all in on it. Every hospital worker who says it's real.
The claim that COVID-19 is a hoax is so titanically stupid and leads to such insane conclusions simply boggles the mind.
But here's the thing: When liberals and progressives go along with their own conspiracy theories, it only gives the nutbars on the right-wing fuel for their fires. I am speaking of course about "Russiagate." It doesn't matter how much you have allowed yourselves to believe this stupid garbage. It didn't happen. What supposedly did happen is so inconsequential that it's difficult to see what you're so upset about. The holes in the plot are so gaping that the entire edifice is undermined.
So now some asshole on the (lying war-criminal) Robert Mueller's Russiagate investigation says that they didn't pursue Trump as diligently as they could have because they were afraid that he'd shut them down. Of course this Andrew Weissmann fellow is trying to sell a book. How could he sell a book that told the true story that their investigation failed because it was based on bullshit? So he ASSERTS that Mueller's fucking stupid farce of an investigation (issuing subpoenas to Russians who would never be extradited and running for the hills when one Russian actually showed up in court to meet the allegations)
“Revenge of the oligarchs” might be a good headline for this story. The IRA indictment initially seemed to be a no-lose proposition for Mueller. He got to look good in the press, the media got to indulge in yet another round of Russia-bashing, while, best of all, no one had to prove a thing. “Mueller’s allegations will never be tested in court,” noted Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor turned pundit for the rightwing National Review. “That makes his indictment more a political statement than a charging instrument.”
Then came the unexpected. Concord Management hired Reed Smith, a top-flight law firm with offices around the world, and demanded to be heard. The move was “a real head-scratcher,” one Washington attorney told Buzzfeed, because Concord was beyond the reach of U.S. law and therefore had nothing to fear from an indictment and nothing to gain, apparently, from going to court. But then the firm demanded to exercise its right of discovery, meaning that it wanted access to Mueller’s immense investigative file. Blindsided, Mueller’s requested a delay “on the astonishing ground,” according to McCarthy, “that the defendant has not been properly served – notwithstanding that the defendant has shown up in court and asked to be arraigned.”
Prigozhin was forcing the special prosecutor to show what he’s got, McCarthy went on, at zero risk to himself since he was not on U.S. soil. What was once a no-lose proposition for Mueller was suddenly a no-lose proposition for Putin’s unexpectedly clever cook.
Now Mueller is in an even worse pickle because he’s barred from mentioning a major chunk of his report. What will he discuss if Democrats succeed in getting him to testify before the House intelligence and judiciary committees next week – the weather? If his team goes forward with the Concord prosecution, he’ll risk having to turn over sensitive information while involving himself in a legal tangle that could go on for years, all without any conceivable payoff. If he drops it, the upshot will be a public-relations disaster of the first order.
As skeptics have pointed out, the IRA’s social-media campaign was both more modest and more ineffectual then the Mueller report’s over-the-top language about a “sweeping and systematic” conspiracy would suggest. Yet after Facebook Vice President Rob Goldman tweeted that “the majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election,” he was forced to beg for forgiveness like a defendant in a Moscow show trial for daring to play down the magnitude of the crime.
But it wasn’t Goldman who shaved the truth. Rather, it was Mueller. Thanks to the unexpected appearance of Concord Management, he’s now paying the price.
Now, some Russiagate dead-enders are crowing about a stupid Senate report (It's bipartisan so you know it's true!) that provides [redacted] evidence to show that Paul Manafort's Ukrainian client Konstantin Kilimnik was a Russian intelligence agent. GASP! HORRORS! So, perhaps when Manafort was sharing this detailed internal polling information with Kilimnik, it was so the Ukrainian could then send that info to the St. Petersburg troll farm, the Internet Research Agency, and they could then scientifically target the electorate with such game-changing memes as these?
I'll retire to Bedlam.
Check out the YouTube video that was my last post for a thorough demolition of the Senate report. That interview shows the New York Magazine reporter has a better grasp of what polling information Manafort shows than does Aaron Mate, and a better grasp of what Kilimnik was doing at the US Embassy in Kiev, and it might be disconcerting to hear the interviewer talking much more (and talking over) the interviewee, but in the end, the enormity of what the interviewee doesn't know, and his inability to pushback shows that he definitely needed that talking-to. In the end, Mate argues that Republican Senators joined Democrats in accusing Russia of stuff because they're all servants of imperialism and the military-industrial-complex.
Listen liberals and progressives. I don't care how wedded you are to the Russiagate narrative. It's bullshit and you embarrass yourselves and you weaken your credibility when you cling to it. And the weakness of liberals and the corruption of the US newsmedia only assists right-wing imbeciles when they use your failings to construct their own shit-head realities.
