Wednesday, December 07, 2016
When Fake News Steers the Ship of State
Fake news isn't just the staple food of Gullibillies.
That much became brutally clear when, in Washington, the House Science Committee cited a wholly fallacious report from that repository of fake news, Breitbart, claiming that global temperatures are actually plunging.
Then there's Michael Flynn, retired general and wingnut conspiracy theorist extraordinaire who believes he has the power of will to transform utter nonsense into truth. He's been pegged to become Trump's national security advisor. Quick, hide the nukes.
Then, of course, there's the bloated bloviator, Trump himself, who likes to fashion reality out of snippets from tabloids.
Here's the thing. When you get that many people running around so literally detached from reality, you're in a lunatic asylum.
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5 comments:
Are we are becoming dangerously close to believing that all news is false or will we believe that any outrageous statement made by those we support is true?
The day of the 'enlightened' commentator is fast disappearing!
Perhaps that is the end game; to make the WWW unreliable?
TB
I have speculated that this is another component of the conditioning people are being subjected to in order to leave them confused, frightened and powerless. In the States I don't think social cohesion was so fractured even during the final years of Viet Nam.
What is fake news except propaganda - the calculated use of falsehood to shape public opinion and, from there, government political and economic policy?
Some years ago I watched a 60 Minutes segment featuring two Republican operatives who had devised a system to warp public opinion. It entailed launching a falsehood on the open mouth radio networks and from there reinforcing the blatant lie by repeating it on cable news (FOX) until it became so widespread that the mainstream (NYT, WaPo) were compelled to run it at which point it was deemed fact. That's how they "swift-boated" John Kerry's presidential campaign.
The WWW has become too influential to be left to it's own ends.
The print media and radio/tv have already succumbed to totalitarianism hence their demise.
They, the media, complain that their audience or readership is down because of the WWW when it could be down because of lack of diversity and opinion.
One day the internet connection to this website and others that are 'non conforming, will find their service connections slowed as to make them dysfunctional.
The writing is on the wall.
TB
Sorry to ramble, but!
Donald Trump made headline of the year.
The Headline /most important subject should be the advent /popularisation of fake news.
Our world has changed, forever!!
TB
If the writing is on the wall, TB, it's there for our kids and our grandkids. Some time ago I tossed around the notion that the decay in liberal democracy is a step along a path aimed at first oligarchy and then neo-feudalism for the plebs.
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