Comment by mandmandam | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mandmandam | Hacker News Reader

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> these sort of issues where people overwhelmingly feel one way, and the political establishment feels another? Yeah, those are all strangely absent.

I feel that Sanders' nomination campaigns epitomized this divide: He spoke for the people. Many more people donated for him than any other candidate, his supporters were diverse and enthusiastic. He was the number one most popular politician in the entire country.

Yet media - quite openly - gave him far less coverage, were 3x more negative in the coverage they did give, studiously ignored the attacks and cheating from the political establishment, systematically smeared his supporters, and then blamed him when Hilary (number one disliked Democrat in America) lost.

And smart people, rational people with functioning memories, apparently, seemed to just... not want to talk about it.

And then it happened again, with even more obvious collusion, four years later. And we talked about it even less, just relieved that we wouldn't have another 4 years of that.

Bringing it all up now feels like you're reopening someone else's closed scab. People are auto-rewriting their own version history to help themselves feel less abused, it seems. They don't want to hear it. And this is (many of) the people who were even clued in to it all in the first place.

Only Sanders wanted Snowden to be honored for his actions. Hilary wanted him to "face the music". It could all hardly be more obvious. And yet...

Much the same could be said about Ron Paul. I think that's worth a pitch because their policies are diametrically opposed, the results however were staggeringly similar.

It really shows how much effect the media and the social and political environment it creates influence the thoughts and feelings of people, however highly educated and intelligent they are. If you think you are not influenced by media and propaganda, consider yourself very wrong, the best propaganda is when you don't even consider it propaganda, and the US probably has the most effective propaganda machine in the entire world.

We need to shift the dynamic in America from relying on these media conglomerates, to individuals doing their own research on things. Everyone knows the news media is rigged beyond saving, we need to let them die out, it's what they all deserve for betraying the trust of the people.

Media megacorporations won't die on their own.

As much money as they lose; they make enough returns for their owners in indirect ways to be worth the investment. Murdoch and Turner are many things, but poor isn't one of them.

Btw, did anyone else find it disturbing how "do your own research" became a trigger phrase that allows a rather large group of people to discount anything and everything you said? And at the same time, for an opposite but similar group of people, "trust the science" did the same thing?

trusting science / expertise has always been a turn-off for a certain portion of people with some sort of inferiority or persecution complex or oppositional defiant disorder

unfortunately some politicians seek to gain power by appealing to this

Sure, that's a hallowed tradition in America.

And at the same time, blindly trusting institutions and their dogma has long been a turn-on for people with a superiority complex, or those content with the status quo.

Each cheek of the political arse seeks to gain power by simplistically appealing to these groups, because it's more effective for raising funds and votes than it ought to be.

perhaps, perhaps not

one thing is for sure, though: falsely portraying trust in expertise and science as,

"blindly trusting institutions and their dogma"

or

"for people with a superiority complex, or those content with the status quo",

has been a trope of those same anti-science, anti-expertise politicians for even longer. As Asimov wrote:

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

You may want to read what I wrote again. I did not "falsely portray trust in expertise and science" etc, not in any way; nor would I. It's rather aggressively wrong to attach such to my point (which you missed).

You seem to have jumped from me saying that some put too much stock in dogma and institutions, to believing that this was an attempt to attack expertise and science. There was nothing in my comment, even implicit, that would lead someone fair to this conclusion.

This assumptive leap typifies the 'with us or against us' thinking I'm talking about; tribal thinking which short-circuits reason, and harms genuine scientific thinking.

Even if you didn't mean to imply this, what you wrote has that effect; consider re-reading your own comment if you don't see that.

You may want to read what I wrote again. I did not accuse you personally of falsely portraying trust in expertise and science, not in any way. It's rather aggressively wrong to take personal offense at such an accusation you imagined.

You seem to have jumped from me criticizing those who do (particularly those who are anti-science and anti-expertise), to an accusation that you personally did so. There was nothing in my comment, even implicit, that would lead someone fair to this conclusion. If you aren't doing it, the criticism doesn't apply to you.

This assumptive leap typifies the persecution complex I'm talking about: emotional thinking which short-circuits reason, and harms genuine scientific thinking. Consider re-reading your own comment if you don't see that.

You seem to want more democracy, but would you say that if Trumpers win again, become even stronger, and subvert democracy some more?

Oh man yeah. Individuals doing their own research. They'll just pour over minutes of committee meetings, develop contacts in government agencies, and explore a bunch of primary sources all in their spare time! It's so simple!

Unfortunately, regular folks have no idea how to do proper research. Not even academic level, but merely separating out low-quality obvious misinformation.

> Everyone knows the news media is rigged beyond saving

Is that true, though? Or do we, in our bubble, just believe that? I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of people think the news media -- at least the particular subset of the news media they choose to watch -- is more or less ok.

Here's [1] a survey from the end of 2022 asking this exact question. Across all adults, those who have at least "some" trust in the news they personally get from national news orgs has fallen from 76% to 61% in the past 6 years. While that's still a majority, and a sizable majority, it won't be for long on the current trajectory. And that's for when the bar is set to "some trust"!

[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/10/27/u-s-adult...

> We need to shift the dynamic...

Ah, sweet flower child.

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