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NYT: Why Nobody Cares the President Is Lying
Posted on 2/22/17 at 7:14 am
Posted on 2/22/17 at 7:14 am
quote:
For years, as a conservative radio talk show host, I played a role in that conditioning by hammering the mainstream media for its bias and double standards. But the price turned out to be far higher than I imagined. The cumulative effect of the attacks was to delegitimize those outlets and essentially destroy much of the right’s immunity to false information. We thought we were creating a savvier, more skeptical audience. Instead, we opened the door for President Trump, who found an audience that could be easily misled.
quote:
The Russian dissident and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov drew upon long familiarity with that process when he tweeted: “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”
Mr. Kasparov grasps that the real threat is not merely that a large number of Americans have become accustomed to rejecting factual information, or even that they have become habituated to believing hoaxes. The real danger is that, inundated with “alternative facts,” many voters will simply shrug, asking, “What is truth?” — and not wait for an answer. In that world, the leader becomes the only reliable source of truth; a familiar phenomenon in an authoritarian state, but a radical departure from the norms of a democratic society. The battle over truth is now central to our politics.
This may explain one of the more revealing moments from after the election, when one of Mr. Trump’s campaign surrogates, Scottie Nell Hughes, was asked to defend the clearly false statement by Mr. Trump that millions of votes had been cast illegally. She answered by explaining that everybody now had their own way of interpreting whether a fact was true or not.
“There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts,” she declared. Among “a large part of the population” what Mr. Trump said was the truth.
“When he says that millions of people illegally voted,” she said, his supporters believe him — and “people believe they have facts to back that up.”
Or as George Orwell said: “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.” But Ms. Hughes’s comment was perhaps unintentionally insightful. Mr. Trump and company seem to be betting that much of the electorate will not care if the president tells demonstrable lies, and will pick and choose whatever “alternative facts” confirm their views.
The next few years will be a test of that thesis.
In the meantime, we must recognize the magnitude of the challenge. If we want to restore respect for facts and break through the intellectual ghettos on both the right and left, the mainstream media will have to be aggressive without being hysterical and adversarial without being unduly oppositional. Perhaps just as important, it will be incumbent on conservative media outlets to push back as well. Conservatism should be a reality-based philosophy, and the movement will be better off if it recognizes that facts really do matter.
There may be short-term advantages to running headlines about millions of illegal immigrants voting or secret United Nations plots to steal your guns, but the longer the right enables such fabrications, the weaker it will be in the long run. As uncomfortable as it may be, it will fall to the conservative media to police its worst actors.
The conservative media ecosystem — like the rest of us — has to recognize how critical, but also how fragile, credibility is in the Orwellian age of Donald Trump.
Why Nobody Cares the President Is Lying
Posted on 2/22/17 at 7:19 am to a want
Where was all this for the last 8 years?
Posted on 2/22/17 at 7:19 am to a want
Nyt lol/DR
A want/dr
Tl/dr
Hillary lover/DR
A want/dr
Tl/dr
Hillary lover/DR
Posted on 2/22/17 at 7:22 am to a want
Nobody cares that the NYT is lying....or being printed for that matter.
Posted on 2/22/17 at 7:23 am to a want
We don't care because we are used to the media lying to us for the past 20 years.
Posted on 2/22/17 at 7:24 am to dcrews
quote:
Where was all this for the last 8 years?
exactly,
as if this is isolated to only the right
Posted on 2/22/17 at 7:24 am to a want
Calm down folks, you can keep your Dr and your plan.
Posted on 2/22/17 at 7:27 am to dcrews
They were too busy polishing a turd.
Posted on 2/22/17 at 7:27 am to dcrews
quote:Well Googling the author of the piece, I would imagine he was critical. Charles Sykes
Where was all this for the last 8 years?
Here is a selection from his bibliography:
quote:
A Nation of Moochers: America's Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing
quote:
The End of Privacy: The Attack on Personal Rights at Home, at Work, On-Line, and in Court.
quote:
Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, Or Add
quote:
A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character.
quote:This isn't exactly left-wing material.
The Hollow Men: Politics and Corruption in Higher Education
This post was edited on 2/22/17 at 7:28 am
Posted on 2/22/17 at 7:29 am to dcrews
quote:
Where was all this for the last 8 years?
There has been a long standing accusation by moderates and those on the left for years that the right lived in a bubble where facts are meaningless and only feelings and beliefs matter....the bubble has no expanded to include everyone....
Posted on 2/22/17 at 7:32 am to buckeye_vol
quote:
This isn't exactly left-wing material.
Credit where credit is due.
Solid point
Posted on 2/22/17 at 7:33 am to buckeye_vol
quote:
Well Googling the author of the piece, I would imagine he was critical.
You're so obvious. Here are the articles from your link that were published by the New York Times:
quote:
(December 15, 2016). "Charlie Sykes on Where the Right Went Wrong". The New York Times. Retrieved December 20, 2016.
(February 4, 2017). "Why Nobody Cares the President Is Lying". The New York Times. Retrieved February 5, 2017.
If you don't understand the conversation, you shouldn't interject yourself into it.
Posted on 2/22/17 at 7:35 am to ShortyRob
quote:
Credit where credit is due.
Ask him how many of those were in the NYT.
Posted on 2/22/17 at 7:37 am to a want
This article is shite. The author feigns to blame himself, but later hits us with the "Orwellian age of Donald Trump" crap. This after propping his tale up with the opinions of - wait for it - Russians!
They truly are the failing NY Times.
They truly are the failing NY Times.
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