I am increasingly convinced – especially over the last few months – that the national news media, with the assistance of a wide swath of academia and those in the business of providing entertainment, are and have been for years constructing a kind of stage set which in their minds represents America. Fake buildings, fake trees with plastic leaves, a painted sky backdrop, concrete boulders and buildings which are either three-fourths actual size or mere painted false fronts with curtains or blinds hung in empty windows. In front of these sets, between the fake trees and the concrete boulders, all sorts of improbable and gruesome things are happening – race riots, fiery car crashes, anti-capitalist social unrest, cartloads of dead from the Commie Covid Virus rolled through the streets, and meanwhile Joe Biden is an honest and upright long-serving member of Senate and former VP who never put a foot wrong, and Hillary Clinton is the most qualified and respected woman ever, Michelle Obama a glamorous and tasteful former First Lady, and meanwhile the whole United States is rancorous with race-hatred, and everyone who has ever attended regular religious services is panting to transform all society into The Handmaid’s Tale.
And meanwhile, those of us living ordinary humble lives in flyover country (and even those who manage quiet lives in coastal states, perhaps) go through our days not seeing any of this. It isn’t our cities on fire, with regular violent protest by black-clad, masked Commie-Symps pretending a concern about the lives of minorities of color (a concern which doesn’t extend in the least to the unborn of color). We in our world – which we are mostly convinced is the real one, not the fantasy perpetuated by academia and the National Media – we live and work peaceably side by side with neighbors and co-workers of every color and religious sympathy there is.
So – which one will be reflected late tomorrow, and all the rest of this week? We can only wait. To borrow a phrase from often-commenter Subotai Bahadur, “Only the blue sky and the Tengri Nor know.” Discuss as you wish. Good fortune all.
If you are even partly right, it would be an effective treatment for them to spend time in flyover country. In fact, we read articles every year from “set piece” believers who venture out into the dangerous territories and are amazed.
Maybe we need Fresh air programs for urban adults.
I’m convinced that a massive fraction of twitter “users” are bots. I have no idea how else to explain the massive numbers of them writing patently untrue things, such as that the Trump truck ran a Biden car off the road, etc.
And I know people in my real life who honestly think that The Proud Boys are a real life army about to seize power, AND that Trump is about to get crushed in the election and will immediately flee to Russia. The cognitive dissonance is incomprehensible, but they are quite vociferous in their sincerity in holding both beliefs, not just as hyperbole.
The psychic damage the Dems and MSM have inflicted on the nation is impossible to overestimate.
cloud people bemoaning dirt people:
“The Politico reporter wrote, “It was bewildering, in a county that has bounced back and forth between parties for nearly 70 years, to meet not a single voter who regretted their vote from 2016. This was the first trip I’ve taken in which I didn’t encounter people expressing buyer’s remorse with the president. There were a few people, like Dafne Lewis and Juan Ordoñez, who might get off the sidelines, but not a single person who was switching teams.
“Maybe that means I didn’t talk to enough people. Maybe that means I didn’t go to the right places. But I think it probably means Valencia County, the most exceptional voting jurisdiction in America, a place that has resisted political tribalism for so long, is becoming like the rest of the country — predictable, polarized and loyally partisan.
“I hope I’m wrong. We need places that swing dramatically from one election to the next. We need voters who move frequently between parties. We need a country where fidelity to shared values trumps allegiance to partisan affiliation.”
lolgf
https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2020/11/more-signs-we-are-trumping-left.html#more
lolgf
Exactly. These lying have scum have spent their last four lying years lying about almost everything- and now they want to prattle on about “shared values”?!
There aren’t going to be any shared values between me and the people who want to send me to a death camp, or at best impoverish me because I’m not a communist.
What cloud person liar really means is that he’s sorry that all the Trump supporters haven’t been fooled by his endless lies.
Again, lolgf.
Your parallel seems to me quite right – but all the more depressing for that. If we aren’t checked by reality, where can our thoughts go? And if we are punished – subtly or otherwise – for not acknowledging an untruth’s truth, where do we go?
Over on Ginny’s post I pointed out that TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) is the big lie. If you repeat it often enough, people forget what the truth is. We’ve had four years of it. We already see that the MSM is hemorrhaging viewers and readers, especially the paying kind.
Via Citizen’s Free Press I came across this article:
https://medium.com/wick-research/predicting-2020-research-on-the-research-57ad9b7b3d5a
It’s from a pollster that goes into some detail about his thinking.
I was struck especially by this statement: “In western democracies like America, having your beliefs and opinions represented through polling has been a long-standing part of participating in the democratic process.” And here I thought that voting accomplished that.
What political polling actually does is enable the candidates to parrot back whatever the apparent consensus is to procure the most votes and obfuscate any commitments that would cost votes. Participating honestly in a poll will insure you hear only what you want to hear and let the actual intent of the politician come as an unwelcome surprise. The same applies to commercial polling.
Absent some sort of paid position, (I’m open to a Cabinet position) I have no desire to tell any politician what I think. I want to hear what they say they think and I’ll decide if I find it acceptable and whether or not I believe them.
I’m one of the growing number of people that exert effort to stay somewhat anonymous on the net. I don’t know how effective I am. Why should I care what Amazon thinks I’m interested in, I’m perfectly capable of deciding what I want to buy and letting Amazon know if they’re going to sell it to me.
I see absolutely no advantage to me from answering any poll and I bet there are a lot more like me out there. The pollster is probably more endangered than the network anchor.
I’m old enough to remember when it seemed perfectly normal to have your name, address and phone number published. The phone company allowed that information to be weaponized against us to squeeze a few extra nickles. They succeeded in killing the home landline business instead. Cell phones might have made this inevitable but they accelerated it by a good ten years. When was the last time you used a phone directory or kept one longer than it took to throw it away?
Now, if I want to make a political contribution, my name, address and employer goes on a public list, just sitting there for someone to figure out how to use it to their advantage and my regret. How do the parasites known as politicians expect to keep paying the other parasites known a political consultants if we all stop giving them money?