Media Malfeasance

I hate tripwire firings. If someone is being dishonest, by all means discipline them. And certainly if C-SPAN wants to maintain its integrity, it can't be populated by Progressive activist clowns. And I don't know honestly where this Scully clown fits into all this.

The period between 1:00 and 4:00 minutes on this video is stunning. Project Veritas has caught CNN with a gun in their hands standing over a dead body with a bullet in its head. If you have time, watch from 1:00 to 14:00 minutes. I think there could be very damaging repercussions from this.

Joseph Goebbels could learn a thing or two from us

While cleaning up my desk today, I came across some notes which I took down on scraps of paper. Sometimes I write down quotes from others, sometimes I write down my own random thoughts.

I could have just as well posted these under Kung's Words of Wisdom, but since they have to do with media and communications, I decided this string would do.

"All mass communications are full of lies and exaggeration. They are meant to persuade, not to inform."

"Do not confuse brevity with insight."

"The advertising industry has prepared us for today's over-arching dishonesty. Slogans are substituted for truth. Simplistic language avoids context and even slightly complex thought. Reality is ignored or denied."

As I get older, I believe more and more in what I would call the "revised and extended" Artlerian prime rule: 90% of everything is baloney.

Those days may be but a pleasant bygone memory. I was reading an article the other day. It was an honest one and the writer was trying to come to grips with why everyone – including conservatives – allowed their civil liberties to be gobbled up because of the KFF.

His conclusion was basically "People farmed out their sense of right-and-wrong to the state because it's just easier that way." Indeed, we have seen how readily people farm out their sense of right-and-wrong to whatever social fad is being pushed that week. Churches, especially (where you would expect principled resistance), have been like pig grease for advancing many of these fads.

What he touched on was arguably a part of it. But, of course, he completely missed the central aspect of living in a feminine-dominated and -oriented "safety" society verses a more masculine "freedom" society. But that's okay. Much like Social Security, it's the third rail of a social reality that few will touch, although some do here and there.

And that's one major reason we keep flailing away. You can't solve a problem if you can't define it. And in the female outlook, logic is not the strong or central point. And this has infected males as well. They are so used to acquiescing to females (to a certain extent, of course, they should) that they basically dare not cross them. It's become ingrained. Think like women. Or at least don't cross them.

So the chicks have won. As as long noted by me, if one is sitting on the branch of feminism, it becomes almost impossible to saw it off. Again, few understand the role of feminism in all this queer and "transgender" stuff. But feminism is based on the idea that the sexes are arbitrary...or at least that they can and should be overlooked as anything of importance. And now we have men who think they can have babies. The one follows from the other.

So the point is, this is just one (a very big one) point of ingrained irrationality that frames our thinking. "Climate change" is another. I'm sure you could name another half dozen Pillars of Irrationality. And thus most (90%) of our social, political, and moral thinking becomes a case of "garbage in, garbage out." The basic tenets are messed up. Even a computer will stumble if the basic data is corrupt.

Who can and will question the basic assumptions? Damn few.

Yes, mass communication has created a sort of mass-mind and mass-ethics in a mass-popular-culture where simply having mass (quantity) is considered quality. Please don't say the words "Taylor Swift" around me.



There was a time – think "Sears Catalog" – when advertising more or less served the needs of people rather than trying to create never-ending wants.

Even then, it's inherent to a mass-production-oriented consumer culture to create new "needs" where none existed before. And quackery was a deep and central part of advertising from day-one. Still, aside from patent medicines, finding a new sewing machine in the Sears Catalog could be considered a healthy relationship between buyer-and-seller as opposed to what we have now.



That's a good quote. We need only note that is is inconceivable to most people to make due with what they have and to be happy. This is a foreign concept. This is how successful industry has been regarding innovation and producing products that were useful...or just novel. Now most people are on the "new is better" bandwagon and they can't conceive an any other way of life.

It's arguable that "climate change" and a desire to "save the planet" is meant to be a veneer, a mere mask to try to escape or otherwise justify mass consumption. If a little spin is put on it that something is "green," that seems to excuse all else.

The mass media is an echo chamber for this stuff and more. And it's thoroughly geared toward hysteria.

My older brother has a theory that this is just a stage-managed connection meant to sell merchandise. Despite him gushing over the idea he was telling me (and not for the first time) just yesterday that we are all living inside a computer simulation, the Swift theory seems a perfectly reasonable explanation.

I've heard others say that Swift is not without talent. But I've heard so much about the mass-marketing aspect of Swift, I don't discount the theory that the NFL tie-in is a self-conscious and constructed attempt to sell more merchandise to the fanatics as well as promote the NFL to the only market they care about these days (women).

Why anyone would spend a dime on merchandise is beyond me, but I'm wired a little differently than most. Whatever strengths or weaknesses of my character and abilities, it would not even occur to me to try to transcend my own mediocrity by paying for over-priced merchandise in order to "identify" with the Mass Makers of Markets. I'm not Taylor Swift. I don't want to be Taylor Swift. It offends my sensibilities that anyone thinks like this. As much as I might like Sinatra's music, I don't want to be Frank Sinatra either. I mean, Jesus, what a bunch of nuts we have become.

By the way, I told my brother point-blank that this whole "living in a computer simulation" concept is de facto identical with the idea of God the Creator. But, for atheists, the former idea has some appeal that the latter does not. But if God created the very characteristics of nature, matter, and energy, then this is a de-facto "computer" (pre-programmed to act in a certain way) simulation. It's somebody's consciously-constructed model.

He wasn't interested in any of this. And I'm not sure I really understand. But it's become a widespread notion that has a particular appeal to atheists and "the secular." Maybe you can figure it out.