The New Age of shamelessness

[DrZoidberg]

There's something that worries me about today's world. I'm just throwing it out there to see if it resonates with anyone here.

The left has collapsed into ever increasing morally high positions and seems more about passing judgement on whoever isn't perfect, rather than helping those who are struggling, and given them tools to help to include them into the prospering wider community. Which I thought was the one unique selling point of the left. Oh, no. All they seem to care about not having to take responsibility and pronouns.

While the right has become a charicature of populism. It reminds me of Germany when nobody took Hitler seriously, but voted for him anyway, because at least he wasn't a communist. We have a similar situation now, when the left has gone increasingly loony and the right are just talking shit.

I'm not saying politics was ever free from bullshit. But right now politics seems to have become completely rediculous. Any option to vote for seems completely divorced from what they may or may not do. Dan Harmon once made a funny comment on his podcast, about how he relentlessly criticised Obama for being such a slick snake, and couldn't be trusted. When Trump was in office Harmon regretted being so cynical about Obama.

I'm primarily thinking about the political climate in Scandinavia. But I have an impression it's the same all over. It just seems to be more bullshit faux issues than ever before.

What do you think about today's political climate? Do you also find it difficult to understand what political candidates are promising?

I didn't make up the title. It's a Slavoy Zizek quote.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Nobody tunes into the 6:30 network news. Where I live, newspaper readers are a distinct minority. Town used to have newspaper machines in maybe ten different locations; now they've joined the pay phones in nostalgia land. I read the paper, largely for the NYT crossword. but also for the limited news coverage. My news/opinion channel is MSNBC; I wouldn't be able to watch Fox or One America for two minutes without losing my mind. I know people who get their news straight off their phone.
The USA is a bitter, partisan society, which lacks the collaborative spirit necessary to address the big issues (especially the national debt, climate change, guns, civil rights, immigration.) This is why our President is D________ J. T________. I can't even stand to type his name.
This situation certainly won't get fixed in my lifetime.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Nobody tunes into the 6:30 network news. Where I live, newspaper readers are a distinct minority. Town used to have newspaper machines in maybe ten different locations; now they've joined the pay phones in nostalgia land. I read the paper, largely for the NYT crossword. but also for the limited news coverage. My news/opinion channel is MSNBC; I wouldn't be able to watch Fox or One America for two minutes without losing my mind. I know people who get their news straight off their phone.
The USA is a bitter, partisan society, which lacks the collaborative spirit necessary to address the big issues (especially the national debt, climate change, guns, civil rights, immigration.) This is why our President is D________ J. T________. I can't even stand to type his name.
This situation certainly won't get fixed in my lifetime.

What we learned after the rise of the Internet is that news has always been pretty shit. It was written by the urban elites and catered to their needs. I think that's the main political split today. The rurals have never in history before had an information mouthpiece. But they make up the majority in any country. And they've always been talked down to. And we're still learning how to deal with the new reality.

When journalists complain that journalism is dead. What they mean is that the time when getting a job at a magazine immediately made you a power player.... is over.

I think the main partisan split is between the old elite and the new rural elite. I think all the populists today (around the world) represent the voice of the rurals. It's the split between those who are trying to raise a family somewhere with few prospects, and those who split hairs about who's the most victim and therefore deserve special treatment in the laws.

I think we have access to more and better news than ever before. What we also have is more bad news than ever before. We have more of everything. And it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell the quality from the crap. I think that's why we're getting ever increasingly divides between groups.

I'm not sure what to do about it though.

 

[jonatha]

The rurals have never in history before had an information mouthpiece. But they make up the majority in any country

Citation needed...

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

The rurals have never in history before had an information mouthpiece. But they make up the majority in any country

Citation needed...

Yeah, that's definitely factually incorrect. For instance, in Australia, over half the population lives in just the five biggest cities.

 

[cycomiko]

Nobody tunes into the 6:30 network news. Where I live, newspaper readers are a distinct minority. Town used to have newspaper machines in maybe ten different locations; now they've joined the pay phones in nostalgia land. I read the paper, largely for the NYT crossword. but also for the limited news coverage. My news/opinion channel is MSNBC; I wouldn't be able to watch Fox or One America for two minutes without losing my mind. I know people who get their news straight off their phone.
The USA is a bitter, partisan society, which lacks the collaborative spirit necessary to address the big issues (especially the national debt, climate change, guns, civil rights, immigration.) This is why our President is D________ J. T________. I can't even stand to type his name.
This situation certainly won't get fixed in my lifetime.

What we learned after the rise of the Internet is that news has always been pretty shit. It was written by the urban elites and catered to their needs. I think that's the main political split today. The rurals have never in history before had an information mouthpiece. But they make up the majority in any country. And they've always been talked down to. And we're still learning how to deal with the new reality.

When journalists complain that journalism is dead. What they mean is that the time when getting a job at a magazine immediately made you a power player.... is over.

I think the main partisan split is between the old elite and the new rural elite. I think all the populists today (around the world) represent the voice of the rurals. It's the split between those who are trying to raise a family somewhere with few prospects, and those who split hairs about who's the most victim and therefore deserve special treatment in the laws.

I think we have access to more and better news than ever before. What we also have is more bad news than ever before. We have more of everything. And it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell the quality from the crap. I think that's why we're getting ever increasingly divides between groups.

I'm not sure what to do about it though.

I think what journalists actually mean by "journalism is dead" is that real journalist do fact checking and issue redactions and corrections when needed and generally follow a code of ethics. These days, anyone can claim to be a "journalist" and just start spouting whatever they want on social media.

Also, in the US, the rurals only make up about 20% of the population.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Our electoral system and the structure of the legislative branch hand them a good deal more than 20% of the political capital.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The rurals have never in history before had an information mouthpiece. But they make up the majority in any country

Citation needed...

Yeah, that's definitely factually incorrect. For instance, in Australia, over half the population lives in just the five biggest cities.

Its shorthand for urban middle class. Yes, I know the American working class thinks they're all middle-class. But they're not. The middle class have all the power today. Those guys. Why all the power? Because the aristocracy is pretty much gone today.

If a person doesn't have money and power, they're working class

I hope that clears it up

 

[jonatha]

Its shorthand for urban middle class.

"Rurals" is shorthand for "urban middle class"?

In Danish maybe...

 

[DrZoidberg]

Its shorthand for urban middle class.

"Rurals" is shorthand for "urban middle class"?

In Danish maybe...

No

 

[southernhybrid]

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2017/08/rural-america.html

I'd like to correct one claim before I think more about my opinion regarding the OP. Most Americans don't live in rural areas. I have no idea if that is true in other countries, but it is here. Just sayin'.

About 60 million people, or one in five Americans, live in rural America.

The term “rural” means different things to different people. For many, it evokes images of farmlands and pastoral landscapes. For our purposes, we define rural based on the official Census Bureau classification. What is urban and what is rural is defined after each decennial census using specific criteria related to population thresholds, density, distance and land use.

In general, rural areas are sparsely populated, have low housing density, and are far from urban centers. Urban areas make up only 3 percent of the entire land area of the country but are home to more than 80 percent of the population. Conversely, 97 percent of the country’s land mass is rural but only 19.3 percent of the population lives there.

Sorry, I just saw this was already mentioned before I posted it, but it does give a reliable statistic of that claim, so I'll leave the post intact.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Nobody tunes into the 6:30 network news. Where I live, newspaper readers are a distinct minority. Town used to have newspaper machines in maybe ten different locations; now they've joined the pay phones in nostalgia land. I read the paper, largely for the NYT crossword. but also for the limited news coverage. My news/opinion channel is MSNBC; I wouldn't be able to watch Fox or One America for two minutes without losing my mind. I know people who get their news straight off their phone.
The USA is a bitter, partisan society, which lacks the collaborative spirit necessary to address the big issues (especially the national debt, climate change, guns, civil rights, immigration.) This is why our President is D________ J. T________. I can't even stand to type his name.
This situation certainly won't get fixed in my lifetime.

What we learned after the rise of the Internet is that news has always been pretty shit. It was written by the urban elites and catered to their needs. I think that's the main political split today. The rurals have never in history before had an information mouthpiece. But they make up the majority in any country. And they've always been talked down to. And we're still learning how to deal with the new reality.

When journalists complain that journalism is dead. What they mean is that the time when getting a job at a magazine immediately made you a power player.... is over.

I have no idea what is happening in Northern Europe. In the US, journalism is dying because the Internet provided the news for free. Print journalism is evaporating (make that evaporated) in the United States. Newspapers have consolidated and went on a diet, with papers being half to a third of their previous published size. In the US, journalism is still trying to figure out how to make themselves viable in the Internet age. Many have gone to online pay models. But the income is much lower than it had been.

I think all the populists today (around the world) represent the voice of the rurals. It's the split between those who are trying to raise a family somewhere with few prospects, and those who split hairs about who's the most victim and therefore deserve special treatment in the laws.

That is so overly broad, to be nonsensical. In the US we currently have roughly 1/2 the voting public supporting Trump populism and 1/2 the voting public not supporting Trump populism.

I think we have access to more and better news than ever before. What we also have is more bad news than ever before. We have more of everything. And it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell the quality from the crap.

It actually is very easy to tell the crap media from the real media. Generally, the main difference is the rage/insult factor. Yes, Trump broke Poe's Law, but overall, it is a bit easy to see bold all caps in article headers or memes and put on the brakes.

The trouble is, many people want to reinforce what they already believe to be true, so they can be susceptible to believing the BS, because they want it to be true.

In the US, toxic masculinity is becoming more popular because of the right-wing and social media. Younger males are falling for that bullshit.

I think that's why we're getting ever increasingly divides between groups.

Communication is usually the best way forward.

 

[Patooka]

Its shorthand for urban middle class.

"Rurals" is shorthand for "urban middle class"?

In Danish maybe...

No

Literally no one in the western world uses "rural" as shorthand for "urban". That is a complete oxymoron. You'd have a better chance convincing people blue collar billionaires and Islamic Atheists are real things.

 

[bilby]

The problem described in the OP is easy to see.

People always made up untrue claims to support their arguments:

The rurals have never in history before had an information mouthpiece. But they make up the majority in any country.

But in the good old days, when it was shown to be factually false, they felt embarrassment, because factually false claims were outnumbered by true claims.

So the false one stood out, and got laughed at.

People learned from their shame to remain silent, until they had checked that what they planned to say was true.

But today, when challenged, instead of saying "I am so sorry, I made a terrible mistake and am ashamed of my lack of dilligence in checking my work before I published it", they simply double-down, and claim that they said something completely different:

The rurals have never in history before had an information mouthpiece. But they make up the majority in any country

Citation needed...

Yeah, that's definitely factually incorrect. For instance, in Australia, over half the population lives in just the five biggest cities.

Its shorthand for urban middle class. Yes, I know the American working class thinks they're all middle-class. But they're not. The middle class have all the power today. Those guys. Why all the power? Because the aristocracy is pretty much gone today.

If a person doesn't have money and power, they're working class

I hope that clears it up

And if called on that falsity, they simply refuse to engage:

Its shorthand for urban middle class.

"Rurals" is shorthand for "urban middle class"?

In Danish maybe...

No

This is the problem, right here. Shamelessness. The facts don't matter, and nobody is embarrassed to be caught making a gross factual error. They don't learn, they don't even retract their claim. They double down.

And tomorrow they will shamelessly be making the same false statement somewhere else.

 

[bilby]

In the US, journalism is dying because the Internet provided the news for free

It's worse than that, Jim. It provides advertisements for free.

Newspapers were always funded by small ads. What we called "classified ads". People would pay a small amount per word, or per line, to sell their old furniture, or seek true love, or send coded messages to spies. The publishers called this "the rivers of gold".

The cover price barely paid for the distribution costs. But the small ads made that a non-issue.

Now you can use eBay, or grindr, or Telegram to do these things. And the cover price for a newspaper now has to actually pay for the whole thing - paper, printing, distribution, reporting, photography, editing, profits...

Even a slimmed down paper can't make much money in such conditions.

 

[Elixir]

Nobody tunes into the 6:30 network news.

Why bother? They get all the news their little brains can handle, from the comments sections of
YouTube videos.

If a person doesn't have money and power, they're working class

Bullshit. That's meaningless semantic bullshit unless you can quantify power... and "money" for that matter.
I eschew power, and don't even like hiring people to do my bidding, so I'm working class, even though I'm not working?
I only see very greedy, unhappy people at the top of the economic food chain, and a spectrum of wealth spread out below them.

I'd rather pay people to know what needs to be done better than I do, and be much better and faster than I am at doing it. What they are asking for it is irrelevant. What matters is how much I want or need what they can do, and how well they know it.

A monk is less "working class" than a billionaire.

And tomorrow they will shamelessly be making the same false statement somewhere else.

QFT

 

[Gospel]

The problem described in the OP is easy to see.

People always made up untrue claims to support their arguments:

The rurals have never in history before had an information mouthpiece. But they make up the majority in any country.

But in the good old days, when it was shown to be factually false, they felt embarrassment, because factually false claims were outnumbered by true claims.

So the false one stood out, and got laughed at.

People learned from their shame to remain silent, until they had checked that what they planned to say was true.

But today, when challenged, instead of saying "I am so sorry, I made a terrible mistake and am ashamed of my lack of dilligence in checking my work before I published it", they simply double-down, and claim that they said something completely different:

The rurals have never in history before had an information mouthpiece. But they make up the majority in any country

Citation needed...

Yeah, that's definitely factually incorrect. For instance, in Australia, over half the population lives in just the five biggest cities.

Its shorthand for urban middle class. Yes, I know the American working class thinks they're all middle-class. But they're not. The middle class have all the power today. Those guys. Why all the power? Because the aristocracy is pretty much gone today.

If a person doesn't have money and power, they're working class

I hope that clears it up

And if called on that falsity, they simply refuse to engage:

Its shorthand for urban middle class.

"Rurals" is shorthand for "urban middle class"?

In Danish maybe...

No

This is the problem, right here. Shamelessness. The facts don't matter, and nobody is embarrassed to be caught making a gross factual error. They don't learn, they don't even retract their claim. They double down.

And tomorrow they will shamelessly be making the same false statement somewhere else.

I don’t know about you, but I find it amusing when people trapped in their own delusions exhibit a hollow display of strength. Like a lone goat staring down a pride of lions. The fact that they don’t know, or don’t care, that they should be ashamed doesn’t make it any less funny knowing they’re about to get devoured. For what it’s worth, I do still feel some sympathy for them

 

[southernhybrid]

I think the more liberal party in the US does have a messaging problem, but it's not necessarily related to the pronoun thing. That minor issue has been used to target the left and most on the left in the US are more center left, not far left. Of course, how left is defined is highly subjective too. The Right has used social issues as a way to target the left, but the right is becoming very extreme to the point where they want to punish gay people, make birth control illegal and create a far right Christian theocracy etc. Perhaps the left should target the right regarding their extreme issues a lot more strongly. Regardless, they need to find a way to improve their messaging.

The Dems in the US have always been the party of the working class, but the right has done a good job of making it seem as if the Dems are the party of the coastal liberal elites and that in turn has caused many in the working class to be disgusted with the Dems. And yes, much of this is due to the disinformation from fake news sources. I refuse to refer to them as actual news since they rarely if ever actually report what's going on, but they are great at making up all kinds of propaganda.

Here's some examples. A friendly acquaintance of mine who I used to exercise with told me that she planned on voting for Trump. I asked her where she got her news from and she said, "Newsmax", which for those who don't know is even worse than Fox when it comes to providing disinformation and propaganda while rarely ever reporting actual news. I asked her why she supported Trump and she said because Biden is inviting criminals to come into the country. She asked where I got my news and when I said WaPo and the NYTimes, she told me that was fake news. Remember when Trump said the Times was fake news? Sure, it's not perfect but it does excellent reporting and has won a huge number of awards for excellent news and it has opinion columnist from both sides, The times will even correct itself when an error was made. Imagine that!

I subscribe online and even if I wanted the paper version, it's no longer available in the South. In fact, the Atlanta Journal is primarily available in ATL and I used to subscribe to it online too. There are some decent free sources of news online. Reuters is supposed to be a good source of news, based on what I've read about it. But how many people even bother to read anything these days? They don't want to know the truth for one thing.

My point is that it's hard to fight people who are gullible enough to believe all the bullshit put out by the tv sources of disinformation. The woman I mentioned isn't a bad person or a racist. In fact, she does a lot for one of her Black next door neighbors who has health problems. She seems compassionate, but I see her as a victim of propaganda, and to be honest, she's not the brightest bulb in the box. All of my Black female friends support liberal causes for the most part and they never vote for any Republican, so they must be smarter than most white people.

Then there are the people like my bro in law who is wealthy and highly educated but also believes the bullshit about the left, so he voted for Trump. For some idiotic reason, he thinks that the stock market will do much better under Trump then any dem and he has los of money in stocks. He once told us he would never vote for Trump again after voting for him in 2016. To me, he is proof that having an advanced degree doesn't necessarily equate with critical thinking skills.

A close Black female friend of mine told me that her nephew said he could never vote for a woman because women are too weak. There are lots of crazy reasons why the left is in trouble. Feminism is dying. A lot of younger women want to go back to the day when they were subjected to being in the kitchen, having babies and subjecting themselves to a husband. I just read an article about that today. Hope it's just a small minority, but it's hard to understand as the women in my age group were all proud to work. My late mother was born in 1925 and she was a working mom. She would be disgusted if she saw what was happening today. She always voted for the Dems, even when she didn't agree with all of their positions. She was a rare evangelical who could think when it came to politics. She once told me that her church friends told her that Obama was a Marxist/Muslim as if that even made sense. She vented to me about them all the time. Okay. I've ranted about this enough. That's at least how I see it in the US.

 

[Colonel Sanders]

My news/opinion channel is MSNBC; I wouldn't be able to watch Fox or One America for two minutes without losing my mind. I know people who get their news straight off their phone.

I can't even watch MSNBC. The last time I watched it was a love fest, softball throwing affair between AOC and Rachel Maddow.

I like AOC.

I like Maddow.

Yet it was cringe inducing and therefore unwatchable.

As for the smart phone, it's a blight on society as are internet news sites.

Read the headline and that's all anyone needs to know.

I will never stop repeating that we're in the intractable mess we're in because people don't take the time to sit down and take pleasure in reading books, newspapers, and news magazines.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Amen. I take my book or mag to every restaurant/coffee shop -- and I'm the outlier. I'm the unusual sight.