"American Rule" (how we got into this mess) by Jared Yates Sexton

[Pluvious]

He posted a long thread on this today, IMHO should be required reading for all who give a fuck.

I will link both the "unrolled thread" and the first tweet link (plus one) for your perusal.

This is some serious shit, folks.
Please help spread the word.

We MUST do something about is malicious media messing up our citizen's
minds with their lies and misinformation !!

Thread reader:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1285949728027533315.html

Original tweet:

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[handmade34]

1. bookmarking... n/t

[Dustlawyer]

2. This is one of the two root causes of most of our problems.

The RW media has programmed their viewers/listeners to cult member levels. That is why we have people refusing to wear masks despite a pandemic. Until we change how the media can report "news" we will never be able to fix most of our problems.

The other root cause is our campaign finance system which allows the super wealthy and corporations to control our politicians. With the media manipulating voters and the Donor Class manipulating our politicians, we end up fighting the symptoms such as climate change, education, guns... but never getting anywhere.

Until we address these two root problems we are just spinning our wheels!

[sharedvalues]

3. K&R

[chriscan64]

4. The right wing media and the gop used to be two different things.

In the old days, the party would write the scripts and talking points for the radio, and the rubes would eat it up. When Devin Nunes first opened his trap during the impeachment hearings, I thought, "wow, right wing radio made it to the halls of Congress, wait... they're in the freakin' white house!"

It is a decades old problem that has resulted in a whole generation of idiots who were bottle fed on this garbage, and many of them are holding office. Not just the misinformation but the lack of critical thinking, and a general distrust of all truth tellers, scientists journalists and career non-partisan government officials. The entire gamut of their logic is "if A equals B, then Democrats are bad".

"The other party is bad" is not a governing philosophy or policy framework. Republicans that did have governing ability were gradually purged. McCain is in a grave and Romney is on an island. The slim tether to reality has snapped under the pressure.

[crickets]

5. K&R for the post and the discussion.

I don't have coherent thoughts at the moment (cawfee, mm) but help keep this kicked, please. It's an important read that lays it all out, the path we have been pushed down to where we are now.

eta - see? oops, meant to reply to the thread.