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Home » Discuss » Archives » General Discussion (01/01/06 through 01/22/2007) Donate to DU
 
Mythsaje Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-30-06 04:33 AM
Original message
Little by little, one at a time...
Sometimes it seems as though we're shouting down a well, trying to explain to people who cannot and will not understand what we're trying to say.

I absolutely understand the frustration. We're working against conventional "wisdom" and the seemingly insurmountable hurdle of the Corporate Media and its near-stranglehold on the information that reaches the general public.

I'm occasionally very frustrated speaking with my best friend, who STILL gets most of his news from mainstream sources. On Thanksgiving we were talking about the voting and he struck me as FAR too influenced by the Corporate Media. He referenced some of the things they were saying in ads put out by the RNC about the campaign between Burner and Reichert here in Washington State (a campaign that actually fell within his particular district) and how it influenced his thinking.

He's on the web, but he didn't really know SHIT about the issues, or how either of them felt about the issues. I think he voted against Burner because of those attack ads that accused HER of attack ads, citing articles in local newspapers.

Reichert's a dick. Thanks to DU I found parts of debates between the two and Darcy Burner blew him out of the water. But since the fucking Corporate Media doesn't bother to actually cover stuff like that, he was totally ignorant of where either of them stood.

Now, admittedly, he leans a bit farther toward the right than I do, though I think this is influenced by his sources of information. And it's irritating as hell.

My father, on the other hand, gets most of his news from the newspapers. And DU, through me. He reads the newspaper from cover to cover, at least any of the headlines that attract his interest. Things about Haliburton and those that click with things that I've already told him about definitely catch his eye.

But it's the things that never, ever, ever, ever, seem to make it into the paper that blow his mind. Or, rather, I should say, the things that seem to take forever to get there...months later he sees verification of something I told him. We seem to be literally months ahead of the curve with the corporate media.

So, yeah, the CM is one of my targets. I despise them for what they've done to us, abandoning the notion of an informed electorate for the benefit of the oligarchs. And I will not, ever, quit shrieking about it at the top of my lungs--or from the tips of my fingers, anyway.

But every time WE put a meme out there, it settles into someone's mind...all but the most infuriately barricaded mind. We are reaching people. We can't give up. Every person who blows us off only to find out we were right later on learns something about us, and about themselves.

We DO know more than they do.

This last election was a verification of this, but we must be sure not to give up, not to allow one small success to cause us to relax. We can only get through to the people who can be reached by continuing to slowly and carefully show them to the truth. We can't force it upon them, but we can lead them to it.

And, I, for one, intend to continue doing precisely that.
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texpatriot2004 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-30-06 08:30 AM
Response to Original message
1. Kick nm
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Mythsaje Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-30-06 08:36 PM
Response to Original message
2. Self-kick
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Roland99 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-30-06 11:07 PM
Response to Original message
3. Perhaps you'd be interested in this media conference in Jan.?
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Jackpine Radical Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-30-06 11:13 PM
Response to Reply #3
5. My wife attended the first of those, in Madison in 2003.
She thought it was wonderful.
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Roland99 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-01-06 06:59 PM
Response to Reply #5
17. I could probably go to that one, myself, but it would really be tight on my sched.
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Jackpine Radical Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-30-06 11:08 PM
Response to Original message
4. OK, OK...you wheedled a K&R out of me.
Next time you see a reasonably coherent thread from me dying of neglect, I expect you to remember this...
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Mythsaje Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Nov-30-06 11:20 PM
Response to Reply #4
6. lol you bet...n/t
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Exultant Democracy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-01-06 12:00 AM
Response to Original message
7. My friends often comment on how I am sometimes months ahead on major news storys
Right now they are all in the "Barrak Obama, thats the guy you were talking about two years ago mode."
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northofdenali Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-01-06 12:42 AM
Response to Original message
8. K&R -
as usual, eloquent and saying what I'd like to be able to say! Plus, read your post on Puh-leez....... :P
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Old and In the Way Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-01-06 12:43 AM
Response to Original message
9. The function of today's mainstream press is to filter out the news.
Your dad will spend lots of time trying to find a lot of information about what Halliburtion is up to in the MSM. Or most anything that puts a criminal light on this administration. 10 years ago, I was getting 98% of my news from the MSM. Now it's probably closer to 20% or less. And I'm a hell of a lot more informed about what's happening around me. Best thing that ever happened to democracy, IMHO.
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Mythsaje Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-01-06 12:48 AM
Response to Reply #9
10. I agree...
He DID, however, find out that KB&R is being investigated, and that it's a subsidiary of Haliburton--a name he only recognizes because I told it to him.

He's not on-line and probably won't ever be. Despite everything I tried to do, he's never been comfortable with computers.
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Old and In the Way Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-01-06 12:57 AM
Response to Reply #10
11. Yeah, my mom was like that, too.
Sad, because I think she'd have found the internet to be an incredible place to find/research information on what interested her. But she could never quite make the connection with computers.
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Mythsaje Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-01-06 01:02 AM
Response to Reply #11
12. I think it's remarkable that a man
who grew up reading science fiction, particularly of the hard variety, is so afraid of one of the staples of science fiction made reality.
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EST Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-01-06 01:28 AM
Response to Original message
13. We warned them and warned them, yet the warm stream media
insisted on their navel gazing and self congratulatory little back-pats like, "Well we get about the same number of complaints that we are left-wing as those accusing us of being right wing, so we must be doing it right."

That this bit of mental masturbation falls apart under any sort of serious examination simply escapes them.

Their readership and audience are falling off. Their pontifications are falling on deaf ears or no ears at all, yet the reasons they give for this demonstrate the process to which they are blind.

The internet is the tool and battlefield which will ultimately aid in winning our fight against tyranny.
The attempt to throttle the internet demonstrates the fascists' awareness of that fact.

The corporate media have tried to sell the notion that it is consumers' laziness and cupidity that are bringing about their loss of audience to the internet, all the while refusing to recognize the biggest reason-that they are unreliable and crooked and we have to resort to searching the internet for scraps of realistic news and information.

They are bringing about their own downfall while blaming everyone but themselves and lying about it all. Their downfall is now a foregone conclusion and our continued flogging of them, in a way, represents wasted effort, but must be done-because that's the way it works.

The battle to retain this medium of communication and prevent the seizing thereof by the corporate masters is the most important challenge confronting us. Those attempts are increasing in their intensity and malevolence and will require a greater and greater participation.

Keeping the public in the thrall of the same sort of bread and circuses that the major media has become is the biggest goal of corporate media and they have barely begun to fight.

So have we.
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Mythsaje Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-01-06 02:16 AM
Response to Reply #13
14. Except I don't think it's wasted effort...
If anything, it will serve to hasten its demise...

Of course now we need to find a way to get "boots on the ground," so to speak. The New Media needs reporters in the field. Maybe fewer than the Corporate Media has needed, but we need people with the credentials to get where they need to be to get the story.

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EST Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-01-06 08:53 AM
Response to Reply #14
16. Of course it is not.
Just like the closing moves of a chess match, even though the outcome may not be seriously in doubt, the play bas to continue, the moves have to be made.

The only alternative is an immediate surrender and that ain't gonna happen.
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Hawkowl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-01-06 02:30 AM
Response to Original message
15. True
It's true. People remember when you tell them some news that only appears in the paper or TV weeks, or months later. "I get how did you know that?" all the time. One by one. People talking to people that is how we will take our country back.
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