US Politics Thread 2016-2020

[u crank]

While having a friendly discussion here about the media with Catfish I came across this article in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi about the death of Edward Herman. In 1988 Herman and Noam Chomsky wrote a book called Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. I haven't read it but some of what Taibbi quotes in the RS article are very interesting and alarming. Given the advent of social media, the ability of mass media to manipulate thought has been vastly expanded since 1988.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...herman-w511766

Herman and Chomsky stressed the concept of worthy and unworthy victims. In Manufacturing Consent, written during the Cold War, the idea was expressed thusly: One Polish priest murdered behind the Iron Curtain earned about a hundred times as much coverage as priests shot in Latin America by American-backed dictatorships.

The Polish priest was the worthy victim, the Latin American priests unworthy.

So Americans learned to be furious about atrocities committed in Soviet client states, but blind to almost exactly similar crimes committed within our own spheres of influence.

According to Herman and Chomsky the current large media outlets are not now nor have they ever been these benign, neutral and trustworthy entities that many of us (and I include myself here) assumed they were. They are corporate interests that operate on two basic principals. Profit for themselves and their advertisers and more discretely the political agendas of the corporate owners. And sometimes these seemingly opposite political views can be set aside for a common goal. Example....

This is how situations like the Iraq War invasion happened, in defiance of all common sense.

Even though a child could see that the government's stated reason for going into Iraq was both insane and a fiction, virtually everyone in the business jumped into the story with both feet.

Round the clock, TV sets were full of current and former generals and/or talking heads from think tanks boosting the war rationale. Antiwar voices were almost totally excluded.

And lastly this disturbing thought. Emphasis is mine.

When Manufacturing Consent was written the major problem was that Americans across the entire political spectrum were being sold a range of myths about the beneficence of American power and government policy.

Today it is not clear who is actually dictating to whom. Is the state dictating to the media, or are global distribution firms dictating the narrative to states?

Pass the roll of tinfoil please.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by u crank

While having a friendly discussion here about the media with Catfish

Nothing against a good scrap with friends

Pass the roll of tinfoil please.

I hereby publicly pass the tinfoil hat to you, u crank.
No seriously, good article..

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Catfish

I hereby publicly pass the tinfoil hat to you, u crank.

Thank you Sir. I shall have it back to you shortly.

[Mr Quatro]

I hope Trump tells him to confess the truth too or sue the hell out of the girls who said that he did what they said he did:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN1E91XO

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump called on fellow Republican Roy Moore on Friday to concede to Democrat Doug Jones in the Alabama U.S. Senate race, following the party’s stinging loss in the southern U.S. state earlier this week.

[ikalugin]

I heard you like the AI:

So 2nd amendment?

[Catfish]

^ Annyone who read 'Second variety' (=film 'Screamers') by Philip K. Dick will know what real AI means, in weapons.

I just doubt that some politicians do (or even can) read, or that any dictator or military dickhead gives a doh about the implications.

[ikalugin]

There were more sci-fi books on the topic than the 2nd variety.

I have seen the case being made for autonomous weapons.

However my question was different - in the age of autonomous weapons, would 2nd amendment matter?

[Catfish]

^ [cynical mode]
As long as those drones do not carry their weapons concealed...
Also drones are invented by people/US citizens, so when the AI runs wild, or becomes self-conscious and decides to kill people, it is after all still people that kill, not weapons.
[/cynical mode]

[ikalugin]

Doesnt need to be self aware and malicious, humans (ie the state) could use the autonomous weapons to kill other humans (ie opposition).

Would the right to own fire arms allow the citizenry to meaningfully oppose the state?

[vienna]

I don't think the 2nd Amendment would apply to drones: much in the same way the 2nd does not stand in the way of prohibition of individual possession of heavy fire power (heavy machine guns, a lot of full auto weapons, etc), the same would/will probably apply to armed drones...







<O>

[ikalugin]

Makes one wonder thought if 2nd amendment is usefull.

[mapuc]

About this 2nd amendment

If the author of these amendment could see how USA looks today in good and bad.

Would they have made this 2nd amendment or would it be different ?

Markus

[August]

The thing about the right to keep and bear arms is that they, along with every other right codified in the Bill of Rights, are inalienable. IE they are not granted by a government but the BoR represents a recognition by government that they exist independent of government.

Now maybe modern technology has indeed evolved to the point that any insurrection would be crushed but that is no justification for surrendering the means for resisting any more than the right to free speech is no longer useful because the government can silence a person at will or because they have the ability to beat down someones door there is no longer a useful need for the right to privacy.

[Gerald]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump will declare that China and Russia are competitors seeking to challenge U.S. power and erode its security and prosperity, in a national security strategy he will lay out in a speech on Monday.“They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence,” according to excerpts of Trump’s strategy released by the White House.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN1EC109

IS GOOD.

[Jimbuna]

Threads merged....US politics.