Flynn Walks

[_ajax18]

Hannity, it's very difficult to penetrate the whole alternative universe of facts that Hannity and similar figures develop among their hardcore fanbase, but yeah

So Hannity is just making up false facts? Is the pretty much the substance of your argument? The only difference I see is what MSNBC chooses to cover as opposed to Fox. Even with the same clip of Attorney General Barr Chuck Todd was able to spin the meaning of the quote just by selectively editing the interview.

[_EAllusion]

Yes, Hannity lies constantly. He also misleads by taking quotes of context, drawing false connections by omitting relevant information, and wording material to act as innuendo. He's dishonest in about every way it is possible to be dishonest, but there's just straight up lying is there. He's a very bad propagandist, but lies build upon lies in such away that there's a whole universe that you inhabit where things that are banana pants crazy to the outside world are readily believed because there's some foundational work that's been done to make it seem plausible to you.

[_Icarus]

Hannity, it's very difficult to penetrate the whole alternative universe of facts that Hannity and similar figures develop among their hardcore fanbase, but yeah

So Hannity is just making up false facts? Is the pretty much the substance of your argument? The only difference I see is what MSNBC chooses to cover as opposed to Fox. Even with the same clip of Attorney General Barr Chuck Todd was able to spin the meaning of the quote just by selectively editing the interview.

You don't watch MSNBC so you really have no clue what MSNBC says beyond what Hannity tells you they say. And like EA just explained to you, Hannity lies and misleads about anything and everything. Not sure why it is so difficult for you to just admit you believe what you want and you listen to those who say what you believe. Its just obvious.

Case in point, the only reason you're complaining about a Chuck Todd interview is because it is plastered all over FOX and that's how you know about it. What you don't get is that when NBC makes mistakes they immediately apologize. Hannity just doubles down on lying when he's caught.

With the Chuck Todd interview, this FOX news defense of Barr is reminiscent of the "Hoax" claim. We were told Trump didn't call the coronavirus a hoax because the evil liberal media didn't quote him in context. Well, context didn't change anything as Barr's contextualize response is just as dumb as the first. He said what he said. But FOX has a way of making people who want there to be a deception, believe there has been a deception because that dovetails with their entire agenda.

[_EAllusion]

It's not the big picture here, but Chuck Todd is a major figure in promoting a strong right-wing bias in media coverage. A large majority of his guests are Republican operatives. When Obama was President, the argument was that it was necessary to hear from the opposition party. When Republicans swept power, the justification was that the people in power are the primary newsmakers and therefore need to be heard from. He gives them a sizeable platform to promote talking points with mostly ineffectual pushback being the dynamic. He generally makes coverage choices that adopt right-wing media's preferred topics while treating their framing as either the default or part of a serious dispute between sincere co-partisans. It's a false reality. When he occasionally breaks that dynamic, it tends to spill over into national coverage. He's awful at his job in general, but he's awful in a particular away that really plays into PR aims of the Republican party.

Yet, if you pay attention to right-wing media, he's the liberalist liberal who ever did liberal promoting liberal bias in the media. It only ever seems to comes up when some pushback from Todd makes it into the broader news cycle. Part of that is just working the refs because Todd, being a poster-child example of a dupe for false balance, will adjust by being even more deferential, but another part of it seems to be a sincere belief that anything short of the conservative equivalent of state media is inherent liberal bias.

Ajax is bringing it up here because Fox, Brietbart, and friends went off on Todd for quoting Barr out of context by not finishing out his quote where he says history is written by the victors. The "out of context" charge comes from not including the part where he states he thinks he's right and therefore a fair history would deem him right (what else would he say?). That's kinda ridiculous because the latter statement doesn't really change what's bad about the former statement and worth discussing, but that's what worth going full-on culture war about now. Meanwhile, just relentless, non-stop, daily outright deception from his preferred news sources doesn't even register a blip on his radar. And that kinda gives away the game.

[_EAllusion]

Todd can spend the lead up to the 2018 election having prominent segments on a migrant caravan, bring on Republican politicians who respond to questions by reading off talking point lists, and if Todd so much as meekly challenges something said, no matter how obviously false or misleading, Ajax's bias detector goes "ZOMG! LIBERAL BIAS!" So, despite elevating a non-issue into a major news story and giving people extensive air time to promote lies about it, if Todd so much as says, "There's no evidence for X" bias alarms are sounding in his brain because he personally believes X.

That this whole dynamic is a propaganda boon for Republicans doesn't enter his mind, I don't think, because it's just the water he swims in and doesn't notice it. It's always hard to tell to what extent an Ajax type is in on the game or is just a tool of it.

[_ajax18]

So why did MSNBC apologize if nothing was taken out of context?

[_EAllusion]

Do you mean why did Chuck Todd apologize? I thought I already outlined that. Todd will run laps to appease conservative critics if there's even a whiff that criticisms could be legitimate. His sense of fairness, or what he thinks makes him look fair, demands it. You're operating from the wrong premise about who Todd, and people like him, are.

[_honorentheos]

When both-sideism becomes nihilism

Yeah, the foundation of society requires people to make reasonable distinctions between when calling for a person to be jailed is due to actual improper behavior and when it is due to political allegiance. It turns out that people like Ajax have one weird trick to hack the brain of people whose main heuristic for figuring out if something can be dismissed as partisan is whether two sides with power can be presented in disagreement. Just project the corrupt and criminal behavior of their leaders onto their enemies with the thinnest possible veneer of argument and present it as a serious debate for serious people. Worst case scenario, you muddy the waters. Best case scenario, you grease the skates to there being no truth but who holds power.

It's interesting that you view my position as nihilist. I look at where we are as a country and don't like the direction it's going. But when looked at through a historical lense, we are not over the precipice by any measure. But in historical terms these things tend to escalate as "both sides" assert more extreme reactions to political opponents are required to counter balance the wrongs being done which creates a sort of inevitability that carries nation's over. In a negotiation over the future of society, heated and reactionary war footings lead to war. If one champions a civil, pluralistic society, one has to act in accordance with those beliefs when discussing the issues taking us to the edge.

In that sense, I'm less concerned about subbie and ajax than I am with people who aren't already on Team Boogaloo. But you are in another category, talking like a mirrored version of ajax like you're already marshalled on the other side of the field waiting for the shooting to commence as an inevitability tied to forces outside anyone's control. Only, you talk like someone who incites a fight, then dodge off to tut tut everyone for not having heeded the warning a fight was breaking out. Clearly someone without kids and deep social attachments from what you've shared I can see the way it may work out in your mind as not your problem since you'll ride it out either way according to your calculations. I'm not for that, regardless of how inevitable some may think that is, nor do I see acknowledging multiple perspectives as giving ground to an enemy so much as meeting them where they are. If there is hope for the future, it will have to come in the form of rational, moderate people continuing to resist the self-destructive narcissism of extreme views from all sides. Wars suck. Wars suck a lot more than some careless people seem to realize.

[_ajax18]

Only, you talk like someone who incites a fight, then dodge off to tut tut everyone for not having heeded the warning a fight was breaking out.

Icarus is just as militant and determined to escalate the violence cycle as EAllusion and he has kids. From what he tells us he has a happy marriage as well. Wars suck in a silmilar way that divorce sucks. Sometimes they are necessary.

[_ajax18]

If EAllusion were libertarian he'd be more in line with Rand Paul who believes the Obama administration was using the power of the presidency to illegally spy on a political opponent. Unmasking of a political opponent as Senator Paul says is the same thing as illegally wiretapping someone's private conversation, something any purported libertarian should be concerned about. The foreign agent was not promising to blow up the capital nor anything worthy of unmasking a political opponent in this conversation with a Russian agent. It's essentially the same issue of using the power of government to attack a political opponent, the same accusation that incited Democrats to go through with a partisan impeachment of President Trump. Imagine someone not knowing anything about the partisan political landscape trying to make sense of this in an apolitical legal textbook. It's simply incomprehensible and irrational without understanding legal realism.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... spartanntp