The movie "Dont Look Up"; Discussion for those who have watched; spoiler alerts

[okeefe4prez]

People in North Korea may or may not believe that one. But the media shields them so much from the outside world that they have no idea what's really going on. A few years ago I would have said America would never be like that. After Covid and Ukraine I wonder if we are already there. Musk buying Twitter hopefully slowed it down. But that's just sticking your finger in the hole in the dam.

Noam Chomsky wrote a fantastic book on this in the '80's called "Manufacturing Consent" where he outlined a series of filters through which reporting travels and demonstrated how even in the absence of a government edict "free market" media tends to create one helluva shield. It's easy for us as Americans to be completely blind to the shield but it is our duty to teach others to see it.

I moved to Japan on 9/10 from New York. I was gone until 2003. When I came back and saw the media blitzkrieg on attacking Iraq I was absolutely floored. I still am floored by it. I think COVID specifically has woken up a lot of people to shit that far fewer people noticed in the past. Chomsky's Propaganda Model was the purview of ardent leftist/commie intellectuals and I was taught the model in the '90's and completely dismissed it, in no small part because it was a commie econ prof who taught it to us and said it was the most important thing he would teach us about economic thought. I didn't think about it again until 2003 when I saw the Iraq shit, but then I re-read the book as a middle aged man right when COVID hit and it legit made my asshole pucker up.

 

[PCHawk]

Noam Chomsky wrote a fantastic book on this in the '80's called "Manufacturing Consent" where he outlined a series of filters through which reporting travels and demonstrated how even in the absence of a government edict "free market" media tends to create one helluva shield. It's easy for us as Americans to be completely blind to the shield but it is our duty to teach others to see it.

I moved to Japan on 9/10 from New York. I was gone until 2003. When I came back and saw the media blitzkrieg on attacking Iraq I was absolutely floored. I still am floored by it. I think COVID specifically has woken up a lot of people to shit that far fewer people noticed in the past. Chomsky's Propaganda Model was the purview of ardent leftist/commie intellectuals and I was taught the model in the '90's and completely dismissed it, in no small part because it was a commie econ prof who taught it to us and said it was the most important thing he would teach us about economic thought. I didn't think about it again until 2003 when I saw the Iraq shit, but then I re-read the book as a middle aged man right when COVID hit and it legit made my asshole pucker up.

What was it about the coverage that floored you?

 

[okeefe4prez]

What was it about the coverage that floored you?

The absolute and unwavering purity test. "You're either for this war or you're for the terrorists." Uncle Sugar had the consent of the population to do anything in Afghanistan immediately after 9/11. People were understandably pissed off and scared. But things had cooled off and then out of nowhere it was "Iraq has WMDs." I never could understand how that fit into the grand scheme of the war on terror, but if you look at a 30 year chart of the stocks of the defense contractors I guess it makes sense. They need to get paid, too.

 

[PCHawk]

The absolute and unwavering purity test. "You're either for this war or you're for the terrorists." Uncle Sugar had the consent of the population to do anything in Afghanistan immediately after 9/11. People were understandably pissed off and scared. But things had cooled off and then out of nowhere it was "Iraq has WMDs." I never could understand how that fit into the grand scheme of the war on terror, but if you look at a 30 year chart of the stocks of the defense contractors I guess it makes sense. They need to get paid, too.

That purity test sounds awfully familiar now with Ukraine.