A disheartening aspect of our national life is the disinformation industry. I’m not talking about “spin” or “puffery.” I’m talking about widespread, deliberate propaganda.
For example, a recent Yahoo News story was summed up in this headline: “Antifa website cited in conservative media attacks on Biden is linked to–wait for it–Russia.” (Speaking of Russia, the New. York Times confirmed that a story about bible-burning in Portland, also embraced by the Right, was both wildly inaccurate and linked to Russia.)
It turns out that propaganda dissemination isn’t confined to Fox News, although Fox is clearly a. predominant “player” in the richly rewarding field of lying for fun and profit. Others have noticed how lucrative propaganda can be, as The Washington Post recently reported.
The reality curated by “The Bearded Patriot” and “The Wolf of Washington” is dismal.
The websites tell of nonstop riots and “crazed leftists.” They warn of online censorship and the wiles of an “anarchist billionaire,” a reference to George Soros, the liberal investor and Holocaust survivor.
The material is tailor-made to inflame right-wing passions. But its underlying purpose is to collect email addresses and other personal information from impassioned readers, whose inboxes then fill up with narrowly targeted ads. The effect is to monetize the anger stoked by misleading political content — for as much as $2,500 per list of contacts.
For-profit fear-mongering is rewarding, and so-called “merchants of misinformation” are exploiting new techniques of data collection to capitalize on American polarization.
Another article I came across–this time from Buzzfeed– provides yet another an example.
The clip that was posted to Twitter — and subsequently viewed over 1.2 million times — purports to show protesters invading a church, screaming “Black Lives Matter” and even abusing parishioners. One demonstrator is filmed calling a church member “a dumb fuck.”
The clip was uploaded by Charlie Kirk, one of the leading voices in the Trump Youth Movement, who added his own interpretation of events: “Christians have not been allowed to attend church for months,” Kirk tweeted, referring to coronavirus-related pauses in services. “But when they finally are, BLM inc. rioters are allowed to assault them. Christianity is now under physical assault by radical left wing terrorism. Where is the media coverage of this?”
Kirk, the founder of Turning Points USA, has 1.8 million followers. His chief creative officer, Benny Johnson — who also tweeted the video, has more than 315,000. The video was picked up by a who’s who of conservative and fringe media: Dinesh D’Souza, Nigel Farage, Laura Ingraham, OAN, the Daily Wire, the Blaze, PJ Media, and Mike Cernovich. The Republican candidate for US House District 20 — which includes Troy, New York, where the events in the clip took place — tweeted it. So did RT, the state-controlled Russian propaganda network. The message of the coverage was a variation on the same theme: This is the real BLM, and they’re coming for your churches next.
Years ago, Paul Harvey hosted a radio show that would begin with an attention-getting story he wouldn’t finish until (after an intervening advertisement) he returned with “the rest of the story.”
The rest of this one’s a doozy.
The church being “assaulted” is affiliated with Westboro Baptist, and the day the video was filmed, it was hosting the second of two AR-15 give-aways. In the middle of a neighborhood that had been wracked with gun violence for years, a neighborhood where faith leaders and public officials had organized gun buy-backs to get firearms off the street, it was giving away deadly guns.
Furthermore,
The Black Lives Matter protesters had been invited inside by the church’s pastor, John Koletas, a self-proclaimed “bigot” who has preached against interracial marriage, defends the use of the n-word, and believes that Black people, as descendants of Ham and Canaan, are cursed by God. He thinks Black History Month is “communism and Marxism month.” He calls Black Lives Matter protesters “savages.” He places a pork product — a ham or hot dogs — at the door, and requires all church attendees to touch it, supposedly to ward off would-be jihadists. He abhors feminists and gay people. He hates Catholics and thinks Muslims shouldn’t be allowed in the country. He mocks sexual abuse victims and the #MeToo movement. And videos of Koletas preaching these beliefs are readily available on the church’s Facebook and YouTube pages.
The invitation was a trap–a set-up intended to incite a protest. The timing was instructive: George Floyd was killed on May 25. The protests in Minneapolis started on the 26th. On May 28, the church tweeted that the church would be giving away additional AR-15s.
The Buzzfeed article goes into substantial detail about these events, including the strategies employed to generate confrontations and get video useful to rightwing provocateurs. The “rest of the story” was that BLM got played.
The rest of our story is clear: Unless we can somehow get a handle on this tsunami of disinformation without running afoul of the First Amendment, the “American experiment” simply won’t survive.
This answers the question of “who benefits, and how, from disinformation campaigns?” It is the harvesting of meta-data, and the exploitation of easily manipulated people targeted by these campaigns. My next question is what to do about it.
So true, Sheila, so very true.
I have become a “crazed leftist”, more crazed than I was two weeks ago which was at institutionalization/straight jacket level, due to all media becoming “merchants of misinformation”. The word being spread about Trump’s latest deconstruction of this government (until that oleander cure for Covid-19 Pandemic news this morning) is that mail-in votes are the only target of destruction of the 245 year old postal service to this country and abroad. Trump, in less that 2 weeks, has all but destroyed the United States Postal Service and where is Congress? Where have they been since the afternoon of January 20, 2017?
The entire postal service is screeching to a halt under the appointed leadership of the rich, fat white guy DeJoy who is currently in Trump’s good graces. He is now saying he was unaware of the problems his changes would cause; evidently he doesn’t receive mail. Will that news maintain his current favor with Trump? Late delivery of bills (by DAYS, not hours) will lead to late pickup and delivery of payments (by DAYS, not hours) which will lead to late fees being applied the following month on that late bill and all following bills. This information is relayed by all businesses and corporations to credit reporting bureaus and will quickly lower our credit ratings and block purchase of goods and receipt of services, thereby further damaging the current economy. We can more quickly move from Recession to Depression than we can recover our good credit and support the national economic condition to bring us out of the Recession. The United States Postal Service is the backbone of this nation’s survival; it is far more than delivering Christmas cards and Absentee Ballots, which are mail-in votes, on time.
Trump’s White Nationalist, based on White Supremacist based on KKK foundation, targets may be minorities but all Americans are now simply collateral damage in his scorched earth attempt to prevent his eviction from OUR White House. He is now saying it may take months – or YEARS – to get a full count which will show him to be the president elect. A belated “Thank you” to Lester for his recent reminder, in addition to my repeated rants, that the Electoral College is still the deciding factor regarding all presidential elections.
“Unless we can somehow get a handle on this tsunami of disinformation without running afoul of the First Amendment, the “American experiment” simply won’t survive.”
Trump’s administration has been totally based on abuse of presidential powers, abuse of the 1st Amendment and the 2nd Amendment since day one. His mental aberrations are now the accepted Rule of Law; what will be “The Rest Of The Story”?
Once again, market theories rely on two rational agents — a buyer and a seller. Does anyone believe the buyers of disinformation are rational in this country?
And, if we must point out that Fox is conservative disinformation, then please include MSNBC and the Washington Post.
The New York Times is our state newspaper, just like the BBC serves the interests of the British empire. I can still remember the BBC’s interview with Glenn Greenwald for The Guardian at that time regarding the Edward Snowden leaks. She went ballistic on him for sharing Snowden’s information disclosing that the USA was capturing all data from citizens with the help of Big Tech & Communication.
Our IC had been lying to us during congressional hearings. Yes, the point of the intelligence agencies is to lie to the people to protect the interests of the state. And, who does the state serve?
Divide and conquer is an ancient strategy. So is using fear to oppress citizens. Fear is the great manipulator. God and Jesus are pure love, which is the opposite of fear. All emotions come from either of those two emotions – love or fear.
I’ve been trying to figure out who in our Oligarchic hierarchy is using the path of love to bring people together. I may need some help on this one because all I see is manipulation and oppression via fear. Maybe it’s because our self-centered Oligarchy is fearful of letting go of something they possess or afraid they won’t be able to get more of something they feel they deserve. 😉
Ego-based fears.
Don’t be click bait. I have a friend who is ultra conservative. She posts no end of noxious stories about BLM, illegal immigrants, Muslims, and Democrats. I decided a while back to ignore whatever she posts. I used to respond with “the rest of the story,” but found it didn’t matter. She doesn’t want to hear the facts. She prefers her version, no matter how nutty it is. it’s worth saying again. Don’t be click bait!
Peggy,
We all have a plethora of confirmation biased fools in our circles of communication. Todd is only partially correct today, but the real goal for the most pathetic and backward humans is achieving power of others. Money? Sure. But power is the thing. To the uncivilized mind, that is the buy-word (sorry). This lust for power is as old as neo-lithic cave dwelling societies. But in today’s overcrowded and “complex” societies, the lust for power manifests itself in the idiocy of Laura Ingraham, et. al. They are the whores of the power mongers.
Since this mis/dis-information “industry” keeps growing, they must, as Todd says, know that there is a market full of bullshit buyers. The “sellers” are merely the gutter scum of capitalism and are working very hard to fulfill Marx’s prediction about how capitalism ultimately destroys itself.
And jerks like me are just trying to sell a few books. How can I stoke fears such that people will go to my website and buy/read my wonderful stories? I do I stoke fear about a kid who grows into a man who actually defends his family and country selflessly? I guess I’m just not nasty are primitive enough to stimulate enough people to read a good, non-vapid story or two.
“The New York Times is our state newspaper, just like the BBC serves the interests of the British empire.”
Todd; please explain the above remark, how is the New York Times OUR state newspaper here in Indiana? Or do you consider it to be the nation’s newspaper as when you compare it to the BBC which serves the British Empire; are there “state” newspapers? I am often confused by your comments; the source, the rationale, the views and assumptions you reach, almost all negative. I did a little Googling and discovered you have a Organizational Leadership graduate degree from Gonzaga University, a private Catholic school. Are you fitting your views into your own organizational chart by forcing square pegs into round holes…or round pegs into square holes? You may correctly disagree at times with MSNBC and the Washington Post but, how do you put them on the list of “conservative” media outlets?
back during the oil boom in NoDak i once sent a summary of my resume under my assumed name for a hot shot job. never heard from them,but i sure was suprised at the mail i started to get about how i should think.. that was 2005.(i had to leave said mailbox,and wonder if hotmail ever emptied the trashbin?) being in a state(NoDak) that sees the goverment as a thorn under their ass, ive heard it all. (gordon kahl if ya remember) i was friends with some of these splinter heads. mainly those feel good farmers and ranchers.. the goodolboys eh? well they ain’t so good,and more gullible to tease into believing every black person is a mistake and god will recognize whitey as the ruling class..yea right…being im from the er,darker side of a major city, it was that diversity that stayed with me. im in conversation with the blue collar i work with, i dress like a working class, and walk the walk. those who trump get my laughter. rude, yep, might as well let em know,if ya didnt break bread with those you think you know, ill be more than happy to discuss your lack of respect, for that person,and democracy. im not on social media, i prefer to take the conversation to the face. not hide behind a mask or someone elses ideals i must abide by.. i recognize the people who sacrificed their lives to give us some sort of freedom. not one that is preached by some bigot who,probably has a fist full of cash and is laughing at the idiots that have pied piper behind him.. like the teleevangelists,trump has made em money,be damn if they will change their needs and lifestyle to be obedient to some god,or to some scripture that is loud and clear about the evil of striking ones neighbor for self needs.. evict covid45, and lets see how they handle it..damn i cant stop laughing about how stupid people are..ya gotta be here in person and listen to this shit..in all seriousness, i not laughing,im damn concern about what happens after November, and if, we will ever vote again in a democracy…
jack smith; I googled Gonzaga University as mentioned in my comments above. Approximately an hour later there was an ad for Gonzaga University on my Facebook page. Nothing is private or separate on the Internet; a massive, tangled web of information to pick and choose from. Is hacking really necessary?
In United States constitutional law, false statements of fact are an exception from protection of free speech under the First Amendment. In United States law, a false statement of fact will not be exempt from some civil or criminal penalty, if a law has imposed one. This exception has evolved over time from a series of Supreme Court cases that dealt with issues such as libel, slander, and statutes which barred fraudulent solicitation of charitable donations.
Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court establishing the standard of First Amendment protection against defamation claims brought by private individuals. The Court held that, so long as they do not impose liability without fault, states are free to establish their own standards of liability for defamatory statements made about private individuals. However, the Court also ruled that if the state standard is lower than actual malice, the standard applying to public figures, then only actual damages may be awarded!
A major limiting factor to this concrete First Amendment exception are statements made against public figures. In New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), the Court strongly suggested that even “deliberate lies” could not be punished if made against the government. Since that decision, many cases that have dealt with this rule have struggled to define the line of who actually is a ‘public figure’. The Supreme Court has also extended this doctrine to non-political figures who are simply famous or well known in the media.
The legal rule itself – how to apply this exception – is complicated, as it is often dependent on who said the statement and which actor it was directed towards. The analysis is thus different if the government or a public figure is the target of the false statement (where the speech may get more protection) than a private individual who is being attacked over a matter of their private life.Thus, a key starting point in the analysis will discuss the ‘manner’ and ‘context’ in which the statements were made.
Professor Eugene Volokh of UCLA Law characterizes this context analysis as divided into five different areas. First, false statements of fact can lead to civil liability if they are “said with a sufficiently culpable mental state”. This possibly includes conscious lies about military service. The second category is a subset of the first: knowingly false statements (deliberate lies). This includes things like libel and slander. These sorts of statements are specifically punishable because they contain malice. A third category are “negligently” false statements, which may “lead to [some] liability”. A fourth included set includes statements that only have a “provable false factual connotation” – that is, implicit statements of fact. The example Volokh uses is the statement that “Joe deserves to die” which in the context of a murder could be made to be a factual statement.
The fifth category is one that is not as firmly set by precedent: false statements, even deliberate lies, against the government may be protected. While some “seditious libel” may be able to be punished, political statements are likely protected.
https://archive.org/details/firstamendmentre00euge
So, might I suggest that the DNC start suing the crap out of all of them! And also, those who repeat those lies are just as culpable! As the soup Nazi used to say, a lawsuit for you, and you, and you, and you, for everyone, LOL!
It might be, you can financially ruin their little nefarious enterprise.
JoAnn
you googled,not I
now dump your cookies, they may lead the pack your way.
best wishes.,
There are these Right Wing Reactionary Websites, where The Trumpter’s go for “facts”.
As the great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes said, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts”.
Twisting the facts or simply making them up is hallmark of Reactionary Right Wing Web Sites that feed The Trumpeter’s.
My Right Wing “friends” on Face Book, constantly share stories or Memes about someone is investigating Hillary, AOC or Obama and arrests will shortly follow.
Jack,
I think you are one of the few that actually get it! So many can make statements and have no clue! It doesn’t matter if you’re white, what matters is what’s in the heart. If a person’s heart is deceitful, well, they are an untrustworthy sort. People don’t believe the heart can control much, but current research proves that the heart actually has its own group of brain cells. So, when Scripture talks about the heart being good or the heart being bad, there absolutely was something to that. Where the heart leads the mind follows.
The heart is more treacherous than anything else and is desperate.
Who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)
Whoever trusts in his own heart is stupid, But the one who walks in wisdom will escape. (Proverbs 28:26)
If men had the answer, I think they would’ve provided by now. Men have been murdering their fellow man, their brothers, their neighbors, and their enemies, since the beginning! If one refuses to inculcate decency and compassion and ethics and love in their heart, nothing will ever change! And a majority have no desire to inculcate anything except for the love of himself, someone else’s shoes be damned!
Jack,
“Splinter heads…” I love it. May I use it in my books?
jack smith; you referred to hotmail and trash bin, are they not on the Internet? I am also in the middle of something with Facebook; they posted a notice that they had removed my post because it contained untrue Covid-19 information, finally found the post and it was one I shared, it was a site to learn true and untrue information from WHO about Covid-19. The information in the site wasn’t posted; it had to be accessed to read…how did I post untrue information? Do you doubt that every word posted on this blog is available to whoever wants to research you, me, Sheila and everyone else who comments here. We have no privacy; the price we pay for access to information and contact with other people, and to find long-lost friends and relatives on Facebook search. Is it worth the price; I believe so, but I have nothing to hide and your comments appear to be very open and honest.
Who are the contenders hoping to profit either monetarily or for more power to use to make more money or power from the movement to trash the US government?
Putin is very high on the list. The NRA. The evangelical church. The KKK in all of its disguises and organizations. The RNC. Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting and all of the entertainers selling feel good emotions. The fossil fuel business now selling goods at odds with the best future of the human race. Most rural communities who would like the world to return to what they remember as times when they were much more relevant and respected. Many good old fashion oligarchs who would like a return to the old days of royalty in which they could be given the recognition that they rightly deserve as shapers of society.
I’m sure that others could easily add to that list but the point is that we are approaching the point where our Constitutional republic may be more valuable dead than alive. Dividing up the carcass among all of those groups of course would not give them what any of them want, but they haven’t thought that far ahead. They dream first of power.
Who benefits from them returning to where society has actually evolved to today in regards to their importance and influence? Families. Working people. Intellectuals. Tax payers. Honest businesses. Other cultures. Cities. The global community. The poor. Public health. Neighborhoods. Those fleeing dangers from the communities of their origin.
Wow. Seems like the makings of homegrown war, doesn’t it? The only thing standing in the way is democracy.
JoAnn,
The second definition of “state” is “a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government. “Germany, Italy, and other European states.”
The NYT is our nation/state newspaper.
If you look at WaPo, they will continuously use “sources close to the matter” or “sources within the administration” when writing about our government. What’s funny about that is we in journalism would also call these “sources” whistleblowers. However, whistleblowers have consistently been prosecuted in this country for revealing government secrets.
So, what secrets are considered okay, and what secrets aren’t regarded as okay?
Anyone detached from their predisposed prejudices would discover that our media is used to pass along information the government wants us to believe. Those sharing this information are considered “sources.”
If these “sources” passed along information that our government didn’t want us to know, the internet, NSA, IC, etc. will track down that person(s) for eventual prosecution as a “whistleblower.”
Anyone can see how our state treats whistleblowers. One does not have to be a sleuth to know the difference. And according to international accounts, Barack Obama’s administration was one of the hardest on whistleblowers but never jailed one single banker who committed fraud during and leading up to a global meltdown.
Todd: “Yes, the point of the intelligence agencies is to lie to the people to protect the interests of the state.”
What are the “interests of the state”? If that phrase is synonymous with “what the president cares about”, they don’t seem to be doing a good job of pleasing the state.
I only worked in the intelligence community for 8 years, but I stayed in direct contact with CIA, NSA, DIA, etc. my entire life and I have no recollection of being told to lie. Of course there is internal conflict when the issues are so murky and the lines so blurred. Of course their are disagreements in interpretation of data when the sources are so numerous and contradictory. Of course politicians will spin intelligence reports for their own purposes. And no, we haven’t satisfactorily solved the organizational issues surrounding who gets to interpret what the president hears in his briefings.
Like scientists, intelligence professionals are never one hundred percent sure of anything. But except for the known times when they were manipulated by their leaders for some political end or organizational advantage, the IC takes pride in its ability to discover and report the truth that is needed to achieve American security. To believe otherwise is to conclude they they are somehow scheming to take us down. Since Trump despises them, they must be doing something right. Scrape away the political veneer and I think you will find a group of professionals who serve us remarkably well given the danger and difficulty of their jobs.
Since you have summarily dismissed all of my news sources except for NPR, can you please suggest where I should get the information that I don’t have the time and resources to collect on my own?
NYT v. Sullivan set the stage for a nuanced view of defamation of public figures and I have used it many times in seeking out a nuanced view of specific fact situations. It is similar to so-called “dealer’s puffing,” a concept we learned in law school that gives some room to advertising excess. Being warned of such judicial tolerance, at least theoretically the buyer is forewarned and should be capable of taking such excess into account in determining whether to buy the goods, services (and now information) offered for sale. Thus I as a prospectrive buyer of propaganda, for instance, reject the idea that BLM are coming into churches and white neighborhoods to create mayhem, whatever anyone hiding under the First Amendment says or writes, and why? Because it is not in accord with my understanding and experience aka reason.
Adam Smith wrote of a willing buyer and seller both of whom were equally aware of the facts in making a buy and sell contract. Stiglitz even much later earned a Nobel in Economics for his efforts on this topic. Smith assumed both parties were honest and above board, so when we today look at what is being offered for sale, it comes down not only what is offered but rather the honesty of the parties offering it – and I have big time problems with right wing and religious fanatics who have their own fish to fry.
Contracts between buyers and sellers don’t tell the whole story; fraud and misrepresentation in their formation and performance are also involved. I have concluded as a prospective buyer of commercial, spiritual and political information that some of the sellers who hide behind our democratic values as set forth in our Constitution and especially our Bill of Rights are not honest and above board as Smith contemplated but rather, for power, money, public notice or whatever, are purveyors of misinformation and propaganda. We have seen the results of the success of such sales of information in the Thirties, present day Russia, Brazil, Turkey, Belarus, and its beginnings here in a cultish America. I am not buying it and will register my dicontent come November 3.
Terry,
If any of your media sources are owned and operated by the Oligarchy, which 85% of all U.S. media is, then you should also summarily dismiss or deeply discount what they are communicating to you.
You cannot stay in the “mainstream” unless you conform to the state’s message which always sings the praises of our Oligarchy and the controlled bureaucrats working in our federal government.
How many media sources pointed out that GWB was lying about WMDs?
There are plenty of independent journalists on Twitter who have consciously chosen to work for independent outlets not controlled by our Oligarchy so they can actually write respectable pieces of journalism holding the powerful accountable.
As college-educated journalists quickly find out when job searching, they are joining a business model — not freelance operations. When joining a business model, you have to conform and write pieces that don’t upset advertisers or politicians. If you are given the political or government beat, and you upset the local, state, or federal politicians, how often do you think you’ll get interviews or get your emails responded to?
In a little hick state like Indiana, the politicians assembled in Indiana don’t take well to criticism. You ask them a tough question, their press secretary shuts you down or pushes your emails into Junk Mail. Once that happens enough, you lose your job.
A good place to learn more is from Noam Chomsky and his propaganda model:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model#:~:text=The%20theory%20postulates%20five%20general,communism%20or%20%22fear%20ideology%22.
Gerald, we may well be at the point where the entertainment profit mindset of media moguls has already eliminated any possibility of facts devoid of opinion from any source.
That is why we can’t rely on media to fix the problem. The only solution is for us to train ourselves to take from entertainment only the facts and build our own objective reality on what they support.
Of course an easy step in that direction for those with the time to is to pay attention to all sources covering all perspectives and average them out according to experience in how much credibility each has earned.
It’s not an easy solution but we have to find one that doesn’t require others to change.
Todd,
I have a clear memory of GWB’s lying about his excursion into Iraq. I learned on MSNBC that UN inspectors had made 50+ surveys of Iraq, had found some gases, but no WMDs. I also learned, I believe from the same source, that Richard Clark had debunked Bush’s claim of Saddam Hussein’s WMD and had worked to convince him that Iraq had nothing to do with the attack on the World Trade Center and that Osama Bin Laden was responsible. He had tried sounding the alarm during 2001 that something like 9/11 was imminent , appealing to Condoleezza Rice to get him into the Oval Office, but to no effect. Later it was revealed, possibly by the same source, that Joe Wilson (Valerie Plame’s husband) had been sent to – I think Nigeria – with instructions to find that that country had supplied Iraq with yellowcake. He found no evidence so was fired (or quit) and Plame was exposed by the Bush administration as a CIA agent in retribution. David Kay, the U.S. representative assigned to search for WMD in Iraq told the Bush administration that he was convinced there were none. The final act in that total farce was poor Colin Powell making an ass of himself by believing Bush and Cheney and parroting their lies to the UN and all the world. I was astonished that with all this public evidence Bush could fool the American public into sacrificing $2 trillion and 4500 American lives because he was peeved. His moral compass must have been tossed onto the same trash pile as Trump’s.
Evidence that Bush was making it all up so he could get even with Hussein for going after “Poppy” were clear to my non-political (at the time) wife. I felt well served by American news services and was 100% convinced that there were no WMD to be found in Iraq. I was right.
P.S.: I feel equally well served by CNN and MSNBC in the last 3 years and 9 months about the level of unbridled prevarication constantly indulged in by Trash Mouth Trump, his science-denying child-like sycophant cabinet, and the Republican toadies in the U.S. Senate led by Mitch McConnell. Where would you have me go to discover the details about his kind of this information?
Terry Munson; I can’t thank you enough for your comments. I had been made aware of the same Bush information you related through news sources and my own research during his administration and after. The facts then are the same today; the scamming of this country by Bush/Cheney and their baseless war in Iraq will not change over time any more than the truth of the deaths of our young men and women. The memory of Cheney’s leering face as he admitted he had approved “outing” Valerie Plame as a CIA agent remains with me today.
Your PS paragraph states truths about our best on air news sources; I begin my days at 4:00 a.m. with CNN’s Newsroom, at 5:00 I switch to MSNBC’s First Look and check both throughout my days and evenings. I research organizations and government sites and research often by the issue for a choice of information sites. On a recent Facebook post cheering the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris ballot were responses by two people who said they would never vote for Biden. Both said the were voting for Jo Jorgensen; someone I had never heard of before, she is the Libertarian presidential candidate this year. She wants to replace Social Security with individual retirement accounts, she considers Social Security to be a Ponzi scheme. She wants to end the War on Drugs and other “victimless crimes”; supports gun ownership and wants to abolish the ATF as unconstitutional. She also wants to abolish the Department of Education, turn control over to states. Wants also to abolish the IRS and considers the Covid 19 government response to be overly bureaucratic and authoritarian (what government response?), considers stay-at-home orders to be assaults on our liberties. She sounds more like a current Republican toadie than any Libertarian and needs only a red MAGA hat to be in full support of Trump. This country has slid deeper into the mire that we are aware of by being totally distracted by Trump’s unending supply of chaos, trauma, tragedy and his visible mental decline by the day.
We must unite; we must stay strong and loud in our support for our nation as a whole. As President Abraham Lincoln so wisely stated, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Nor can a divided House and Senate stand against the few abusing the powers of their elected positions and discarding the Constitution of the United States of America.
Sometimes, instead of dreaming in color, I dream in history.
Like a recent dream in which I was present the first time early man, named Lak,referred to that emotional/philosophical center of an individual that provides his or her strategy for dealing with the world. That dude did not use the word heart for that “center” of a person, he used a word that meant “core”.
Then I was present the next day when the village idiot Urg misquoted Lak while telling the village about the previous day’s conversation. Urg used the word “heart” to mean center.
Lak objected to being misquoted, so Urg slayed Lak, and to this day mankind, including its most misguided poets and physicians and blog posters, still use the wrong word for “core”.
Talk about fake science!!!
I’ve read a handful of reports in the National Library of Medicine from medical studies (Robert D Foreman, Kennon M Garrett, Robert W Blairthat; Nichols JB, McCallum AP, Khattar NK, Wei GZ, Gopinathannair R, Nauta HJW, Neimat JS.; and Ali M Alshami) claim the heart does send signals to the brain but in the simple, non-thinking way that a burglar alarm sends a preprogrammed signal to a police station.
The heart is not a brain, nor is it an Id…except to some who try to think with a heart that is not equiped for the job. Sorry, but if the insult fits, wear it…I suppose with pride.
Larry@7:42 PM
The answers to many of our original questions now provide a scientific basis to explain how and why the heart affects mental clarity, creativity, emotional balance and personal effectiveness. Our research and that of others indicate that the heart is far more than a simple pump. The heart is, in fact, a highly complex, self-organized information processing center with its own functional “brain” that communicates with and influences the cranial brain via the nervous system, hormonal system and other pathways. These influences profoundly affect brain function and most of the body’s major organs, and ultimately determine the quality of life.
https://www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/
Considering there are microscopic pictures the very thing that was mentioned in my earlier comment, and considering there are dozens of other articles with the same exact conclusions, I’m curious as to why anyone would want to listen to mouth breathing troglodytes? I could post more, there’s an interesting article in physics.org 2020 which discusses this very thing!
I find Scripture was very accurate concerning the heart before any of these research studies were ever thought about because this type of science didn’t exist for thousands of years later!
True, the heart of something can refer to the center, or the core, but it also alludes to something else!
There are many instances where individuals who have had heart transplants acquired the personality traits of the donor! Because not only is the DNA of that donor in the heart, but the memory is contained in the heart, the happiness, the sadness, the angst, the euphoria, that triggered the cranial brain are still there. It’s not worth my time to continue on this tack, suffice it to say, some individuals need to come into the 21st century as Bradford so eloquently points out, LOL!
The national Library of medicine at.gov, points out how personalities and emotions from the donor can inject themselves into the persona of recipients! So, I suppose someone needs to wear it with pride, HUH Larry?
Maybe you should try and acquire some updated science texts or medical journals, that way you won’t be so embarrassed!
Some things have been with us for a long time.
I came across an old Doonesbury cartoon – I won’t bother with the details, just the last panel with Mike Doonesbury saying: “Speaker Newt says that’s a hippie lie. Speaker Newt says…”
Substitute President Trump or Fox News and here we are.
Jo Ann thanks for your comments regarding Todd’s post. I, too, was confused about his references to the Times et al.