politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
We can blame voters or fix our media landscape. You can do both, but we need to do the latter to have a functioning democracy.
Democracy: "of the People, by the People, for the People".
Y'all seem to forget the middle part. Institutions, including the media, are not there to hand democracy on a silver platter. Democracy must be safeguarded. Constantly. There is no room for passive participation. American democracy is under threat because people are so apathetic and just expect it to happen on its own.
Statements like "the media should..." are not going to accomplish anything. It's just more passive participation.
How would you fix something that isn't broken? This is what for-profit capitalist media does and has always done. Manufacturer consent for capitalism and its desires. Regulation in the past made it mildly less obvious? I mean they still breathlessly covered and promoted the Red Scare a half a century ago.
Not to mention that state and nonprofit media still have issues. How would one fix any of them? The only way to fix the media is to fix the voters. Actually teach critical thinking stills and encourage them. Not gullibly devouring anything fed to you unquestioningly.
You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make them drink. All the information to debunk every claim ever made by Trump is out there. All anyone has to do is look. But most people cannot be bothered. They will just go with whatever hearsay they see on Facebook.
On that note I recently had to deal with my sister getting a bit frothy. Raging about how the Harris administration had spent so much more money than the Trump administration had on some meaningless thing. I had to insert myself and point out if there had never been a Harris administration. And that not even the Biden Administration had done what she was talking about.
I would respectfully disagree and point out that all of your well-considered points are in fact indicative that media in the US and to some other extent the rest of the world is very much broken.
And has been for well over 50 years.
Then you should be able to provide relevant counter points to current events and the constant creep of sensationalist yellow journalism. Otherwise you're just disagreeing to disagree.
When it comes to mass media it's actually been this way far longer. The 50 years statement was in relation to just postwar propaganda output ala the red scare. It existed and was popular before that too. But I look forward to you actually posing something to actually disprove it other than "nuh uh".
Well, by “broken” I mean “Not being used in a manner befitting humankind”. That is to say, it’s been misused.
Relevant counterpoints to current events . . . I guess we could use some form of successfully beneficial online community and compare it to greatawakening.win or whatever the Qanuts are posting to these days.
There’s a huge lack of awareness about out thought and media correlate and it’s been that way since scholars and academics began treating it as a subject separate from philosophy or sociology.
This narrative serves the capitalist class and cannot be proven. You don't "fix" voters, you create solidarity by dealing with their material conditions (engage in mutual aid).
Solidarity is great. And I I'm all for it. But how do you have solidarity with a group of people that cannot even agree on what constitutes reality. How do you address the material conditions of people who reject addressing the material conditions if it also helps someone who isn't them.
The answer is you cannot. Not until critical thinking skills Etc are addressed. As long as people are blindly ideological of any stripe. There can't be solidarity
I think the sort of help you're talking about is of political policy (ie free lunches at schools). I am speaking of direct action by volunteers (ie running a community pantry). When you engage in the community, conversations happen and that is when you can challenge biases in a non-confrontational setting.
If you cannot find solidarity in the masses then what is it you're looking for? A Vanguard party to reeducate the masses?
No not specifically. Again many of these people deny community with those they disagree with because of ideology. Though as someone pragmatically anarcho communist I do agree it is the better method. Working in communities.
The problem is how does one effectively address attacks facilitated through government? Is education reeducation? We're not talking about instilling any sort of ideology. I despise ideology generally. Vanguard parties specifically. We are talking about basic critical thinking skills. Checking and verifying sources. Not just blindly believing what others tell you.
part of me wishes that the democrats spent money to put up a decent fight against the VERY rampant misinformation in spanish media instead of using the money to attack third party candidates.
Third party candidates are often part of the misinformation machine. Used as an attack Vector as well. The problem is Democrats cannot address everything. Oligarchs fund conservative media more than most people realize. So many outlets exist just to push a narrative. Not to make a profit. Tim Pool and several other right-wing demagogues were recently exposed for getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars effectively a week to put out one or two low effort barely edited videos of propaganda. They made more in a couple weeks than someone like Sam Cedar for instance makes in a year. And they are just the ones we know about. Democrats simply cannot compete with or push back against all of it with the minuscule funding they do get.
the democrats literally broke campaign fund raising records and their donor list includes some of the richest oligarchs on this planet.
it was clear that they barely tried at all on univision and telemundo based on the professionally-polished trump-loving pundits mopping the floor with unpracticed volunteers and nonprofits; it was like watching the debate but in reverse with trump's side dominating the discourse just as hard as kamala did.
i think that the democrats just assumed that latinos would vote for them anyways like they did with almost everyone else.
Latinos have been a huge concern for the Dems since 2020, as they supported Biden to a far lesser extent than HRC. They may have done a bad job at targeting them, but no way the campaign took them for granted.
actions speak louder than words and the democrats' out-of-touch actions led to their defeat.
Much as I agree, these people went rabbitholing on Youtube. Well-designed “independent” (toxic) videos, properly targeted by Youtube & co (in exchange for some tax returns, maybe?) were an important part of their information, something that you can hardly blame on more … traditional sources.