Because many of them believe the same thing. The Democratic party is overall moderate conservatives, but some swing further right than others. We don’t have a progressive party in the US.
MAGA is the island of lost souls. The point of the debate is not to change their minds. It is to make the stark difference between the candidates laughably obvious, so that even the moderate conservatives feel ashamed and stupid that he represents their interests, and the moderate Democrats feel comfortable mocking them for their weirdness.
Nobody felt that way about Clinton. She tried to be the better person without alienating the Trump supporters. She used words like “deplorables” when she should have said “shitbags.”
Trump supporters deserve to be alienated, just as all bigots and nazis and narcissists should be. They will not change because of a rational argument. You need to smoke them out of the crowd, and then point and laugh until they shrivel up and every child sees their humiliation, so that no one grows up thinking it’s OK to be a bigot, or that there are good people on both sides.
Fascism is a threat of violence, and the best way to defeat it is to render it impotent. You can’t kill an idea, but you can make people embarrassed to admit it out loud.
We all know the news tomorrow will be about how Trump was confident and Harris made one statement that could be misleading if you squint hard enough. Then there will be a wet noodle fact check that is far less prominent than some article about how MAGA cultists think he won the debate.
AP Newswire is generally a good source of information yes, and while the person you are responding to is being bombastic, they’re not materially wrong.
Everything AP presents here is presented in the tone of “this is the best we can do” and the idea that bringing us barely back to sustenance levels we were at before (there was certainly a big homeless problem in my city before COVID) is a “great” thing to be presenting as a winning campaign issue belies the real suffering many, many US citizens are currently suffering.
It’s also choosing to make measurements and metrics that benefit the status quo instead of choosing different metrics that do show the real picture for citizens on the ground in the USA.
Does that mean it’s fully propaganda. No, but it’s inability to talk about the issue outside the prescribed accepted discourse presents a problem as it does not show the full picture. It’s much like the Clinton campaign in 1992 pushing protestors at campaign events outside of the view of the television cameras. As long as it’s not in the picture, it effectively doesn’t exist.
Chomsky said it best:
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
I was wondering when APnews would be suspect in this sub… turns out it’s when it veers outside the accepted discourse on lemmy… or doesn’t appease them enough.
Status quo, hiding the “real” picture… unreal. All of this while providing absolutely no evidence contrary to anything in the article. Quality discussion.
I think you missed the point. The parent comment explains it well. It’s not that AP specifically is suspect. It’s a comment on the wider discourse where AP is but one participant. Perhaps one of the best ones. AP is generally a good source. The whole discourse on the topic is propagandist in the way that it works in favour of firms, not labor.
No I understand the point, it’s that good news about the economy must be down played because of various unsourced opinion A, B, and C that don’t dispute anything in the article but do still manage to accuse AP news of presenting information with an agenda.
This scrutiny is not applied when the reported information is in line with what the community believes. The article even discusses caveats to the good news:
The data showed that while the typical American household regained its 2019 purchasing power in 2023, it essentially experienced no rise in living standards over that time. That is a sharp difference from the preceding four years, when inflation-adjusted median incomes rose 14% from 2015 through 2019.
But that isn’t enough. The whole article needs to be cast with doubt, not because contrary evidence was presented, but because users feel AP news is shilling.
A “compelling indictment of the news media’s role in covering up errors and deceptions” (The New York Times Book Review) due to the underlying economics of publishing—from famed scholars Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. With a new introduction.
In this pathbreaking work, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order.
Based on a series of case studies—including the media’s dichotomous treatment of “worthy” versus “unworthy” victims, “legitimizing” and “meaningless” Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media’s behavior and performance.
Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media’s handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media’s treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion
Case in point for for enforcing the limits - I just heard the head of the corporate landlord association in Canada suggesting that the government buying old buildings instead of them would be Marxist and that would be like East Germany. Keywords strictly outside the acceptable spectrum.
Our family income only went up because I picked up two (very) part time jobs lol it’s amazing that that is somehow a sign we’re back to normal in their eyes.
The data showed that while the typical American household regained its 2019 purchasing power in 2023, it essentially experienced no rise in living standards over that time.
At least they admit the increase didn’t help anyone
sigh I wish my rights and existence weren’t treated like this. Like I’m sure I can think of something pithy or brave or whatever but I’m just so damn tired of this shit
The data showed that while the typical American household regained its 2019 purchasing power in 2023, it essentially experienced no rise in living standards over that time.
Idk, included it but completely ignored gaining anything from the data :(
Poorly, but not like you’re great at discussion or reading comprehension
The data showed that while the typical American household regained its 2019 purchasing power in 2023, it essentially experienced no rise in living standards over that time.
No. This is saying that wages have outpaced inflation, which would be disinflation rather than deflation. It’s confusing but they are not actually the same thing even though it sounds like they should be.
The latest data came Tuesday in an annual report from the Census Bureau, which said the median household income, adjusted for inflation, rose 4% to $80,610 in 2023, up from $77,450 in 2022. It was the first increase since 2019, and is essentially unchanged from that year’s figure of $81,210, officials said. (The median income figure is the point at which half the population is above and half below and is less distorted by extreme incomes than the average.)
It’s not even a good metric to try and say income is getting better
news
Oldest
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.