I watched John Oliver last night - at this point mostly for the entertainment of watching his sanity death spiral. 
Right now the left wing media is pretty much behaving like passengers on a doomed airliner's final plunge. John Oliver looks very nearly broken and the rest of the media continues to plunge deeper into the abyss of panic. The world looks very grim when you look through the bubble of left wing media. It's no wonder people who get their worldview through it are likewise losing their minds. It can be a kind of contagious hysteria.
I had an interesting conversation with a friend and we were discussing media influence and the thought experiment came up: what would America be like if cable news were suddenly vaporized. How much of this "culture war" is fuelled by dueling cable news outlets dumping gas on social anxiety for ratings? How would our culture behave without a 24 hour scream machine telling us that 50% of America is ruining the country?
Because I have to say that when I take my eyes from the hysteria periscope and look around, things aren't looking bad. The economy is up, business is humming along, the country is functioning, and the sky remains firmly in place. There are international tensions, but nothing greater than normal, and overall everyone seems to be taking care of business. Hospitals aren't leaving people to die in the streets and it all looks like business as usual.
So this is my thought experiment. Try to imagine how you would see the world without mass media. This means ALL cable news. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, the whole shebang left right and center and for good measure all national newspapers and websites. If you were to gauge the state of America based solely on America in the real world, without any form of mass media telling you the sky is falling, your primary source of information being nightly news and local papers and interaction with people, how truly scary is life under Trump - or any president for that matter.

Right now the left wing media is pretty much behaving like passengers on a doomed airliner's final plunge. John Oliver looks very nearly broken and the rest of the media continues to plunge deeper into the abyss of panic. The world looks very grim when you look through the bubble of left wing media. It's no wonder people who get their worldview through it are likewise losing their minds. It can be a kind of contagious hysteria.
I had an interesting conversation with a friend and we were discussing media influence and the thought experiment came up: what would America be like if cable news were suddenly vaporized. How much of this "culture war" is fuelled by dueling cable news outlets dumping gas on social anxiety for ratings? How would our culture behave without a 24 hour scream machine telling us that 50% of America is ruining the country?
Because I have to say that when I take my eyes from the hysteria periscope and look around, things aren't looking bad. The economy is up, business is humming along, the country is functioning, and the sky remains firmly in place. There are international tensions, but nothing greater than normal, and overall everyone seems to be taking care of business. Hospitals aren't leaving people to die in the streets and it all looks like business as usual.
So this is my thought experiment. Try to imagine how you would see the world without mass media. This means ALL cable news. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, the whole shebang left right and center and for good measure all national newspapers and websites. If you were to gauge the state of America based solely on America in the real world, without any form of mass media telling you the sky is falling, your primary source of information being nightly news and local papers and interaction with people, how truly scary is life under Trump - or any president for that matter.
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