Every now and then it’s necessary to break it down. Why does a long time political observer and analyst find it more difficult to talk about politics these days? In Will 1968 Unrest Shockwaves Echo In 2018-Podcast 670.
Attack Trump. Defend Trump. At any cost. Ideas and principles aren’t important. Commentators are running for office, under the employ of some partisan organization, or supporting a person or point of view. Will 1968 Unrest Shockwaves Echo In 2018-Podcast 670.
Garbage In Garbage Out
Social media, the Internet and so called news sites spew a constant stream of invective, misinformation and outright lies. They are so busy predicting the future they put Tarot Card Readers and Astrologists to shame.
Journalism’s new norm is reaction. It is called News. In Podcast 596-Values, news coverage today is a reaction to something someone said or wrote. News is reaction to a new initiative by some government entity. Donald Trump hasn’t been president for a month yet. Already it seems like a year. Trump’s pace of executive orders, executive actions, tweets and initiatives allows him to dominate the media battle space while he cooks up another controversy stew to cauterize yesterday’s controversy.
In Podcast 596-Values, where is the media battle ground? It’s not the Internet. It’s some some battlefield in Europe or Virginia where armies clashed. It’s not a battlefield with stories of élan, bravery or great deeds. The media battle space is our brain. This battlefield is as small or as expansive as it needs to be. As the media storm rages and the wind blows, how do we know our tent is securely fastened and isn’t going to blow away? It call comes down to something called values.
In Podcast 596-Our Values, time to take a pause in this daily insanity of back and forth partisan media coverage. A break from ‘journalists’ who call two or three people, get some quotes, write it up and call it a day. Time to take a look at what we believe as individuals and as a people. Democrat, Republican, Populist, Populist Nationalist, Libertarian, Communist, Socialist, Moderate, Partisan, and Extreme alike. We’re all on a journey together in our lifetime on this planet.
What do we believe? What are the Values we hold dear? Where do those values come from? How do those values anchor us when the gales of change blow up even when those gales are generated from the hot air of politicians in Washington? Politicians who cry and grandstand secure in the knowledge the things they say and do won’t be investigated for any length of time or to any real conclusion?
Reporters determine our values by looking at the latest poll or driving to a shopping center and asking people in the parking lot a few questions. The result is a few hundred words taking the ‘temperature’ of regular everyday ‘folk’. Don’t have any supporters of the president in your state to talk to? Just drive across the state line to the first town and sit in the parking lot of a Safeway or Piggly Wiggly until mom and the kids show up, or chat up and write up what old uncle Frank thinks, while he sits in his 1997 Lincoln waiting for Aunt June. The headline? “Middle America Supports Trump”. Boom.
Work on a national TV show? Find that article about middle america. Get that pollster on the show. Find that Congressmen who says that crazy stuff. Get that woman on from that foundation. Say some stuff. Get some calls. Move on to the next ‘story’. Clicks. Listens. Comments. Calls. Ratings!
The battlefield is the mind. How do you avoid becoming a casualty in the partisan political war? It’s increasingly a battlefield filled with threats. More and more it’s a battlefield better characterized as a moonscape no man’s land, where the shell shocked wander, dazed and confused. Survival in this environment depends on what we believe. Why we believe it. Where we learned it. Who taught us. Where we get our information. How we check our information. What anchors us in the storm, or what kind of ground we have pounded our tent pegs into.
Podcast 517-Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show-32. With huge reaction in the financial markets, the media and in political circles raging over the British vote to exit the EU this week, it seems as though 2016 just kicked off in earnest. In fact, for me this week flew by. One of the week’s features was the visit of my son. Andrew Davis joined me on a radio show I did last week for the Northern Alliance, and then we came back to the ‘broadcast bunker’ to have some steak, father and son time, and record a podcast. Honestly, I would probably not have talked that much about the potential for the Brits to leave the EU and the impact on foreign trade, the markets and politics. Andrew Davis is an International Relations guy, with some experience in government (working on Capitol Hill for a couple of years). Our conversations about trade and the potential for a British Exit turned out to be prescient, given the surprise of a close vote in Britain on the EU question. My problem with the whole issue isn’t the vote so much as the coverage of this story by the media, and the coverage of trade issues in the United States. While trade as a whole is a complex issue that can’t be explained away with a soundbite or snarky comment, it is also a core issue in the 2016 election cycle. It is amusing and instructive that during the run up to the vote in Britain, republican candidate for the nomination Donald Trump said, as a private citizen that he could understand why the British would want to leave the EU, while President Obama condescended to lecture British on why they should stay and Hillary Clinton supported Obama. For its part the media characterized, and demonized a no vote as ‘xenophobic’, ‘populist’ and ‘nationalist’. My question is, what if the people have no words anymore to describe the frustration of living under a regime of regulation, taxation, laws that nudge (governenment-ese for encourage) certain behaviors and get in our business in so many other irritating ways? We’ve lived under a construct that government is the solution for so many years we don’t even have the words to oppose it anymore, but we do still have a vote…for the time being. Sponsored by X Government Cars and Hydrus.
