Why are Americans are so Dumb?

[Chicks]

Originally Posted by Waggs098

Nope. But I see how other conservative views are treated. Not just my own.

That's funny! Many of us quote conservatives often, especially pundits Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot. There are still many smart, educated conservatives who haven't succumbed to the Cult of Orange.

Oh, BTW, you're whining again...

[Waggs098]

Originally Posted by Chicks

That's funny! Many of us quote conservatives often, especially pundits Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot. There are still many smart, educated conservatives who haven't succumbed to the Cult of Orange.

Oh, BTW, you're whining again...

You know I'm talking about conservatives on this site. As far as conservatives you quote I will have to research if they are "conservative" "centered" or "liberal".

[donquixote99]

Originally Posted by Waggs098

Nope. But I see how other conservative views are treated. Not just my own.

But hey at least I admitted a fault of my own and stated how I'm changing it.

I admire the way you are staying engaged. Many would have quit in disgust by now.

[bobabode]

Originally Posted by Waggs098

Nope. But I see how other conservative views are treated. Not just my own.

But hey at least I admitted a fault of my own and stated how I'm changing it.

Respectfully, you are full of crap, Waggs. You "admitted" to being aggressive and segued right into a whinge about how your 'stealth' campaign of being 'kinder and gentler' wasn't ballyhooed by the left of center membership.

It's disingenuous blather and bluster like this that leads me to question your sincerity. At the risk of repeating myself, you're fulla beans.

[FordGT90]

Originally Posted by Chicks

...as your horrific grammar and spelling...

Originally Posted by Chicks

...propaganda YooToob…

Originally Posted by Chicks

...Faux "News"...

The posts are also rife with run-ons and still resort to petty insults instead of answering the question/substance:

Originally Posted by Waggs098

Why do you believe that the "adfontesmedia" site is the go to for reliable news outlets?

It's a good question. I never even heard of it until you linked it.

[RickeyM]

Conservative viewpoints are one thing Reich-Wing propaganda is something else. Unfortunately in the age of tRump too many conservatives have become closed minded. That probably began back in the Obama years.

[FordGT90]

Conservatives generally want to know one thing: how are you going to pay for it? How much am I going to have to pay for it? Leftist proposals aren't just big, they're huge, and there's a prolific problem of people not wanting to pay more taxes. The pool of federal revenue to spend is getting smaller, not bigger because of frequent tax cuts to simulate the economy.

It comes down to fairly basic math: there's no money available and no reasonable means to raise money to create more big government programs. Conservatives are open to ideas but they have to be budget neutral or surplus.

[donquixote99]

Ford, do you believe the guys who mine bitcoin are making actual money?

[Not Insane]

Originally Posted by FordGT90

Think back to the 1960s-1980s...media bias didn't really exist. Journalists were journalists and everyone wanted the news as it was, not opinion. The concern was more whether or not media was government propaganda over journalistic credibility. That was mostly because of the Vietnam War and the public losing favor of it though.


What changed? Satellite/cable booming in the 1990s. "News" became an entertainment product. Radio followed suite because there was big money in political opinion syndication. This is what started the trickle of money away from professional journalist towards opinion and focused reporting. Higher ranks meant more advertising dollars and entertainment is all about the money.

Then 2000s, the internet became mainstream. Professional journalists now had to compete with amateur bloggers. A battle they could not win.

Then 2010s, the straw that broke the camels back: smart phones and social media--everyone is an amateur journalists. There's no longer money available to do much if any investigative journalism. The professional journalists are always the last on the scene. And advertisers want opinion over hard news.

Money fundamentally caused the collapse of professional journalism...it left the industry. Even historic greats like Washington Post which was responsible for exposing Wategate are chaffing funds today.


In my estimation, the media losing professional journalism came first and the advertisers drove them to bias. The bias created echo chambers that draw people and the echo chambers themselves caused the divisive political climate.

The journalists themselves are living in the echo chamber so they're incapable of being unbiased. There was an editor that quit New York Times recently that said as much.


The "beginning" was somewhere in the early-mid 1990s.


Leftist: a member of the political Left or a person sympathetic to its views. aka left-wing politics

It was there, just harder to prove. I dumped TV in 1997 because I got sick and tired of the network news (I've never had cable) giving me the raw facts interspersed in their story, but then giving me a story that didn't match the actual raw facts they just gave me.

And then there is Walter Cronkite and the Tet offensive. He reported it as if we had lost the war when, in fact, it was the "all in" push by the Viet Cong and we held up. We were on the edge of victory, yet his reporting told the exact opposite story, empowering the anti-war mob and causing our tail between our legs abandonment of that country.

We didn't have the internet sources fact checking the news back then. Even when we cought them red handed, who was going to report it? And in that last sentence is a key to why I respect non-MSM sources more than the MSM. For those that think the MSM is so honest, think about the out of court settlement between Nick Sandman and the Washington Post: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...shington-post/

And notice the source. And their reporting was absolutely in the vein of what Cronkite did, except there are other sources that reported the TRUE story.

This is the MSM we live with today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdO5Gf9NRAo

This is why non-MSM sources are killin' it.

[FordGT90]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

Ford, do you believe the guys who mine bitcoin are making actual money?

Nope. They're converting electricity into a virtual commodity.

Originally Posted by Not Insane

It was there, just harder to prove. I dumped TV in 1997 because I got sick and tired of the network news (I've never had cable) giving me the raw facts interspersed in their story, but then giving me a story that didn't match the actual raw facts they just gave me.

And then there is Walter Cronkite and the Tet offensive. He reported it as if we had lost the war when, in fact, it was the "all in" push by the Viet Cong and we held up. We were on the edge of victory, yet his reporting told the exact opposite story, empowering the anti-war mob and causing our tail between our legs abandonment of that country.

We didn't have the internet sources fact checking the news back then. Even when we cought them red handed, who was going to report it? And in that last sentence is a key to why I respect non-MSM sources more than the MSM. For those that think the MSM is so honest, think about the out of court settlement between Nick Sandman and the Washington Post: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...shington-post/

And notice the source. And their reporting was absolutely in the vein of what Cronkite did, except there are other sources that reported the TRUE story.

This is the MSM we live with today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdO5Gf9NRAo

This is why non-MSM sources are killin' it.

But it's also why people don't know who to trust and why everything has become so fragmented. Example back on topic: when someone says something like "wear masks" there's always something else out there to point back and say "fake news." It's information overload with no sifter sorting fact from fiction without bias. It was generally investigative journalists that did that, which resulted in articles that are pages and pages long. Most people today don't have the patience to digest that much information. Everything boils down to headlines. It's a problem and I don't see any solutions.