...and which is more dangerous? I haven't seen many crazy old cat ladies engaging in any mass shootings, or attempting to prevent the peaceful, lawful change of any government leaders.

People who aren't on the right see them as batshit, alternative-fact-fueled crazies. People who aren't 'woke' see them as being overly concerned about politically correct pronouns. And, Biden was THE most middle-of-the-road candidate available at the time - that, and the glorious fact that he simply wasn't Trump, were why he was elected.

More of a rhetorical question then a question that I was really looking for an answer. I obviously know how messed up things are.

Sounds like you've stopped questioning the motives of the people that say things you like to hear. They call that "cognitive bias", and most of us, on both sides of the partisan divide, are guilty of it.

Sounds bad, on the face of it, and maybe it is. But, if the media serves the rich first and foremost, that's NOT what they're going to tell you. They're going to tell you they're fair and objective. Well, they've been telling us that all along. Maybe a documentary like this one is the best way to find out things that the MSM has a vesting interest in not telling us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA4OTsb7Fho

Why is it so hard Todo the same now?

Because the people who have the power to do it were funded by the people that they would need to do it to. And, a conservative SCOTUS isn't likely to step in, after they decided that money = free speech, and that dark money campaign contributions don't harm actual democracy at all.

Honestly, you have no idea how scary your question is. The fact that you, and many others, would need to even ask it, tells me how little so many people know about how our country works. That's one of the things you can thank our corporate media for. This is part of why Bernie Sanders is advocating for a government-funded, but non-partisan/independent, non-profit news organization that actually informs people about what's going on. I don't see that working all that well, because the people who would be making the appointments in such an organization are, themselves, HIGHLY partisan.

I was responding to your made-up statistic. 90%? There are 195 countries in the world, what even is 10% of that? There are 19.5 countries more lefty than the US?

My point was that you are biased. You are drawing conclusions based on your opinion and then presenting it in numerical form. That's the data I'm talking about.

The Left should be anti-war? Why? Why should the right be pro-war? Who told you that these political opinions are aligned this way? There's no historical basis for that. The left and right were both mixed in favor of WW1 and 2, Korea, Vietnam, and MiddleEastHappyFunTime 1 and 2. The notion that Left means anti-war is your own color because of the eventual political alignment at the end of the Vietnam conflict. That's exactly one instance where being left meant anti-war and being right meant pro-whateverthefuckvietnamwas.

Realistically, the Right should be anti-war. It's a wasteful expenditure and an overreach of government. You seem to have conflated the individual politics of the GOP with "Right" and politics of some of the Donkeys with "Left". That's unmoored in global politics, historical politics, or really anything else. It is literally the narrative you have been programmed from the corporate media you consume.

The GOP are a center-right party with nationalist tendencies, globally speaking. The Dems are also a center-right party, this time with some historical flag-burning tendencies. But those times are decades ago, you don't see Nancy Pelosi out there without a bra on. There is no left-wing party in the US, just as there is no left-wing media. Maybe Democracy Now! or other crap like that, but neither you nor I consider that to be mainstream, and with up to 200k viewers an ep, it really isn't.

And Ukraine is not a proxy war. Principals aren't participants in a proxy war. I suppose you could claim that it is half-proxy, but that's a pretty novel formulation and inaccurate. The US is doing literally the barest minimum to aid that country. I am not pro-war myself, but I am confident that the US military could completely flatten the Russian army in a heads-up conflict. If the US were directly involved in Ukraine, it would already be over.

Make that "we", and I'll agree with you.

Your comment is more of the same: all those OTHER people are influenced and brainwashed.

Community and culture don't have the same agenda that the government and the corporations have.

Does something stop being a conspiracy when it's documented and discussed?

No, but it might stop being seen in the same way that a "conspiracy theory" is often seen - that is, not really believed by many people, but actually the overwrought imaginings of a mind that sees conspiracies behind every door.

"The other party is a bunch of corporate stooges, but not my party! If everybody would just vote for my party, we could all have nice things!"

Also, check out Inventing Reality, something something something, by Michael Parenti.

People don't like to think this, in a culture that touts individualism, but we really are sheep - AND THAT'S A GOOD THING. We survive because of other people. There is next-to-nothing that we don't get because of other people. We are social beings, and that is one of our major assets.

But, it can so easily be used against us.

In fact, we are INFLUENCED to prize our individuality - by other people. It's a value that we got from other people, along with all our other beliefs and values. If everybody thinks they're an individual, how individualistic is that, actually?

So, we are highly susceptible to the social engineering conducted by the people who want us to act in ways that benefit them. Media is one of the main ways in which that engineering is accomplished. Thus, what we think of as reality was presented to us, and continually corroborated by much that we see around us. Nothing that doesn't support that version of reality is presented in the MSM that serves its owners and advertisers, along with the people who they share interlocking corporate board memberships with, but is relegated to low-traffic, alternative news sources few read, and many doubt.

Agreed. And Manfacturing Consent at least doesn't cry because a pedophile wasn't treated with "dignity."

There IS class war, and my class is winning. - Warren Buffet.

Class war is real, and always has been. But, the media, which should be telling us a lot more about that, is owned by one of the warring sides.

This doc is a weird mixed bag. It makes some valid points, but when it goes into the coverage of TWA 800 it veers into tinfoil hat territory. We know what brought down that plane and it wasn't a missile. Also, the sympathetic treatment given to a child predator is all kinds of WTF.

Never, but I've had that feeling a few times in downtown Detroit. Something about how the sunlight interacts with the tall buildings. Summery shadows.

You leave out the power of doubt. What we truly need is drastic change. That scares people, so anything that casts doubt on how much change we need makes it easier for people to think it's always been this way, and it always will.

Fox always lags far behind, regarding fact-checking. That is hugely more true about their "news-entertainment" programs, which are propaganda, pure and simple.

Yup, the "left" does it too. But, the right has made a science of it, and taken it to heights hitherto undreamt of. But, you have your what-about-ism to protect you from really seeing that.

The fact is, it's ALL owned by the rich, and both sides keep any information about how our country really runs out of the limelight.

Read "Inventing Reality" Michael Parenti is very knowledgeable on the way media distorts reality in favour of the elite minority.

Interlocking board memberships with other large, powerful corporations, and an abiding interest that the ruling class, to which they belong, continues to rule. So, for instance, we don't see anywhere near as many stories about how much influence the ruling class has in, and over, our government, to insure that the US continues to be a place where the rich can grow richer, while everybody else doesn't.

Also, it's easier to print and bury than live record and bury. Which is why you'll even more rarely see televised CNN pundets question defense spending or budget cuts.

It's ridiculous to think that politics can be defined by statistics or data. What the fuck are you even talking about? What stats are you looking at? What "data" have you presented? Just emotional opinions like "that is an absurd and completely made up statement."

And yes, many within the U.S. political split takes on stances that don't align with their claimed ideology. The left should be pro-freedom and anti-influence of pharmaceutical companies. Yet what side did they take on "vaccination" mandates? The left should be anti-war, yet they are cheering on sending billions of dollars to weapons manufactures under cover of the Ukraine proxy-war.

Where I don’t disagree with you about Fox you seem to be giving cnn, msnbc and all the other networks that do the exact same thing only with a different narrative a hard pass. And who might be determining this “truthful rating?” I’m sure they are just regular people with zero political ties.

Smooth brain take.

This is a documentary where they never talked to anyone actually involved, it was basically ambush journalism at its finest. When Jean-Philippe Tremblay was asked if he ever tried to talk to any of the major players, proudly answered NO. He went on to say he had 93 minutes to get an alternative point of view across to the viewers and that is what he wanted to present and thought they did a good job of doing that.