>One lesson from this election is how big an influence the media has on politics, and I see this as a huge problem. Oh that's been a lesson for a while. I'm ol

>One lesson from this election is how big an influence the media has on politics, and I see this as a huge problem. Oh that's been a lesson for a while. I'm old enough to dimly remember the run-up to the first Gulf War and the level of discourse was generally much more thoughtful. You had your partisan hacks like Bob Novak and other Heritage Foundation tools, but they were embedded within a media-world that still took itself somewhat seriously and had resigned itself to being staid and boring. At one point I remember someone quoted Thucydides and discussed various ideas about Just War theory from Aristotle to Michael Walzer and applied it to the present situation. And this was on a major news network! People make a big deal about "fake news on the internet" but the truth is, the reason the fake news had impact is because the "real news' long ago gave up any claims to credibility to be calling out the fake news. They've been acting as platforms for partisan hacks like Sean Hannity and Bob Novak for too long for anyone to put trust in them.