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I remember well the day I lost faith in the news media as surely as the childhood moment "Father Christmas" stopped being real. For me, it was the second Iraq w

I remember well the day I lost faith in the news media as surely as the childhood moment "Father Christmas" stopped being real. For me, it was the second Iraq war. The whole thing was so blatantly a put-up. Day after day the news media went along with what were obviously, and later proven, falsehoods. To watch and listen felt corrupting, like being part of something unreal, like witnessing an accident or assault, but being powerless to do anything. The intransigent deafness of government to the feelings of the people, and the role the "mass media" played in that have never left me. It was a coming of age for me. I was astounded that trusted organisations and people I respected were so willingly engaged in something false and monstrous.

mandmandam 4y ago
Same! It was so obviously a scam, and only became more obvious over the years. But seemingly smart people kept falling for it. They'd get angry and then dismissive if you showed them clear evidence. I thought people would get wise to the bullshit after evidence came out - instead they all kept following the Piper. People who should have known better started attacking the whistleblowers, even though the smear campaigns were as blatant as could be. Basically all anti-war media is banned from Wikipedia - and 'the liberals' are fine with it. I believed people would wise up as the true costs of war (20 trillion plus if you count the interest and don't count the societal destruction) started to be felt. Instead, the anger was successfully redirected to 'others' of various stripes; immigrants, refugees (from the wars we incited!), 'Russian hackers', blue vs red, "gobal communist elites" (ffs), etc. My own parents minds were melted by corporate media over the last twenty years. Close friends got baited into the same permanent fear/rage state that they complained about Fox News promulgating. And people seem to have forgotten it all, let it slide, to the point where a key architect, cheerleader and enabler of the disastrous invasions is now President. And people are happy about it, even as he breaks strikes and sets record military budgets while talking shit about nuclear and economic superpowers. I'd love to see America get its shit together, but now it feels more likely that Santa Claus will drop me a PS5 and a Ferrari. Constant ceaseless propaganda has more of an effect than I gave it credit for, and people are way more likely to put up with it that I could have believed.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  I hear how much that still stings for you. The hope I pull out of living through it all comes from Germany and Japan. They've definitely been through a lot of introspection and soul searching since 1940s, and I find both nations have a "wiser" and more cautious stance in the world. The question is, will our Iraqs, Afghanistans and Vietnams ever be something we reckon with and integrate into a better future? I'm not a pacifist btw, just allergic to colossal misadventure based on the flimsy lies of elite minorities able to control the message. It's staggering that in my lifetime we repeated the mistakes of the Germans 70 years earlier, and right now the Russians are going through the same thing. We humans are, in David Bowie's words, always crashing in the same car.
- mindslight 4y ago
  I'm right there with you about the 2nd Iraq War. But as I've gotten older I've seemingly gotten more conservative and I'm relieved to have a status quo politician running USG as the devil I know. I've grown up under the shadow of mass surveillance (Binney was 2001) and status quo mass reality distortion, and see a way around that through Free software etc (despite it being an arduous road). But I don't have much of an answer to domestic administrations paralyzing institutions, wagging the dog with nonsense like "antifa" and "stolen election", and unleashing physical troops (both federal "law enforcement" and social media fueled militias) to hunt for the witches. And ultimately it bothers me that all of the legitimate critiques of the status quo US power structure are being brought into the limelight simply to enable a different set of looters who are even more shameless.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    > ultimately it bothers me that all of the legitimate critiques of the status quo US power structure are being brought into the limelight simply to enable a different set of looters who are even more shameless. Me too. It's the self-reproachment then self-cannibalising following darks periods that is tragic and painful to watch. In my own conservatism I am exasperated by iconoclasts toppling statutes and badmouthing our values as if that could put things right or undo acts of a few whose ideas were clearly wrong even at the time. Going back to the German experience, they more or less had an "intergenerational war" in the 70s. Not to over-psychologise but Tolstoy would clearly name the devouring guilt of our own crime and self-punishment. Nations that wage unjust wars are as traumatised as those they destroy, just in a different way. Again with the Russians, I can't help but think the ghosts their boys brought back from Afghanistan ate a good portion of the values they needed to keep people like Putin out of power.
hot_gril 4y ago
"The first casualty when war comes is truth." I was too young to follow the Iraq invasion as it happened, only look back on it sometimes as a clear example. Now with the Ukraine war, while I understand it's a different situation from Iraq, I don't expect our news to faithfully report any facts that could possibly be used to support the Russian narrative. Among the first mainstream reports here were straight martyr propaganda about the Snake Island guards, repeating unconfirmed reports of their deaths later found incorrect. And anyone pushing the Russian side isn't more trustworthy. I give the overall US-Ukraine side in this conflict the benefit of the doubt only because I knew enough about Putin's antics before the war started, otherwise I'd honestly be lost.

mandmandam 4y ago

Same! It was so obviously a scam, and only became more obvious over the years. But seemingly smart people kept falling for it. They'd get angry and then dismissive if you showed them clear evidence. I thought people would get wise to the bullshit after evidence came out - instead they all kept following the Piper. People who should have known better started attacking the whistleblowers, even though the smear campaigns were as blatant as could be. Basically all anti-war media is banned from Wikipedia - and 'the liberals' are fine with it. I believed people would wise up as the true costs of war (20 trillion plus if you count the interest and don't count the societal destruction) started to be felt. Instead, the anger was successfully redirected to 'others' of various stripes; immigrants, refugees (from the wars we incited!), 'Russian hackers', blue vs red, "gobal communist elites" (ffs), etc. My own parents minds were melted by corporate media over the last twenty years. Close friends got baited into the same permanent fear/rage state that they complained about Fox News promulgating. And people seem to have forgotten it all, let it slide, to the point where a key architect, cheerleader and enabler of the disastrous invasions is now President. And people are happy about it, even as he breaks strikes and sets record military budgets while talking shit about nuclear and economic superpowers. I'd love to see America get its shit together, but now it feels more likely that Santa Claus will drop me a PS5 and a Ferrari. Constant ceaseless propaganda has more of an effect than I gave it credit for, and people are way more likely to put up with it that I could have believed.

nonrandomstring 4y ago
I hear how much that still stings for you. The hope I pull out of living through it all comes from Germany and Japan. They've definitely been through a lot of introspection and soul searching since 1940s, and I find both nations have a "wiser" and more cautious stance in the world. The question is, will our Iraqs, Afghanistans and Vietnams ever be something we reckon with and integrate into a better future? I'm not a pacifist btw, just allergic to colossal misadventure based on the flimsy lies of elite minorities able to control the message. It's staggering that in my lifetime we repeated the mistakes of the Germans 70 years earlier, and right now the Russians are going through the same thing. We humans are, in David Bowie's words, always crashing in the same car.
mindslight 4y ago
I'm right there with you about the 2nd Iraq War. But as I've gotten older I've seemingly gotten more conservative and I'm relieved to have a status quo politician running USG as the devil I know. I've grown up under the shadow of mass surveillance (Binney was 2001) and status quo mass reality distortion, and see a way around that through Free software etc (despite it being an arduous road). But I don't have much of an answer to domestic administrations paralyzing institutions, wagging the dog with nonsense like "antifa" and "stolen election", and unleashing physical troops (both federal "law enforcement" and social media fueled militias) to hunt for the witches. And ultimately it bothers me that all of the legitimate critiques of the status quo US power structure are being brought into the limelight simply to enable a different set of looters who are even more shameless.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > ultimately it bothers me that all of the legitimate critiques of the status quo US power structure are being brought into the limelight simply to enable a different set of looters who are even more shameless. Me too. It's the self-reproachment then self-cannibalising following darks periods that is tragic and painful to watch. In my own conservatism I am exasperated by iconoclasts toppling statutes and badmouthing our values as if that could put things right or undo acts of a few whose ideas were clearly wrong even at the time. Going back to the German experience, they more or less had an "intergenerational war" in the 70s. Not to over-psychologise but Tolstoy would clearly name the devouring guilt of our own crime and self-punishment. Nations that wage unjust wars are as traumatised as those they destroy, just in a different way. Again with the Russians, I can't help but think the ghosts their boys brought back from Afghanistan ate a good portion of the values they needed to keep people like Putin out of power.

hot_gril 4y ago

"The first casualty when war comes is truth." I was too young to follow the Iraq invasion as it happened, only look back on it sometimes as a clear example. Now with the Ukraine war, while I understand it's a different situation from Iraq, I don't expect our news to faithfully report any facts that could possibly be used to support the Russian narrative. Among the first mainstream reports here were straight martyr propaganda about the Snake Island guards, repeating unconfirmed reports of their deaths later found incorrect. And anyone pushing the Russian side isn't more trustworthy. I give the overall US-Ukraine side in this conflict the benefit of the doubt only because I knew enough about Putin's antics before the war started, otherwise I'd honestly be lost.