Main Stream Media Propaganda and Marketting

The Main Stream Media is at an all time low with journalists generally considered little better than politicians and pedophiles.  CBC News is perhaps the worst offender of all sadly because it’s extreme biases and manipulations are publicly funded yet their marketing of messages is controlled by an extremely narrow elite.  Even BBC, once a bastion of objective journalism has fallen to “making the news” rather than ‘reporting the news’.  CNN is the greatest whore of all but definitely not alone.  Today no one knows where to turn especially given the amount of ‘fake news’ on the internet. Worse the greatest purveyors of bias are now claiming to ‘regulate fake news’, con artists, like billionaire Zuckerberg whose Facebook algorithms were employed to support Hillary Clinton against Bernie and then against Trump.
Like everyone else, I really don’t know what to believe.  Yet I’m extremely well educated, have a very high IQ and years of experience watching news and politics.  Today it’s uncertain.  There’s a ‘fog of war’ in the world today. It’s a kind of madness too.
So I thought I’d share some of the guidelines that I believe rule my own set of biases.  They probably follow from my study of logic and rhetoric, as well as formal training in Cognitive Behavioural therapy and a whole lot of experience with ‘drug talk’ , ‘adolescents’, ‘insane and schizophrenic’ people, psychotics, and just generally education and experience.  I know that’s frowned on as increasingly groups insist that they are going to reinvent the wheel.
So these are things I look for:
1.  Certainty.  If someone is absolutely certain of the ‘facts’ and argues stridently and emotionally about the ‘facts’ and the ‘news’ they’re probably a nut bar who doesn’t know they’re a nut bar. I don’t know and I really am experienced and study the matter so what’s with their insistence.  This is ‘arrogance’ and arrogance usually goes with ignorance. The more we study the more we realized what we don’t know.  The more humble we become in our appreciation of the breadth and depth of knowledge
2. Bias.  Who is funding the information.  Commonly in discussions there is money somewhere. A drug dealer will commonly argue for decreased policing of drugs but won’t tell you he makes hundreds of thousands on drug trade. On the internet there are increasing numbers of trolls hired by various parties and marketing agencies. They commonly can be recognized by the nature of their arguments but more commonly they are known by their claim to impartiality.  Yet I can’t know this. At the university we demand increasingly that ‘conflicts of interest’ are declared.  The internet is a swamp of conflicts of interests. Many are just selling their books and their ideas.  Some may well be vampires looking for prey.  Bias is the norm.
3. Ad Hominem. This is the most common evidence that people are a ‘nut bar’.  Saying a person is a nut bar is an ad hominem’.  If they were discussing ‘nuts’ their being a nut bar might be beneficial. More importantly ad hominem refers to the attack on a person rather than their argument or position. This is increasingly seen with the bullying and psychopaths who promote “Identity Politics’.  They say ‘you are white’ so you can’t talk about ‘white matters’ or you are ‘black so you can’t talk about white matters’.  If you accept the base premises of “Identity Politics’ then ‘ad hominem’ is your whole argument.  “You are a woman so you can’t know”.  “You are a woman so you’re wrong.”  “You are a man so you are wrong’.  You are straight so you are wrong’.
4. Marxism and communism and paranoia.  These can be recognized as one in the same cognitively.  It’s a matter of identifying two groups, by vast generalization then labelling one or the other as good or bad.  It’s and ‘we and them” argument.  Jesus said “there are rich and poor’.  Marx wrongly said that this was the “Oppressor and Oppressed’.  He, himself a bourgeoisie, defined the world as paranoids do, into the dyadic, beugeosie and proletariat.  He himself was the most oppressive man who ever lived.  He was extremely offensive to his wife and children and those who supported him. But the fact is he was wrong.  The Scottish Socialist movement which began ‘unionism’ rather than communism’ maintained there were three classes in society, lower, middle and upper and that these were inter related with varying powers. The middle class was indeed the ‘guild movement’ which gave rise to professions and unions in the advanced societies of the western world. In the barbarism of communism like the mind of the paranoid everything is Opressed and Oppressor. It’s worth watching for this in any argument.  Marx was a revolutionary and wanted war seeing everything through his highly privileged viewpoint. Lenin who took Marx’s ideas and created a dictatorship with them was himself among the highest beugeosie and proceeded in killing millions as soon as he had power.  Indeed all communist government have been the greatest thieves and killers of all time, atheist murderers they invariably present this apparently rational argument of ‘oppressed and oppressor’, naming the two groups as ‘good and bad’ just like paranoids always do.  It’s very easy to spot these arguments once you are aware of the paranoid propaganda and the appeal this has to the immature, ignorant and marginalized. There is always someone who is indeed usually from the upper class who offers to ‘rescue’ these people apparently out of the goodness of their heart, all the while sprouting platitudes like Lenin did before he became the supreme dictator. It’s always worth it to recognize these arguments because the purveyors want ‘war’. The communists believed that only through war would they win. Hence the Beatles years ago writing that great song, “We don’t want a revolution’. All communists, all marxists revel in war.
5. Straw dog Arguments -  these are so common today.  The journalists never bother to listen to what others say but make up their own arguments.  If I were to say “I believe in a higher power’, the Main Stream Media journalist would write a 10 page article based on the ‘fake premise’, “Dr. Hay said he believes in Jehovah and wants to kill all non believes and gays and aboriginal and wants to have blacks as slaves.”  This is the most common discussion of presidents and prime ministers.
6.The world is going to end unless you believe me.  These are the other most common political arguments. Unfortunately the young are at greatest risk for falling for this argument. I believed the world was going to end in months and years because when I was 16 I was told Climate Change was going to kill the planet.  This ‘argument’ has been going on for 40 years of my adulthood in various forms and always there’s the caveat, pay me. So I’m jaded.  It happens to the old. We’ve heard these arguments for everyone to give politicians more money year after year and the world hasn’t ended.  There are marvellous papers that can be read about Millenial Madness and about the ‘world going to end’. Apparently it was being used as a political argument 500 years ago.  The best book on Fear Mongering is the Science of Fear by Daniel Gardner
7. All or nothing thinking - this is black and white thinking - it’s a variation on the paranoid….’either you’re with me or agin me.’  This was the Climate Change Lie  -calling their critics ‘deniers’ and ignoring that there’s a whole lot more grey areas than the black and white propositions of nutbars. The latest insanity of this sort was Justin Trudeau’s government’s proposal of “Islamophobia’.  This suggested that anyone who was a critique of the barbaric practices of Islamic religions and the Jihadist activities of Islamic terrorists was mentally ill. It’s an ‘either you’re with me or agin me’ argument and once you recognize this then you know that the proponent is a nut bar.  My method of research of fake news could be described as paranoid in this sense because I divide them quickly into ‘Nutbar or not a nut bar and maybe a nut bar”.   Notice the advanced ‘maybe’.
Piaget the great child psychologist found that children though ‘concretely’ into these ‘either or’ categories. It’s a bit like the computer which works on the digital of 0-1 versus the quantum computer which works on a 0 0/1 1 basis at least. Quite possibly the computer has due to it’s limited either or digital function limited the mental development of children to the next phase which Piaget described for adolescent and this is ‘abstract thinking’.  Research by Piaget was on his children and they had moved by adolescent from dyadic to triadic think with adolescences. However the great irony is that Piaget’s children were geniuses.  So when researchers took Piaget’s research and applied it to the adult general population they found that the majority of adults were simply not enlightened. They continued to think in concrete, either or, black and white terms well into their 30’s.  We ‘ve all seen that the young have delayed maturity and are staying home with their parents well into their 20’s .  Research by neuropsychologists shows that the brains development today continues well into 25.  Not surprisingly liberals and democrats have campaigned for reducing the electorate age to 16 because under 30 black and white thinking is so dominant and obviously it’s easiest to sell ‘us and them’ and ‘oppressed and oppressor ‘ to children.  Fiscal responsibility and karma and community values and such just don’t fly with the young but every 30 year old begins to appreciate the value of money as they are more and more paying for their activities and possessions.  Winston Churchill said that if you’re not a socialist at 20 you have no heart but if you’re not a capitalist at 40 you have no brains.  There simply is a middle way.  Confuscious and Buddha promoted this for one most religions, especially Christianity have recognized that there is a heaven and a hell and here’s the rub, an ‘in between’.  Most everything is grey and confusing as consequences.
Anyway I’ve got to go to work so these are just some thoughts. I have people telling to read something but I often don’t want to bother because I’ve heard the ‘music’ or the ‘flavour’ of these ‘arguments’ for decades’ and frankly I don’t like most RAPP music and am increasingly cautious about where I eat raw fish.  So I know all the diatribes about inclusion and diversity but these are ‘plattitudes’.
8. Platitudes are airy fairy marijuana drug talk - like ‘we should all love one another’.  Fine ‘lets love one another, now bend over.”  The key to understanding ‘platitudes’ is knowing that the devil is in the detail.  The whole idea of childish words like Lennon’s “give peace a chance’ is we all really want to but Lennon was a capitalist and didn’t want to share peace and his bed with anyone but the wealthy banker family ONO.  So a whole lot of platitudes fall apart when you ask to ‘operationalize them’. Show me don’t tell me.  What does love mean to you.  Ironically the longest lasting commune from the 60’s is this really mean spirited place in India where everyone is now paranoid because everyone got ripped off and now it’s next to impossible to get anyone to do things together for the community. There simply are takers and givers and those in between.

News is now entertainment and big money.  Click bait only to some.