US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6549

On January 12 2017 06:04 xDaunt wrote:

Labeling what CNN did as "fake news" is neither ignorant nor misinformative unless you insist upon adhering to the Left's very limited definition of "fake news." And if you do, then once again, the argument degenerates into semantics, which is just retarded.

On January 12 2017 02:26 Thieving Magpie wrote:


An email ordering pizza led to gunmen shooting up a Trump supporter's business. The emails revealed nothing, people simply wanted them to, hence why they have to falsify stories from them. From pretty much every "evil" leak that she supposedly had. The worse thing you can say is that some emails had the letter C on it and that Hillary is not against adapting to globalization. That's it, that's all the leaks actually show. The only reason they were damning is that people Bernie supporters kept fabricating meaning from them.

On January 12 2017 05:35 TheTenthDoc wrote:


Mostly just commenting that the same people bringing up motivations of these leakers argued the only thing that mattered was the DNC emails and discussing motivations was purely a smokescreen to avoid discussing the content (and spent months denying we should think Russia had anything to do with it, even after intelligence agencies said otherwise).

IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.

This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”

Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.

The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.

But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.

Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?

All of these toxic ingredients were on full display yesterday as the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.
....
One can certainly object to Buzzfeed’s decision and, as the New York Times notes this morning, many journalists are doing so. It’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where it’s justifiable for a news outlet to publish a totally anonymous, unverified, unvetted document filled with scurrilous and inflammatory allegations about which its own editor-in-chief says there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations,” on the ground that they want to leave it to the public to decide whether to believe it.

But even if one believes there is no such case where that is justified, yesterday’s circumstances presented the most compelling scenario possible for doing this. Once CNN strongly hinted at these allegations, it left it to the public imagination to conjure up the dirt Russia allegedly had to blackmail and control Trump. By publishing these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.

CNN refused to specify what these allegations were on the ground that they could not “verify” them. But with this document in the hands of multiple media outlets, it was only a matter of time — a small amount of time — before someone would step up and publish the whole thing. Buzzfeed quickly obliged, airing all of the unvetted, anonymous claims about Trump.

Its editor-in-chief Ben Smith published a memo explaining that decision, saying that—- although there “is serious reason to doubt the allegations” — Buzzfeed in general “errs on the side of publication” and “Americans can make up their own minds about the allegations.” Publishing this document predictably produced massive traffic (and thus profit) for the site, with millions of people viewing the article and presumably reading the “dossier.”

....

THERE IS A REAL DANGER here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the significant claims in this “dossier” turn out to be provably false — such as Cohen’s trip to Prague — many people will conclude, with Trump’s encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying “Fake News” to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit — render impotent — future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing.

Beyond that, the threat posed by submitting ourselves to the CIA and empowering it to reign supreme outside of the democratic process is — as Eisenhower warned — an even more severe danger. The threat of being ruled by unaccountable and unelected entities is self-evident and grave. That’s especially true when the entity behind which so many are rallying is one with a long and deliberate history of lying, propaganda, war crimes, torture, and the worst atrocities imaginable.

All of the claims about Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and ties to Trump should be fully investigated by a credible body, and the evidence publicly disclosed to the fullest extent possible. As my colleague Sam Biddle argued last week after disclosure of the farcical intelligence community report on Russia hacking — one which even Putin’s foes mocked as a bad joke — the utter lack of evidence for these allegations means “we need an independent, resolute inquiry.” But until then, assertions that are unaccompanied by evidence and disseminated anonymously should be treated with the utmost skepticism — not lavished with convenience-driven gullibility.

Most important of all, the legitimate and effective tactics for opposing Trump are being utterly drowned by these irrational, desperate, ad hoc crusades that have no cogent strategy and make his opponents appear increasingly devoid of reason and gravity. Right now, Trump’s opponents are behaving as media critic Adam Johnson described: as ideological jelly fish, floating around aimlessly and lost, desperately latching on to whatever barge randomly passes by.

There are solutions to Trump. They involve reasoned strategizing and patient focus on issues people actually care about. Whatever those solutions are, venerating the intelligence community, begging for its intervention, and equating their dark and dirty assertions as Truth are most certainly not among them. Doing that cannot possibly achieve any good, and is already doing much harm.

On January 12 2017 06:04 xDaunt wrote:

Labeling what CNN did as "fake news" is neither ignorant nor misinformative unless you insist upon adhering to the Left's very limited definition of "fake news." And if you do, then once again, the argument degenerates into semantics, which is just retarded.

On January 12 2017 02:34 LegalLord wrote:

GH would be more willing to question your assertions there. I will simply say that evidently plenty of people thought otherwise.

On January 12 2017 05:38 LegalLord wrote:

The difference? The emails were verified to be authentic documents.

On January 12 2017 04:50 xDaunt wrote:
Leave it to Glenn Greenwald to be the conscience of the American left:



Source.

On January 12 2017 06:04 xDaunt wrote:

Labeling what CNN did as "fake news" is neither ignorant nor misinformative unless you insist upon adhering to the Left's very limited definition of "fake news." And if you do, then once again, the argument degenerates into semantics, which is just retarded.

On January 12 2017 06:07 Gorsameth wrote:

So as said, you are misusing a definition and then when confronted on it you say you don't want to argue semantics...

That's one way to try and avoid losing an argument I guess.

On January 12 2017 06:07 Gorsameth wrote:

So as said, you are misusing a definition and then when confronted on it you say you don't want to argue semantics...

That's one way to try and avoid losing an argument I guess.

On January 12 2017 06:07 Gorsameth wrote:

So as said, you are misusing a definition and then when confronted on it you say you don't want to argue semantics...

That's one way to try and avoid losing an argument I guess.

On January 12 2017 06:15 xDaunt wrote:

No, I'm not avoiding the argument at all. The problem is that my opponents don't know how to argue the issue. Given that I'm feeling generous, let me provide a template for everyone to use that provides the basic structure for countering the label:

"X is not fake news, because [discuss in detail the propriety of the journalistic methods employed]."

That wasn't hard was it? Rotely arguing that "X is not fake news because you're misusing the term of fake news" is asinine, retarded, and a complete waste of everyone's time.

So to everyone who objects to my use of the term: stop whining and start making the proper argument.

On January 12 2017 06:22 kwizach wrote:

Let's put aside for a second the fact that since you're the one who came up with the claim that the CNN article was an example of "fake news", the burden of proof lies on you -- I'll respond to your query: the CNN article was not an example of fake news because it made no false claims.

Your turn. Fake news present false claims as true, and are designed to deceive readers. I'm willing to put aside the matter of intent here to make your job even easier. Where does the CNN article present false claims as true?

On January 12 2017 06:22 kwizach wrote:

Let's put aside for a second the fact that since you're the one who came up with the claim that the CNN article was an example of "fake news", the burden of proof lies on you -- I'll respond to your query: the CNN article was not an example of fake news because it made no false claims.

Your turn. Fake news present false claims as true, and are designed to deceive readers. I'm willing to put aside the matter of intent here to make your job even easier. Where does the CNN article present false claims as true?