Notices by Eric Blair (protecttruth@mastodon.online), page 2

Oh— and this: media is impt for shaping epistemic circles.

That’s why Dems like us should care much much much more about media than we have.

Build Democratic media, do media policy, attack rightwing media. Have a media strategy because media affects people’s epistemics. /end

I don’t have much more to say about Fetterman, except that Jentleson’s theory isn’t implausible. That theory: that Fetterman is looking for a way to troll to get attention he can use to exert political power. Could be.

/end

It’s also clear that a Republican colleague from PA has significant input into Fetterman’s epistemic framework on Israel.

“I’m just incredibly inspired and proud of the way he’s going about his work,” Bartos said.

Fetterman signals his circles of info are not large

“But I’m, like, ‘There are no Middle East experts.’ Because if there are experts, well, have things gotten any better?” He went on, “I’ve had meetings with these experts, and they’re not able to answer all of these questions.”

What can US Democrats do about Rafah?
What can we do to affect Netanyahu?

Here's an action we can advocate for:
"Democrats should come to Netanyahu's speech carrying signs from Ha'aretz."

Quote Israeli critics of Netanyahu. God knows he's got enough.

https://www.deepnarrative.io/democrats-should-come-to-netanyahus-speech-with-ehud-olmerts-haaretz-signs-bloody-netanyahu-government/

“Trump’s run-out-the clock legal strategy worked.”

Blame the Fed Soc and our captured courts.

Trump packed the courts with extremist political actors like Aileen Cannon and the Fed Soc SCOTUS. And they are protecting him.

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-legal-delay-tactics-worked-cannon-willis

The (major!) problem with this argument is that Sotomayor resigning has POLITICAL consequences. The courts and politics are linked.

A Sotomayor replacement fight will transfigure the country and dominate headlines. That’d have been great last summer. It probably is good now too.

All journalists are activists.

It’s just that neutral journalists are activists for the status quo.

This is bad! It’s very bad.

Diversify our media ownership.
Do some media antitrust. Weaken the power of this former Australian oligarch who has close social ties to Russian oligarchs.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-elena-zhukova-engagement

Not to take away from the great SOTU, but:
Rupert Murdoch is marrying someone whose daughter was married to a Russian oligarch close to Putin—Roman Abramovich.

Murdoch has greater control of US politics via Fox than any other single person. And he’s all tied up with oligarchy.

Important thing about SCOTUS:

John Roberts is the most effective Republican strategist of his generation. He is running a scheme to impose GOP theocracy via the courts.
To do that he must avoid NYT pushback, and got that yesterday.
Notch a win for Roberts; a loss for democracy.

Worth saying again that Benjamin Netanyahu came to power in 1996 after encouraging the assassination of liberal Yitzhak Rabin.
That was, in effect, a rightwing coup.

Netanyahu is a modern fascist and working with him isn’t in American interests.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/labor-chief-michaeli-rabin-was-assassinated-with-netanyahus-cooperation/

Pretty sure @Alon is going to provide some more context by correcting me in some way here.

For US audiences especially its important to lay this out with direct language

@Alon

I’d probably go further and say that it’s not just Israel: given the worldwide slide towards this authoritarian oligarchy, we should all start differentiating between a country’s leaders and its people.

Americans were not Trump and are not Biden, though we’ll probably stay closer to Biden than trump going forward. Iran is not Khameinei, Israel is not Bibi.

Until our democracies stabilize some against these attacks from oligarchy, differentiating will serve us well.

@Alon

Fair enough.

The biggest point now IMO is that most Americans, notably Biden and his social circle, have not realized just how far-right Bibi is and his government is.
That’s why so many Americans reply to me saying “wow I didn’t know that!”

“Every Hunter Biden story was built on a fountain of Russian bullshit.”
Yes.

Because the New York Times misinforms its readers about politics.

Forget for the moment about the details of how or why, about bad headlines and terrible story assignments, and narrative and business models.

The bottom line is NYT Politics today fails as journalism.
/end

The real Trump and Putin news, the real journalism, today is: Trump and his Republican allies plan on day 1 to use violence against immigrants using federal forces. And Putin plans to expand his Europe wars if Trump wins.

NYT readers won’t get that by reading the NYT today.

This is a joke. But it is true.

This is the core of the problem with the New York Times since 2010: It simply does not inform its readers about the Republican Party.

Millions of American professionals are misinformed by NYT Politics, Opinion, story placement, and podcasts. 1/2

Important info and revelations about the WSJ layoffs this week.

They consolidate control of the WSJ **newsroom** in the hands of the crony editor Murdoch installed a few months ago.

You think WSJ Opinion is biased.
But Murdoch didn't buy WSJ *just* to sway WSJ Opinion. 1/