On "authenticity" and how corporate media just never fucking gets it.
They get into the meat of the media problems starting at about 23:05.
Showing posts with label professional left. Show all posts
Showing posts with label professional left. Show all posts
May 6, 2026
May 10, 2024
Apr 16, 2024
Mar 29, 2024
Support The Pod
The breakdown of the meltdown at NBC is an outstanding analysis of the pitiful condition of American news media, wrought by the suits, and the Press Poodles, and the advertisers, and the whole fuckin' mess that has grown out of the incredibly stoopid idea that the news division has to be a profit center.
Jan 11, 2024
Today's Podcast
The Professional Left with Driftglass and Blue Gal
The internet is a community band
where everybody thinks they've got the solo,
and nobody bothers to practice.
Jan 4, 2024
Today's Podcast
- Republicans aren't messaging well
- Let the vibes rule
- Millionaire's Tax in Massachusetts
- Johnny Cash was a hippie
- Michelle Obama will not be riding to anyone's rescue - cuz Joe doesn't need no rescuing
- Let us not be queasy about strenuously defending the constitution
Jun 23, 2023
Today's Pro Left Podcast
Yesterday's, actually.
Plenty of rakes, and more than enough Republicans to step on all of 'em.
May 19, 2023
May 3, 2023
Apr 29, 2023
On David Brooks
Driftglass does this much better than I do, but I can't not throw my 2¢ in.
Joe Biden and the Struggle for America’s Soul
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
Joe Biden built his 2020 presidential campaign around the idea that “we’re in a battle for the soul of America.” I thought it was a marvelous slogan because it captured the idea that we’re in the middle of a moral struggle over who we are as a nation. In the video he released this week launching his re-election bid, he doubled down on that idea: We’re still, he said, “in a battle for the soul of America.”
I want to dwell on the little word “soul” in that sentence because I think it illuminates what the 2024 presidential election is all about.
What is a soul? Well, religious people have one answer to that question. But Biden is not using the word in a religious sense, but in a secular one. He is saying that people and nations have a moral essence, a soul.
Whether you believe in God or don’t believe in God is not my department. But I do ask you to believe that every person you meet has this moral essence, this quality of soul.
Because humans have souls, each one is of infinite value and dignity. Because humans have souls, each one is equal to all the others. We are not equal in physical strength or I.Q. or net worth, but we are radically equal at the level of who we essentially are.
The soul is the name we can give to that part of our consciousness where moral life takes place. The soul is the place our moral sentiments flow from, the emotions that make us feel admiration at the sight of generosity and disgust at the sight of cruelty.
It is the place where our moral yearnings come from, too. Most people yearn to lead good lives. When they act with a spirit of cooperation, their souls sing and they are happy. On the other hand, when they feel their lives have no moral purpose, they experience a sickness of the soul — a sense of lostness, pain and self-contempt.
Because we have souls, we are morally responsible for what we do. Hawks and cobras are not morally responsible for their actions; but humans, possessors of souls, are caught in a moral drama, either doing good or doing ill.
Political campaigns are not usually contests over the status of the soul. But Donald Trump, and Trumpism generally, is the embodiment of an ethos that covers up the soul. Or to be more precise, each is an ethos that deadens the soul under the reign of the ego.
Trump, and Trumpism generally, represents a kind of nihilism that you might call amoral realism. This ethos is built around the idea that we live in a dog-eat-dog world. The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Might makes right. I’m justified in grabbing all that I can because if I don’t, the other guy will. People are selfish; deal with it.
This ethos — which is central to not only Trump’s approach to life, but also Vladimir Putin’s and Xi Jinping’s — gives people a permission slip to be selfish. In an amoral world, cruelty, dishonesty, vainglory and arrogance are valorized as survival skills.
People who live according to the code of amoral realism tear through codes and customs that have built over the centuries to nurture goodness and foster cooperation. Putin is not restrained by notions of human rights. Trump is not restrained by the normal codes of honesty.
In the mind of an amoral realist, life is not a moral drama; it’s a competition for power and gain, red in tooth and claw. Other people are not possessors of souls, of infinite dignity and worth; they are objects to be utilized.
Biden talks a lot about the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. At its deepest level, that struggle is between systems that put the dignity of individual souls at the center and systems that operate by the logic of dominance and submission.
You may disagree with Biden on many issues. You may think he is too old. But that’s not the primary issue in this election. The presidency, as Franklin D. Roosevelt put it, “is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.”
One of the hardest, soul-wearying parts of living through the Trump presidency was that we had to endure a steady downpour of lies, transgressions and demoralizing behavior. We were all corroded by it. That era was a reminder that the soul of a person and the soul of a nation are always in flux, every day moving a bit in the direction of elevation or a bit in the direction of degradation.
A return to that ethos would bring about a social and moral disintegration that is hard to contemplate. Say what you will about Biden, but he has generally put human dignity at the center of his political vision. He treats people with charity and respect.
The contest between Biden and Trumpism is less Democrat versus Republican or liberal versus conservative than it is between an essentially moral vision and an essentially amoral one, a contest between decency and its opposite
Here's David Brooks, doing his usual Above-It-All thing, trying to disconnect Trump from the GOP, and working hard to pretend he had nothing to do with how we got Trump in the first place.
Trump did not remake the Republican party in his image. He's the perfect reflection of what the GOP has been morphing into for at least 50 years, and David Brooks helped engineer it.
I'll take the common cause all day long, but I refuse to see David Brooks as anything but the snake he is.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
Joe Biden built his 2020 presidential campaign around the idea that “we’re in a battle for the soul of America.” I thought it was a marvelous slogan because it captured the idea that we’re in the middle of a moral struggle over who we are as a nation. In the video he released this week launching his re-election bid, he doubled down on that idea: We’re still, he said, “in a battle for the soul of America.”
I want to dwell on the little word “soul” in that sentence because I think it illuminates what the 2024 presidential election is all about.
What is a soul? Well, religious people have one answer to that question. But Biden is not using the word in a religious sense, but in a secular one. He is saying that people and nations have a moral essence, a soul.
Whether you believe in God or don’t believe in God is not my department. But I do ask you to believe that every person you meet has this moral essence, this quality of soul.
Because humans have souls, each one is of infinite value and dignity. Because humans have souls, each one is equal to all the others. We are not equal in physical strength or I.Q. or net worth, but we are radically equal at the level of who we essentially are.
The soul is the name we can give to that part of our consciousness where moral life takes place. The soul is the place our moral sentiments flow from, the emotions that make us feel admiration at the sight of generosity and disgust at the sight of cruelty.
It is the place where our moral yearnings come from, too. Most people yearn to lead good lives. When they act with a spirit of cooperation, their souls sing and they are happy. On the other hand, when they feel their lives have no moral purpose, they experience a sickness of the soul — a sense of lostness, pain and self-contempt.
Because we have souls, we are morally responsible for what we do. Hawks and cobras are not morally responsible for their actions; but humans, possessors of souls, are caught in a moral drama, either doing good or doing ill.
Political campaigns are not usually contests over the status of the soul. But Donald Trump, and Trumpism generally, is the embodiment of an ethos that covers up the soul. Or to be more precise, each is an ethos that deadens the soul under the reign of the ego.
Trump, and Trumpism generally, represents a kind of nihilism that you might call amoral realism. This ethos is built around the idea that we live in a dog-eat-dog world. The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Might makes right. I’m justified in grabbing all that I can because if I don’t, the other guy will. People are selfish; deal with it.
This ethos — which is central to not only Trump’s approach to life, but also Vladimir Putin’s and Xi Jinping’s — gives people a permission slip to be selfish. In an amoral world, cruelty, dishonesty, vainglory and arrogance are valorized as survival skills.
People who live according to the code of amoral realism tear through codes and customs that have built over the centuries to nurture goodness and foster cooperation. Putin is not restrained by notions of human rights. Trump is not restrained by the normal codes of honesty.
In the mind of an amoral realist, life is not a moral drama; it’s a competition for power and gain, red in tooth and claw. Other people are not possessors of souls, of infinite dignity and worth; they are objects to be utilized.
Biden talks a lot about the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. At its deepest level, that struggle is between systems that put the dignity of individual souls at the center and systems that operate by the logic of dominance and submission.
You may disagree with Biden on many issues. You may think he is too old. But that’s not the primary issue in this election. The presidency, as Franklin D. Roosevelt put it, “is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.”
One of the hardest, soul-wearying parts of living through the Trump presidency was that we had to endure a steady downpour of lies, transgressions and demoralizing behavior. We were all corroded by it. That era was a reminder that the soul of a person and the soul of a nation are always in flux, every day moving a bit in the direction of elevation or a bit in the direction of degradation.
A return to that ethos would bring about a social and moral disintegration that is hard to contemplate. Say what you will about Biden, but he has generally put human dignity at the center of his political vision. He treats people with charity and respect.
The contest between Biden and Trumpism is less Democrat versus Republican or liberal versus conservative than it is between an essentially moral vision and an essentially amoral one, a contest between decency and its opposite
Remember:
- Trump got more votes in the 2016 Republican primaries than any other candidate in the history of the GOP.
- He got 11 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016
This is not Trumpism
this is what the Republican party is now.
Apr 21, 2023
Podcast
It's already been a long slog. And it's going to take a lot longer.
People my age may live to see The American Plutocracy Project win out (it won't last - because that shit is ultimately unsustainable), but it's not likely we'll see the end of the fight to beat back the dark anti-democratic forces of Radical Libertarianism.
Guess The Headline Source:
- "Record Number Of Americans Say They're Politically Independent..."
- "Political Independents: The Future Of Politics?"
- "What Independents Want"
embrace the suck
stay in the fight
Apr 18, 2023
An Excerpt
Most Republican leaders have bitterly fought and blocked the forward surge of average men and women in their pursuit of happiness.Let us not be deluded that, overnight, those leaders have suddenly become the friends of average men and women.We have all seen many marvelous stunts in the circus, but no performing elephant could turn a handspring without falling flat on its back.
--Franklin D Roosevelt
The best way to a balanced budget is full employment and price restraint.
Ted Kennedy at the 1980 Democratic National Convention in NYC:
Apr 14, 2023
A Podcast
Episode 709 - that's one podcast episode every week for 13½ years - and that in itself is pretty fucking impressive.
Scatter gun thoughts:
- Hunter Biden's letter of recommendation is why Buckley Carlson (Tucker's boy) got into Georgetown University. (yes - he named his kid Buckley)
- It occurs to me that Republicans are even more hollow and unimaginative than I thought. They steal ideas from the Dems: they steal whole sections of speeches (Melania's remarks at the GOP convention in 2016 comes to mind). So when they go on the attack, they take the (well-deserved) criticism leveled at them, and turn it around, baselessly accusing the Dems of everything the Republicans are actually guilty of
- "Bathe in the light of truth"
- The power of the Super Majority is a rot that won't be cleansed with anything but blood - because that's what a Death Cult actually wants. So - question: Do you think it's simple coincidence that the GOP Death Cult likes to crow about "Pro-Life"?
- Charlie Sykes is a fucking monster
- The asshole Republican Speaker Of The Tennessee house is crooked like a mountain road
- "Burnish"?
Mar 24, 2023
Pro Left Podcast
"If you do what I tell you to do, I can keep you out of prison. I'm not sure, at this point, that I want to."
Feb 24, 2023
Feb 10, 2023
Podcast
Murc's Law:
The widespread assumption that only Democrats have any agency, or causal influence over American politics.
Jan 27, 2023
Podcast
Jan 13, 2023
Podcast
MSNBC and The New York Times are not your liberal friends.
Plus The Mystery Of The Missing Headline - right here on The Professional Left Podcast
Jan 6, 2023
Podcast
Two highlights:
- As we watch the GOP nail Kevin McCarthy's balls to the speaker's lectern, let us take a moment to reflect on Cancel Culture.
- 90% of everything we see on TV is owned &/or controlled by 6 companies:
- News Corp
- Comcast
- CBS
- Time Warner
- Viacom
Dec 30, 2022
The Professional Left Podcast
Driftglass and Blue Gal breakin' it down.
Episode 682 - Who said what, when did they say it, and were they full of shit or was it part of the plan cuz they were going to lie to us all over again anyway?
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