I never watch TV in my Budapest apartment because the set only gets Hungarian channels … or so I thought. I found CNN on it, and decided to watch some of its war coverage. I turned it off after watching an interview with a retired US military officer who now is part of a think tank. It was stunningly bad journalism. The think-tanker offered nothing but rah-rah for the Ukraine resistance, and claimed that by not losing, Ukraine was winning. The interviewer never challenged any of it, not in the least, and boosted the guest’s point by quoting statements from Russian POWs — a mistake I regrettably made a couple of weeks ago, forgetting that promoting propaganda statements made by a POW is a violation of the Geneva Convention, and should never be taken as truthful, given that they are likely made under duress. But the narrative being sold in this segment was: Ukraine is winning this war, and we just need to believe more in their cause.
Maybe Ukraine is winning this war, but that is by no means obvious to anyone who looks at the battlefield map. I want a media that does its best to tell me what is actually going on in the world, not one that manufactures consent. That’s what Russian state media does, right? Why do you need state media when our private media in America are happy to take a party line without being told.
These reporters are not interested in the news; they are interested in goading the White House to get more involved in the war on behalf of Ukraine.
I turned the TV off after that. It made me furious. This is bad, warmongering, propagandistic journalism. I posted about it on Twitter, and one of my followers there said that Fox News is the same way, except when Tucker Carlson is on. I wonder if this is what the paleocons and the antiwar leftists thought back in 2002 and 2003, during the march-up to the Iraq War and its early stages. I recall hearing back then from a friend of mine, a longtime journalist and a military vet, furious over what he regarded as the media’s surrender to the urge to propagandize on behalf of the war. I thought of him at the time as an eccentric middle-aged liberal. Now I’m an eccentric middle-aged conservative, in the same sense.
Ross Douthat explains why populism is in philosophical disarray in the wake of the Putin invasion (the reversion of normie conservatives to pre-Trump hawkishness is a sign, he says), but warns liberals that they would be fools to think that Russia’s invasion solves the problems of our decadent society. Excerpt:
Russia may be winning the kinetic war…maybe not. But Ukraine is winning the propaganda war. We were winning the kinetic war in Vietnam but lost the propaganda war. Remember how that turned out. Al wars for the past half century have been two fold. Kinetic vs propaganda. You have to win BOTH wars to tru!y prevail.
If you follow the time proven mission of the military, “Total destruction of the enemy; his means and will to resist.” You will win. Problem is the west does not have the stomack for real war. They want to make it like some computer game so after it is so called over, everybody feels good.
I find this very interesting. I was looking in the Urban dictionary for the word copium and it’s usage since it’s basically a slang word. Remember the election was Nov 3, 2020. This statement was printed Oct 3, 2020 by enterprise 1701, hmmm wonder who that is:
-Supporters of the losing candidate claim they didn’t legitimately lose the election; they say it was due to foreign interference and election fraud. They’re clearly high on copium.
by enterprise1701 October 3, 2020
Nothing will change the narrative from the propaganda media except a total and complete removal of every traitorous person in the federal and state and local government, the propaganda press has to be shut down. Is that to big of a task? Maybe so I guess we will have to ride it out to the end.