Every time I try and point out some media bias against Trump I have to preface it with the fact that I'm not a Trump supporter, but doing so when advocating for press transparency is getting tiresome. I see lots of people having to add the same disclaimer when exposing the MSM obvious bias because we know that going against the main narrative is interpreted as supporting the 'other side' these days.
I also keep seeing articles on HN and elsewhere talking about how Facebook or Google or whoever can fix the spread of Fake News or misinformation. The elephant in the room is that the problem lies with people, the majority of people, who do not care about facts or accuracy. I believe for most people the constant stream of "news" on Facebook is just a modern soap opera. Why watch Eastenders when you can have a live streamed 24/7 stream of drama in front of your very eyes. Facebook cannot fix peoples disposition towards their attraction to sensationalism. I don't even think this is a recent phenomenon, it's just taken a while for people who would usually take part in this offline to transfer it online and we as the people who grew up with the early internet are only now experiencing it in our space and thinking it is something new.
Not sure that's true. It was the media that was telling people there was a sudden bombshell that was upending the campaign regarding Clinton's e-mail just a week before the election, and talking about 650,000 new pieces of e-mail that were discovered and being investigated. In reality this ended up being nothing, but it dominated headlines in the week before the election.
Here's a word cloud Gallup did about what people heard about Clinton and what people heard about Trump:
Although I mentioned Trump specifically I only use him as a recent target. The MSM's reporting over the course of the election for all candidates was embarrassing from all perspectives. I don't mean to insinuate that the MSM only reports with bias against Trump, far from it. Trump's situation is unfortunate because I both disagree with him on nearly all issues while also finding the media's reporting about him highly disagreeable, it makes objective discussion difficult with partisans.
The word cloud is interesting because it is obvious that everyone was pestered about Trump's scandals incessantly and would be very aware of them but people decided that they weren't important (relative to the issues they thought Trump was solving).
Well, first of all the idea that news media should be neutral and objective is a fairly recent, and mostly America-only, notion. The history of newspapers, for example, is full of publications which were openly and viciously partisan to a degree that offends modern American sensibilities. And even within my lifetime that's been true to a certain degree: as I was growing up, the largest nearby city supported two daily newspapers, and everyone knew and openly admitted that you either subscribed to the Republican newspaper or the Democratic newspaper, and did so based solely on your own partisan affiliation.
So if the news media is currently significantly more partisan than it had been in the previous few years, it's unclear whether that would be something new and unprecedented, or just a regression to historical mean.
Second, I don't necessarily think we're seeing a rise in overt organized partisanship by major/"mainstream" outlets, so much as a combination of several factors:
1. Many journalists now feel that they were an unwilling part of Trump's campaign, in the sense that they were played in order to give Trump free media coverage that other candidates never got, which in turn gave Trump broad nationwide exposure at a time when his campaign was struggling to get off the ground. This is not something that feels good to them, and since they were so late on recognizing the playbook (regardless of anyone's personal opinion on the ethics of that playbook) they now are -- not surprisingly -- looking for a way to cover Trump that doesn't just repeat the debacle of the campaign.
2. But an interesting corollary to this is that Trump is almost the perfect person for them to cover in the modes they'd been used to. The way he operates produces a never-ending stream of outrage, scandals and "breaking news" to breathlessly report on, and he seems to thrive on it, creating a self-reinforcing cycle. His campaign recognized very early on that outrage works as a strategy, but the problem with being a continual source of outrage is that it makes you look outrageous.
3. Trump seems to be having a lot of trouble making the transition from candidate to officeholder. Historically this is something that does cause trouble for populist "outsider" candidates when they get elected: as long as they're on the campaign trail they can drum up support for themselves and against the system they say they'll fix. But what happens when they're no longer the outsiders, when they are the system? That's where Trump is right now: he's still largely running the campaign playbook, but the campaign has been over for months. And the result is he's in trouble. When the coverage was Trump versus someone else, when it was about him unloading on opposing candidates, he could make it work in his favor, because that's just how elections work. But now that he's sole winner and serving President, it looks a lot worse: people like a bully in the campaign but not so much in the Oval Office.
4. It is absolutely true that trust in media, and in experts and intellectuals of all types, has declined precipitously in recent years, but it's also true that promoting this decline has been actively cultivated as a strategy by certain political entities, many of them on the conservative/reactionary part of the ideological spectrum. It's unsurprising, and in fact completely expected, that one of the consequences would be increased media scrutiny of those entities, even if only out of self-defense.
The BBC is certainly less biased than RT, but it is still state television - anti-Brexit, anti-Corbyn, anti-Scottish independence, pro-Syrian intervention, anti-junior doctor's strike, and currently pro-Tory (because the Tories currently run the state; it would be happy to be pro-New Labour again.)
It's pro-power even to the point of having to be pressured to out blatant pedophiles, like Saville, on whom it killed stories. It waited until after he died, and after it had beatified him in memorial coverage, to acknowledge him after another documentary was made on the systematic protection of Saville at the BBC.
It's systematically staffed with a certain class of people who share a certain set of assumptions about the world, think that sharing those assumptions is neutrality, and think that opinions outside of those assumptions, even if held by a vast majority of the public, are propaganda. You don't get objectivity by surveying Oxbridge grads; you get something similar to what we have in the mainstream of the US, without the idiosyncrasies of our particular billionaires.
Could you please elaborate on what you mean by bias against Trump? The media is very critical but I would say that 99% of it is fully deserved. What would you perceive as unbiased reporting in this context?
Edit: Downvotes instead of responses? Very classy.
You say that 99% is fully deserved because you know the person or his family personally?
How relevant it is you believing that is fully deserved? Are you really good informed?
I remember hearing about Mark Shuttleworth by acid critics in the press of that Rich bastard that spends so much money to for going to space, money that could be spent on feeding kids in Africa...
Later I met the person personally and it blew my mind how much I had been lied and manipulated by the press about the person.
The same thing happened as I got to met more and more famous people because of my job.
There is a clear bias against Trump, because the same thing is different depending of who who does it but if you can not see it you won't be able to see it, because it means you are emotionally attached to the other side, and you need to detach first.
For example, democrats believe it is great that men could sodomize other men and I agree with that, because I believe that what someone does private it no one business. But the same newspapers that believe it is so great to have sex with whoever you want become sexual puritans with the private sexual life of Trump.
The same happens with massive surveillance for example, it is so great when Obama does it, because you know, he needs it for going against bad people(under democrat definition), but it is terrible when Trump has it.
Now the same newspapers that went against Bill Binney and other whistleblowers, now do interview him and consider massive surveillance bad because it is Trump who controls it.
When Bill is asked about it, what he says is: It does not matter who has it, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Bill is objective, people are subjective by nature.
I don't need to know Trump and his family personally to be able to tell that the terror attack in Sweden that he was talking about never happened. In fact knowing him and his family would contribute nothing at all to clarifying this. Just one example out of many.
There have been things just outright made up, 'gone viral', and reported on by organs that clearly didn't conduct even the most rudimentary of fact-checking.
That's true. But in every case, someone else in the media points that out very quickly, and usually within hours the problem self-corrects.
A great example is the Oval Office MLK bust. A reporter tweeted that it seemed to be missing and it quickly went viral, but within an hour, virtually every reporter and network had realized their error and retracted it.
95% of the people who heard about it heard it not from the hour of media discussion but from the days of administration complaining about that hour afterward. If the administration really was against the spread of false information, that would seem rather counterproductive -- but it seems more like the administration is going out of its way to paint a narrative that the media lies, despite this robust self-correction in every instance.
The incentive is to publish a story first. At the speed of information spreading on the internet that means no time for fact checking any more. A story can reach peak viral before a correction or retraction is even considered. The original story has already gone viral and and may continue spreading long after a correction is made and the media are fully aware of this. It allows them to claim to update stories with facts as they appear but also allows them to publish unsubstantiated stories quickly to get views with no repercussions.
You're right that the administration are constantly making stories worse for themselves in how they react, I completely agree. But it's not a case of MSM = bad and Trump admin = good. They both have serious flaws.
When I look at my Facebook feed I don't see a flood of corrected stories and retractions unless they have an invested interest in that particular story and happen to support the side being wronged. My Trump supporting friends don't pipe up when the MSM is unfair to a liberal candidate and vice versa.
The retractions are seen and remembered by a tiny percentage of the people who incorporate the original story into their world view and continue to spread it, and given a tiny fraction of the coverage (in time and space) of the original story. If not for the administration constantly talking about it since, it would still be perceived as true.
If not for the administration constantly talking about it since, most people wouldn't even know there was ever a discussion about it. Which is why the administration keeps talking about it.
That may be true but it doesn't justify blanket statements about the media being generally biased specifically against Trump. First, untrue things have also been reported about other candidates. Second, the majority of things reported about Trump seem to be correct.
The majority of things reported about Trump are based on a single sentence he tweeted a year ago, the opinion of a random expert, or anonymous leaks, all surrounded by 5000 words of editorial.
The current question being struggled over by the news media is about whether he is mentally ill, as you can tell by going to http://news.google.com and searching for "mentally ill" (not "Trump mentally ill" just "mentally ill.")
They've determined that he's not, although they've found half a dozen psychiatrists and experts who either say that he is, or that they can't say whether he is or isn't due to professional standards, or say that he suffers from a personality disorder, and that the Trump debate should move on to whether personality disorders are actually mental illness, or another class of disturbance. Nevertheless, it might be a positive step to install a psychiatrist to continually evaluate the president in order to remove from power if he shows signs of the illness of narcissism.
So what they're reporting is probably true; Donald Trump is probably not mentally ill, and it's probably not appropriate for psychiatrists to say that he is. Why they needed 50 billion articles about it in the last 5 days? Probably just being thorough about it.
Is it Time to Call Trump Mentally Ill?
(Answer: No. But stay tuned for the follow-up, Is It Time To Call Trump a Pedophile Who Beats His Wife?)
When Trump announces that journalism will be licensed, and selects Bannon as the head of the new Department of Truth, housed in the old EPA offices, the public will see is as a shame, but necessary.
>When Trump announces that journalism will be licensed, and selects Bannon as the head of the new Department of Truth, housed in the old EPA offices, the public will see is as a shame, but necessary.
A related comment is that the "press" borrows heavily from formula fiction which the ancient Greeks discovered was a sure-fire way to get and keep the attention of an audience.
But, formula fiction, novels, short stories, plays, poems, operas, ballets, the press, etc. rarely include a disclaimer that the content is not necessarily factually true.
Maybe now with the Internet with many more sources and the ability easily to look up details that have some credibility, for serious decision making people will raise their standards, ask for solid, well supported, information, keep fiction, fantasy, etc. as light entertainment or maybe some conjectures about reality, and otherwise set fiction aside in favor of solid information.
E.g., fantasy about computing, robots, etc. is not taken at all seriously here at HN but was taken seriously by much of the US population in the famous radio broadcast of the H. G. Wells story, IIRC War of the Worlds, about an invasion of robots from Mars. Net, now, with the Internet, we have much more information.
E.g., for me, since I have no dead fish heads to wrap, my kitty cat has plenty of cat litter, and I don't get the NYT or WaPo printed on paper, I have no use for the mainstream media (MSM) and flatly just ignore it.
I can still enjoy fantasy, indeed, last night on YouTube watched the Kirov performance of The Nutcracker, also at YouTube recently watched several performances of "Wotan's Farewell" (it did well communicating the emotions I felt when I was 15 and had a misunderstanding with my girlfriend of 13 I was genuinely in love with), etc.
But, for facts, etc. about politics, I can get directly from Trump, Paul Ryan, Chuck Schumer, etc. exactly what they said in full, word for word, and form my own opinions. I can keep copies and links and often do.
So, nearly always, to heck with what the clearly unreliable MSM says about what the politicians said. Or, the MSM has just had a big collision with the Internet and better sources of facts and the truth. Good. Progress. Hopefully the Internet is letting us move ahead of what Jefferson saw 200+ years ago.
The 200+ year old rot and nonsense of the MSM would not be the first or last weeds killed off in the struggling garden of civilization.
> It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood.
Basically the metaphor is that the MSM has given up on truth and now is willing to report anything for ratings i.e. Money, hence prostituting itself to whatever sells even falsehood.
>> the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors.
You mention the WSJ as one of your preferred sources which is funny because they are currently responsible for a large number of young Democrats and Independents buying into Trumps "everything is fake news" bullshit thanks to their very much fake news hit piece they put out on a famous YouTuber (pewdiepie).
Hit piece? PewDiePie was effectively normalizing Nazi propaganda, for whatever reason. He should stop whining and admit that he has only himsrlf to blame. PewDiePie might not be racist, but he certainly is a spoiled brat who has no idea that actions can have consequences.
No, I'm claiming it is misreported out of context and that your question is irrelevant as to what the news claims.
The claim reported was that he is an anti-semite -- based on the posting of that picture, which he did in jest, to show how easy it is to exploit a service like Fiverr to make people do horrible things. It was openly intended to be an example of a horrible thing.
So, yeah, this is the worse kind of fake news reporting, and people mostly buy it because they dislike pewdipie (or however it's written) or envy his success. And some for the cheap click-bait value of "unmasking" a popular youtuber as anti-semite, e.g.: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/15/youtub... (while they just unmask themselves as click-hungry hypocrites).
You're lying about the content of the WSJ article. I checked the text of it. It does not say that PewDiePie is anti-semitic, and it mentions that he was joking:
"Since August, PewDiePie has posted nine videos that include anti-Semitic jokes or Nazi imagery, according to a review of his channel by The Wall Street Journal."
To say that the videos contained anti-semitic jokes and Nazi imagery is 100% accurate commentary.
Did you or did you not make a post on the internet saying "death to all jews"? The answer to that question is yes. Do you agree with me that context clearly matters?
The context is some moron who thinks it's ok to makes jokes about the Holocaust.
Sure, you can joke about anything, but that comes with attendant risks. Make jokes about the Holocaust if you want to, but unless those jokes are pretty damn amazing, don't expect to be very popular afterwards.
> The context is some moron who thinks it's ok to makes jokes about the Holocaust.
Which it is, thankfully. I'd argue that misrepresenting the situation and painting an image of said moron as an 'anti-semite' and a racist is actually far worse than making a joke about the holocaust.
> Sure, you can joke about anything, but that comes with attendant risks. Make jokes about the Holocaust if you want to, but unless those jokes are pretty damn amazing, don't expect to be very popular afterwards.
Based on his apology video I get the impression that he's aware of that, and perhaps even understanding of Disney's decision to ditch him. What he takes issue with is how the media handled the situation, and I strongly agree with him.
Boo hoo hoo, why are people so upset by by my edgy taboo-breaking jokes?
The answer is in the question, don't you think?
I'm not sure I really buy his explanation for this anyway. Sure, the various bits of Nazi propaganda that he puts in his videos are framed as being part of jokes, but why choose to put Nazi propaganda in your videos on several different occasions? He at least seems to have some kind of unhealthy obsession with it.
Maybe it's different where you're from, but here in Holland my experience is that typical 'edgy' behavior is pretty much exactly the same as what he did. Growing up, even as far back as primary school, we would do the Hitler salute, quote the man, or make jokes about jews or gas chambers. Other popular edgy topics include loud homophobia, and ironically anal fixation. It was mostly the guys who did this, but it was rampant nonetheless (and IMO not indicative of deep-seated isms).
As an 'adult', I've become less offensive/edgy in part because I just don't care anymore, and in part because I think these kinds of jokes are not worth the potential emotional distress they can cause, nor the fact that they might normalize 'real' racism.
Even so, among my inner circle WW2-themed jokes are still popular, including overt endorsement of the Nazis and gas chamber jokes. As far as I can tell none of us are anti-semites or fascists.
In my experience Sweden is very similar to Holland in our attitudes to WW2 and our sense of humor about it. And if you consider that PewDiePie's audience is significantly younger than he is, it doesn't strike me as suspicious that he'd make repeated edgy pro-nazi jokes, just like pretty much all young men and man-children that I know.
>Growing up, even as far back as primary school, we would do the Hitler salute, quote the man, or make jokes about jews or gas chambers.
If that kind of disgusting behavior has been normalized then it really does need to be called out. Dutch and Swedish culture aren't beyond criticism.
>Other popular edgy topics include loud homophobia, and ironically anal fixation. It was mostly the guys who did this, but it was rampant nonetheless (and IMO not indicative of deep-seated isms).
As a gay person I can tell you that it's not very comforting to know that loudly homophobic people don't consider themselves to be homophobes. You might want to consider the effects of your actions on other people from time to time.
> including overt endorsement of the Nazis and gas chamber jokes. As far as I can tell none of us are anti-semites or fascists.
So your Jewish friends are all laughing along with you at the gas chamber jokes?
edit: I was foolish enough to take the word of you and other posters regarding the wording of the initial WSJ article. In fact, the article does not say that PewDiePie is anti-semitic, and it mentions that he was "joking". So I really have no idea what you guys are complaining about.
Edit: I'll leave the comment for what it is, but after thinking on it a bit I feel that this is not something worth arguing over. While I do think there should be more nuance in these things, the fact of the matter is that PewDiePie acted racist and I do disagree with that. And he doesn't need (or perhaps deserve) random internet people to defend him against other random internet people. I guess I'm just in 'hating the media' mode but that's another discussion best not conflated with an issue such as this one. So my apologies for raising a stink.
> Growing up, as far back as primary school, we would do the Hitler salute, quote the man, or make jokes about jews or gas chambers.
>> If that kind of disgusting behavior has been normalized then it really does need to be called out. Dutch and Swedish culture aren't beyond criticism.
I don't disagree with that at all. I find that the Dutch in particular often seem to value breaking taboos and as a result can be needlessly insulting or hurtful. I'm not a fan.
> Other popular edgy topics include loud homophobia, and ironically anal fixation. It was mostly the guys who did this, but it was rampant nonetheless (and IMO not indicative of deep-seated isms).
>> As a gay person I can tell you that it's not very comforting to know that loudly homophobic people don't consider themselves to be homophobes. You might want to consider the effects of your actions on other people from time to time.
Did you read the part where I changed my ways as I realized the effects such jokes could have? I can't help but feel that you've simply decided that you disagree with me and are now not even bothering to actually read my comments. Or otherwise maybe I've not expressed myself well, in which case I (honestly) apologize.
> including overt endorsement of the Nazis and gas chamber jokes. As far as I can tell none of us are anti-semites or fascists.
>> So your Jewish friends are all laughing along with you at the gas chamber jokes?
Yes, and quite often they're the ones who started it. Furthermore, my (fellow) gay friends make more and harsher 'gay jokes' than my straight friends. But all in the right context.
And again, I'm describing the state of things, not promoting this kind of behavior.
>> edit: I was foolish enough to take the word of you and other posters regarding the wording of the initial WSJ article. In fact, the article does not say that PewDiePie is anti-semitic, and it mentions that he was "joking". So I really have no idea what you guys are complaining about.
I can't speak for other posters, but I was 'complaining' about this:
>> I'm not sure I really buy his explanation for this anyway. Sure, the various bits of Nazi propaganda that he puts in his videos are framed as being part of jokes, but why choose to put Nazi propaganda in your videos on several different occasions? He at least seems to have some kind of unhealthy obsession with it.
You argue that his behavior is not 'normal' (as in, the norm), and then proceed to question the truth of his statement, basically insinuating that he's actually a racist.
I merely wanted to point out that, 1) in my experience as a middle class white guy from Holland, this behavior is rampant and in fact quite 'normal' (as in 'the norm'), and 2) he panders to exactly the age group who is insensitive for its own sake (and dumb enough not to consider any consequences) and responds positively to these immature jokes.
I guess I was just bothered by the fact that people are judging his person instead of his behavior, when in context there's no need to jump to such conclusions, and when in a broader context such polarization doesn't seem the least bit productive to me.
(So just to be clear: my preferred world is one where not a single person is hurt in any way by another person's 'joke', and I'm doing my best to at least make that a reality in my own life.)
>I can't speak for other posters, but I was 'complaining' about this:
No, you started complaining that the WSJ accused PewDiePie of being anti-semitic before I made that comment.
>Yes, and quite often they're the ones who started it. Furthermore, my (fellow) gay friends make more and harsher 'gay jokes' than my straight friends. But all in the right context.
There isn't really a right context for straight people to make homophobic jokes.
It sounds like things are pretty fucked up in Holland, if your account is to believed. Thankfully they aren't quite as fucked up in the part of the world that WSJ journalists are familiar with, which maybe explains the disconnect between your reaction and theirs. I'm British (but have spent ~5 years living in the US), and can say that it's not normal for middle class white guys to make Holocaust jokes or homophobic jokes here either.
>So just to be clear: my preferred world is one where not a single person is hurt in any way by another person's 'joke', and I'm doing my best to at least make that a reality in my own life
So have you stopped making homophobic and anti-semitic jokes and stopped defending other people who do? Your comment is a bit ambiguous on this point.
> Edit: I'll leave the comment for what it is, but after thinking on it a bit I feel that this is not something worth arguing over. While I do think there should be more nuance in these things, the fact of the matter is that PewDiePie acted racist and I do disagree with that. And he doesn't need (or perhaps deserve) random internet people to defend him against other random internet people. I guess I'm just in 'hating the media' mode but that's another discussion best not conflated with an issue such as this one. So my apologies for raising a stink.
It might not seem like something worth arguing over to you as a straight white man, but Jewish people and gay people don't have the same luxury of being able to ignore these issues.
"Not worth arguing over" was in reference to my misguided attempt to distinguish between 'having racist beliefs' and 'acting racist to be edgy'. I feel I went down the wrong path arguing over that. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that.
So, to be clear: I absolutely agree that these issues are worth arguing over, and that we shouldn't ignore them, and it was good that you challenged me on that.
I use them for business and financial news, not for political positions. And I care not one whit what happens to some random Internet personality considering the tendency of Internet gamer crowds to mire their lives in pointless orgies of perceived persecution.
Besides, I judge these things on how successful they make me. If somehow false pewdiepie persecution affected me, maybe you could make me care.
> He's once again raising important questions that were ignored before.
Which questions? Criticizing the news media has been a national (and international) sport continuously for a very long time, at least 200 years it seems.
Also, his approach to the issue has long been used by fascists and authoritarians.
> Also, his approach to the issue has long
been used by fascists and authoritarians.
Quite generally that argument is not very
solid: For a simple but extreme
refutation, no doubt "fascists and
authoritarians" breathe air, drink water,
walk, talk, write, read, etc. also.
If Trump is being, or trying to be, a
fascist or an authoritarian, then,
sure, we should know that.
I very much liked the OP: I've long
thought of all the criticisms in the OP,
more or less independently, and am glad to
see that the "press" and/or media are
much the same as in Jefferson's time
because that is some evidence that what I
long thought has been correct -- e.g., I'm
not the only one saying that the press
pumps out too much sewage.
I had seen that negative attitudes toward
the press were clear in a 1930's Andy
Hardy movie; IIRC Mark Twain had some such
comments; but the Jefferson quote suggests
that the objectionable aspects of the
press I, etc. have seen go way back at
least to Jefferson: From this we suspect
that the press has their techniques and
that these have not changed in 200+ years
and, thus, might be solidly based on
something or other. Again, I like the
evidence that I'm not alone in negative
attitudes toward too much of the press.
Another description of the press was from
a college English professor my older
brother had: That professor claimed that
the press used the techniques of formula
fiction -- a case can be made for that.
From the Trump rally in Florida yesterday,
I see a coincidence (different things the
same in time and, thus, possibly with a
common cause): (1) The First Lady of the
US made what might be regarded as her
first appearance as First Lady. (2) The
First Lady recently won a libel law suit
brought against a person associated with
the press who had made vile comments about
her. (3) Trump mentioned the Jefferson
statement as if it was a way to tell the
First Lady that vile press behavior was
not unique to her or the Trump
Administration but went back at least to
Jefferson. (4) The First Lady started her
speech with the Lord's Prayer as it she
had found that helpful in her reaction to
the vile libel.
I have to guess that nearly all US
citizens would be outraged at the vile
libel against the First Lady and pleased
if Jefferson's statement, the Lord's
Prayer, her husband's affectionate
support, etc. helped her -- I was.
On "fascists and authoritarians", during
the campaign Trump was attacked with,
apparently, about all the possibly
somewhat damaging vile accusations that
could be uttered. We all heard a lot of
the accusations that were common --
sexist, racist, misogynist, xenophobic,
Islamophobic, fascist, bully,
authoritarian and more. When I heard
those, I looked right away, immediately
following the accusations, for the
supporting evidence or at least references
to such evidence. I never saw solid
versions of any such evidence.
1. "A nativist, sexist, arguably fascist
and racist demagogue who twists the truth
is the front-runner in the race to become
the Republican Party's presidential
nominee..." — Liberal columnist Charles
Blow, March 3.
that is, such an accusation but
(apparently) without solid evidence.
In contrast, eventually I did see
Jeffrey Lord, "When Trump Fought the
Racists", The American Spectator,
November 13, 2015, 9:00 am, at
where apparently Trump worked hard,
including with a law suit, to stop the
near universal racism of clubs in Palm
Beach.
Many people in the US, no doubt nearly
everyone at HN, is really good at
considering solid evidence. We commonly
see high respect for such evidence in
physical science, medical science,
computer science, engineering, law, a lot
in finance, etc.
E.g., we know from freshman physics that F
= ma, from basic electricity and magnetism
that I = E/R, from computer science that
heap sort runs, for positive integer n and
n records to be sorted, in both worst case
and expected time O( n ln(n) ), from
mathematics that, given a positive integer
n, the set of real numbers R, a subset C
of R^n closed in the usual topology of
R^n, there exists a function f: R^n --> R
so that f is 0 on C, positive otherwise,
and infinitely differentiable (we have a
solid proof, and there is no sense in
saying otherwise).
Well, we should attempt also to have solid
evidence in evaluating our candidate and
actual political leaders.
No doubt nearly all of us have seen the
disasters of fascists, e.g., Hitler, and
authoritarians, e.g., Stalin, Mao, and Pol
Pot, and want no such disasters here in the
US.
Well, we can guess that the US Founding
Fathers also saw the dangers of
authoritarians and designed the US
Constitution to protect the US from such.
Recently for Trump, he wrote an executive
order (EO) temporarily blocking
immigration from seven countries
identified by the Obama Administration as
so deep into civil war and/or chaos that
vetting people from those countries was
impossible. Soon a US judge issued a
temporary restraining order (TRO) on the
Trump EO.
Apparently the Trump EO was based at least
in part on section (f) of "8 U.S. Code §
1182 - Inadmissible aliens" as at
> (f) Suspension of entry or imposition of
restrictions by President
> Whenever the President finds that the
entry of any aliens or of any class of
aliens into the United States would be
detrimental to the interests of the United
States, he may by proclamation, and for
such period as he shall deem necessary,
suspend the entry of all aliens or any
class of aliens as immigrants or
nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of
aliens any restrictions he may deem to be
appropriate ....
Okay, so, here, at least first cut, it
appears that the Trump EO was legal.
Still, a judge issued a TRO. Then the
appeals court of the US 9th Circuit upheld
the TRO.
So, what did Trump do? He argued against
the courts but did obey the courts. An
authoritarian might have asked "How many
tanks and airplanes does the court
command?", told the court "try to make
me", sent troops to lock up the judges, or
some such.
So, net, Trump did respect the judicial
branch.
So, on this issue, it appears that Trump
did not act like an authoritarian.
More generally, I'm short on solid
evidence that Trump is a fascist or
authoritarian or is racist, sexist,
misogynist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, a
bully, etc.
Instead, it appears that during the
campaign and since, some Trump opponents
and some in the press, much as in the
Jefferson statement, just tossed out
whatever vile accusations they could think
of and omitted any solid evidence.
How could many people come to believe vile
accusations or just lies without solid
evidence?
With some irony, as maybe we could see
from some fascists such as Paul Joseph
Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda of
Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, if a lie
is repeated often enough from enough
sources, then, even without solid
evidence, the lie will be widely believed.
Also we can expect from some aspects of
human psychology, e.g., E. Fromm, The Art
of Loving, people tend to be insecure, in
response seek membership in groups, and,
then, adopt the norms and beliefs of the
groups they join. Here they can come to
believe or at least repeat lies simply
from belonging to a group that wants to
repeat the lies and without solid
evidence.
The story is true, Trump used race and creed as wedge issues when he was working to open Mar-a-Lago as a social club (it had been a private estate). The part where I believe Jeffrey Lord is a sycophant is the part where he presents it as Trump nobly fighting for integration in Palm Beach, rather than Trump using accusations of racism to smear the town council and make it difficult for them to act to restrict his plans.
Just to be clear, I don't think Donald Trump is malignantly racist, I think he's more or less nihilistic when it comes to people that aren't him. I believe that if he thought it would have been more profitable/easier to open a segregated club, he would have done that.
Trump "used" the Jews for some business or political purpose?
So, the implication is that Trump doesn't really care about the Jews?
But, in this case we are awash in other evidence: Trump was made Grand Marshall of the Israeli day parade or some such. We note Ivanka's conversion and marriage to Jared. We just saw the astoundingly strong statement by Bibi.
So, the game seems to be, if can't come up with such overwhelming evidence, and even when can, Trump is from the opposition anti-semitic. No evidence; just make the accusation; ignore that the burden of proof is on the accuser; when there is lots of evidence that the person is really a strong supporter of Israel, just ignore that evidence and repeat the accusation.
I call BS.
I'm still looking for solid evidence to support the accusations. Rivers of accusations from the Hillary campaign and the MSM, and so far not a single drop of meaningful evidence.
Right, Trump is xenophobic, that is, doesn't like foreigners. He married two of them, his mother was one of them, he's hired thousands of them, and just because he wants to enforce long standing US immigration laws, policies, and practices, passed to protect US workers, we're supposed to believe he doesn't like foreigners? The US immigration laws are clearly examples of important labor laws; a lot of labor laws are really important; we should enforce the important labor laws, and that is reason enough for what Trump is doing on immigration.
As a special case of the Jefferson piece, we've been getting rivers of BS propaganda: They just keep saying stuff, just nasty stuff, just keep saying it, give no meaningful evidence, and just let the nasty stuff just sit there while repeat it. BS.
So, net, in Palm Beach, Trump did fight racism hard and successfully.
So, tough to claim that he is racist.
His motives are more difficult to document.
But the burden of proof that Trump is racist is on the accuser -- tough to prove that he never had a racist comment in a private conversation some place. Instead, the key issue is proof that he did something racist and, then, proof that he has done such things often enough to have a pattern that lets us conclude he is racist.
I grew up in Memphis. Memphis was and still is awash in some strong and bitter racism against the Blacks. My parents were both from the North and wanted nothing to do with that racism; neither did I; and I got the heck out of the Deep South ASAP; my ancestors are from England and Germany, but, still, I did NOT like the strong racism of Memphis.
Thus, from Memphis, I've seen a lot of racism. To me, I see no evidence that Trump is racist. To me, all the billions of Hillary campaign and MSM claims that Trump is racist are missing one simple item: Some solid evidence.
I can't read the whole comment; it's too long. But there are many well-documented examples of racist (or more precisely, prejudicial) and authoritarian behavior by Trump. It would be wrong for the news media to omit it. Your personal judgment on the legality of his executive order isn't worth much.
One of the most common tactics of propagandists is to raise endless questions and imply that unless they are answered, no judgment can be made. I could say Neptune is the 8th planet from the Sun, and the propagandist would say, 'prove it' - which of course I don't have time or resources to do.
Another tactic is to suggest that all allegations and claims are equal; it's the perspective of a liar: 'You say something and I say something; it's all the same in regard to truth.' But to say all statements have the same value - that's the opposite of truth.
There's no game, and your Neptune example does not apply.
Instead, you are making an accusation of racism; I claim, rightly, that for such an accusation solid evidence is needed and you, the person making the accusation, should provide it; and then you are refusing to provide such evidence and, now, claiming that providing such evidence would be a silly "game".
Grade school students know English and reasoning much better than that.
Exactly. There is nothing original or insightful to Trump's rhetoric.
It's just a sensational, aggressive, unhinged version of the "attack the liberal media" strategy that Rupert Murdoch successfully deployed in Australia, UK and the US.
Trump attacks the press (and people) that question him, and praises the press (or people) that supports him. That's it. He doesn't care about the truth. Just that people say good things about him.
He is by no means a moral voice in this cause, he's a part of the problem: he lies consistently, and when he's taken to task, he just screams 'liar' or bullies people - instead of explaining, justifying.
Yes - the press is definitely biased, but most of what the MSM publishes is essentially true.
But it's a problem because the press is now playing the role of 'political opposition' - because there doesn't seem to be anyone else doing it. This is not fair, because instead of playing 'against Trump' they should be being more objective. But they really hate Trump, and can't but help themselves play hardball back against him (and I don't mean 'doing more of a better job, I mean cheating a bit with the bias). And the press is definitely hurting their credibility in that way.
The paradox is, that it is very easy to read any of the MSM headlines and easily find anti-Trump bias - which lends credence to Trump supporters acceptance of his 'anti press' rants.
Example: Trump's orders on immigration were pretty hardcore. Possibly illegal. Instead of explaining it, and highlighting concerns - the press mostly lambasted it, and created a sense of 'national fury'. Buried away were the polls that showed more Americans supported the action, than were against it.
This demonstrates the paradox because although the press were 'truthful' in their response to Trump's policy - they were also somewhat biased, which is a form of misrepresentation - and were also creating the idea that 'America was outraged' when really it wasn't so clear. The press was not allowing for nuance ... they were playing the role of 'vocal opposition'. Which isn't quite their job.
But more to the point of the article: 'the press' was never considered truthful at all, not up until the modern era and Television, when at least the notion of 'truth' and 'impartiality' was supposed to be observed.
In the 19th century, Newspapers existed as businesses only, and to push the propaganda and flame-wars of their owners. Obviously this exists today, but not quite as much. It's between the lines, and in the bias.
The EO is a good example of how your request could be very hard to satisfy.
I challenge that the media didn't cover what was wrong with it. They did! They explained the legal issues, expanded on the natsec consequences (we all know about the Iraqi interpreters now).
And I saw polls in the NYT about this. Asking multiple questions as well, notably showing that a solid majority did not support touching permanent residents (which was the crux of the legal argument)
Let's say Trump decided to nuke the ocean. How does the media cover that objectively?
If you just say "Trump is going to nuke the ocean" without stating more facts, that's bias by omission. Like when they would report on Trump's voter fraud claim without stating that there's zero evidence.
But if you state the facts, then that looks like bias! Some things are"objectively" bad ideas!
But if you say "Trump is doing something stupid with no logical basis" then that looks like bias.
If you have only bad decisions come out of the WH, then it's the press's responsibility to point that out.
>> "I challenge that the media didn't cover what was wrong with it. They did!"
Of course they explained 'what's wrong' - but they did not explain the motivation for it, and what is 'right' about it.
Here is how CNN 'misrepresented' the EO:
CNN's Fareed Zakara started out by saying that the 7 countries chosen 'made no sense at all' and were 'chosen arbitrarily'. Fareed is a very smart man, and knows fully why those countries were chosen.
When I first heard the list - I knew exactly the reason for it: those were countries in which there was 'open lawlessness' - and areas wherein terrorists can operate out in the open. There is no governance in those regions: Libya has no government. Sudan/Somalia - outside of the city = no government. Northern Yemen is no-man's land. As is most of Syria, and most of Western Iraq. Iran is the only country on the list that is not basically an 'open war zone' - however, there are rational reasons for concern there as well.
More specifically - those countries cannot (or will not, in the case of Iran) provide US Border and Customs with any information about those entering. Who does US Customs contact when they want to know about a 'Libyan' coming to the US? What is a 'Libyan' if there is no state of Libya?
It's a very 'operationally obvious thing'. US Customs wants 'info' on people coming in - those places = no info, ergo, 90 day ban until the issue can be looked at.
Now - I don't agree with the EO - but there are very rational reasons underlying those specific countries.
Fareed definitely knows this - but instead, Fareed went on about conspiratorial issues such as 'The 9/11 perpetrators were from Saudi Arabia'. Fareed also failed to mention that the state of Saudia Arabia is one of the closest anti-terrorism allies that the US has, and works very extensively with the US on terrorism. The Saudis closely monitor their people - and they will definitely work with the US to stop 'terrorists' from trying to enter the US.
Fareed knows this, but did not bring it up - because he was acting as an 'advocate' of 'one side' - not really as a good journalist should.
So - 'the list' of countries has definitely rational underpinning - agree with it or not.
CNN played the role of 'opposition'. They said what I would expect to hear from democrats - a 'truthy' but nevertheless, very one-sided position on the story.
>> "And I saw polls in the NYT about this."
That 'some of the polls' showed 'not full support' for 'sub-items' of the EO - does not invalidate the fact that most Americans actually support the EO overall - a fact which was not highlighted at all by the press. Again - the press created a sense that 'America was outraged'. This was not true. The press was 'leading the story' and 'creating it' - as opposed to being objective.
Do you remember the 'Tea Party' movement's early days? That was very much 'led by' Fox News. Without Fox 'fanning the flames' and leading swaths of Americans to believe in the legitimacy of the movement - it likely would not have been so big.
>> "But if you state the facts, then that looks like bias!"
CNN and others (ie Fox etc.) consistently and deliberately do not simply 'state the facts'.
Example: again on the EO - CNN's headline was "We don't want them here" (in quotes) and the sub-text "Trump bans Muslim".
But here is the 'editorial lie': Trump did not say "We don't want (Muslims) here". CNN took part of a quote from Trump saying: "There are many terrorists in those parts of the world, and we don't want them here".
Trump was definitely implying: "We don't want terrorist here" in that context.
But CNN chose to merge a headline together from a a partial quote + headline - as if to say "We don't want Muslims here".
This was incredibly poor judgement by CNN - and hugely biased.
Now - you could argue that Trump's motivation was to 'ban Muslims'. According to Rudi Guliani, Trump approached him in order to 'find a legal way to ban Muslims'. But it does not matter - CNN cheated, in order to try to counteract Trump's 'cheating' (i.e. by creating a specific country ban that was not exactly a 'Muslim ban').
What CNN should have done was not misquoted Trump.
What they should have done was pushed hard on the fact that Trump, in the past, may have been 'seeking a legal way to ban Muslims'.
Unfortunately - 'doing the right thing' in terms of professional journalism doesn't necessarily make good headlines.
>> "If you have only bad decisions come out of the WH"
I'm sorry, but 'bad decisions' is biased, and not objective. Something is not 'bad' because you, or even 60% of Americans 'don't agree' with them.
Listen - I do not like Trump, and I trust the press more than I do Trump. And I understand why the press is doing what they are doing - but that doesn't make them pristine and professional. They are fairly biased.
Trump makes such crazy statements so often, you'd think it would be easier for the press to just stand back and let him fall on his own words.
Trump made a claim yesterday that "He won by the largest margin of victory since Regan". Which is a lie. They should just run with that obvious lie, and not try to do anything with it.
As if the motivation for the immigration order was anything other than a political stunt.
There were already reasonable procedures checking out people from the 7 countries. Universally choosing to deny entry to Visa holders that were in the air and trying to deny entry to Green Card holders was all about making a big news story. It wasn't about improving the vetting procedures, which could have been done without being capriciously disruptive.
The claim is that the bad people would hurry up and come in if they knew a ban was coming, but that simply isn't how US immigration works, people can't just hurry up and obtain a Visa (and thus won't even be able to get on a plane).
I fully understand that - and that's a good point.
However, it's not necessarily the logic on which the case should hinge.
Tunisia is the #1 source 'per capita' of ISIS/AlQueda memebers - but they won't be on any list. Why? Because their government works actively against terrorism, and really does help the US. When a Tunisian wants to enter the US, US customs can say "hey, is this a bad guy" and Tunisia will respond with something reasonably credible. Ditto for Saudi.
Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Iraq (because of W. Iraq), can't do that today. Iran won't.
Moreover - the issue is not 'whether we should ban people from there or not' - the issue is 'how the press chose to present the facts'.
Fareed made a good case for why the ban is bad. (Which I agree with by the way!) But he didn't offer objective analysis. He was 'advocating'.
> When a Tunisian wants to enter the US, US customs can say "hey, is this a bad guy" and Tunisia will respond with something reasonably credible.
Is that actually the case? The attacker in the Breitscheidplatz truck attack in Berlin was Tunisian, and the German authorities made a pointed comment that the Tunisian government only issued the passport for his deportation the day after the attack. I wish I could find an exact citation for this (I saw it on live TV, presumably Deutsche Welle), in the meantime the closest I can find is this:
"Amri was an asylum-seeker whose application had been rejected by the authorities. He was granted a residence status in Germany referred to as "tolerated," meaning his deportation order had been temporarily suspended. This happened after an initial attempt to deport the man failed."
"Is that actually the case? The attacker in the Breitscheidplatz truck attack in Berlin was Tunisian"
First - there are 1 million migrants in Germany for which the government made no checks whatsoever.
Second - nobody is going to argue that a governments assessment is going to be entirely valid.
But it's helpful.
The notion of 'not allowing people in unless there is a background check' is very rational from a policy perspective.
Anyhow - it's besides the point regarding the press: that the countries listed were those for whom there can be no background checks is most of the rationale. The press largely failed to report this. Specifically in Fareeds presentation of the facts. Ergo - not doing his job.
The press, more than ever, needs to hold themselves to the most objective standards they can.
I agree about that, and I'm somewhat sorry I brought the point up as it was unrelated to the original link. Not sure why you were downvoted, but thank you for steering my comment back on topic.
Iraq just today sent their troops in the biggest offensive against ISIS in Mosul. Somalia and Sudan have been working extensively with the US on anti-terrorism efforts in their countries. Iran is backing 100K+ Sunnis who are fighting the largely Shiite ISIS.
And of course in Somalia and Yemen you are dealing with Al-Shabab who are unaffiliated with ISIS. Just like you have groups in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand who have their own Al-Qaeda offshoots.
What the US has stupidly done has been to tarnish those countries as state sponsors of terror when they have been working so hard to eliminate terorrism and really needed US and International support.
And no country right now including allies can adequately identify terrorists. Many terrorist acts have been committed by individuals without direct ties to ISIS or Al Qaeda i.e. rougue sympthasizers.
'No country right now including allies can adequately identify terrorists'. Correct and gets to the heart of the problem. In other words, people's intentions cannot be judged by the stance their government takes. In the absence of adequate identification, minimizing the chances of someone being maimed or killed is, for me at least, more important than the 'tarnishing' or not of a country. The question then comes down to estimates of the likelihood of this happening with incomers from country X bearing in mind that it's what is likely to happen in the future rather than in the past that counts. I have no data to hand on this so cannot comment. Maybe the estimate is very low in which case the anti-ban people are right. Otherwise?
>I'm sorry, but 'bad decisions' is biased, and not objective.
This is very much a "my feelings are more important than your facts" argument.
There are many decisions that are "objectively" bad for the country. Nuking the ocean would be a bad decision. Yelling at the Australian PM seemingly unprovoked is a bad decision. Trying to run the government by yourself instead of at least asking for input from people who are out in the field actually doing things is a bad decision.
The EO is the perfect example of this. The core idea (limiting immigration from these 7 countries) could have been executed upon! If they could have controlled their fascist spasms for a week, they could have gotten lawyers to write up a bulletproof EO. Lots of people would be pissed, but the administration would have gotten what they want.
Instead, they just sent out the first draft from Bannon's cocktail napkin as-is, and it took less than 24 hours for it to get shut down by the courts. That's not some crazy strategizing, they're just bad at their jobs.
Little OT but this comment proves to me that HN is the only (if unlikely) place I can read a balanced and calm discussion on somewhat incendiary subjects. It seems to me that every political discussion lately turns into a shitshow instantly.
Anyhow, does anyone know some outlet similar to HN discussion-quality-wise? I don't mean political discussions exclusively.
> the press is now playing the role of 'political opposition'
I strongly disagree. Their job is discover and publish information important to the public and 'speak truth to power'. Trump doesn't like that role, of course, and his administration's high level of corruption, illegality, and incompetence so far has resulted in a lot for the news media to cover.
He can allege that he's unfairly persecuted - people can make empty allegations about anything - but so does every public figure, from every president to business figures to celebrities. The press was just as aggressive with Hillary Clinton (remember the email server scandal, Benghazi, and the continuous reports on the leaked DNC emails; she wouldn't give press conferences in order to avoid the journalists), Obama, Bush, etc.
First, Greenwald:
>1) Trump presidency is dangerous. 2) CIA/DeepState abuse of spy powers to subvert elected >Govt is dangerous. One can cogently believe both.
Second, the media is not to be trusted. Truman, JFK, Bernie Sanders, Eisenhower, Ron Paul, all warned of the CIA, and all said it should be basically destroyed or returned to its original mission. The CIA meddling in media and pushing agendas through our newspapers, cable news, and respectable media outlets has been long established. It is no conspiracy theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
>Yes - the press is definitely biased, but most of what the MSM publishes is essentially true.
Most people I've encountered, when informed of Hillary's connections to Saudi Arabia, simply do not believe me.
This problem can be summarized by Douglas Adams:
>"The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
Full quote:
“[Ford said] ".. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur. "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going in for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in.”
If the era of lizards is allowed to continue, tyranny is closer around the corner than most people would believe, and almost everyone loses.
Finally, we're very lucky for Glenn Greenwald and people like him. Without people like him the world would be a much darker place.
What you are saying is erroneous. It is not in agreement with the facts.
You can not ignore that the Washington Post specifically said, as the headline:
>Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say
They published this in their news section. Not their op-eds.
ProOrNot was the source this article used to substantiate the central premise of this article that subversive, clandestine Russian Propaganda was spreading into the US.
They've since tried to walk away from this claim without admitting to the journalistic garbage that it is.
First of all, Wikileaks has obvious bias against the DNC/Clinton/establishment politics, most of which are personally motivated by grievances of Assange, which are based on perceived injustices he has suffered allegedly coming from them.
I will however defend Greenwald on alleged bias. Greenwald is a Jewish-born gay man who justly and earnestly defended a White Nationalist on principle alone. I can't think of another journalist who more purely fights for constitutionally-granted civil rights. Can you?
Now, about your inaccurate news argument. I believe you ignored the examples I already listed; however, graciously allowing that to be set aside: you said that you'd find most information accurate information at CNN. In fact, I believe one could dutifully read the information at CNN and it would be mostly accurate; yet the reader's perceptions would still be further from reality than one who read a lot of misinformation from mainstream representations of alt media like reddit.com/r/conspiracy.
For example, Google searching site:cnn.com Tulsi Gabbard returns mostly articles with headlines with negative connotations about her 'facing criticism for meeting with Assad.' How many US citizens know most of our funding towards the Syrian proxy war with Russia is to ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria?
"If you don't read the news, you're uninformed. If you read the news, you're misinformed." -Mark Twain
Reality - "90 day travel suspension from 7 countries"
As someone who did not vote for Trump I can detect an ovious bias on just how that one story alone was covered. I could spend days going over every way the media speaks incorrectly\lies about things.
What I find most sad is often "intelligent" people will buy into the bias because they take a political side instead of sticking to the truth.
I don't think anyone is fooled there, though. If you list the countries and you listened to his campaign speeches you know what he's going for.
No one is going to have a different position if you do that.
EDIT: In case, it wasn't clear, I mean that his opponents will see it as a Muslim ban and dislike him for it and his fans will see it as such and like him for it. He ran on that platform. There's nothing disingenuous here.
Surely it's possible to report the facts without embellishment, and also point out how worrying those facts are in context? If indeed 'nobody was fooled', it shouldn't even be necessarily to embellish headlines or content.
There is no fooling needed. Report exactly what it is, then you can report exactly what Trump said in present or past. Its not medias job to create a "Muslim ban". Anyone who is honest at all will tell you there is no Muslim ban.
The media does no one any favors by just making things up.
That's what most of the MSM does though. Here's a CNN article on the ban, for instance[1]. The only time it talks about a "Muslim ban" is when it's quoting what a Democratic politician said.
We need to keep in mind that the US
Constitution does not grant freedom of
religion to US aliens outside the US who
want to immigrate to the US. Instead the
US, and under US law the POTUS, e.g., see
section (f) of "8 U.S. Code § 1182 -
Inadmissible aliens" as at
> (f) Suspension of entry or imposition of
restrictions by President
> Whenever the President finds that the
entry of any aliens or of any class of
aliens into the United States would be
detrimental to the interests of the United
States, he may by proclamation, and for
such period as he shall deem necessary,
suspend the entry of all aliens or any
class of aliens as immigrants or
nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of
aliens any restrictions he may deem to be
appropriate ....
are permitted to deny entry to any alien
outside the US for essentially any reason
or no reason. In particular, a "Muslim
ban" would be perfectly legal. I repeat,
as is fully clear from the law,
"essentially any reason or no reason".
So, suppose there is a Muslim ban? So
what? Whatever the answer, such a ban
would be both constitutional and legal.
For more detail, is Trump against all
Muslims? Nope. Evidence: IIRC, at the
Republican convention, the last speaker
before Trump accepted the nomination was a
long time Trump friend and Muslim.
It is fair to conclude that Trump is
trying to keep terrorists out of the US.
Are all terrorists Muslims? Nope: Not in
the world and not even just in the US.
But: In recent decades, somehow too many
terrorists have been Muslims, from
"radical Islam". Europe has seen a lot of
that in Nice, Paris, etc. The US saw a
lot of that in 9/11, Orlando, and San
Bernardino.
A good summary of the threat of radical
Islam with recent data was from Newt
Gingrich at the Republican convention as
at:
There is a nice introduction by Newt's
wife, but watch and listen to his actual
speech, especially his list of events from
radical Islam from "the last 37 days".
Or, to keep out radical Islam, a good
first step is to carefully vet all
Islamists. There's so far not much sense
in looking for radical Islamist terrorists
among Episcopalians, Methodists,
Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, or Jews.
Your legal analysis here is substandard, even for a discussion among laypersons. The fact that the administration cannot in fact violate the Establishment Clause at the border, not only because the Constitution forbids it but because there's a statute that specifically bars that kind of discrimination, is known to any of the hundreds of thousands of people who listened to the livestreamed CA9 proceedings.
For violating the establishment clause, I heard about that and regarded it as laughable. E.g., the US has lots of institutions for essentially any religion on the planet. So, no way can actions at the border for immigrants "establish" a state religion in the US.
For anyone who listened to either the district court proceedings or the CA9 appeals court hearing on the stay, no citation to a law would be necessary; the whole thing turns on the interaction between the law you cited and the one that limits it and forbids religious discrimination.
Rather than have me (poorly) explain the hearings to you, I think you should just take an hour to listen to them directly. Again: I think you're going to find that the analysis you just presented doesn't hold up well.
There are issues with the CA9 stay --- standing, and nationwide applicability --- but they're not based on the idea that the President can simply declare Muslims dangerous.
> the one that limits it and forbids religious discrimination.
What "one" law? I gave a clear reference to a law that clearly says that the POTUS can block anyone he "deems" whatever -- he can block for essentially any reason or no reason.
You claim that there is another law that limits the law I quoted, but you did not name such a law or give a reference.
Name your law, and I'll read it.
Maybe after reading your law, I'll also listen to the judges argue that the law I listed does not justify what Trump did.
Sorry, but this sounds backwards; instead of relying on HN comments for your information, I recommend instead listening to the CA9 proceedings --- which, once again, are largely about how the analysis you just provided is inadequate.
Section (f) of 1182 has been quoted in
this case, including by me in this thread.
So to address one of your claims,
Q. Does 1152 limit, modify, constrain,
weaken section (f) of 1182?
A. Apparently a little: 1152 has in part:
> (A) Except as specifically provided in
paragraph (2) and in sections 1101(a)(27),
1151(b)(2)(A)(i), and 1153 of this title,
no person shall receive any preference or
priority or be discriminated against in
the issuance of an immigrant visa because
of the person’s race, sex, nationality,
place of birth, or place of residence.
But clearly the part of this law with
"nationality, place of birth, or place of
residence" is nonsense because just try to
get into the US if you are from North
Korea or Iran. Lots of luck! One of the
judges mentioned this point.
Next, if the US denies a Visa to a US
alien outside of the US based on some of
"race, sex, nationality, place of birth,
or place of residence", does that person
have standing to sue in the US courts?
I doubt it. Why not? The US Constitution
does not provide legal right to US aliens
outside of the US.
The law 1182 is mostly about the POTUS
protecting the US, and 1152 doesn't
restrict the POTUS from protecting the US
as in 1182.
The court kept asking if the POTUS could
block all Muslims?
Apparently 1152 and 1182 don't say he
can't. E.g., the POTUS might notice that
radical Islamic terrorism is a threat to
the US, that all radical Islamist
terrorists are Muslims, and that until he
can tell the difference between a safe
Muslim and a dangerous one he can block
them all.
Maybe the 9th Circuit would like to spend
a few years in legal cases on that point.
To help such a case, when some e-coli is
detected in a four ounce sample of 10 tons
of hamburger, we block all 10 tons.
In line with section (f) of 1182, The
POTUS might notice lots of evidence that
lots of Muslims believe that their
religion demands that they regard everyone
else as an infidel and kill or convert
them and, thus, admitted to the US would
be a risk to US national security. Or, a
violent religion is not just a religion
but is violent and can be banned from the
US because it is violent even though its
practitioners believe it is a religion.
The hearing had lots of wacko nonsense:
(1) E.g., suppose I'm in the burka
business; the Trump executive order (EO)
will reduce the number of Muslim customers
for my business; so, I have standing to
challenge the EO as harmful to my
business. The EO should be blocked until
we have a court case where I can show the
damages to my business.
Nonsense.
(2) The establishment clause is
> Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof;
So, in Yemen I create a new religion
that worships death for everyone else,
claim that the EO blocks my "free
exercise" of my religion in the US; thus
the EO should be struck down as
unconstitutional.
Gads.
(3) The judicial role is to say what the
law says.
So, each time the POTUS wants to use a
law, we need to have long legal cases to
question in court what the heck the law
means.
So, the POTUS can't use a law unless every
possible wacko objection to the law has
spent months in the courts and been struck
down.
So, we don't have any laws at all until,
one law at a time, the Judicial Branch has
their say, modifications, vetoes, etc.?
More nonsense.
(4) Can't just block all Muslim aliens
outside the US from entering the US
because, as mentioned in the hearing,
there is "religious motivation".
Nonsense.
The law 1182 says that he can block people
for reasons he "deems" .... That's darned
broad.
There is nothing in the US Constitution
that says that aliens outside the US have
rights, i.e., a right to have their
religion ignored when they want to enter
the US. Instead, both current practice,
e.g., keeping people from North Korea out
in spite of 1152, from 1182 and "deems"
the US can block immigrants on eye color,
ability to run a 100 yard dash, or
anything or nothing. Aliens outside the
US have zip, zilch, and zero rights under
the US Constitution.
Apparently the courts want to claim that
some huge range of legal cases can change
the meanings of all the laws passed by
Congress. There be monsters and chaos.
In that case, in general, the POTUS can't
do anything because anything he does might
hurt someone; for each POTUS action legal
cases could go on for years.
Nonsense.
Net, so far the most reasonable
explanation is that this whole EO case and
its appeal is a bunch of lawyers making a
mess just so that they can stick it to
Trump -- tie him up in endless legal
nonsense -- because they don't like him.
Maybe Trump's approach now is to have some
major fraction of all the best lawyers in
DC write him a new EO that not even the
9th Circuit dare question.
If you consider the establishment clause and the concept of judicial review of the actions of Congress and the President to be nonsense, you can expect to be consistently disappointed in the sensibility of the functioning of government in the United States.
Resolving either complaint will likely require a constitutional amendment; the Establishment Clause is literally a clause in the US constitution, and the judiciary's role in interpreting the law and in deciding when a statute or regulation is contrary to the Constitution has been practiced throughout the entire history of the US since the Constitution's ratification.
> If you consider the establishment clause
and the concept of judicial review of the
actions of Congress and the President to
be nonsense,
I don't, and I never so claimed.
You misrepresented what I wrote to set up
a false straw man in order to knock it
down.
Just read again what the heck I wrote.
But just for you, again, once again, over
again, yet again, one more time,
I did claim, e.g., that saying that the
establishment clause on "free exercise" of
a religion basically forces the US to
admit a Muslim is nonsense.
Or clearly the context of the US
Constitution is people inside the US,
mostly US citizens. That some Muslim
alien in Yemen wants to immigrate is
irrelevant.
For judicial review, sure, but in this
case 1182 is so crystal clear that
supporting the TRO against the EO
is nonsense.
Or, 1182 says that the POTUS has
essentially unlimited powers to keep US
aliens out of the US. That an EO to keep
out US alien Muslims in Yemen might deny a
US university a speaker from Yemen,
disappoint a US woman expecting to marry a
man from Yemen, hurt some US burka
clothing business due to fewer Muslim
customers in the US are all just
irrelevant; no way did the founding
fathers or the authors of 1182 think of
such distant side effects; issuing a TRO
against such an EO is nonsense.
Or the university, the woman, and the
owner of the burka clothing business
needed to think ahead that they were
counting on US aliens outside the US being
able to enter the US, and there was no
such guarantee.
Again, once again, over again, yet again,
one more time, if consider such obscure
indirect effects, side effects, secondary,
tertiary, ..., effects, then no action on
anything will be possible.
E.g., I could ask for a TRO to keep Trump
from using Air Force One because the
amount of jet fuel it burns will tend to
raise the price of gasoline for me and,
thus, reduce what I can buy for myself.
Gee, I should file a class action with
plaintiffs all over the country! Yup,
that would be such an indirect effect.
But such a TRO would be nonsense.
I better not come up with more such
examples or the 9th Circuit will be
supporting such TROs.
Law 1182 is just crystal clear. Making
that law look complicated -- e.g., that
some university may have to cancel a
lecture from a speaker who can't enter the
US -- is just being really mixed up
between the ears.
Again, the believable explanation is that
those two courts out west just wanted to
stick it to Trump, to show that the
Judicial branch could, anytime it wanted
to, so tie up Trump in legal cases that he
couldn't even have a sandwich for lunch.
That, from what I wrote you wrote
> If you consider the establishment clause
and the concept of judicial review of the
actions of Congress and the President to
be nonsense,
shows that you were deliberately
misreading what I wrote. Why? Basically
you hate Trump and want to fight with me.
I'm being clear, rational, and objective,
and you are just flailing away in a
political fight.
Why do you hate Trump? A lot of people
do. Why? The Hillary campaign spent
about $1 billion and the MSM went along
passing out just dirty, but unsupported
and totally false, propaganda about Trump,
and a lot of people believed a lot of it.
The people had either to (A) believe some
of the propaganda or (B) treat as sewage
to be flushed nearly everything they heard
from the Hillary campaign and the MSM.
Case (B) required flushing so much that it
was scary; so people believed (A).
The Jefferson remarks show that we should
accept that at times nearly everything
from the MSM can be just sewage.
A lot of people really swallowed that
Hillary-MSM propaganda, were so convinced
that after Trump won they wanted to
scream, throw things, leave the US, etc.
They really, really believed that
propaganda.
All such people have to do is just review
what objections they have with Trump and,
for each, find some solid evidence. At
the end of that review, they will have
discovered that they have essentially no
evidence at all for anything significantly
wrong with Trump.
E.g., in this thread, on the claim that
Trump is a racist, I gave the URL of the
story on his efforts at Palm Beach. I got
an answer back that there is plenty of
evidence that Trump is racist. I asked
for some such evidence, and so far I've
received none. No wonder: I paid fairly
close attention to the election, and I saw
no such evidence at all solid.
Other times on this thread I asked for
evidence of something bad about Trump and
didn't get any.
In a sense, the TRO on the EO is really
good news: If that is the strongest shots
the Trump enemies can fire, then Trump
must be squeaky clean.
I don't really care whether it's legal. It's just a bad idea, morally and realistically. Alienating people is what turns them into terrorists. To paraphrase a line from "Legally Blonde" (I know I'm really helping my case here), "Happy people just don't kill people, they just don't."
I don't know if Trump doesn't understand this or if he really does understand it and wants another terrorist attack on the US so he can gain more power.
I've never used pastebin. I'm not really against putting a copy of the 11,000+ bytes
in some public place, but I'm wondering
if anyone would be much interested.
Nobody benefits from these kinds of casual, uninformed analyses of major world religions on HN, least of all anyone hoping for thoughtful discussion. The point at which you wrote "I'm not an expert in Islam" probably should have been where you rethought this whole comment.
The so-called failing New York Times has repeatedly used "travel ban" and "immigration order" and such, often referring to 7 Muslim majority countries:
President Trump on Friday closed the nation’s borders to refugees from around the world, ordering that families fleeing the slaughter in Syria be indefinitely blocked from entering the United States, and temporarily suspending immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries.
It's Rudy Giuliani who was running around calling it a Muslim ban.
I think there is plenty of evidence that the EO order was designed to be a "muslim ban" [1]. Fortunately it was done poorly, and didn't hold up in court so far.
If you're suggesting the media is wrong for trying to investigate the motivation behind policy decisions, I don't know what to say to you. I think this is absolutely what the media should be doing, as long as it's backed up by evidence.
I see your point but it's entirely academic. How exactly do you think a "muslim ban" would be enforced? Do you actually for a second think there's going to be a registry or a proclamation for POTUS to ban all muslims? This is how it's implemented in practice; you're just splitting hairs to determine the theoretical merits on whether it constitutes a "muslim ban" or not.
Headline: "McDonalds refuses to hire blacks for being inferior".
Reality: A racist shift store manager of a single store owned by an absentee franchiser is caught discriminating in his hiring practices and promptly fired.
Is the headline misleading? It's a factual statement that a McDonalds in the context described above did do exactly what they were accused of.
So back on point, yes it was a Muslim ban and no it wasn't a ban on Muslims. Both sides are trying to frame it for maximum affect and the result is we grow further divided as a people.
That's what "no it wasn't a Muslim ban" is saying. You can not have a rational discussion on the topic without first agreeing to the context of the words. I hope you understand the other side of the argument is just as correct and valid. Any subset of a group (5% of Muslims, a single McDonalds store) can still be referred to by the group moniker (Muslims, McDonalds) without it being a false statement. Hence "yes it was a ban on Muslims".
Both groups think the other side is being intentionally pedantic by refusing to accept their interpretation of "Muslim ban" which keeps every discussion on the topic in a permanent circle jerk instead of becoming a discussion on the merits, faults, and legality of the executive order.
Dude campaigned on implementing a Muslim ban, one of his associates explains that the EO was developed after Trump specifically asked for a legal way to do a Muslim ban, and Trump himself has referred to it in his tweets as a Muslim ban.
How much more do you personally feel you'd need to have before you'd be OK with someone using the term "Muslim ban" to refer to it?
The account is shadowbanned. So all of its comments are killed off.
Sometimes I see valuable comments from shadowbanned accounts, in which case I click the "vouch" button which brings the comment back to life. This is not one of those times. It's a pointless comment, mainly a joke, not useful or interesting to anyone.
Out of curiosity, do you know why you see the "vouch" button? I always knew it existed, and assumed that it was unlocked at some karma level; but your account has less karma than mine, so I must be wrong.
The media exists so that the narrative can be owned, manipulated and put towards furthering a greater goal. There is no other reason why anyone would bother to take the time and invest the resources necessary to disseminate information on such a wide scale. All news is fake. It's purely a matter of degrees.
> That does not lead to the conclusion that other sources are right.
There are no other sources. Information you get isn't divided into "news" and "not-news", even if you divide it that way in your head. An article in a blog is just as much news as an article in the NYT. Or for that matter, one of the NYT blogs...
Not at all. It's pretty hard to be objectively truthful. Even if one achieves it the bias filters of the reader will Colour it somehow anyways. In any case truly objective news would be very drab to read indeed.
This is illuminati thinking, pre-supposing that someone is in charge and that there's some big plan.
That isn't the case. Plenty of organizations have a plan but the media is a gigantic melee of different ideas, no one is pulling the strings on that chaotic monster
I also keep seeing articles on HN and elsewhere talking about how Facebook or Google or whoever can fix the spread of Fake News or misinformation. The elephant in the room is that the problem lies with people, the majority of people, who do not care about facts or accuracy. I believe for most people the constant stream of "news" on Facebook is just a modern soap opera. Why watch Eastenders when you can have a live streamed 24/7 stream of drama in front of your very eyes. Facebook cannot fix peoples disposition towards their attraction to sensationalism. I don't even think this is a recent phenomenon, it's just taken a while for people who would usually take part in this offline to transfer it online and we as the people who grew up with the early internet are only now experiencing it in our space and thinking it is something new.