Our News Media’s Big Problem – They Don’t Know How To Connect Dots

March 29, 2019March 29, 2019 ~ boynhisdog ~ Leave a comment

I have two kids. When they were little, they both delighted in connect-the-dots books. They thrilled to the concept that — as they drew (their pencil being guided by the numbers) — a picture would emerge. And all THEY had to do: connect the dots.

That same concept works in and for storytelling. Half the fun of listening to a story is anticipating where we think it’s going to go. Based on the dots already connected for us (by the storyteller), we can anticipate how the dots ahead of us might connect. We’re also hoping for a plot twist that will completely screw with what we anticipated. Then the dots will connect a different way.

But — the point is — they’ll still connect.

If the dots don’t connect — there’s no story. So — in stories, as in life, the dots must (and do) connect. Just like in the connect-the-dot books.

What can possibly explain our Main Stream Media’s inability to do that simple, basic thing?

We sit in the middle of the biggest connect-the-dots puzzle ever imagined. It’s massive, stretching in all sorts of directions. It’s a picture — we can see it already (those of us who can imagine a picture from more than a few hundred feet up) of Massive Corruption — here, in the United States, in Europe, in the Middle east and in Asia. Even Australia’s contributed — contributing a racist murderer to New Zealand. Only Antarctica seems free of political corruption; maybe the scientists who’ve worked there know differently.

What we’ve already eyewitnessed ourselves is staggering in its audacity and criminality. Those of us who see crime for what it is, have always seen crime. Those who easily normalize crime (“He’s a different kind of president”) see normalcy. The only reason they see normalcy is because they cannot connect dots.

There is nothing normal about these here times. Anyone who accepts this as normal has either surrendered (and needs to stop or just get the hell out of everyone else’s way) or is part of the criminal class — and they need to cut it the hell out — and get the hell out of everyone else’s way. There has been a steady stream of clear-cut EVIDENCE that Donald Trump has an “unnatural” relationship with not only Vladimir Putin but a whole host of authoritarian monsters.

There are no coincidences — those are dots connecting.

Of course, it’s hard to see the picture the dots are forming when you obsess on the relationship between two dots. Problem is — while THOSE TWO dots may not connect directly, they’re still part of the same picture. If you don’t see THAT fact — you’re going to miss what the picture looks like. Hell, you’ll probably think they’re TWO DIFFERENT PICTURES. And that, of course, is completely wrong.

Welcome to America’s Main Stream News Media.

Back when Fusion GPS first got hired by the REPUBLICAN Washington Free Beacon (Jeb Bush supporters) to compile oppo research on Donald Trump, they started by doing their “due diligence”. When he testified before Congress on August 22, 2017, Fusion’s founding partner Glenn Simpson (formerly of the Wall Street Journal — not exactly a liberal rag) explained Fusion’s process. They got ahold of every piece of PUBLICLY AVAILABLE material they could on Donald J Trump.

They got books. They got magazine articles. They listened to Trump on radio shows and watched him on TV shows. They bought stuff from Amazon and borrowed it from the public library. Simpson testified that Fusion got its hands on every existing bit of info (available to anyone) that even hinted at Trump. And what they found there, said Simpson, convinced them that Donald Trump had a long, clear criminal history — and that history had a long, clear relationship with Russian mobsters.

Simpson and Fusion GPS knew — Russian mobsters equals the Russian government. You don’t get to be a Russian oligarch (a mobster) without having one particular friend in Moscow: Vlad Putin. Putin’s a spy by nature and training. He thinks like a spy and acts like one. He’s always looking for an in — a way to control you and make you his. If Donald Trump had secrets about Russian mobsters for whom he’d been laundering money — he had secrets about himself and Vladimir Putin.

Understand — the Donald dot does not connect directly to the Vladimir Putin dot. But they do most definitely connect.

They are very definitely part of the same picture.

Oh — before I forget — IF anyone in the Main Stream Media happens to read this — that picture at the top of the post?

It’s an elephant.

Having A “Normalcy Bias” Isn’t Abnormal; It Should Be…

March 22, 2019March 22, 2019 ~ boynhisdog ~ Leave a comment

If a presidential contender coming down an escalator announces to the world that he’s running for President because America needs a wall to keep out all the Mexican rapists — and everyone (after an initial burst of outrage) shrugs because they’re already consumed by that contender’s next outrage — somewhere inside that shrug was born their “Normalcy Bias”. Calling Mexicans rapists went — within a sentence — from being an outrage to being… “normal”.

That’s just how Trump speaks, the MSM told us. Racism? No. Poor word choice — yes. And, just like that, the MSM had built absolute racism into its Normalcy Bias. Racism was — IS — now completely legit. Pussy-grabbing worked the exact same way. A few moments of outrage tempered by the “timely” release of a Wikileaks dump — which, too, got NORMALIZED. Shall we toss LYING onto the bonfire?

How quickly did the MSM normalized the fact that a president of the United States lied more reliably than he told the truth? Though they knew what Trump was saying was a lie, still they continued to report each lie as if it WASN’T a lie and therefore had to be considered as possibly the truth.

Sorry, but a turd is a turd is a turd. Call it a “perfumed package” if you like or a “surprise” or even just “poo”. It’s a turd. It stinks. It has to be cleaned up. Making it “palatable” while making it “do-able” also makes it “palatable”. Maybe it shouldn’t be.

What our MSM can’t seem to grasp is how badly THEY are being fooled every day by their own Normalcy Bias. When, say, you know going into a (rare) press conference that the Press Secretary is going to lie to you — and then you LET HER LIE & (worse) let her GET AWAY WITH IT, you are further solidifying HER Normalcy Bias that she CAN get away with just about every time. What’s the cost of lying? Nothing.

Normalcy Bias is no one’s friend. It’s comfort with what is even if “what is” is utter bullshit. Normalcy Bias is how that frog slowly gets boiled to death without ever realizing it.

2020 Will Be Different BECAUSE So Many Women Are Running

February 20, 2019 ~ boynhisdog ~ Leave a comment

Our Main Stream News Media sure love a horse race. I guess it’s because horse races are easy to report. Who’s the favorite (according to the odds makers)? Who’re the jockeys? Then – when the race gets run — the winner is almost always easy to identify. A simple story for simple minds to tell.

But not all horses are the same. Some have no business running in races. And some will outclass any field they run in.

And some horses aren’t horses at all. They’re women.

Even as things that have never happened before happen, our MSM insists that these things have happened before. Presidents committing treason, for instance. Or so many women running for office and winning.

At present there are 5 Democratic women running. According to the Washington Post, there could conceivably be 11 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/09/11-democratic-women-who-could-run-for-president-in-2020-ranked/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5dd174e9044a ) .

The lingering passion, among Democrats, is for a woman to get the nomination again. Whereas Hillary Clinton’s win was stolen from her, the next woman president won’t suffer that. It’s almost a guarantee. I pity the fool who even tries it. Women are on the come in American politics. They are transitioning from being “A” player to “THE” player.

Now — here’s what our MSM still doesn’t get: As women become more dominant in American political culture, they will directly impact that culture. Presently, American political culture is overwhelmingly “male” in its nature. Trump has taken it to a kind of perversely viagra-y extreme — like a painful erection that won’t go away and isn’t even capable of coming. It’s an erection for its own sake.

Trump epitomizes it especially when he says things like “I alone can fix it”. That is a supremely “MALE” thing to say. No woman would ever even think such a thing because her biology knows better. A women, pregnant with child, needs help. She needs help to carry her child, to bear her child and to raise her child. Yes, indeedy — it takes a village. Women know this. It directly impacts who they are, how they think, how they plan.

It directly impacts how women interact — with other women and with men. When women have to problem solve — that gets impacted too. They look around at the collective — the women nearby — the women going through the same sorts of things — and they seek both communion and council. They seek consensus. They seek a working relationship with the community that will assure both their safety and happiness and the safety and happiness of their children. Nothing, to a mother, is more important than that.

This is the organic result of having children begin their lives inside yours.

Men — for comparison’s sake — while capable of genuinely loving women — are designed to spread their seed far and wide. Think of it as “Flirt N Squirt”. That, too, impacts how WE think and behave — and practice politics.

Men don’t need anyone else to survive. We can, if we’re of a mind to, flirt n squirt till the day we die (or lose the capacity to flirt and/or squirt). That’s why only a man could even imagine saying “I alone can fix it”. Because a man thinks he can “be” or “accomplish anything” all by his lonesome.

He’s wrong, of course. Absolutely wrong.

With so many women running — not just for POTUS but for offices at every level — their way of thinking and doing things will impact the way we currently do things — the men’s way. Instead of male unilateral decision-making, we’ll shift toward female multi-lateral decision-making.

Here’s my other bet. Unless they’re forced to compete with men, women don’t naturally ‘dick measure’. Unlike men who love to break each others’ balls, women (though capable of cruelty) commune together. I would be shocked-as-hell if the lineup of Democratic women — as they debate each other — started dissing each other the way Donald Trump took off after every opponent he had.

Women won’t (my bet) stand there and snipe at each other like angry little boys. Because they aren’t — and never were.

My bet is that women have already changed our political culture profoundly. As usual, our Main Stream News Media are the last to get hip to it.

How Failure Of Imagination Kills…

February 1, 2019 ~ boynhisdog ~ Leave a comment

When the forensics get done on our Time — and the Big Question gets asked — “How in the world did Americans let such an obvious criminal & traitor 1) get elected & 2) remain in power so long?

The answer will complicated with lots of moving parts (requiring actual calculus to figure out). One of the biggest moving parts will be the Republican Party itself and the monstrosity of its actions here. But the fact that they were complicit — in ways that even predated Trump’s takeover of their party (think Mitch McConnell & his refusal to even talk to Merrick Garland) goes right back to the heart of my premise. We “didn’t see it”.

In real time, Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans did something no other Senate had ever done before — held a President’s SCOTUS pick hostage. Mitch’s excuse was so phony it should have physically hurt every ear that heard it. It was Bullshit On Steroids: “The American People should get to decide who the next SCOTUS judge is”. The American People in that equation are the ones who VOTED FOR BARACK OBAMA and made him POTUS — the guy charged with doing that very thing.

Yet here we are. No Merrick Garland. Neil Gorsuch instead. Funny how the rules work when you make em up as you go along — AND GET AWAY WITH IT.

With all this press going at this story like sperms going at an egg — you’d think someone would have gotten through already and “fertilized” that egg. And yet — with a mountain RANGE of evidence staring them in the face, the Press seems blind to it. It’s there — they kinda know it is — and yet they can’t bring themselves to go and report it. It’s like they just can’t “trust” themselves and what they’re thinking. What they “know”.

This is how “FAILURE OF IMAGINATION” works. Under normal circumstances where everything’s normal — failing to think with imagination won’t hurt you (not much anyway). You can always muddle along in your mediocrity enjoying the status quo until you don’t.

But this here ain’t “normal”. Not even remotely. Gawd, I hope that’s not a revelation. Laws weren’t written to deal with our particular situation. This wasn’t “imagined” by the Constitution’s framers — a flat out treasonous POTUS and the flat out treasonous political party supporting him (the framers didn’t even want political parties; they happened because we’re human and tribal by nature). See how our problem is “outside the box”?

The solution to our problem will have to come from “outside the box” too. Part of our problem is — the criminals are using our rules to undermine them — as part of the whole Cyber War they’ve been waging against us as we sleep. We’re miles behind — in large part because we’ve been so damned slow to SEE what was happening.

Not slow to SEE, so much, really, as GRASP. We saw all this happening — but failed to grasp what it meant — and how it was playing out in all its terrible detail RIGHT IN FRONT OF US. That, too, is failure of imagination.

FAILURE OF IMAGINATION is how McConnell got away with circumventing the will of the American People to deliberately remake the judiciary as conservative when the people CLEARLY want it progressive?

HOW has Donald Trump gotten away with HIS shit for as long as he has? How did we ever let him get past “Mexicans are rapists” or “Pussy Grabbing” or every stinking lie he’s told from the moment he became OUR EMPLOYEE? How have we not been able to stop this — or even report this accurately?

I’ll let you fill in the blank — with an “Amen!” chaser.

But it isn’t just OUR failure of imagination — as citizens. We rely on our Press (as per the First Amendment) to be the final check on power. To do that they need to IMAGINE the worst — because you can’t report all the possible reasons things happen if you don’t include that. For one, you’re not being accurate.

But — strangely — watch enough news, and of all the possible answers to The Biggest Question Facing Us — Why Does Donald Trump Act Like Vladimir Putin Owns Him? The American Press STILL refuses to answer the question: “BECAUSE VLADIMIR PUTIN OWNS HIM”.

It seems bizarre that one can’t “imagine” the thing that’s not just “staring you in the face” but stabbing you there, too.

Does Anything Epitomize Conservative Thinking Better Than ‘A WALL’?

January 10, 2019January 10, 2019 ~ boynhisdog ~ Leave a comment

The prototypes for U.S. President Donald Trump’s border wall are seen behind the border fence between Mexico and the United States, in Tijuana, Mexico January 7, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Duenes – RC1B258D6BC0

We stand on a precipice — one of many precipices we seem to end up standing on here in The Age Of Trump — being held hostage by Donald Trump’s campaign slogan ‘Build The Wall’. It’s absurd on it’s face. If you tried to WRITE this — as a script or a novel — you’d bomb because no one would buy it as a premise. It’s too absurd, ya see…

“Build A Wall” began its life (as most things Trumpian do) as an exercise in cynical marketing. During the 2016 campaign, Roger Stone & Sam Nunberg suggested a way to easily remind Trump to rant about ”illegal immigration”. They proposed a cheer line: “Build The Wall”. The icing: “Mexico Will Pay For It”.

‘Build A Wall’ & ‘Mexico Will Pay For It’ were never ever ever based in reality. They never ever EVER were connected to any sort of actual policy beyond pure unadulterated racism. They were mneumonics — memory devices designed for a narrow-minded, forgetful, but deeply racist OLD MAN — Donald J Trump. The wall is a metaphor for everything Trump.

It’s a metaphor for everything CONSERVATIVE, too. To call building a wall — and thinking it’s actually ‘defense’ — is Medieval. It’s more ancient than that actually but — for the sake of kindness, we’ll call it Medieval. As we learned today — Trump’s wall can be chewed through by a common saw that anyone can by at Lowe’s (shop them instead of Home Despot — the guy who owns Home Despot is a Trumpian).

https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/turns-out-trumps-steel-barrier-can-be-cut-through-with-a-saw/

Turns out the word ‘impenetrable’ & ‘wall’ don’t go together…

Donald Trump wants us to ‘buy’ that his wall is ‘impenetrable’ just because he says it is. That’s how authoritarians ‘think’. A thing is so just because I will it. The way sycophants work is they say ‘Yes, it is!’ regardless of the truth. That’s CONSERVATISM right there. Conservatism is the willingness to deny every bit of WHAT IS because you want it to be HOW I WANT IT — regardless of how inaccessible the one place is from the other.

Conservatives have built a metaphorical wall in their minds around a notion of ‘How It Was’. That’s what they want to CONSERVE — just as their name says. They don’t WANT to go into the future (they certainly don’t want to Progress there…), no, they want to stay in the past — in a place the they’ve CONSERVED.

The overwhelming majority of Americans don’t want to conserve what was since it was weighted so heavily against them. That would be women & People of Color & the LGBTQ Community & Immigrants to the country & Asylum seekers & Frankly, Anyone Who Isn’t White-Christian-Male. WE want what this country can BE far, far more than what it WAS.

To that end, we lend our talents, our passion, our tax dollars, our hopes. Our citizenship comes with great privileges but also awesome responsibilities. A lot of us see it as our duty — as citizens — to help steer this Nation toward the place where as many Americans as possible enjoy the fruits of our common ‘struggle’. That’s not something to conserve — it doesn’t exist yet. But it’s at the very CORE of the American Promise: Come, Give Us Your Best, Work Hard — And We Will Share Our Bounty With You As You Share Yours With Us.

That’s what Conservatives want to KEEP OUT. That’s the thing they want to WALL against. The Truth is, walls don’t keep out Human Progress. Oh, they can delay it a bit — but no wall has ever truly kept human beings captive.

Only a fool conservative would think so.

What Republicans Forgot: INTEGRITY Matters

December 23, 2018 ~ boynhisdog ~ Leave a comment

Regardless of how we’re all physically ‘born’, we all arrive in this world with 100% of our Integrity intact. Whether or not we get to the end of our lives with it STILL intact — that’s entirely up to us.

The ‘thing’ about Integrity is, it’s an ‘all or nothing’ proposition. Ever meet someone with 99% of their Integrity? What’s up with the 1%?

Our Integrity is iron — yet destructible as gossamer.

When set and kept at 100% it should be seen as inviolable. An impenetrable Force Field of Righteousness, built on facts & open-eyed analysis of those facts & The Truth. That’s the iron.

The gossamer is anyone turning off the Force Field to entertain offers. Even if you opt to ‘stay pure’ — you entertained offers. You even allowed for the ‘appearance’ that you were for sale. Integrity can never ever EVER be for sale. Integrity popped — like a soap bubble. Made of gossamer.

Lying instantly destroys Integrity. Allowance for lying destroys Integrity. Acceptance of lying destroys Integrity. One always has to ask ‘WHY?’ Why lie to begin with? Why’s the Truth ‘problematic’?

In the case of the Republican Party — they’ve been lying to us because they recognized as the Reagan years ended that electoral politics would not favor them going forward. The demographics were already trending completely against them (had more Americans voted regularly, that distinction would have been clearer a lot sooner). The only means to keep power for a few more generations was via the Judiciary.

Or — the Kochs reasoned apparently — one could rewrite the Constitution and make White Christian Male hegemony PERMANENT. To do that they’d need 37 states — so they could convene a new Constitutional Congress. That was very definitely in the Koch Bros sites. The last election — where Democrats took back 7 statehouses — destroyed that plan; the Kochs were within ONE STATEHOUSE. For reals.

The majority of Americans do not want what the Koch Bros want. That’s probably because the majority of Americans are not white, Christian men. But, of course, ya can’t exactly sell that come election time. So the Kochs find themselves politicians — Republicans — who are willing to lie.

And there goes their Integrity.

What Did YOU Do In The Culture War, Daddy?

November 4, 2018 ~ boynhisdog ~ Leave a comment

There are times — at the beginnings of wars usually — when one side knows a state of war exists while the other side doesn’t. Pearl Harbor comes to mind.

On the morning of December 7, 1941, the residents of Hawaii — Pearl Harbor in particular — slept soundly in their beds, unaware that they were moments away from being bombed, strafed, shot at and in every way attacked. Japan was at war with them. Japan knew it — they, unfortunately for them, did not.

That’s pretty much how the Left has been reacting to the Culture War the republican party declared not just on the Democratic Party but on the majority of Americans, too. We’ve been almost oblivious to it. We’ve heard the war-like chatter in the background but we’ve never taken it seriously. We damned well better — because the war Newt Gingrich talked his side into launching years ago has finally established significant beachheads in American Culture.

newt-gingrich

Michelle Cottle nails it: “In his zeal to cripple Democrats, Gingrich poisoned the public against the entire American political system. ”

In Newt’s own words: “You have to confront, delay, and undermine and impose failure in order to move the public.”

Newt made it his absolute goal to impose FAILURE on his perceived enemy — everyone who wasn’t HIM. That included the CULTURE in which the rest of us live.

Right Wing Culture is a lot like what Astrophysicist Neil deGrsse Tyson calls the ‘Diminishing God of the Gaps’ — the place you go to when you reach the end of what you ‘know’. Right Wing culture — once thought to be a significant part of American Culture is now understood to be a fringe element at best (and shrinking rapidly). Right Wing Culture is that thing everyone with a sense of humor laughs at.

It is a fact of life that Right Wing Culture has no sense of humor. Oh, it can laugh all right — at other people. Especially if they’re suffering some sort of misfortune. Then they turn hilarious. Right Wing Culture is sanctimonious. It believes it understands the divine; it believes the divine has chosen it to be its representative here on earth. Right Wing Culture is seriously delusional.

Right Wing Culture honestly believes that IT is American Exceptionalism — that its very whiteness and maleness and Christian-ness is exceptional. It’s wrong of course. America’s DIVERSITY is what makes it EXCEPTIONAL. That kind of broad diversity never happened before in one country. It produced remarkable — no, EXCEPTIONAL — results.

White Christian Male culture is the exact opposite of exceptional. Aside from rage and grievance, it can’t point to a single thing it’s added to the conversation. Being weak and having few weapons at its disposal, White Christian Male Culture counts on drawing us near enough to sneak in a dirty low blow to neutralize us.

They’re going to be disappointed this time. A lot more of us are woke now. We’re paying attention.

And — as much as we can — we’re doing the thing that cuts Trumpists & Religionistas & RW Culture Warriors deepest: We’re laughing at them.