23 October 2025

Video of the day -- lying (to yourself) by omission


I was going to just add this at the end of the next link round-up, but it's such a must-see that it deserves its own post.

posted by Infidel753 at 2:29 AM

8 Comments:

Blogger John A Hill said...

That's good!
Thanks for sharing it.

23 October, 2025 07:26  
Blogger Rade said...

I do miss his "New Rules" segments. I got to see him in concert when he came to Providence a while back, and it was a good show.

23 October, 2025 08:35  
Anonymous CAS said...

Nailed it!

23 October, 2025 09:36  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Glad you liked it. He really hit the target dead center with this one. People need to break out of these echo chambers that keep them ignorant and at daggers drawn with each other.

23 October, 2025 17:48  
Blogger Rade said...

"People need to break out of these echo chambers that keep them ignorant and at daggers drawn with each other."

I'm not ready to put my dagger down. There is no compromise with MAGA, and I am tired of being kicked when I extend an olive branch. Fuck them.

24 October, 2025 01:52  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

There's probably no dealing with the extremists and ideological fanatics on either side. But most people on either side don't fall into that category.

We can't allow the extremist fringes to keep the whole population polarized and divided like this. In the long run that can only destroy the country -- exactly as the Russians intended.

24 October, 2025 02:17  
Blogger Dave Dubya said...

Maher's points are solid here, but he tends towards false equivalence at times.

As a firearm owner and curious person in general, I get feeds from a broader spectrum of the algorithms. I get more glimpses "across the fence" than most people. (It's not pretty over there.) Progressive journalists tend to report more accurately and broadly than Republican state propaganda. Shocking.

Yes, we should listen to other viewpoints. Yes, we should examine our own beliefs. But this is usually a one-way street in Trumpworld.

We may want to keep in mind that "both sides" are way out of balance. The side that spews the worst lies and hate is in power with a criminal president elevated above the law with unconstitutional immunity.

"But her emails!", and "But Hunter's laptop!" and "Biden's dementia!" have worked their spell. Trump's lawlessness, mental decline and family grifting don't get nearly the same saturation in corporate media, nor does Trump's extortion of that same corporate media.

The same is true for political violence. Count the lies. Count the bodies.

Then cover both sides.

Christiane Amanpour discussed both-siderism at her address to a Columbia School of Journalism commencement.

“Journalism is a public service, first and foremost. Journalism is about the truth, first and foremost. Be truthful, but not neutral. Both-siderism, (on the one hand, on the other hand,) is not always objectivity. It does not get you to the truth. Drawing false moral or factual equivalence is neither objective nor truthful. Objectivity is our golden rule. And it is in weighing all the sides and all the evidence. Hearing everyone, quoting everything, but not rushing to equate them when there is no equating. And look at the damage that has done.”

26 October, 2025 19:29  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

It's usually a one-way street on the ideological left as well. I've talked with people who were quite upfront and explicit about not wanting to ever look at any news source that didn't align with their existing beliefs, and insisted there was nothing wrong with that.

I have never claimed that the left and the right are exactly equivalent in this way or any other way, but the problem is bad enough among both of them that it's a serious issue.

The sheer lack of consciousness is stunning sometimes. I once saw a blog post in which the author condemned Republican gerrymandering in Utah and cheered for Democratic gerrymandering in California just a couple of short paragraphs later. Ideologists can bloviate and split hairs until doomsday, but this will never be anything but abject hypocrisy, and is easily recognized as such by non-ideologists.

The corporate media are owned by billionaires and defend the interests of the billionaire parasite class. Biden threatened to raise taxes on the wealthy in his second term, so they launched a campaign to hound him out of office. A Republican president who did the same thing would probably be similarly attacked with whatever weapon was handy. They defend Trump because he kowtows to billionaire interests. It's not any more complicated than that.

My posts on issues like this are really not aimed at the activist fringes at all. They are so mentally rigid that there's not much point in having discussions with them. I try to talk more to the less-political 70% or so in the middle, who usually support the right or left to some degree, but are more open to unfamiliar ideas and arguments because they're not rigidly committed to an ideology. The people on the fringes yelling "Marxist" and "fascist" at each other -- it hardly matters if one group is marginally less dogmatic than the other. They're both pretty much a write-off at this point.

27 October, 2025 01:20  

Post a Comment

Please be on-topic and read the comments policy. Spam, trolls, and fight-pickers will be deleted. If you don't have a Blogspot account and aren't sure how to comment, please see here. Fair warning: anything supporting transgender ideology, or negative toward Brexit, or in favor of a military draft or compulsory national service, will be deleted. I am not obligated to provide a platform for views I find morally abhorrent.

No comments advocating violence against any specific identifiable individual, even jokingly.

Please be considerate -- no political or politics-tinged comments on non-political posts, and no performative cynicism (or cynicism in general).

<< Home