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Glenn Greenwald on Lessons from the Election, Leaving the Intercept and More | Useful Idiots
Glenn Greenwald joins to discuss the election (taped on Thursday), leaving the Intercept, ludicrous voting and ballot counting system in the USA, and more. Matt and Katie ponder the future of both parties after a tightly contested result, the Democrats clear refusal to represent anyone except their super-rich 0.1% donors. Engaging analysis of the rise of hyperpartisan media and the now complete absence of journalistic integrity. "Cognitive capture" of most major media figures is now the polite term for this form of selling out.
NOTE: Marxian analysis would have made this chat a lot shorter by zeroing in on the fact that bourgeois journalists are acculturated and carefully screened to accept the status quo, the profession's narrow topical scope, and especially the prevailing cultural conceits, including US exceptionalism. The fact that the media are owned by rightwing billionaires and conservative corporations who retain the right to hire and fire at will explains a great deal about the timidity of contemporary journalists, particularly the most career-minded ones, and their widespread acceptance of self-censorship. The marching orders are to support the official narrative favoring capitalism and empire. Those who hesitate or defy that tacit rule are soon disciplined or dismissed.
This has always been the case, especially since the close of WW2 and the start of Cold War I in the late 1940s. With the aggravation of the US imperial crisis as a result of capitalism's incurable and constantly mounting contradictions, the media owners' imposition of a more strict observance of whatever deceptive narrative the ruling elites require to stabilise their rule has only become more pervasive and dictatorial. Meanwhile, as truth is declared unwelcome in America's (and much of the West's) media precincts, an elaborate simulacrum of reality, with a false set of oppositional ideologies, is being marketed to the public to replace the class struggle. In the 1970s and 80s we used to call such misleading political clashes, typical of a deliberate "culture war" organised by the deep state, "wedge issues". Now the correct term is identity politics. The gushing you hear from both professional misleaders like Van Jones, and the perennially clueless about the triumph of the Biden ticket, with "the first black woman vicepresident", is part of that shameless con chiefly orchestrated by the Democrats and their numerous media shills. Thus, while we are urged to concentrate our political energy on skin color, gender, a false anti-semitism, or sexual identity, anyone fighting for real justice and democracy, against wars and for the environment is simply persona non grata. —PG
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Crying and holding my daughter, “look baby, she looks like us.” pic.twitter.com/Gy4MAPoNjy
— Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling) November 7, 2020
Oh, BTW, Greenwald adds, as usual, a ton of interesting insights.
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