Forest_Dump » February 22nd, 2017, 10:42 am wrote:Athena wrote:Which came first, our tolerance for disrespect and unethical behaviors or youtube?
There is an interesting angle here, one that some I have need reading have suggested might be part of Trump's "genius" at play. From him we are continuuing to get an unimagineable stream of outrageous lies, bad logic, etc., that we are getting so over-whelmed that 1) we are getting immune to it and 2) changing our expectations. As someone pointed out, the "right" used to express outrage at Bill Clinton's sexual mistakes but is now accepting Trump's "full bladder" fetish and admitted groping. They used to tub thump on every lie by Clinton or Obama but accept and rationalize the many, many by Trump (as Stalin is reported to have said, one murder is an atrocity but a million murders just becomes a statistic). They accused Obama of being soft on the Russians but accept the many influences on Trump. They would go into near hysterics over any perceived slight against the military but learned to accept Trump tearing into McCain's military career or taking shots at a Silver Star mother. It is the sheer number at assaults on all forms of common decency and common sense that has become so over-whelming that not only are we accepting a lowering of the bar but actually removing th bar altogether. We used to actually look very closely at anyone who seemed to be attempting to be on a higher moral ground. Now we have trouble even imagining that there is a hgher moral ground.
I know everyone is tired of me saying this, but we were not always like this and I think education is the reason we were different in the past. We had education for good moral judgment. This put reason above religion, and education for technology ended that past education and left moral training solely to the church, which gladly took moral authority from those who promoted the powers of reason. The cry began that public education should have nothing to do with teaching morality, and so the perversion of our democracy began.
We have forgotten the connection between morals and reason, and what that has to do with being a democracy, and responsible for government, rather than being subjects. We have forgotten the role of journalists as defenders of our democracy who acted on a high standard of investigation and telling the truth.
I am going to present some old news so that we have a better understanding of the media corruption that we experience today. I would start this story with Eisenhower and his administration's establishment of the Military Industrial complex that created new links between research, media, and government, and radically changed public education, but I assume you all are tired of me beating this drum, so I will just add to it the following rise and fall of Dan Rather. If you only have time for one link, jump to the last one, but then you will miss the important Reagan, Bush and the fall of Dan Rather ties to what has happened to our media.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgwxjG7y9eEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW0gGy_95Qwhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfWkFORwJ-c