🧵We cannot forget the reasons agencies like the USDA and the FDA were created. They are not perfect. They have a lot of problems that need to be addressed by competent technocrats. But that's the opposite of Trump's crazy cabinet picks, who are meant to destroy these agencies. Let's take a trip through memory lane back to the time, a mere human lifespan ago, when we didn't have these agencies.

You shld listen to the full episode of @bastardspod about the origins of the FDA, but I present some disturbing excerpts in this thread. podcasts.apple.com/tt/podcast/par…

The kindest interpretation of the fathomless failures of America's news media is that it is a cult. Owners and bosses like NYTimes' Sulzberger & Kahn use their esoteric interpretations of "independent journalism" to shape coverage. Reporters then self-censor.

https://twitter.com/airbagmoments/status/1823321356143825179

Which raises the question of whether, for example, @GlennThrush and recent erstwhile @WHCA president @tamarakeithNPR are so dumb and programmed that they perform loyalty to the cult in the way shown in this image, or are they trusted lieutenants who are in on it with the bosses.

Mainstream media is comfortable providing multiple layers of omission that obscure the decades-long fascist plots that are obvious to those paying attention to better sources.

The vandalization of the Voting Rights Act by the Roberts Court provides a perfect example.
(1/6) The VRA wisely required the former Jim Crow states, which had proudly engaged in shameless suppression of black voters, to get "pre-clearance" for any new laws about voting.
(2/6)

🧵 Here's a violently nauseating story about the Republican mindset.

We have a friend in a red state who has suffered three miscarriages. Each time, she needed mifepristone to help expel remaining tissue to avoid fatal sepsis. Her docs have no idea why she's miscarrying, so she is going to try one more time, and is rightly concerned that if she has another miscarriage she'll now have to travel far to get life-saving treatment because of new Republican laws.

Current podcast diet:

Every weekday morning we walk a few miles invigorated by @KeithOlbermann's Countdown. His minatory tone and energy are required in this time.

We often skip the occasional sports coverage and the personal story at the end-unless it's relevant or juicy. Then we usually switch to @NewAbnormalPod or @DeeTwoCents's Woke AF podcast.

If it's Friday we listen to @ProLeftPodcast.

On the weekends we listen to @JYSexton's The Muckrake.

Capitalism and democracy, though sometimes conflated by confused or cynical people, are not the same thing or even the same type of thing.

Neither requires the other. A form of capitalism can thrive under autocracy, for example.

But they have a few things in common. In representative democracy, the form of all current democracies larger than a book club, there's tension around how your rep should act.

Are you electing them bc you trust their judgement or are they there to reflect the majority will of constituents?

There's no right answer.

Hey, how about a little review of some recent highlights from the US conservative movement?

In TN, GOP legislators expelled duly elected Dem legislators because they protested inaction on gun violence.
vox.com/policy/2023/4/… Remember when Trump dangled pardons for anyone who committed violence on his behalf? He got away with it, so the idea is inevitably going to spread to other GOP executives. They want you to know that if you fight injustice, you're risking your life.

We have been in an unrequited information war with Russia for many years.

We do almost nothing to block their messaging. It's like we're letting Tokyo Rose broadcast from New York City. (Tuckyo Rose?)

Information war is war. Many people die.

https://twitter.com/Duncan20212/status/1628378041834430465

In light of the latest astonishing revelations abt the perfidy of Fox News, Biden needs to take the following actions and more to try to protect America from the toxic affects of this is disinformation:

* Revoke @rupertMurdoch's citizenship
* Ban Fox from all federal facilities

Okay, folks, here's a 🔥🧵 about an actual encounter with a typically stupid and cowardly Republican state representative in this benighted region.

It is guest written with minor embellishments by the person to whom it was told, in the first person voice of the teller.

Enjoy! I live in a gated community of large homes with copper drain-pipes and coffered ceilings.

One day as I was making pasta for dinner, I heard the ring of the doorbell over the sound of rushing water from the pot filler.

Oh, look!

Another news story about the hideous suffering caused by Republican Christo-fascist policy that fails to mention the words "Republican," "Christian," "Supreme Court," or "Conservative."
azfamily.com/2022/10/04/its… Oh look! Another article about the nightmarish results of conservative Christian Republican laws that fails to mention conservatives, Christians, or Republicans! (Or Catholics!)

It does mention the Supreme Court once, without mentioning who controls it.
news5cleveland.com/news/abortion-…

MAGA die-hards are going to set up a permanent armed camp outside Mar a Lardass to protect TFG from being arrested.

Palm Beach is going to live to regret letting him live there permanently even though it violated the agreement he had perviously made with them not to. If he's indicted, I also predict new truck convoys trying to snarl highways and descending on Washington or other cities.

In the case of these two, I'm talking about actual recognized cults.

This also applies to the homophobic Catholic Church in general.

https://twitter.com/airbagmoments/status/1555538364538961923

The lunatic way she say "My guru..." 🤮

https://twitter.com/JackRob67175771/status/1185328917114044417?s=20&t=O6q4_gL0mkwVzMZJrnyfBg

The apotheosis of the oligarch-driven culture war fooling dummies into voting against their own interests.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/… Non paywalled link to the article. wapo.st/3vGbU7O

I knew a psychiatrist, let's call him "Dr. Sam."

He was one of the best people I've ever known. He saw many indigent patients pro bono.

He was also a painter of haunting landscapes.

His disintegrating spine killed him.

But before he died, Google tortured him. Dr. Sam's aged mother lived far from him, in the Northeast.

Like many elderly folk, she had a shady fellow around her who was trying to swindle her money.

Dr. Sam tried to thwart this grifter, so the grifter, who was never a patient of Dr. Sam, left him a bad Google rating.

Important & terrifying article sufffering from a classic MSM flaw: the words "Republican," "Christian," etc do not appear in it.

It describes the nightmarish consequences of overturning Roe without once mentioning who is at fault.
@froomkin @jayrosen_nyu
washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07… @froomkin @jayrosen_nyu Articles about the tragic results of Republican policies treat those policies as spontaneously generated, without authors.

Articles about the crafting of such policies studiously ignore the tragic results and treat them as the end points of a funny game elected people play.

A brief 🧵 about journalism and alarmism.

Ideally, journalists act like prairie-dog lookouts. When threats appear, they shrilly chirp, and everyone else either dives into their holes or comes forward, ready for combat.

https://twitter.com/tzimmer_history/status/1526965973462528000

But our fight or flight instinct is really easy to manipulate, because it's part the deepest foundations of our nervous system. (FOX News does it with lies every day.)

So journalism bifurcates in its attitude towards alarm.

🧵

I've become convinced that the billionaire (and adjacent) class globally and especially in America suffers under a delusion I'm calling "oligarchical utopianism." History indicates that utopia for the masses is likely unachievable. I don't mean a particular utopia, I mean smthg like the best use of resources to maximize happiness & security for the population.

Even small utopian experiments have been disasters. pcmag.com/news/11-failed…

When people like anencephalic fascist Mike Lee say "America is not a democracy," they are wrong.

Even the brilliant @JYSexton blew this a little bit in his latest podcast ep, so I'm going to do a little thread about it here. To say that America is not a democracy is like saying a particular banana is not "banana." In tiny, sophistic, useless sense it's true.

"Banana" is an abstract idea. "Banana" does not exist in the physical world. But bananas do exist, each unique and different.

THREAD

Let's talk about Republicans and "griefing."

In online multiplayer video-games, griefing is a sort of meta-game played by sociopaths whose goal is to ruin the game experience for other players. In games that pit human players against each other, as opposed to pitting human players only against computer-controlled opponents, this practice is common.

Since Ooze Cruz has brought up abortion, I'd like to give my little Ted talk on it.

(Keep a sharp eye out for subtle puns.)

https://twitter.com/SenTedCruz/status/1301203239140954112?s=20

1. No one really believes abortion is morally the same as murder.

If they did they'd act very differently.

Imagine if no patient ever exited a dermatology office except through a chimney bc they were all being murdered and incinerated.

Would we just stand outside with signs?

.@jayrosen_nyu published this illuminating thread about "the public" and the media.

It made me want to do a thread of my own here about the real audience of what I think of as the "benevolent media," i.e. media outlets that think of themselves as a public service.

https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/1239699833088344066

I don't exclude for-profit outlets, as long as their staffers feel they and their bosses sincerely see public good as an intended and actual net result of their output.

It does exclude rightwing media and tabloid media, with their various malevolent agendas.