Originally published at: It’s The Messaging Environment, Stupid - TPM – Talking Points Memo
Hello. It’s the weekend. This is The Weekender 
I’ve been thinking for a long time about the asymmetrical information ecosystem, and how Republicans don’t just dominate — Democrats don’t even compete. I’m talking about “cultural” shows from which politics flow downstream — right-wing ideology wrapped in chatter about MMA and the stock market, or…
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I didn’t expect The Weekender to pop up so early.
Cross-posting what I just put on Friday’s MM
The know-nothing strain of Americanism was turbo-charged by the social media age. There was never a come-uppance for being a holocaust denier, or evolution denier, or climate denier in the 80s or 90s or 00s- and THEN the most massive, all-consuming, 24/7 piped-into-your-brain disinformation system grew up around and supporting that.
Home schooling and vouchers education. RW disinfo news networks. Blogs and podcasts. Any possible escape from realism has been offered, safe spaces and cocoons to hide away in. Even churches (which were never bastions of realism) began lying about their own precepts. Basically teaching the opposite of the accepted message that Christianity had pushed for 100s if not thousands of years. Our modern world, modern America, offered no punishment for people who went that route.
The real info has been out there this whole time and we see which way people have shifted. The people offering the disinfo have seen geometric growth, profits, and enthusiasm. None of this is the Dems fault.
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And no real way to combat it.
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Right. Like trying to stop a suicidal or addicted person. Americans, by a huge margin, want to bury their head in the sand and we can’t stop that.
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I’m thinking of John Lewis and the protests of civil rights movement times. Nonviolence only becomes impressive when participants willingly accept the suffering that will surely accompany it. Are there American citizens willing to accept the consequences of protest now and the time coming?
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Hello Puppy
Who’s the fat cat?
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Some weekend fun after a week that was, well, a lot.
(And I know I’ve posted this video before, but left out why our resident cat enthusiasts might enjoy these anime closing credits: the living ‘welcoming cat’ in the static opening shot adopts a realistically rendered kitten later in the credits and they do some synchronized dancing. Pretty fun!)
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That rhythm is a wakerupper!
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What is coming is a hard life lesson for those who deny the evidence before their eyes
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Trump convinced many, many Americans that Obama wasn’t born in the US. We thought that nonsense would go away at some point. It didn’t, it just grew. Someone called me a Socialist the other day and I asked him what he thought a socialist was. He replied, “All Democrats are socialist. All Democrats are corrupt.” He truly had no idea what socialism was. He was immersed in a world of “insulting the libs”. The mighty right -wing Wurlitzer did us in. It’s not hard to do, it just takes a lot of repetition. It doesn’t have to be logical or make sense to sway people, it just needs repetition.
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Puppy’s mom, Lilith.
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it’s a mini-banger. 
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Maybe we need to adopt Homer Simpson’s response when he emerges from a bunker and discovers that a nuclear blast has destroyed Springfield and he’s the only survivor: “It’s time to laugh again!”
Or maybe just play the “We’ll Meet Again” sequence from “Dr. Strangelove” on a loop.
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With themes of Nazis, looting, and resistance bouncing around in my head - hmm, I wonder why - I rewatched The Train with Burt Lancaster who plays a French Resistance rail worker fighting to keep a Nazi officer, played by Paul Schofield, from shipping all of the artwork they looted from France back to Germany as the allies are days from retaking Paris. It’s a great film, shot in black and white, which really fit my mood. Vive la résistance!
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The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston Churchill
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American voters just voted for a world of hurt. I wonder if they will make the connection when the hurt arrives.
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So much shit is about to hit the fan that I expect the fan will stop.
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They might, hope springs eternal and all that, but for forty years it’s been a cycle of Republicans making a mess, Democrats painfully cleaning it up followed by voters angry from the pain punishing them by electing Republicans again so if any connection is made by enough citizens to make a difference it is certainly taking its sweet time about it.
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