Tag Archives: Politics

Streak Day #11 Sucks (and some stuff about the Democratic primary/Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72

Today is the last day of the WordPress week and I’m right on the brink of having a record number of weekly views. Sort of. The highest week I’ve had yet has been 210 and this week’s total is currently 182: I need 28 more views before midnight tonight to pull this off. I doubt it — this post isn’t going to be one to rake in views and I know it — but I’ve been praying in my own atheistic way to get some cosmic hope on my side.

I’ve said before that I’m done talking about politics here. Years ago the plan was to bitch about the most recent stupid thing Trump had done, and as an example, his handling of the coronavirus outbreak could possibly amount to ten easily written blog posts. Sadly, the thing with Trump is 1. he continually does shit to complain about and 2. everyone else is already shitting on him to a pathetic degree. Consider the countless “Twitter roasts Trump over [insert topic here]” posts and ‘news stories’ that you see shitting up social media. Good for the denizens on Twitter I guess, but these stories haven’t changed anything in the past three years and won’t change anything going forward.

So to hell with politics, at least writing about it. Lately I’ve been utterly fascinated by the Democratic primary process to an unhealthy degree. Honestly this is the reason I’m on my phone for literal hours in the morning. Most of us are aware that staring at a screen in the wee hours of the morning is a great way to fuck up your circadian rhythm, but I cannot pull myself away from my phone. Checking polls, reading Reddit comments on r/politics, pondering fivethirtyeight’s latest projections for the primary, waiting to see who Elizabeth Warren endorses, etc. The list is pretty long.

A month ago I ordered Hunter S. Thompson’s book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, a collection of his stories and reports from the Democratic primary and general election from, you guessed it, 1972. I’ve been loving the book so far. Initially I was hesitant to read it because it’s a book about politics (boring), but seeing as 2020 is an election year it sounded fitting in a way. Thompson’s writing is always so descriptive, dynamic, honest, and hilarious. if anyone could make an election interesting it would be him.

Most interesting about the book is the many parallels I see between the 1972 primary and the current 2020 primary. While things don’t mesh perfectly, the old saying is that history might not repeat itself but it does occasionally rhyme, and boy does it rhyme. In 1972 there were a handful of “safe” Democratic candidates such as Hubert Humphrey and Ed Muskie that were expected to be the nominee without any doubt; an underdog that no one actually gave a shit about, George McGovern; and good ole George Wallace from Alabama who famously stood in front of a school as black students were trying to enroll.

While 2020s George Wallace seems (thankfully) absent, the other three sound strangely familiar. McGovern sounds just like a Bernie Sanders and even seemed to share the far-left/antiwar/youth vote that Bernie commands today. McGovern won the nomination due to an impressive ground game and impassioned supporters that loved to campaign for the guy. Humphrey was the Democratic candidate in 1986, and Ed Muskie was I guess just really popular with the party. I’m thinking these are the Pete Buttigeigs and Joe Bidens of today. Sounds kinda familiar, huh?

Humphrey and Muskie commanded the “establishment” vote, most notably Thompson calls them party insiders, career politicians, and union bosses. While the union power is nearly a non-issue today, I think it has been replaced by the “big business/corporate” vote. The entire “party insider” deal sounds the exact same in 1972 as it does now in 2020. You know, candidates who want to slightly change things but not shake the boat too much.

There apparently was a large “ABM movement” — Anyone But McGovern — in 1972. As McGovern locked up delegates prior to the convention, the party insiders/bosses tried to work around actually electing him. This is clear today with most moderates and Democratic insiders flocking to Joe Biden to stop the “radical” Bernie Sanders from actually winning. This also happened in 2016 with Democratic superdelegates backing Hillary Clinton even before the primary process started. Today, as was in 1972, the party has it’s own vision of what it wants and needs to keep its power and sees some potential candidates as a threat to their interests.

This also happened famously with Donald Trump in 2016. The Republicans didn’t even want the unhinged bastard to win, but just couldn’t get their shit together long enough to back a strong Anyone But Trump candidate. Jeb!? Rubio? Fucking Ted Cruz? John Kasich? Lacking superdelegates, there was no way for them to steal the nomination from Trump. More rhyming…

We’re still early in the primary process and looking forward is foggy. I don’t know how many parallels will continue, especially since Joe Biden totally wiped Bernie on Super Tuesday last week and looks to be in a fantastic position to lock up the nomination in a few weeks. George McGovern went on to win the parties nomination despite party insider’s attempts to rob it from him. Will this happen to the 2020’s McGovern: Bernie Sanders? I don’t know. It looks bad for him going forward, but it has been a strange primary this year, and a strange year in general. I wouldn’t count out some ridiculous scenario in the Universe’s plans.

Even bleaker to think about is the fact that McGovern lost in a massive landslide to none other than Richard Fucking Nixon in November 1972. We all know what happened to Nixon after 1972 and similarities between the legal issues Trump is having (whether you think they’re justified or not) makes you wonder. I’m nervous about seeing Sanders this way if he did win the nomination; would he be another McGovern? And would we have another four years of 2020’s souped up version of Nixon: Donald Trump?

It’s a great book, check it out if you’re interested in Hunter S. Thompson, politics, and especially if you’re interested in both. Try not to be terrified at how similar everything sounds though.

Greta is our Hero

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Note: I wrote this a week ago and with my ever present procrastination it sat around in Google Docs doing absolutely nothing. I even thought about scrapping it. But yesterday I found a news story saying that the main motivation for this writing, Greta Thunberg, was actually nearby! She was in Iowa which is notable in and of itself. Iowa isn’t exactly where you’d expect to find someone with worldwide fame to be at outside of presidential candidates during Primary Season. Coincidentally, I was in Iowa last weekend when I was bitching about hotels. I’m well experienced with the absolute nothing that is in Iowa: they have corn and that’s about it. I also can’t shit on Iowa too much because I myself live in Illinois, another state that can easily be described with the singular word that is “corn.” (And Chicago I suppose.) So the stars aligned and Greta was only a few hundred miles away from where I am now and stupidly close to where I was last weekend. Let’s publish this shit and get it over with while I naively think the Universe is sending me signals.

This post is clearly breaking with tradition by not featuring something “that sucks” but if anything what does suck is our inability to actually change the world as individuals. I wrote an early post about that here if you want to check it out. Instead of dwelling on the negativity of our helplessness I want to take a more positive approach. Crazy, right?

Greta Thunberg is yada yada and I’m sure you’ve heard about it all on either mainstream news stations, social media, our your drunken, second-amendment-obsessed right-winger uncle. And I’m sure you already have your opinions of her depending on what you’re brainwashed to believe: she’s either a personal hero (raises hand) or a total fucking villain, something something deepstate/liberal propaganda puppet. I don’t like giving an overview of people like this because it’s tedious and boring; anything or anyone I write about is probably popular enough that you already know who they are. So yeah, Greta. You already know her.

But hey, didn’t you say you weren’t going to write anything political anymore? Yeah, you’re right actually, and that hasn’t changed. What you might not realize is that climate change isn’t political at all. It’s established scientific fact, kinda like the theory of general relativity, quantum mechanics, and electromagnetism are (and surprisingly aren’t politicized). Climate change is such sound science that I’m not going to dick around with proving it to you guys: it’s like trying to explain that the sky is actually blue. I’m not going to prove shit because it’s already been proven. The idea that climate science is a political topic is just some bullshit wizardry invented by those that have a personal interest in the public’s ignorance on the topic.

Why Greta is so beloved/hated is due to how outspoken she is in regards to climate change. She is also a young female which also attracts the ire of detractors. She isn’t wrong though: the climate is a finely tuned and immensely complex machine that has developed over literally millions of years. Humans destabilizing the machine within a few hundred years leaves ecosystems with nowhere near enough time to change and adapt and it’s this upcoming collapse of ecosystems that is the real issue with climate change. As much as people like to think they’re separate from nature we are as much a part of it as any other lifeforms on earth. We’re hopelessly dependent upon the very ecosystems were destabilizing. Greta is pissed about all of this because people have been fucking up the planet for decades well aware of the problem at hand and have done jack to prevent any of it. She’s basically been telling world leaders to get their fucking shit together because we don’t have much room for error going forward.

I think Greta speaks for all of us too: why can’t people in charge get their shit together? Why are companies allowed to pollute and pump endless amounts of CO₂ into the air? Why doesn’t somebody do something?! Note how we always gripe about someone or somebody else. Here’s where I slightly disagree with what Greta is saying: we are the people that need to be doing something! You and I are the problem, and asking or demanding someone else like companies/governments to do something is slightly missing the point. The only problem here is that us, as individuals, feel utterly powerless to do anything to prevent climate change. While we actually hold all the power, we don’t know how to wield it.

Companies don’t pollute for the hell of it because that would go against simple economics. Everyone acts in their own self-interests, corporations as well as us consumers, and this is what drives the world’s mostly capitalist economies. It isn’t a perfect system but it seems to be the economic system that works the best. Us as consumers want good products for cheap and companies provide those products to us to earn the most customers/money. Consider the electric companies: they don’t burn coal for the hell of burning coal, they burn coal because it is the cheapest form of fuel they can find and if they find anything cheaper they’ll switch to that. The problem isn’t companies blatantly polluting, the problem is they have no incentive to do otherwise because us consumers demand their products.

The reason none of us alter our daily activities and habits is because we all feel powerless. If I was the head of a giant corporation I know I could take drastic measures to combat climate change. The same is true if I was a politician. But I’m neither of those things and am just some random guy in Illinois. What can I do to stop climate change? And why would I want to change anything if it will be utterly futile? This is why we want the government or corporations to do something; we can’t do a damn thing because we feel powerless as individuals.

We can stop climate change dead in its tracks if we collectively got our shit together as individuals. We are the problem, but by being the problem we are also the solution.

And back to Greta. Greta is our hero because she can unite us usually helpless feeling individuals and give us direction. I really think humans by our very nature require leaders. Left alone we kinda zip off in our own directions and wander around with misdirected motivation. I think of bugs or moths around a light a night: each of us while wanting to do something is zipping around lost, confused, misguided and undirected. If only we had someone to give a voice to those who feel they have no voice and to give us all a direction to move towards. Someone to inspire us.

And that’s what I think Greta’s main power is. We all like her sticking it to world leaders and corporations but they only do what their constituents/consumers want. They’re only working as they should in a capitalist economy. (Maybe that is the problem? There is no incentive to work in a carbon neutral way because there is no economic incentive to do so. I think a carbon tax might be a good idea, although I’m no expert.) But with Greta sticking it to the world leaders, she gets us all on the same page. She gets people passionate about climate change and has us asking What can we do to help stop climate change? I know I’ve been asking myself that same question over and over the past week and I can only imagine that other people are doing the same thing I am, possibly by the millions. We’re not alone and she reminds us of that.

Facebook Sucks: Overexposure

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We live in shitty times. If it hasn’t been obvious, I despise Donald Trump and the way the country is heading. Environmental rules are being ripped apart, multibillion dollar businesses somehow are getting tax cuts while everyone else is given pocket-change tax breaks, we seem to be on the verge of a nuclear war every few weeks, and you can’t go a month without hearing that another school has been shot up and that the NRA lobbied as hard as can be to stop anything from being done about it. Russian’s are running rampant on social media while no one cares and our international imagine is faltering. It almost feels that America is falling apart.

Some people have a problem with watching too much news and news programs don’t do shit to “fix” the problem because if the world is shit and they hype things up they get better ratings and more money from advertisements. It’s a shitty system where the news is rewarded by sensationalizing everything and making everything breaking news. What’s actually nice about the news is that it’s linear though; they can only talk about a single news story at one time. And like you might be aware, they usually drag it out for hours and hours by having “experts” give their opinions. The world is shit, but you might only be aware of one single aspect of it that is shit. When Florida was getting shot up people forgot about whatever new Trump scandal was happening. It’s linear and you get one shitty aspect of the world at one time.

How about Facebook or other social media? You already know how it is. Depending on what you like and follow you might see a myriad of bullshit as you mindlessly scroll down the page. Kids are getting shot, the NRA throws money to not fix the problem, lawmakers don’t care, and teachers will have guns. Or, conversely, illegal immigrants get better treatment than veterans, the media is shitting all over Trump unfairly, and the democrats are pushing the Russia deal to shit on Trump. Also liberals stopped the pledge of allegiance because of tears. It doesn’t matter what you believe because you’re still going to be convinced that the world is going to hell. Everyone knows the world is going to shit.

I can’t get on Facebook and not feel shitty simply because I become aware of not a few bad things, but all of them. Whereas TV news focuses on single stories forever, when you scroll Facebook you see about ten or twenty problems with the world. This also happens every time you check the damn thing. You don’t even have to read the stories because the headlines are shitty enough. Even if you click the link and read the story there are still more clickbait news stories at the bottom of the page to tempt you!

Coupled with the feeling that the world is going instantly to hell is the feeling of helplessness that is involved with seeing the news. Everyone wants to help solve the problems facing America or the world, but what can the single person on Facebook do? Nothing. Say it again. Nothing. You can’t do a damn thing. Most people try sharing links or joining groups and ~~discussing~~ complaining about the issues but you’re either insulting those with opposing views or circle-jerking your worldview with others that share the same outlook. Think about it: has a person sharing anything on Facebook really changed your opinion? Has someone sharing a gun control post really changed the mind of a hardcore second amendment bastard? Has the opposite ever happened? Not that I’m aware of and it seems near impossible. Yet we keep sharing thinking that we’re doing something to fix the world. Because doing something is better than nothing, RIGHT?

Facebook gives you the idea that the world is terrible and that you can’t do anything to change it. And even if you are trying to change it no one is listening to you. You feel like shit, but listen. Shut your computer, phone, or whatever else you dose up on drama with and go outside. Look around. I see trees, houses, dead but soon to be alive grass and the occasional squirrel. Sometimes a loud jackass on a motorcycle drives down the road but other than that the world is rather quiet and peaceful. I don’t see kids shooting each other with guns and I don’t see animals going extinct. The shittiest thing I see is that Mountain Dew bottle someone tossed by our mailbox. The world is shit, but it’s shit in a way that doesn’t personally affect you much. Outside and the world doesn’t seem too bad really.

I’m not saying to ignore the problems because the world does have some serious problems. I’m just saying not to let them consume you and sacrifice the quality of your life. Climate change is a problem but shitposting on Facebook isn’t going to help it. Stop driving your car as much or ride your bike but don’t worry about it in an unhealthy way. How about guns? You really can’t do shit about that so don’t even try. Just go outside and do whatever the fuck you like to do. Go run, or bike ride, or whatever. Facebook Sucks because it magnifies the problems in the world in a forum that makes change and discussion nearly impossible. You feel shitty and helpless. This doesn’t help anyone or anything. Taking a break from Facebook might make you feel happier about the world and your place in it. Give it a shot. Because Facebook Sucks.

Edit: It was during writing this I found a New York Times article about a dude who, being upset and depressed with Donald Trump’s win, decided to keep himself ignorant about all political matters. It’s an interesting read and touches on some of the same points I did here in regards to Facebook.

The Illinois Primary Sucks

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(This is a dreaded “political post” but not about the typical dumpster fire. Maybe it won’t be so bad.)

The Illinois primary for Governor is Tuesday. This post is a little late in coming but with a deadline comes desperation which brings motivation. The primaries should mostly be focused on the democrats because our governor is a republican (Brucey Rauner) and will certainly win his primary. What’s more important is Brucey is pretty well hated in our state and we will (almost certainly) elect a democrat for our next governor. In effect we’re choosing our next governor based on whoever wins the democratic primary Tuesday. So who’s running?

We have three “big candidates”: J.B. Pritzker, Chris Kennedy, and Daniel Bliss. Surprisingly (really unsurprisingly), I know who’s going to win. It’ll be J.B. Pritzker. Why? Because he’s rich as fuck that’s why.

Here’s a link that, while a bit older, describes what these people make or are worth. I know they’re different numbers but you get an idea about how much money they have to throw around. Kennedy made over a million dollars last year, and J.B. made about 9 million dollars and is worth over 3 billion dollars apparently. Biss, along with his wife, made $55,000. Wow. Biss is poor as fuck.

J.B. will win because if you have three billion dollars you can spam ads everywhere. Every few days I get a goddamn Pritzker ad in the mail (which immediately goes into the trash), and I see other ads for the bastard everywhere. Facebook spams me with Pritzker ads and the TV yells Pritzker ads at me. That’s all anyone in Illinois hears about is Jay Bee Pritzker. It’s exhausting.

A wild Pritzker ad appears! Seriously, these things are like Zubats in caves.

Politicians don’t win elections based on how decent their policies and ideas are. They’re successful based on how well they can get their names out to the masses. It’s one big, stupid popularity contest. You could have the best candidate ever but if they don’t have money to throw around they don’t have any chance of winning. It’s sad, but that’s how it is. Politics Suck.

You could also blame the voters. People walk into the booths on primary day with little idea of anything. They vote for the name that is most familiar. How many ill-informed voters will stroll in to vote only knowing there’s some democrat named J.B. running? Enough of them to guarantee victory for the guy. JB? Hmm. I’ve heard of him. And his name sounds cool! *Fills in bubble*

I’m sick of rich people being in politics. I get that “business people” are seen as good candidates for office, but damn, can we quit having billionaires running for things? Having a fuckton of money doesn’t show you can successfully represent people; it just means you have a fuckton of money. So say hello to our future governor of Illinois J.B. Pritzker. He might be qualified and he might be a good governor and you should notice that I haven’t mentioned anything about specific policies. This is mostly because policies don’t matter and that’s not why he’ll win. He’ll win because he’s rich as fuck and can buy advertisements. That’s it. Once again, Politics Suck.

An Update (Which Sucks)

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So here’s what I’ve been up to the past few months (besides not posting a damn thing on Everything Sucks). I was working a new job which over the course of a half-year became unbearable. I worked for two package shipping companies which as you would expect was a mistake during the holiday season. I made it through peak season but instantly quit one of the jobs afterwards. Thinking about going back to that job makes me physically ill.

My sister said that motivation is like a muscle: you can only use it so much. She might’ve stolen that from somewhere so don’t blame me for stealing someone’s quote because I didn’t know about it. I suppose that working two jobs outside in the winter wore me out a bit and the blog suffered from neglect (along with my diet, my weight, my happiness, and my sobriety, etc.). I intend to change that now that I’ve quit.

A few of my older posts were rather political. Now don’t get me wrong, Donald Trump is a piece of shit and probably the worst president we’ve ever had, but there isn’t any point in blogging about it. The way I see it there is way too much political shit out there and I’m really worried that people are becoming fatigued by it. Trump Sucks, Trump Sucks day after day but we’re stuck with him so why fucking throw it up on the news nonstop. People are just to the point that they don’t give a fuck to hear anymore, or at least I am.

I took a break from the constant stream of news and toxic social media and the quality of my life improved immensely. Others should try not being exposed as much.

More to the point, why should I blog about it? As much as I’d like to think that I can change people’s minds I probably can’t. If the (“failing”) New York Times can’t get Trump supporters to change their minds with actual in-depth reporting why the fuck would some random unknown blogger such as TheBlackHairedGuy change any minds? It would be like expecting this shit to actually change my (or any anti-Trumpers) mind. It won’t and it works both ways. Their stupid shit won’t change my mind, and my stupid shit won’t change their minds.

Writing about politics itself Sucks. Trump is so goddamn all over the place I’d be chasing headline after headline and that’s exhausting. Even though it’d be “popular” to shit on Trump it’s a very cheap sort of popularity. Political posts also age very quickly and my last post about the Nazi dudes is such long forgotten news that it’s pointless to even have it up anymore. Do you even remember RyanCare? I sure didn’t.

I want Everything Sucks to be about things that Suck, but I want it to be in a fun and maybe depressing way. A sort of “Haha, life is shit, but it’s kinda funny.” So that’s what I’m going to try to stick to. And goodbye to the political posts because they Suck.

Facebook Advertising Sucks: Avoiding the Echo Chambers

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I’ve recently been experimenting with Facebook advertising and this blog. I’ve known consciously for a long time that any endeavour is successful in a large part by how you sell yourself: you can’t just have a really good blog or business or whatever and expect that word of mouth can carry you to success. You could have the best damn widget ever and no one will ever buy it if they don’t know about it. There is a lot of hard work and shamelessly selling yourself on the road to success. I say I’ve known this consciously because while I’ve known it, I didn’t really believe it at a really deep level. Anyways, while I want this blog to be successful, I don’t really intend for it to be an actual business. I figure if I get a bunch of readers I could sell T-shirts or something, mostly so people can rock my sister’s logo design, but it isn’t a get-rich-quick sort of scheme. It would be cool to get more readers, and see if that whole “selling yourself” idea works, and it would be an interesting experiment if I ever did try to start a business. So that was my motivation behind advertising, to see how effective it really is and to learn from it.

So I advertised (“boosted” in Facebook parlance) a few of my posts. The first one I advertised was the post about writing and typing; it was a fairly tame post that I figured people might find enjoyable. If you clicked the link you can see that it did get quite a bit of shares, more so than most other posts (33! Shit! I didn’t know it did that good!). Anyways, advertising on Facebook is cheap, easy, and does seem to get your message out to people. It also allows you to pick your audience by selecting interests that you want to target for your audience. Obviously for that post I selected people who liked reading, writing, and blogging. You want to advertise to people who the message will resonate with, obviously. More on that shortly…

For advertising my second post I wanted to go right for that juicy market that is Donald Trump hatred, and selected my scathing but fun post on covfefe. (And got 55 Facebook shares?!) It wasn’t so much trying to get those sort of readers, just that my first advertised post was fairly tame, and I wanted to get in on the mess of politics. When it came time to pick my audience it was obvious to select those who identify as liberal and who possibly lean towards liberal views. Duh. Like I said before, you want to target people who your message will resonate with. But this seems really cheap and easy, so I also targeted those who were very conservative and who leaned conservative. In a recent post about Echo Chambers (which I learned from advertising the covfefe post), I railed against people reading shit that agrees with their views. To me, what’s the point of advertising an obviously liberal point of view to people who lean liberal? I’d just be contributing to the “echo chamber” problem so why not advertise to the conservatives? So that’s what I did…

And it was kind of a mess.

First off, it finally clicked in my head that I had just spent $25 to target conservatives with a very anti-Trump post, and if you care to check this blog’s Facebook page, some people weren’t happy at all about it. Curiously, a bunch of liberals “liked” the post, but few conservatives shit on it, so I’m assuming many of the people angered by it just ignored it. Still, that isn’t as bad as shitting all over the page like some people did and could’ve, but it’s still wasted money by going absolutely nowhere. Advertising on Facebook Sucks because you pay to target an audience, so you’d naturally pick those who agree with you. No one in their right mind would pay to target those who hate their ideas and views. Imagine if Shell or Mobil gas tried to target electric car owners? Or if Tyson Foods advertised towards vegans and vegetarians:iIt’d be a waste of money.

Secondly, I don’t think this would get any sort of conversation going at all. Not a single conservative voter will read my blog posts and go “Hmm. He has a point. Trump is bad, what was I thinking?” The political posts I write are some vulgar, simple, and easy hit pieces on Trump and the Right, mostly because they make such obvious and easy targets on a page called Everything Sucks. While I don’t want my blog to only appeal and to target liberal-minded voters, trying to actually get a conversation going (while simultaneously shitting on Trump) on Facebook seems pretty stupid and futile. I mean if a newspaper as prestigious as the New York Times (“the failing @NYTimes”) can be labeled “Fake News” and shit on by Trump supporters, why would Everything Sucks and Facebook Advertising change anyone’s mind? It won’t…and I’d be dumb as hell to think it would.

So, in short, Facebook advertising is pretty cool if you just want to shamelessly support a page, company, blog, or whatever. It does work and is fantastic at getting your product (or whatever) out in the world for people to notice and perhaps utilize. This puts the success of your whatever on it’s quality and not if people have heard about it or not. My two blog posts got tons of views and shares after I advertised them, but in terms of trying to advertise to those who disagree? Hell no, because no one wants to spend money to reach people who will hate their message. Even if I’m trying to be inclusive and not contribute to creating my very own echo chamber, Facebook advertising sort of encourages advertising to people who will be supportive of your message. Facebook makes it so you can target an audience who will like your message, but this ease in getting positive feedback discourages any willful targeting of a dissenting audience, further contributing to people hearing what they want to hear. Facebook Advertising Sucks in getting a conversation going and further contributes to the problem of people having Echo Chambers where they can hear facts and opinions that already support their own opinions.

Echo Chambers Suck

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As a liberal-leaning person, I get really pissed off when my obvious conservative friends and acquaintances share news stories from Fox News. These stories are obviously biased (“But only because the mainstream media is left-biased!”) and I don’t understand why anyone would ever be proud of getting their news from such a biased source. But Fox News isn’t even that bad compared to Breitbart or some of the other really questionable news sources out there. I’m talking the American News sites out there. Everything on these sites are so perfectly geared to target the conservative mindset it’s almost unbelievable. I don’t get how people can read shit that just confirms everything they believe and not be any bit suspicious of it.

I used the conservative news outlets as an example because they are most obvious to me as a left-leaning person. But the thing is that the left has it’s own bullshit websites and it’s own news (or even “news”) networks that conjure up the same hate and nonsense that the right has. It isn’t as visible (to me at least) but it’s there and it’s equally pathetic.

For the equivalent of Fox News you have MSNBC. While Fox has shit to prop up the conservative agenda and try to make Trump out to be a masterful genius, MSNBC does the exact same thing in the opposite direction by demonizing him. Everything is how terrible Trump is, how he’s destroying America, how he’s moments away from being impeached, and while the stories do present facts, the speculation and “meaning” of those facts is used to paint Trump is a highly negative view. How about Huffington Post? Nope. I’ve read enough stories from there to know that it’s going to be feel-good liberal propaganda to get me and other like-minded people riled up about Trump. I don’t know how Mother Jones compares to American News, but they seem to be nearly equal and opposites of the same idea: fear mongering to appeal to a single side. Democracy Now! seems even worse though, go check it out.

I really think part of the problem with our current state of sensationalized, polarized politics is due to this sort of one-sided news reporting, where facts take second stage to the speculation behind a story. Facts are pretty damn tame stuff that sound boring. Do an experiment for yourself: go to the BBC News website and then go to either American News, Mother Jones, or Democracy Now! and check out how “important and scary” the headlines sound; how scary is the world we live in? The BBC reports some boring facts: Trump got his travel ban knocked down (again), there was an earthquake in Greenland, and…whatever. The Huffington Post declares that “TRUMP SLIPS ON BAN APPEAL.” Same news story with the same facts but different presentation in the headline. American News pronounces on a video that “Anti Sharia Law Rallies Erupt in Major Cities Across the Country – Chaos Ensues [LOOK]” Wow. Holy shit! Apparently people are trying to push Sharia law in the US and there’s basically a WAR going on over how crazy this is? Apparently the BBC doesn’t give two shits about it, probably because it’s sensationalized bullshit that a cheap conservative news website shoveled out to rally their base. HuffPost also mentions that a congressman unveiled an impeachment draft against Trump, which is curiously absent from the front page of the other two websites, almost as if it’s sensationalized bullshit that a cheap liberal news website shoveled out to rally their base. Democracy Now! has a damn category at the top called “Impeachment.” Protip: Trump isn’t immediately on the verge of being impeached (He’s going to be impeached — I’ll bet money on it — but it doesn’t require a headline yet.). CNN, just for shits and giggles declares that “Dennis Rodman heading to North Korea.” CNN has good bigly news people…[Like everything else, I wrote this shit yesterday so the headlines changed; you won’t see the headlines I mentioned. I can’t keep up with this shit.]

I’m not saying the BBC are infallible journalists or whatever, they just seem to present dry facts with minimal bullshit that these other examples present. My point here is that if you are a conservative and only read/watch conservative news, aren’t you just being spoonfed a bunch of shit that you already know and that makes you feel comfortable in your worldview? The same goes for a liberal person as well: if you already know for a fact that Trump is the devil himself, why do you need to read a bunch of shit confirming it? Whenever I see a link shared on Facebook from HuffPost or Democracy Now! I never click it because I know it’s going to be shit. Same when I see a Fox News or American News or Liberty-Whatever-The-Fuck-News from someone proclaiming “They’re going to take our guns!” It’s confirmation bias in a near textbook form — no one wants to possibly accept a different worldview so we close our minds off from the possibility while simultaneously thinking we’re being open to new facts but not really.

It doesn’t all involve simple news websites and channels as well: it also applies to social media. I think I’ll write more about this later, but we all have our favor sites to visit and people to interact with. Do these influence our worldview in a negative way? Do they tell us happy things we already know? Do they scare us into sticking with our current beliefs? I frequent Reddit, and I’ll use it as an example. Check out the World News subreddit. It leans left and if you look at any posts about Donald Trump it will have tons of hate. It’s fun to read too. Now check out The_Donald. It speaks for itself. They’re Echo Chambers: places to hear the same confirming facts over and over again.

So, obviously, that all Sucks. There are facts – indisputable facts – but the interpretation of those facts is down to whoever you seem to ask. If all you read are these borderline news websites that just regurgitate your worldview you aren’t learning anything and aren’t doing anything to solve the problem. We all have our Echo Chambers that solidify our worldviews and this does nobody any favors. This applies to both political outlooks conservative and liberal alike, so don’t think you’re up on a high horse when everyone else is stupid. It goes without saying that this lack of mixing ideas and compromising Sucks and has a large part to play in how polarized our current state of politics is.