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Why is the media on the left? Why the contempt for workers?
Asia Times ^ | December 4, 2016 11:14 PM (UTC+8) | Reuven Brenner

Posted on 12/05/2016 2:46:07 AM PST by expat_panama

I spent the first fourteen years of my life under communism. When my parents got out in 1962, I realized to my utter astonishment that much of academia was on the left, praising communism, rationalizing increased centralization of powers under a variety of jargons. Even the US was not immune to these ideas, and that the left and academia despised workers who wanted routine lives, rather than revolutions.

All this came to my mind during the last few weeks, both with Fidel Castro’s deat...

...cry their hearts out again about the increased inequality – which, with minimal introspection, would have been predictable...

...How did much of the mainstream media turn so blind? And where does their contempt for workers come from, that using the term “deplorable” did not even instantly raise eyebrows?...

...It is nice to be subsidized revolutionaries. But even “leftover” Bernie Sanders must have noticed that his initial calls for “Revolution!” frightened a bit his crowds and he toned down his rhetoric. Later, he and Hillary just promised to get rid of students’ debts...

...many optimists who thought that digital media and the lowered barriers to entry would be a remedy for both media and the universities and restore some common sense. I was not among the optimists, having long observed – from experience both in business and living in various countries under different regimes, that only “Default, risks of falling behind are Mothers of Inventions.” As long as government continue to subsidize academia rather indiscriminately and unaccountably, and they continue to subsidize media too (in Canada the bleeding cash print media is now begging the Federal government for subsidies, the latter already heavily subsidizing the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) – the grasshoppers will continue to sing and dance, and the workers will be taxed.

(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: economy; investing; media
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1 posted on 12/05/2016 2:46:07 AM PST by expat_panama
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To: expat_panama

2 posted on 12/05/2016 2:55:12 AM PST by jsanders2001
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To: expat_panama

“Yes, why not tax the already hard working kids of that age group even more, and give demonstrating students more puppies and coloring books?”

Pretty much sums up the Left in academia and government.


3 posted on 12/05/2016 3:09:06 AM PST by jacknhoo (Luke 12:51. Think ye, that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, no; but separation.)
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To: expat_panama

A motivated researcher could dig through the video way back machine and find plenty of footage of American commiescum announcing, loud/proud and clear, their intent to conduct a “Long March” through all our institutions.

We sat on our hands and just let it happen.

It’s as much our own fault as it is the domestic enemy’s. We allowed an obvious and self declared domestic enemy completely redefine the rules of engagement to suit themselves at will. We allowed that same domestic enemy to redefine words and concepts, including our Constitutional “protections” to suit their own ends at will and without contest.

We played the Vichy and the Quisling.

We were, all of us, moral cowards in refusing to confront the blatant domestic enemy in their predations and perfidies.


4 posted on 12/05/2016 3:12:55 AM PST by Grimmy (equivocation is but the first step along the road to capitulation)
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To: jacknhoo

I was explaining to my journalist sister that in contrast, being a lawyer presenting a case, no one gives a sh-t what your opinion is about anything.


5 posted on 12/05/2016 3:18:30 AM PST by yldstrk (My heroes have always been cowboys)
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To: yldstrk

Journalism and other “scribbling” professions tend to attract individuals with Messianic (”I am going to save the world”) complexes.

This “Anti-Capitalistic Mentality” (Ludwig Von Mises classic study) is also found in academia, non-profit foundations, government bureaucracies, and in non-business related law practices.

Needless to say, these folks are a danger to individual liberty.


6 posted on 12/05/2016 3:35:09 AM PST by cgbg (Pedophiles--the siren is wailing--incoming!)
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To: Grimmy
“It’s as much our own fault as it is the domestic enemy’s. We allowed an obvious and self declared domestic enemy completely redefine the rules of engagement to suit themselves at will. We allowed that same domestic enemy to redefine words and concepts, including our Constitutional “protections” to suit their own ends at will and without contest.”

Well-stated, and I entirely agree.

7 posted on 12/05/2016 3:43:40 AM PST by pieceofthepuzzle
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To: expat_panama

Media are part of the elite...paid off by the politicians, married to politicians etc. Many are power hungry control freaks who gravitated to journalism because they could control people with their own spin. Control and lust for power is what socialism is, so naturally they are all a bunch of leftists.

Once enough of these leftists gained a foothold in the media and press, they systematically drummed out anyone who was not like them.

Just like in the university system, the leftists gained power little by little until they hit the tipping point. Now there are maybe 8% of professors nationwide who are not raging communists. I think we have more commies in America now than in Russia.


8 posted on 12/05/2016 4:07:49 AM PST by bigtoona (Make America Great Again! America First!)
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To: jsanders2001

Dr. John Hardon called the media satanic. Why was there more hunger, to the point of man made famine, after the agricultural revolution that started in England with the enclosure of community lands? Why was it proposed to burn on the English docks, the excess of industrial revolution produced manufactured goods, to keep the poor gainfully employed, but too poor to buy them themselves. Why has the information age been characterised by mass delusion, the science of psychological manipulation of billions, instead of cheap, high quality education, and mass distribution of knowledge of the truth?


9 posted on 12/05/2016 4:30:20 AM PST by CharlesOConnell (CharlesOConnell)
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To: expat_panama
Why is the media on the left? Why the contempt for workers?
First question first: Why do you call journalism “the media?”

Because you mean nothing else, anymore - and you shouldn’t. Originally the use of “the media” included the leftist tendencies in movies and TV drama. But, people seem to have absorbed the lesson (tho not likely from my having argued it here, I’m not that optimistic about my own influence) that you can’t censor fiction, the most you can do is shame fictional “non”fiction.

Next question: Why is journalism monolithic? That, I have concluded, follows naturally from the fact that journalists talk - to each other - a lot: 

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
And people of the trade of journalism not only read each other’s output, they get most of their information from the wire services. Thus, they read each other’s input as well as output. Wire service journalism is group-think.

But what is the nature of journalism at its core? It is the reporting of news that will attract attention. Does the news that I plan to build a house qualify? Probably not. Does the fact that I have bought a lot qualify? Probably not. Each increment of the process is mundane, and after a period of months a house appears and I move in. With no excitement. But let that house burn down, and what is the reaction??? The change in value - from no house, to a house, took place gradually and predictably - but the destruction of the same house took place overnight. The change in value is much quicker, and it is negative instead of positive. Journalism is about bad news, almost exclusively. It is scarcely too much to say that “good news is advertising.”

So journalism is all the same, and journalism is negative. And yet, knowing it is negative, journalism claims to be objective. There are objections to this. The first is that it is an arrogant claim; no one can know that they actually are objective. Secondly, it is a self-negating claim, in that the sine qua non of any attempt at objectivity is candor about the reasons why you might not be objective. The claim of actual objectivity - not just of diligent effort towards objectivity - is precisely the opposite of such candor. And third, the claim that negativity is objectivity is cynicism.

SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

For “some writers” substitute “journalists” (“the media,” if you must). For “society” substitute “workers” (if you must; actually “society” is the correct word). Recognize that to identify “a blessing” (society) with an "evil” (government, even if “necessary”) can only be described as cynical about society, and naïveté about government.

"The contempt for workers” is cynicism about society. “The media” is “on the left” because it is cynical about society, and naive about government. Which I take to be the proper definition of “socialism.” Or, “on the left."


10 posted on 12/05/2016 4:33:43 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion ('Liberalism' is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)
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To: expat_panama

The left supposedly was about the worker, but it turns out they are only about workers if they can be used as cannon fodder. In the west it turns out that workers have their own agenda, and would like to be left alone to pursue it... this makes them unsuitable as cannon fodder. So the left has had to go in search of others to use as mobs and shock troops.

Its OK, though. There are always disaffected, ignorant, unhappy souls to be exploited. The left will find them if they have to invent them.


11 posted on 12/05/2016 4:54:54 AM PST by marron
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To: expat_panama

Those who can’t do...teach! Those who can’t teach...teach gym!


12 posted on 12/05/2016 4:58:29 AM PST by gr8eman (Don't waste your energy trying to understand commies. Use it to defeat them!)
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To: marron

It’s now also happening in the Christian churches.

Even the militant homosexual movement is making inroads into the church. For example, the current heretic pope would rather look the other way instead of confronting the degenerate homosexual mafia.


13 posted on 12/05/2016 5:02:41 AM PST by Flavious_Maximus
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To: expat_panama

It’s not so much contempt for workers as it is blind worship of the Holy Mother Welfare State. Journalists will defend it to the death - even going so far as to support those Republicans who back its expansion and to bash the few Democrats who want to rein it in. They always reflexively support the candidates who most strongly favor expanding and strengthening the welfare sate, having been taught all their lives that - as Bob Scheiffer once put it - such candidates are “on the side of the angels.”


14 posted on 12/05/2016 5:09:08 AM PST by Mr. Jeeves ([CTRL]-[GALT]-[DELETE])
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

Journalists are also fascinated by their own words and the way they can string them creatively creatively and convincingly. It is often style v. content with cleverness a valuable attribute of the story or article. Journalist writing style varies little from that of the novelist whom the journalist would like to be. There is a big difference in writing for truth and writing for attention.


15 posted on 12/05/2016 5:18:16 AM PST by yetidog
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To: Grimmy

Just as revolutions must reach a critical mass before they can be taken seriously, so does the resistance to them, the counter-revolution. Fortunately, dialectical forces always provide that pendulum swing. When the revolutionary force becomes too odious (as in the Reign of Terror in France or obama’s “fundamental transzformation”) the resistance gels and the counter-revolution begins.

It has taken conservatives this long to galvanize and start the pendulum swinging back toward sanity. Expect resistance. Fierce, probably even violent , resistance.


16 posted on 12/05/2016 5:19:43 AM PST by IronJack
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To: expat_panama

Media are on the left because media people don’t think of themselves as working for a living even when they speak the phrase. They think of themselves as crusaders for the right and Good. At the same time they do not have any emotional attachment with Work. They feel they are awarded a stipend so that they can pursue their calling of Making the World a Better Place which quickly becomes making everyone (else) absolutely “equal.” Any connection to the real world that may have held over from their youth dissipates in most of them. Academics and many teachers suffer from the same disease. Trust fund kids and those who got too rich too fast have variations of the syndrome. For them lots of money is just the background of existence. Others’ lack can only be due to the system or to nefarious greedy types taking it away. They have no understanding of what money is and where it comes from.


17 posted on 12/05/2016 5:48:04 AM PST by arthurus (Mrs Clinton is The Great Conniver.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

you formatted that as a if quoted from elsewhere. Care to share where?


18 posted on 12/05/2016 5:51:27 AM PST by KC Burke (Consider all of my posts as first drafts. (Apologies to L. Niven))
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To: Flavious_Maximus

Current heretic pope ,,, homosexual mafia. It’s more complicated than that, you have to move your sights with the moving target to hit him where he WILL be.


19 posted on 12/05/2016 5:52:05 AM PST by CharlesOConnell (CharlesOConnell)
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To: KC Burke

Select the quote, search with Google.


20 posted on 12/05/2016 5:52:45 AM PST by CharlesOConnell (CharlesOConnell)
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