Interesting article....very well thought out.
Anybody that knows me knows that I am not, repeat,
not, left-wing, to say the least. But this piece is comparatively non-partisan. I don't agree with him on a few points, but it's a thoughtful analysis, worth the read.
MSN
Part II
In regards to my closing comments of the previous post, consider the following,
"In addition to blame, there would be a profound reckoning about how the Democratic Party lost its mainstream appeal. Once it offered a home to a wide spectrum of voters (fiscal conservatives, progressives, bipartisan moderates, lefties) while embracing classic American tenets such as tolerance, free speech, patriotism and a global helping hand. There was a tangible pride in its representation of the old and the young, the well-heeled and the up-and-coming, the patriarchs and the new arrivals. Now it is fragmented and disordered, plagued by infighting, resentment and second-guessing, resembling a dog with a flea on its tail, chasing itself, circling, biting, without calm or cohesion, or a fresh mainstream policy agenda. And, of course, as much as Democrats are loath to admit it, or even think about it, Trump has taken advantage of their move to the far left to take more of the ground in the political center than they could have ever imagined."
Aside from the fact the reader is manipulated by having that paragraph interrupted by a picture (and a picture of what appears to be an angry man most readers won't recognize), that paragraph's claims are not entirely true. The Democratic Party has not lost its "
mainstream appeal." That's a lie. It's propaganda. America is split right down the middle as far as two-party politics goes and it has always been that way. Polls consistently show half the population is Dem and half is Repub. Mainstream America is divided into two parties. The Democratic Party is half of the "mainstream." If anything was lost, then it is the appeal within their half of the mainstream. And, again, the professionals at MSN know this and yet Mr. Halperin wrote that paragraph. He's supposed to be the best and his professional ethics are supposed to prevent that kind of misrepresentation.
A more accurate view would be that the "mainstream" still holds values of the Democratic Party but there is a divide between the elite and the common voter. An accurate view would be that one of the Democratic Parties strengths has always been its ability to gather minority populations (like LGBTQA++, ethnicities, and Socialists) and bring them together despite their often-opposing values. No minority is, by definition, representative of the whole. While they may or may not be constituent elements of the much larger "
mainstream," some minorities (like gays and/or socialists) do not share all of mainstream's values. Two things the vast majority of those in and out of the mainstream is the rule of law and a secure, thriving economy. Both parties have done a very wanting job of the former in recent years. The latter, however, is where the two sides of the mainstream come together and neither Harris or Biden helped the mainstream. In fact, they lied, lied blatantly, and lied often. Politicians lie. That's not news, and Trump has taken what politicians do to new heights in mockery (although that seems to have escaped everyone in the media), but what Biden and Harris did the last four years hurt the mainstream at home.
And there's no mention of that in the article, either.
That sentence "
Once it offered a home to a wide spectrum of voters (fiscal conservatives, progressives, bipartisan moderates, lefties) while embracing classic American tenets such as tolerance, free speech, patriotism and a global helping hand," is reminiscent of Marc Antony's funeral speech about the honorable men who slayed Caesar in Shakespeare's
third act of Julius Caesar. They are not tolerant. That article is about a supposed enormous dilemma facing the Democratic Party and the likelihood of "dunking' (which is code for blame and scapegoating. Tolerant people do not blame and scapegoat. They do not support free speech, either. There's a raging debate going on in America right now over what to do with social media, whether or not to prevent certain content, and what is permitted or not, and to what degree can or should the federal government be involved. Donald Trump was castigated for claiming there was a thing that could actually be called "fake news," but we all now know there is a lot of fake news. Orange Man bad.... but he was right. Polls consistently show 69-78% of journalists self-report to being politically left of center. In places like NPR to 99% and when WaPo surveyed its editors 100% of them were Democrats. In other words, the Democrats are free to speak, but none of their media institutions practices free speech. Facebook and Youtube have become a jokes as far as free speech goes. The fact is the so called "alternative media" and the division between liberal and conservative news would not exist if the liberals had been objective with the news. As far as patriotism goes, this is very simple: globalization is antithetical to patriotism, and the Democratic Party is easily much more globalist than the Republican. Halperin knows this so he also, therefore, knows he is lying. As far as a "
global helping hand goes," the Monroe Doctrine (protecting the Americas) was globally helpful. Pax Americana was globally helpful. Allowing South and Central American countries to go to hell is not global helpfulness and that neglect is directly responsible for the current migrant crisis we now face. Halperin knows this too, so he also knows he was lying.
The article is a propaganda piece, an effort to get ahead of what might happen starting November 6th and frame those events ahead of time for MSN readers, most of whom are left-of-center readers.
The Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics can be found
HERE. I took some journalism classes many decades ago when I was trying to decide my major. We were hammered with the need to be ethical and there was a lot of debate raging about the lack of objectivity routinely occurring in media. Back then we used to draw a line between news and commentary, even in the light of historical realities like "
muckraking," "
yellow journalism," and the political influences of Pulitzer and Hearst, but that line eroded beyond redemption long ago and now, as a consequence, we have two versions of every bit of news, not one factual news with multiple opinions. I mention this and cite the ethics code because once this is known, reading/hearing news and commentary is never again the same. Marc Halperin is a propagandist, not a journalist, and he knows it.
I strongly encourage everyone with an interest to read Gaye Tuchman's book, "
News Making: A Study in the Construction of Reality." It's a long read and a bit boring in places but it's also phenomenal in its examination of how news is made. Tuchman is a sociologist. She is also politically left of center. She hung out at the news offices of several agencies in the Seattle, Washington area. The state of Washington has long leaned left. I say this so you know Tuchman is not inherently antagonistic to what she studied. She didn't go there looking to rake muck. She does a very good job of objectively recounting the editorial process in which tons of information comes into these organizations and is then selected for local, national, and/or international distribution. If it's read, the news and journalism will never be seen the same again.
