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Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

Growing up in the 70s, we looked at news from the Soviet Union and other authoritarian regimes as blatantly untrue propaganda. By comparison, our press and government practiced transparency -- they may have lied, but not on the scale the others did.

I keep slipping back into believing the United States government believes in honesty and transparency, at least relatively more than other governments. In some areas it might, but not on major issues like war.

It's painful to watch a government that instituted the Marshall Plan actively destroy its credibility like this. Or to think of the consequences. Or to see them play out.

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I grew up in the 80s in the Soviet Union. And the thing is, we never believed their propaganda because it was too ridiculous. Everyone was laughing at the bullshit they heard on the radio and TV. True believers have disappeared probably the the mid 60s or so. Even defecting spies had stopped using "ideology" as the reason for their defection it was too unbelievable.

Likewise might happen in US. It seems two things has happened already. They stretched propaganda vs reality difference too thin. And the Internet.

It becomes harder to keep a straight face telling others about freedom, privacy, free market, human rights in light of news about torture, drones, spying etc. Also, without an ability to get access to alternative media and if Fox was the only channel available many would still thing this country was God's gift to humanity. It is just the pesky Internets that lets "domestic terrorists" like Occupy organize and share idea. Pesky little extremists forums like /r/news lets people discuss issues outside the mainstream media.

On another note. There was an old joke from back in the 90's. "When Soviet Union fell, we found out everything they told us about Communism was a lie. And everything they told us about America was true".

Good counter-propaganda after all, is often not telling lies just telling the dark truth the other side is trying to hide. In other words I doubt the Marshall Plan America is a good ol America or is it the America that still believed in segregation, raping South American countries for profit, installing brutal dictators in South East Asia and so on.

Good counter-propaganda after all is often not telling lies, just telling the dark truth the other side is trying to hide.

That's very well put.

That's really interesting to hear the "other side" as it were. I think the US mentality is to simply not tell you anything about the other county so that you don't develop any sort of personal feelings.

I was a child during the cold war, but I actually could not tell you one thing about any Russian person that I was told during that time, aside from the "evil" leaders hated our way of life and how they desperately wanted to destroy us.

Unfortunately I think that still works - it's still not that unusual to hear about how terrorist hate our freedom, want to take away our freedom, etc. If you have any interesting in understanding why such thing may be true - you have to go out of your way to find news about it.

I think it's just easier to paint yourself as good guys when you can leverage "us" vs "them" mentality. During cold war that was USA vs USSR, now its USA vs terrorists. Real beuty of that is that it works from boths sides - USA hated commies from USSR, USSR hated evil capitalists from USA. Now same thinking can be applied to both USA and terrorists (when you think about it - USA has invaded couple countries and is actively bulying rest of the world into shape). During cold war there was USSR to keep USA in check so to say. Now there's USA and some people without any real resources behind them fighting out of idea. Even sadder thing - both sides have people who believe all that "we" are good guys are absolutely true. I was born in USSR couple of years before collapse (I don't remember anything solid myself), but to this day my parents say that "then" things were better, everybody had jobs, everybody was happy (partly because vodka was water cheap, partly because nobody told anybody what really happened in places where happened things like biological or nuclear weapons manufacture). I can guarrantee you same exact things happened over in the USA. When I say "happened" i really mean "happens".. I can't currently decide who next will stomp over my country..

I was a child during the cold war, but I actually could not tell you one thing about any Russian person that I was told during that time,

I still remember Sting's song Russians with the rhetorical lyric, "Do the Russians Love their Children Too?"

Which is kind of the opposite of your point, since it wasn't Big Evil propaganda.

> It is just the pesky Internets that lets "domestic terrorists" like Occupy organize and share idea. Pesky little extremists forums like /r/news lets people discuss issues outside the mainstream media.

Why does everyone blame the evil MSM? Fox News was started because the MSM was 'too liberal'.

I mean, I sort of agree with your overall point, but if you want to see what 'domestic terrorists' could do before the Internet then you need not look any further than Weather Underground (70s-80s) or the various radical right-wing organizations that hit their peak in the 90s with the Oklahoma City bombing.

You know what killed Occupy? Occupy! No goal, no purpose, just "we hate the bankers and we hate the gub'mint!". Well, take a number, guys, you can get in line with practically the whole rest of the country.

But don't try to pin that on suppression of alternative media. Alternative media is out there, and it's been out there. The technology used to spread the message has changed, but the message has always been available. It's just that no one actually cares.

> You know what killed Occupy? Occupy! No goal, no purpose, just "we hate the bankers and we hate the gub'mint!". Well, take a number, guys, you can get in line with practically the whole rest of the country.

I never argued for supporting Occupy. The problems isn't about occupy, the problem is that FBI and their corporate partners thought they are dangerous enough to label them as "domestic terrorists". Think about it. A bunch of people without a goal, disorganized, non-violent, and they bothered to label them as terrorist. Good Lord. What if they were more organized. What would those watching them be doing? Assassinating them with drones.

> The technology used to spread the message has changed, but the message has always been available. It's just that no one actually cares.

It is a mater of degrees. There used to be zines and meetings and what not. Getting a hold of a publisher, printing on dead trees, distributed that is a lot of effort than just posting a blog. So saying alternative media was there and it is there now. Is true. But it was never in the same quantity and availability. The latency was much higher as well. There aren't dark and white colors only. Only radicals vs authoritarians. People are on the continuum and drift across it. Availability of information is that makes that easier. One can become more informed or go further into conspiracy theory fantasy world. But overall it is a very positive development.

> Why does everyone blame the evil MSM? Fox News was started because the MSM was 'too liberal'.

There is nothing to blame there. They are simply following their incentives. Fox News, MSM and all others are large corporations in the business to make money (largely from advertising). They are not in the business of informing the public. They would operate according to basic incentives. This is very well described and researched in Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent work. The work is not new but it is still very valuable to read and very actual.

That's rather a mischaracertization. In the FBI documents about Occupy that were released through the FOIA, the overall peaceful nature of the protests is continually emphasized and the occasional militancy (in places like Oakland) is treated as atypical. Articles that suggest the FBI considered it to be a terrorist movement are not really being honest with their readers.

That's not quite accurate.

“These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

> http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html

"Potential"

> So saying alternative media was there and it is there now. Is true. But it was never in the same quantity and availability. The latency was much higher as well. There aren't dark and white colors only.

That was all sort of my point though. The alternative media available to these groups is the best they've ever had it. Why is it that they can't organize anything? Their ancestors organized much more effective movements with much less effective means of communication.

>Why does everyone blame the evil MSM? Fox News was started because the MSM was 'too liberal'.

Because "too liberal" for Fox just meant "too democrat". Hardly something that absolves MSM from the BS they are.

MSM were the same officially santioned, partisan and corrupted sources, pre and after Fox.

With the exception of some smaller outlets and the rare honest and piercing journalist, but that's not mainstream anymore.

> You know what killed Occupy? Occupy! No goal, no purpose,

Occupy was subverted from the inside much like the Tea Party. The fact that George Soros was involved is a big clue.

The aim went from something fairly specific, like lets bring Goldman Sachs to justice for starters, the other major investment banks and the Federal Reserve ... to "let's get those one percenters!". Yeah, let's bring the dentists of the world to justice for their role in the housing crisis.

Again, the role the media plays is one of spreading confusion and disorder. You have a large number of low-power people with a shared common interest -- preventing themselves from being "farmed" by a parasitic financial system -- and if they could be coordinated and work together, would suddenly become a powerful mass. The media works to prevent that coordination by spreading confusion as to the aims of the group, or even better getting the masses to fight amongst themselves.

> The aim went from something fairly specific, like lets bring Goldman Sachs to justice for starters, the other major investment banks and the Federal Reserve ... to "let's get those one percenters!". Yeah, let's bring the dentists of the world to justice for their role in the housing crisis.

Don't attribute to malice, stupidity. Dissolution of purpose is just what tends to happen when a movement gets popular as a fad for people to join--people who are there just to be cool, and to maybe be told what to do and help a tiny little bit--but with no particular greater goals in mind. You can't get people on-board with a specific purpose they don't care for, but maybe if you tell them some vague agreeable bullshit, they'll join. Guess what? Now all your movement is there for is vague agreeable bullshit.

It was particularly bad with Occupy because the core members had a weird fetish for allowing the movement to be steered democratically--and so they basically asked what all the people who didn't care all that much wanted to do, took an average, and did nothing.

> Don't attribute to malice [what can be attributed to] stupidity.

No, there really are people acting with malice out there. Pretending it is all just the result of stupidity just runs cover for those people.

Fetish is quite a strange word to use. They put in practice anarchist principles and showed that such principles do actually work in practice as they managed to grab the focus of the world for maybe a month or two and communicated a very focused message, there is a difference between 99% of the people and a tiny 1%.

> they managed to grab the focus of the world for maybe a month or two and communicated a very focused message, there is a difference between 99% of the people and a tiny 1%

This... wasn't the goal of the core group going into the "turn Occupy Wall Street into a movement" project, though, which was my point.

It's sort of like setting out, in 0 A.D., to turn Christianity into a movement--but everyone who joins you ends up evangelizing for Scientology (or whatever the equivalent at the time was), because that's what they think you're talking about, and that's easier to sell. So, you've spawned a successful movement... to evangelize Scientology. Not a success.

Also, the word choice was deliberate; every piece of literature you can find on movements throughout history would suggest that there is a strong correlation between success in spreading awareness/change, and having charismatic leadership: a "face" to put to the movement, and a person that could be looked to--either for guidance, or just as a role-model--when one is confused about what the movement should be focusing on. This is important not for any sort of top-down leadership/command role--it's not a 1% hegemon--but rather the "face" exists so that new members have someone to base their understanding on what the movement "is for" off of, instead of just looking at what the people around them are doing (usually nothing.) To know this, and persist in attempting to use a self-defeating "no one is special; we are all of us together" approach, goes past ideology and into role-playing. They weren't trying to accomplish anything; they just wanted to enjoy the feeling of doing something anarchic, even if it wouldn't accomplish anything.

Its far from role playing. As I said they were putting anarchist principles in practice. You say they need a leader, they showed they did not need a leader.

I did not see them being hijacked by anything but the police force. They had a message, they communicated that message, everyone heard the message. That the people were unwilling to support them more vocally, but instead were successfully divided by the media, was not a failure on the part of occupy, but an example that propaganda is very, very effective against the masses.

> Its far from role playing. As I said they were putting anarchist principles in practice. You say they need a leader, they showed they did not need a leader.

He said they need a leader to evangelize. You say they didn't need a leader to organize a coherent group.

You might be right, but given that Occupy seemed to me to be a political action movement, and there's been exactly zero substantive political action, we have to consider it as a failure.

And apparently that means we have to consider 'anarchist principles' as a failure, unless there is some better explanation of why they failed in this case to drive political improvement.

What killed occupy was the police forcibly removing them.

I lived right near DC. Trust me, it wasn't the police that killed Occupy.

Why do people blame the MSM? Because they fail to do their job correctly, it's pretty simple. They get caught up in eyeballs instead of exposing the truth. Why break a big story about drones when you can rehash your thinly veiled opinion on some more popular topic?

These major media companies are just that. They are in the business of business, so what drives eyeballs to newspapers or television screens, or ears to the radio, is what will often take precedence.

They're essentially giving the public what they want. The public doesn't want to know about dead babies in Pakistan. They're much more at ease hearing news about the latest celebrity baby (royal, or otherwise).

The media could take responsibility for its lack of ethics, the population could decide that it wants those ethics, or things will just stay like they are.

They're essentially giving the public what they want.

Is it what the public wants, or is it what the public that still regularly watches MSM news wants?

Is there a difference, other than a smallish constant factor? If no one watched the MSM it wouldn't be the 'mainstream' media.

Well don't get me wrong, not every news story should be super serious. Some stories need to be light and distracting. Distraction is how we deal with life without going crazy. But lately the MSM has been treating both corporations and government with kid's gloves. I want them to be another balance to the traditional US institutions and they are failing. They should be outraged at the killings and the spying. But instead they change the topic. It's pathetic.

> You know what killed Occupy? Occupy! No goal, no purpose, just "we hate the bankers and we hate the gub'mint!".

It seems to me most political movements, whether Rush Limbaugh or Occupy Wall St or even Anonymous, are like this.

They find things that aren't working. Great. Like you say, "Get in line."

But a plan? It's either a variation of what we've already got, or a very idealistic "solution" that doesn't account for all the necessary parts of a society.

It's why people like me are so cynical. It's not apathy. It's the opposite. It's heartbreak and as a result, withdrawal in frustration, confusion and self-loathing.

"By comparison, our press and government practiced transparency -- they may have lied, but not on the scale the others did."

"I keep slipping back into believing the United States government believes in honesty and transparency..."

The U.S. government never believed in honesty and transparency and you're lying to yourself thinking that they did. Our press has constantly manipulated us. Lies and secrets are just getting easier to expose.

I suggest you read the following:

- A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present by Howard Zinn

- Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

Or for the far right-wing version: A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations by Mencius Moldbug (http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-...)

Part 2 is where he examines the myths surrounding the Revolutionary War, and it is very good (http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-...)

Agreed. For me, the most depressing part is that I, as a Republican [not a retard "movement" conservative, but a non-Progressive [yes, I believe in Climate Change]], voted for Obama and his message of transparency. I shouldn't have "believed" in a politician, but I did.

Crazy time: liberal friends are now defending the NSA's actions... Cats and dogs are living together in peace. WTF?

Well, it was not like Republican and Democrat parties were really apart in the first place.

One is left of centre, the other is right of centre. The both agree on the centre. They have some token issues to ramp up their followers (gay marriage on one side, religion on the other, etc), but no matter who is in power the country works more or less the same for 90% of issues.

Does anyone feel like a huge change is happening in his everyday life and the workings of the country, when the other party comes into power after some time?

One is right of center, the other is even more right of center, if you consider parties in other countries.

Yep. Brit here. We tend to laugh when we hear the Democrats described as 'Center-left'.

Actually that's true. I just used the terms they are described with in their local political scene.

Compared to our parties, both are on the right.

And it's a shame that the democratic party, from what I've read, has gotten even more on the right as times move along, even being bullish against the sixties spirit etc.

From this book (which is half light pop culture references and half decent period analysis) I've come to the conclusion that this happened in the eighties:

http://www.amazon.com/Back-Our-Future-Now-Our-Everything/pro...

Today, Richard Nixon would be booted out of the Democratic party as "too liberal". Go figure.

not a retard "movement" conservative, but a non-Progressive

Hey, care to give some details? This is exactly one point of view I've been trying to understand without much success: why people would be non-progressive for intellectual rather than emotional reasons. I'm sincerely curious what your rationale is.

Not the original commenter, but if you are looking for the intellectual underpinning of conservatism then I'd guess Edmund Burke would be a good start. I'd summarise as 'don't tinker with things you don't fully understand' but that overly simplifies it.

This certainly depends on the individual, but for me, I start with intellectual objections to government power -- and to the implicit acceptance of massive government power found in American liberalism -- and the long record of "Progressive" programs failing to meet their goals and producing instead negative consequences. An example of both of these is Social Security.

It is easy to be contemptuous of most liberal opinions (though this is not sufficient to be opposed to Progressive ideals) as they ignore the disconnect between intention and effect. Many progressive programs are righteous in intention, but harmful in effect. An example is the minimum wage.

I sympathize with OP's position. I too voted for Obama and I now have "liberal" friends making increasingly hair-brained excuses for these mad abuses of civil liberties. They love Obama the man more than they care about his rule.

From what I've seen around here, some progressives are starting to move past the idea of minimum wage. Basic income is gaining traction now and with good reason; it's a more economically sound policy (because it doesn't distort market prices).

Crazy time: liberal friends are now defending the NSA's actions...

If Jimmy Carter can't convince them, then they really are lost.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/jimmy-carter-edward...

>Growing up in the 70s, we looked at news from the Soviet Union and other authoritarian regimes as blatantly untrue propaganda. By comparison, our press and government practiced transparency -- they may have lied, but not on the scale the others did.

Well, it lied alright and on a huge scale. The establishment dropped a-bombs on civillians with BS pretexes (one can still find them on party line history books, from where lots of people get their official version of wisdom), invaded tons of countries in the name of "democracy" (that is, resources and influence), from Vietnam to Panama, established dictatorships (e.g the toppling of Iran's legitimate government back in the fifties), persecuted people in the McCarthy era, stomped on the blacks and civil rights movement, etc.

The difference with the USSR is that it wasn't totalitarian inside the country. USSR was like 1984, US was like Brave New World.

>It's painful to watch a government that instituted the Marshall Plan actively destroy its credibility like this

Well, the Marshall Plan was (among other stated goals) a way to extract influence upon the broken Europe, pay the right people at the right places, and ascert the top dog position.

Not only is it painful to watch this, it's even more painful to think about how far we've fallen, and how quickly. It wasn't that long ago where most mainstream US media sources could be trusted to provide insightful, fact-checked journalism.

And yet I still think the reason it happened was not because of gov't intricately and carefully orchestrating things with great forethought, it happened because media corporations went after easy profit and found out that pandering to the religious right was an easy and worthwhile thing to do to bring in the money.

Of course it isn't as if gov't isn't in on it, it is -- but not it ways that people think. They're doing it more subtly:

"The major exception here is the Department of Defense, which has an ‘open’ but barely publicized relationship with Tinsel Town, whereby, in exchange for advice, men and invaluable equipment, such as aircraft carriers and helicopters, the Pentagon routinely demands flattering script alterations."

http://www.globalresearch.ca/lights-camera-covert-action-the...

http://original.antiwar.com/sean-a-mcelwee/2013/04/28/propag...

The internet killed fact-checkers. In order to beat the 24-hour news cycle, reports have to be done asap, and fact-checking just gets in the way. Removing fact-checking is just a risk management strategy, methinks, as sure you'll lose out from time to time, but overall you'll be so much faster!.

I lament the loss of fact-checking, and it pains me to see errors in professional services that should be picked up be even first-year tertiary students.

No, it's because the FCC eliminated the Fairness Doctrine [1] which lead to the rise of biased "news" channels in order to gain viewers.

The Harper government in Canada recently eliminated Canada's version of this and I shudder what to think will happen 10-20 years down the line.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine

Its been at least 20 years since that was the case, once large corps started buying up all the local TV, that was the beginning of the end.

Is this sarcasm?

> it's even more painful to think about how far we've fallen

This has been going on for a long time. The difference now is that it's far easier to discover these issues. What's happening now in government has always been happing. I'm sorry, but the number of civilian drone deaths, as bad as it is, is quite low when you look at the history of the US. This isn't support one way or the other mind you.

However, where you see how far we've fallen, I see how far we've come. It's still not right, but it's far, far better.

I don't remember anyone denying that drone strikes result in civilian causalities. But guess what we did before we had drone strikes? We did cruise missile attacks, targeted bombings, arming of rebels, and often full scale proxy wars. Drone strikes kill a lot fewer civilians than the alternatives we used during the Cold War.

Yes. I'm uneasy about drone strikes, but they're a lot better than cluster bombs, which not only kill people during the bombing but which leave bomblets around for years.

The bomblets are visually appealing to children, causing considerable harm to them.

UNICEF works hard in this area.

(http://www.unicef.org/eapro/media_14458.html)

(http://www.unicefusa.org/campaigns/public-policy-advocacy/ke...)

All of which is happening now, in addition to the activity mentioned in the article. Ever hear of Meles Zenawi rayiner? I know, the New York Times didn't like to talk about him, but that doesn't mean he didn't exist. If the US started shipping arms to the reincarnation of Suharto tomorrow, I image Mr. Rayiner would be here arguing: "Guns are so much more humane than missile strikes. A bullet can kill at most two, three people. So much more precision!" Also: cruise missles were designed to take out installations. The relative payload of a weapon is an issue of cost and weight ratios, not mercy.

I don't really see your point. Mine is that it's silly to hold drone strikes up as some example of a shift for the worse in U.S. foreign policy, especially for someone talking about "growing up in the '70s."

The drone strikes are alleged, in the article, to have killed as many as 400 civilians over 9 years. In comparison, 500-600 civilians were killed in just the few of months of NATO bombings of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo war. And the 1990's was a picnic compared to the 1980's or 1970's.

The U.S. has never hesitated to use force abroad to protect American interests. This goes back to the early days of the Republic, when Thomas Jefferson authorized attacks on Tripoli to protect American shipping. People have a visceral reaction to drone strikes, but the fact is that they're a more delicate instrument than the other tools we would otherwise be using.

The Marshall Plan came at a cost: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

> By comparison, our press and government practiced transparency

Really?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War

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