Right Wing Noise Machine - Chomsky nails it

Er, so, the answer to blaming everything on the democrats is to blame everything on corporations, got it. I can see how it’s totally different when you believe the premise. ;-)

Do you know what "generally" means?

hehe

Sure, but a lot of these issues are far more complicated, and end up getting so many different group’s hands dirty that singling not only corporations, but abuses by them as the primary driving force behind all of our woes seems to go completely against this argument.

Here’s the thing, though, you’re perfectly willing to give your own answer to everyone’s problem, and your “investigations” basically come down to campaign finance and greed. I mean, fuck, you believe one party has a monopoly on pure politicians, and those few are, undoubtedly, the ones who most closely align themselves with your own beliefs.

You see nothing wrong with this?

My point is that you care about scapegoating when you, or your beliefs, are the target, but are perfectly fine with the practice when it’s done to those you disagree with. A practice you then justify by impugning the motives of those with whom you disagree.

This seems like a pretty simple concept to me.

In a capitalist society, power is going to be tied to money. If there are major, widespread problems in a society, they will probably be tied to areas in which the greatest amounts of power (in this case, in the form of money) are concentrated.

I don't even see how what yt wrote in her first post is even a matter of opinion, much less controversial.

I don’t believe I’ve disagreed with the concept, merely pointing out how quickly yt can go from a Chomsky quote about the right-wing’s practice of scapegoating the left for all of our woes to immediately blaming it all on another group.

I imagine when Chomsky says people like “Rush Limbaugh” & “Michael Savage” are blaming “rich liberals” who “own everything,” “run the government” and “run the media” for why “the country is going in the wrong direction.”

I guess we could get into some horribly semantic argument now, but, while those are fun, I do have to run.

Yeah, but... isn't that at least a partially true statement? Obviously, there are also illegal immigrants, the poor, the Muslims, and various other groups, but when's the last time that these jokers pinned anything on big business? You know - the area in which power is largely concentrated in this country?

And I should know - I'm DaveB of Right Wing Noise Machine, and you're listening to the morning show on 101.2!

(Sorry, it's that phrase - it just calls out for band-naming purposes.)

The problem is that fundamentally, our society is built to work that way.

Once upon a time, maybe, a lot of settlers started out at similar points in terms of power and riches. But over time, in any capitalist society by sheer definition of capitalism, some get more money, some get less.
Our system NEEDS money to run, money to work, people NEED money to do virtually anything, thus having a lot of money means having a lot of power over a lot of things... because virtually everything is up for sale in a capitalistic society.

Enter the government, laws and other things which block the reach of said money-fueled power. Naturally, those with power/money are, sooner or later, going to try and push the boundaries of said power, in order to get more. Capitalism pretty much tells them, sometimes even forces them to do so to serve the interests they represent or have themselves. Sometimes, they will win a battle like that, and push further inwards, eroding the law, government and whatever measures in place to limit their power derived from money.
And sometimes they lose.

The problem in the USA right now is quite obviously that, for whatever reasons, a large part of the populace does not really understand their position in the game, and not just carries, but WANTS a society which is basically trying to erode their rights. Many of us do not clearly see, or do not care to see at all, how our respective societies power structures work, and so we vote, cheer and labor to basically give those higher up in the food chain more power to push us down again.

The "noise-machine", Mainstream Media or whatever you want to call it has turned out to be the most powerful way to make people see things that arent there, and make them not see the things as they are. There isnt really much more to it. Capitalism would not work if the entire populace were able to always see the big picture, just as it does not work if one could always see and access the entire market. The system is based around being able to gain power at the cost of others, and the MSM just does its part.

Unfortunately, there used to be a counterpart to it, called journalism. It kinda went missing some way back I think ....

Neither Chomsky or yt are scapegoating right-wing media for all of our woes. That's not what's happening here.

You should really look into the meaning of the word before you use it again, because pointing out the actual acts of a specific group of people and the problems that result from those acts is not scapegoating.

That's not to say the right-wingers are the sole responsible party for this whole mess.

At some point I stopped looking at everything as a zero sum game, which suddenly made a lot of these political arguments far less compelling. To answer a question with a question, should you have the same say on technology legislation as, say, Apple, Google or Microsoft? If your answer is yes (or god forbid you believe you, yourself, deserve more), we’ll just have to agree to disagree, if it’s no, then comes a terribly difficult question to answer.

How should we determine a fair relative value of influence?

Bit off the specific topic of this thread...but very fitting given the theme, and the real war currently going on between the Obama Administration and Fox News...

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/13/171220/97

http://www.mediaite.com/online/did-t...he-news-media/

So...your argument is not for democracy but for corporate democracy? "The corporations know more about their business so we should just trust them and not have a say." Wow. That's some kind of insight.

I believe it’s fair for, say, Google to have more influence than myself—being a single American citizen—on, say, Net Neutrality, as it has greater expertise in the field, employs tens of thousands of American citizens in the sector, impacts billions more, and has more invested in such a bill, but like I said, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

And to Parker, I never argued that the government should do whatever a corporation says, I was just trying to see if anyone could establish how one would determine what an equitable relative value of influence would be. If Google says X is bad, and it’s against the beliefs of millions of American citizens, I don’t believe the government should listen to Google as much as it should to millions of American citizens. But what if it’s a thousand American citizens? A hundred? One?

To say corporations have too much influence is to say that there is a fair amount of influence for them to have, and without establishing what “fair” is, it’s difficult to really have a coherent discussion about it.