We live in an era when reporters are too busy hanging out on Twitter, with no time to interview sources and write stories. News stories themselves are often little more than a series of posts strung together into an article, with the tweets furnished as images (evidence) of their claim.
Everybody's offended by something, and today's "journalism" insures they will keep being offended, because news outlets live and die by the mouse-click. I suppose we should be grateful. The ever-growing list of things guaranteed to offend someone means that at least we have variety in our public discourse.
Public discourse? Wasn't that when we used to discuss ideas? Political ideas? Scientific ideas? Social problems and fixes? Didn't we have discussions to try to figure out what might work best to solve the problem – or determine if there even was a real problem?
No, we don't have discussions anymore. If we had a discussion, instead of an offense parade, new ideas might emerge. Even worse, the emergent idea might not fit our view of the world, which is what we are really trying to implement. So we twist and tie the facts, which often turn out to be other people's lives, into convoluted knots we think will sell our side of the argument. When others don't agree, we play the outrage card! End of discussion.
Basing news stories for the public on Twitter rantings, with Fakebook as a backup source, seems like journalistic malpractice in the extreme. The first is designed for people who have no life, and the latter is a depiction of the fantasy life they would like to have. Perhaps that is why news executives are so optimistic about replacing their newsrooms with artificial intelligence algorithms. Talking-head news programs could then be delivered by chat robots. The entire apparatus would be programmed to deliver propaganda, 24/7, for whomever has the money to pay for it. Elections decided by orchestrated outrage; what a concept!
The reason this is the left's fault is that the political left has been on the march since at least the days of LBJ, who inherited the presidency after JFK's assassination. LBJ's War on Poverty was to produce the Great Society. Vietnam war protesters marched with LBJ, while taking over the educational establishment, Hollywood and much of the federal government. Trillions of greenbacks were redistributed from productive Americans to alleviate the guilt of America's elitist, entitled families. All to no avail.
Today's left wants America to repeat that bit of its history with the entire world. Immigrants, it would seem, have a basic human right to go where the subsidies are richest. The only solution is an end to national sovereignty and a one-world (iron-left-fisted) government, without private ownership of firearms or any means of resistance. That's the end game for the leftist paradise, the mythical land that has only ever existed in the left's twisted imagination.
The real truth is that a strong and prosperous America is the best hope for moving so much of the world from squalor and poverty into freedom and prosperity. That move takes money and leadership, however; not outrage and slogans.
Reconnaissance. Understanding the real resistance.