| Yes. Sadly, he's getting a lot of traction with it too. Mainstream media reports from a big business point of view and it almost never reports on itself or its parents critically. People get this. Trust is low and Trump is exploiting that reality to great effect. Today, we have people growing lost, confused, seeking more and maybe better information. What they are finding from indie efforts ranges all over the map. It's reasonable to say that isn't a good thing either. Though I will also say it is at least a mild check on an ugly press machine in play today. I am very rapidly becoming a fan of people funded news and Media. In the USA there is almost no reporting and commentary from the economic left point of view, for example. I lean strong left, but I also don't see that as a blanket answer. I do see it as the basis for a more complete discussion, and we really need that right now. I know I need to understand others better and they me so the conversation can get somewhere good. This isn't happening. Not all of our problems are going to be resolved with boardroom and or bumper sticker politics. For perspective, our conservative peers could say the same thing about social issue reporting, and they would be right. The product of this is a very dangerous polarization. Ideologies are being championed as means to ends, when the better role for them is as a basis for policy ideas we can use, combine and apply toward common goals. There are a few big needs, like health care, where we have solid majority support for doing good things, necessary things, yet no real ability to accomplish them. Our press does not address this at all too. It's all process and horse race type drama, not a meaningful look at both the state of things and clear desire to make progress on them. A more inclusive discussion, sans so damn many triggers and set pieces would bring those goals to front and center. All political sides need this. We need it as ordinary people too. Badly. Some 20 percent of us have few worries about money. Another slice, maybe a third tops, must be super careful, but are OK. The rest are in big and growing trouble! Super expensive, long term trouble. Decline of a great nation type trouble. As a nation of people, that growing unrest is not good. We will pay really hard for allowing so much to get stalled, bogged down, ignored. Even those of us who are economically secure will share in that cost. It won't hurt in dollar terms like it will most Americans. It will hurt in terms of our future, environment, social laws, many norms. These kinds of things take lifetimes to come back from, if we even can It began somewhere late 70s maybe 80s too. A look at government and politics prior to that time saw the process working. Governance happened and it was net progress. Our history is littered with ugly politics. The better times seem to be associated with a more functional press. Those better periods were not the best possible, but were livable. Today? Cluster fuck. And the press has a lot to do with that as does the Internet and social media presenting different views to everyone based on some ideas of what we think people want to see. It's hard to get a sense of where people are really at outside our circles and rough class and demographic. This should be front and center journalism. Yet, it isn't. Remember earlier, simpler Internet? For a while we all saw most of the same things. People exploiting that and the need or value in curated content brought us a better information view in some ways, but a worse one in others. This idea of a weekly paper, if done in a reasonable, equitable way may just hold the potential for establishing that "we are all people and just want better for us and ours" conversation. It could unify people and foster cross class, cross gender, etc... type conversations. It could also do a lot to help understand one another better and punch through so damn much vilification going on too. When we have an opportunity to talk to one another, sans all the bullshit, we invariably find the others have good intent. Nobody wants so many others to hurt and struggle out of hand. So many of us do not have those conversations. Lack of venue, opportunity, fear, judgement all play a role here. I'll be watching efforts like this. We need to keep trying. The growing mess us quickly approaching the unrecoverable and regrettable. Almost none of us really want that, but it's gonna happen, unless we can somehow have a common conversation that can get us back to the idea of just governance. Nobody should get all they want, but all of us should be getting the things we really need. There is more than enough for it to happen too. |