[nicholasjarnold]

"Flood the zone" => The specific strategy put forth and now enacted by the current US admin in order to overwhelm the media's ability to cover issues and therefore by extension the ability for the public at large to keep themselves informed. It's a fundamental attack on one of the pillars of democracy. Mental bandwidth saturation is a feature here, not a bug.

Additionally, the gradual removal of personal privacy, and the normalization of it, is another attack on a democratic pillar.

It really does seem like structural cracks are widening rapidly. I too hope that our current realities cause a sort of 'wake up' to occur in the minds of those whom are too busy, deep in "my team" politics or otherwise not concerned about what's going on right now.

[davidw]

The media does plenty of shooting itself in their own feet though. There was tons of coverage of Jake Tapper's book taking time away from everything that is happening right now.

[willcipriano]

The book about how the media covered up the president's decline?

[davidw]

If it was such a big deal, why did they wait to publish it in a book about a guy who will never see elected office again? They do this a lot and it damages their credibility.

Also, the current guy is not exactly that sharp, or improving with age, either. But age seems to no longer be of interest to the press.

[abridges6532]

Tapper was like #1 in the coverup lmao

[zzrrt]

I’ve been wondering lately why they told us about “flood the zone” and published Project 2025. Is it because they don’t have regular communication with every person who is willing and able to employ these strategies, so they just communicate them in the open?

[godelski]

You need broad support and to recruit. It is hard to do those things while being highly secretive. Besides, who's going to read a 500 page book? They'll read parts, but all of it? Of course not. By just using parts it is easier to dismiss. People don't want it to be true in the first place, so it's easy to buy the lie.

The truth requires understanding a lot of moving parts.

The lie is simple. We hate complexity (and long comments ;)

Some people they'll never convince, but they don't matter because they'd resist no matter what was proposed.

I mean look at Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It's a major logistical effort to invade a country. They amassed military forces all along the border. The whole time saying "nothing to worry about" and "if we were really going to invade we wouldn't be so obvious about it!" It was happening for months! (Starting in March!) Meanwhile lots of people, including news outlets, bought the lie. Everything was there plain as day, but it's easy to buy the lie. No one wanted to see war break out. Every day they didn't proved they were right too! Sure, plenty of people asserted that the attack would happen and time showed them correct. But that doesn't change how many misses there were nor did it actually stop the attack.[0] Being right didn't matter

But it's impossible to make an attack without telegraphing it. Same thing here.

[0] certainly all the military leaders responded appropriately. You don't take those risks, especially when so blatant. But that also doesn't mean they aren't going to lie through their teeth trying to prevent public panic. Not when there's the faintest of hopes that a war could be stopped before it happens. Again, you can see similarities

[yeahokbut]

They’re used to openly saying what they are doing and expecting everyone to ignore it: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/business/job-insecurity-o...

Worked so far. But social media put everything up for scrutiny. The smart ones hide it. Trump doesn’t care cause no one will revolt with violence.

[gosub100]

It's never limited to a single administration.

[toss1]

That is trivially true, but stop both-sides-ing it with false equivalency.

At this point, the major party in power is doing all they can to undermine democracy and strip-mine the country for their own benefit and that of their few multi-billionaire sponsors.

The other party is attempting to herd a broad coalition of people to maintain democracy.

Yes, it is imperfect, and the country has fallen often far short of perfection through it's entire history.

That is no reason to set the perfect as the enemy of the good. Simply declaring "every form of government is (or all parties are) awful" is a cop-out, and the logical conclusion of that is a complete power vacuum which leads only to the population being ruled by rival gangs & fiefdoms.

[yeahokbut]

My Dem senator from a “very blue state” described the US economy with decades of forced austerity and rising inequality as a model for the world and then Trump ruined our credibility.

Let that settle in; our credibility is was built on growing inequality. Decades of austerity being cheered on behind closed doors to leave a left wing senator believing austerity politics, gentle eugenics is a model for the world.

The problem is not the parties. It’s the people in power.

[gosub100]

I'll happily stop both-sides-ing it when people stop emphasizing "the current administration" when it's not relevant to the topic. Your guy lost, learn from your mistakes and carry on. Or criticize both presidents equally. If you criticized Biden in his tenure it was still Trump's fault. Believe me, I tried. It's Logical nonsense.

[exceptione]

> I'll happily stop both-sides-ing it when

No, you unconditionally need to stop both-siding. When you want to bring a broader issue in the spotlight, do bring the broader issue in the spot light. But when you feel you are inclined to throw in a bothsidism, which is a negative sum contribution to discourse, then the chance that you actually have an insight on the broader issue is quite small.

> Your guy lost, learn from your mistakes and carry on

As a bystander I can say on behalf of the ones that have been "othered" by means of political marketing, there is no guy. The pressing issue at play is the rule of law, separation of powers, due process, fair elections, and basic respect for human rights. If anyone feels they should continue to shout while waiving the merchandise of their favorite team, if anyone thinks this is the right moment to continue behaving like a spoiled hooligan, then they lose the aforementioned basic prerequisites of democracy, and with that, the democratic constitutional state.

[kurikuri]

> Your guy lost, learn from your mistakes and carry on. Or criticize both presidents equally.

So, your solution here is for people who think the current administration is particularly bad to either not complain or accept any whataboutisms you have?

Your ‘both administrations’ quip is a vacuous justification for the current administration’s actions. If this is the basis for your justification, then, regardless of the truth of your claim, you’d be inconsistent to then praise this specific administration for anything positive. Thus, outside of nihilist generalizations about the overall structure of the US, you can’t meaningfully contribute to this conversation. Without giving a positive justification for the administrations behavior, your contributions are ‘logical nonsense.’

I’d rather simply complain about the doublespeakers in office at the moment and say it is wrong to do so, and there is no ‘logical nonsense’ in that.

[ivewonyoung]

Is my reading of your comment accurate? If not please let us know.

"The party not in power also has been doing similar things(in regards to the article) if not worse over the past couple of decades but lets completely ignore that, not criticize them at all, don't even bring it up and blame only the current admin because...<party currently in power is baddd>"

[beej71]

I'm not the parent, but that seems like a pretty bad misread.

But to answer, you worry more about the guy waving a knife in your face than other people who have knives and may have waved them in your face in the past.

I'm curious what the worse one is. The Clipper Chip? Seems like a light pleasantry compared to what's happening now.

[toss1]

No. It is so inaccurate that you either have serious problems with reading comprehension or are being deliberately disingenuous in order to destroy the conversation as if your Red Team is right.

The GP comment was about both the specific "Flood The Zone" strategy promoted by an advisor to the current administration and the overall and absolutely unprecedented assault by this administration on democracy and the rule of law itself.

Yes, I made a reference to the historical fact that the ideals of American democracy have always been aspirational. That is NOT license to whataboutism or claims that "everyone does it".

In a democracy, all the branches of govt (exec, ligislative, judicial) and the institutions of society (press, industry, academy, finance, religion, sport, charity, orgs, etc.) are ALL independent, balance power throughout society, and work for its advancement as best they can.

Under authoritarianism or fascism, all those branches and institutions are coerced or corrupted to concentrate power and serve the executive.

Never in the history of this country has any administration even come within orders of magnitude of this regime's attempt to cut off democracy. They are abusing the power of the state to coerce an corrupt every single branch and institution they can, starting with the judiciary, lawyers, press, and academia.

If you have actually "won young", you should take your gift of time and freedom to learn some history. Particularly relevant are how democracies are converted to autocracies, and it did not just happen in Germany in the 1930s, it happened today in Russia (ya, short weak democracy, but it didn't have to go that way), Venezuela, Hungary, and more; and the current party in power is abdicating it's legislative responsibilities to try to make it happen here. You might think you are safe because of your privilege of wealth, but if they succeed in their efforts to kill the 14th amendment and Habeas Corpus, you are not. Again, history is a guide, and the bog-standard authoritarian playbook is being run in broad daylight and secret Signal chat groups.

[gosub100]

> attempt to cut off democracy

You must have misspelled government waste. All of this was exposed by doge and trump and the first thing you did was start minimizing the damage, saying we waste way more in other places, and telling me that the world will end if these lazy wasteful socialist institutions get their fat lips yanked off the teat. I didn't believe your lies then and no matter how much you squeal I don't believe them now. Your whole party has perfected it's use of language control, redefining words, and catastrophizing everything. These aren't MSM viewers in here, you're not fooling anyone. Fix your party by delivering social improvements not just fantasizing and warning about the "end of democracy", and minimizing waste. Fear mongering is not helping your situation if you have any hope of your candidates ever winning again.

[toss1]

And, just this morning's headlines:

The President makes a direct threat to Apple, that specifically their products will be made in the US or he will put a 25% tariff on them

This is nothing resembling policy or democracy. This is straight-up autocracy — an autocratic leader with zero input, specifically ordering a single company to take specific actions or he will personally set penalties.

This is not language trickery. This is reality.

[toss1]

So, which version of "government waste" propaganda do you believe? The $2Trillion, $1 Trillion, $150 Billion (7/1000 of the initial claim), or any of the other mostly disproven by their own documents claims in the few $10b range?

Do you believe the Musk's line that "40% of all calls to Social Security are fraudulent", or what he actually found after creating massive IN-efficiencies, both drastically worsening service AND costing more, that only 2 in 110,000 calls might have fraudulent indicators. [0]

The examples would go on for many pages.

And what institutions do you think are actually wasteful? All the scientific research that creates most of the advances that employ most people in this forum, medical research that saves lives every day, disaster recovery programs that restore distaster-hit economies to productivity more rapidly, initiatives to re-shore manufacturing to the US and build infrastructure for the next-generation economy, or just programs to ensure everyone actually has healthcare, or predict the weather so people can get severe storm warnings in real time instead of the next morning after their family got killed?

>>delivering social improvements OK, do you not consider workers' rights, 40-hour workweek standard, overtime pay, ending child labor (remember, 5-year-olds working was common) and building education programs and requirements kids stay in school, requiring a level of workplace safety actual social improvements? Because those were NOT brought by "conservatives", but by "liberals".

Without liberals fighting, and often dying, your life would 99% likely be born poor, to a mother who bore a dozen other siblings, you get no real education, start work in a factory by age 5, and you are lucky to survive to adulthood, as only 1-2 of your brothers and sisters make it. That was life 120 years ago before work standards, education, public health, and many other "liberal" innovations happened. Just got look at an old graveyard and notice the ages on the tombstones - they are overwhelmingly infants and children. And those are the ones wealthy enough to have marked graves.

But evidently, you think it is less "wasteful" to just let 85% of the humans born work from the age of 5, have nearly no education, and die before adulthood.

All this is reality, not some linguistic trick, and if all you have to deny reality is a claim that reality is some linguistic trick, you have a very weak argument.

>>aren't MSM viewers in here I'm no MSM viewer either, and if you think the MSM is "liberal" you are at least several decades out of date. Just look at the ownership, where 90% of the MSM and all local media outlets are owned by just six major corporations, who are all-in on promoting oligarchy.

[0] https://www.yahoo.com/news/doge-fraud-tracker-social-securit...