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If we're going to start counting "media conspires to suppress stories harmful to their favored candidates during an election cycle" as "stolen elections" then every major election since the invention of democracy has probably been stolen.
Well, yes. This election happened with the entire weight of the establishment trying it’s best to elect Joe Biden. Negative news about Biden was pretty systemically repressed, even when that information was relevant to whether the man should be president. It’s pretty clear looking at Biden’s unscripted moments that he’s probably pretty deep in dementia. He turns the wrong way leaving podiums, attempts to shake hands with nobody, looks for people who died years before — these things if known before the election would have been causes for concern. Things like Biden’s cognitive ability, the Hunter laptop, these would have had a negative impact if actually reported on. And if such systemic one sided shilling by the media doesn’t count toward an unfree election, we owe an apology to a lot of “failed democratic states” who have elections and a controlled press.
A government controlled press is different than a press that is loosely tribally (in the Blue/Red Tribe sense) affiliated though. Over 90% of farmers are Republican and Red Tribe. They have generally the kind of opinions you would expect. over 90% of journalists are Democrats and Blue tribe, they generally have the kind of opinions you would expect.
If Democrats want better penetration in the farmer's market (heh) they have to change their positions to do so. If Republicans want better penetration in the journalist market they have to change their positions to do so. Or they can each not and understand that most members of specific groups are going to be hostile to them and plan accordingly.
Biden is almost certainly not (in my opinion) deep in dementia, having worked with people in Adult Social Care in the past, if he is suffering it is very mild and in the early stages. Having met him personally a couple of times before he was President (or even vice President) he looks to have declined slightly but not much more than the passing of 20 odd years would indicate since then. Old people are gonna old people. That is not the same thing as dementia.
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Times, technology, and visibility into these things change.
Is it normal to have former intelligence leaders and staff imply a candidate is committing or enabling treason? Is it normal to have the wider mainstream media actively suppress and turn eyeballs away from a scandal, against their usual approach? Normal for the adults in the room to heavily imply or outright claim their opponents are the literal reincarnation of Nazis?
Maybe it is. Perhaps all that's changed is the advent of Twitter, Facebook, the blogosphere, and ever-watchful eye of the internet to record everything for future analysis and dissection. And maybe now is the time to cut this beast down a size or two.
I'm used to media bias and political acrimony being things. I grew up through Clinton-Obama. The Trump years were fucking inexcusable.
It seems to me that American politics goes through cycles of greater or lesser political acrimony. The period roughly between Watergate and Trump (with a nadir in the early Clinton years and a gradual ramp-up afterwards) was one with outwardly good behavior and fair play on the part of politicians and the media. Before that we had the 60's with all their unrest, political assassinations, riots at party conventions, and the infamous daisy ad. Before that we had a president-for-life whose predecessor denounced his programs as socialistic and fascistic.
Growing up in a time of relative tranquility may have given many of us the impression that that state of affairs was normal rather than astoundingly and miraculously unpartisan, but like another era of good feelings it was bound to come to an end as all the problems we put on the backburner for decades finally burst back into public awareness.
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Kennedy did a lesser version of it to Nixon with the "missile gap" line which he and Nixon knew to be false (because they were both getting classified briefings), but which Nixon couldn't rebut without disclosing classified info.
Yeah, and to most people born after their presidencies, all that is behind the smoky curtain of history. It's the perpetual meme that all that shady stuff that happened in the past is just the messy, unglamorous history of an imperfect nation - but we certainly don't act like that any more!
And I feel extremely silly for writing that, because the naivete is blinding by now. I considered myself more cynical than most, and the degree to which people went mask-off during Trump was shocking to me. At the very least, I expected them to manage their appearance better.
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