Thank you both. Jews living in the US are living in the Upside Down right now. Logic has left the room here.. the Islamists/marxists seem to have captured common sense and brought the Jew haters out of the woodwork. So much stupidity mixed with insanity. I cannot imagine NYC allowing Mamdani to become mayor.
That the purpose of headlines is not to inform but to 'generate clicks' isn't exactly a new insight. That media's 'mission,' if you like, isn't to inform or even entertain but to sell you something—either a consumer product or a political narrative—is something scarcely anybody troubles to hide anymore. You can't watch or listen to mainstream programming for even a few minutes and come to any other conclusion: a steady diet of standard TV fare would turn most brains to mush in short order—and to the extent that this anaesthetizes viewers into a passive, receptive state, this is actually the aim.
So... 'World War III' for a day—why not? The object isn't for the vision of the world this connotes to cohere with yesterday's vision or tomorrow's; it's simply to hold your attention right now, and ultimately to get you to behave in a certain way, one the people manufacturing the headlines construe as being in their interest. That's all—that's their sole motive. This is the only understanding of what we see on screens that makes sense of it, and is consistent with how we know capitalism works. Any legacy media outlet that lost sight of this, its real reason-for-being, for long would simply vanish from the business scene. While media technology has many amazing capabilities, they're subordinated to the same purpose as other marketing tools.
As for the war in Gaza, you clearly have some facts wrong. The War in Afghanistan was a response to 9/11 attacks, and when the US fought in large cities with similar population densitis to Gaza, the ratio of civilian to militant casualties killed was about 1 to 1. The ratio of civilian to military casualties in Gaza is about 3 or 4 to 1. The US also didn't just wholesale destroy most civilian infrastructure in those cities either when fighting militants there.
Of course you could try to dig in and make arguments about how the war in Gaza is different, but at least on its face there just isn't the equivalence between Israel's attack on Gaza and other modern wars, involving western powers that supposedly are civilized and have a respect for human rights, that you make it out to be.
To be honest when you say "why would Israel use surgical precision in strikes against people that want to kill them" You are bordeering on endorsing terrorism, which is targeting civilians. By that logic, Palestnians targeting Israeli civilians, for supporting governments that commit criminal land theft against them, woud be justified.
Why do you downplay the relevance of the settlement expansion in ocmparison to Oct 7th? The land Israel is continuing to steal by force in the West Bank and settle is supposed to be part of a future Palestinian state made up of the West Bank and Gaza, with free movement in between. The decades long blockade on Gaza destroys their economy which is even worse in some ways (and considered by everyone to be an act of war), of course you could argue there are reason for it, but again this is in a broader context of continual Israeli criminal land theft.
You mention violence from Native Americans, and how they couldn't be dealt with because of it. THe is downplays the fact that land theft itself is violent, if men with guns came to steal your house would you not agree? How do deal with people that continualy criminally and violently steal your land for generations? However unjust and brutal the response to that may be, does it really morally change who the primary aggressor is? Israel and Russia are both land stealing colonizing powers.
What happened to having episodes where you take general questions from the audience? I would upgrade to being a founding member is that were still a thing.
Thank you both. Jews living in the US are living in the Upside Down right now. Logic has left the room here.. the Islamists/marxists seem to have captured common sense and brought the Jew haters out of the woodwork. So much stupidity mixed with insanity. I cannot imagine NYC allowing Mamdani to become mayor.
mamdani has a good chance of getting in, maybe its what they need. They can find out just how much free stuff ends up costing them
Your best episode yet. A refreshing respite in the realm of rationality.
That the purpose of headlines is not to inform but to 'generate clicks' isn't exactly a new insight. That media's 'mission,' if you like, isn't to inform or even entertain but to sell you something—either a consumer product or a political narrative—is something scarcely anybody troubles to hide anymore. You can't watch or listen to mainstream programming for even a few minutes and come to any other conclusion: a steady diet of standard TV fare would turn most brains to mush in short order—and to the extent that this anaesthetizes viewers into a passive, receptive state, this is actually the aim.
So... 'World War III' for a day—why not? The object isn't for the vision of the world this connotes to cohere with yesterday's vision or tomorrow's; it's simply to hold your attention right now, and ultimately to get you to behave in a certain way, one the people manufacturing the headlines construe as being in their interest. That's all—that's their sole motive. This is the only understanding of what we see on screens that makes sense of it, and is consistent with how we know capitalism works. Any legacy media outlet that lost sight of this, its real reason-for-being, for long would simply vanish from the business scene. While media technology has many amazing capabilities, they're subordinated to the same purpose as other marketing tools.
Probably not a "sole motive", but *follow the money* is an appropriate mantra
As for the war in Gaza, you clearly have some facts wrong. The War in Afghanistan was a response to 9/11 attacks, and when the US fought in large cities with similar population densitis to Gaza, the ratio of civilian to militant casualties killed was about 1 to 1. The ratio of civilian to military casualties in Gaza is about 3 or 4 to 1. The US also didn't just wholesale destroy most civilian infrastructure in those cities either when fighting militants there.
Of course you could try to dig in and make arguments about how the war in Gaza is different, but at least on its face there just isn't the equivalence between Israel's attack on Gaza and other modern wars, involving western powers that supposedly are civilized and have a respect for human rights, that you make it out to be.
To be honest when you say "why would Israel use surgical precision in strikes against people that want to kill them" You are bordeering on endorsing terrorism, which is targeting civilians. By that logic, Palestnians targeting Israeli civilians, for supporting governments that commit criminal land theft against them, woud be justified.
Why do you downplay the relevance of the settlement expansion in ocmparison to Oct 7th? The land Israel is continuing to steal by force in the West Bank and settle is supposed to be part of a future Palestinian state made up of the West Bank and Gaza, with free movement in between. The decades long blockade on Gaza destroys their economy which is even worse in some ways (and considered by everyone to be an act of war), of course you could argue there are reason for it, but again this is in a broader context of continual Israeli criminal land theft.
You mention violence from Native Americans, and how they couldn't be dealt with because of it. THe is downplays the fact that land theft itself is violent, if men with guns came to steal your house would you not agree? How do deal with people that continualy criminally and violently steal your land for generations? However unjust and brutal the response to that may be, does it really morally change who the primary aggressor is? Israel and Russia are both land stealing colonizing powers.
Absolutely on theme one of your best discussions that reaffirm the reason I follow you, thanks and thank G-d there are folk like you.
What happened to having episodes where you take general questions from the audience? I would upgrade to being a founding member is that were still a thing.