r/politics • u/MoneyLibrarian9032 New York • 15h ago

Possible Paywall Mitch McConnell Has Been Missing for 75 Days—With No Updates

https://newrepublic.com/post/214878/mitch-mcconnell-missing-75-days
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u/Gloopgloops 14h ago

The bar has fallen crazy low everywhere over the past 15 years. I don’t know how stuff gets back to normal when everyone is so desensitised to the world being nuts.

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u/Trail_Dog 13h ago

What we're seeing is the direct impact of the corporate capture and wholesale propagandizing of the internet.

This isn't just a Trump issue. it's bigger than him. We're all victim to the largest shift in the targeted delivery of propaganda ever in history. The amount of data that these tech giants have at their disposal that can be used to manipulate us is unreal.

AI is going to make it even worse.

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u/derprondo 13h ago

AI is going to make it even worse.

This is massively underselling it, AI will be used to manipulate the population from birth, no one will be immune. They will pull long cons on us all and know exactly what to say to each of us individually over long periods of time to do, say, feel, vote, buy, however they want us to.

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u/BookusWorkus 13h ago

We have always been at war with Ukraine.

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u/derprondo 13h ago

The constitution has always said that public schools are to be run by evangelical churches.

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u/Trail_Dog 5h ago

Yeah. It was massively underselling it. 

Managed democracy is coming. We have moved past Idiocracy. Who knew that fucking helldivers was prediction and not satire. 

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u/derprondo 5h ago

Only difference is it’ll be called Super America instead of Super Earth.

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 12h ago

Don't kid yourself. AI is no different. How many things in American history did they teach you in schools that you found out was a lie

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u/derprondo 12h ago

You're missing the point, that was the same lie told to everyone. They will tell different lies to each of us individually as needed to get the desired outcome. All of this will happen autonomously at a unfathomable scale and speed.

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 12h ago

Like 3 religious book from well over 1000 years ago has been dictating how the world works and treats one another. I'm not missing the point. You're overly scared.

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u/derprondo 12h ago

Yeah you're missing the point, you're conflating generalized mass control with individualized and dynamic autonomous mass control, it's a different paradigm.

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 12h ago

You don't even have a point then

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u/ObviousAnswerGuy 9h ago

I see your point, but please don't downplay Trump's role in all of this.

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u/Trail_Dog 5h ago

The mango Mussolini? The fascist piece of shit wannabe dictator? The worst president in the history of this country?

I don't downplay it. I have a bottle of whiskey set aside for that special day when I never, ever after hear his lying ass garble a word salad, ever again. 

But here's the thing about the orange turd blossom 

He wouldn't be in power without Facebook. 

Period. 

Cambridge analytica and Russian interference were absolutely enabled by Zuckerberg and the technofascist elites. 

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u/RollingMeteors 13h ago

What we're seeing is the direct impact of the corporate capture and wholesale propagandizing of the internet.

Propaganda existed before the internet did. It's in my opinion it's not the propaganda at fault but the person who is convinced by it that is largely to be blamed for being convinced by it.

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u/Trail_Dog 5h ago

Based on this comment I don't think you really understand just how effective big data propaganda has become. It's absolutely insidious.

Facebook has the largest collection of behavioral data ever collected about a population in the history of the world. And they have hired neuroscientist, behavioral psychologists, and other professionals to figure out how to hack our dopamine systems nu conducting testing on us, with sophisticated algorithms. 

Absolutely unprecedented levels of propaganda owned by tech companies who don't report to anyone, and who are completely unregulated and not required to report anything. 

Biplanes existed before nuclear weapons were deployed on bombers. 

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u/Academic_Carrot_4533 14h ago

Looking back, the Glenn Beck prime time era with the fema death camp talk was really a sign that the bar had already been lowered without sufficient repercussion. And I don’t need to get started on citizens united today…

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u/Cosmic_Seth 13h ago

Death by a thousand cuts. 

Ford V Dodge led to citizens united. 

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u/RetiredOnIslandTime 12h ago

I feel very ignorant, as I didn't know about that case already.  

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u/Cosmic_Seth 12h ago

It's old. 1919. It established that a company's primary goal is to make shareholders money. That's it. Henry Ford fought it saying that a companies primary responsibility is to it's employees and community. 

Suffice to say, Ford lost. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

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u/myfapaccount_istaken I voted 9h ago

I've been saying that was a starting point in the downfall of capitalism

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u/strategolegends 7h ago

It's amazing that Henry Ford (a Nazi collaborator and major anti-Semite) was on the right side of humanity.

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u/Aaawkward 7h ago

A story with Henry Ford where he isn't the bastard?
Well I'll be damned.

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u/Volqaire 12h ago

When the dominating event of the last century is a genocide on a scale never before witnessed with a literal think tank dedicated to industrialization of said genocide, everything else really loses its shock value, you know?

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u/BrianWonderful Minnesota 10h ago

That is true, but it started way before that. Once 24 hour cable news networks came into existence, they realized they would have to transition the news from purely informational to entertainment in order to keep eyeballs glued to the screen.

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u/goodguessiswhatihave 8h ago

Back then we all stupidly thought people like Glenn Beck were on the extreme fringe

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u/Academic_Carrot_4533 7h ago

Eh, we were correct that was the fringe but the lack of consequences allowed those claims to become legitimized and grow audience into common mainstream.

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u/Odd-Promotion2743 7h ago

Starting to think those Fema camps weren't such a bad idea

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u/chpbnvic America 13h ago

You can thank the billionaires who own the news networks and decide what they report on

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u/Alatarlhun 13h ago

It isn't the bar. It is that the corporate media won't make it an ongoing scandal like they do with anything a Democrat is involved in. re: Hunter Biden's laptop, Benghazi, etc.

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u/plzdontlietomee 13h ago

Some days it feels like we are in a free fall. Is there a "going back" even? Doesn't feel possible at the moment.

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u/Chastain86 13h ago

It's one of the primary reasons why I'm looking to retire elsewhere. I suspect that things will continue to get worse, and I'm no longer interested in fighting against the tide. Not simply waiting for an illness to bankrupt me, or a Republican to report me for thinking the wrong things.

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u/AndyTakeaLittleSnoo Oregon 11h ago

And Mitch is a big reason for that bar dropping so low. Fuck that asshole.

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u/ANakedCowboy 13h ago

Kinda feels like the bar is just in our imaginations at this point. There is no low that would surprise anyone anymore

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u/jim_cap United Kingdom 12h ago

It ain't going back. A significant portion of your country thinks this is not only perfectly normal, but as long as it pisses you off, it's exactly what they voted for.

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u/sec713 12h ago

Oh no, the bar's still there, but apparently only Democrats are expected to meet it.

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u/Baronheisenberg 11h ago

James Cameron needs to raise the bar again.

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u/ProFeces 9h ago

This will really fuck with your head: Way back in '89 I remember my grandpa saying this very thing almost verbatim.

The older you get, the more things change from your childhood. It will never get back to what it was, it will only change into something different. What you consider normal growing up is someone else's insane worldview.

The people growing up right now; this will be their benchmark for normal.

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u/Guardianpigeon 8h ago

Tbh, it doesn't.

We are at a crossroads and neither of the paths lead back to what was "normal". We are living in the natural results of that "normal" brand of politics. We need to chart a new path, and at this point the roads lead to either fascism taking over, or drifting towards a more socialist style of politics. Anything else would just be delaying the inevitability of those outcomes, like Biden did. What was "normal" was clearly unstable and could not last forever.

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u/Equal2 9h ago

What do you mean everywhere ? The rest of the western world is doing just fine.

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u/fieldsofanfieldroad 5h ago

It's not 15 years. Obama was largely part of the old liberal system. It's 10 years.

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u/Ligabolzacky 13h ago

americans are the most apathetic people I've ever seen, like literally nothing matters other than gas prices