What to expect...

[babylonsister]

Sister posted on FB...

The Obama press conference was probably the last public act of rational deliberative government we will see for the next 4, possibly 8 years.

A Trump presidency will never engage with the press or the public via an exchange of ideas similar to how we all understand and experience rational "discussion" or "debate"--people offering ideas through language, listening and responding on the belief that we all accept the existence of empirical ideas/facts, thereby allowing us to arrive at agreed upon conclusions. Instead, the Trump administration will engage solely in a kind of public talk designed to transform reality via programatic scripts that undermine and call into question normal deliberation. This disjuncture between empirical reality and the attempt by the Trump administration to push their own version of reality will lead to a kind of mass frustration, cynicism, social and political paralysis.

We will all be caught in an endless cycle of needing to argue that the obvious, tangible world actually exists and the invented world of propaganda does not exist. Not sure what this feels like? Look outside your window: is it snowing? In a rational deliberative system, you see snow and the weather report says that it is snowing--you put on your coat and boots, drive to work. In an anti-rational system, you see snow and the weather report says that it is sunny and 75--you spend all day at home trying to figure out what the weather actually is. One strategy in this alternate system is to stop listening to public reports or news.

[Hugin]

1. We're back to... "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"

It's a packaged deal with, "Do as I say, not as I do."

[many a good man]

2. If the left stops listening to the news

We'll be like the right wing who stopped listening to the news years ago. Then the only people listening to the news will be the "mushy middle" - the ones who actually decide the outcome of elections. They are also the ones most susceptible to propaganda.

We need to support those that call out the propaganda. We need support writers and academics who get after the truth. In this new media age it will be far too easy to obliterate objective truth completely. We must fiercely resist this or our posterity will be doomed.

[babylonsister]

3. I do agree with you; I for one

can't and won't look away. I don't know if it's for your noble reasons or the train wreck aspect. I am both fascinated and appalled by turns. But I'll keep watching and keeping tabs, fwiw.

[a kennedy]

4. Thank you for watching.....I'm just not ready......

Hope I will be at some point.....I just can't now....to physically painful.