"A broken clock may only be right twice a day, and the rest of the time it’s useless. But if you have a clock that always falsely tells you the precise opposite of what time it is, you can actually use that to figure out what time it really is. You just have to figure out how to translate the clock’s pattern of bullshit. And it’s the same with the political media. They’re not ineptly wrong at random. They’re intentionally wrong in a very specific pattern."
Hanlon's razor is the proposition that one should "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." It's actually a Napoleon quote.
To which I'll add, LeftistLawyer's first #capitalist corollary --
"Never ascribe to incompetence, that which is adequately explained by #greed."
Which, if you think about it, is really just a euphemism for malice. You have to be ok with the oblique suffering of others to be a good capitalist.
So please stop scratching your heads in confusion about why so many things are so fucked up. We celebrate immiserating the poor and lionizing malicious greed in the capitalist world. Hanlon was the greatest elite enabler of all time.
As Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling says, a website with podcasts and sermons Mike Johnson has given in churches has now been scrubbed. It showed him saying things like this at First Baptist Church, Haughton, Louisiana, in 2019:
“By the way, the United States is not a democracy. Do you know what a democracy is? Two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner. You don’t want to be in a democracy. Majority rule: not always a good thing.”
@wdlindsy. With each new revelation, I can't help but wonder why we are only now reading about this. Did the #Louisiana#media do a better job than the national media, or was no one paying attention? As a #teacher, I would like to give the #NYT and the #WashingtonPost an assignment. Each day, instead of doing a #horserace article for the umpteenth time, pick a #congressperson and dig into their record. Write about their #interviews, #sources of funding, belief (or not) in #democracy.
"But if #Republicans did not wake from their slumber after the first impeachment or the second, after a jury decided he had lied about sexually assaulting #EJeanCarroll, after an indictment accusing him of obstruction and violating the #Espionage Act (set out in shocking detail), and after replete evidence of his alleged role in an attempted #coup, it is hard to imagine what would bring them to their senses." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/trump-nomination-gop-doomed/
"And, frankly, the mainstream media has made it that much easier for cowardly Republicans to stick with Trump.
Rather than challenge Republicans at every turn to defend their embrace of Trump or even to examine seriously the historical origins of toxic racist, xenophobic and delusional beliefs, the mainstream media largely sticks to horserace politics." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/trump-nomination-gop-doomed/