Trust in Media
The other big part of the red pilled worldview is a lack of trust in the media.
We’ve all heard the term “fake news.” This is what that term implies: That the media is partisan and lying and have abandoned their fourth estate responsibilities as a check on power.
We need a shared understanding of reality to be able to work as a community and create our future together. And we need someone to hold powerful people accountable.
And we don’t have that. At all.
There’s a phenomenon dubbed the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. I bet you’ve experienced it. It goes like this:
You read an article about a topic you know something about, and you realize how little the journalist who wrote it knows about your topic. It’s an oversimplification, misleading, or downright wrong.
Then you proceed to turn the page and read an article about some other topic you’re not an expert on, and you promptly forget what you just noticed, and you trust that this article surely is telling the truth.
But of course it isn’t.
I’ve had this experience many times. You probably have too.
After Trump got elected, I was seriously concerned about the survival of the US Democracy.
A thriving democracy depends on an informed citizenry, and so I signed up for a paid subscription to The Washington Post. Democracy dies in darkness, as their slogan says. Better shed some light.
I quickly learned the errors of my ways.
Article after article, I saw the same pattern:
There’s some tiny bit of real data. They’ll write a whole article of narrative, interpreting the thing. And then buried in paragraph seven is the real nugget of information that the whole article was based on. But when you go check out the source, it turns out that it doesn’t support the narrative of the article.
Try it yourself. Read almost any article carefully. Ignore any adjectives, assertions, generalizations, loosely defined or undefined terms, and see what you’re left with.
A Fun Game
I’ll walk you through an example so you can see how this works.
Try to look beyond the Trump piece and just notice the machinations at work. Imagine it was Kamala or Obama or Trudeau or whoever your favorite politician is.
I just pulled a random headline from CNN.com today, September 20, 2024:
Headline: “Trump leads, and his party follows, on vaccine skepticism.”
What does that mean exactly?
What does “vaccine skepticism” mean exactly? Does it mean that you have questions about the value of some of the vaccines administered to children? Rejecting them all? Having questions about immunity from liability for vaccine manufacturers? What does it mean? That’s not clear, but it’s clearly bad.
What does it mean that he leads and the party follows?
None of this is clear. But okay, it’s a headline.
More than four years ago, former President Donald Trump’s administration accelerated the development and rollout of the covid-19 vaccine.
Okay, nothing much here. Statement of fact.
The project, dubbed Operation Warp Speed, likely saved millions of lives.
This is an assertion, and one that I personally question. I think it’s more likely that millions of people died because they were prevented from receiving known, effective treatments early on, so that an Emergency Use Authorization could be given to the COVID vaccines. So the exact opposite.
But a substantial number of Republican voters now identify as vaccine skeptics — and Trump rarely mentions what’s considered one of the great public health accomplishments in recent memory.
What is a “substantial number”? What does it mean to “identify as a vaccine skeptic?” What’s the implication of Trump “rarely mentioning” this? And the fact it was “one of the greatest health accomplishments in recent memory” is another assertion not backed by anything.
Note how they repeatedly state assertions as fact, to make it appear as if the question of the efficacy of the COVID vaccines, and vaccines in general, is a settled issue. It’s not. Far from it.
Here’s another article from yesterday, September 29, 2024.
Headline: “Trump lambastes immigrants using false homicide claims.”
Note the word “lambastes.” A very loaded word.
“Immigrants” itself is also value loaded. Are they legal or illegal immigrants? Is their status disputed?
And the claims are deemed “false” right there in the headline. The stage is clearly set.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, in a speech that repeatedly painted a dark caricature of immigrants, seized on a recent report to claim falsely that thousands of immigrants with homicide records had been allowed to go free by the Biden administration.
“Repeatedly painted a dark caricature of immigrants”. Whoa! That’s strong. What did he say exactly? How many times did he say it exactly?
“Seized” is another one of their favorite words. It sounds dangerous, suspect, and manipulative.
Imagine they’d instead said something neutral, like “Trump, quoting a recent government report, raised concerns about immigrants with criminal records being allowed into the country and remaining free.”
Or, if they were Trump-friendly, they could’ve said: “Trump, quoting a recent government report, raised valid and reasonable concerns about some illegal immigrants with criminal records being allowed into the country and remaining free.”
Notice the addition of “valid” and “reasonable” and “illegal” to add support.
Same set of facts, very different narrative.
All of this really matters. Narrative is everything. These words bypass your mind’s defense mechanism, and seep right into you as truth. “Trump’s a bad guy who hates immigrants.” When there’s plenty of evidence to support the opposite. But that story is never told in the media.
Let’s continue:
“They’re coming into our cities and our small towns, here in Pennsylvania and all over the country,” Trump said in a speech that meandered widely and made several other unsupported assertions. “These towns are petrified. Even if they’re not there yet, they will be there.”
Note the use of “meandered widely” and “made several other unsupported assertions”. Clearly painting a picture of Trump as off his rocker.
Trump cited a new letter from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to falsely suggest that more than 13,000 immigrants convicted of homicide had been let into the United States on President Joe Biden’s watch and then released. But allies of Vice President Kamala Harris and nonpartisan experts say Trump is badly misrepresenting the data.
“Falsely”. Again, they’re asserting the conclusion without backing it up.
Also note “nonpartisan experts.” Who are these experts? What are they experts on? What are their credentials? And what does it mean exactly that they’re “nonpartisan”? You can be nonpartisan and still part of the blob, because the blob is beyond party. It’s intentionally reinforcing an outdated, irrelevant left/right paradigm. Instead of trusting “experts” because someone claims they are experts and nonpartisan, can we just look at the facts directly?
The people he cited entered the United States over several decades, including during the Trump presidency. And while they are listed as “non-detained,” that means only that ICE is not detaining them; in many cases, they are being held by another agency, and are often serving prison sentences.
So now we’re getting somewhere. We’re hearing some of the pushback. We still haven’t heard exactly what Trump claimed, or what the letter says. Let’s keep going
“The data in this letter is being misinterpreted,” a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement. “The data goes back decades; it includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more, the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this Administration.” The spokesperson added, “It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners.”
Great. Now we’re hearing some details about the claim.
I looked to see if I could find the original statement from DHS. Nothing on dhs.gov, nothing on their official X account, nothing on YouTube. Not clear if it was a written statement or an oral statement, nor exactly when and how that statement was made. A “spokesperson” for the DHS doesn’t say much. Hard to determine what that statement is based on. I don’t trust the government on this.
Also, what does it matter that it also happened under Trump’s watch, or before? If murderers are indeed entering the country, and if the question of whether we should allow more or fewer people to enter the country without adequate vetting is a point of differentiation in this election, then it’s still relevant. Could we look at what’s true, and what exactly each candidate plans to do about it?
Can we now hear exactly what Trump claimed and what the letter says, so we can compare?
Not so fast…
Even so, Trump spent much of his two-hour speech on elaborate descriptions of the individuals purportedly roaming the nation, calling them “stone-cold killers,” “worse than any of our criminals,” “monsters,” and people who “have no heart” and “don’t care who they kill.”
“Elaborate descriptions” and some quotes. It’s not clear from the context who exactly he was talking about. If he is talking about members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang, for example, his descriptions sound pretty accurate. If he’s talking about regular folks with no criminal background, it’s obviously obsessive. So who’s he talking about? We need to know the context to judge the statements. Will we get it? We shall see.
But note how the way this is presented makes it seem like he’s unhinged and cold and paints immigrants in a bad light with broad brush strokes. Especially if that’s the view you already have of him, because you’ve been told over and over again by the media that he’s a racist, he hates immigrants, and he’s “literally Hitler”. If that’s your view, then you’ll see all of this as confirmation of what you already know to be true and just accept it all at face value. That’s the point.
I have a friend in Venezuela who tells me the claim that Venezuela is emptying their prisons and sending the inmates to America is 100% true. Venezuela is safer than it’s ever been, because all the criminals are gone. I haven’t verified this statement further, but I trust my friend, and it sounds plausible. He’s not particularly involved in US politics, he’s just sharing what he’s observing in his own country.
Sometimes statements that sound awful can actually be true. In that case, which is more awful? The saying of it, the fact itself, or the people who allowed it to happen?
The ICE letter, which has also been cited by other conservatives, was sent on Sept. 25 by Patrick J. Lechleitner, the agency’s deputy director, to Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Tex.), in response to his request for information on noncitizens who are on ICE’s docket and havebeen charged with or convicted of a crime.
And here they actually link to the letter. That’s helpful.
So I’m guessing now we’ll hear exactly what the letter says and how it compares?
Not yet.
While Trump focused much of his speech in Erie on immigrants, he hit on several other themes that have made regular appearances in his stump speech, including the notion that he would easily win the election if Democrats did not somehow rig the system.
Wait, what? Now they changed the subject from immigration to election fraud? Note the use of “somehow” to make it seem preposterous and silly. “Several other themes that have made regular appearances” is patronizing.
Contrast that with this way of saying the same thing: “Aside from immigration, Trump also brought up important topics like the need for a secure and trustworthy election process, something Democrats have systematically opposed.”
Same set of facts. Completely different narrative.
Are you starting to see how the sausage is made here?
The “correct” opinions are constantly being assigned to you by the media.
Unless you do the hard work of actually reading the letter and listening to Trump’s speech or reading the transcript, then you have no idea what is really going on here. The only thing that’s clear is how the Washington Post sees it, and how you’re supposed to see it too.
And nobody has time to do this work.
We’re screwed!
Next, the article turns to Trump criticizing Kamala’s mental acuity. Given her performance, it doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing to bring up to me. Especially after four years of Biden, where his obvious cognitive decline was being hidden from the public by the media and his administration, including Kamala. Are we being told the truth about Kamala? What would make us believe we are?
I am going to quote this paragraph:
