# Happy Birthday to a fractured nation



## mark handler (Jul 4, 2018)

Happy Birthday to a fractured nation


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## jar546 (Jul 4, 2018)

Happy 4th to you too.  Yep, agree.


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## ICE (Jul 4, 2018)

Well then since the door for political discourse has been thrown open  .....   I do not agree.   The nation is not fractured just because we have two or a dozen sides with many issues.  The news machine stirs up a storm to stay relevant.  Our current leaders are truly looking out for the USA; as they should be.  The other side is content to sit on their hands when they are not busy wringing them.


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## conarb (Jul 4, 2018)

I found this chart interesting:


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## mark handler (Jul 4, 2018)

ICE said:


> I do not agree.


The United States of America is more divided now than it has been since the civil war.
The two major parties disagree on if certain problems even exist, and most voters vote not in support of their candidate, but in opposition to the opposing one.
It seems like the people of the country are truly of different nations.


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## Francis Vineyard (Jul 5, 2018)

Ones perspective is relative to times we live in, to promote facts, propaganda and rumors to mobilize and convince others, even before President Lincoln.

For instance "The process of "tar and feathering," for example, was brutally violent. Stripped of clothes, covered with hot tar, and splattered with feathers, the victim was then forced to parade about in public. Unless the British Army was close at hand to protect Loyalists, they often suffered bad treatment from Patriots and often had to flee their own homes. About one-in-six Americans was an active Loyalist during the Revolution, and that number undoubtedly would have been higher if the Patriots hadn't been so successful in threatening and punishing people who made their Loyalist sympathies known in public." 
http://www.ushistory.org/us/13c.asp

1.  "The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.  He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false." ~Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:225 

2.  "I deplore... the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them... These ordure’s are rapidly depraving the public taste and lessening its relish for sound food.  As vehicles of information and a curb on our functionaries, they have rendered themselves useless by forfeiting all title to belief... This has, in a great degree, been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit." ~Thomas Jefferson to Walter Jones, 1814. ME 14:46

3.  "As for what is not true, you will always find abundance in the newspapers." Thomas Jefferson to Barnabas Bidwell, 1806. ME 11:118 

4."Advertisements... contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." ~Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1819. ME 15:179

5.  "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.  Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." ~Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, June 11, 1807


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## Builder Bob (Jul 5, 2018)

The issue at hand is instant access to media and the use of social media - times in the past were not so quick to be presented without factual checking of the materials presented - it took time for film to develop and process --- Now it is on a cell phone, placed on social media, starts getting hits, beig media company picks it up and runs with it.... even editing the media post to make it look more dramatic than it is....

Best I have been in years, not watching evening news or local news - previewing newspapers from three different sources and basically not giving a damn about what is saying what about who.... we used to call that gossip when I was younger, not it main stream media.

I miss the news anchors of days past that had the more correct morals about responsibility of journalism......another lost  trait in today's sociality.


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## jar546 (Jul 5, 2018)

So far I appreciate this thread, although it is on the edge of where I shut it down.  Right now, there are no arguments, just viewpoints.  I will not delete this........yet.  It is up to the participants as to whether or not I take this down.  I have been pretty steadfast on banning discussions of religion and politics which has kept this form as civil and professional as we all hope it to be.  Thank you for your participation and let's not cross the blurry line I am drawing in the sand.


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## Builder Bob (Jul 5, 2018)

No problem - not meant to be a discussion issue, just how I stand at the moment.


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## jar546 (Jul 5, 2018)

Builder Bob said:


> No problem - not meant to be a discussion issue, just how I stand at the moment.


It was not about you, it was the thread in general.  I screwed up my wording and will correct it now.


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## tmurray (Jul 5, 2018)

Francis Vineyard said:


> Ones perspective is relative to times we live in, to promote facts, propaganda and rumors to mobilize and convince others, even before President Lincoln.
> 
> For instance "The process of "tar and feathering," for example, was brutally violent. Stripped of clothes, covered with hot tar, and splattered with feathers, the victim was then forced to parade about in public. Unless the British Army was close at hand to protect Loyalists, they often suffered bad treatment from Patriots and often had to flee their own homes. About one-in-six Americans was an active Loyalist during the Revolution, and that number undoubtedly would have been higher if the Patriots hadn't been so successful in threatening and punishing people who made their Loyalist sympathies known in public."
> http://www.ushistory.org/us/13c.asp
> ...



Wow. Tell me how you really feel about news papers Thomas Jefferson...

We always think of the media of being this altruistic thing, but we often forget that it is ultimately a business. Businesses traditionally have been to serve a single purpose: to make money. We have been seeing a shift recently in the business community to some more selfless acts, but I think this is likely at the demand of their customers. I always hear about how people in the past had more integrity, but I always question if this is really true. In my mind people are people. Some are giving, some are not. Some are principled and some are not. Maybe we are just rewarding the unprincipled people more than principled people now so they rise to a more prominent position.

As far as a fractured nation, show me one that isn't. I know Canada is. It's easy to have everyone focused when dealing with military threats that could impact civilians. No one wants to die, so everyone gets on board to fight the enemy. Everything else is a lot more gray.


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## Rick18071 (Jul 5, 2018)

You can have your own opinions but not your own facts. But I do like to hear other opinions from all sides.

It seems that all the commercial news stations have there own opinions. I try to stick with PBS and NPR to get the facts.


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## my250r11 (Jul 5, 2018)

Builder Bob said:


> I miss the news anchors of days past that had the more correct morals about responsibility of journalism......another lost trait in today's sociality.



Agreed.


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## mtlogcabin (Jul 5, 2018)

Even "facts" can be skewed depending on how they are gathered and presented

We all need to be discerning and slow to draw conclusions when events happen and are first reported no matter where the report is coming from.


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## conarb (Jul 5, 2018)

Rick18071 said:


> You can have your own opinions but not your own facts. But I do like to hear other opinions from all sides.
> 
> It seems that all the commercial news stations have there own opinions. I try to stick with PBS and NPR to get the facts.



As I've said before I don't watch television so am not exposed to propaganda, I stopped taking the newspaper when there was too much propaganda, when driving I do listen to the Symphony and Opera channels on Sirius XM Radio, at times I would switch to NPR until it starated promoting the New World Order agenda.  There is a new Rasmussen Poll out showing that 31% of Americans think we are headed into a Civil War within 5 years.



			
				Rasmussen Report said:
			
		

> Most voters fear that political violence is coming from opponents of the president’s policies, just as they did in the second year of Barack Obama’s presidency, and nearly one-in-three think a civil war is next.
> 
> Thirty-one percent (31%) of Likely U.S. Voters say it’s likely that the United States will experience a second civil war sometime in the next five years, with 11% who say it’s Very Likely. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 59% consider a second civil war unlikely, but that includes only 29% who say it’s Not At All Likely. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
> 
> ...



In a recent thread I was arguing with Jim Brown about the ICC, Jim finally said he would fight to the death to stop the United Nations Agenda 21, I stopped listening to NPR about 2011 when several of their hosts started promoting the One World government agenda, like solving the world's overpopulation problem by moving humankind into urban cores and stacking them into high-rise buildings.  NPR is government propaganda, I would rather see a Civil War rather than the United Nations Agenda.   


¹ http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub.../june_2018/31_think_u_s_civil_war_likely_soon


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## ICE (Jul 5, 2018)

I used to have a cable channel that broadcast Al Jazeera News.  I saw happenings from around the World.  It was amazing in that no other news organization touched the topics.  It was eyeopening to see what we wern't seeing here in the USA.  The cable channel is gone.....from me at least.  NPR will give us news from around the World .....Al Jazeera gave me the rest of the story and important news that I would not get otherwise.

There will never be another civil war in the USA.  We have it too good to waste time killing each other.


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## conarb (Jul 5, 2018)

ICE said:


> I used to have a cable channel that broadcast Al Jazeera News.  I saw happenings from around the World.  It was amazing in that no other news organization touched the topics.  It was eyeopening to see what we wern't seeing here in the USA.  The cable channel is gone.....from me at least.  NPR will give us news from around the World .....Al Jazeera gave me the rest of the story and important news that I would not get otherwise.



Tiger:

Television has become an entertainment medium, you get opinion about the news and not facts, I've found that you can get the news on the computer without the commericals, the best I use are:

*RT (Russia Today)* for the Russian perspective, they even have a tab for news in the USA and other tabs for other parts of the world.

*Al-Jazzera* for the Arab prespective.

*China Today* for the Chinese perspective. Before they had it on the computer I subscribed to the paper.   

I used to go to the BBC but found the news there as bad as the US, for a while when NPR went bad I listened to  CBC (the Canadian Broadcast Channel) on Sirius XM radio but it soon became a mirror of NPR. 



> There will never be another civil war in the USA.  We have it too good to waste time killing each other.



I certainly hope you are right but so many people are rightly upset that lots are calling for it, both sides of the political spectra have seen that no matter who they vote for things stay the same, I'd rather see a civil war than live under socialism.


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## tmurray (Jul 6, 2018)

You can get al jazzera on youtube as well. That's where I watch it along with CBC.


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## conarb (Jul 6, 2018)

tmurray said:


> You can get al jazzera on youtube as well. That's where I watch it along with CBC.


T Murray:

Haven't you noticed that CBC has become a clone of NPR over the last few years?  There is still a lot of good stuff on NPR, it's just the way it's slanted, like TED programs that they play then have the presenter there for questions. 

In all of these you have to realize that all so-called news today is propaganda, a good example is RT, they are constantly knocking fracking, you have to take this in the context that Russia's main source of income is oil and gas sales to Europe, the US has the world's biggest gas reserves and is constantly threatening to convert it to LNG and ship it to Europe to undercut Russian prices.  I think the secret is listening to all of these sources and make your own decisions, Americans who are glued to their TVs are the most indoctrinated people in the world, when TV first got started I read the warnings of the great Canadian thinker Marshall McLuhan.¹

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan


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## tmurray (Jul 6, 2018)

conarb said:


> T Murray:
> 
> Haven't you noticed that CBC has become a clone of NPR over the last few years?  There is still a lot of good stuff on NPR, it's just the way it's slanted, like TED programs that they play then have the presenter there for questions.
> 
> ...



I mostly watch their panel stuff and the odd thing that I did not catch during the day. 

This post echoes many on this thread; that understanding the "spin" that the news outlet puts on their programing is key to understanding if it is an actual issue or not. We generally make this determination based on the threat to our value structure. Since we all have different value structures, some people may find the fact alarming while others have no interest in it. We all feel that we are logical beings and assume others are as well, so we get frustrated when other do not feel the way we do about an issue. 

All very interesting really.


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## Pcinspector1 (Jul 6, 2018)

Hey...how bout the Cubs!


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