More and more people are tuning the news out: 'Now I don't have that anxiety

This kind of reporting (breaking, tickers) generates more stress than any understanding and never enables you to form a more complete picture.

It's easy even for children and many animals to understand the Golden Rule: treat others like you'd want to be treated. It generally takes an adult to fail to understand it.

A newsletter is problematic if it doesn't cater equally to people who believe that climate change is a hoax? Seriously?

I have a number of friends that are addicted to Outrage Pron (almost all media -mainstream or fringe- qualifies). They -literally- spend almost every waking hour, doomscrolling. One of them occasionally forwards videos to me, that are clearly edited for angst, but he takes as gospel. AI will make that kind of stuff much, much worse.

I had a friend tell me "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention!" He thought it was a clever, brand new saying (Spoiler: It's not —I first heard it, in the 1970s).

I've found that I can get a lot done, when I pay attention to the things over which I have direct control.

I have so much trouble deciding on primary elections. There are often 5 primary candidates, and 10 seats to decide upon. And I've found no good tool to help evaluate their policy and record.

I want some sort of score board website that tracks their political and public behaviors towards various policies.

If you want to do something, get involved in local politics and groups, stay off social media where Facebook like activism does nothing.

The same is not true of the left. What's labeled "progressive" really isn't; the left has moved right too. 15 years ago, the US was on the verge of passing universal healthcare. That's not even on the radar today.

Media orcs have not all kept up with these changes. Something that was "left right and center in 2015, would look as though it was mostly leftist today, because the ground has moved.

The Economist definitely has bias. All reality has a bias. You may not like some topics, that's fair. But to call a report "good journalism", it should exclude fabrications and baseless accusations. The latter are tools of propaganda.

I appreciate The Economist, but I find that they do editorialize, they're just up front about it. They use the word "should" regularly. They have a pretty clear and consistent viewpoint advocating for classical liberalism, but they're honest and unashamed about having a stance.

I've listened to NPR for decades and the only thing I've noticed as far as "progressivism" is that the weekends include shows that speak to non-white audiences (Black and Latino).

I'm curious as to what you think was "too progressive".

https://www.cbc.ca/lite/

Maybe the real source of anxiety is people have justified anger but no where to direct the anger to affect change?

Maybe it is better to keep reading the news and organize people to make it so we do not have any bad news to report.

How does your political leanings affect how you react to clickbait? NPR makes clickbait, Fox makes clickbait. Images make it easier but text can still be effective.

I don't see the spin here. Yes, news across the spectrum is lying more and more. Or at least severly downplaying some heinous events. That shouldn't be a partisan stance.

I think so much of it is us feeling emotionally overwhelmed and running away. Anxiety can be really helpful if we engage with it, have the courage to address the fear. If we just always run, especially with social conflicts, the conflicts often don't go away, we just pretend they don't exist until they boil over.

See Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes by Jacques Ellul - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda:_The_Formation_of_M...

Excerpts:

The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action. It is no longer to change adherence to a doctrine, but to make the individual cling irrationally to a process of action.

"Differences in political regimes matter little; differences in social levels are more important; and most important is national self-awareness. Propaganda is a good deal less the political weapon of a regime (it is that also) than the effect of a technological society that embraces the entire man and tends to be a completely integrated society. Propaganda stops man from feeling that things in society are oppressive and persuades him to submit with good grace."

Propaganda employs encirclement on the individual by trying to surround man by all possible routes, in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or his needs through his conscious and his unconscious, and by assailing him in both his private and his public life.

Propaganda must be total in that utilizes all forms of media to draw the individual into the net of propaganda. Propaganda is designed to be continuous within the individual's life by filling the citizen's entire day. It is based on slow constant impregnation that functions over a long period of time exceeding the individual's capacities for attention or adaptation and thus his capabilities of resistance.

Propaganda should no longer be viewed in terms of an orthodoxy but rather modern propaganda should be seen as an orthopraxy because it aims for participation not adherence. Participation can be active or passive: active if propaganda has been able to mobilize the individual for action; passive if the individual does not act directly but psychologically supports that action.

Propaganda is concerned with timeliness since an individual is only moved to action if he is pushed towards a timely one by propaganda. Once it becomes history it inevitably becomes neutral and indifferent to the individual who is sensitive primarily to current news. "Operational words" are used to penetrate an individual's indifference. However they lose their value as immediacy passes as old facts are replaced by new ones. The "current events man" is carried along the current of news and caught in the events of today, losing interest in the events of yesterday. The indifferent are apolitical and without opinion, therefore they are outside of propaganda's grasp. Incidentally, there are also the undecided, people whose opinions are vague, who form the majority of citizens within the collective. These citizens are the most susceptible to control of public opinion that is dictated by propaganda. Lastly, this part discusses propaganda and truth or the ability of propaganda to relay something as true based not on the accuracy of facts but of reality. Propaganda veils the truth with falsehoods even though lying is generally to be avoided.

Political vs. Sociological Propaganda:

Political Propaganda involves techniques of influence employed by a government, a party, an administration, or a pressure group with the intention of changing the behavior of the public. The themes and objectives of this type of propaganda are of a political nature. The goals are determined by the government, party, administration, or pressure group. The methods of political propaganda are calculated in a precise manner and its main criterion is to disseminate an ideology for the very purpose of making various political acts acceptable to the people. There are two forms of political propaganda, tactical and strategic. Tactical political propaganda seeks to obtain immediate results within a given framework. Strategic political propaganda is not concerned with speed but rather it establishes the general line, the array of arguments, and the staging of campaigns.

Sociological propaganda is a phenomenon where a society seeks to integrate the maximum number of individuals into itself by unifying its members' behavior according to a pattern, spreading its style of life abroad, and thus imposing itself on other groups. Essentially sociological propaganda aims to increase conformity with the environment that is of a collective nature by developing compliance with or defense of the established order through long term penetration and progressive adaptation by using all social currents. The propaganda element is the way of life with which the individual is permeated and then the individual begins to express it in film, writing, or art without realizing it. This involuntary behavior creates an expansion of society through advertising, the movies, education, and magazines. "The entire group, consciously or not, expresses itself in this fashion; and to indicate, secondly that its influence aims much more at an entire style of life." This type of propaganda is not deliberate but springs up spontaneously or unwittingly within a culture or nation. This propaganda reinforces the individual's way of life and represents this way of life as best. Sociological propaganda creates an indisputable criterion for the individual to make judgments of good and evil according to the order of the individual's way of life. Sociological propaganda does not result in action, however, it can prepare the ground for direct propaganda. From then on, the individual in the clutches of such sociological propaganda believes that those who live this way are on the side of the angels, and those who don't are bad.

"For propaganda to be effective the propagandee must have a certain store of ideas and a number of conditioned reflexes that can only be acquired through peace of mind springing from relative security. The establishment of a mode of common life—all this leads to the creation of a type of normal man conveniently leads all men toward that norm via a multitude of paths. Propaganda's intent is to integrate people into the normal pattern prevailing in society bring about conformance to way of life. To sum up: The creation of normalcy in our society can take one of two shapes. It can be the result of scientific, psycho-sociological analysis based on statistics—that is the American type of normalcy. It can be ideological and doctrinaire—that is the Communist type. But the results are identical: such normalcy necessarily gives rise to propaganda that can reduce the individual to the pattern most useful to society.

Information is indistinguishable from propaganda in that information is an essential element of propaganda because for propaganda to succeed it must have reference to political or economic reality. Propaganda grafts itself onto an already existing reality through "informed opinion".

Citizens are aware that political decisions affect everybody and governments cannot govern without the support, presence, pressure, or knowledge of the people. Yet the people are incapable of making long term policy so opinion must be created to follow the government because the government cannot be led by opinion. All of this describes the "Mass-Government" relationship characterized by people demanding what has already been decided, in order to appear as though the government is actually caring about what the people need.

An ideology provides society certain beliefs and no social group can exist without the foundation of these beliefs. Propaganda is the means by which an ideology can expand without force. An ideology is either fortified within a group or expanded beyond the borders of a group through propaganda. However, propaganda is less and less concerned with spreading the ideology nowadays as it is with becoming autonomous. The ideology is no longer the decisive factor of propaganda that must be obeyed by the propagandist. The propagandist cannot be constrained by the ideology of his State but must operate in service of the state and be able to manipulate the ideology as if it were an object. The ideology merely provides the content for the propagandist to build off since he is limited to what already is present within the group, nation, or society. The fundamental ideologies are nationalism, socialism, communism, and democracy.

Propaganda and Democracy:

Since democracy depends on public opinion, it is clear that propaganda must be involved. The relationship between democracy and propaganda evidently presents a conflict between the principles of democracy and the processes of propaganda. The individual is viewed as the cornerstone of a democracy which is a form of government that is made "for the people and by the people". However, as discussed in early chapters Ellul described the masses are incapable of making long-term foreign policy and the government needs to make these decisions in a timely manner. This is where propaganda comes into play and projects an artificial reality to the masses to satisfy their need to participate in government while the decisions are really made behind the scenes. This was also describe earlier as the "mass-government" relationship. Democratic regimes develop propaganda in line with its myths and prejudices. Propaganda stresses the superiority of a democratic society while intensifying the prejudices between democratic and oppressive.

Fair enough. Take a look at candidate actions as well.

And to boot, city townhalls here are every other Tuesday, usually around 4-6. Better than others I've seen at 2pm, but still not quite something a full time worker can drop in on.

There is none. Cortuption goes on as ussual either you vote or you don't.

I don't fully agree; there other paths, but they involve becoming _more_ politically active; calling & writing your congressman, joining political movements, volunteering, canvasing, etc. I think my argument is that if you're just sitting at home and getting outraged -- but not willing to spend the real time and effort to do the actual work of supporting a political cause, then your outage has no value in your life.

In other words, it's much more about tying your stress and outage to real, practical action. Most of us are just scrolling and fretting, but not doing anything. We either need to do real, practical things, or stop getting strung out for no reason.

>But even if that wasn't the case how can you research candidate positions without knowing the political context you want them to represent you within?

This is true, but you can just do a couple of days of research when it's time to vote. Given how representative democracy works, a candidate's stated view is sort of only going to directionally affect things, and I don't need expert-level knowledge to pick between two candidates. My decision for who to vote for just never requires much real precision.

I don't want to make this too political, but suppose that Gavin Newsom and J.D. Vance were the next candidates for president. Would I really need to pay close attention to politics for the next few years to figure out which one of them I considered to be the 'least bad' option? To my point above, that decision just does not have a lot of precision with regard to my views, and does not require any real expertise on my end. I could 100% check out between now and then, review the political platforms for each candidate (and maybe a few opinion pieces) over an afternoon, and be informed _enough_ to make a decision.

Again, voting is sort of the "bare minimum" when it comes to political participation. So I'm definitely not arguing that people should not become more involved; only that we should carefully consider whether our involvement is tied to any real positive outcomes. (and that's both personally, but also politically. A great deal of personal stress could potentially be a great tradeoff for a really important political outcome.)

At the very least, vote for politicians actually taking the myriad of issues seriously. Millions of Americans couldn't be bothered to do even that bare minimum in 2024, despite knowing what shitshow the first Trump term was. And no, voter suppression isn't an excuse, the Democrats lost more votes from 2020-2024 than Trump gained.

And it's not just the federal elections where votes and engagement can and do make a difference. The book bans? Passed by school boards (crazy enough these are a thing in the first place, most other countries run that through regular civilian administration). That nutjob sheriff Arpaio? Voted and confirmed by locals. You get the point - the far-right has done local legwork and voting for decades.

And finally: stay informed about what is going on, so when Uncle John goes off on his usual tirades at family gatherings after a few beers, you can recognize what the lies are and call the lies out.

I missed that part of the Western Constitutions. It is likely missing because it is a false and self-serving axiom, as well as flirting with being the opposite of democracy. Mostly, it is totalitarian regimes that invoke education as being necessary for their citizens.

Is it only democracy and not a downward spiral when democracy moves in the direction that you prefer?

You might have to accept that democracy works, and that if nothing else democracy is the individual freedom to decide on what is true.

The second that you start restricting that freedom of information and individual decisions pertaining to it, impacting elections for example, you can no longer appeal to democracy.

Personally I think that more subjects are deceptive than either they or you likely know. But I'm not so debased as to call for restrictions on your information. You're free to believe in and seek out your deceptions, as a matter of democracy.

> Dave Van Zandt is a registered Non-Affiliated voter who values evidence-based reporting. Though not a journalist, Dave has maintained a lifelong interest in politics and media bias. He originally pursued a Communications degree in college before ultimately earning a degree in Physiology. Since then, he has worked in the healthcare industry (Occupational Rehabilitation) while continuing to study media, language, and bias independently.

The guy you're talking about (from Wikipedia):

> Van Zandt was born in 1953 in Montgomery, New Jersey, and raised in New Jersey along with his three siblings. He graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology. In 1981, he earned a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School, where he served as managing editor for the Yale Law Journal. He earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the London School of Economics.

Unless Dave leads a double life as both a physical therapist and treasurer of the bar foundation these are two different people.

[1] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/about/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._Van_Zandt