08-21-2021, 12:59 PM
(08-20-2021, 12:55 PM)Au165 Wrote: I used CNN as most view it as a pretty liberal news source for perspective. Social media is a tough one because how much of it is bots pushing it versus humans is tough. That said, what is your point?
Was it not concerning that a domestic terrorist who has been radicalized by misinformation threatened to blow up the capital? This on the heels of other domestic terrorists storming said capital this very year, again because of outright lies? Your kind of arguing semantics when the real threat here isn’t sensationalism, it’s the lack of urgency to a very real and well documented threat to national security. I feel like most wouldn’t worry about sensationalizing the headline here if the guy was a self admitted member of Al Qaeda.
The fear people have isn’t being artificially pushed based on “had a bomb didn’t have a bomb”, the fear is growing because the rapid radicalization of these people is only getting worse and it’s prompting them to do shit like this at all.
Wait……..what?
This isn’t about semantics. People can’t sit there and make shit up and then go, “Eh …. Whatever, so what if he didn’t have a bomb, this is really about confronting the REAL issue of domestic terrorism”.
Am I concerned that some guy threatened to blow up the capital? A tiny bit concerned? Sure. Really concerned? No, not really. I have faith that what can be dealt with will be dealt with by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies. They don’t always get it right, but they have actually thwarted a lot of shit that you and I never even hear about. Me “being concerned” hasn’t done anything.
You do realize that people threaten to do crazy shit every day across the US yet you don’t hear 99% of it? Do you care about those threats to or is it just this one because the media decided what you should be scared about today?
Sensationalism absolutely is an issue
The propagation of fear leads to action, and when the facts of those fears are distorted you can head down the road of tribalism which can eventually lead to unethical decisions happening all in the name of the greater good because “Eh……..so what if they didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, the point is they COULD have and we needed to stop them!!”
You can’t generate fear and then distort the facts because you feel people aren’t urgent enough to stop the apocalypse of impending doom you believe will befall us. That’s not to say you can’t have your concern, but you can’t use your concerns as a basis to lie and then claim it’s all about defending the greater good. That’s dangerous and can actually in itself lead to further deterioration of society and bring about more chaos because people feel they need to stop the “evil force” that you’ve painted for them that is constructed by lies.
You seem to be so concerned with this guy “Acting on a lie” but then don’t even realize you’re okay with lies yourself because “That’s not what matters. What matters is stopping the bad guys”. No actually it does matter, because what we say can warp people’s perception of reality, and reality matters. If some guy says he’s going to blow up the capital but doesn’t actually have a bomb to do so, that changes the narrative of what could have actually happened, which is absolutely nothing.
On the other hand, if he did have a bomb, well now you have the issue that he actually COULD have killed people/damaged property etc… Now you have the issue of defusing the bomb…….finding out how he made the bomb……where he got the materials….. etc. It becomes not only a different story, but one that is much more severe and could have possibly caused many deaths depending on what the guy actually had.
You can’t demonize people by making up false narratives just so you can make them look like the boogeyman to compel people to act a certain way. That is absolutely bonkers. Wars have been justified with such thinking. People have been harassed and even killed for made up shit. Who cares if so-and-so didn’t ACTUALLY rape her. The point is we need to go full steam ahead against sexual assault! Meanwhile, that guy gets beat to death because someone believed some headline that the guy raped some woman when all he really did was rub her shoulder without consent.
It doesn’t mean he was right in touching her without consent, but it doesn’t mean he’s a rapist either.
