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In electronics an amplifier works by feeding the same electronic signal back on itself until the signal grows in amplitude (now you know the origins of terms feedback loop and amplifier). An uncontrolled feedback loop will keep feeding the amplified signal of the previous loop until you get…feedback which, in the audio world, is the loud squeek that we’re all familiar with from karioke bars and weddings.
Now in the world on online news and reporting this is a disadvantage for progressives who try to amplify facts but a great advantage for the right amplify noise that aims to squelch the truth.
I long for news that has teeth. Joe Wilson for instance…great news for about five minutes while everyone is in shock and only the facts are being reported. But as soon as the opinions, editorials, bloviations and eructations of the online feedback loop kick in, the the right wingers have enough to wait to listen to Limbaugh the next day to hear what they should be thinking…then the is in the right court and stays there. The right is more adept at handling online news to there advantage because the feedback loop works in their favor. The "outrageous" opinions and interpretations are much effectivly amplified than the boring truth and facts. Even poor little FDL gets sucked in their game by talking about how outrageous the right’s opinions and talk is… just amplifiying the garbage static of the right and squelching the truth and helping to establish an unreal reality.
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As usual, Glenn Greenwald was ahead of the pack in cautioning against excessively high dudgeon with regard to the Wilson outburst. I mean, we’ve just come off 8 years of progressives complaining about legislators and journalists not shouting, “You lie!”
So, HardRight – what do you suggest? Are you vying to become the Luntz-of-the-Left? Seriously, are you coming with advise?
While I agree with some of your premise, it is worth noting that effective communications apparatus were long ago abandoned by Democrats – this may or may not coincide with the Democratic Party’s realization that incumbency-protection was more important than, you know, actually leading. I envision the feedback loop you describe as not a single channel in which two signals compete for bandwidth, but rather two distinct channels: one vital and flexible, relentless, and gifted; the other moribund, prehistoric, and unfamiliar.
It can be traced back to Jimmy Carter’s defeat of Ford in ‘76 (when ‘we’ assumed that having Nixon exiled to San Clemente was the death knell for the Republican Party), and probably farther back.
Name one media apparatus that is not expertly and instantaneously plied and saturated by ‘Republicans’ (I use the word generically) – you can’t. We literally surrendered that terrain generations ago. So your feedback loop analogy limps right out of the box – lacking the hardware, acoustics are irrelevant.
I would posit that Democrats DO NOT attempt to amplify facts. Rather, they play along, like a life-boat full of steerage being towed by a cruise ship. Elected Democrats are by and large pathetic, and hence the growth, however meager, of online Progressive communications.
They do not need to wait for that piece of trash to make their move – they reflexively pivot and turn sewage into gold by simply saying it loudly and relentlessly from every corner of their well-practiced media operation. This has never been (and will likely never be) about the ‘truth of a thing.’
So describe the frame you envision. ShuttingTFU is how we got here in the first place.
The Democratic Party – sporting dry powder since January, 1977.
If you want to take back “The Media”, just read Forrest!?! I Don’t See No Stinkink Forrest! The Cheney method to save the Public Option. It’ll describe how and why the Right saturates all Media outlets and how the Left can “easily” take it back.
In response to newt @ 2:
Dood!
And, they still don’t get that they have to pay attention to their progressive base:
— Bobby Kennedy unseated incumbent LBJ in 1968.
— Teddy Kennedy killed incumbent Carter’s chances in 1980.
— Ralph Nader did in anointed Al Gore in 2000.
When will these fuckers get the picture that we are not to be messed with. Do they only get it after the fact? (If at all?)
I was struck by how the metaphor above focused me on what we have made of our party, and how much ground the Republicans made up in what is really a very short time.
That aside, when Goopers, regardless of the paucity of real ideas, can make so much hash of a debate that deserves some real debate – I mean literally, many, many people of good faith are truly scared to death of health care reform because of a vacuum in communications – we can only conclude that we fucked ourselves, and will not stop fucking ourselves until the money dries up.
How likely is that?
Progressives are not important. That’s why they are ignored.
I don’t think we have to take too much responsibility for the fuck up. The right controls the media and therefore, the message. There is so much media concentration in teabagger country that no matter what we say or do, the teabaggers will either not hear of it at all or hear lies 24/7. The repubicans have a propaganda machine that we cannot fight. There’s a diary on DKos that contains a video of a very non-threatening young man interviewing the teabaggers at the Million Moron March. The ignorance of the teabaggers is appalling. It’s criminal that these people are so clueless. Here’s the You Tube whatsy (I hope this works): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..r_embedded
All the discussion about the media and the Dem’s fail to address the real problem, namely that 7 companies own over 90 per cent of mass media(television,newspapers, movies,radio) and that just 21 people sit on the boards of ALL seven companies.
See here and take action.