The last time I wrote, it was about the baneful biases that are inherent in party politics, and how people will subscribe to them almost as if they have been brainwashed. In a way they have been.

Big Media works hand-in-hand with party politics, nowadays. Fox News caters to the Conservative Right, and MSNBC caters to the Liberal Left, and all the others seem to be pandering to some demographic or another in order to get the best ratings and advertisers. There is no truly neutral media news outlet that will simply cover the news and let the viewer make their own decision.

Theodore Roosevelt said, in the early days of the American newspaper industry: “There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful." However, “spin” has become the watchword of the Modern Media, making “truth” relative. Some outlets spin to the left, some spin to the right, all lie by omission, and all use propaganda to make the others look like liars. No news channel, no matter what they claim is “fair and balanced.” The propaganda of the news channels is nothing more than a way to keep their core audience from going to another source of information.

This is especially true of the “party-approved” news channels of Fox News, and MSNBC. Fox, as I said, caters to the Conservative Right, and may be considered the “party station” of the Republicans. MSNBC caters to the Liberal Left, and may be considered the “party station” of the Democrats. They both use propaganda, lying by omission, and other such manipulation tactics to lead America by the nose, and keep the people of America divided against each other.

I have seen it multiple times on the Internet where people deride each other for nothing more than the news channel they happen to prefer. It may seem like a small thing, but it is another example of how Party Politics divides us and allows the politicians of BOTH parties to keep us conquered.

As I said in my last entry, like-minded people prefer the company of people who think exactly like them, but the proliferation of bias in the media has allowed people to enter into echo-chambers of similar thought where outside ideas are not only unwelcome but are often considered nothing less than absolute evil. I would say that this has reached the point that the members of these closed-off groups have a truly skewed idea of what constitutes absolute evil to them. Both sides seem to agree that Hitler, and the Nazi party were evil, naturally, but they will often attempt to revise history to include the so-called “evils” that the other Party is supposed to be perpetuating to Hitler’s list of crimes.

Doesn’t it dilute the effect of Hitler, and his historical evil, when the comparison is overused? If the other side is as bad as you say, the evidence should stand on its own, without bringing Hitler or Nazi’s into the argument. Have we not had enough of the logical fallacy of Reducto ad Hitlerum?

The truly evil thing, in my opinion, is the manipulation of the American people by the media. We are being herded like sheep, what we see and hear are being dictated by a very few giving us the illusion of variety. This control of what we see and hear is particularly insidious, because it ultimately controls what we THINK.

It is time we break the chains.