Friends, Trump made a triumphant return to Madison Square Garden last night, alongside his entourage, of which Elon Musk is now an integral part, apparently! My man RFK was there too. Trump's visceral connection with ordinary Americans was on full display, and I'm sure the progressive intelligencia hated every minute of it. Expect a lot more crass populism in the years to come!
Was the 2024 election symbolic of a profound "realignment" in American politics? The short answer is yes, although elements of that realignment have been percolating for years, and sometimes decades. For instance, the growing rift between the working class and Democrats is something that's been a persistent theme going back at least to the presidential campaigns of Richard Nixon. Republicans have been making inroads with minority voters since the presidency of George W. Bush, although periodic backsliding has sometimes obscured that fact. Perhaps most interestingly, the most affluent and highly educated voters have drifted decidedly towards Democrats, making the party vulnerable to charges of elitism. It's a rich tapesty, indeed! Also note the sanctimonious New York Times piece about how "Republican" pollsters aren't to be trusted. Guess what? Those pollsters were a lot more accurate in this cycle than the alleged professional pollsters working for the mainstream media, and that's been true for a long time -- the New York Times just doesn't want to hear it. With any luck, though, fewer and fewer people will be reading the Times as well as watching CNN and MSNBC. It appears that MSNBC's ratings are circling the drain already, which is extremely good news. Meanwhile, ad revenue is starting to flow back to X, after a concerted effort by lefties to smother the platform. Let's hope more corporations see the writing on the wall and shift their ad spending from the mainstream media to social media, especially X, and alternative media. It would be the smart thing to do, surely.
https://www.patrickruffini.com/p/the-realignment-is-here?r=cyqk&triedRedirect=true
https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1857897129076777108
https://www.adweek.com/media/advertisers-returning-to-x/#
https://apnews.com/article/trump-democratic-states-blue-states-346dbbd11111f9558b69ed137321c630
To your point Dr. Waddy, there is plenty of good news on the dissemination of information front.
ReplyDeleteHowever, should we welcome all large corporate advertising spending on SM platforms like "X"? It might be the smart thing for them to do, but the big corporate ad spend on traditional media, specifically MSNBC and CNN, has precipitated their failure.
Many insiders have suggested that MSNBC's ad revenue from Pharma alone approached 65-80% of receipts. Others have suggested that drug company's advertisements were less about promoting products than influencing content. With the changing political landscape, it's no wonder Comcast and Warner Brothers seem bearish on their prospects and may be looking to sell.
Granted, independent content creators populate the posts on SM platforms. However, one can easily see Pharma's two billion dollar influence on YouTube with their shaky "fact-checking" on anything vaccine-related.
Count me in for hopes that certain categories of corporate advertisers are limited on any SM platform. The appointment of "my man" :) RFK Jr. may be meeting legislative resistance in part because of his stand on this issue. On the flip side, his vision could result in positive changes to limit drug companies' power to affect public perception, federal agency action, and, yes, free speech.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Wish I had seen that event. Picture is great; I'm so happy for him and his family.
ReplyDeleteLet's not forget VP JD; haven't heard much of him lately and he's one of the BIG gains we made on this glorious election day.
Dr. Waddy and Richie et al from Jack: I would bid MSNBC "aw, don't get mad, just GO AWAY!" I'm learning a lot from the dialogue you are having on dissemination of info. I'm from the last generation of card catalog librarians and its much above my ken.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: "Too big to rig"; I love it because had antiamerica had had any pretext to rig they would surely have done it or would surely have "projected" such intent on us had it been possible. Finally we have taken the gloves off and met these dissemblers straight up.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Big business has generated the unprecedented prosperity which - well, all I can say is try living without it! I understand they have to be always watching the bottom line in order to survive the competition which is inherent in free enterprise, so perhaps we ought not task them for beginning to come in from the cold and abandoning the smarmy clasps of antiamerica . Their cringeworthy flirtation with neo Marxists has its element of pathos because we know the far left would,in the totalitarian power it seeks, deliver them to Madame DeFarge . I guess they think they must hedge their bets and they probably have good reason.
ReplyDeleteYeah, lets go after them when they get too big for their britches, as they did in the post Civil War 19th century and into the '30s. But let's also fully recognize that we owe them very, very much. The material well being we enjoy brings us far more than physical comfort; poverty is an intensely degrading state to be in and no people has been as blessedly delivered from it as we are.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Doc Waddy, your having a PhD, what do you think are the reasons so many highly educated people are leftists? Is it because their necessarily narrow intellectual specializations as they advance hamper them from seeing a bigger picture? I would guess also that there is a dominant far left social and professional ambience in the American academy which can in some circumstances cause one to outwardly favor the left(?). What do you think?
ReplyDeleteRAY TO JACK
DeleteI have an MA in History and taught History at a 2 year Community College for 10 years, and can give you my opinion on this.
While in graduate school, most of the professors were Left, and my advisor was no exception. If you did not "tow the mark" with them they would give you a hard time until you "fell back in line".
One student I knew personally who was in a seminar with me, and who was working for a PhD got so discouraged, he dropped his program, and ended up working for the State of Kansas. He told me it was one of the smartest things he ever did. Instead of struggling through on soup (and he had a family to support), he ended up with a job he liked with lots of benefits. Better by far than having to "put up with the bullshit dished out by a bunch of academic assholes!"
Most graduate schools today are still run by a bunch of professors who have been brain-washed with Marxist ideology by generations and decades of other professors who were brain-washed. There are some exceptions, but they are few and far between. Check out the late Charles Beard who started a lot of this Marxist crap about 100 years ago, and also Howard Zinn, who greatly influenced U.S. History in colleges for decades after World War 2.
Hope you are not offended by my giving you my unasked for opinion, when your question was specifically for Dr. Waddy, who clearly had the guts needed for achieving his doctorate.
I was invited to a PhD program, but declined because I know such a program, lasting years, would just be more Leftist Bullshit. Instead, I got a great job with the Feds making decent money with good benefits. Fortunately, the Community College where I taught part-time was almost miraculously conservative.
Richie, that is a very perceptive point that cutting off the MSM's revenue from Big Pharma, in itself, would probably kill most of the platforms we so despise. But you are right that transferring that filthy lucre over to the platforms we like might, in the long run, be no better.
ReplyDeleteJack, I totally agree that corporate America isn't fundamentally evil. It's fundamentally good. The problem is that it is often led by affluent, highly educated PROGRESSIVES, and they can be a powerful enemy when buttressed with all the resources of the private sector.
Jack, I tend to agree with Ray that there is nothing inherent in academia that promotes leftism, and nor is there anything inherent in high intelligence that promotes it either. As Ray says, generations of brainwashing, social pressure, and insidious institutional infiltration have brought us to this point. In a word, the smarty pants set is leftist because it's the fashionable thing to be, and from that point on confirmation bias sets in and they only dig in their heels. I believe the capture of our elite CAN be reversed, but it will take a hell of a lot more than "four more years"!
Ray from Jack: No reason for me to be offended; your experience sounds very germane. I know I briefly considered becoming a leftist under the influence of leftist Profs I admired while an undergrad. My library master's program was dominated by leftists and some had doubts about my fitness for the profession when I expressed misgivings about "heroic"reflexive resistance on the part of public librarians to citizens who wish to see their library free of certain works.I found the profession itself often dominated by leftists and I refused to join the American or NY Library Associations because of their blatant leftist biases (which they hold despite claiming strict doctrinal neutrality in the selection of library materials). Recently the ALA has gone right off the deep end and will no doubt be a stalwart in the impassioned "resistance" to the redemption of common sense we have just enjoyed. Luckily most of my career was in state prison librarianship where, despite supervision from criminal lovers in the ivory tower state capitol,assertive leftist bias was NOT welcome. I found that despite my grievous backwardness I was able to run libraries which were beneficial to the inmates AND to the tax payer and crime victim.
ReplyDeleteRAY TO JACK
DeleteHave a nice Thanksgiving.
RAY TO DR. WADDY
ReplyDeleteHave a happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving to you too, Ray! This year we have ample reason to extra thankful.
ReplyDelete