PeteFree.comMeaningless COVID numbers — Ahmaud Arbery and Bubba Wallace — the propagandizing Lamestream
© 2020 Peter Free
25 June 2020
Idiots, propaganda and the Lamestream
The Lamestream (as constituted today) exists solely to drag attention to itself. Intentionally ballooned shock, outrage and fear work to that end.
The notable negative to this Media strategy is that American culture becomes progressively dumber. And less able to think independently.
Lemmings, we are intended to become.
Consider, for illustrative instance . . .
. . . the meaninglessness of the Lamestream's COVID numbers.
Now that the George Floyd murder protests are taking a backseat in the news, the Lamestream is again pumping coronavirus infection numbers forward.
We are supposed to be frightened as COVID "Cases are rising vertically in some US states" (as of 24 June 2020).
To this end, every day, the Lamestream pounces on rising totals of infections in the worst-hit states:
Doom is at hand.
Trump is bad.
Fools are in charge.
And so on.
But notice that . . .
. . . virtually no one talks about whether those reported COVID "infection" numbers actually mean anything substantively important.
How many of these represent hospital admissions?
ICU placements?
Anticipated deaths?
Patient recoveries, but with significant losses of normal function?
The Lamestream delivers us virtually nothing useful on those subjects . . .
. . . which are, in truth, the only ones that provide us means to gauge the severity (or not) of the pandemic's current activity.
Instead of investigating epidemiologically important questions, the Lamestream contents itself with reporting supposed infection totals — as if those numbers are actually comparable from one place to another.
And it reports the infection numbers that it gets, without even questioning how the numbers come to be:
What tests?
On which categories of 'whom'?
Under which circumstances?
With what accuracies?
As compared to other regions' testing — or lack of testing?
Do these unsorted, amorphously presented infection totals amount to anything?
Regarding a coronavirus that is notorious for infecting a high proportion of the people that it encounters, but simultaneously leaves surprisingly many with no obvious negative effects?
I don't think so.
And neither, apparently, do a lot of the folk, who are out and about, without taking mask-wearing and social distancing precautions.
Media's non-investigating laziness is worse than useless
Their penchant for ignoring what matters, in favor of what does not, trains people to:
think like monkeys
(not a good thing for supposedly superior primates)
and/or
ignore everything that these Lamestream dumb-shits have to say.
I see no societally useful purpose in either result
The Lamestream's fear-boosting, non-investigating lassitude is another indicator of how Rampant Capitalism destroys community.
The Press sabotages its own previously manifested duty to serve public good. Today, the Lamestream concocts, reshapes and hypes stories solely to feed lucre to its plutocratic owners.
Remember when the American Press was . . .
. . . as a matter of occupational principle, supposed to keep authorities honest and the public genuinely informed?
Instead today, there is always a completely self-centered Lamestream agenda. In most cases, this boils down to generating fear, conflict and dissolving freedoms.
All of these are intended to generate the equivalent of URL clicks.
Clickbait. Mindless clickbait, at that.
Two examples — first of these, Mr. Arbery
Remember Ahmaud Arbery?
He is (was) the purported 'black jogger':
who was negligently killed,
murdered
or
manslaughtered
by three good-ole-boy-looking white guys
whom the Lamestream implicitly wanted us all to crucify
for being racist demons.
That was the Press's convenient story line. What with white cops killing black folk all over the place.
The Ahmaud Arbery story ran for a few days. Until a series of surveillance videos turned up demonstrating clearly that he was neither jogging, nor in pursuit of a holy — or even manifestly innocent — purpose.
See here, for instance.
In other words, like the majority of citizen on citizen encounters, this one was complicated. Angels, supreme competence and sound judgment were nowhere obvious.
As a result of Actuality's unfortunate intrusion — the Lamestream mostly dropped Mr. Arbery from its rage-evoking coverage. The original Bad Whites story had now been tainted with anger-subduing nuance.
How sad, said the Media (to themselves).
Two examples — second one, NASCAR
Similar jump-to-judgment naivete (or maliciousness) surfaced with regard to NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace.
Recall the "noose" in his NASCAR track garage?
That account popped up, just after NASCAR banned the Confederacy's flags at NASCAR events at Wallace's urging.
We were supposed to think that the Confederate flag-waving KKK — or some similarly minded people — had targeted the almost white-looking guy (Wallace) for Black Person Subjugation.
It turned out (in glaring contradiction), exactly as a number of 'conservative' black YouTubers had predicted it would:
The noose was a garage door pull, shaped in the form of a small (but evidently not slip-functioning) noose that would have been sufficient to hang only a "gerbil". As one critic commented.
And the door-pull "noose" had been in place from a time before Wallace had moved into the NASCAR garage.
Oops.
Another perfectly concocted story of Rampant American Racism down the drain.
I'm sure another inflated such will pop up soon.
That is, until someone bothers to actually investigate the circumstances.
The moral? — Was not investigative clarification once the American Press's main purpose?
That must have been in the time when George Washington was around.
Of course, 'we' pulled his statute — and Ulysses S. Grant's — down just a few days ago.
Can't have the past reminding us that Modernity's rampaging Blanket of Idiocy cheats us in some easily contrasted ways. Not to say that our past was 'good' and without vast areas that justify moral critique.
Nevertheless, most things human are grayish and subject to Times and Fashion. They should be treated that complicated way.
Cultivate insight, rather than overreaction and chaos.
You can see where the Lamestream's lust for money (via the equivalent of clickbaiting) conflicts with its once historically assigned duty to do some public good.
The American nation, itself, has fallen into this self-same Toilet of Loot Gathering.
That is why I point to Greed as the most vicious of the deadly sins. See here (after "The Moral" heading).
Avarice increasingly destines the United States for her inelegantly imperial demise. At the Corporatist Establishment's command, we drag each other down.
The Lamestream assists socioeconomic Elites in turning "We the People" into easily herded, consumerist, each-other-despising lemmings.
This is not a beneficent societal development.
A nation comprised of avariciously individualistic, propagandized ignoramuses very probably will not survive against political entities that are less chaotically self-destructive than it is.
So, beware the United States' ceaseless Propaganda Machine. It does not operate to our benefit.