As IF Times

Source: When Silicon Valley Took Over the New Republic – The Atlantic

We seldom get to see the kind of naked honesty about the present state of journalism discussed in such candor as in the linked article.  Of course this will be a shock to those that have their worldview shaped by Facebook news or for that matter, many of the popular news outlets.  In the parlance of phone email services, the trends are all about push news, not pull news.  In other words, you don’t look for news; news is pushed onto you.

I have extensively pointed out the sinister creep of push news for years, starting with of course, my favorite, Climate Change, tactfully re- branded from Global Warming.  Given the recent inconvenient publicity that Al Gore has received once again by the supportive media, we are expected to believe that his discredited bleats are in the forefront of the average person’s consciousness.  The first fantasy movie that he produced was such a success, that apparently, people are waiting in rapt anticipation for his newly released sequel…well, at least those that didn’t sell everything and are hunkered in the mountains waiting for high tide Armageddon.

That Gore continues to attract the media spotlight is amazing until you consider all of the other annoying spam that gets media exposure…like a staph infection that won’t go away. I refer to regular revelations of the Kardashian Clan, the Jenners, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, etc etc.  On a too often basis, we get the most recent Michael Moore utterance.  If you believe the media, at this very moment, the life of Diana has suddenly attained must know status for people.  Diana.  She’s been dead for 20 years!  Yet the entire media are splashing headlines about her as if she just had breakfast.  You know the tabloids are running out of ideas if they revive a long dead story to get clicks.  Next in line; is JFK really dead?

Most people don’t even know that they are the victims of push news.  The effectiveness of modern push media is such that confirmation bias is rampant among much of the populace. If your peer group confirms the same worldview based on their sources of news, then an entire fake reality becomes real…without anyone knowing why.  They’ve become parrots who regurgitate what’s been repeatedly heard.  Let me say this: if climate change is really the number one concern among your peer group, you may have been co-opted by push news.  If you think transgender bathroom issues are at the top of society’s concerns, you may need to expand your news sources.  Do people really think Russia, Russia, Russia is a valid news thread?  The linked article confirms what many have known for years and perhaps many more are awakening to:  News is no longer news. It’s structured to get the most clicks.  It’s a business…with a world of unwitting customers.

Source: Germany now has North Africas sex crime troubles – Chicago Tribune

Those that have been following the news may have noticed that men from non western cultures do not have quite the same respect for acceptable protocols concerning women as they do in the west.  Of course, that’s kind of like saying Kim Kardashian is a flirt but this realization is dawning upon those that have created policies welcoming new cultures with expectations of easy assimilation.

It shows a naivete that is borne from lack of experience, or much worse, an inability to accept reality.  Outside the PC borders of western societies, men are treated as disposable commodities, much less women.   Imagine coming from a culture in which the exposure of a woman’s ankle is considered unacceptably lurid to being plopped into one in which women frequently dress like Taylor Swift.  What could go wrong?

The naive premise that everyone’s the same and worships the same set of values is as wrongheaded as expecting dogfish to fetch sticks.   There is and always has been a great divide in the view of women’s roles in society between the Judeo Christian/Secular and the Muslim based cultures.  In the 21st century, you’d like to think that death is a bit of an extreme penalty for showing an elbow, or that a display of calf is the same as an open for business signal.  But in some extreme Muslim societies, those views do exist.

In the extreme case of the ISIS group, women are explicitly held to be chattel and in fact, there are codified instruction manuals on rape protocols.  “Well, you can do the mother but not the daughter” or  “Only after prayers, but not before lunch”.  In the news today is an item which claims that an ISIS member executed his own mother for the crime of trying to talk him into leaving ISIS.

It’s no wonder the ISIS men are so savage; they can’t find women of free will to date them. What would be the sales pitch? “Well you can’t come out in the daytime unless covered completely in a designer sackcloth; you can’t speak unless spoken to, you need to do whatever, whenever; you get beaten when the mood strikes and are eligible to be stoned to death if you glance at the plumber…what’s a good wedding date?”.  How do they stop women from flooding in to hook such manly men?

If such behavior were exhibited in western cultures, the man would be in jail as fast as shrimp disappears from the buffet table, or at least be the subject of much squawking on The View.  Apologists are brushing off this behavior as if it was simply a function of religious differences.   What is needed is an end to the appeasement attitude and an acknowledgement that this kind of stuff has little to do with religion.  It is not only illegal in our culture, it’s inhumane and as the Brits say, it’s frowned upon.  Anybody who fears offending ISIS or apologizing for any anti-social behavior in the name of religious sensibilities should be made to live among them.