LIVING IN AN UNREAL WORLD–Why ‘Progressives’ Prefer ‘Info-tainment’
I maintain an account on a social media site. It’s a small social media presence I use as an additional way to stay in touch with family, friends, and co-workers. Recently, someone on my friends list bragged that he had figured out how to remove Fox News from his newsfeed and was now so much happier because he said, “I prefer my own reality”. Someone commented later on that it was best to watch Jon Stewart to get “the real story”.
Now, there are lots of media sources out there on all sides of any given issue and all bring with them some degree of bias. At present, the only media outlet I have personally encountered that is anything close to being bias-free is France 24 — their coverage tends to focus more on France itself and former French colonies in Africa, and in doing so they do bring their own prejudices to the anchor desk.
Similarly, there are a lot of what I like to call infotainers. Jon Stewart is one. He’s not a media figure. He’s a guy that pushed information in an entertaining way with a particular ideological persuasion. Not a lot different from what I do when I write articles here for Clash Daily. I’m not a news media figure either.
So, for one progressive to assert that Jon Stewart is somehow bringing forth the “real story” a) doesn’t speak well for the current state of investigative journalism coming from the mainstream media; and b) there are a lot of people who have been duped into thinking he is a hard news kind of guy. While that’s problematic, it’s less so than the “I prefer my own reality” notion my social media friend bragged about.
It would be nice if reality could be dissected. Carved up and handed out so that you can take your bit and I mine, then we individually do as we will with our slice of it and somehow it’s all a part of the same real world. But the real world doesn’t work that way. It’s impossible to pick and choose one’s reality. It’s impossible to take the slice of reality one wants without taking the other parts one doesn’t want. If this were untrue, we could all simply live out our days on Tahitian vacations sipping cocktails around the clock without a care or worry in the world.
That’s the root problem with progressives though. They believe it possible to manufacture a utopia that looks just like that. One where reality itself is gerrymandered to the point where all bad things just simply aren’t there.
A reality in which everyone has everything they want and it’s all good, no strings attached.
No wonder they tune in to Jon Stewart for “the real story”. No wonder they believe they can pick and choose reality itself.
Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Show