My Reply To A Liberal Friend Who Argues That PBS And MSNBC Are The Left-Wing Equivalent Of Fox News

Alan: I haven’t had a television for 26 years, although I do see clips on the Internet, where much of my television viewing is Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah and Seth Myers. (Have you noticed that there is almost no sense of humor on the political right?  Some years ago,  when “Medal Of Freedom” winner Rush Limbaugh broadcast a news satire program. The only laughter it evoked was being promptly laughed off the air for its middle school snarkiness.)

Every day I get a summary news email from Daily Kos and Raw Story,  two outlets to the left of MSNBC.

Of the two, I prefer “Raw Story.”.

Even so, about  half the articles carried by Raw Story are repulsively partisan, typically because they “make mountains out of mole hills” or provide confirmation bias for the left’s “Official Story.”

The percentage of repulsive stories is even higher with Daily Kos.

Amongst the other articles supplied by these two sources, I find several valuable articles a day that are either topics overlooked by “Google News Headlines,” or provide rectification for the torrent of in-your-face falsehood that is all too typical of Fox News with its infotainment orientation, and  One America News Network, an exacerbated reincarnation of the Soviet Union’s Pravda - but on the right side of the aisle.

If I were banished to a desert island for the rest of my life and could have only three news sources, I would choose the Jesuit magazine “America,” the mainstream magazine, “The Week,” and the NPR program, “On The Media.”

Bill Maher observed that our epistemological crisis “is not about Democrats and Republicans. It’s about sentient beings and the lizard people.”

If this observation seems overboard, have you watched any of the proceedings at this weekend’s C-PAC  Convention, where eight sessions are dedicated to “The Steal” and not one dedicated to the topic, “Why Did Trump Lose?”

Throw QAnon and Sh*tstorm into this mix and we have a situation in which the normalization of falsehood and the normalization of lunacy have resulted in the widespread - and nearly ubiquitous - right-wing conviction that sedition is patriotism.

PS I will often google Judy Woodward’s Friday afternoon review of “the political week” with Mark Shields and David Brooks.

Humans do not love peace.

They love noise and excitement.

Meditate more.

Contemplate more.

Ponder more.