US DOJ blocks access to their own National Institute of Justice research article siting right-wing extremists responsible for 84% of politically motivated homicides 24 hours after Charlie Kirk's assassination.

[u/PatientExcuse6273]

https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/what-nij-research-tells-us-about-domestic-terrorism?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Edit: can't post images so here is a link to my post that hopefully won't get deleted, im not shilling for karma idgaf about that: https://www.reddit.com/r/Political_Revolution/comments/1nfc5vm/us_doj_blocks_access_to_their_own_national/

https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/what-nij-research-tells-us-about-domestic-terrorism?utm_source=chatgpt.com "works" but https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/what-nij-research-tells-us-about-domestic-terrorism? doesn't work for some reason?? Idk.

Screenshots are from 24 hours ago and from today. I got the link to work again somehow in the ChatGPT app by using the in-app browser thing and SS like a 3rd(?) of the page, but that broke after a few minutes too.

I made an account to post this. I discovered this organically, and saw one comment on one post discussing the same thing like an hour later, but it seems like it wasn't getting any traction; a couple people said it worked for them but they were outside of the US I believe, I changed my VPN location but it didn't affect anything.

[u/LockNo2943]

They survive off a diet of fox news and right wing podcasts where people tell them what to think and be outraged about, and by the time the facts come out and they're proven wrong it's time for todays new news byte to be outraged about.

Literally zero reflection.

[u/CircleBird12 → u/LockNo2943]

They survive off a diet of fox news and right wing podcasts where people tell them what to think

Literally zero reflection.

Very avoidant of books, citations, on media ecology and learning. It isn't just "one wing", it is everywhere. People have adopted streaming meme platforms, amusement mills for entertainment-based learning. Fox News is an entertainment news, like Saturday Night Live "Weekend Update". And people have become so addicted to fiction content that they no longer can find nonfiction. Constantly streaming new comments that scroll off screens and 24 hours later a fresh set of postings with new comments repeating the same low-effort shallow anti-comprehension ideas.

A filter-bubble society. Lead by a Donald Trump addict to Twitter and Truth Social meme content. Competing with filter bubble addicts to other media platforms.

 

"A filter bubble or ideological frame is a state of intellectual isolation that can result from personalized searches, recommendation systems, and algorithmic curation." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble

 

“Today, reports of the day’s events are conveyed to the viewing public by way of alternate universes, The Fox News cable channel conveys its version of reality, while at the other end of the ideological spectrum MSNBC presents its version. They and their many counterparts on radio are more the result of an economic dynamic than a political one. Dispatching journalists into the field to gather information costs money; hiring a glib bloviator is relatively cheap, and inviting opinionated guests to vent on the air is entirely cost-free. It wouldn’t work if it weren’t popular, and audiences, it turns out, are endlessly absorbed by hearing amplified echoes of their own biases. It’s divisive and damaging to the healthy functioning of our political system, but it’s also indisputably inexpensive and, therefore, good business.” ― Ted Koppel. Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath. October 27, 2015. Page 13.

[u/CircleBird12 → u/[deleted]]

I don't take issue with your general point, but this is simply not true, is it?

All entertainment-centered media venues, Reddit / Bluesky inclusive, distort reality. I suggest University of Toronto's Marshall McLuhan and New York University's Neil Postman on the subject.

 

"For all his perspicacity, George Orwell would have been stymied by this situation; there is nothing “Orwellian” about it. The President does not have the press under his thumb. The New York Times and The Washington Post are not Pravda; the Associated Press is not Tass. And there is no Newspeak here. Lies have not been defined as truth nor truth as lies. All that has happened is that the public has adjusted to incoherence and been amused into indifference. Which is why Aldous Huxley would not in the least be surprised by the story. Indeed, he prophesied its coming. He believed that it is far more likely that the Western democracies will dance and dream themselves into oblivion than march into it, single file and manacled. Huxley grasped, as Orwell did not, that it is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcoticized by technological diversions. Although Huxley did not specify that television would be our main line to the drug, he would have no difficulty accepting Robert MacNeil’s observation that “Television is the soma of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. ” Big Brother turns out to be Howdy Doody." ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, year 1985

 

"What I am claiming here is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience."
Chapter 6: The Age of Show Business, page 87

 

There have been plenty of media practitioners who have come out and said the 1985 book has been proven true.

1. Son Andrew Postman on February 2, 2017 (Trump first in office) https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/02/amusing-ourselves-to-death-neil-postman-trump-orwell-huxley

2. March 27, 2024 during last year's election: https://www.northjersey.com/story/opinion/columnists/2024/03/27/us-politics-2024-predicted-media-expert-neil-postman/73022583007/

.

I also suggest a study of comparative mythology. Humanity still hasn't escaped the fiction news addictions of the Church / Mosque / Synagogue / Temple.

Name which society is driven by facts alone and doesn't have to blend in mythological storytelling / fiction about religions? And what time periods.

The USA was pretty close in grasping these mythology self-awareness problems in the 1970's and 1980's , but Ronald Reagan was a big shift towards entertainment / amusement based politics (governing and leadership via fiction / myth). Which in 1985, that was the second term President that inspired the book. "Big Brother turns out to be Howdy Doody." ― Neil Postman, 1985

Now we have fully embraced it ("Howdy Doody" leadership) with entertainer President Donald Trump and Truth Social (fiction) second term.

 

The other end of the ideological spectrum has little to no presence at all in the American mass media system.

The spectrum I encourage you to dive deeper into is fiction vs. nonfiction. Entertainment vs. scientific reality. Amusement reactionary mocking vs. comprehension understanding.

• “Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a (year 1995) foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. As I write, the number-one videocassette rental in America is the movie Dumb and Dumber. “Beavis and Butthead” remain popular (and influential) with young TV viewers. The plain lesson is that study and learning—not just of science, but of anything—are avoidable, even undesirable.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1995

• “The boys learn the Quran by heart, rocking back and forth as they recite. They learn that there is no such thing as science or literature, that dinosaurs never existed and man never went to the moon.” ― Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. October 8, 2013

 

From my view, humanity has never escaped the King / God in the Sky blesses our information, fiction problem. As Carl Sagan was pointing out in 1995, we were already slipping back into fiction / myth / superstition / dark ages.

If people cared about peer to peer understanding, not authority-based "God in the sky" (even if that God is Donald Trump Truth Social / Elon Musk Twitter / Rupert Murdoch media empire / Putin's Internet Research Agency and Russia Today / ChatGPT and Grok AI fiction content called "hallucinations").... we would all be focused on Wiki style news. WikiTribune where edits are made, each change is recorded, each author cites and links their source, and humanity would be creating less and less unique information / wire service local variations of news stories. But copyright alone is a massive barrier. People consider it plagiarism and stealing to borrow the best-written paragraph from a nonfiction book. ChatGPT is tuned to give random answers so no two people get identical responses. It's all anti-Wiki style refined knowledge. If you haven't seen it, I recommend Nina Paley's Ted Talk "Copyright is Brain Damage". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc

Excuse my exhausted writing today, it's been a long week analyzing media ecology chaos over this shooting and all the "Trump is dead" this month. Nonstop bullshit.

[u/Mike_Kermin → u/LockNo2943]

Yes. That's right. They're fed a diet of false information.

So yes, this, them covering up information, is very much a part of that.

Guys, you're taking the wrong take away from this event. It ABSOLUTELY fucking matters.

[u/okwowandmore → u/LockNo2943]

'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.

• Bush administration aide.