Summary
A new AP poll reveals widespread political fatigue among Americans, with two-thirds limiting political media consumption post-Trump’s election.
Viewership on CNN and MSNBC has plummeted, with declines of 35-54%, as many Democrats and independents step away from politics.
In contrast, Fox News has seen a 12% ratings surge, dominating cable news.
The trend mirrors post-election slumps in previous cycles, though the erosion is sharper this year.
Some suggest focusing less on Trump and more on broader issues to re-engage disenchanted audiences.
What does studying cable news do for me? Nothing. All I can do is vote. No sense in overconsumption when the Democrats seems to lose every election on purpose.
I paid attention, I engaged, I voted, I urged others to vote. It didn’t matter. This country deserves what is coming.
I feel you. But at the same time, I’m also afraid that as they dismantle the government, the brain drain from departing/retiring federal workers and knowledge about how the parts of government (for example the NIH or the NOAA/NWS) function on the day to day (including things like historical climate data) will be lost in the chaos. I’m not paying attention now, because I think it will be more important to pay attention in a month. I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle it then either, but I don’t want some of what we do have to be lost forever because some assholes didn’t like it, and the rest of us thought they deserved it. Maybe they do deserve it, but the rest of us don’t deserve to lose it forever either.
Sadly, a two party system is inevitable.
Precisely. My only fear is the people who need the biggest punch in the face won’t get it. Or will be too stupid to understand it.
To be fair, a majority of Americans chose not-Trump for 3 elections. And that’s ignoring the fact that voters in solid blue states just didn’t show up to vote because their votes don’t matter. If we lived in a Democracy and not a Democratic Republic, I’m confident he would have lost the plurality as well.
But also, half the country didn’t ask for this. Even in solid red states like the one I live in, a third of us didn’t ask for this bullshit.
What I’m tired of is the media sanewashing domestic terrorists and centrists giving the right a free pass by not paying attention and assuming “both sides” any time literally anything happens.
I had to disengage from the news a bit, too. I put my News follows on Mastodon on a separate list and stopped listening to NPR Up First.
We’re fucked, but hearing about it non-stop wasn’t good for my mental health.
Same same. Watch the pbs news hour headlines and if they’re about trump I turn it off immediately. As soon as topic switches to domestic politics I’m out. Same with Lemmy feed, adding musk, trump, RFK, and other words to my block list. It’s not that I don’t care - I do care deeply - but it’s ruining my mental health. As long as the majority of voters in this country want it my reading about the constant fucking clown show will change nothing.
What’s the point when it’s all owned by billionaires anyway? It’s not like you’re gonna get the straight story without any corporate shenanigans. They won’t talk about anything actually important, or details about issues. It’s feels over reals from the media from here on out.
I remember watching my roommate, in the early 90s, and he was absolutely GLUED to some news outlet - pretty sure it was local news. I kind of laughed as I walked through the room. He followed me into kitchen - it had switched to the commercial break - and he was kind of wound up a bit for whatever reason. He demanded to know what was so funny. I chuckled and said “none of this is real news”. He huffed and puffed a bit and so I said I’d watch it with him and explain what I meant and that he should not really take offense - the mirth was not really aimed at him, but the situation. He was game for whatever reason.
And the rest of the show was the usual filler you can write off right away as not news: sports scores, local incidents of crime, celebrity gossip, the direction of the Dow. There was nothing that was going to have any impact whatsoever on either of us, with the possible exception of the weather, I suppose.
And at this point, I had not even read Chomsky, so I probably had less grounding on this.
Anyway, I don’t think it’s gotten any better. It’s always been bad, but I think algorithms can make it far, far worse.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang, but a “yeah, whatever.”
I don’t know about others, but I hope maybe it is similar with others.
I stopped watching 24/7 channels, I no longer trust CNN. Washington Post and LA Times showed their colors during the election, showing exactly that the owners purchased them to manipulate readers’ opinion.
I since then set up recurring donations to ProPublica, local NPR station, I also found a local news paper that still seems to do local journalism. The rest I intend to rely on Lemmy and Reddit.
I stopped caring what trump is saying (he always lies) and instead intend to care about what he does. There are things that are out of my control, but intend to support any way I can politicians, judges, public employees and others that will fight him. And when it comes time to protest I intend to do my part.
I just don’t want to waste my energy on pointless BS that 24/7 news media was doing 2017-2020. If trump says he intends to take over Greenland why should I rile up about it and how can I change anything. It is likely a BS anyway to tire us up.
Also I highly recommend On Freedom: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. This book was published in 2017 when he started his first term and outlines what things we should watch for and not let him do if we still want to have a democracy.
Well yeah.
Putin is the role model for Trump and Musk and the rest of the would-be autocrats.
Their explicit goal is, and has been all along, to establish a plutocratic/kleptocratic oligarchy as much like Putin’s as possible.
And everything they’ve done and are doing is bent specifically to that goal.
The information environment that has been cultivated in the US was always leading here. The effect the internet had on news media didn’t help. For every politically engaged person on whatever side there are 20 low information voters voting based on general vibes and gut instinct and little else. And their instincts suck.
I’m listening to the audiobook “It Came From Something Awful” and at one point, when referencing Gen X, and how SICK they/we were of seeing everything they/we tried to cultivate being colonized by corporate America and then sold back to them embodied Cobain’s “oh well, whatever, nevermind…”
I highly recommend the book, by the way…makes for a good retrospective on how we got to where we are, and it’s not falling into the stupid generational warfare horseshit that lays the blame for this at the feet of boomers (and Gen X or the Greatest Generation). At least no so far, anyway - I’m not done yet.
Customary link: https://youtu.be/viaTT859Yk0?si=D6iY25ZZdpl3wTOG
