We’ve had a couple of late night .... um... conversations I guess you’d call them.. with old mates. “We” as in Jing and me. And “old mates” as in really old mates, a European and an Aussie, both living and working in Asia for many years, married to Asian women, with Eurasian kids who’ve gone to school here and are multi-lingual.
These are by any measure sophisticated guys, cosmopolitan. They own and still run businesses they themselves founded. They know what it’s like to meet a payroll. And that’s an important thing. Having to meet a payroll every month, no matter what, to make sure you meet your commitment to your staff, no matter what, that’s a truly sobering and chastening experience. I admire anyone who’s done it, as we have and as have these lads. Longterm and consistently. Good job, lads!
In both cases we ended up talking politics, mostly American politics. I think that’s partly because American politics have become the default; the politics of the whole world. They’re a way to measure yourself against others. In simplest terms it’s Trump v Biden. Though we, Jing and I, we prefer to say: we’re Independent. As a younger lad I would’ve voted Clinton and Obama and Clinton2. But I could also have voted Nixon, Reagan and Bush. Trump? That’s another story and perhaps a hill too far, although v Biden it’s the Don, for Biden is too poor of a president.
But I’m running ahead of myself. Let’s rewind a touch.
It’s no surprise really that American politics have become the default for everyone. After all, they’re endlessly fascinating. We’ve no sooner had an election than we’re wondering about the mid-term elections. And then it’s on to the next election. And of course, with the Trump election in 2016, we had the real earthquake and now everyone is focussed on 2024. Where it’s kinda possible that the Republican candidate will be campaigning from a prison cell. I mean,, that’s box office Gold!
But our two friends, talking about all this -- and they were keen to do so -- were talking with a CNN view. We learnt this, as we learned that there were big chunks of “things that have happened” that they knew nothing about. They openly admitted that they only watched CNN, and were quite happy with that. They were busy guys, after all. They don’t have time to chase down alternatives and at least CNN is a “curated” site. It’s not some random podcast by some random guy in the basement, who has who know what crazy views. And fair enough. I understand that.
What they didn’t know, though, because of only watching CNN, was a lot. Here’s a list, of what neither one knew:
- The Mueller Report (into the Russia Collusion theory/hoax)
- The Durham Report (into the FBI investigation of Trump; Crossfire Hurricane). What the FBI did to give credibility to the Steele Dossier, which we now know to be fraudulent.
- The Hunter Biden Laptop story: what is on the laptop and how it implicated his father, now president Joe Biden, in bribe-taking from Ukraine, China and Romania
- The Twitter Files and what they reveal about the government censorship complex and restrictions on Free Speech
- Hillary Clinton destruction of emails vs what happens to Trump: ie unequal treatment under the law
Each of these is major, but our friends were and (largely) remain oblivious to them. (I say “largely” because even when told of them, they showed no real interest in finding out more. As they say:“It’s easier to fool someone that it is to convince them they’ve been fooled”).
The Mueller Report, for example, concludes that there was no Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. And that they Russian mis-disinformation campaigns via Facebook did nothing to change the outcome of the 2016 election.
The Durham Report, for another example, concludes that there was no predicate for the FBI to begin an investigation into the Trump campaign (The Crossfire Hurricane project), which it nevertheless did, on the basis of bogus information provided by Hillary Clinton and known by then president Obama and then vice president Biden. Both of these are extraordinary, breathtaking, examples of high-level corruption. But ignored by CNN.
The Hunter Biden laptop reveals the influence peddling of the Biden family up to and including the now president. Again, ignored by CNN. Despite that fact that it’s true!
It happened that Michael Shellenberger had a sit-down with Winston Marshall just a few days after we’d had the above talks, which is handy. Because Michael lays out so much of this, in one good podcast.
For the future, maybe they’re quite happy to keep on with just being informed by CNN. If so, fine. Though I reckon is they do, they don’t really have grounds for strong opinions on anything much in current affairs. Because the CNN view of the world is so palpably one-sided.
But if they think they ought to look outside the bubble sometimes, and they don’t want to go social media -- because there’s so many crazies out there, and you can’t trust them -- well, fine, and maybe just look here at this blog from time to time. I do cover issue over on the right of the aisle. And I do try to include only sound observers.
This could be like “What you don’t learn from CNN” service.
