Poor Man Survival
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A Digest of Urban
Survival Resources
We Need a New Media System
The
moment a group of people stormed the Capitol building last Wednesday, news
companies began the process of sorting and commoditizing information that long
ago became standard in American media.
Media
firms work backward. They first ask, “How does our target demographic want to
understand what’s just unfolded?” Then they pick both the words and the facts
they want to emphasize.
It’s
why Fox News uses
the term, “Pro-Trump protesters,” while New York and The Atlantic use “Insurrectionists.” It’s
why conservative media today is stressing how Apple, Google, and Amazon shut down the “Free Speech”
platform Parler over
the weekend, while mainstream outlets are emphasizing a new round of
potentially armed protests reportedly planned for January 19th or
20th.
What
happened last Wednesday was the apotheosis of the Hate Inc. era, when this audience-first
model became the primary means of communicating facts to the population. For a
hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties, from the advent of the
Internet to the development of the 24-hour news cycle to the end of the
Fairness Doctrine and the Fox-led
discovery that news can be sold as character-driven, episodic TV in the manner
of soap operas, the concept of a “Just the facts” newscast designed to be
consumed by everyone died out.
News
companies now clean world events like whalers, using every part of the animal,
funneling different facts to different consumers based upon calculations about
what will bring back the biggest engagement kick. The Migrant Caravan? Fox slices off comments from
a Homeland Security official describing most of the border-crossers as single
adults coming for “economic reasons.” The New York Times counters by
running a story about how the caravan was deployed as a political
issue by a Trump White House staring
at poor results in midterm elections.
Repeat
this info-sifting process a few billion times and this is how we became, as
none other than Mitch McConnell put it last week, a country:
Drifting
apart into two separate tribes, with a separate set of facts and separate
realities, with nothing in common except our hostility towards each other and
mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share.
The
flaw in the system is that even the biggest news companies now operate under
the assumption that at least half their potential audience isn’t listening.
This leads to all sorts of problems, and the fact that the easiest way to keep
your own demographic is to feed it negative stories about others is only the
most obvious. On all sides, we now lean into inflammatory caricatures, because
the financial incentives encourage it.
Everyone
monetized Trump. The Fox wing
surrendered to the Trump phenomenon from the start, abandoning its supposed
fealty to “family values” from the Megyn Kelly incident on. Without a thought,
Rupert Murdoch sacrificed the paper-thin veneer of pseudo-respectability Fox had always maintained up
to a point (that point being the moment advertisers started to bail in horror,
as they did with Glenn Beck). He reinvented Fox as a platform for
Trump’s conspiratorial brand of cartoon populism, rather than let some more-Fox-than-Fox imitator like OAN sell the
ads to Trump’s voters for four years.
In
between its titillating quasi-porn headlines (“Lesbian Prison Gangs Waiting To
Get Hands on Lindsay Lohan, Inmate Says” is one from years ago that stuck in my
mind), Fox’s business model
has long been based on scaring the crap out of aging Silent Majority viewers
with a parade of anything-but-the-truth explanations for America’s decline. It
villainized immigrants, Muslims, the new Black Panthers, environmentalists —
anyone but ADM, Wal-Mart, Countrywide, JP Morgan Chase, and other sponsors of
Fortress America. Donald Trump was one of the people who got hooked on Fox’s
narrative.
The
rival media ecosystem chose cash over truth also. It could have responded to
the last election by looking harder at the tensions they didn’t see coming in
Trump’s America, which might have meant a more intense examination of the
problems that gave Trump his opening: the jobs that never came back after
bankers and retailers decided to move them to unfree labor zones in places like
China, the severe debt and addiction crises, the ridiculous contradiction of an
expanding international military garrison manned by a population fast losing
belief in the mission, etc., etc.
Instead,
outlets like CNN and MSNBC took a Fox-like approach, downplaying issues in
favor of shoving Trump’s agitating personality in the faces of audiences over
and over, to the point where many people could no longer think about anything
else. To juice ratings, the Trump story — which didn’t need the slightest
exaggeration to be fantastic — was more or less constantly distorted.
Trump
began to be described as a cause of America’s problems, rather than a symptom,
and his followers, every last one, were demonized right along with him, in
caricatures that tickled the urbane audiences of channels like CNN but made
conservatives want to reach for something sharp. This technique was borrowed
from Fox, which learned in
the Bush years that you could boost ratings by selling audiences on the idea
that their liberal neighbors were terrorist traitors. Such messaging worked
better by far than bashing al-Qaeda, because this enemy was closer, making the
hate more real.
I
came into the news business convinced that the traditional “objective” style of
reporting was boring, deceptive, and deserving of mockery. I used to laugh at
the parade of “above the fray” columnists and stone-dull house editorials that
took no position on anything and always ended, “Only one thing’s for sure: time
will tell.” As a teenager I was struck by a passage in Tim Crouse’s book about
the 1972 presidential campaign, The Boys in
the Bus, describing the work of Hunter Thompson:
Thompson
had the freedom to describe the campaign as he actually experienced it: the
crummy hotels, the tedium of the press bus, the calculated lies of the press
secretaries, the agony of writing about the campaign when it seemed dull and
meaningless, the hopeless fatigue. When other reporters went home, their wives
asked them, “What was it really like?” Thompson’s wife knew from reading his
pieces.
What Rolling Stone did in giving
a political reporter the freedom to write about the banalities of the system
was revolutionary at the time. They also allowed their writer to be a
sides-taker and a rooter, which seemed natural and appropriate because biases
end up in media anyway. They were just hidden in the traditional dull
“objective” format.
The
problem is that the pendulum has swung so far in the opposite direction of
politicized hot-taking that reporters now lack freedom in the opposite
direction, i.e. the freedom to mitigate.
If
you work in conservative media, you probably felt tremendous pressure all
November to stay away from information suggesting Trump lost the election. If
you work in the other ecosystem, you probably feel right now that even
suggesting what happened last Wednesday was not a coup in the literal sense of
the word (e.g. an attempt at seizing power with an actual chance of success)
not only wouldn’t clear an editor, but might make you suspect in the eyes of
co-workers, a potentially job-imperiling problem in this environment.
·
not
be aligned with either Democrats or Republicans;
·
employ
a Fairness Doctrine-inspired approach that discourages groupthink and requires
at least occasional explorations of alternative points of view;
·
embrace
a utilitarian mission stressing credibility over ratings, including by;
·
operating
on a distribution model that as much as possible doesn’t depend upon the
indulgence of Apple, Google, and Amazon.
Innovations
like Substack are great for opinionated individual voices like me, but what’s
desperately needed is an institutional reporting mechanism that has credibility
with the whole population. That means a channel that sees its mission as
something separate from politics, or at least as separate from politics as
possible.
The
media used to derive its institutional power from this perception of
separateness. Politicians feared investigation by the news media precisely
because they knew audiences perceived them as neutral arbiters.
Now
there are no major commercial outlets not firmly associated with one or the
other political party. Criticism of Republicans is as baked into New York Times coverage as
the lambasting of Democrats is at Fox, and
politicians don’t fear them as much because they know their constituents do not
consider rival media sources credible. Probably, they don’t even read them.
Echo chambers have limited utility in changing minds.
Media
companies need to get out of the audience-stroking business, and by extension
the politics business. They’d then be more likely to be believed when making
pronouncements about elections or masks or anything else, for that matter.
Creating that kind of outlet also has a much better shot of restoring sanity to
the country than the current strategy, which seems based on stamping out access
to “wrong” information.
What
we’ve been watching for four years, and what we saw explode last week, is a
paradox: a political and informational system that profits from division and
conflict, and uses a factory-style process to stimulate it, but professes shock
and horror when real conflict happens. It’s time to admit this is a failed
system. You can’t sell hatred and seriously expect it to end.
TK
News by Matt Taibbi.
WARNING: Get With Your Family - Prepare Now...
If the rollercoaster year of
2020 taught us anything, it’s that people who prep aren’t as crazy as they’re
made out to be. The idea of prepping can be easily misinterpreted, and
introducing it to your family and friends can be difficult. Talking to them about
prepping needs to be done with care. Here’s how:
Click to watch video…
https://thesurvivalguide.com/friends-family-meet-prepping/?utm_source=Earnware
The first element to remember when
introducing your family and friends to the world of prepping is to do so
gradually. If you overwhelm them with ideas and facts about prepping, they’re
less likely to take to the idea.
In the beginning, it’s probably
best to avoid talking about national or global disasters such as nuclear
warfare or an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. Keep it at a local level;
discuss what possible disasters you face and how you can get ready for them.
Explain to your family and friends
why you prepare and why they should as well. 2020 gave plenty of examples as to
why everyone should become a prepper: civil unrest, a global pandemic and even
borderline martial law.
Children should be involved as
well. After all, you have to teach them young. Check out how you can teach your kids important
survival skills.
Copyright 2021, TheSurvivalGuide.com
USEFUL
STUFF…
Final looting of the America is now under way...
prepare for collapse
We can only describe the events under way right now as the
"final looting" of America, where every bureaucrat, every Pentagon
official, every lawmaker and every gatekeeper is demanding a payoff, hoping to
skim as much as possible as the American empire is taken down by enemies from
within.
We believe Trump has attempted to invoke the Insurrection Act,
but that no one in the military is willing to act on it unless Trump initiates
a war with China. The Pentagon wants global war because it directs a
significant portion of the GDP into their own pockets. (And China is a
legitimate threat to the future of our world.)
In today's Situation Update podcast, I cover the insane dynamics
now under way in Washington D.C., and I predict that America is headed for
doom. It will be almost impossible to avoid at this point, it seems.
Read the full article and hear the podcast here.
Bug Out Location Not in the Budget? Go Here Instead…
Every prepper dreams of one day
owning their own piece of property where they can build the ultimate bug out
destination. Unfortunately for many, this is a lofty goal. For those of us who
can’t afford to buy a survivalist paradise, where can we go when forced to leave
home?
City Prepping has created a video
tackling this very issue, providing some helpful tips on where to go when
forced to evacuate:
https://parler.com/profile/Bedavid/posts
The Getaway Log Cabin Kit is Perfect for DIYers
Click here to see
more PHOTOS...
http://hyggehous.com/the-getaway-log-cabin-kit-is-perfect-for-diyers.html
Anyone
who loves DIY projects will love the idea of being able to construct their own
small log cabin. The Coventry log cabin is a one-room cabin plus bathroom that
you can build yourself. The Getaway is the smallest of the cabin kits for sale
in the Cabin Series of log cabin designs. This intimate and cozy log cabin
design is the perfect rustic retreat to use as a weekend retreat. The front
covered porch is a nice addition that shelters you from the elements while you
relax at the end of a busy day. This 192 square foot log cabin space can house
some bunk beds, a kitchen cabinet where you can place your cook stove, a
kitchen table and some chairs, and it has everything you need. The upstairs
loft in this cute log cabin getaway offers another spot where family or guests
can sleep.
NEW-STOP the Socialist Agenda T-Shirt
https://www.bonanza.com/listings/STOP-the-Socialist-Agenda-T-Shirt-Bonus/924898489
Our phones are extremely important in a crisis.
They hold
information and special functions that are essential for survival.
Essential
information like important contacts, incoming public alerts, and they give us
online access to survival strategies and life-saving techniques.
Your phone
also has special functions like digital compasses, levels, and even the tiny
flashlight that can be the difference between life or death in a crisis.
Your phone
is that important, and should not be overlooked as an
essential survival device.
THE MAJOR
PROBLEM: Your phone’s power fails quicker than any survival tool you
own.
THE
SOLUTION: Fortunately, when you grab this "forever charger," your
phone will always be charged…available at our storefront!
Free enterprise, limited
government, individual freedom!
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You Can’t Buy Life Insurance After You’re Dead
Not Prepared?
That's Bad News...
You Can’t
Buy Life Insurance After You’re Dead-Prepare NOW for Emergencies…Small radios,
hydrapaks, books, emergency power cell
or solar/battery radio weather radio!
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efforts by shopping my storefront…
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