Handful of people in the base sandwich shop, some broken down looking aviation contractor, Navy/USMC pilots and trainees, and two women who worked there. And Fox News on the TV. It was the usual lineup, Barbie and the Ken dolls, opining seriously about impeachment. 2/
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I watched the rest of the room with an ear cocked towards the TV. Fox was amazingly reality free. It was patently obvious none of the commentators had any actual direct knowledge of the impeachment process. I'm not sure they even understood what impeachment actually IS. 3/
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It was as if they were describing a sporting event. Excitedly waving their arms about and earnestly recounting lines of scrimmage and touchdowns. This is "news" designed to alter fact and reality. To appeal directly to emotion. It doesn't inform opinion, but shapes it. 4/
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We report, you decide. That's the Big Lie. They would NEVER leave the decision to you. There's no expert analysis. No presentation of fact. And not even a pretense of impartiality. This is carefully made psychological warfare designed to reinforce existing opinion. 5/
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I had the strangest sense of déjà vu. Here I am, sitting in a Subway, on a some backwater Navy base in 2019, and for some reason I could FEEL the hair on my neck stand up. 1980s. Europe. Something eerily familiar. I watched the room. Something familiar. Something... 6/
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The sandwich ladies were watching the TV intently, along with Contractor Guy. But the military pilots, who in my experience, aren't exactly silent bastions of liberalism were ignoring Fox News completely. ALL of them. And I saw it. I saw it. I'd seen it before. Déjà vu. 7/
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The civilians were engrossed in impeachment. The Sandwich Ladies talked about how unfair it was, the way they were picking on Trump who only wanted to do good for America. Contractor Guy was staring raptly at the flatscreen, nodding every few seconds in agreement. 8/
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It's custom, among officers, to avoid talking about politics at a Navy table, but this wasn't that. I was in when Bill Clinton was being impeached, we talked about impeachment all of the time. Impeachment. They SHOULD have been interested. But they weren't. At all. 9/
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And I knew what it was. That feeling. The 1980s. Europe. The Cold War. Déjà vu. 10/
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See, back then I was a junior Navy intelligence technician. My first tour. Assigned to the Soviet problem. Working out of Rota, Spain. Know your enemy. And back then our enemy was the Soviet Union. And copies of Prava and Red Star were stacked ten deep on the Read Desk. 11/
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And you'd look at that stuff, listen to the tapes of Soviet news broadcasts. It was unclassified. Hell, some of it they broadcast in English, they WANTED us to listen, to read. The state news of Communism. And it was so, so ... obviously, laughably, bullshit. 12/
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That's what you noticed first: Soviet news was hilariously divorced from reality. It was so incredibly bad, so ridiculously, ineptly, obviously WRONG. But the people who created it were deadly serious. See, it wasn't about reporting the news. 13/
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It wasn't about reporting the news. The USSR sure wasn't going to let CITIZENS decide reality. That's the mistake WE made. We'd look at it and laugh. Who believes this clumsy bullshit? Nobody. It wasn't about truth. It was about enforcing the narrative of the State. 14/
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In those days, before the fall of the USSR, before the internet and ubiquitous cell phones in the hands of every Russian, the average citizen knew only what the government told them. It wasn't so much they believed State media as there wasn't ANYTHING else. By design. 15/
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The Soviet military officers were force-fed this stuff. And they developed a reflex of pretending to pay attention while not believing a single word of it. THEY knew better. That didn't mean they wouldn't carry out their orders though. They would. They were professionals. 16/
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Who believes this stuff, we'd laugh? The government believed, because for them it HAD to be true, even if it was a lie. The citizens believed even when they knew it was all bullshit, because they had nothing else. They cheered for the same reasons North Koreans do today. 17/
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But the Soviet military? The officers? They didn't need to watch Central Television, or read Red Star or Pravda. They believed -- or pretended to believe -- because it was their DUTY to do so, same as any other military. 18/
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Thirty-five years later, and I sat there, watching what has become the de facto organ of state TV, free of reality, divorced from fact, designed not to provide information but to reinforce the narrative of the state. To tell citizens what they WANT to believe. 19/
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But here's the thing: Unlike those old Soviets, Americans have other sources of information, other narratives. But, they believe -- many of them anyway -- even though they know it's all lies. Not because they have nothing else, but because they don't WANT anything else. 20/
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They've done to themselves what the USSR never could. 21/
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And the military? The professionals? They don't need to watch. They believe -- or pretend to believe -- the narrative of the State, because THAT is their duty, same as it ever was. Déjà vu. 21/21
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Addendum: See? See how ridiculous this is? If you watched, you know some half-ass ambulance chaser like Gaetz is no match whatsoever for three constitutional law professors. But it doesn't matter, because it's not about truth. Hell, they're even called RED State. 22/pic.twitter.com/4izyI59bc5
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Addendum: See it? See the misogyny? Trump's anger is valid, right? He's righteously pissed off. But if a woman gets mad, even if she maintains icy self-control, it's a "nervous fit." Trump instinctively does this, because it works with his supporters. 23/ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1202631185052164096 …
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Addendum 2 cont: See it? Impeachment isn't valid because women be crazy. Watch it trend. Watch the trolls and bots and foreign influencers push this idea. That's what the Soviets did, they didn't counter the argument, they invalidated the accuser and dismissed the facts. 24/pic.twitter.com/oddW5HmwwT
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Addendum 3: They WANT to believe. For every item in this list, you can find literally THOUSANDS of contrary views in the general press and in the broadcast media. Don't take my word for it, go look for yourselves. (cont) 25/pic.twitter.com/bbWDKzlFFR
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Nor is the general media a de facto arm of any specific political party. While certain outlets might lean one way or the other, they remain independent and hardly uniform. This is NOT true of Fox News, which is openly and exclusively an agent of the GOP. (cont) 26/
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Worse, because Fox News is openly partisan in favor of Trump, Trump himself listens EXCLUSIVELY to it. And is directly INFLUENCED by Fox News commentators and pundits. This no secret and easily proven. This is an ENORMOUS national security vulnerability. 27/
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If you can get Hannity or Fox&Friends to say it, you can get Trump to do it. Q.E.D. See the Gallagher affair et al. For practical purposes, Fox and the State are one. The assertion that non-Fox outlets are the same is garbage on the face of it. Try again. Try harder. 28/
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