hopefully pessimist

youtube's may 1st

Vamos lá então, one more round. Duas peças de dia 6, dos dois lados do Canal, de dois tópicos diferentes, ambos a apontar à mesma moral. Segue-nos.

Media. Mainstream media. Aquilo da fabricação de realidades.

French voters on social media have not been particularly kind about their mainstream media. Terms like "Merdias" (blending "media" with "merde", meaning shit) and "journalopes" (blending journalists with "salope", meaning slut or bitch) have become relatively common when the French discuss their press online. Why all the hate?
in "How the French Media Turned Emmanuel Macron Into a Presidential Candidate" ^{6 maio 2017}

Cita-se Alain Accardo ^(*), sociólogo, "senior lecturer at Bordeaux 3 University", "his writings focus on journalism and the system in which the mainstream media operate".

(*) Hey: hold it. Mesmo método de sempre: não citamos o sujeito, citamos os media em entrevista ao sujeito.

Accardo argues that media organisations are part of the capitalist system and therefore have an interest in keeping that system in place.

Accardo doesn't think journalists are puppets to wealthy shareholders, nor does he think they're plotting to spread misinformation or fake news. But that they all share the same background, have the same perspective and profit from the status quo in the same way.

Journalistic titles hire journalists whose social background – socially, culturally, educationally and morally – fits perfectly with what the current capitalist order asks for. All that talk drowns out any serious criticism of the system.

Virtually all major titles in print media, major TV-channels and radio stations are part of larger media groups with capitalist interests. Those companies produce information for the market and at the same time, produce a market for information. They're like any other company that makes cars, perfume or barbecues. A company produces your desire for a barbecue, and then produces the barbecue you desire. If the press is part of that capitalist system, their underlying mission is to keep that system in place.
in "How the French Media Turned Emmanuel Macron Into a Presidential Candidate" ^{6 maio 2017}

Exemplo: eleições de França.
Eleições...

The French people have been indoctrinated that way for decades. It's hard to wake up from that. It's a natural step for [journalists] to promote all candidates who don't really threaten the capitalist order.
in "How the French Media Turned Emmanuel Macron Into a Presidential Candidate" ^{6 maio 2017}

De pluralismos:

The media has to appear to respect the values on which our Republic and our Constitution are based – democracy and secularism. That's why they'll appear to give way to diverse voices – a far-left candidate like Jean-Luc Mélenchon will get the floor, but in the media narrative he'll be associated with extreme left-wing leaders – like Hugo Chavez, for example. Anti-capitalist candidate Philippe Poutou will be interviewed, but will always be presented as a minor candidate without vision. More traditional candidates who don't threaten the capitalist structure are presented positive or neutrally, without devaluing connotations. Individually, each of those comments or connotations might seem small or irrelevant, but the fact that it's repeated so often in all media creates that narrative around a candidate or their ideas.
in "How the French Media Turned Emmanuel Macron Into a Presidential Candidate" ^{6 maio 2017}

Do Macron, e do sistema que persiste. Yes, we can and always will. 'Till they cant no more.

The marketing campaign around him gave him the fashionable air of being neither left nor right. There's nothing modern in that – it's just well-tried logic of a well-organised system. It's naive to think that if Macron hadn't been there and then, the establishment would have been pushed aside and lost power.
in "How the French Media Turned Emmanuel Macron Into a Presidential Candidate" ^{6 maio 2017}

É ingénuo pensar que o sistema descambaria. Retém esse pensamento, segway para o descambar de um sistema noutro século: que lições retirar da revolução de outro '17?

"a very unpredictable past"

Why does the revolution matter? Because of what was right about it, and what went wrong. It matters because it shows the necessity not only of hope but of appropriate pessimism, and the interrelation of the two. Without hope, that millennial drive, there’s no drive to overturn an ugly world. Without pessimism, a frank evaluation of the scale of difficulties, necessities can all too easily be recast as virtues.
in "Why does the Russian revolution matter?" ^{6 de Maio de 2017}

Os media e os mercados celebram o novo senhor no Eliseu mas nOS POSITIVOS somos do contra e ninguém que nos leia a) vota b) votaria no sujeito. Do refrear de entusiasmos aos gentios, aquilo do de sempre, tão bem ilustrado pelos excertos anteriores: "não há alternativa". Excepto, quando de repente a há.

It has become commonplace to admit that history was more tenacious than Francis Fukuyama suggested, but this is, after all, still meant to be the post-Thatcher era of TINA – there is no alternative – in which but perhaps for a diminishing tinkering space, fundamentals are not to be challenged. To even moot a system predicated on something other than profit, of grassroots control, is supposed to provoke eye-rolling, despite the increasingly sadistic deployment of austerity.
in "Why does the Russian revolution matter?" ^{6 de Maio de 2017}

Mas a resistência à alternativa é visceral. Recordemos Outubro ido, extrapolem para junho/julho aqueles que por terras francas põem papelinhos em caixotes:

It’s precisely as a vision of an alternative, and one that had the temerity, at the start, to be successful, to overthrow the un- or not-yet assailable, that October matters. That’s why there’s anger, on all sides, rather than mere exasperation or amusement. Because what’s at stake isn’t the interpretation just of history but of the present. The question of whether it had and has to be this way.
in "Why does the Russian revolution matter?" ^{6 de Maio de 2017}

E não no tópico de as coisas não terem que ser assim: um piscar de olhos à nossa veia anti-experts.

One salutary impact of recent extraordinary political upsets – Corbyn, Sanders, Trump, the French presidential election, with more to come – has been the carnage of political givens, the humbling of the know-it-all.
in "Why does the Russian revolution matter?" ^{6 de Maio de 2017}

Mas voltando aOS POSITIVOS, e de ser do contra. De nada.

Any movement that avoids hagiography, that critically evaluates its own traditions, is healthy and confident. A hard-headed pessimism would have been less damaging than this bad hope.
in "Why does the Russian revolution matter?" ^{6 de Maio de 2017}

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