The left vs right spin tug of war

With the onset of social media, everyone who has an opinion about American politics is making their opinion known. You can select any channel on YouTube or other platform to be heard, but the only problem is many who are empowering their keyboard or camera don’t share the ethical integrity of a proper journalist. That results in reality being viewed on those bent and warped funhouse mirrors.

From Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh on the right to David Packman and the Young Turks on the left, you can hear entirely different stories about the exact same thing. This is all spin or more about getting you to see things their way. That is different than fake news where what the story is about never happened. So when deciding what to believe and what to ignore, it all comes down to looking at things from a central view point.

It is unfortunate that few people have time to dig and see for themselves, and most rely on another person’s viewpoint that is already seasoned to their liking. In many cases all it takes is looking at a few stories on the same topic. What is common between the stories is very likely the truth or at least a more balanced representation. So if someone wanted to make an App that reads several news stories and extracts what is common, that person could make a significant fortune selling the App. It could take left leaning and right leaning stories and omit the spin and just leave the news.

Political spin does more damage than people think. It divides views to such an extent that there is no common ground to pass balanced legislation. Washington has experienced that and Americans are taking radical steps to try and fix things. Electing Donald Trump was such an extreme measure, America has become increasingly isolated in the global community with positions on climate change and where to plant the American flag.

Left spin is more progressive looking to advance the world, while right spin looks to regress to eras past like fossil fuel and coal. Given time steam power may come back if you see the trend. The reality is modern technology has replace old technology and created a new set of jobs that never existed before. When was the last time you saw a VHS tape or tape player for that matter. Now everything is digital and is stored on a card about the size of your thumbnail.

So this comes down to common sense and that is the central view. If you are getting just the basic facts then your decisions will be based on your needs and not the needs of some politician who should be working for you as you elected them. Listening to some conspiracy story is more about keeping the person speaking about the conspiracy going and little if any to do with what you need to know to navigate your life.


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