MSNBC is a huge part of the problem [View all]

[JMCKUSICK]

I'm going to piss some people off here so please, before you respond, read it again.
I've been a loyal MSNBC viewer back to the Countdown days. Too loyal.
I've bathed in the self-righteous glory of watching and defending the news network that doesn't lie to its viewers.
The bill of goods we've been sold is every bit as bullshit insulated as anything Fux news does.
Those of us that watch MSNBC as background during the day watched daily as reporters interviewed "Trump Voters" and it left us asking again and again, "How can these people be so out of touch?"
Another version is "How can they really believe the economy is that bad?" I'm at home really wondering "My God, they really have been brainwashed" etc...
There are really two trump voters out there. One is the selfish greedy voter who damn well knows rules like this, (Abortion bans, birth control) and who knows what else don't apply to people with money and two is the voter who has been outright ignored for DECADES now while us loyal MSNBC viewers pull our hair out because we've tried "everything" to reach them but in hindsight, most of them are "lost".
Everyone focuses on the word CULT when it's included in a sentence because it's a BAD word. As long as cults have been around, they've always had the same MO. Recruit members on the fringes of society, the outcasts, loners and here's the important ones, those suffering from insecurity and those disconnected from society. (loosely paraphrased from "The Psychology of Cults" UT Permian Basin).
We need to recognize, and I mean yesterday, that disconnected from society does not mean what it did 50 years ago. left behind or left out does not mean what it did 50 years ago.
Rural America is DYING and there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it. Start there.
Rural America has been at the bottom end of technological priority for DECADES.
Rural America is supposed to be thrilled when they get the scraps of economic expansion that by policy decisions alone, have driven most economic advancement to urban centers with barely a crumb left for anyone else.
Guess who was running most states when the listening stopped cold?
MSNBC contributes NOTHING to the necessary discourse in this country. During the day, it repeats the same bullshit breaking news with the same "Politics of the story" focus that has become truly nauseating over the trump era as it's gotten worse with each outrage. Everybody has to be neutral, both-siderism alive and well.
Outside our rose colored outrage at trump denigrating the decline of America and much worse, the reason that attack has been so successful is because in 80% of territorial America, IT IS.
Are trump voters going to get shit on? You bet, but trump got these voters to be loyal because he knows how to sell. Most people buy on emotion. It really is as simple as that. In that arena he's an expert.
As long as our eyes are on MSNBC, we are essentially no better off than fox viewers because we're all on the same BULLSHIT TRAIN, just a different car.
I know that having stopped watching myself, my conversations and whole perspective has changed dramatically.
I cannot Vote Republican for countless reasons but that in no way obligates me to prop up a channel that with honest reflection has elicited ever increasing feelings of anger and outrage at the whole system, especially the old guard, who still believe it's best to fucking poll test a message instead of listening and talking to PEOPLE, not voters.
I'm also pissed at myself as having MSNBC on in the background because it made me as comfortable as spa music and therefore, I stopped listening, stopped talking to people and slowly but surely, became better than them.
Quitting MSNBC has been hard and that alone tells me I was right to.

Maybe I was in a cult too?