hollow vessels

"politika and rtv belgrade became hollow vessels which milosevic's bureaucracy filled with seductive nonsense, designed to manipulate and feed the gullible and disoriented serbian people with a diet of suspicion and intolerance. the role of televion during the election had been especially tendentious."

"fake news" "alternate facts"...other ways of saying propaganda and viewpoint...and the raw material of media, be it corporate or social...fox news and the n y times may not be overtly selling hate ( or they may be...depends on your "alternate facts" )...but they are both selling fear for all they are worth in an effort to manipulate thinking...and a lot of what they are saying is pure nonsense...distortions designed to play on perceived identity...or to divert attention from what is going on in front of our noses...and if you look closely enough they are all mediocre magicians with corroded slight-of-hand skills...an incumbent president who says he is planning on being president for life no matter what the polity might say...and has obfuscated the entire elctoral process by way of rationalization...a vice-presidential candidate in bed with big tech...they all have an agenda...that voting is imperfect is a given...political machines are not built on straightforward democracy...still...such a blatant and hubris filled position as donny's deserves to be reflected on and the judgement of the president and his handlers that i am so confused and stupid as to believe it is as astounding as it is insulting...this is a seriously divided population...divided to the point of fracturing...and i have to wonder to whose benefit this is all working...domestically and globally...there are any number of wannabe warlords waiting for a chance to carve out a fiefdom in say alabama or idaho or martinsville...to think there are not is to be overly naive about humans as political animals...and that there are national entities with an interest in seeing a confused and divided united states is a no brainer...the times are interesting and perilous...political violence is already a factor in this election...that violence is being fed by the media, the politicians, and by their manipulation of the perceived identity of the participants and stopping to talk it over seems less and less likely...that "diet of suspicion and intolerance" would seem to be working.