Episode 194: The "Graying Population" Panic and the 90-Year War on Social Security
Release Date: 12/06/2023
News Brief: Campus Anti-Genocide Protests and the Weaponization of Squishy, Bad Faith "Safety" Rhetoric
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In this public News Brief, we discuss Establishment reaction to pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses, from liberal handwringing to police crackdowns to therapy-speak.
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Episode 200 - The Rise of the War on Drugs 2.0: This Time It's Different, We Promise
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“Sen. Chuck Schumer warns drug dealers are pushing rainbow fentanyl to children,” CBS News cries. “'It's very challenging': Inside the fentanyl fight at the border,” ABC News reports. “The hard-drug decriminalization disaster,” New York Times columnist Bret Stephens laments. In recent years, we’ve been warned about the growing threat of hyperpotent street drugs, particularly opioids. Fentanyl is disguised as Halloween candy to appeal to children. US Border Patrol doesn’t have enough resources to keep up with drug screenings. Efforts to decriminalize drug use and possession are...
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Episode 199: The Golden Age of Crybullyism
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"Ex-officer Amber Guyger testifies in wrong-apartment murder trial: 'I was scared to death,'" a " story reported in 2019. "Starbucks Files Complaints with Labor Board, Accuses Union Organizers of Bullying and Harassment," reported Food & Wine Magazine in April 2022. "Labour MPs fear for safety as pro-Palestine protesters target offices," The Guardianwarned in November 2023. Within the last decade, we’ve seen the rise of a phenomenon we’ll refer to as “elite crybullying," in which people in power engage in political manipulation in order to portray themselves as victims. Routinely, we...
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Episode 198: How The Atlantic Magazine Helps Sell Austerity and War to Middlebrow Liberals
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“Teachers Unions: Still a Huge Obstacle to Reform.” “Countering Iran’s Menacing Persian Gulf Navy.” “Open Everything: The time to end pandemic restrictions is now.” “The Good Republicans’ Last Stand” Each of these headlines comes from the same magazine: The Atlantic. For 167 years, the publication has enjoyed elite stature in the American literary and journalistic worlds, publishing such luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Barack Obama, and serving as a coveted professional destination for writers throughout the country. Founded by a number of esteemed 19th century...
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News Brief: Media, Billionaires' Attacks on Homeless People May Pay Off Big at Supreme Court
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On this News Brief, we are joined by Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center to discuss the upcoming Johnson v. Grants Pass case, which will be heard by the Supreme Court of the United States on April 22nd 2024. This is the most significant case about the rights of homeless people in decades, determining whether cities can make it a crime to be homeless, to sleep outside, even when there is no safe shelter available to them. We discuss the boarder media narratives that got us to this cruel, irrational point.
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Beg-A-Thon Live Show 1-30-24: The Grim Popularity of Rise-And-Grind TikTok #Influencers
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In this Live Show Beg-A-Thon recorded Jan 30, we break down the worst Rise-And-Grind social media stars and how they've moved from Silicon Valley-adjacent to subprime motivational content helping middle and working class people get through the daily grind. With guest Hussein Kesvani.
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News Brief: How US Media Obscures the Violence of the Generic, Sterile-Sounding "Border Deal"
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In this News Brief we are joined by friend of the show, Maximillian Alvarez of The Real News, to discuss Democrats' pathetic, myopic, and nihilistic attempt to play the Racist Reverse Uno Card on Congressional Republicans.
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Episode 197: The "Human Shields" Canard as Catch-All Colonial Absolution
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"Viet Cong Use Children as Human Shields," the Associated Press alleged in 1967. "'Civilian casualty?" That's a gray area," Alan Dershowitz argued in The Los Angeles Times in 2006. "We can’t ignore the truth that Hamas uses human shields,”"Jason Willick wrote in The Washington Post in 2023. For more than five decades, military forces with overwhelming firepower, including the U.S., Israel, and others have accused enemy combatants of using “human shields.” According to these allegations, militant resistance throughout the world, from the Vietnamese National Liberation Front to...
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Episode 196: Benevolent Billionaire Despotism and US Media’s Softball Treatment of ‘Effective Altruism’
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"Join Wall Street. Save the world," The Washington Post urged in 2013. "How to Know Your Donations Are Doing the Most Good," The New York Times proclaimed in 2015. "I give 10 percent of my income to charity. You should, too," Vox advised last November. Each of these headlines tops a piece that extols the virtues of Effective Altruism, a philanthropic philosophy, for lack of a better term, ostensibly dedicated to the pursuit of the best ways to address large-scale, global ills like pandemics and factory farming, informed by “evidence and reason.” The school of thought, popularized by...
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News Brief: The ICJ Ruling and the Essentialness of Squishy Western Liberal Support for Genocide
Citations Needed
In this public News Brief, we react to the media spin around the ICJ's genocide ruling against Israel and how framing by the NYT and BBC seeks to uphold the logic of the so called "war" creating said genocide.
info_outline“Aging population to hit U.S. economy like a 'ton of bricks',” Reuters reported in 2021. “Aging Is The Real Population Bomb,” the International Monetary Fund cautioned earlier this year. “How an aging population poses challenges for U.S. economy, workforce and social programs,” PBS declared in June. “Why we’re borrowing to fund the elderly while neglecting everyone else,” The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell wrote just this past November.
Year after year, it seems, American media issues the same warning: The population of the US, due to - among other factors - rising life expectancy and falling birthrates, is getting older, which spells doom for our economy. A graying public, we’re told, will inevitably upend the labor force, destroy productivity, bleed programs like Medicare and Social Security dry, and thus place an undue burden on the younger population.
But the premises for this panic are based on misleading stats, goofy non-sequiturs, and misdirected faux class warfare. So, why do media keep insisting the olds are out for your hard-earned money? Who gets to shape our understanding of what an aging population actually means economically or socially? How does this narrative shift the burden from the state to the individual in terms of managing retirement benefits and systems of care? And what are the real harms of treating people over the age of 65 like they’re a cancer on society?
On this episode, we examine the narrative that an aging population is necessarily dire, looking at how it’s instrumentalized to gut public benefits for seniors and thus for everyone, advance the financialization of retirement, and reframe the conflict between rich and poor as one between young and old.
Our guest is social security expert Nancy Altman.