Is the war rhetoric helpful ?

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To be honest as I may have said in another thread before I've stopped watching the news because of what is going on in the Ukraine and I get sick of rhetoric that some news channels and their presenters over-react with things like ''World War 3'', and ''Nuclear Apocalypse'' and so on. I seem to think its inducing more anxiety in people. We are coming out of a pandemic and during that time the rhetoric was that everything about the disease was so ''lethal'' and that ''anyone who gets infected will die''. It is like haven't we all been through enough already ?

Depends on where you are and how much of a "risk group" you are.
Generally, various catastrophes don't affect everyone equally.
Here, things are pretty upside down already, but we're dealing with it so far.

It could be helpful to investors.

I don't watch TV news, but I bet that monitoring the tone of war rhetoric is a useful tool to investors to gauge just how freaked out people are being told to be.. and then waiting for them to panic sell off a bunch of stocks, watching their prices plunge and then snapping them up and holding them until after they rebound again.

Might also be a good signal as to which arms suppliers to invest in and when if that's your thing. Same for energy and anything else required for the war industry.

Sometimes it seems there is a deliberate choice made to stoke anxiety and fear in the general population.

And then I think, if it is a deliberate choice then someone made that choice because there is something in it for them.

And then I say, oh well, my defective body doesn't have the health to pursue that any further.

I think it's simple: money.
TV sells emotions. If nothing else happens, they use sports events and soap operas.
But news have stronger impact, so any accident or catastrophe will sell.

Fear sells. Just like those commercials for housecleaning products where they show hideous CGI germs covering every surface until the product magically removes them. I hate those ads, I'll bet they're one of the reasons people develop OCD.

So whats your better idea?

NOT tell folks that covid can kill you, and be guilty of criminal negligence?

NOT tell folks that a nuclear superpower waging an aggressive war on a continent with other nuclear powers - which are in alliance with the greatest superpower- COULD escalate into a third world war? And be guilty of lying, and of criminal negligence?

The media talks about that stuff because that stuff is the truth...whether you like it or not.

Even in sports they sell war. Why do you think the American national anthem is sung before every major professional sports game? The military pays for that sponsorship to keep the "rah rah go killing machine!" patriotism up amongst the populace. It's literally a military recruiting tool.

I had a different thoughts on sport.
Thinking of dawn of humanity, I came to a conclusion that tribal wars played probably much greater role in shaping our species than we're comfortable to admit. It was a lenghty chain of concepts, which concluded in something like:

Tribal war instincts are still in us, but, unlike stone age wars, wars today are too destructive to afford them.
So, to manage these instincts at relatively safe level, we need some ritual form of tribal war, some ritual fighting within clearly stated rules, that would let the steam of tribal war instincts off without causing the damage of an actual war...
And then I realized I just theoretically predicted sports

Yes, that's also true. You're not the first to think of it - I've read some articles about it & I think seen some mini docus online. Professional sports teams replaced medieval battles and give each side something to cheer for. Very similar purpose and psychology - home team vs. away, winners and losers, bragging rights and prize money instead of new territory to claim and defend etc.

In my view, the central issue is damage control, both in sports and in actual military actions.

Yes. Exactly how team sports often did evolve. The small often warring ancient Greek city states came up with the original Olympic games for the dual purpose of being a safety valve to prevent war, but also as training FOR war. The Indigenious tribes of the northeast woodlands of what would become eastern Canada, and the northeast USA invented lacrosse ( much more violent than modern version we see today) for much the same reasons.

The truth is, people like excitement, until they get it; it's not all fun then. It's why violence and whatnot is everywhere in media, as it provides that excitement without having to go through with it yourself. People will get secondhand excitement from these things. It's reality TV. Turn it off if it bothers you, because there'll be more danger in your surrounding area than what's on the TV in most instances; if one has a propensity to worry, better to worry about the local things that have a much higher chance of harming you.

Most people consume it because they like it, and that's fine.

The truth is, whether folks like it or not is irrelevant. The truth is that the media is just doing its job...of reporting the truth.

What else would you have them do?

As a whole, I wouldn't consider that the media report the "truth" on these things (objective truth). Rather, they report a subjective truth that goes along with whatever agenda the owners/handlers desire, and their subjective truth can sometimes cause more harm than good. A good example is back in 2003, where war rhetoric via the media drummed up support for the Iraq invasion.

So yeah, I'll do my own research on things. Much like how masks didn't matter early on with SARS-CoV-2. I wore my P2s and glasses because I knew the truth that the media as a whole wouldn't tell (whether they knew it or not).

They're as useful to me as Hollywood.

Good point. There is a HUGE difference between what Fox News reports as the truth & what MSNBC reports as the truth. Both media sources often contradict each other. I love the one where Fox News said they heard something from Trump & Trump said he heard it from Fox News Trump often credited Fox News as being the truth & the other news networks as being fake news. How can they all be the factual truth

Last edited by nick007 on 14 Mar 2022, 7:06 pm, edited 4 times in total.