The Observation Deck

I've seen a lot blowback over the past couple days about "Real News", a new project of "Trump TV".
Progressives, Democrats, and media critics are rightfully comparing it to Soviet-style propaganda.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... e3ac23131f

It's interesting that there are some so-called "Lakewood Democrats" that would scoff at "Trump TV", yet LOVE Mike Summers' administration.
Before "Trump TV", it was Team Summers that created the fake newspaper "Lakewood Neighborhood News" .
Team Summers is behind "Lakewood Citizen", a propaganda arm owned by a former City Hall employee.
And it was City Hall employee Jen Pae that created the fake "Lakewood Community" Facebook page, which is monitored and edited by City Hall without public disclosure.

Why the double standard?

A few weeks ago I read an article suggesting that "negative partisanship" drives a lot of contemporary politics.

The most thought-provoking idea was probably summed up by these lines: "The vast majority of people don’t sort themselves into political groupings based on firmly held beliefs. Most people don’t have firmly held beliefs about political issues at all, and most people aren’t and don’t want to be deeply involved in politics. When people do express political opinions," according to this theory, they are typically taking cues from political leaders rather than the other way around.

In addition to being rather discouraging, this is a relatively new/contrarian take. I would guess (as well as hope) that there are substantial exceptions to this, at minimum.

Still, thought-provoking. Here's the whole article.