Putin protesting protests of Putin

(enjoy my first rebooted vlog bit... it's more done just to be audio/podcast of the blog below, but maybe I'll add some effects later to the series and make it more vloggish, let me know what you think in the comments)

Georgia is safe.

I’ve got to repeat that time and time again, despite the popular draws the country has into the international media. The citizenry generally struggle to be known for positive things, like cheese boats with eggs, wine, techno clubs, and fashion, but the real draw in our disaster porn-obsessed culture seems to be civil unrest and war with Russia. To be sure, the ongoing occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are pressing concerns, but they don't really effect the climate for tourism, and if you don't travel there, you'll even have no idea that part of the country is barred by demarcation lines.

Like any country, things go wrong. The government has its problems, the city has its corruption, these things aren’t really that strange in the developing world, nor are they in the West. The United States (my home country) has been under wave of wave of violent protests, from BLM to Proud Boys to “antifa”, most of these end up with looting, beatings, tear gas, and mass arrests. So when a bit of that revolutionary spirit sparked up in my adopted home of Tbilisi, the emails and concerned calls phoned in. It’s a small country making international news for protests, so of course it must be big news, never mind that it’s just par for the course in a democratic country. It was actually far less violent than most American protests are (of course, if my American friends were imagining a modern American-style protest going down, I can see why they were concerned!).

After the unrest followed the typical bellicose sentiments of the Russian government, trying to drum up a dose of conspiracy and anxiety in order to gain support from their own waning electorate. Putin declared that Georgia was unsafe for Russian citizens and inexplicably placed a travel ban on the country. In response, the Georgians have a launched a movement to drum up tourism from other countries, the #spendyoursummeringeorgia campaign.

Despite Putin’s utmost, heartfelt concern for his citizens (/endsarcasm), Georgia remains a safe place, even for Russians. Georgians are for the most part welcoming people and though there are things wrong with the country (as in any country), there are also a great deal of things right in the country, especially for vacationers.

Image ripped from this CNN article who apparently got it from Vano Shlamov on Getty Images. Being a blog 6 people read means I can feel free to rip off images.

The low down

Russia has revived a kind of soft power they had once perfected in the Soviet days, focusing again more on propaganda and image to go along with strong military action rather than having any use for actual diplomatic relations. One of the main branches of its soft power is the Russian Orthodox Church, with little difference in the Soviet days of its KGB control and in modern days serving under FSB auspices—note also that Putin had his upcoming in the FSB regarding religious affairs. I’m not saying there aren’t legitimate complaints about Western culture, but that’s the thing—they’ve hijacked the legitimate complaints which should be a dialogue within Western culture to push a global Us vs. Them paradigm, making it instead between all the bad things about liberalism vs. Russia (which is only about good, God-fearing things, apparently), and if you are discontent with liberalism and/or the West, then you must kiss Putin’s hand, or at the very least, give a hand in destroying Western “Gayropean” institutions like NATO, the European Union, and the United States (which is simply gay, obviously not “-opean”)—and if you don’t, you hate families and God and all that’s holy.

if that's not Gayropean, I don't know what is. Ripped from this Eurasianet post.

It’s been a long and an immensely well-played game, one that has even pitted Orthodox Church against Orthodox Church, turning in the eyes of much of the Orthodox laity the Greek Orthodox into a nest of CIA vipers and Putin into a veritable Saint-Emperor. It’s also a game that outspoken liberals jump willy-nilly into as useful idiots, proclaiming that the NATO agenda is the gay agenda, that the future of Europe is in pink-boa-wrapped runway dance-offs at Berghain with sodomite orgies spilling down Kurfurstendamm or the Champs d’Elysees, thus playing into the entire fears that Putin has been capitalizing on (see also: brown people).

One such Orthodox institution the Russians have managed to hijack for their own political game and pursuit is the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy, an assembly that was started by the Greeks to help revive the Orthodox Churches in the post-Soviet territories and get them to cooperate. Unwittingly, the Greeks seemed unprepared for the neo-Sergianism that went along with this, a policy of the Russian Orthodox Church under the Communist regime to be willingly allegiant to the government in order to survive, and thereby actively cooperate with the regime in placing KGB spies throughout the priesthood—a practice that has not likely been discontinued in present times, just with a swap of acronyms (the players though are pretty much the same).

The Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy has been led by a Russian parliamentarian, Sergei Popov, re-elected on two-year terms since 2004. And though the Russians have parted their ways with Ecumenicism in their current slash-and-conquer ecclesiastical tactics, it doesn’t mean that they haven’t been using inter-Orthodox groups to wage their political power games and their dominance of the IAO is one such result. This doesn’t mean that the IAO is altogether malignant; cross-border cooperation is a positive thing after all, and the more multilateral institutions the better, even and perhaps especially those with Russian representatives, as that remains at least one outlet that communication can be had. It’s good Greece, Georgia, et al. take part in groups like the IAO, but we should be aware that Russia’s interests are not religious interests, except where the interests of the Church are that of the Russian state. The Georgian Orthodox Church, meddle as it does in Georgian politics (though I’m of the opinion that churches have every right to meddle, just as any other member of civil society), is still an independent organization, and praiseworthy for it. It is not a tool of the Georgian state, nor will it allow itself to be. The same cannot be said for the Church in Russia.

The latest meeting of the IAO was held in Tbilisi. This itself wasn’t enough to spark the riot, but that it was chaired by a Russian Minister of Parliament, Sergei Gavrilov. To me it reveals the great cynicism of Russia’s approach to religion: That an MP from the Communist Party of Russia would chair an Orthodox summit. Gavrilov is no stranger to this sort of hubris, as he has made regular religious appeals despite his upstanding position in an officially atheist community—a student of Stalin indeed. Gavrilov is also quite famous for making bold statements about how Georgia really belongs to Russia, or should, and is rumored to have even taken an active part in the Abkhaz war in the 90s. All that to say: Gavrilov is not, nor has ever been, a popular man in Georgia.

The IAO meeting was held in the Parliament building in the center of Tbilisi. Gavrilov, as chair, sat in the Georgian Parliamentary Speaker’s chair. The opposition was immediately insulted by this (nothing new, they’re insulted by everything, but at least now something with due cause), they bolted out, spread the word and immediately protests sparked up—Georgians seeing this Communist Russian MP sitting in their Speakers’ chair took it as a huge insult to their national pride, especially with a view of a government that many claim to be soft on Russia.

Everybody is pretty much in agreement with most of this. It’s what happened next that was disputed: Either the oppositionists attempted to storm Parliament, or the police just got overly nervous and started going crazy. I’ve heard conflicting reports from people there—I, having been trying to wean myself off Facebook addiction, didn’t even realize there was a major protest going down—but the end result of the tense showdown was that the police were firing rubber bullets indiscriminately into the crowd and launching canisters of tear gas like they were curled up shirts at a sports game. When the night was over, over a hundreds civilians and police had been injured, two people lost an eye, and dozens detained.

In honor of the two who lost their eye on the first night, protesters began to wear red eye patches. Ripped from this Al Jazeera article.

The next day, protests resumed. This time not so much about Gavrilov (though it definitely maintained a strong anti-Putin and anti-Russian government/occupation narrative), but more so about the police handling of the protest against Gavrilov (who safely left and even said he felt safe in “his homeland”—Gavrilov, from Tul, Russia, either is referring to his maternal grandfather who was Georgian or that he sees no difference between Russia and Georgia, a statement he has made in the past). As the hours passed and more speakers contributed to the protest, more and more issues were raised. There is a lot of discontent with the current political process, after all. The majority of the protest organizers seemed to have been content with pushing the agenda of changing the majoritarian style of Parliamentary elections, and having direct representation as well, meaning that participation in the Parliament would be allowed for even parties that didn’t have 5%.

International reaction

International journalists were languishing in the Georgian capital. It’s been over 10 years since the last war, and large protests had been handled pretty well since then. As soon as the rubber bullets were loaded, the contingent was there, eager to represent Georgia as a country in chaos and make every penny they could off their sensationalist dollars ready to cash in on the typical sensationalist moolah. And though the reality was that the protesting (and violence of one night) was localized to the Parliament (though tear gas did float down the neighboring city streets), that isn’t what gets clicks man! (I can’t entirely blame the international press though, as their Georgian counterparts were equally stirred to action). Even the protests every other night after were entirely peaceful and well-conducted on all sides.

Russia though, had a strange reaction. The protest was anti-Russian government. There were many naughty signs of Putin, no doubt. But the protests were not anti-Russian people (I’ve even watched a few Russian vloggers who were there). Putin, dismayed about the treatment of his MP (who is not of his party) and I suppose, insulted by the signs, declared Georgia unsafe and banned tourism travel. But why? Because they protested him? The Russian government even had RT and Sputnik, along with their local state media branches, ripping montages of foreign reports and making them appear as though they were attacking and focusing on Russian people.

Russia occupies through military and puppet regimes, 20 percent of Georgia's territory. Image ripped from this Emerging Europe article.

This is like if Trump decided to declare the United Kingdom unsafe for Americans and banned travel there, simply because they protested against him. Putin has held Georgia economically hostage before—back in 2007 they declared a wine embargo. The Georgians were basically forced to improve the quality of their wine in order to hit the European market. The result was that it led a lot of Georgians to rediscover their own traditional wines and old, long-unused varietals, leading to a minor vinicultural renaissance of the heavenly nectar. If anything, the Russians lifting the ban was a bad thing, leading Georgians to resume mass sale of cheap wine to an easy target market.

So what effect will the Russian ban on tourism have?

Georgian reaction

The Georgians doubled down. When Putin banned tourism, they essentially bit their thumbs and said, “Screw you, we don’t need your tourists anyway, we’ll get other people to come!” (By other people, they largely mean rich Europeans and Americans, not rich Arabs or Iranians). That’s when they launched their hashtag tourism campaign, to help drum up interest in traveling here.

There’s some debate on how big of a market the Russian tourists were. Many say that though they were huge in numbers, they weren’t big spenders. Others say the opposite. Who knows. But hopefully the tourism trade can go the same direction as the wine trade. There are huge needs in infrastructure here for tourism development, and if Georgians are as willing to meet those challenges as they were the challenges of the wine industry, then there’s nothing but success for this country ahead.

But first some hardship as they are losing a sizeable share of the tourism market. Hopefully they can get over that initial hurdle. But if it’s one thing I don’t doubt is that when Georgians finally set their mind to something, there’s very little that can stop them.

#holidays #Tbilisi #rantsandraves #history

The Great Wall of Sighnaghi

My wife skipped town to Switzerland, so I decided to skip town myself. I thought it’d be a good chance to work on my book, cleaning up and changing things that I didn’t feel quite right about. So I needed somewhere quiet and scenic for my little “writer’s retreat”, and preferably close because I hate riding marshrutkas.

Sighnaghi was perfect for me. I couldn’t imagine what could lead to a more productive time than sipping on coffee with an incredible view of the Alazani Valley and the wall of mountains that lies beyond. So I went to Samgori metro station, hopped on the next marshrutka, and made the one-hour journey.

My luck had it that I was the last person on the marshrutka, which meant I had the unenviable “bitch seat”. That meant I was in the front, squeezed between a passenger—an old, man-spreading gent—and the driver, with my long legs somehow trying to stay out of the way of the stick shift, and just hoping the driver grabbed the right stick.

But I made it fine and my trip went most excellent.

A bit of history

Sighnaghi gets a bad rap as a “tourist town”, and expats hate it because it “isn’t authentic”. I say they must not have been to any number of beautiful little towns in Europe where people go to relax. “Authentic” isn’t always on the list, but beautiful is, and you normally don’t get to mix the two unless your balls-rich, especially in Eastern Europe where authentic is more-often-than-not defined by brutal concrete blocks and faux sportsmen standing around eating sunflower seeds bumming cigarettes off passersby. No offense to Eastern European lifestyles (heck, my hood is more than authentic and I love it) but sometimes you just want to have a bit of fresh air and some beautiful things around you.

The town has an old history. Situated at the end of the Gombori Range with a commanding view of the valley, it’s always been a place of strategic importance: the Alazani Valley has served as the “Gateway to Georgia” for invader after invader, from Parthians to Arabs, Mongolians to Persians to Qajars (perhaps even in that order). The fact then that this is one of the most fortified ancient towns in Georgia shouldn’t be of any surprise. The current wall system though isn’t that old, as King Erekle II had much of the fort system redesigned, repaired, and rebuilt in the 1700s. The efficacy of the fortifications have always been under question though, as it has never really seemed to stop those pesky invading armies…

a commanding view indeed!

All that said, it is therefore an authentic tourist town. There are old things there that they didn’t just invent. The bad rap comes from when Saakashvili was president and he dumped a load of dough onto the town, and they went in and redid all the facades and cobbled the streets. That would have been fine had the locals reciprocated and refurnished their houses, but for the most part they had no money, so speculators just bought in and sat on the properties, leaving those weirdly nice facades covering up ruined interiors, creating this kind of ghost town medieval wild-west movie set feeling going on.

still true off the beaten path

That’s been changing though (slowly, ever-so-slowly). With more guest houses and hotels opening up, restaurants and cafes everywhere, it’s starting to feel like an actual resort town (true, not “authentic”, but neither is Cesky Krumlov, Hallstatt, Rothenberg, Paris, and so on). It’s got a beautiful “old town” vibe, almost as old as any of those (cobblestones are actually a fairly modern thing, most European cities had streets of mostly mud and crap, with stepping stones), and the best view south of the Greater Caucasus Range. The locals have begun to realize how perfectly situated they are, and they’re starting to understand tourism a bit, so for people on their own, it also makes a great spot as you can jump on a tour to almost anywhere in the region, or create your own for far cheaper than anything out of Tbilisi—it’s an easy region to get your fill of wineries, monasteries, and castles, depending on which is your poison. It’s also central to the primary wine region of the land, so there’s that too.

a side alley down a residential street

To bring real change and "authenticiy", something truly revolutionary needs to be done. I think the Tbilisi Music Conservatory, and/or a premiere art school, needs to open a campus in the old town of Sighnaghi, sending students for 6 months to a year to study there (also a tourism college could do the same). At minimum one term if they can't handle being outside of Tbilisi that long. Part of the curriculum would be to organize an art festival, art exhibition, music festival, or concert in a concert hall. If this were to be done, it would elevate Sighnaghi to be not just a destination for tourists, but also for locals, and it would be an all around exotic, interesting, beautiful, and authentic place, and all those sad empty facades would spring to life.

Sighnaghi National Museum

At the center of town, there’s the history museum, which really shouldn’t be missed. On the first floor is a large display of artifacts with a lot historical background of Sighnaghi and Kakheti. The upstairs features an exhibition by a Georgian artist and also a permanent installation of the famous Pirsomani, who was from a small town nearby (Mirzaani, check out the house museum in the village, or read more about the painter here, of course, just like any destination in Georgia, it’s nearly impossible for tourists to get to outside of taking a tour or taxi).

wondering about the weird statutes in Tbilisi? they're often inspired by the ancient arts

After the art exhibition, the arrows point you into the museum café, which doesn’t seem to operate (it should, with both a beautiful interior and a stunning view and terrace, it’s bizarre that nothing is happening there). But one of the museum operators was a friendly and talkative guy, impressed that I wasn’t a Russian tourist and I could speak some Georgian. In fact, I kind of felt like a celebrity superstar around town with these two attributes, as I’ve never had such a bizarrely positive time in my solo travels in the country (not that I lack in positive times here). He collects American quarters—the ones with the states on the back—so if you’re a visiting American, pop in to help his collection.

The town walls

As I’ve mentioned, the fortifications aren’t exactly “medieval” as they were built in the 18th century, but they’re medieval enough for me. Also, what’s not cooler than strolling along what could easily be termed the Great Wall of Georgia, walking the battlements from tower to tower? The walls actually seem maintained and relatively safe as well, completely unlike Narikala Castle in the center of Tbilisi, which seems about to crumble down with the next load of tourists climbing around, sending a rain of stones and Russians upon the Zoroastrian fire temple down below.

walking along the walls

even the towers are accessible

Bodbe Monastery

For fans of the famous Hamlet line, “Get thee to a nunnery!” Bodbe is the perfect site. Originally a monastery built in the 4th century (current building from the 9th), it’s now a functioning nunnery, where the Ninos and Tamars hide away from their village for about nine months before coming out a refreshed and pure young woman again. Nun jokes aside, it is a beautiful religious area, and is said to be the place where St. Nino retired after the conversion of the Georgians to Christianity in the early 4th century. King Mirian III of Kakheti built a small monastery there in her honor, and it became the preferred place for the coronation of most of Kakheti’s future kings.

the 9th century church covered with 18th century murals

A spring of miraculous healing waters below the monastery are said to have been blessed by the saint, and are found down below the new main cathedral, accessible by the newly built stairway. To get back up, they’ve built a meditative pathway that meanders up a meadow underneath the cathedral.

When the Russians came in, Georgia’s natural “Orthodox brothers” abolished the monastery just as they abolished the Georgian Orthodox Church, and they downgraded the site to a simple parish. Despite their efforts, in the 1860s, the Archmandrite Macarius Batatashvili did his best to repair the facility and make a school of Georgian chant. It’s perhaps his luck that the Russians didn’t also whitewash over the beautiful painted 18th century murals—a common practice of the Russians of that period—which are still visible today. To his credit though, Tsar Alexander III did command the rebuilding of the monastery, but this time designated it as a nunnery (which makes a bit more sense, given its dedication to a female saint).

the new 21st century cathedral

It was again shut down in 1924, this time by the Soviets, and again reopened in 1991. For any visitor to Sighnaghi interested in religion, history, or architecture, it’s a must-see site. Especially as they finish the new cathedral, itself a beautiful monument in this age of glass, mushrooms, and maxipads that flourish in Tbilisi.

A taxi should take about 5 laris to get there. Otherwise you can go like me and just walk. It’s about 45-minutes on foot, with the first half a pretty steep incline, but then it levels off through a forest. The traffic is light, as the road leaves the highway fairly early and then is on a dedicated road to the site. As I mention below, there’s a nice patio place to get coffee, beer, wine, or even shisha along the way.

The Guesthouse Experience

I stayed at Zandarashvili Family Hotel (call them at +995 555 383 837, they speak English and Russian) this last trip. My second trip to the town, when I showed it off to my parents, we had stayed there, and I’m planning to guide another tour and use this house as my base. It’s off in a slightly more residential street of town, so off the map of the roving Russian tour groups, but still close enough to take it all in. The backside is off a cliff, with a commanding view of some of the medieval walls and towers, as well as the main mountain range itself.

amazing views from the balconies

I love guesthouses. Mainly because I love hostels. Guesthouses like Zandarashvili are like hostels for grownups. It’s cheap and you get to mingle with other guests, but you still get your privacy. The family there is great and welcoming, and you get much of the famous “Georgian hospitality” that Tbilisi tends to lack. In fact, many of the family members used to live in Tbilisi, but after having their go at boring desk jobs, they came back and decided to invest their time and energy into the guesthouse, tours, and wines, and they all do an excellent job (they make some great qvevri wines too, bottled for sale as well, at 10 lari a bottle for excellent wine it’s not a hard decision where to stock up your suitcase, be sure to ask Giorgi for a tasting).

Zandarashvili's street/authentic Sighnaghi

Restaurants and cafes

As I was there to work, that’s what I did. I toured all the outside garden areas of restaurants and set up my work area—manuscript stack, laptop, and boom. There’s a plethora of restaurants there to eat and drink wine, though there does seem to be an extraordinary and inexplicable lack of cafes—as most of the interiors seem a bit ornate and overdone, rather than “homely”, it feels awkward to just sit somewhere and have a coffee and croissant. Which definitely makes it more of a summer destination to me. There used to be a lovely little coffeeshop, Kedeli, which also served as a charity for the mentally handicapped, but that’s since shut down.

the view from Kanudosi

This last visit I didn’t really eat at any restaurants. The guesthouse where I was staying has excellent cooks, and the sons either join the guests or have their friends over to eat, creating quite a festive and fun atmosphere every night. For anyone staying solo, staying in for dinner is probably the best way to go (not to mention the bottomless and most excellent wine, which will also ensure you a hangover in the morning).

Espresso-based coffee in a comfortable outdoor environment can be a bit of a challenge to get—much of the town is running off Turkish coffee, which is a fine alternative and definitely more to the local taste. I was pleasantly surprised then while walking back from Bodbe to find Club Kanudosi, which not only has americanos but also has an amazingly awesome view of the village and mountains (obviously I spent over half the day working on my manuscript here). So for coffee addicts, make the 5-minute walk uphill and out of town for this spot.

also the view from Kanudosi

Getting there

Though the locals have started to pick up on tourism opportunities, the Gods of Georgian Transportation have been eerily quiet (or dead… they seem to be dead, possibly having been mistaken for a dragon). Though it wouldn’t take too much relative effort to renovate the Kakheti rail-line to Tsnori and have shuttle services up the hill, it clearly takes more effort than any Georgian in the government or shadow government is willing to do, never mind it would be a clear boon to tourism, and of a huge benefit to the locals (imagine living in a Kakheti village, surrounded by vineyards and fresh air, and taking the rail to commute to work in Tbilisi… pipe dreams though!).

a little touristy? sure. but also a little beautiful

Nobody has even thought of a bus line there, with most Georgians just thinking tourists are fine with paying 100 lari for a taxi or jumping on a tour bus full of Russians or Poles…

All that said, you can take a lovely marshrutka from the Samgori metro station. By “lovely” I mean overcrowded, smelly, and possibly containing chickens. There is also clearly something to all the icons hanging in front above the dashboard, as they miraculously do manage to take people safely to their destinations. Most of the time. But anyway, you were just whining that cobblestones aren’t “authentic”, so here’s your dose of authenticism!

By the way, people might tell you of a “schedule” for these marshrutkas. Ignore them. They leave when they’re full (squeezed in and unable to breath). I did however, discover one immensely nice marshrutka running the route. He’s said to leave Samgori around 9 in the morning, and he takes the 1 o’clock route leaving Sighnaghi back to Tbilisi (I luckily caught the return route). It’s spacious, roomy, smells okay, plays the standard Russian 80s marshrutka music, and is in general a positive experience. I actually wouldn’t have such a problem with marshrutkas if this were the standard. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S HOLY, TAKE THAT MARSHRUTKA!

#wine #holidays #fairytalevillages #castles #Hallstatt #amalfi #coffee #churches #touristicsites

Into the Echo Chamber

After a tragedy that hits the feels because it’s close to home, massive amounts of people take to Facebook and spread stories about it. Take the New Zealand instance. Westerners relate to New Zealand because it’s Western. We think it’s generally a safe place, so when a shooter walks in and kills everyone inside a place of worship, us Westerners relate. That’s okay. Same goes with tragedies that happen in France (see the passion behind the Notre Dame cathedral fire), England, the United States, and so on. It wasn’t necessarily because the NZ victims were Muslim, as even Christian and/or white victims get a similar amount of treatment (and to an extent, Western people’s buildings get an even more phenomenal treatment) as long as they’re Western.

Notre Dame. Still there.

But then there always follows a wave of guilt shaming. Saying, “You people paid attention to this conflict, but not to these other conflicts! How dare you!” Then they’ll find tragedies about their own in-group, and rage on Facebook trying to shame people into feeling guilty about this or that. After NZ, posts came up about Nigerian Christians who were killed, or about the ongoing murders of Christians in Syria—curiously those same people had nothing to say later in their posts when 200 Christians were murdered in Sri Lanka (instead of shaming people, imagine if you just shared things). After a jihadist went nuts and stabbed people on a bridge in London, people found some instance about brown people in whereverlandistan, saying, “Ya’ll only care about white people!” And so it goes.

This is, I think, a big symptom of only getting your news on Facebook. Let’s say you deeply care about Nigerian Christians getting murdered. When the NZ attack happened, it certainly felt like the world was ignoring what you cared about, because they’re Muslims! And then you see that someone wrote an article just about that, so that must be what’s happening! But what’s really going on is that’s what the people on your feed care about. They are not The News, they are an echo chamber. This is why it’s important to actually take the time to visit news sites from time to time and not depend upon Facebook as your source of news.

Echoooo! choooo! oo! o!

Facebook shares content from your friends. So you are only seeing content that has been curated by a group of people that you yourself have curated. Does media seem too liberal? Check your friends list. Does it seem to conservative? Check your friends list. There is no Facebook editorial board—which can be good or bad, because true editorial boards can follow agendas (as apparently even the FB algorithm is wont to do). But then also you get caught in an echo chamber, a spiral of news from people with similar interests as yourself. These people share blogs, news articles, and so on that reinforce their (and your) world view, further pushing you into your own slot and so you no longer exist in an objective world, but everything becomes more and more subjective, further slanting your ability to process information.

Fake news?!

You might be surprised to hear this. There has always been fake news. Media has always had an agenda. The first newspapers were run by political parties. They popped up all over the place along with/leading to the parliamentarian form of democracy. Most parties in the European parliaments had a newspaper when they first formed, and many political groups had newspapers and newsletters in wide circulation. Americans might be familiar with Thomas Paine, a prominent newspaper writer, and even the Federalist Papers were a kind of newspaper that was being passed around. All these were produced with political intention, which is to say they represented their side, and not fairly so.

Social-Democrat newspaper in Munich during the Weimar Republic

Media has always sought to create their own narrative, not always in line with history—common during the Weimar Republic were newspaper reports about how the Jews betrayed Germany in World War II, or how there weren’t any Jews on the front lines (they were actually overrepresented in the Kaiser’s armies). Trotsky got his start writing newspapers for the Communists in Tsarist Russia, Lenin wrote tracts, Goebbels was a newspaper editor. I’m not mentioning all these guys to say that journalists are by and large bad people, but rather that they all write with an intention or agenda, even when they don’t want to or are aware of it. And on top of that, there are editors above the writers who are pushing those agendas, and are only letting through specific articles with specific messages that reinforce that journal’s (and therefore party’s) narrative.

It’s not really that different in the modern media. Each news company is owned by one person or another who guides his editorial board in one direction or another for one reason or another. In most post-industrial free market economies, the reason tends to be fairly simple: money. And as politics means money, the media most certainly plays a political game as well.

News is money

It’s all about the Benjamins

Take, for instance, John Stankey, the CEO of WarnerMedia. WarnerMedia owns Warner Brothers, HBO, CNN, and Turner Broadcasting. Given that he manages a company with such a portfolio, you might assume he was a pretty die-hard Democrat. And you’d be wrong. Stankey is a lifelong Republican and regularly donates to the RNC and donated to the Trump campaign. What’s up with that?

I imagine Stankey is a pretty good businessman. He figures that CNN resonates with a large liberal audience. So he feeds stories to that audience in order to make money. And that’s the bottom line (literally). Media organizations, just like every other corporation, exist solely to cater not to your best interest, but to what will get money. For the past one hundred years or so we’ve become confused—and even enamored with such confusion—on the difference between money-making and self-interest and indeed, another person’s self-interest.

So what to do about it?

The best way to read media is to understand that it is written with a purpose. It doesn’t matter if you’re watching CNN, Fox, a Ben Shapiro YouTube video—they’re all the same and they all have corporate backers (you really think YouTube guys are some sort of underground rebels preaching the way to truth and freedom?). There’s a reason why at the beginning of every Alex Jones or Joe Rogan video, they start with a long list of their sponsors. Then they continue with a message that they know will retain and/or get new viewers. More viewers means more money. That’s it. And if YouTube thinks the blowback from hosting their services will generate less revenue, they will ban them. That’s it. It’s Capitalism, baby. Capitalism is and has never been about securing freedoms, it’s always been about the movement of money.

"Let me first explain all the people paying me to tell you this BS. And you should most definitely buy their crap."

So understand that. CNN might be pushing one agenda because their cousin company works in that field. Maybe they support a set of Democrats because those Democrats and them have a shared interest (in say UPS, who Stankey serves on the board of). And I’m using CNN here as an example, but we can also go with Fox, or Breitbart, or any other company that has carved its moneymaking fiefdom.

So number one: filter what goes in your brain.

Number two: filter what goes on your screen. The best thing to do is to drop Facebook as a device to read about news. Then pick five news sources. Two of which you know to be conservative, two of which are liberal. Then pick another outlier, maybe a foreign media group or one that doesn’t show overly much bias (but keep in mind, they all do, especially the free ones, because they’re not actually free). Ones that are quite open about their slant can be even better. HuffPo and Jacobin for instance, are clearly far left journals. You can read it and understand that. Breitbart or the Blaze are clearly far right. There’s no hiding there.

Read. Digest. Process. Synthesize.

Circles and arrows, it must be true!

The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle.

And the best thing about reading from sources you disagree with, is that you can learn that not everything written is true. Then apply that ability to sources you agree with.

And then recite that Reinhold Niebuhr prayer that recovering alcoholics like so much. Is it within your control? No. Then take a breath. Release. Have a glass of wine. Enjoy the view. Say hi to your neighbor. Do a good deed today. Start with what you can manage. The whole world doesn’t live online. Rather, the whole world lives around you. Today. Right now.

#rantsandraves