- 149,622
- 199,253
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2007
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: this_feature_currently_requires_accessing_site_using_safari
When Tesla was founded in 2003, the goal of decarbonizing transportation emissions was sacrosanct.
CEO Elon Musk detailed in an online climate manifesto how the Roadster had fewer carbon emissions across its life cycle than the hybrids of that era. He expressed passionately the ambitions of Tesla and Solarcity—which later got incorporated into Tesla Energy—and how they would combat global warming.
The manifesto existed for nearly two decades, but now Tesla has quietly taken it down from its website, Forbes first reported. Titled “The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me),” it laid out a vision for zero emissions road transport, written by the CEO himself.
Clearly, political strategists don’t need traditional media as much as they once did. And the media have richly earned this drop in status. Too many political journalists are marinating in the Washington cocktail culture, writing for each other and for their sources – in service to the political industry, not the public.
They’ve lost touch with their audiences, especially the audiences they’ll need in the future. A recent survey found that 78% of Americans age 65 or older get most political and election news from journalists and news organizations. But that figure drops to 55% for people ages 30-49 and to 45% for those 18-29.
The director says he anticipated a massive police presence which would prevent protesters from gaining access to the Capitol. In the event, he was shocked by the lack of security; he says it almost felt deliberate. “I have to imagine that there are many law enforcement people who are part of these same conservative Facebook groups. They’re watching Fox News, watching Alex Jones and all the other pundits bang the drum about storming the Capitol. They had the same information I did and chose to do nothing about it.”
What Homegrown highlights, however, is how broad-based and diverse America’s right-wing populist movement has become. Premo, who is black, claims that its main organising principle is not race hatred so much as despair and disillusion, characterised by a widespread loss of faith in American democracy’s ability to safeguard public interests. Significantly, the film chooses to cross-cut Quaglin’s journey with that of his fellow rebel Thad Cisneros, a charismatic Latino activist from Texas. Cisneros explains that he was first radicalised by watching Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. He now dreams of forming an alliance with Black Lives Matter organisers.
Cisneros, it transpires, is now also serving time and thus unavailable for comment. But he represents an increasingly fractured and muddied political landscape, one in which the old left-and-right stereotypes no longer apply. “We need to have a more nuanced understanding of the people driving this movement,” Premo says. “We need to know who these people are, what they look like, where they come from. Only then can we understand what we need to do to support the principle of a pluralistic democracy that stands any chance of surviving beyond this current era of us-versus-them politics.”
![]()
Mainstream media on a path to irrelevance
Instead of carping about TikTok, news outlets need to fix themselveswww.stopthepresses.news
We don't need journalists to simply turn on the microphones and broadcast whatever politicians say. A machine could do that. The value added of journalism is doing investigations that matter, putting news events in context, confronting prominent liars, and drawing fair conclusions that inform the public.
. And there’s Meidas Touch, which broke a story last week about CNN including a longtime Trump supporter on its panel of “undecided” voters even though the voter’s social media made his Trump affection clear