It all mirrors the rise of the IQ test in American life, which was applied to Army draftees before basic training. Never forget that Binet had concocted the test as a way to judge if grade school students were slipping behind.

The kicker is that psychologists know that tests like the Rorschach are garbage, yet they still make people take them, possibly through inertia.

And they wonder why nobody trusts corporations in the US.

I remember taking a personality test around 2000 to get a job at Hollywood Video -- yes, the video rental place!  And it took me probably 30-45 minutes!

Once more into the breach of Afghanistan takes: the media now turns to our precious abandoned military ordnance to hand-wring over, and Britain continues to feel the cold shoulder of the Biden administration. We also cover China’s new gaming ban, and an effort to gin up a BDS movement against the Taliban.

Chapo Trap House

554 - Junkyard of Empires (8/31/21)

“It’s not about right vs left, but the people vs the elites,” “Wall Street and the media are leaching off hard working Americans like you and me who play by the rules.” “Our elite have sold us out to China.” American media consumers are routinely fed, a particular, and often confusing brand of so-called “rightwing populism” –– nominally taking on “elites”, “the media,” and “bankers” and standing up for the every man but with a suspicious mix of xenophobia, self-help audience flattery, anti-Semitic dogwhistles and a semantics cup-and-ball game about how exactly, the speaker defines “elite” or “the media”.

With the rise and eventual presidency of Donald Trump there’s been no shortage of pontificating and reporting about the appeal of “rightwing populism” but one aspect worth dissecting is the way in which wealthy Republican-funded media deliberately seeks to win over confused and sometimes lefty media consumers with a clever mix of faux class warfare, vague appeals to post-partisanship and piggybacking off legitimate discontent with the Democratic party to sow nihilism and suppress voter turnout.

From President Andrew Jackson and Alabama governor George Wallace to today’s billionaire-backed charlatans like Tucker Carlson, Saagar Enjeti, JD Vance and Josh Hawley, there is a longstanding effort to take the working man and insist the author of his suffering isn’t a class of people marked by a concentration of wealth and power, but a deliberately ill-defined “elite” of snot-nosed, overeducated liberals, immigrants, Jews, secularists, women and academics out to undermine their culture and way of life.

On this first part of a two-part episode, we focus on the many ways that “rightwing populism” operates to confuse and distract, to pick off independents, liberals and even leftists, exploiting real failures of the Democratic Party and use fake class war to muddy the waters of real class war.

Our guest is Daniel Martinez HoSang.

The GOP's "Populism" Rebrand (Part I) - How Well-Funded Charlatans Pick Off Disillusioned Lefties

"Investigative journalism." It’s a term that conjures imagery of committed, industrious newsrooms like those in the Oscar-winning films All the President’s Men or Spotlight, filled with intrepid reporters dutifully scouring documents, scrutinizing photographs and taking secretive yet explosive phone calls at all hours of the night. It’s a rallying cry for TED Talkers and Brookings Institute essayists, many of whom extol the virtues of scrappy and scrupulous reportage that succeeds in taking down a crooked politician, exposing a company’s abusive policy, or otherwise changing the course of history.

It’s common to think of investigative journalism as an honorable line of work - after all, investigative reports have exposed powerful misdeeds, labor abuses, air and water pollution, and racism in healthcare. But this isn’t the only form of investigative reporting in the United States. Too often, stories characterized as well-meaning investigative reports - local news pieces alerting viewers to the “dangers” of bail reform, or New York Times scoops on government “leaks” demanding billions more for military spending--end up reinforcing the very power structures they’re supposed to be challenging.

While the title of “investigative journalist” is so often used as a catch-all term for a noble tireless, truth-seeking, deep-digging reporter who, like a determined fictional detective, follows a twisted trail of breadcrumbs to their blockbuster end, why should we assign valor to what can often merely be the lazy practice of government and corporate stenography? Or laundering intelligence or pro-police propaganda?

On this episode, we discuss the ways in which investigative journalism is portrayed as an inherent good even when it serves powerful interests, how professional norms in the journalism industry seek to remove power dynamics in deciding what leaks are important and who is leaking them, and why investigative reporting without politics isn’t an inherently subversive or moral enterprise.

Our guest is Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting's Jim Naureckas.

Ep 156: How the "Investigative Journalism" Aesthetic Can Be Used to Launder Power-Serving Narratives

"Is it a higher compliment to be called a) a person of real feeling, or b) a consistently reasonable person?" "Are you more successful at a) following a carefully worked-out plan, or b) dealing with the unexpected and seeing quickly what should have been done?" "Which word in each pair appeals to you more? a) scheduled, or b) unplanned?"

Questions like these are posed to millions of current and prospective workers and students every year. They come from personality tests, whether the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Clifton StrengthsFinder, or other surveys purporting to assess personality traits and job aptitude. Through a series of tens to hundreds of questions, personality inventories claim to identify qualities like dominance, neuroticism, or introversion, synthesize a user profile, and determine that user’s fitness for a given job.

But beneath this ostensibly neutral goal of matching a person with their ideal form of employment lies a much more sinister aim: Identifying and weeding out would-be dissenters, labor organizers, and union sympathizers. Additionally, studies have shown repeatedly that commercial personality tests like the commonly used Myers-Briggs have little to no scientific value. Why, then, does their use continue–with anywhere from 60 to 80% of prospective workers taking a personality test–and given their anti-labor history, what harms do they pose?
On this episode, we examine the history of personality testing used in military, educational, and corporate settings; the relationship between personality assessments, labor law, and the corporate consultancy class; how personality testing threatens the livelihoods of people based on race, disability, and other factors; and media’s role in laundering tests as benign instruments of self-realization.

Our guest is writer Liza Featherstone.

Episode 159: The Anti-Worker Pseudo-Psychology of Corporate Personality Testing

It's an extremely discouraging political moment for our neighbors in the United States, so we decided the time was right to finally examine one of the quintessential cinematic articulations of American exceptionalism, FORREST GUMP (1994). Is life, in fact, like a box of chocolates? We investigate.

"The Man Who Loved Presidents: On John Meacham" by Thomas Frank - https://harpers.org/archive/2021/07/jon-meacham-thomas-frank-soul-of-america/

"Tom Hanks Explains It All" by David Marchese - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/06/13/magazine/tom-hanks-interview.html

Michael and Us

#345 - At Long Last, the Forrest Gump Episode

Originally published to Patreon on 9/11/2021. 

In this third edition of Shano's Brainos (really, that's still what we're calling it) on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Shane talks through the disastrous and ongoing war on terror, how imperial ideologies get formed, and considers what it means to live through history.

Unlocked: Shano's Brainos - 9/11

Bryan is back with Kumars Salehi from Delete Your Account

Follow Kumars on Twitter - @KumarsSalehi

If you want to hear Bryan dive deep into the world of Shock Jocks  then you should check out our Patreon where you can get access to “Shocktober” plus a slew of other series that are updated every week! - www.patreon.com/streetfightradio

Join the chat to talk to us while we record these episodes live every wednesday and sunday at 8pm on Twitch,Youtube & Facebook.

Street Fight Radio Twitch - www.twitch.tv/streetfightradio
Street Fight Radio Youtube - www.youtube.com/c/StreetFightWCRS
Street Fight Radio Facebook - www.facebook.com/StreetFightWCRS/

Every Sunday at 8pm we do a show where we take calls from y’all. If you want to call in you can reach us at - (614) 655-3887

We love getting free things from y’all!
Street Fight Mail - P.O Box 82306 Columbus, OH 43202

Ty Williams's Album

Street Fight with Kumars Salehi

What would socialism look like in the United States—the richest country ever known yet 38 million people are hungry? Socialism would use that wealth and our development for the needs of the people, stop endless wars, and crush racism, sexism, and all forms of bigotry. A new book, "Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States," demonstrates what this could look like in detail, starting in “the first decade of socialism in the United States."

Brian is joined by Dr. Jodi Dean, Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges & author of several books. She and Brian were part of the collective effort to produce the just-released book “Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States."

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

Get the book here: https://www.liberationstore.org/products/socialist-reconstruction-a-better-future-for-the-united-states

Socialism in the US Can Happen, and Here's What It Can Look Like

Massive protests in South Korea are demanding the end of right-wing President Yoon Suk-yeol's tenure. At the same time, the US and Japan are promising a major military escalation against North Korea.

Brian is joined by K.J. Noh, a peace activist, organizer with Pivot to Peace, scholar on the geopolitics of Asia, and a frequent contributor to Counterpunch and Dissident Voice.

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

Huge Protests in Korea As War Danger Grows

Subscribe at: https://www.patreon.com/americanexception

Sarah Kendzior joins us to talk about her book, They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent. She is also the author of Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America and The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America. Sarah is the co-host of the podcast, Gaslit Nation.

Special thanks to Dana Chavarria for the sound engineering!

Music: "Do You Want Out" by Mock Orange

Episode 96: Of Course They Knew w/Sarah Kendzior

We take a detailed look at the career of Elizabeth Warren, granddaughter of a white man who murdered an unarmed Native American in 1906

Episode 37: Sounds About White

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

Episode 159: The Anti-Worker Pseudo-Psychology of Corporate Personality Testing

Citations Needed Podcast

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