[HN Gopher] Some Americans are breaking out of political echo ch...
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Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers
Author : Chazprime
Score : 250 points
Date : 2021-06-14 13:41 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| ape4 wrote:
| I would suggest reading news from other countries about USA.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world/us_and_canada
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| RT is fantastic for criticizing the US government. Though I
| wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them when covering
| Russia.
|
| Abby Martin's Breaking the Set show is what got me to pay
| attention to just how coddled by our domestic media our
| government is. There are so many things that they straight up
| don't cover at all.
|
| It's not a slant in stories, it's a total refusal to cover
| important things.
| ajoy wrote:
| Assigning a person a label of right or left or center is too
| simplistic. People are more complex. Their preferences are tied
| to issues. For each issue, every person might have a
| tilt/preference and they may not always tilt in one direction on
| all issues.
| Layke1123 wrote:
| Hacker News, a place for hackers to read about interesting topics
| and discuss things like political echo chambers while ignoring
| the political echo chamber that is venture capitalism. Ahh this
| site sucks now.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I am starting to think that it isn't really the "news" but the
| commentary. Most sites will cover many of the same events. There
| will be different focuses but a large percentage of the
| information is the same.
|
| But I recently visited my senior citizen parents and got some
| exposure to Fox News. During their commentary shows they just
| throw outrage after outrage at the wall and see what sticks. One
| example was trying to stir up a controversy over not covid
| testing people crossing the board illegally. Another was a rich
| part of Atlanta trying to break away from Atlanta and they were
| blaming it all on defund the police and black lives matter.
| robmccoll wrote:
| I live in one of the (upper?) middle class parts of Atlanta and
| I really hope they don't do that. Crime rates are up in a bad
| way, and the city can be pretty mismanaged, but taking your
| ball and going home isn't a real option. It's just going to
| hurt the city that will still be right next door, and that has
| your sports (some of it, Braves are gone), museums and culture,
| restaurants, a lot of work spaces and shopping, etc. You can't
| just wall it off and you do take part in it, so stay, keep
| paying your share, and fight to make it better. It'll be worse
| than when people outside the perimeter vote down taxes to cover
| transportation infrastructure and refuse mass transit, but are
| the ones commuting into and through town increasing the burden
| on the transit system. We're all in this together, so let's try
| to work together to improve it.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| From searching it looks like the community in question is
| Buckhead. All I know about Atlanta is the airport though
| prepend wrote:
| In general, I agree with you, but in the case of Atlanta and
| Fulton county that narrative is in conflict with repeated
| poor management. Lots of cities have incorporated over the
| past 20 years and ended up with better services and lower
| taxes. Part of that is due to siphoning off funds that would
| help worse off, but most is just due to more efficient
| management.
|
| I used to not support the idea of reforming Milton county,
| but it makes more sense as Fulton funds are focused on
| Atlanta and away from the tax base. Especially with stupid
| stuff like no Atlanta police chief for a year, etc. And no
| Marta in north Fulton. And minimal court services, etc.
|
| I live also live in one of the (upper?) northern burbs of
| Atlanta. I had to handle some property tax stuff and it was
| kafkaesque in how out of touch and poorly managed it is.
| Driving an hour to downtown atlanta to meet with an assessor
| who has never been to my town. Then meeting with a board of
| "peers" that also don't even know the town where I live,
| listen to my arguments, ask no questions and then rubber
| stamp the county.
|
| I'm not sure how to fix this and it's so appealing to just
| give up and work on local stuff.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Didn't Marta extensions get voted down by those same
| suburban counties?
| prepend wrote:
| This is all in the same county, Fulton, and the northern
| part has voted to extend multiple times. The current
| Marta line stops about 8 miles from the top of the
| county.
|
| Even other counties, Gwinnett and Cobb have recently
| voted to extend but that's sort of a separate point.
|
| My complaint was that Fulton county sales taxes support
| Marta, but Marta service does not extend all the way
| through the county.
| pgsimp wrote:
| All media does that, not just Fox news. They all try to get you
| enraged all of the time, no matter what political side you are
| on.
| jt2190 wrote:
| > During their commentary shows they just throw outrage after
| outrage at the wall and see what sticks.
|
| Yep. We're all addicted to "rage-ahol" [1], but it gets
| eyeballs which means they can charge more for ads.
|
| What's _worse_ IMHO is that we consume so much "news" that we
| can do nothing about [2], and I believe that contributes to
| people feeling quite helpless, and learning that all they can
| do is _nothing_.
|
| [1] Homer Simpson https://youtu.be/JKRn2nEw7rY
|
| [2] Fires, car chases, etc. And even if there is, indirectly,
| something we could do, the reporting never mentions it.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I miss Jay Leno, who through pretty even-handed comedy would
| present the news.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| You can always find incendiary articles from both sides at
| RealClearPolitics, too.
|
| I regularly read it, Fox news, CNN, NBC, and Breitbart to get
| ideas about what my colleagues might be thinking.
| fleddr wrote:
| I want to given an outside perspective as somebody living in a
| full opposite of your binary political system. I'm from the
| Netherlands, where we have too many political parties, so many
| it's becoming a joke in itself.
|
| The contrast is stark compared to the US because in our political
| system, a coalition has to be formed after each election to form
| a majority.
|
| This means building consensus and thinking multi-partisan is the
| default. This pretty much rules out the "total war" approach on
| political opponents as it means shooting yourself in the foot.
| You may need that other party to form a majority.
|
| Therefore, centrism in the broadest sense, which I see as the
| spectrum center-left, center, center-right...is the heart of the
| matter here, instead of some barren wasteland. Over 90% of the
| population votes within that relatively narrow bandwidth,
| therefore this is the negotiation space.
|
| And negotiate we will. Whilst we too have pockets of extreme left
| and right getting disproportionate media attention, reality on
| the ground (voting and policy) is basically centrists all around,
| with minor tweaks to the left and right.
|
| The above system isn't perfect, above all it does lead to slow
| progress at best, as policy is watered down due to the nature of
| coalitions, but let's not stray too far off topic.
|
| The US political system indeed seems designed to destroy or at
| least "win" from the other party, and basically...anything goes.
|
| Without any choice, centrism is not represented, at least not in
| media. But that doesn't mean centrism does not exist. I would
| expect in any developed nation the majority of the population to
| be in the center or fairly close to it, the so-called silent
| majority.
|
| The thing I find most baffling is how besides polarization
| between the left and right reaching new heights, many of you seem
| so indoctrinated into this us versus them dogma that many if not
| most comments below heavily criticize or even attack centrism.
|
| You should take some time to think about that position. The point
| of the article was to break out of your bubble, yet you double
| down. When you reject both the opposing party as well as
| centrism, you basically reject some 50-70% of the typical
| population. This besides the ridiculous notion of reducing
| something as complex as a human being to "friend" or "enemy".
|
| Way to miss the point.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| If you're thinking of things in terms Republicans vs Democrats,
| or left vs right, you are already behind the 8-ball. The entire
| framing of this article is counterproductive to clear thinking.
|
| If you really want to break out of your political echo chamber,
| you have to first decide how you want the world to be, and why,
| and then look for people and orgs who can help make it that way.
| You have to start with facts and policy and then find partners to
| work with, and politicians who will be open to your preferences.
| This is how the pros approach governing, including the names you
| read in the paper every day.
|
| Partisan politics is the tool that powerful people wield to get
| what they want; it's not a core part of their identity. If you're
| not approaching politics with the same pragmatic skepticism, you
| are the one getting used by them.
| benzible wrote:
| AllSides buys wholesale into right-wing framing. By what measure
| is CNN's news coverage on the leftmost side of the spectrum? Is
| MSNBC really the equivalent of Jacobin or Mother Jones,
| especially when it devotes 3 hours each morning to center-right
| Morning Joe?
|
| https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings
| Miner49er wrote:
| I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. It doesn't make sense
| to put a socialist website like Jacobin in the same category as
| liberal sites. It's two very different and opposing political
| philosophies.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > By what measure is CNN's news coverage on the leftmost side
|
| "The latest Trump scandal shows how much we must still discover
| about his presidency's assault on democracy"
|
| "Trump's DOJ continued to pursue a CNN reporter's records even
| after a federal judge called the reasoning 'unanchored in any
| facts'"
|
| "A senate report reveals new details about the stunning
| security breakdowns ahead of the January 6 attack but omits
| Trump's role"
|
| "Ex-president Obama says he never thought the darkness that
| rose in the GOP during his tenure would reach the party's
| epicenter"
|
| "Exclusive audio of a 2019 phone call shows how Rudy Giuliani
| pressured Ukraine to investigate baseless conspiracies about
| Biden"
|
| These are CNN headlines from just the past week.
| mike00632 wrote:
| It should be noted that Trump supporters literally stopped a
| vote that would culminate America's biggest democratic event
| in 4 years, they tore down the American flag on the capitol
| and replaced it with a Trump flag. Some 5 people died and
| hundreds were arrested. It's not an exaggeration or hyperbole
| to say that that Trump, his administration and his followers
| "assaulted democracy".
| benzible wrote:
| This is straightforward reporting. Are CNNs many headlines
| quoting Trump, Republicans or right-leaning judges examples
| of right-wing bias? Are news outlets not allow to accurately
| describe a conspiracy theory as baseless? To do otherwise is
| to implicitly give credence to it. Reporting is not mindless
| stenography.
| Impassionata wrote:
| This is the problem with concepts of polarization: when one
| side is completely corrupt, reporting on that corruption
| (that is, observing basic reality) becomes a political act
| easily described as 'biased.'
|
| The Republican party is fascist.
| miked85 wrote:
| Posts like yours are a great example of the polarization.
| Impassionata wrote:
| Once you send a mob at the Capitol to interfere with the
| peaceful transition of power, there can be only one side
| that calls itself American.
| bena wrote:
| Here's the problem with your framing: It's not "left-wing" if
| it's true.
|
| The first. Sure, that's an opinionated take on the facts of
| the matter. But the facts aren't great either.
|
| The second. Did a federal judge call the reasoning
| "unanchored in any facts"? If so, then they're just telling
| you what the judge said. Did the Trump DOJ then continue to
| pursue those records? If so, then they're just telling you
| what happened. That headline is devoid of any opinion. And
| let's not ignore, it's about CNN being the target of the
| Trump DOJ. If this is indicative of bias, it's bias towards
| CNN themselves, not any "left-wing agenda".
|
| The third. Did Trump have a role in the security of the D.C.
| and the Capitol? The headline implies he did. And from what
| we know, he did have some role. He was responsible for
| certain things. Now the word "stunning" is a smell. But it's
| not really forcing you to care about one side or the other.
| It's just saying that the security breakdown was extremely
| unexpected. That all being said, did the Senate make a
| report? Did it reveal new details? Did it not say anything
| about what the President could have done but didn't?
|
| The fourth. Obama is an former President. His words will be
| reported on. Did he say those things? It's not bias to say
| someone said something. It's not bias to report on a former
| President.
|
| The fifth. Once again. Did that happen? Is that audio of
| Giuliani calling Ukraine to convince them to investigate
| Biden? Is the investigation he wants based on anything
| meaningful?
|
| So of the five headlines you've chosen to demonstrate liberal
| bias by CNN only the top can be said to be actually biased.
| And that's mostly in presentation. Being critical of Trump,
| the Republican party, or "the right" in general isn't "left-
| wing" by default. Republicans themselves should have been
| critical of Trump. And they were, right up until he won the
| nomination.
|
| Fairness isn't tit-for-tat. Not every "right-wing"
| impropriety must be balanced with a "left-wing" one. That's
| not fairness. That's sports team mentality.
|
| Fairness is everyone being measured against the same
| standard.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > It's not "left-wing" if it's true.
|
| Then Fox News is also not right-wing.
| mjparrott wrote:
| Here is an awesome take on this subject:
| https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/10/01/the-low-informati...
|
| I'm going to suggest that unless you work directly in the news
| media industry yourself, you too should be paying absolutely no
| attention to the news.
|
| "It is all Bullshit", is what Mr. Money Mustache says, "You need
| to get the News out of your life, right away, and for life."
|
| The reasons for this are plentiful, from the inherently sucky
| nature of news programming itself, to the spectacular life
| benefits of adopting a Low Information Diet in general. But let's
| start with the news.
|
| News programs are, with the exception of a few non-profit or
| publicly funded ones, commercial enterprises designed to turn and
| maximize profit. Many of them are owned by larger shareholder-
| owned corporations, most notably Rupert Murdoch's News corp. The
| profit comes from advertising, and advertising revenue is
| maximized by pulling the largest audience, holding their
| attention for the longest possible time, and putting them into
| the mental state most conducive to purchasing the products of the
| advertisers (which turns out to be helplessness and
| vulnerability).
|
| Another great perspective on this: This Video Will Make You Angry
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
| boringg wrote:
| TBH I am over political news and over biased sites on both
| spectrums. Too much information and too much making hay. Soo much
| of it isn't news - and it hamstrings any politicians able to talk
| to the other side when they report on the minutiae.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| I sometimes think American politics has been reduced to a
| census ... whether people claim blue or red are strongly
| correlated to income, age, urban/rural and other factors.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Political divides are pretty demographic in most places (in
| particular, urban vs rural is a big one). It does seem
| particularly extreme in the US, but that may be partially
| down to the two party system, which encourages tribalism.
|
| In Ireland, say, there's a pretty sharp divide on the issues
| (Dublin was Yes+50 in the same-sex marriage referendum, most
| rural constituencies were more like Yes+5-10; similar though
| not quite as extreme split on the abortion referendum), but
| there isn't even remotely as large a divide on the _parties_.
| Server6 wrote:
| It's been like this forever and why gerrymandering is even a
| thing.
| vmception wrote:
| > "We can't pretend the Constitution doesn't say what it says."
|
| And then you read how some Supreme Court justices make a decision
| and you're wondering if they are even reading the same document
| acuozzo wrote:
| I can hardly imagine how our technical jargon will change in
| the next 250 years. If you'll permit me...
|
| What it means to execute code on the "bare metal" has changed
| over time. If you track its usage on HN, it is now common for
| programmers to use this to describe running a program outside
| of a Docker container or hypervisor/VM, but still atop an OS.
|
| (I personally think this change in meaning is silly, but my
| feelings on this matter don't matter.)
|
| Interpreting security policy making use of this "bare metal"
| term is now tricky. Choice #1 is to interpret the policy in the
| context in which it was written. Choice #2 is to attempt to
| interpret the policy in the context of how the term is now
| used.
|
| (The best choice is, of course, to rewrite the security policy
| in question to address the change in definition, but for the
| sake of argument let's consider this to be too impractical to
| even consider.)
|
| Let's assume that the 1996 policy in question is: "No company-
| written code that interacts with the Internet shall run on bare
| metal."
|
| If we strictly interpret the policy in the context in which it
| was written, then we're in a pickle. Agner's hand-rolled x86_64
| HTTP server is permitted. It runs atop GNU/Linux, so it's not
| freestanding and therefore isn't a "bare metal" program.
|
| On the other hand, if we determine that the modern use of "bare
| metal" is compatible with what the authors of the policy
| intended, then the security team is clear to insist that Agner
| run his HTTP server within Docker, for instance.
| ixacto wrote:
| We also pretend the law doesn't say what it says. Look at the
| sanctuary states for illegal immigration and marijuana. Then
| the red states started doing the same thing with second
| amendment sanctuary states.
|
| Looks like if there's no political will to enforce the law it
| doesn't get enforced.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The US system is, perhaps, unusual in that it started from a
| set of independent states that formed a federal government.
| While the balance of power has shifted century-upon-century
| towards federal centralization, the power of the federal
| government to enforce federal law is still constrained by the
| money spent on federal-level enforcement; states are not
| generally legally obligated to go out of their way to assist
| federal law enforcement (and proving obstruction of justice
| in an inter-jurisdictional situation is pretty difficult most
| of the time if the states just use "malicious compliance" and
| stick to the letter of the law).
|
| Hence, "sanctuary cities" where the state and local
| government just doesn't feel obligated to hand over records
| and resources they aren't legally compelled to. It's
| basically daring the federal government that if the law is so
| important, they can spend the money on ICE / FBI / ATF / etc.
| resources to enforce it (because those resources are paid
| from a completely different pool than the state or town
| police).
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| I identify pretty closely with one side. But certainly there are
| Outrage Machines on both sides, a network of media and
| personalities hyping up the latest calumny that the other side
| committed, for views and clicks. These machines can't slow down
| -- even if the other side has been quiet lately, all those people
| need something to do and talk about. They'll find something.
| api wrote:
| One thing a lot of people miss is that there is a profit motive
| here. You can make money, sometimes a lot of money, by building
| a huge social media following being a political outrage
| merchant. You can find examples of people doing this on all
| sides, especially at the extremes where outrage and other
| powerful negative emotions can most easily be stirred up.
|
| All the outrage over "cancel culture" is not about censorship.
| Censorship means state power is deployed to silence speech, and
| that is not (at least in the USA) happening much. What the
| outrage is about is money. While you can still speak elsewhere
| or on your own web site, being kicked off the majors makes it
| hard to monetize that speech.
|
| Deplatforming really knocked the wind out of a burgeoning
| outrage-for-profit industry that had some influencers making
| _millions_ by being controversy and outrage trolls on social
| media.
| Noos wrote:
| Not really. Like a recent cancel attempt was Scott Cawthon,
| creator of the game series Five Nights at Freddy's. His
| crime? Voting for trump.
|
| No really, that's it. His games weren't political, and while
| he was open about who he was, he pretty much seemed to be
| inoffensive in practice. But since his fanbase has a lot of
| LGBT, they felt betrayed because he did so, and as far as i
| know he was definitely not trolling them or being any form of
| negative person apart from supporting people they disliked.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/fivenightsatfreddys/comments/nybyo1.
| ..
|
| I can understand not wanting to support legit offensive
| personalities, but increasingly it will be used as a weapon
| to enforce proper thought.
|
| You can't really get used to siccing the tiger of cancel
| culture on people, because it gets really tempting to sic it
| on anyone. Homophobia for example is a useful concept to make
| people think about why they disagree with legalizing gay
| marriage, or their attitudes about alternative sexualities.
| But it also can and has been used as a club to silence
| enemies or any disagreement whatsoever.
|
| You have to keep things civil and restrained because once
| unrestrained, like the tiger, it can be used on and go after
| anyone.
| antiterra wrote:
| Trump's positions included his belief that people should be
| able to be fired solely for being LGBT+. You know, like
| cancelled.
|
| So, people who are or care about LGBT+ share the
| information that Cawthon voted in a way that could harm
| them. That's not 'siccing a tiger' for any disagreement
| whatsoever.
| prepend wrote:
| Trump was cancelled by the election, so that makes sense.
| People vote for lots of reasons so assuming that a voter
| supports every single issue is simplistic.
| antiterra wrote:
| Imagine people not being impressed with arguments like "I
| don't agree with his attempted oppression of a vulnerable
| group of citizens, but I sure do like his position on
| immigration/tariffs/capital gains tax."
| prepend wrote:
| I'm not sure your point as that's exactly what people do.
| I have a neighbor who is gay and voted for Trump because
| of gun rights. People are really diverse and it takes
| lots of particulars to find out why people do stuff.
|
| It's not a good idea to "cancel" people based on a single
| characteristic.
| myko wrote:
| > Trump was cancelled by the election
|
| Only if you believe mainstream media sources, if you step
| out of your bubble you will see that trump will be
| reinstated this August
| XorNot wrote:
| > But since his fanbase has a lot of LGBT, they felt
| betrayed because he did so
|
| The LGBT community was [1] and still are _violently_
| attacked for the mere act of existing. The idea that people
| 's political beliefs, what, don't affect other people who
| live in that country? Is insane.
|
| Voting is a political act which affects others. If someone
| votes for a politician who gives cover and support to a
| group which - as an example - believes atheists are unfit
| to have the right to vote - then they are voting to strip
| the right to vote _from me_ and I do not and _will not_
| support them or their personal enterprises.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots
| [deleted]
| rcoveson wrote:
| > The idea that people's political beliefs, what, don't
| affect other people who live in that country? Is insane.
|
| Yes, that is insane, but I don't think the person you're
| replying to or the FNAF guy believe that. It sounds like
| Mr. FNAF might actually be opposed to Trump to some
| extent on LGBT issues. However, he feels more strongly
| about other things (USA-China relations, abortion), and
| he, like all of us, only gets two choices. So he chose
| the mix of good and bad stuff that he thought was better
| than the other mix of good and bad stuff. I disagree with
| him so I voted the other way, but I'm not going to hold
| him accountable for everything Trump says or does, and I
| hope I am not held accountable for everything Biden says
| or does.
|
| Presidents cause unnecessary death and suffering without
| exception. That's not to say that "everything's a gray
| area so nothing matters", rather it means that you can't
| just take one issue and be like "I can't imagine how you
| would vote for somebody who believes this". Maybe the
| other option was somebody who is ~3% more likely to start
| a bad war, for example. Or 3% more likely to lose an
| inevitable war. I might take a bible-thumping evangelical
| with a _slightly_ higher chance of winning WWII over
| somebody with exactly my ethics in office with less
| strategic acumen. It depends on the actual degree of
| difference. I 'd have to assign weights to things and sum
| them up, because it's democracy and that's what you do.
| Noos wrote:
| Reading about Trump on this, he seems to flipflop more
| than be hateful or anything; in one breath he supports
| same sex marriage, in another he restricts certain
| federal aspects like gender dysphoric individuals being
| allowed in the military. The actual content of what he
| did for LGBT seems to be a minor negative mostly
| surrounding limiting federal power over employment; he
| refused to put up any fight against same sex marriage and
| there's a lot of "well it could LEAD to this" going on.
|
| I don't think this is a cancellable offense. I think if
| you are going to sanction someone for voting, it has to
| be real and clear danger of present harm, not "they are
| republicans, you know they hate us."
|
| Like, if that's the case, why not just sanction everyone
| who voted for him?
| iammisc wrote:
| > in one breath he supports same sex marriage, in another
| he restricts certain federal aspects like gender
| dysphoric individuals being allowed in the military
|
| These are incredibly different issues. For me personally,
| given that we ought to only have a small peace time army
| and we currently have lots of volunteers I support only
| accepting the strongest, buffets, most agile soldiers
| which 99/100 times will be a mostly male force.
|
| When we have a war, then we can talk about adding more
| people, but fighting a war or being in the army is not a
| right and frankly the army is too big.
|
| Now whether those men are homosexual or not is
| immaterial, but trans soldiers would require higher costs
| and more lifetime healthcare costs.
| slumdev wrote:
| Running a gay bar in New York City wasn't illegal in
| 1969.
|
| The Stonewall Inn was effectively a brothel with mafia
| protection, not a gay version of Cheers.
| antiterra wrote:
| Homosexual behavior was branded disorderly conduct and
| liquor licenses were revoked as a consequence. So yes, it
| was effectively illegal if you didn't bribe the cops.
| People were arrested because the police didn't consider
| their genitals to match their clothes.
|
| Drug deals and transactions for sex occurred at Stonewall
| just as they have occurred on Discord, but I've not seen
| any credible evidence that it was a primary function of
| the place.
|
| It seems somewhat a habit of yours to find something bad
| about victims and then use that to dismiss any wrong done
| to them. Someone subjected to police abuse? Oh they had a
| criminal record, so it's ok. Indigenous people being
| tortured, enslaved and slaughtered by Spain? Oh, it's ok
| because some of them practiced human sacrifice. There's
| no going the extra step and recognizing Spain was in the
| middle of the Inquisition and creating their own
| murderous horror, or that the Spanish allied with the
| Aztecs to eliminate groups that didn't have human
| sacrifice, or that the Spanish cruelty was applied to the
| people in the Caribbean as sport from Columbus. It reads
| like intellectual laziness.
| adolph wrote:
| > Spanish allied with the Aztecs to eliminate groups that
| didn't have human sacrifice
|
| As far as I can recall the Spanish did not ally with the
| Aztecs but conquered the leading faction of the Aztecs
| through an alliance with rival factions and effects of
| smallpox.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Empire
| slumdev wrote:
| You didn't like my comment, so you went through my post
| history?
|
| Recasting criminals as innocent angels is a
| disinformation tactic. You don't get to accuse people of
| laziness when they correct the record.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| Your habitual rhetoric _is_ lazy, regardless of much you
| want it to be considered "correcting the record".
| aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote:
| Regardless of one's personal beliefs, it's indisputable
| that President Trump is the single most polarizing figure
| in American politics at the moment. He is radioactive for a
| large proportion of our fellow citizens.
| robmccoll wrote:
| But what exactly is this "cancel" attempt? Is he legally
| prohibited from expressing his views somewhere? It seems
| more like his former fans deciding they don't want to
| support him and "voting with their feet".
|
| This guy can still produce whatever games he wants, say
| whatever he wants in a public forum, make his own websites
| declaring whatever he wants to declare, probably get on TV
| and talk about it, get licensure to establish a talk radio
| station and talk about it all day, ... He isn't legally
| muzzled, and he's hardly reached a point where he has no
| audience in society. This is the balance of free speech.
| You are allowed to hold and express an opinion and everyone
| else is too.
| prepend wrote:
| > But what exactly is this "cancel" attempt?
|
| Basically it's just like calling for a boycott and
| removal of apps and removal from social media platforms.
|
| It's not calling for execution, just for reducing the
| person's ability to communicate and/or make a living.
|
| This seems like a basic understanding of what
| "cancelling" is although it gets spun up quite a bit
| because lots of people like arguing about it.
|
| But I think it's a "bad thing" TM to call for boycott and
| removal from social media. Not that it's illegal or
| shouldn't be allowed, just that it's dumb and people who
| do it are dumb.
|
| Similar to how Tipper Gore was dumb in the 80s/90s for
| calling for the "cancelling" of rappers and whatnot.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| > His crime? Voting for trump.
|
| > No really, that's it.
|
| No, that's really not it. Cawthon contributed thousands of
| dollars to multiple Republican campaigns in 2020, including
| some noted hate magnets (e.g. Devin Nunes and Mitch
| McConnell). This naturally sparked discussion of boycotting
| his products, some of which was level-headed and some of
| which wasn't. As has happened countless times for many
| other vendors and issues across the political spectrum.
| mike00632 wrote:
| Ballots are secret in the Unites States. Therefore this
| person must have vocally supported Trump. Therefore you are
| being misleading about what incited his former fans.
| Noos wrote:
| yeah, well he gave money to him rather. My mistake. About
| the same difference imo, contributions are limited to the
| point that at best you can say its a vote +1.
| mike00632 wrote:
| My point remains. You are deliberately minimizing his
| support for Trump, his support for other anti-gay
| politicians and his political statements to make it seem
| like people were against him over his quiet political
| preferences. If you try to influence politics and use
| your platform/money to do so then you absolutely should
| expect some sort of response, if only from your partisan
| opposition.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _Censorship means state power is deployed to silence
| speech, and that is not (at least in the USA) happening
| much._
|
| >cen*sor (sen's@r)
|
| >1. A person authorized to examine books, films, or other
| material and *to remove or suppress what is considered
| morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.*
|
| Being authorized by twitter to do it on twitter is still
| censorship. A simple non-political example: censor bars on
| nudity in media, literally labelled 'censored':
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=censored&iax=images&ia=images
|
| The mental gymnastics to excuse censorship by private
| entities when it's done to the "correct" targets or for the
| "correct" reasons is infuriating.
|
| Censorship is censorship. It doesn't matter who is doing it.
| api wrote:
| That makes censorship a basically meaningless concept,
| since any exercise of one's property rights to deny a soap
| box to anyone now counts as censorship. It makes access to
| privately owned media an entitlement.
|
| Censorship historically means the initiation of force by
| the state (in the form of bans, fines, arrests, etc.) to
| suppress speech. There's very little of that in the USA
| outside certain well known areas like child porn or
| explicit personal threats of violence.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Censorship historically means the initiation of force
| by the state
|
| No, it doesn't, it historically means action by any locus
| of institutional power to control speech (and, before and
| directly inspiring that, specifically the review by
| particular officials of the Roman Catholic Church in the
| process of pre-publication review of material to assure
| it was free of doctrinal error.)
| axguscbklp wrote:
| Deplatforming targeted one side of the political tribal war
| much more than the other, it was not just some politically
| neutral phenomenon that only targeted grifters.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > make money [...] by building a huge social media following
| being a political outrage merchant.
|
| I think you have summarised both the nature of the US
| "information economy" and the state of political discourse in
| the US.
| XorNot wrote:
| When you want to know why Fox News does anything it does,
| just take a look at it's marketshare [1]. That's why.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/373814/cable-news-
| networ...
| [deleted]
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| I think this is the _real_ export behind the phenomenon
| of social memia:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27488950
| _-david-_ wrote:
| I couldn't fully see what was posted in the article since
| it was wanting me to sign in or something, but I will
| assume that it was showing Fox had a larger market share
| than the alternatives.
|
| The reason why is NBC, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, etc are far more
| in competition with each other than Fox is with them.
| There are no major right of center competitors to Fox.
| This results in most right of center tv news watchers
| going with Fox. If there was only one left of center news
| channel Fox would closer to even with it.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Yep. Look at it this way: the same Republicans who whine
| about cancel culture went ahead and stripped one of their
| own, Liz Cheney, of her committee positions merely for the
| crime of daring to oppose Trump. That should tell you all you
| need to know about their hypocrisy.
|
| edit: I guess I hit a nerve, lol
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Liz Cheney was in party leadership. She was unable to lead
| since she couldn't stop attacking her own party members.
| That is no different than firing somebody for failing to do
| their job which nobody would consider the same thing as
| canceling.
|
| Trying to end a career of people because they donated to
| some politician or said some inappropriate years ago (that
| very often was accepted back then) is completely different.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| _Censorship means state power is deployed to silence speech_
|
| Since when? You're attempting to give default context to a
| word that has none.
|
| Somehow, api, I doubt that you'd be attempting that
| redefinition if Facebook, Twitter, etc. were silencing people
| and organizations of the Left.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| No need for the hypothetical -- that happens regularly, and
| people on the left criticize them for it. They just don't
| often describe it as "censorship".
|
| Also, to add a bit of context: the top performing posts on
| Facebook are almost exclusively far-right demagoguery.
| https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| _that happens regularly_
|
| It happens in a token way in infrequent and extreme
| circumstances. But there's nothing even remotely
| comparable to the fact that Donald Trump was banned from
| Facebook and Twitter, that numerous internet powers
| worked together to shut down Parler, that the NY Post was
| locked out of Twitter for reporting on Hunter Biden's
| laptop, etc.
|
| _the top performing posts on Facebook are almost
| exclusively far-right demagoguery_
|
| Popularity despite censorship just goes to show how the
| operators of Facebook are in a different narrative bubble
| than a sizable portion of their users. The notion that
| Ben Shapiro is far-right is just demagoguery of your own.
| Shapiro is a pretty benign and centrist-sympathetic
| conservative.
| [deleted]
| prepend wrote:
| I think that two things can be true at the same time: there
| are people piling on rage about "cancel culture" to gain
| following/money; cancel culture is real and a bad thing.
|
| Similar to how I think that racism is bad and systemic and
| must be eliminated and there are people who make a good
| living on raging about stuff. People building on a cause
| doesnt mean that the cause is bad.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Have you considered not "identifying"? Just choose your
| opinions on issues a la carte. Or even don't have an opinion on
| a bunch of issues.
|
| I started doing that and now I'm kind of politically homeless
| but oh well. I do notice that I can talk to either side now
| which is cool and no one automatically puts up their defenses.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Well, I think I'm like most people in that I think one side
| is okay, but the other is absolutely evil. Definitely don't
| agree with my side on everything, and they're far from
| perfect, but I feel I have to support them because the
| alternative would be a genuine threat to the country.
| iammisc wrote:
| Speaking personally... I did this until a good friend pointed
| out that while I identified as independent, I basically
| agreed with most conservative view points. I come by my views
| honestly. My typical response goes like this .. I hear about
| something presented on the local news in a very fact based
| way. I form an opinion. Then I read others opinions and 9/10
| times I match with the conservatives.
|
| I mean sometimes I fit with the far left (for example, mother
| Jones had a great article on private prisons a while ago),
| but for the most part I'm a conservative.
|
| Anyway, my friend pointed out it's disingenuous to basically
| always end up with conservative views and claim to be
| independent because you want the brownie points. And he's
| right.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Part of the problem with this is "what is a conservative?".
| Democrats and Republicans are both economically right wing,
| pro imperialism, anti workers rights, pro the wealthy.
| There is no left wing major political party in the united
| states. The difference between the two parties is on
| cultural values, cultural progressives vs social
| conservatives. It is possible to be economically left wing,
| and socially conservative (roughly 25% of people fall into
| that group).
| standardUser wrote:
| It's challenging to not identify with one "side" when the
| other side loudly and proudly support policies that directly
| harm (or would harm) many people you care about. It's natural
| to band together when under attack, and in fact it's really
| difficult not to.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > It's natural to band together when under attack
|
| IMHO, the most inflammatory and dangerous things in our
| political discourse nowadays are the "we're under an
| existential attack (by our domestic political opponents)"
| narratives. Shit stirrers in both camps are
| enthusiastically engaging in them, and in the short term
| that keeps their bases enthusiastic and committed, but it
| leads to a vicious cycle that might actually bring about
| one of the feared scenarios in the medium/long term. Power
| play responses to the "existential threat" posed by the
| other side are likely to themselves be interpreted as
| "existential threats" by that side.
|
| Deescalation is needed, and that's going to look like
| compromise that the activists/partisans are going to be
| really unhappy with.
| smt88 wrote:
| It's fine to feel this way while acknowledging that the
| "other team" has gotten at least one or two issues right.
|
| For example, lots of left-leaning Asian Americans agree
| that race-based affirmative action is unconstitutional,
| which puts them at odds with many of the people they'll
| likely vote for.
| standardUser wrote:
| Sure, but I don't see a ton of legislation being passed
| by Republicans about affirmative action or other areas
| where there may be some agreement across the political
| spectrum. I do see dozens of bills being voted on to
| limit trans rights, to reduce voting access to
| marginalized groups, to restrict access to reproductive
| medical care. Their priorities are being shown very
| clearly by the laws they prioritize. It doesn't help much
| if we agree on a few things but they have no interest in
| pursuing policies in those areas of agreement and instead
| keep focusing on divisive issues over and over and over.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I can totally see that. I think the portrayal of the other
| side by the media is more of a parody of them than what
| they actually are.
|
| As a data point. I moved to a red state and have befriended
| quite a few republicans. Any of them with a busy life
| really don't care about the current hot button issues the
| media says they do. They mainly seem to want the government
| to leave them alone. It's hard to fault them for that.
|
| The only ones that care about the hot button issues are the
| ones that watch the news several hours a day.
| standardUser wrote:
| Laws being passed at the state level that limit trans
| rights, or restrict access to reproductive medical care,
| or erect barriers to voting that disproportionately
| impact people of color are not parody, they are very real
| and binding.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| I don't think that makes sense unless you are particularly
| apathetic.
|
| Like sure, neither of the major parties in America matches
| all of my opinions exactly but I still have strong opinions
| on a number of things, and they tend to align with a
| particular party.
|
| I imagine this is the position most Americans find themselves
| in.
| helen___keller wrote:
| I went the other way: I started by outright refusing to label
| or identify myself politically and picking opinions a la
| carte, and over time most of my opinions on the things I care
| most about tended to converge on one political ideology, so
| I've started to generally identify with that ideology as a
| result. There's notable exceptions, which I do keep in mind,
| but they tend to be just exceptions.
|
| (Of course, even then it's not simple. There's also party
| infighting, subparties, etc, so even if my opinion on "what
| the issue is" lines up, my opinion on "what the solution is"
| might not.)
|
| Edit: another complication is strength of conviction. For
| example, standard American left/right dichotomy comes with
| very strong conviction about guns. I have very very weak
| conviction about guns. Even though I tend to agree with my
| ideologies' opinion on what should be done about gun control,
| I don't really care that much either way whether there's no
| gun control or super strict gun control. So while I do
| "identify" as my ideology here, there's clearly a disconnect
| from the mainstream form of it.
| t-writescode wrote:
| I think the really frustrating thing is that these side
| issues for some of us (like gun control) take center stage
| so much and so loudly that we're effectively forced into
| listening to and arguing about things that are low on our
| personal considerations.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Echo chambers are fine. It's okay to have firm beliefs that you
| aren't interested in changing.
|
| This isn't appropriate for every belief, but for some, it is.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I strongly recommend:
|
| https://www.memeorandum.com/
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| As a non US citizen,I would say US politics is not all that bad,
| neither party can be overthrown or something. I have plenty
| American friends who live or used to live in various states and
| different segments of society. Like anywhere else it's not
| perfect, but top 5 in the world I would say. In many latin
| American countries there is a fierce divide between left and
| right, the distribution of wealth is unlike anywhere else, the
| poor live in favelas, the middle class lives in gated and secured
| communities, simple things like leaving a gated community can be
| a danger to your wallet or life. The leftists are very extreme,
| the middle class is conservative, they want their status
| protected. Neither side realizes that it's better anywhere else
| in the world, almost literally. The left does not even offer a
| social system for the unemployed, this cannot deserves the label
| left and leads to most of the crime, they happen due to dire
| economic straits. No really, the USA are doing fine. Some people
| say the left in the us is a right wing light, but that is not
| accurate. Some states are as left as many EU countries. If you
| think either Obama or Trump were the worst, don't worry , Europe
| has worse, in the UK, Farrage, the hypocrite, Boris fake name
| Johnson and many more.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > "Until you can passionately make arguments for both sides," she
| says, "you don't understand the issue."
|
| While this may be true for many issues, I don't think this is
| true for all issues. Imagine someone saying that just prior to
| the civil war on the issue of slavery, for example.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Lysander Spooner was happy to say that.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Better take: Until you can't passionately make arguments for
| any side you are biased.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Yes, I'll admit, I'm biased against slavery. Proudly guilty
| as charged.
| firebaze wrote:
| As much as I despise slavery I'd definitely be interested in
| understanding the way slavery was rationalized (if it was? if
| not, how did they cope with the suffering etc.?). We have to
| understand the principles allowing such an emotional and
| rational detachment from our set of ethics _to prevent_
| something like this happening again.
|
| This is quite similar to Germany's handling of the 2nd World
| War. You cannot just pretend it didn't happen, and you cannot
| just pretend everybody was devil's child and pure evil. You
| have to accept that "normal" people may act like absolute
| beasts, and try to understand why, not ignore it.
|
| If we don't, then we'll repeat history. Oh well.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I think we agree. Understanding why something was
| rationalized is important (slavery, the holocaust, etc). But
| being able to make an impassioned argument for those things
| isn't necessary for that kind of understanding.
| firebaze wrote:
| Yes, I agree. I missed this part, thanks for pointing this
| out!
| tayo42 wrote:
| The inability to make a rational counter point to something
| like the holocaust is the reason why the "paradox of
| tolerance" exists.
| bovermyer wrote:
| Something else to keep in mind is that liberal/conservative is a
| false dichotomy. We have at least four major cultures in the USA
| - some scholars put it as high as eleven - and they each have
| differing core values.
|
| This accounts for much of the infighting we see in political
| parties and the various factions that arise.
|
| I'm not so much a progressive Democrat as I am a member of
| "Yankeedom," as Colin Woodard dubs it.
| munificent wrote:
| Related, I really really enjoyed George Packer's "The Four
| Americas" article from a few days ago:
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/george-...
| barbacoa wrote:
| That was a very interesting article to read. Thank you for
| sharing.
| andred14 wrote:
| MSM lies to us constantly
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I don't understand the jabs HN is taking against Centrists -
| Centrists do not give equal importance to, say, Holocaust deniers
| and QAnon consipiracists. Listening to other side and believing
| it in are two different things. The alternative of camping out in
| your echo chambers is far more terrifying that exposing yourself
| to the entire spectrum (and ignore lunatic theories).
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| More americans have migrated to 4chan and Gab. Interesting art,
| mind expending videos, and news about as accurate as the weather
| forecast from your grandpa. Apparently, "2 more weeks" boys.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Long ago, before the rise of Fox News but after discovering my
| political identity as being on the left, I listened to a lot of
| AM talk radio (particularly Michael Savage) both to get out of my
| bubble and in a "know your enemy" sort of way.
|
| I learned nothing except that this guy was a tremendous asshole,
| saying things like "I want the US to nuke a country in the Middle
| East, I don't even care which one". Hearing shit like that, and
| his arrogant, bigoted, hate-filled bashing of everything to the
| left of Hitler diatribes just pissed me off, and I decided I
| really didn't need to hear more right-wing garbage.
|
| While I was there, though, I did listen to others, like Rush
| Limbaugh and various other right wing "luminaries" (including
| going back to William F Buckley), and while Michael Savage was
| the most extreme of the ones I listened to, they were all just
| different shades of crap.
|
| The same goes for listening, reading, or watching mainstream
| media like CNN or MSNBC, which I consider way too conservative
| for me. When I heard them defending the Iraq war, endlessly
| interviewing generals and other pro-war figures without
| interviewing any serious anti-war opposition (like, say, Noam
| Chomsky, or any of the other leaders of the antiwar movement),
| when they give trite, superficial coverage of protests and focus
| on sensationalism rather than issues the protests are about, when
| they (say) crap all over Obama for not wearing a lapel pin
| (instead of something serious like him enabling the surveillance
| state), when they give endless air time to Trump or can't stop
| talking about him (pre-election.. it's harder to ignore him when
| he's President), when they have an unquestioning support of
| capitalism, then I wonder why the fuck am I listening to this?
|
| Yes, I'm out of my echo chamber when I listen to right-wing and
| mainstream news, but what's the point? They're really not telling
| me anything new... I already know how pro-war, pro-capitalist,
| right wing, anti-left they are.
|
| Even consuming left-wing media mostly just upsets me because all
| they do is talk about the injustices of the right and quote
| right-wing media back at me, which just pisses me off more.
|
| If I was politically active maybe this would be more bearable, as
| I'd have an outlet for my frustration, but as I'm not I really
| try to limit my consumption of news, left-or-right.
|
| In theory it would be nice if there was more real communication
| between the left and the right, mutual understanding, and
| cooperation on issues we do agree on.. but I just don't see it
| happening. Both sides see each other as super biased, unfair, and
| close-minded, and it's hard to see how that's going to change...
| just getting out of one's echo chamber is not enough.
| [deleted]
| bobthechef wrote:
| I sense that in a lot of these posts, "objective news source" =
| "they agree with me".
|
| No news source is "unbiased" as in "not guided by what the
| newspaper things is valuable". It's a ridiculous notion. Even
| when full honesty is assumed (not sure why anyone would; all
| newspapers publish what they want you to think for all sorts of
| reasons), even putting aside external factors that constrain or
| compel what is said, there is a selection process informed by
| what is held as important. I am not dismissing the objectivity of
| value (no fact-value dichotomy in my world), but in practice, you
| will see a variation in what people hold that to be or want to
| hold that to be.
| oarabbus_ wrote:
| Wired has gotten considerably more political lately, which is a
| major disappointment. I canceled my print subscription to them
| for this reason.
|
| I have full access to Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. I
| go to Wired to read about tech, not some worse version of a take
| made in WaPo or WSJ.
| hn8788 wrote:
| An underrated way to get out of your echo chamber is to actually
| talk to people in person. I lean fairly conservative, while my
| wife and her friends are very liberal. Whenever we happen to talk
| about political topics, most of the time we end up understanding
| where each other are coming from, even if we still don't agree.
| standardUser wrote:
| Perhaps your political viewpoints are fairly mild compared to
| mainstream conservative discourse? It's difficult to have civil
| discourse with someone who says your identify (or the identify
| of those you love) should be outlawed or otherwise severely
| restricted by the state. That's been a core tenet of
| conservative politics and policy for several years now and I do
| not have the intellectual tools nor the emotional strength to
| find common ground with people who view the world that way.
| axguscbklp wrote:
| >It's difficult to have civil discourse with someone who says
| your identify (or the identify of those you love) should be
| outlawed or otherwise severely restricted by the state.
| That's been a core tenet of conservative politics and policy
| for several years now
|
| On the far right yes, but not in mainstream conservatism. For
| example, a recent poll shows that 55% of Republicans support
| gay marriage
| (https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1004629612/a-record-number-
| of...). And that is even putting aside the question of
| whether wishing for gay marriage to be illegal really
| constitutes a severe restriction of someone's identity or the
| identity of those they love.
| hpoe wrote:
| Well I am conservative and don't believe that so maybe you
| should consider talking to more conservatives.
| StephenAmar wrote:
| Well, but do you vote for conservative candidate that may
| believe it?
|
| So maybe a person is believes in X, but if they continue to
| vote for candidates or parties actively promoting "not X",
| you can understand why this advice rings hollow.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Excellent job not understanding what the opposite side
| believes and why.
| standardUser wrote:
| I know what legislation they pass. "Believing" sounds nice
| and fun, but legislating directly impacts the actual lives
| of people.
| reedjosh wrote:
| This assumes that everyday conservatives believe in the
| republican representatives that end up in power.
|
| I didn't even vote in the last election as I felt un-
| represented. For me there was no 'greater evil'
| candidate. Prior I voted libertarian, but what good does
| that do?
|
| Does having voted a certain way for a candidate make your
| beliefs ultimately responsible for the way the
| representative governs? In America we essentially get
| `choose red or blue`.
|
| How can the subjects as complicated as everyday topics
| are ever be reduced to two colors!?
|
| The problem _is_ our tyrannical democratic system.
| dbrueck wrote:
| You could not have more completely proven his point.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| The liberal viewpoint is vastly different from the
| conservative viewpoint, but only if we find a way to
| communicate and find common ground will we ever hope to move
| forward together as a nation. Seeing your political opponent
| as irredeemable is the first step towards sectarianism, which
| can easily lead to war.
|
| I lean to the right, and yet regularly talk to and see the
| humanity in liberals on a pretty regular basis. We are all
| people, even if we see things differently.
| standardUser wrote:
| If a major political party prioritizes limiting the rights
| and freedoms of entire groups, how can we expect to find
| common ground with them? If you are asking people who are
| directly impacted by these laws to find the humanity in
| their oppressors, you are asking for the impossible.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| The fundamental purpose of law is to place limitations on
| the allowed behavior of other people. The lines between
| what behavior is right and wrong varies from people to
| people and group to group, hence why we have democracy to
| try to form a consensus.
| reedjosh wrote:
| > The fundamental purpose of law is to place limitations
| on the allowed behavior of other people.
|
| Maybe the problem is just a majority forcing a minority
| into their beliefs?
|
| I'm anti-government in general, so that _is_ my
| standpoint.
| standardUser wrote:
| There is a stark, obvious and undeniable difference
| between "other people" and narrowly defined groups of
| people, such as Jews, gay people, black people,
| immigrants or women. Many people view targeted
| restrictions on specific groups of people as some of our
| most atrocious and indefensible errors throughout
| history. I am one of those people.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Yes, but reality is muddy and people affect each other.
| Look at the rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide,
| and see how well they correlate with the liberalization
| of American culture since 2012. Look at the declining
| rates of sex in our youth, the number of school
| shootings, the rise of populist politicians... If a
| generic goal of diversity and avoiding hurt feelings was
| what our country truly needed then our country would be
| better than ever, but its not.
|
| You are obviously right when you look at the far right.
| Complete oppression is a bad thing. But swinging to the
| other extreme and saying that no ways of life are better
| than others causes social instability too.
|
| Whether it should be government's job to do that is
| another matter.. I'd much prefer that our society handles
| such social pressures itself, though such social feedback
| systems seem to have broken down.
| reedjosh wrote:
| I think a large bit of conservative viewpoint today is that
| the government shouldn't even be involved in marriage.
|
| I don't at all care what you do with your life, and really
| I'd like it if you gave me the same courtesy.
|
| But, if you believe that because I consider myself more
| conservative than not, I must then hate your lifestyle, how
| can we ever come to a happy coexistence?
| standardUser wrote:
| I don't think _you_ hate anyone. I _know_ that millions of
| voters reliably vote for candidates who are outspoken about
| oppressing specific groups of people, and who introduce
| legislation and vote in support of legislation that targets
| specific groups of people.
|
| I'm glad you don't care what I do with my life. If you vote
| for candidates that legislate in ways that do restrict my
| life, I ask that you please stop.
| reedjosh wrote:
| I replied below to another comment, but that reply fits
| here as well.
|
| > This assumes that everyday conservatives believe in the
| republican representatives that end up in power. I didn't
| even vote in the last election as I felt un-represented.
| For me there was no 'greater evil' candidate. Prior I
| voted libertarian, but what good does that do?
|
| > Does having voted a certain way for a candidate make
| your beliefs ultimately responsible for the way the
| representative governs? In America we essentially get
| `choose red or blue`.
|
| > How can the subjects as complicated as everyday topics
| are ever be reduced to two colors!?
|
| > The problem _is_ our tyrannical democratic system.
| Impassionata wrote:
| > I think a large bit of conservative viewpoint today is
| that the government shouldn't even be involved in marriage.
|
| How is it you think that your viewpoint connects to
| conservative viewpoints at large?
|
| At some point you have to admit and understand: you aren't
| conservative. You aren't what most people think of when
| they think of conservatives.
| reedjosh wrote:
| I'm for small and lesser government and anti-war. I also
| like freedoms including gun rights.
|
| I think less taxation is great and believe in the free
| market.
|
| I believe in a nuclear family and traditional marriage
| for a healthy society, but not to the point that I'd ever
| try to force it on someone else, but in that I think it's
| proven to be the best way for people to rise from poverty
| and build a healthy community.
|
| I don't think abortion is okay, but I won't stop you from
| having one.
|
| I don't want the government to provide welfare though I
| do think that minorities have been hurt by our current
| system. I think welfare has if anything propagated said
| system.
|
| I'm skeptical of big pharma and in particular the systems
| that both hyped COVID's danger and provided the vaccine.
|
| I'm not anti-science, but anti-scientism.
|
| My point is, I'm mostly conservative--to the point I get
| downvoted a lot when I express my opinions and I identify
| with a lot of opinions that are removed from twitter and
| youtube.
|
| I think global governance only leads to more inscrutable
| bureaucracies and less freedom and privacy.
|
| I believe that governments everywhere are doing their
| damnedest to scare everyone into believing more
| governmental control is the only way to protect you from
| `the other`.
|
| I'm pretty clearly in the conservative camp. That said, I
| don't wish to control you, simply not to be controlled.
| vincent-toups wrote:
| I'm all for people getting out of their bubbles, but the idea
| that the truth is "somewhere in the middle" or is even
| discernible by a process of digestion applied to the two "sides"
| of the American political spectrum is pretty dumb.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Somehow I saw absolutely no examples of the subject line
| statement in the articles body. I also see no evidence of broken
| echo chambers in the wild, the only thing that is changing on
| both sides is accelerating distrust of media
| fancyfish wrote:
| The elephant in the room is that this sort of enlightened
| centrism, while it sounds noble, rests on several ill-formed
| assumptions.
|
| The first is that, by reading from both sides, they'll balance
| and you'll arrive at an enlightened center. This assumes the
| Overton Window is balanced, stationary, and not tilted to one
| side or the other. You're beholden to the good judgement of each
| side to not move themselves further left or right.
|
| Another is that the opposing content can actually be merged. In
| many cases the content will cover different pieces of the same
| broad issue. Or the interviewees will present their opinions in a
| completely different fashion. Up to you to carry all this context
| in your head, or make simplistic summaries of viewpoints that
| don't add much value beyond what is already commonly known.
|
| The third assumption is that being at the center or having this
| detachment from either side is a political position in and of
| itself. I think it's too simplistic to say you'll be the net sum
| of whatever each side puts out, but you're taking a position all
| the same.
|
| You're not obligated to give equal credence to the opposing side
| on a number of issues. At best it will make you more detached
| from politics over time, splitting hairs over policy stances at
| the voting booth instead of more impactful grassroots political
| action.
| chmod600 wrote:
| You don't need to give equal credence, but you do need a source
| of facts that is not cherry-picked. Polarization leads to
| cherry-picking, so the only way to get facts that might falsify
| (or complicate) narratives is to seek out adversarial sources
| with their own (but different) biases.
| lumost wrote:
| In practice there are three possible outcomes for resolving
| differences between large groups of people.
|
| 1) Some negotiated middle between viewpoints
|
| 2) Some converged position based on a winning argument.
|
| 3) War
|
| If viewpoints remain diverged for a sufficiently long period, 3
| is almost inevitable. Understanding the different sides helps
| lead to either 1 or 2.
|
| My ask with family members who are on the other side of recent
| issues has always been to broaden their news/media consumption.
| Reading the other sides media has given me insight into why
| they feel the way they feel, even if I don't believe the
| feeling is valid.
| anm89 wrote:
| Attacking the center is always the craziest narrative to me.
| It's saying: not only is it not okay to disagree with me and be
| on the other side, it's also not okay to not passionately agree
| with my exact side. The only right way to view these complex
| issues is to sign your name to join my party and then hold the
| party line, and everything else is unethical. I can't imagine a
| more obnoxious political viewpoint than that.
|
| That enlightened centrism subreddit listed below is up there
| with the most toxic sub reddits I've seen on reddit where
| people "dunk" on the idea that anyone would be so brave to have
| the gall not to conform precisely with progressive rhetoric on
| anything. It somehow seems like some of these people are more
| offended with the center than the other side.
|
| Anyway yeah, I'm a centrist and it's not because I'm trying to
| be neutral, it's because both sides are terrifying cesspools
| the further you get to their extremes and the best outcome for
| partisan politics is to give either of those groups as little
| power as possible. It's not some abstract goal of evenly seeing
| both sides on the issues.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| You mention both sides being terrible cesspools, but your
| concrete examples only hit out at what you deem to be
| progressive subreddits. One aspect of centrism is that it's
| generally people who either benefit from or want to maintain
| the status quo, without incurring the conflict that comes
| with stating so.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| > One aspect of centrism is that it's generally people who
| either benefit from or want to maintain the status quo,
| without incurring the conflict that comes with stating so.
|
| This absolutely is not true, it's simply the straw man that
| polarized extremists use to lampoon centrism. It's based on
| two faulty assumptions:
|
| 1. Centrists believe the right course of action is "in the
| middle" of both extremes on all issues. This is like
| assuming that every movie that gets rated 5/10 on average
| got rated 5/10 by everyone who watched it, rather than 1/10
| by 50% of people, and 10/10 by the other 50%. It's
| certainly true that sometimes centrists will believe the
| truth is somewhere in the middle, but it can also mean that
| they agree with the more extreme view of one wing on some
| issues, and strongly disagree on others.
|
| 2. It also assumes that neither wing of the political
| spectrum is never interested in maintaining the status quo,
| which is rarely the case. There are some issues for which
| progressives are pro-change and conservatives are for the
| status quo, and vice versa. You could conceivably have a
| centrist who is for raising taxes and government provided
| universal healthcare, and against affirmative action and
| for increased border security or against legality of
| abortions. All of these positions would represent upending
| a point of the status quo that either conservatives or
| progressives are for maintaining.
|
| The point is that too often, centrism is lazily painted as
| apathetic, uninterested in change, or unwilling to take a
| hard stance on anything. In reality, many centrists are
| simply not falling in line with a particular political
| faction consistently enough to be a supporter of any of
| them.
|
| And this doesn't even consider those who are skeptical of
| the self-perpetuating propaganda narratives that have been
| increasing in intensity as the internet has matured. Some
| people are centrists not because they aren't for change or
| taking a stance, but because they express skepticism at the
| narratives constantly being thrust upon us through the
| media and the internet. This doesn't equate to "both sides
| are right", or even "both sides are wrong", it is closer to
| "both sides have demonstrated a willingness to lie for
| their agenda, so I want to take things on a case by case
| basis rather than blindly throw my support at one".
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| So in the issues of chattel slavery, Jim Crow, anti-
| lynching laws, Voting Rights what position would a
| centrist have taken that wouldn't have explicitly
| maintained white supremacy?
| fleddr wrote:
| This is the typical bait to attack centrism: moral
| coercion by framing an issue so that "NO" can never be an
| answer.
|
| Centrism doesn't mean indifference regarding any topic,
| nor does it mean "meet in the middle" on any topic.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| So centrism means everything and nothing at once.
| local_dev wrote:
| It's hard to assume a centrist's opinions on these
| things. Anecdotally, the centrists I know and talk to
| regularly are entirely aligned with the left on those
| issues.
|
| Centrists don't pick the middle of every issue, they pick
| issues from both sides they agree with.
|
| For example, a centrist may be FOR universal healthcare
| and AGAINST gun control. Or FOR lower taxes all around
| and FOR $15 min wage.
|
| Taking each issue as it's own instead of aligning with
| one party or another on all issues is what a centrist is,
| to me.
|
| Edit: I'm a self admitted centrist. Feel free to ask
| questions on my views if you'd like more info.
| tootie wrote:
| Free speech as a sacred right means you have the absolute
| right to put yourself anywhere you want on the political
| spectrum, but that doesn't mean that one isn't right and the
| other side is wrong. I also think that "centrist" is a pretty
| meaningless term. I prefer to think of myself as more of an
| empiricist. I like policy that follows evidence. 90% of the
| time that's liberal policy. Roughly 0% of the time is that
| conservative policy. There's some rallying cries like $15 min
| wage or forgiving student loan debt that seem like foolish
| hills to die on, but universal healthcare, equal rights,
| voting rights, progressive taxation and aggressive action on
| climate are so blindingly obvious that anyone who questions
| them is wrong in my book. You have right to be wrong, but
| you're wrong. Saying that you oppose the poles because they
| are "cesspools" strongly implies you don't like the loudest
| proponents and aren't considering the validity of their
| policy.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This is how liberal policies of Oakland, California will
| decide how to educate their children [PDF]:
| https://equitablemath.org/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11...
|
| I am not convinced, _at all_ - this is coming from a
| liberal who has voted for every democratic candidate since
| age 18.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think perhaps the reason enlightened centrism gets its
| reputation is because there is no well-formed critique.
|
| There is a vague reference to the awfulness of both sides,
| it's never really described in depth or weighed, and then you
| end with the blithe "and that's why i'm a centrist."
|
| Even in this comment, both sides are terrifying cesspools,
| maybe - so what are the concrete things that you are afraid
| of if each of the groups gets power?
| [deleted]
| watwut wrote:
| The middle between truth and lie is a lie. The middle between
| torture and fredom is less bad torture.
|
| I could continue, but that is the point.
| rictic wrote:
| A "centrist" who looks at each issue and takes the average
| of the mainstream parties' positions is a fool, and will be
| wrong more often than someone who picks a party and follows
| along with their beliefs.
|
| Someone who looks at each issue and comes to their own
| conclusion is likely to end up with views that will not
| line up cleanly with any political coalition, and must
| choose which issues to compromise on when deciding which
| coalition to back in a given political contest.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| A political party is a compromise - a bunch of people
| who've decided they can accept one-another's redlines and
| non-negotiables.
|
| A sane person doesn't just choose a party and adopt their
| party-line; a sane person works out what _their_ opinions
| are, and maybe then chooses to support a party with
| policies that are sufficiently congruent with their
| views. Or not.
|
| People who don't think for themselves are not really
| participating in politics. They're kidding themselves.
| They should voluntarily refrain from voting.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| "If you aren't for us, you are against us."
|
| This is a great tool for crusades and other holy wars. You
| can paint inconvenient bystanders who don't come over to
| your side as enemy combatants and justify attacking them.
| Also fantastic for reinforcing in-group identity, forcing
| group members to stay loyal or lose their entire friend
| group.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| This doesn't actually address the parent post in that
| quite literally half-truths aren't truths. Of course the
| rhetorical implication is that only one side had those
| truths but that is most certainly not the argument being
| made here.
| rkk3 wrote:
| Except politics is based on conflicting value systems not
| objective truth.
| watwut wrote:
| What does that have to do with what I said? Nothing.
|
| Political center are not passive bystanders. They are
| people who are active in politics and either actively
| stop or actively push for real policies. That then affect
| how country operates.
|
| It is set of ideologies as much as any other political
| group is. They make aliances or refuse to make them too.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| A random example policy position: "We should vote for the
| immediate shutdown of coal plants and demand their
| replacement with large scale nuclear reactors."
|
| There are lots of good objections available here, from
| pointing out that blackouts kill people and coal is an
| important part of energy capacity, to jobs arguments, to
| arguments about micro-reactors and the lifespan of
| nuclear plants.
|
| If you're going to sit on one side of the debate and say
| anyone who isn't fully aligned is wrong/a liar/etc, then
| you are both doomed for failure and have started at a
| maximally partisan position.
|
| Political positions have little to do with objective
| truths and instead tend to fall on value arguments.
| slowhand09 wrote:
| That sounds like a great philosophy.
|
| Who gets to decide what is truth and what is a lie?
|
| Case in point. The Pulse Nightclub shooting 5 years ago.
| Proven the shooter chose it because of lax security
| compared to other places he considered. He didn't know it
| was LGBTQ+. It was about Syria, Afganistan, and other
| middle eastern wars to him.
|
| Now it is hailed as persecution of the LGBTQ+ community - a
| target. Who is doing this? Politicians, activist, etc.
|
| Who decides what the truth is? Why do they spin the lies as
| truths? This is societies problem today. Manipulation of
| fact and fiction by those who want to control you, and
| those who control the message.
|
| Inaguration Day at the US Capitol. Police officer killed
| after being struck in the head with a fire extinguisher. No
| proof, not even a strand. Now thought to have had a stroke.
| Pols, pundits, and Trump haters still swear he was
| MURDERED. Female protester killed by capital police - still
| no identification which officer did it, or what she was
| doing when shot. Sound like open&shut case of self-defense?
| Wouldn't they sing that from the heavens?
|
| How about Jeffery Epstein? How did he hang himself in a
| maximum security facility where two video cameras failed,
| and guards checked him frequently? Guilty - probably. I'm
| surprised if they aren't taking bets on when girlfriend
| Ghislaine Maxwell committed suicide. Who else was involved
| in their island escapades? Who benefits from their silence?
|
| Who controls the truth?
| krapp wrote:
| >Proven the shooter chose it because of lax security
| compared to other places he considered. He didn't know it
| was LGBTQ+. It was about Syria, Afganistan, and other
| middle eastern wars to him.
|
| How? By whom? Why should we trust you or your sources?
|
| Your thesis is that no one can be trusted to decide what
| is truth and what is a lie... then you follow up with
| several "facts" which clearly share a common ideological
| bias. Like most people who pretend only to be concerned
| with the integrity of the truth and ask "who controls the
| truth? Who watches the watchers?", you're just attempting
| to move the Overton window by pretending an anti-leftist
| narrative is a neutral one.
| slowhand09 wrote:
| On June 12, 2016, Mateen spent just over three hours in
| PULSE from the time he began slaughtering innocent people
| at roughly 2:00 a.m. until he was killed by a SWAT team
| at roughly 5:00 a.m. During that time, he repeatedly
| spoke to his captives about his motive, did the same with
| the police with whom he was negotiating, and discussed
| his cause with local media which he had called from
| inside the club. Mateen was remarkably consistent in what
| he said about his motivation. Over and over, he
| emphasized that his attack at PULSE was in retaliation
| for U.S. bombing campaigns in Iraq, Syria and
| Afghanistan. In his first call with 911 while inside
| PULSE, this is what he said about why he was killing
| people:
|
| Because you have to tell America to stop bombing Syria
| and Iraq. They are killing a lot of innocent people. What
| am I to do here when my people are getting killed over
| there. ... You need to stop the U.S. airstrikes. They
| need to stop the U.S. airstrikes, OK? . ... This went
| down, a lot of innocent women and children are getting
| killed in Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan, OK? ... The
| airstrikes need to stop and stop collaborating with
| Russia. OK?
|
| In the hours he spent surrounded by the gay people he was
| murdering, he never once uttered a homophobic syllable,
| instead always emphasizing his geo-political motive. Not
| a single survivor reported him saying anything derogatory
| about LGBTs or even anything that suggested he knew he
| was in a gay club. All said he spoke extensively about
| his vengeance on behalf of ISIS against U.S. bombing of
| innocent Muslims.
|
| Mateen's postings on Facebook leading up to his attack
| all reflected the same motive. They were filled with rage
| about and vows of retaliation against U.S. bombing. Not a
| single post contained any references to LGBTs let alone
| anger or violence toward them. "You kill innocent women
| and children by doing U.S. airstrikes," Mateen wrote on
| Facebook in one of his last posts before attacking PULSE,
| adding: "Now taste the Islamic state vengeance."
|
| : People still surround the Pulse nightclub which is
| still an active crime scene on June 18, 2016 in Orlando,
| Florida. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) It was of
| course nonetheless possible that he secretly harbored
| hatred for LGBTs and hid his real motive, but that never
| made sense: the whole point of terrorism is to publicize,
| not conceal, the grievances driving the violence. And
| again, good journalism requires evidence before ratifying
| claims. There never was any to support the story that
| Mateen's attack was driven by anti-LGBT hatred, and all
| the available evidence early on negated that suspicion
| and pointed to a radically different motive. But the
| media frenzy ended up, by design or otherwise, obscuring
| Mateen's anger over Obama's bombing campaigns as his
| motive in favor of promoting this as an anti-LGBT hate
| crime.
|
| As the FBI investigation into Mateen proceeded, all the
| early media gossip -- that Mateen was a closeted gay man
| who had searched for male sexual partners and had even
| previously visited PULSE -- were debunked. The month
| after the attack, The Washington Post reported that "The
| FBI has found no evidence so far that Omar Mateen chose
| the popular establishment because of its gay clientele,"
| and quoted a federal investigator as saying: "While there
| can be no denying the significant impact on the gay
| community, the investigation hasn't revealed that he
| targeted PULSE because it was a gay club." The New York
| Times quickly noted that no evidence could be found to
| support the speculation that Mateen was gay:
|
| F.B.I. investigators, who have conducted more than 500
| interviews in the case, are continuing to contact men who
| claim to have had sexual relations with Mr. Mateen or
| think they saw him at gay bars. But so far, they have not
| found any independent corroboration -- through his web
| searches, emails or other electronic data -- to establish
| that he was, in fact, gay, officials said.
|
| The following year, the local paper that most extensively
| covered the PULSE massacre, The Orlando Sentinel,
| acknowledge that "there's still no evidence that the
| Pulse killer intended to target gay people."
|
| As the investigation proceeded, this anti-LGBT hate crime
| narrative became more and more unlikely. But the question
| of Mateen's motives was settled once and for all -- or at
| least it should have been -- during the unsuccessful
| attempt by the Justice Department to prosecute Mateen's
| wife, Noor Salman, on numerous felony charges alleging
| her complicity in her husband's attack. That trial --
| quite justifiably -- ended in a full acquittal for
| Salman, but evidence emerged during it that conclusively
| disproved the widely held view that Mateen chose PULSE
| because he wanted to kill gay people.
| krapp wrote:
| Ok. I'm not even claiming you're wrong, but again, if we
| can't trust anyone to determine what truth is, why should
| we believe you?
|
| How can you _prove_ you 're right without invoking
| exactly the same sources of truth that are being
| discredited as untrustworthy due to their biases?
|
| Once you play the "Who controls the truth?" card, it
| applies as much to you as anyone else. That argument
| becomes infinite and recursive when the implication is
| that no one can be trusted. Otherwise, the implication is
| that _only certain sources of truth_ can 't be trusted -
| which itself is simply a statement of bias. Just tell us
| which side you're on, in that case.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Epistemological proofs are an impossible standard. Take
| in what you think has credibility or value and make a
| personal judgement.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| The fact that you're being downvoted by stating simple
| truths that go against the accepted MSM narrative just
| shows how bad the problem is.
|
| And HN is supposed to be where the more informed crowd
| hangs out.
|
| One quibble, though. It wasn't inauguration day. It was
| on 1/6, the day they were to certify the vote in
| Congress.
| anm89 wrote:
| All of humanity does not agree with your personal
| subjective assessment of "the truth", whatever that is
| supposed to even mean.
| watwut wrote:
| If you are determined to pick middle of all issues, you
| are not superior neutral thinker. Instead, you are
| enabler for whoever is bigger lier or whoever is set up
| to cause more harm.
|
| People dont have to have same opinions as me. But the
| contemporary idea that if you position yourself in the
| middle you are doing good by definition is wrong.
| fleddr wrote:
| I don't think a lot of centrists claim to be "doing good"
| just for being in the middle.
|
| You can't read from this position the intent. It could be
| indifference about a topic, caring about it yet rejecting
| both extreme views, or somebody that did deeply study the
| topic and found the center to be just right.
|
| Both rejecting centrism or glorifying it, makes no sense
| in any case.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > It somehow seems like some of these people are more
| offended with the center than the other side.
|
| I think this holds well beyond that particular subreddit. I
| think this is horseshoe theory in action. The klansman isn't
| the real threat, it's the moderate who won't toe the
| progressive line.
| [deleted]
| ABCLAW wrote:
| >Anyway yeah, I'm a centrist and it's not because I'm trying
| to be neutral, it's because both sides are terrifying
| cesspools
|
| You aren't being neutral. Your position is a very strong
| affirmative for the current status quo. You don't want anyone
| to be able to enact change.
|
| That's an understandable position, but it isn't neutrality.
| Especially not if the status quo is actively negative for
| certain people.
|
| As an aside, this portion of your statement:
|
| >It's saying: not only is it not okay to disagree with me and
| be on the other side, it's also not okay to not passionately
| agree with my exact side.
|
| Feels like a strawman. The existence of critique isn't a
| censure. It's just how rational analysis works. You find
| ideas and you work through them.
|
| If your goal is to never be critiqued because you can't stand
| to be wrong, and that's why you've adopted a 'centrist'
| standpoint to get above it all that's a very political
| position to adopt.
| anm89 wrote:
| >Anyway yeah, I'm a centrist and it's NOT because I'm
| trying to be neutral
|
| > You aren't being neutral.
|
| My claim is that I'm not neutral and that I'm also not
| trying to be neutral.
|
| >If your goal is to never be critiqued because you can't
| stand to be wrong,
|
| Speaking of strawmen.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| It's a bit tough to understand how you reconcile this
| position with your original paragraph.
|
| >Attacking the center is always the craziest narrative to
| me. It's saying: not only is it not okay to disagree with
| me and be on the other side, it's also not okay to not
| passionately agree with my exact side. The only right way
| to view these complex issues is to sign your name to join
| my party and then hold the party line, and everything
| else is unethical. I can't imagine a more obnoxious
| political viewpoint than that.
|
| Your position is that holding a position and critiquing
| those that don't hold it is the most obnoxious political
| viewpoint to take. How can you adopt and advocate for any
| political position, then, other than a 'non-position'
| which doesn't actually adopt any stance?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| What's hard to understand? Picture a spectrum with three
| points labeled "left", "center", and "right"
| respectively. Each point is a "position", none of them
| are neutral (because they all exist on the spectrum).
| ABCLAW wrote:
| Because the center has to be qualitatively different from
| the others in order to escape the cycle of critique
| presented in the original argument.
|
| Otherwise, why is critique of the center different from
| attacking the left or the right? Why would attacking the
| center be the "craziest narrative"?
|
| The OP's post has a hidden premise, otherwise it does not
| lead to his conclusion.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Otherwise, why is critique of the center different from
| attacking the left or the right?
|
| Presmably the OP meant "it's crazy to attack the center
| with equal fervor that one applies to the opposite
| extreme". E.g., leftists attacking everyone to their
| right as uniformly "far right", using language like
| "white supremacist" and "literal Nazi" to describe anyone
| who is not far-left, etc.
| 13415 wrote:
| I don't think there are or could be neutral political
| positions, nor would it be desirable to have them.
| mlac wrote:
| Not the OP, but I'll counter: >You aren't being neutral.
| Your position is a very strong affirmative for the current
| status quo. You don't want anyone to be able to enact
| change.
|
| It's not that I don't want ANYONE to enact change, I just
| don't want people with extreme views enacting change. And
| it's this all-or-nothing discussion that drives the country
| apart and makes for little or no common ground on major
| issues. The US Federal laws impact hundreds of millions of
| people. In most cases, this requires gray areas,
| exceptions, and a one-size-fits-all approach leaning to one
| extreme or another creates externalities and negative
| consequences. People who hold extreme views either don't
| feel these consequences, don't know them, or do not care
| about them. If they did, then they wouldn't be in the
| extreme.
|
| For any given situation there are extremes and some path of
| action between the two that is optimal. Let's say an
| infected finger - there are extremes (do nothing, cut it
| off) and an optimal path (some treatment). If OP is in the
| "some treatment" standpoint, he or she is not advocating
| for inaction (inaction is actually an extreme in this
| case), but may be advocating for an optimal, less
| aggressive approach.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| I'm not sure how "Extreme views enacting change" =>
| Centrism.
| mlac wrote:
| I was replying to OP: "Your position is a very strong
| affirmative for the current status quo. You don't want
| anyone to be able to enact change."
| ABCLAW wrote:
| >It's not that I don't want ANYONE to enact change, I
| just don't want people with extreme views enacting
| change.
|
| This position sounds fine until you realize all it has
| done is shift discussion away from the effectiveness and
| correctness of a given policy, to a pre-discussion of the
| reasonableness of that policy. The heuristic replaces the
| thing itself. "Is this an extreme position?" replaces "Is
| this good policy?"
|
| This is fine when public discourse is a never-ending
| deluge of extreme ideas: 'should we commit genocide?' -
| let's not even bother working through that one.
|
| However, in practice this position is often used to
| prevent or shut down discussion of social legislation
| aimed at fixing publicly broken but privately lucrative
| policy positions.
|
| Is single-payer healthcare too extreme an idea for the
| states? Regardless of your answer you've likely seen this
| exact form of argument. It adds nothing to the discussion
| and creates a presumption that the status quo is correct.
|
| The inverse position isn't 'Is single-payer healthcare
| good?', it's 'Is remaining on employer funded healthcare
| too extreme an idea for the states?' Note how the
| existence of the status quo makes this an uphill battle -
| how can what already exists be too extreme?
|
| Everyone wants the policies they want. Being able to
| define the policies they do not want as 'extreme' is just
| an extra tool to ossify and slow legislative change.
| Which, again, is itself a position to take.
| mlac wrote:
| If a policy is effective and correct, I would not call it
| extreme.
|
| I guess it depends on the definition of extreme, but I
| would not think "good" policy would be extreme in the
| sense that it has (whether real or perceived) negative
| externalities on a large portion of the population. Two
| years ago, I (and perhaps the country) would have said
| the PPP for paychecks would have been extreme. Given the
| (extreme) circumstances that occurred, it became a
| reasonable approach.
|
| I would argue people that shut down dialogue are
| advocating for an extreme position (e.g. doing nothing
| and maintaining status quo can be an extreme approach in
| some cases).
|
| I don't know if single-payer health care is too extreme,
| but any and all options should be discussed, and a
| reasonable course of action should be taken. I think most
| people agree that the current situation we have is a
| broken mess of half-measures. I don't think we're stuck
| with an either-or situation. [This feels like the most
| Yogi Berra thing I've ever written]
|
| There is merit to discussing chopping off the finger or
| doing nothing. Both solutions are worth understanding -
| one avoids gangrene and the other saves the finger at the
| potential for the infection. Given no other choices or
| options available, the decision maker will have to choose
| one option or the other. But when other alternatives
| exist (e.g. modern medicine), creating a false dichotomy
| between the two camps yelling the loudest is not an
| optimal approach.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| >If a policy is effective and correct, I would not call
| it extreme.
|
| >I guess it depends on the definition of extreme, but I
| would not think "good" policy would be extreme
|
| The issue is that you've begged the question in your
| definition: Good policy isn't extreme, therefore all
| policy that is extreme isn't good, therefore no extreme
| policy. You've just redefined extreme to mean bad - so we
| can't really discuss much more.
|
| I'll propose a different definition for use here, one
| that accords with common use: 'Extreme', in this case, is
| whether or not the position is unreasonable, unmoderate,
| or exceedingly unusual.
|
| With this definition we can find examples of positive
| extreme policy positions: We take take the abolition of
| slavery as an example of extreme policy. Granting women
| suffrage is another. Desegregation is another.
|
| This isn't to say that all extreme policy positions are
| right - many, maybe most, are wrong. But digging into the
| trade-offs between the two requires a far more nuanced
| discussion than the one we're having here, because
| there's a lot of legal history about the relative
| velocity of legislative change and that's gonna take up
| more room than we have.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I think your flavor of centrism is actually relatively rare.
| That you distrust both sides I think is the key to enabling
| 'the good kind' of centrism. Many with a similar viewpoint
| would call themselves Independent to separate themselves from
| the parties.
|
| The issue lies is the false dichotomy of the two-party
| system. Centrists I interact with often seem to view the
| world as if the two party lines are a single dimension and
| that a rational 'compromise' position can be found somewhere
| in the middle.
|
| So in effect, many centrists determine their positions by
| trusting BOTH parties - which can be just as bad or worse
| than having blind faith in either. They are setting the
| bounds of possibility in between two groups which have many
| ideological similarities (ex. how meaningfully different are
| democrats than republicans on war spending?).
|
| The vast majority of 'issues' do not cleanly divide along
| ideological lines, and by viewing them through the distorted
| lens of the two-party dichotomy it creates a reductive
| perception of reality.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Most people I know don't even trust their own political
| party. I have a hard time believing there's many people
| that actually trust both.
| junon wrote:
| > The issue lies is the false dichotomy of the two-party
| system. Centrists I interact with often seem to view the
| world as if the two party lines are a single dimension and
| that a rational 'compromise' position can be found
| somewhere in the middle.
|
| As a self-proclaimed centrist, it's weird to me that anyone
| who calls themselves a centrist thinks this way.
|
| For me, I see both sides as being correct sometimes but
| also blindly agreeing with anything else they come up with
| even if it's wrong. It kind of negates any good ideas
| because, to me, they don't come from a point of reasoning
| or critical thinking, but from tribalism.
|
| I disagree with a lot from the left, usually because (these
| days) it's unscientific. I disagree with a lot from the
| right, usually because it's uninformed, religious, or
| inhumane - and also, unscientific.
|
| However, there are some good ideas financially coming from
| the (American) right that I think would work well for the
| US. I say this living in (and enjoying) Germany, which is
| largely what the left views as "socialism".
|
| As well, living in San Francisco for a few years prior,
| there are of course a lot of good humanitarian efforts
| coming from people mostly based on the left - including
| renewable energy, for example, which seems to be wholly
| rejected by conservatives.
|
| To me, what "makes sense" is oftentimes owned by one of the
| sides, and sometimes owned by neither. I'm often found to
| be politically homeless, and thus why I call myself a
| centrist - usually my viewpoints have some relation to one
| of the parties' extreme standpoints but generally nowhere
| near the fanaticism they exude (e.g. I'm what the Twitter
| left calls a "trans-medicalist", whereas the right tends to
| completely deny the humanity of trans individuals
| entirely).
|
| I don't think people who claim that all issues can have a
| solution "somewhere in the middle" are centrist. I think
| they're undecided, uninformed, weak-thinkers, or people
| pleasers - or some mixture of those things. I myself have
| strong, solid opinions that oftentimes don't align with
| either side - hence why I call myself a centrist.
| slowhand09 wrote:
| Regarding "I disagree with a lot from the left, usually
| because (these days) it's unscientific. I disagree with a
| lot from the right, usually because it's uninformed,
| religious, or inhumane - and also, unscientific."
|
| Have you ever considered that given the left dominates
| the media, they might imply or present thinking from the
| right as "uninformed, religious, or inhumane - and also,
| unscientific."
|
| I take the "How informed about..." quizzes at Pew
| regularly. And I regularly score in the top group across
| the board. And I identify as conservative, after growing
| up as blue collar, patriotic, and somewhat liberal.
| reedjosh wrote:
| Downvoted... How dare you imply conservatives can be well
| informed and the media paints a bigoted picture. /s
| anm89 wrote:
| It's hard to say either way without getting into polling
| data but anecdotally, I would say the amount of people whos
| issue with American politics is that they trust both
| parties so much that they can't decide who they like so
| they settle for the middle is many orders of magnitude
| smaller than the number of people whose primary issue is
| that they feel a general sense of distrust with all of the
| parties.
| cwkoss wrote:
| You may be right about orders of magnitude, but I think
| there is an important distinction to the relative
| loudness of these two groups though.
|
| There is a large silent majority of people who distrust
| both parties and ignores and avoid politics.
|
| However I think the "trusts both" group tends to be
| overrepresented in the media, government and political
| classes because it has utility to them: hard to work with
| or get interviews or jobs with politicians that you've
| called disingenuous or bought by special interests - even
| when it is clearly the case.
|
| I think there is a breed of people who watch the West
| Wing and see it as a utopian possible reality
| ("Federalists"?) and they prioritize the power and
| respectability of the state as more important than the
| results of political actions. I believe these people
| self-sort into these roles and are able to advance in
| these roles more easily because of this ideology.
| reedjosh wrote:
| I agree and imagine that the overwhelming majority of
| people do
|
| > feel a general sense of distrust with all of the
| parties.
|
| Yet our system only allows for `pick red or blue`. In
| this case the control of the minority by the majority on
| what are incredibly complex topics is filtered down to a
| binary decision.
|
| In what world is our current system reasonable!?
|
| Our current system is a tyrannical mess, and it's no
| surprise everyone is polarized to the max under it.
| rictic wrote:
| I don't think I've ever heard someone argue that the
| rational position is the compromise in the middle. I have
| heard people argue that it's the only politically available
| option in one circumstance or another, which makes sense
| because the structure of American democracy creates a
| strong pressure for there to be two parties of
| approximately equal power.
|
| When I talk to people I generally hear people taking
| specific positions on specific issues, which often but not
| always aligns with their preferred political party's
| position on that issue.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I would beg to differ. Anecdotally I have overheard a lot
| of people expressing frustration that there are only two
| real choices in political debates. There are a lot of
| "nonpartisans" out there but they are suppressed by
| ignorant and xenophobic politicos on both sides
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| Agreed. The center is the glue the holds the populace in
| check. We need these people. Once the center is eroded things
| will not go well.
| anm89 wrote:
| Here's an interesting article from a great blog that tries
| to use a game theory perspective to quantify your belief
| and makes a really interesting argument in agreement with
| you:
|
| https://www.epsilontheory.com/things-fall-apart-pt-1/
| kthulutude wrote:
| Once the center is eroded things will not go well... for
| centrists. The idea that both 'extremes' are equivalently
| bad neglects the real differences in worldview that create
| a sense of political urgency. It's important to remember
| that this political urgency is a reflection of real social
| problems--for some people, the consequences are literally
| life and death.
| slumdev wrote:
| There are two centrisms that can't be confused.
|
| The first kind of centrist examines each issue on its merits
| and arrives at a principled conclusion, regardless of how
| other people think about an issue. This kind of centrism is
| reasonable. This person can't really even be called a
| centrist. He's just non-partisan.
|
| The second kind of centrist looks at the existing parties to
| an argument and averages their viewpoints: "Group A insists
| 2+2=4 and group B insists 2+2=6, but I'm a virtuous centrist,
| so I believe that 2+2=5."
|
| I don't think anyone has any issue with the first kind of
| centrist. But there are far too many of the second kind.
| laputan_machine wrote:
| Can you give an example of the second type? I see this kind
| of strawman argument against centrism all the time, yet I
| rarely see "worst of both worlds" outcomes in a political
| sense
| slumdev wrote:
| Most Americans support an abortion ban, but they also
| support exceptions for rape or incest.
|
| If the fetus is a human person with rights, there should
| be no exception.
|
| If the fetus is not a human person with rights, then
| restrictions of any kind are unjust.
|
| The provenance of the fetus has no effect on the moral
| liceity of killing it. It's a lazy opinion formed by
| appeals to emotion.
| hn_one_off wrote:
| Actually, this seems like a coherent position: they
| believe that fetuses are somewhat like a human person,
| but not entirely. They should generally be protected, but
| in exceptional cases might not be.
| onethought wrote:
| As your example you use a weird right wing wedge issue.
|
| How about science based climate change where people think
| you can literally compromise on physics/math and make
| 2+2=5 because 4 is just too inconvenient.
|
| Edit: (I'll clarify: Abortion is used as a kind of hack
| into the religious/cultural background of Americans. It
| is purposefully used to divide political debate in a non
| rational way).
| tomc1985 wrote:
| > Most Americans support an abortion ban, but they also
| support exceptions for rape or incest.
|
| This is news to me, can you qualify this statement?
| slumdev wrote:
| https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-
| aborti...
|
| > Fewer take the position that in all cases abortion
| should be [...] legal (25%)
|
| 75% of Americans support some kind of ban (with differing
| positions on what loopholes should be carved out.)
| watwut wrote:
| > Most Americans support an abortion ban
|
| This is not true. They support restrictions that are way
| smaller then the "only rape" one.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| Very few people decide the value of a fetus on a binary.
| Some leftists say it's always just a clump of cells, some
| rightists say it's always a human life.
|
| Most people just don't know. Immediately after conception
| it's clearly just a clump of cells, immediately before
| birth it's clearly a baby. Hence why most Americans are
| between lots of exceptions and few exceptions.
|
| In general, if lots of people feel a certain way, and
| your conclusion is completely contradictory, you should
| assume you're wrong until strong evidence says otherwise.
| You're essentially assuming you know better than
| everyone.
| slumdev wrote:
| > In general, if lots of people feel a certain way, and
| your conclusion is completely contradictory, you should
| assume you're wrong until strong evidence says otherwise.
|
| This is a useful heuristic for becoming popular but not
| for making moral decisions. It is the worst possible
| approach to forming one's conscience.
|
| > You're essentially assuming you know better than
| everyone.
|
| You're assuming everyone else formed a reasoned opinion
| rather than following the loudest existing herd.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| In general, people are about as intelligent as you, and
| at least the same order of magnitude. People are prone to
| trends as much as the market is, but the market of ideas
| tends to be somewhat efficient (not least because all
| profits from financial to business to psychic stem from
| people and their expectations). So the conclusion that
| everyone is wrong requires serious burden of proof.
| Doesn't mean you can't be contradictory and correct, it
| just means that's unlikely. You can beat the market, but
| usually you won't without good evidence
|
| This is less true with morals, unless you're a
| relativist.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In general, people are about as intelligent as you, and
| at least the same order of magnitude.
|
| > This is less true with morals, unless you're a
| relativist.
|
| Even assuming moral absolutism is valid, that very much
| depends on what measure you choose to apply to values
| that, even if they are naturally quantifiable (which I
| doubt for morality, even one assumes it is absolute),
| clearly have no obvious natural ratio-level measure,
| making orders of magnitude and other ratio-dependent
| comparisons entirely arbitrary.
| atq2119 wrote:
| Technically, one could make arguments based on genetics
| for the "middle" position. Something like: allowing
| abortion following rape puts a damper on the spread of
| genes that tend to lead towards rape.
|
| That's probably not a _good_ argument. I 'm just playing
| devil's advocate for why that position isn't necessarily
| self-contradictory.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| Allowing abortion for purposes of eugenics is self-
| contradictory with the notion that life should be
| inviolate.
| anm89 wrote:
| Meta comment: I'm not allowed to vote specifically on
| this comment. I can vote on its parent and children. Does
| anyone know why that might be the case?
| gruez wrote:
| It's probably to prevent pointless tit-for-tat downvotes
| from replies. eg:
|
| 1. user A makes a comment
|
| 2. user B downvotes user A for disagreeing with him,
| makes a reply saying why user A's wrong
|
| 3. user A sees the downvote (or not), downvotes user B
| for disagreeing with him, makes a reply saying why user
| B's wrong
|
| continue ad infinitum.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| yeah, left/right are total cesspools. Left = right in
| toxicity. (Sarcasm, not trying to be snarky) but you really
| can't equate the far-right to the far-left.
|
| On the one hand you have people passionate about:
|
| - Equal access to schools, careers, pay, universities,
| healthcare...
|
| - Ending global warming.
|
| - Racism is real, and we should learn about it in school.
|
| - End poverty
|
| - More regulated capitalism
|
| - Higher taxes on wealthy, less on middle class.
|
| - Science is cool, we like science.
|
| Respected Orgs: ACLU, Trade Unions, Post Office, Defamation
| League, EFF, Palestinians (going back to equality - w/
| regards to Israel), Science Orgs, Colleges / Universities
|
| On the other side you have people passionate about:
|
| - California wildfires > caused by Jewish space-lasers.
|
| - that all guns should have zero regulations (nobody wants to
| end guns, just maybe ar-15s outside gun ranges)
|
| - that tourists were just being tourists on January 6th.
|
| - Gun violence isn't a big deal
|
| - Cops deserve immunity cause their cops, and we love them
| and they can't do bad.
|
| - All unions are bad, except cop unions. See previous.
|
| - Ending all environmental protections.
|
| - Racism ended in the 60s, let's forget it ever existed all
| lives matter...
|
| - Who cares about poverty, I got mine, that's all that
| matters.
|
| - No regulations on capitalism.
|
| - Lower taxes on everyone, including the wealthy.
|
| - Science is bad it destroys our world view, let's ignore
| science.
|
| Respected Orgs: KKK, Boogaloo Bois, NRA, <anything> of the
| confederacy, Confederate Army (retrospective), Israel,
| Fascists, The Pillow Guy, Trump Empire.
|
| From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93ri
| ght_political_s...
|
| Generally, the left-wing is characterized by an emphasis on
| "ideas such as freedom, equality, fraternity, rights,
| progress, reform and internationalism" while the right-wing
| is characterized by an emphasis on "notions such as
| authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction and
| nationalism".[16]
|
| Political scientists and other analysts regard the left as
| including anarchists,[17] communists, socialists, democratic
| socialists, social democrats,[18] left-libertarians,
| progressives and social liberals.[19][20] Movements for
| racial equality[21] and trade unionism have also been
| associated with the left.[22] Political scientists and other
| analysts regard the right as including conservatives, right-
| libertarians,[23] neoconservatives, imperialists,
| monarchists,[24] fascists,[25] reactionaries and
| traditionalists.
|
| A number of significant political movements do not fit
| precisely into the left-right spectrum, including Christian
| democracy,[26] feminism,[27][28] and regionalism.[27][28][29]
| Though nationalism is often regarded as a right-wing
| doctrine, many nationalists favor egalitarian distributions
| of resources. There are also "liberal nationalists".[30]
| Populism is regarded as having both left-wing and right-wing
| manifestations in the form of left-wing populism and right-
| wing populism, respectively.[31] Green politics is often
| regarded as a movement of the left, but in some ways the
| green movement is difficult to definitively categorize as
| left or right.[32]
| anshorei wrote:
| And that's what we call "strawmanning".
| reedjosh wrote:
| And bigotry. Wow... I could put together a nasty list of
| what conservative outlets preach about liberals too, but
| I don't actually believe the nonsense.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| I agree with you in a lot of ways, although my problem with
| the center is:
|
| When Democrats want to blow out the budget by spending $10
| trillion and then centrist Republicans say, "Okay, we'll do
| $5 trillion", there's nowhere to go besides further to the
| right.
|
| _is to give either of those groups as little power as
| possible_
|
| The only two groups that even talk about decreasing the power
| of all the extremists are Libertarians and Conservatives.
| Those people have no voice in the center. The very lack of
| their agreeing to keep increasing the power of government
| labels them as "extremists".
| watwut wrote:
| Historically, democrats make debt smaller and republicans
| larger.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| Actually, nobody makes the debt smaller. They monkey with
| the deficit, but the debt continues to grow.
|
| But your original claim is a naive talking point based
| upon who happened to be President at the time. Often, the
| Congress has a lot more to do with what happens spending-
| wise.
|
| Clinton was a good example. The Republicans were the ones
| who reined in the budget under Clinton, but somehow
| Clinton liked to talk about how he had "balanced the
| budget".
| version_five wrote:
| Wow, all the confirmation one needs for the first two
| paragraphs of your post is to read the replies you got.
|
| I'm reminded a bit of the Futurama where Zapp Brannigan
| attacks the neutral planet :)
| rayiner wrote:
| No, those aren't the assumptions at all. The assumption is not
| that "the truth is likely to lie between the two poles" but
| rather that, in a democracy, you have to pay attention to what
| the other half of the country thinks.
|
| Democracy isn't about "finding the truth." It's not really even
| about "truth" anyway. Most disputes are about differing moral
| judgments not disagreements about facts. For example, liberals
| I've talked to are often a bit surprised to learn that a fetus
| stops being "just a bundle of cells" very soon, and by 12-13
| weeks has all its parts, a face, etc. That doesn't cause them
| to go "oh, now my view of abortion is totally the opposite!"
| Views on what stage of development entitled a human to a right
| to life isn't about truth finding, it's about differing moral
| judgments. In a democracy, the most important thing is
| accommodating those disparate world views so we can live
| together productively.
| smitty1e wrote:
| > it's about differing moral judgments
|
| I submit that it's less about moral judgements--no one comes
| out in favor of, say, chattel slavery--than it is about
| controlling people via cognitive dissonance[1].
|
| After a life-altering act, e.g. aborting a pregnancy, or
| having a gender reassignment surgery, it is cheaper for the
| mind to fall in with a re-enforcement group than to realize
| the decision was wrong.
|
| Not to judge these wrong calls as worse than my own wrong
| calls. Merely being descriptive.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
| jjj1232 wrote:
| I mostly agree with you but I think it's interesting that you
| make an additional assumption that I think is incorrect: You
| say "You're beholden to the good judgement of each side to not
| move themselves further left or right." Which misses another
| possibility: that the overton window can shift when one side
| moves further to the center.
|
| The democrats' economic stances are a good example of this:
| they've moved towards neoliberal economic policy since the 80s,
| to the point where the democrats and republicans have a
| materially indistinguishable stance on unions, workers rights,
| public benefits, Wall Street, etc.
|
| This may seem like nit-picking but I think it's important to
| clarify that some policies that lie outside the overton window
| are "extreme" because those in power want them to seem extreme,
| not because they are actually unpopular or unrealistic.
|
| This may be wrong, but when I think of centrists I think of
| people who decide where they stand on each policy on a spectrum
| that extends from what the Dems deem acceptable to what the
| Republicans deem acceptable. If you're someone who decides
| where they stand on an issue regardless of these arbitrary
| endpoints I think "independent" or "non-partisan" fits better.
| BryantD wrote:
| First and foremost: I agree with you on all counts regarding
| enlightened centrism.
|
| Second: I think there's some value to increasing awareness of
| counter-arguments. I do not believe that good discourse
| inevitably drives out bad, but I do think there are practical
| advantages when people I agree with understand opposing
| arguments, and I think _some_ percentage of people I disagree
| with will think twice if they know more.
|
| (Yeah, you can figure out which are which from my comment
| history, but I like a good Rawlsian veil of ignorance.)
|
| There is definitely a line between "all sides are of equal
| value" and "this is what the different sides are saying." It's
| a difficult one to draw. The stated intent of Ground News seems
| quite good, for example.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I don't think this article is necessarily arguing for centrism.
| Being able to understand the perspective of all sides of an
| issue doesn't mean your own views will necessarily fall
| directly in the "middle" of those perspectives. It probably
| does mean, however, that you're less likely to demonize those
| who disagree with you.
| mseidl wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM/
|
| For some funny times.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Why post this left wing talking point narrative here? What
| does it add to conversation?
| [deleted]
| bart_spoon wrote:
| Replace "funny times" with "endless straw men" and you are
| spot on.
| wallacoloo wrote:
| > Another is that the opposing content can actually be merged.
| In many cases the content will cover different pieces of the
| same broad issue. Or the interviewees will present their
| opinions in a completely different fashion. Up to you to carry
| all this context in your head, or make simplistic summaries of
| viewpoints that don't add much value beyond what is already
| commonly known.
|
| If differently aligned parties cover different sections of a
| broad issue, then aren't you gaining more knowledge by
| listening to more varied sources? V.s. listening to just one
| political angle that would give you only a narrow slice of
| reality.
|
| Also, what is "commonly known"? I personally have found when
| taking in 3-4 different sources that the amount of common
| knowledge is vanishingly small! How many of the pro covid
| lockdown group know anything about the death rate for _your_
| age group? Or knew accurate ratios of outdoor v.s. indoor
| spread? How many of the anti-lockdown group knew these things?
| There's a lot of things which _should_ be common knowledge that
| really aren't.
|
| You can combat _some_ of this by reading "both sides". But if
| you're doing that, doesn't it sort of mean that you trust
| neither of your sources? Aren't you doing extra overhead to
| sort out where each side is wrong /lying? Seems better to just
| find a source that you trust instead.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| I have been reading daily news for 50 years. When I first started
| reading the news, it was objective. It portrayed facts with
| little opinion. Then during the Reagan presidency, I noticed a
| trend towards liberal bias in the media. This is well documented
| by MRC.org. To counter this, conservative talk radio was born,
| and Fox news was created.
|
| In the din of infinite media outlets, the major media outlets
| must stand out from the crowd. They do this by extending their
| bias to outright advocacy for their political side. This is
| happening on both sides. Other niche outlets are doing the same
| thing to be attractive to a specialized set of readers.
|
| Unfortunately, it has gone from advocacy to outrage. A daily
| outrage occurred in the media in response to Trump, where every
| action created an outrage from one offended group or another. It
| was more than just Trump. "Cancel culture" was created where
| those who were outraged by something someone said on social media
| "cancelled" the speaker's life by erasing them from society. They
| lost their jobs and were ostracized by their peers.
|
| Where does all this lead? I hope it is not violence. However, the
| political violence I see everyday in the form of violent protests
| and riots is not a welcome sight.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Get a list of the names of medium-to-large town newspapers
| (from, say, 1980, before many of them closed). Look at the
| names. Note how many papers have "Democrat" or "Republic" in
| the name. Many of those papers were founded to deliberately
| support one political party.
|
| So "it was objective" may be a bit much. UPI, AP, and the
| national news were pretty close to unbiased. Local papers often
| had their slant, which would include editorials, local news,
| and maybe even which national stories were covered.
|
| It was far better than today, I'll grant you.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| What I continue to be surprised by is how the left-leaning
| sources keep denying their liberal bias. Fox news more or less
| admits to being right-leaning, but CNN is still insisting that
| they're unbiased, which is almost comical. I think that somehow
| left-biased types really, honestly, believe they're actually
| considering both sides of every issue, and just coming to the
| conclusion that "reality has a liberal bias".
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > What I continue to be surprised by is how the left-leaning
| sources keep denying their liberal bias
|
| There are no left-leaning major news outlets in the US (the
| nature of capitalism assures that; you can't get the kind of
| capitalist backing for anti-capitalist positions required to
| _be_ a major media source), only far-right and center-right,
| and even the center-right ones treat targets to their left
| much worse than those their right.
|
| And if there was a left-leaning outlet, their bias would be
| left, not liberal.
|
| > Fox news more or less admits to being right-leaning
|
| Only recently, in the Trump era, did Fox drop "Fair and
| Balanced" for "Standing Up For What's Right".
|
| > but CNN is still insisting that they're unbiased
|
| That's because Fox is marketing to people who see themselves
| as on the Right and CNN is marketing to people who identify
| as centrist, non-ideological, or above the fray (who are
| largely the pro- _status quo_ center-right.) Both label
| according to the identity group they are marketing to.
| myko wrote:
| CNN isn't biased to the liberal or conservative viewpoint, it
| is biased towards clicks and views. A lot of the blame for
| trump gaining acceptance as a viable voting option belongs to
| CNN for uncritically promoting him and giving him coverage.
|
| When looking at US politics reality does have a liberal bias.
| Look at how conservatives handled the pandemic and losing the
| 2020 election. The minority party with a majority of the
| voting power in the US actively believes and promotes a false
| version of reality.
| newfriend wrote:
| > CNN isn't biased to the liberal or conservative
| viewpoint, it is biased towards clicks and views.
|
| Bullshit. CNN is in the tank for the corporate wing of the
| Democratic party.
|
| > A lot of the blame for trump gaining acceptance as a
| viable voting option belongs to CNN for *uncritically
| promoting* him and giving him coverage.
|
| Absolute bullshit. You believe CNN was pro-Trump in
| 2015/2016? Every single story/show was about how terrible
| he is.
|
| > a false version of reality.
|
| I think you're the one with a false version of reality if
| you believe CNN was/is pro-Trump.
| myko wrote:
| > Bullshit. CNN is in the tank for the corporate wing of
| the Democratic party.
|
| Bullshit. CNN repeatedly focused on trump to the
| detriment of other candidates because he generated clicks
| and views.
|
| > Absolute bullshit. You believe CNN was pro-Trump in
| 2015/2016? Every single story/show was about how terrible
| he is.
|
| It's hard to report on him without it being obvious how
| terrible he is. Most of the reporting in 2015/16 were
| about his zany antics, in your face racism, and sexual
| assault admissions - but still free airtime.
|
| > I think you're the one with a false version of reality
| if you believe CNN was/is pro-Trump.
|
| I said they're pro-clicks and views, and trump was a
| vehicle for that, which helped him get elected. You
| should work on reading comprehension.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Even NPR admits the coverage was more negative. And no,
| not more negative because he was worse, more negative in
| an unfair way:
| https://www.npr.org/2017/10/02/555092743/study-news-
| coverage...
| myko wrote:
| As I said, it is impossible to report on trump without
| being somewhat negative because very little that he did
| could be spun in a positive manner. This doesn't justify
| keeping a camera on his empty podium at one of his
| rallies while other candidates are giving speeches.
|
| Clicks, and views.
|
| Also your post doesn't really match what you claim it
| does - in no way does NPR admit that the coverage was
| unfairly negative. It seems to say it was negative
| because trump had little substance to his policies and
| there weren't many positive things to say about the job
| he did.
|
| Which makes sense given the results of his presidency
| (coup attempt, many convicted associates pardoned,
| hundreds of thousands dead due to incompetence/lying,
| economic collapse, destruction of American family
| farming, etc.)
| andreygrehov wrote:
| I'm not a voter, but isn't 51% vs 47% is basically a flip
| of a coin result?
| myko wrote:
| Raw vote totals tell a different story (millions more
| vote for Democratic candidates, even when the Democrats
| lose), the fact is that the GOP can win federal elections
| because land has more voting power than people
| bena wrote:
| I would have to say that maybe it's not the news that has
| changed, but your view of it.
|
| The media has always had biases. How can it not, it's run by
| people.
|
| Look at the propaganda during the Spanish-American War. That's
| the most obvious U.S. example of how biased media can be. And
| we enjoy the temporal distance to not be invested in the events
| so we can evaluate it from a third-party perspective.
|
| Are you saying the media became less biased after that then
| more biased?
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Michael Malice has some very insightful comments on this very
| subject:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9HqHzA3atQ&t=647s
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| If you want to counteract the narrative bubbles that you're
| operating in, you need to work hardest to counteract the one that
| is the default. If you're like most Americans, you're probably
| immersed in left-leaning thought. The Left owns the culture. They
| own the major institutions that are shaping society through
| Hollywood, academia, sports entertainment, the music industry,
| social media, etc. They own the bureaucracy that has pretty much
| eaten up the US government. Even longtime bastions of the Right
| like the military, FBI, etc. have been taken over by the Left.
|
| If you just consume random media, you're getting the left-leaning
| perspective. It's the right-leaning perspective that you probably
| have a deficiency of unless you make a great deal of effort to
| swim against the current.
|
| Take, for example, Haidt's work on analyzing how well different
| political ideologies understood each other.
|
| The bottom line: Moderates and Conservatives understood the
| Liberal perspective better than Liberals understand other
| perspectives.
|
| https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/conserva...
|
| [edit: fixed a typo]
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| Most of this is because the cultural tastemakers have long been
| college educated cosmopolitans, and the modern right has taken
| an extreme turn that has alienated them. Orange County votes
| Democrat on the presidential level now!
|
| > Even longtime bastions of the Right like the military, FBI,
| etc. have been taken over by the Left.
|
| What? What does this even mean?
|
| The idea that the right understands the left better than the
| right is silly - how many Fox News profiles are there of Whole
| Foods shopping Democrats in Arlington? Of Black voters in
| Gwinnett county? Meanwhile, NYTimes did countless stories for
| four years about rural voters in diners that still like Trump
| despite the scandal of the week.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >The idea that the right understands the left better than the
| right is silly - how many Fox News profiles are there of
| Whole Foods shopping Democrats in Arlington? Of Black voters
| in Gwinnett county? Meanwhile, NYTimes did countless stories
| for four years about rural voters in diners that still like
| Trump despite the scandal of the week.
|
| myfavoritedog's point is that the default position in the
| _Times_ is of Whole Foods-shopping Democrats in NoVa. You
| couldn 't read a book review, or sports column, without anti-
| Trump snark suddenly appearing in there _regardless of the
| subject matter_ (seriously, it was like there was a quota to
| meet),
|
| The pieces you mention invariably
|
| * treat the subjects like they're a new, just-discovered
| animal species
|
| * frame their fears and hopes, needs and concerns, in very
| patronizing ways. Example:
| <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/trump-
| macho-a...>, which a) attributed Latin male support for Trump
| to their desire for the same kind of authoritarian _machismo_
| that ruined their home countries (as opposed to the same
| reasons that other blue-collar workers, Latino or not, voted
| for Trump) and b) made wanting to provide for one 's family
| sound like a bad thing. Outcome: Trump in 2024 didn't just
| again outperform expectations with Latinos in 2024
| (<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/us/politics/trump-
| latino-...>), but also increased his Latin support.
|
| (Needless to say, there's never, ever any _Times_ article
| discussing how Latinos ' support for a large welfare state
| hearkens back to their home countries' social models.)
|
| * dismiss those being profiled as aberrations. Example: In
| 2016 the Clinton-friendly media backfired on Clinton by
| missing the facts on the ground. If in Ohio--for the past 150
| years perhaps the quintessential swing state--and Iowa Trump
| was 10 points up in the polls, the right conclusion was that
| the rest of the Midwest was swinging to him too. The wrong
| conclusion was to come up with imaginary reasons why Ohio is
| suddenly no longer representative of the region or country
| (<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/us/politics/ohio-
| campaign...>). One guess on which the press and the Clinton
| campaign chose.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| > without anti-Trump snark suddenly appearing in there
| regardless of the subject matter (seriously, it was like
| there was a quota to meet),
|
| This sounds like some sort of victimhood complex. I think
| you should understand that 54% of the country did not like
| that man, ever, and we gave outsized influence to the 46%
| that did at the expense of the otherwise silent majority.
| Joe Biden blew the doors off turnout in history despite
| never having blockbuster rallies like Donald Trump or his
| Democratic rivals.
|
| > frame their fears and hopes, needs and concerns, in very
| patronizing ways
|
| I don't really disagree, which should mean they would do
| the same for working class black folk in the same cities,
| yes? But no, they don't.
|
| > If in Ohio--for the past 150 years perhaps the
| quintessential swing state--and Iowa Trump was 10 points up
| in the polls, the right conclusion was that the rest of the
| Midwest was swinging to him too
|
| This is not a good example - when a state stops being
| within 2-3 points of the national margin (~+0 R in '04, +3
| R in '08, +1 R in '12) and starts becoming +10 R and then
| +12 R in '16 and '20 it does stop being a bellwether.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Good point but even if you get the perspective from the right,
| you're still in the Overton window that was decided for you by
| the media.
| Impassionata wrote:
| Haidt's work gets trotted out a lot, but it was prior to the
| fascist turn of the Republican party. Now Republicans live in a
| mostly imagined political reality.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| It's quite hard to reason with a political movement in which
| half don't believe the guy that got 51% of the vote and 306
| electoral votes isn't the president, to the extent of
| sympathizing with an attack on the electoral vote count and
| "auditing" the ballots repeatedly. A majority of the house
| republicans caucus effectively voted to bypass the will of
| the people during the electoral vote count - makes the
| Democratic objections in 00, 04 look mild.
|
| The Democrats didn't spend early 2017 storming the capitol or
| recounting Wisconsin for the fourth time. HRC never said
| she'd be reinstated by August.
| bluGill wrote:
| No, but the democrats did spend 2017 looking for every
| excuse to impeach Trump they could find.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| That's just untrue given they didn't have the house or
| senate in 2017.
|
| They didn't even spend 2019 doing it, even after the
| Mueller report. When they did impeach him it was on the
| narrowest possible scope and they got 1 bipartisan vote
| for removal.
|
| And that's before the second impeachment which had
| several Republican backers in the house and senate.
| bluGill wrote:
| You are confusing congress with democrats as a whole. The
| democrats I know who are deep in the left wing good right
| wing bad partisan politics were looking for excuses to
| impeach Trump all along.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| _to the extent of sympathizing with an attack on the
| electoral vote count_
|
| The Left thought it was hilarious when Trump's Secret
| Service moved him to the bunker when violent protesters
| were threatening to breach the security of the White House.
| I remember late night jokes, CNN/MSNBC mocking of how big a
| coward Trump was, etc. It was a great deal of fun and tied
| in with the lies about how supposedly Trump had peaceful
| protesters cleared out of Lafayette Park for a photo op. ht
| tps://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/06/09/lafa.
| ..
|
| "HRC never said she'd be reinstated by August."
|
| Hillary Clinton spent years claiming that the election of
| Trump was illegitimate.
|
| Has Stacey Abrams even conceded the Georgia gubernatorial
| election yet?
|
| It's pretty rich for a party that claimed that George W.
| Bush was the "Commander in thief" and has Congressionally
| protested all the recent elections gets upset when
| Republicans did the exact same thing for even better
| reasons. The 2020 election was ridiculous. Democrats used
| the excuse of COVID to change election laws in multiple
| states while mass-mailing millions of ballots. They created
| an environment that was ripe for corruption and then
| assumed shocked faces as corruption was alleged.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| > the bunker when violent protesters were threatening to
| breach the security of the White House
|
| Yeah because they didn't and Trump hilariously lied about
| the incident. Even they weren't saying "hang Mike Pence"
|
| > Hillary Clinton spent years claiming that the election
| of Trump was illegitimate.
|
| She did win the popular vote, while Trump won neither
| while claiming he did win both....
|
| > They created an environment that was ripe for
| corruption and then assumed shocked faces as corruption
| was alleged.
|
| Biden won 81M votes, the most in history. Have fun with
| the next 4-8 years.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| I started writing out all the tit-for-tat responses, then
| I remembered that this topic is about media narrative
| bubbles.
|
| I already know all of your claims because I watch
| broadcast news programs here and there. I see the news
| reports on Good Morning America when we have it on. I
| know what the left-wing narratives are.
|
| That's my point. It's the default.
|
| You have to work harder to get something that isn't in
| that bubble.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| You're seeing the point. This isn't a bubble. _This is
| objective reality_.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| It is definitely a bubble.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| _fascist turn of the Republican party_
|
| This is just projection from the Left that is working so hard
| to cancel anyone who steps politically out of line. They
| think that calling a group "Antifa" makes it anti-fascist,
| despite their tactics of violently terrorizing anyone with
| whom they politically disagree - even to the extent of their
| attacking journalists who simply document their activities.
| But somehow Republicans are fascists.
|
| _Now Republicans live in a mostly imagined political
| reality._
|
| Imagined, like that Putin had a video of Trump being peed on
| by hookers and that Trump was a cat's paw of Russia? That
| Russia was paying a bounty to have American's assassinated in
| Afghanistan with Trump's full knowledge? That the BLM
| protests last year that injured and killed so many were
| "peaceful"? That an attack on the White House, necessitating
| Trump's evacuation to a bunker was funny and peaceful, but
| that there was an "armed insurrection" on the Capitol on 1/6
| where no guns were confiscated and the only person killed was
| an unarmed protester climbing a barricade? That it was a
| conspiracy to speculate that the corona virus probably came
| out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology? That Hunter Biden's
| laptop showing how the Biden family used its political
| influence for their financial gain was Russian
| disinformation?
| myko wrote:
| > This is just projection from the Left that is working so
| hard to cancel anyone who steps politically out of line.
|
| To be clear, the leader of the conservative party of the US
| recently attempted a coup.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| Nonsense. There are tons of video compilations showing
| Democrat leaders using the exact same turns of phrase
| that Trump did, talking about "fighting" for their
| political beliefs.
|
| Further, the Democrats were urging violence throughout
| Trump's presidency, but the default US media never
| claimed that they were "attempting a coup". Democrats
| were attacking federal buildings with fireworks, arson,
| shooting high-powered lasers into the eyes of the police,
| and on and on. But those were "mostly peaceful protests".
|
| https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/08/10-times-democrats-
| urge...
|
| This is really why we can't have nice things.
|
| Claims that 1/6 was an attempted coup are just so far
| beyond the pale of honest discourse.
| myko wrote:
| He literally psyched a crowd up into a fervor after
| months of lying and then they marched on the Capitol. His
| own people were sickened by his giddiness during the
| event. He was telling his VP to install him as POTUS and
| tweeted as much. The same guy has been telling folks he
| plans to be reinstated in August.
|
| You can lie to yourself about it but you're not going to
| get far lying to others.
| Impassionata wrote:
| Might get far enough: this entire thread is flagged.
| myko wrote:
| Well, that's frustrating.
| Impassionata wrote:
| Once you only care about silencing those who would point
| out fascism, it becomes easy enough. Watchful moderation
| willing to act is necessary.
|
| I'm unsurprised that HN is being exploited this way, but
| I am pleasantly surprised that there are people seeing
| them in operation like yourself and the others speaking
| up.
|
| The truth gets buried, ultimately, not by these bad-faith
| arguments, but by the giant thread above consisting of
| those who prefer to live in the world of the 90s where
| Republicans and Democrats worked to further their
| specific interests collectively in an organized fashion,
| and listening to both sides made sense.
|
| I don't know if the memo is going to get out: those
| Republicans are gone. Those days are gone. Once the party
| has turned fascist I don't think there's going back, it's
| not like they can turn away from their deceived or
| delusional voters.
|
| HN isn't a politics forum, its only function is to
| provide value for YCombinator. It can't address these
| foundational failures in human thinking.
|
| But it's informative to see it struggle and fail.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| _Once the party has turned fascist_
|
| Says the supporter of the party that literally used
| impeachment twice to try to get rid of a President they
| didn't like.
|
| Says the supporter of the party that is big into
| political correctness in order to control what people say
| and how they say it.
|
| Says the supporter of the party that is canceling people
| who don't toe the party line.
|
| Says the supporter of the party that controls academia,
| the mainstream media, and social media - where censorship
| abuses are an ever-increasing problem.
|
| Says the supporter of the party that did billions of
| dollars of damage to cities across the country last year
| in looting, rioting, arson, and vandalism.
|
| Says the supporter of the party that is actively trying
| to prosecute the most recent opposition party leader. No
| charges, just hunting for a crime.
|
| Says the supporter of the party that raided the private
| attorney of the most recent opposition party leader to
| seize privileged attorney-client communications, based
| upon normally ignored FARA accusations.
|
| If there is a political party in the USA flirting with
| fascism, it's the Democratic party.
| myko wrote:
| > Says the supporter of the party that literally used
| impeachment twice to try to get rid of a President they
| didn't like.
|
| He deserved to be impeached, claiming otherwise shows
| your lack of judgement.
|
| > If there is a political party in the USA flirting with
| fascism, it's the Democratic party.
|
| Says the person defending the guy who tried a coup
| against the USA
|
| The previous POTUS deserves to be in jail, like his
| lawyer who went to jail for crimes ordered by him, and
| multiple members of his team who committed crimes on his
| behalf (only to be pardoned by him).
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _To be clear, the leader of the conservative party of
| the US recently attempted a coup._
|
| I simply can't imagine the level of bias and filter
| bubbled amount of media indoctrination it takes to say
| this with a straight face.
|
| The party of "freedom and guns" showed up with 500,000
| people, left all their guns at home, but "attempted a
| coup"? Utterly ridiculous.
|
| This is what a coup looks like: https://www.occupy.com/si
| tes/default/files/field/image/scree...
|
| Notice the number of guns vs. flags.
|
| This is what a protest looks like:
| https://consortiumnews.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/01/Jan_6_...
|
| Notice the number of flags, and no guns whatsoever.
| myko wrote:
| The man told the VP to make him POTUS and is now claiming
| that he will be reinstated in August. I can't imagine
| what information bubble you live in where this escapes
| you.
| Impassionata wrote:
| I can understand why you think the way you do and the way
| you construct your arguments, unlike some others in this
| thread, makes me believe you're genuine.
|
| But I hope you can see that there are a large number of
| people who see a physical assault on the peaceful
| transition of power as a threat to the continuance of our
| government. An existential threat.
|
| We are _never_ going to change our minds on this and you
| have _no right_ to ask us to overlook it because that 's
| sort of like asking us to ignore an arsonist who we know
| set a fire, who has proclaimed the desire to set fires.
|
| Violence was used to disrupt the peaceful transition of
| power. Violence was used to disrupt the peaceful
| transition of power. Violence was used to disrupt the
| peaceful transition of power.
|
| How can you possibly ask people to look past this? With a
| straight face?
|
| You're one of those people, I suspect, who gets tripped
| up on literal definitions of things. It doesn't matter
| what, specifically, is an attempted coup and what isn't.
| People will use imprecise terminology and if you want to
| talk politics you may just have to grow up about that
| fact.
|
| Violence was used to disrupt the peaceful transition of
| power.
| parrellel wrote:
| We're all supposed to forget that happened, dontchaknow.
| -_-
| barbazoo wrote:
| I didn't know about https://www.theflipside.io/latest-issue which
| compares news coverage of left and right leaning sources. Anyone
| know more sites like that they can recommend?
| mr-wendel wrote:
| Not sure I'm a fan of this site in general, but I _do_ like
| their list of sites at https://swprs.org/media-navigator/.
|
| I've picked up some great regular reads from that list.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| If you skip the opinion section, reporting from business news
| operations like Reuters or Bloomberg is basically as objective
| as it gets while still not being a plain recitation of facts.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I launched Read Across The Aisle to help people find new news
| sources and balance their news media diets. It's totally free.
|
| http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com
| Causality1 wrote:
| I've found that I have to carefully tailor my arguments depending
| on the audience, to a greater and greater degree lately. In many
| places it seems the only way to get someone to listen to you is
| to couch everything you say in the terms of their pet causes. If
| I argue for LGBT rights with a conservative I have to make it
| about constitutionality and government overreach. If I discuss
| male victims of sexual and domestic violence with a leftist I
| have to talk mostly about female victims. If I advocate for the
| free speech rights of racists I get called a Nazi and when I
| advocate for the free speech rights of Drag Queen Story Hour I
| get called a communist.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| > Until you can passionately make arguments for both sides, you
| don't understand the issue.
|
| Russ Roberts, host of the podcast Econ Talk, is really good at
| this. Independent of the guests political background, he does a
| good job of offering debate using a charitable interpretation of
| other people's arguments (even ones he doesn't disagree with). He
| also is pretty good at trying to find common ground with people
| he disagrees with, and when he realizes he's made a statement
| that would demonstrate his bias, he's pretty quick to call out
| his own bias.
| lkrubner wrote:
| Who cares? The framing of this issue is strange to me. I know
| what my values are, I know which side I'm on, I know what I fight
| for.
|
| If you're looking for new philosophies or perspectives, I
| strongly suggest two things:
|
| 1. fiction
|
| 2. history
|
| I don't think day-to-day news coverage can ever be written at a
| level where it might affect your fundamental values; among many
| other problems, it is typically written in a hurry, with a lack
| of context, and so it lacks long-term perspective.
|
| In terms of books that have changed my perspective on some
| subject, here are some important ones I've read over the last
| year:
|
| Reading Lolita In Tehran, by Azar Nafisi
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Lolita-Tehran-Memoir-Books/dp...
|
| Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security, by
| Sarah Chayes
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Thieves-State-Corruption-Threatens-Se...
|
| The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, by
| Andrew J. Bacevich
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Power-American-Exceptionalism-...
|
| The Emergence of China: From Confucius to the Empire, by E. Bruce
| Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Emergence-China-Confucius-Ancient-Con...
|
| Azar Nafisi's book is both a true life action story, and it's
| also an intellectual journey, a consideration of how
| authoritarianism slowly takes over.
|
| Sarah Chayes book is remarkably ambitious, not only did I
| suddenly see corruption as a global issue, but she connects it to
| religious extremism and then reviews the corruption of the
| Catholic Church in the 1400s and how that lead to Martin Luther
| and that era's own explosion of religious extremism.
|
| Andrew J. Bacevich's book is a sober look at all the things the
| USA probably cannot do, even though it has the worlds most
| powerful military
|
| The Brooks book about China was eye opening for me. I previously
| knew nothing about the Warring States period, or the intense
| intellectual debate that occurred over the meaning of the state
| and the duties of the leader to the people. I wish more
| Westerners knew this story.
|
| Should I expect this kind of writing from the daily newspaper?
| Absolutely not. It's ridiculous. It's a category error. That's
| now what the daily newspaper is for. That's certainly not what
| the 24 hour news cycle is for.
|
| Sometimes I want actionable news I can use, which is partly a
| matter of knowing which candidates might have the best chances of
| advancing my goals. Especially during primary races, day-to-day
| political news is useful to me when it gives me the information I
| need to decide who of many candidates I should donate money to.
|
| But when I want new perspectives and philosophies? I turn to
| books.
| prof-dr-ir wrote:
| > "Until you can passionately make arguments for both sides," she
| says, "you don't understand the issue."
|
| I think this is the key quote. It should really be taboo to have
| an opinion without an understanding of how the other side argues.
|
| (Ironically the search for counterarguments would often
| strengthen my position because they would turn out to be quite
| weak. Nevertheless I think that the exercise is important.)
|
| I think the words "well-reasoned opinion" describe it well: try
| to see what part of your opinion is fact, which experts you
| trusted for that, and what part is morality and ethics.
| asdff wrote:
| The vast majority of people do not have the time to even
| research for an informed opinion. Not to mention for any hotbed
| issue, being able to differentiate between the actual factual
| reports and opinionated bullshit is next to impossible on the
| modern internet unless you are a domain expert who can sniff
| this stuff out.
| ahelwer wrote:
| The issue with this standard is it can only be applied to
| situations where you're making decisions about the fates of
| other people - where you don't have skin in the game. It would
| be ridiculous to, for example, require that all trans people
| possess in-depth knowledge of TERF arguments against the
| validity of their identity (along with counter-arguments)
| before accepting that they understand their own identity. So
| sure, subject the lofty peanut gallery to this standard. If
| you're actually personally affected by a political issue it's
| usually pretty easy to figure out where you stand on it.
| insickness wrote:
| > It would be ridiculous to, for example, require that all
| trans people possess in-depth knowledge of TERF arguments
| against the validity of their identity
|
| Is it though? If you want to convince someone of something,
| you have to understand the opposing viewpoints well. Many
| rational viewpoints labeled TERF don't "infringe on the
| validity of [trans people's] identity." For example, trans
| women competing against women in sports. You wouldn't
| convince anyone by straw manning one side by saying that
| people who oppose trans women competing against women are all
| simply transphobic; you would say that they believe that
| trans women have a physical advantage over non-trans women in
| sports.
| prof-dr-ir wrote:
| I think I see what you are trying to argue and let me say,
| with as much respect as this comment box allows me to convey,
| that I completely disagree.
|
| First of all, if you have skin in the game then it becomes
| even more important to try to understand the opposition's
| arguments in order to convince them to join your cause and to
| prevent others from joining the other side.
|
| As for your example, I am convinced that trans people have a
| battle to fight for greater acceptance in most (all?)
| societies. But I would still insist that they have only
| earned the right to call someone, or something, trans-
| exclusionary, if they have given careful thought to the
| argumentation and the positions actually taken.
|
| Sometimes this is easy: if someone says "trans women are not
| women" then in my mind that is not even a coherent position
| (define "woman"). But if someone says "most trans women have
| not had the same childhood experiences as cis women" then
| that is (to me at least) a statement of fact. Calling the
| latter statement trans-exclusionary is not what I would call
| a well-reasoned opinion.
| parafactual wrote:
| Deeply understanding viewpoints that pose a direct threat
| to you takes a lot of effort. It takes time and mental
| resources. I don't think it is fair to expect that of
| everyone; activists, sure, but most people just want to
| live and feel safe. That is hard as is, especially for
| trans people.
| prof-dr-ir wrote:
| But this would only disagree with my comment if you
| further say that trans people should nevertheless be
| allowed to call something or someone trans-exclusionary
| without having understood their position. Is that your
| point?
|
| If it is then I would still disagree: if it is too
| emotionally taxing to try to understand an opponent's
| position then I think that one can just refrain from
| calling them out in public.
|
| In fact, how do you know a viewpoint really poses a
| threat in the first place? For example, which of your
| rights does it propose to infringe? If you can answer
| that then you probably already understand the viewpoint
| enough to counter it...
| cwkoss wrote:
| Yeah, I would estimate <1% of people try to deeply
| understand the nuances of _any_ issue.
|
| It would be great if we had a reliable way to identify
| that 1% and sort articles/comment/reach by this metric,
| but it's a hard problem.
|
| For as many people that deeply understand a topic, there
| are many more that are parroting or making up
| rationalization for the beliefs they think they are
| expected to have. These sorts of arguments aren't really
| arguments, they are just a self-soothing method of tribal
| identification.
|
| I think there is a pitfall with trying to "understand the
| other side" because there are an infinite number of
| possible opinions and not all have merit. It is useful to
| a point, but when taken to the extreme you just waste a
| bunch of time reading garbage.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > I think this is the key quote. It should really be taboo to
| have an opinion without an understanding of how the other side
| argues.
|
| It's a nice quote, but I don't find it accurate for all topics.
| Should I be trying to figure out how to make passionate
| arguments for the Q Conspiracy nuttiness? There are lots of
| antivaxx conspiracy theories that are pretty close to
| mainstream in parts of the US - should I be trying to figure
| out how to make a passionate argument for those?
|
| For many of these conspiracy theories the 'understanding' part
| should probably be more along the lines of epistemic forensics
| - "What kind of misinformation got them to this point?"
| bena wrote:
| It's not accurate for all topics. Can you make a passionate
| argument _for_ a flat Earth? One that isn 't rooted in
| ignorance or denial of something basic?
|
| So obviously there are some topics in which you can
| understand the issue well, but still not be able to make a
| credible defense of the other side.
|
| Now, the point of the exercise is valid. We should always be
| approaching an issue from the perspective of "What am I
| missing?" or "How am I wrong?"
|
| Of course, bad faith debaters will ask this of you while not
| doing it themselves. Or they will do so only superficially.
| They won't actually _try_ to disprove themselves.
|
| Which makes discussing things with such people exhausting.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I don't know that you should absolutely not have an opinion
| without understanding the other side, but if you don't spend
| at least a little bit of time understanding what motivates
| people to believe in conspiracy theories you will struggle to
| understand over half the population of the US.
|
| Most of the main tenets of QAnon are recycled conspiracy
| theories that predate Q, which is why the "X% of people
| believe in QAnon" headlines that have been going around
| recently are so misleading.
|
| Epistemic forensics is necessary for an awful lot of things
| people believe (true or false) given that for many things
| personal experience is insufficient to uncover the truth, and
| for any single truth, only a tiny fraction of the population
| is making direct observations at scale.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| >> "Until you can passionately make arguments for both sides,"
| she says, "you don't understand the issue."
|
| > I think this is the key quote. It should really be taboo to
| have an opinion without an understanding of how the other side
| argues.
|
| There's a difference between "understand" and "make a
| passionate argument for" a given position. It's become standard
| for just about any ideological position to claim that anyone
| who disagrees "doesn't really understand" and to primarily use
| extreme emotions paired with unverifiable claims. At what point
| does one "understand" in these conditions?
|
| The idea that most issues today have two reasonable sides
| arguing is itself an ideology. Often there's not even one
| reasonable position.
| bagacrap wrote:
| But lots of times people will make an argument for the other
| side, then poke holes in it, aka a straw man. So it's pretty
| annoying to hear "people on the other side argue X but that's
| wrong because Y" as a demonstration of one's enlightenment.
| mrkstu wrote:
| My main issue with American news and commentary is the complete
| lack of skepticism of those on 'their side' of an issue.
|
| On the right, when Trump hadn't yet gotten control of the party,
| there was some persistent reaction against him from established
| conservative media. Once he got control, it was almost complete
| silence.
|
| On the left, evidence of how much of the investigation into
| Russian collusion with Trump's election team was completely made
| up and water carrying by the media of Clinton's team's planted
| story has never been owned by the participants.
|
| There are near infinite examples of this on both sides. I just
| want media that is skeptical of those _in power_ and those
| _seeking power_. All of them, not those on another _team_.
| myko wrote:
| > On the left, evidence of how much of the investigation into
| Russian collusion with Trump's election team was completely
| made up and water carrying by the media of Clinton's team's
| planted story has never been owned by the participants.
|
| This is bizarre. No such thing happened.
| passivate wrote:
| https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-
| mill...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/03/dear-
| cnn-...
| myko wrote:
| Those links don't disprove anything I've said on this
| subject in this thread.
| passivate wrote:
| I disagree. They do for me, so we'll just have to agree
| to disagree. Have a nice day.
| Impassionata wrote:
| Fascists don't care about truth. It's that simple.
|
| And people are that easy to mislead. At least for a while.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Sigh- voted against Trump twice.
|
| The fact of the matter is the Ratcliffe Letter [0] shows
| that President Obama was given an briefing well before the
| Steele Dossier was leaked to the media that the Russians'
| had picked up intelligence that exactly that kind of fake
| evidence would be planted by the Clinton campaign.
|
| I really don't believe in a coincidence that big and unless
| Steele was simultaneously a Russian and Clinton asset, it
| doesn't matter, and that would be even a bigger issue that
| should have been _the_ story. Can 't have it both ways.
|
| I'm perfectly happy to not have Mr. Trump around any more,
| but I'd prefer the media not carry water for their
| preferred candidates and let me make those determinations
|
| [0]: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/09-29-2
| 0_Lett...
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _Sigh- voted against Trump twice._
|
| You cannot vote "against" someone in any election except
| a recall.
|
| Who you voted _for_ is who you voted _for_.
|
| Simple example: When I voted for Howie Hawkins in 2020,
| who was my vote "against"?
| myko wrote:
| I suppose you could say your vote was against "everyone
| else", but that seems like a pretty useless statement
| mrkstu wrote:
| I don't know how to characterize my votes any other way.
|
| Voted Libertarian this election and McMullin last. Both
| were ways to keep my vote away from Trump, though I had
| historically voted near straight party Republican most
| years (never actually straight ticket, just close.)
|
| Going forward no party gets my allegiance and I'll vote
| per person/issue, but Trump was the turning point.
|
| When you feel a civic duty to vote, but none of the
| candidates are really acceptable, I'll vote 'against' the
| worst by picking the least objectionable, until the whole
| country gets the Nevada option of 'none of the above.'
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _When you feel a civic duty to vote, but none of the
| candidates are really acceptable, I 'll vote 'against'
| the worst by picking the least objectionable, until the
| whole country gets the Nevada option of 'none of the
| above.'_
|
| ...you cannot vote 'against' anyone in an election.
|
| In 2020, I think I wrote myself in for about 8 different
| positions in my locale, because I won't vote for anyone I
| don't support. Sure I may not have won that time around,
| but I didn't assist anyone I didn't actively want to win.
| Guilt free voting.
| buerkle wrote:
| Ratcliffe was a big Trump supporter, not sure how much
| anything he said can be trusted. The letteris lacking in
| detail and hard proof. It even acknowledges "The IC does
| not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to
| which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect
| exaggeration or fabrication."
| myko wrote:
| Right, all the letter says is what anyone who is talking
| about the Steele Dossier should already know - Russia
| habitually leaks disinformation, and will mix the lies
| with fact to confuse folks. Steele said as much himself
| which the FBI commented on in their review of the dossier
| (parts of the report he got from Russian contacts he
| wasn't sure were accurate, but since it was raw
| intelligence he reported it).
|
| Basically the letter says: "somebody heard from some
| Russian source that is not trusted that HRC was behind
| linking trump to Russia, but since that source is not
| trustworthy and there's no evidence we can't determine
| that to be a fact."
|
| Treating that tenuous link as a fact is doing exactly
| what OP is claiming the media did with the Steele Dossier
| (which generally they did not, they reported on its
| existence not its accuracy - and the media I consumed was
| careful about that distinction).
| myko wrote:
| > fake evidence would be planted by the Clinton campaign.
|
| Again, this never happened. First of all, the Steele
| Dossier was raw intelligence, not meant to be taken as
| fact. It was paid for initially by Republicans, not HRC's
| campaign, so pinning it on her is disingenuous. Also,
| there were clear links between the trump campaign and
| Russia, including some that led to arrests of his folks
| and some that should have (Jr's meeting that trump helped
| him lie about).
|
| Your own link (and common sense) disputes your claim that
| it was proven HRC's campaign did this:
|
| > The IC does not know the accuracy of this allegation or
| the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may
| reflect exaggeration or fabrication.
|
| It was Russian disinformation creating and spreading the
| lie that you are boldly posting on here.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >Also, there were clear links between the trump campaign
| and Russia, including some that led to arrests of his
| folks
|
| Name one Trump person who was arrested (let alone
| convicted) for something actually, directly related to
| Russiagate.
|
| Papadopoulos: Indicted for making a false statement to
| FBI.
|
| Manafort and Gates: Indicted for not registering as
| foreign agents of Ukraine (which, you might have noticed,
| is sort of an enemy of Russia right now)
|
| Flynn: Indicted for making a false statement to FBI.
| (Forced by lack of legal fees into pleading guilty, which
| later caused problems when the government tried to drop
| charges.)
|
| Pinedo (Who? Exactly): Indicted for identity fraud.
|
| van der Zwaan: Indicted for making false statements (and
| not an American, anyway).
|
| Cohen: Indicted for making false statements.
|
| Stone: Indicted for making false statements and witness
| tampering.
|
| Then we have people like Carter Page, whose name was
| raked over the coals for years because a FBI lawyer
| intentionally altered evidence
| (<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/us/politics/fbi-ig-
| report...>) showing that far from being a Russian asset,
| Page had for years briefed the CIA every time he met with
| suspicious Russians. (Got to love how the Times describes
| said altering evidence as a "serious error".) You want an
| actual Russiagate-related indictment and guilty plea?
| Kevin Clinesmith, said FBI lawyer, is your man.
| myko wrote:
| - Roger Stone (he lied about his work with Guccifier 2.0,
| and wikileaks which was working as an arm of the Russian
| government)
|
| - Paul Manafort (his work in Ukraine was done on behalf
| of Russia - I mean seriously read about the shit he did:
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/05/ex-trump-
| aid... - also linked with wikileaks, but not in the US
| election context afaik). And where did the former leader
| of Ukraine, Yanukovych, who Manafort propped up flee to
| when the shit he and Manafort did together came out?
|
| - We know Jr attempted to get the Russian governments
| help and had a meeting in trump tower about it, that his
| dad helped him lie about (obstructing justice in the
| process)
|
| Done
| fartcannon wrote:
| There's a thing that happened with the Canada subreddit. It used
| to be kind of an interesting sub where youd get neat Canada-wide
| local stories (mostly Ontario) that were genrally pleasant. It
| was a nice place to visit after being inundated with American
| politics. Then, sometime in the early 10s and it gradually became
| very partisan and political. Which, to clarify, means it got
| substantially worse.
|
| It, like the comment sections on Canadian news websites, leaned
| heavily to the right. So a group got together and made alt Canada
| subreddit that leaned heavily left called OnGuardForThee.
|
| Originally, I thought it would be helpful to compare the two subs
| to get something closer to the middle but instead all that
| happened was I got twice as much screaming hot garbage.
|
| I unsubbed from both and now individually sub to all the Canadian
| town I can find. It's better now. There's so much less anger.
| buzzert wrote:
| This sounds like a Reddit-wide problem. I stopped going to
| Reddit years ago because of this.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| That slippery slope is a byproduct of their subreddit social
| mechanic combined with a polarized political climate.
|
| If the sub leans 60/40 one way, the minority group will see
| all their posts being downvoted, and gradually leave. As more
| leave, the downvote pressure on the remaining few gets more
| intense, and they leave too, until you're left with a
| veritable echo chamber.
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| It's interesting to see how you've characterized what happened
| in r/canada. I think it is itself an example of polarization.
|
| r/canada used to be great, as you said, but it didn't become
| polarized in a right vs. left manner. The moderators were self-
| admitted alt/far-right people who were pushing a particular
| agenda.
|
| When the country as a whole votes left at a consistent 65-70%,
| then r/canada simply no longer represents the Canadian
| viewpoint. r/canada used to give center-right viewpoints
| attention at about the same rate as the support they got in
| elections. The push from right-wing mods to move to an even or
| greater split doesn't reflect the political reality of Canada.
|
| r/OnGuardForThee is now a far more accurate representation of
| the political landscape of Canada where 70% of people vote
| center-left to left.
| gruez wrote:
| > Then, sometime in the early 10s and it gradually became
| very partisan and political. Which, to clarify, means it got
| substantially worse.
|
| I just checked the top posts for last week and it looks
| pretty... non-partisan? Certainly better than something
| /r/all.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/canada/top/?t=week
| spamizbad wrote:
| A lot of "local" subreddits started declining around 2015. It's
| like all the local news website commenters discovered their
| local subreddits and started posting there.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| A lot of investor-relations style astroturfing began in the
| lead-up to the 2016 election.
|
| We did some threat tracking for certain organizations as a
| result of the growing extreme rhetoric in some of these
| communities and with social media aggregation tools it became
| very clear that there are a lot of paid political shill
| accounts.
|
| Facebook's toxic communities are far more grass-roots in
| comparison. They're also, at least in the cases of the files
| I was on, a lot more violent, and a lot more volatile.
| Surveiled Facebook groups looked a lot more like Parler than
| brigaded reddit subs.
| asdff wrote:
| I almost think it was these local news sites trying
| themselves to post on these subreddits. Looking at the
| histories of the people who actually post articles on a local
| subreddit, all they do pretty much is post articles. Who even
| does that? Either someone with some sort of complex to share
| every article they read on reddit, or an intern who is paid
| to post the article on social media and reddit is on that
| list. Even the LA Fire Department is active on reddit now.
| It's mainstream, and commercialized.
| [deleted]
| fallingfrog wrote:
| What I don't like about articles like this is that they never ask
| the obvious question, _why?_. So people from rural areas are more
| likely to be conservative. Why? Because in a lot of places, like
| most of Latin America, the opposite is true. So what are the
| cultural and material reasons for that?
|
| The most obvious reason here, is that when you go to college it
| tends to make you more liberal. Because you learn about the
| world, which makes you more tolerant and less religious.
|
| But I think there are some psychosocial forces beyond that going
| on too. America was founded on the idea of going out and getting
| a bunch of free land and being self sufficient, so being godly
| and being self sufficient and being American all got tangled
| together. And if you're wealthy and live in the country, you
| probably have a lot of property, which makes you conservative
| too.
|
| Anyways there's a lot more going on here and nobody ever talks
| about it, everything gets blamed on whatever the new explanation
| for every problem is, the internet currently. The internet
| exaggerates and intensifies these tendencies but it's not where
| they come from.
| shockeychap wrote:
| I'm sorry, but I find articles like this entirely disingenuous.
| It opens with a rural Tennessee classroom in which the teacher
| and a lone student bravely try to help a bunch of Trumpers
| understand their perspective. It continues with another example
| of a right-leaning former WV legislator coming around to the
| leftist position on transgender participation in sports. But what
| I did not find was a single meaningful example of the opposite.
| The best the article could muster - for appearances of neutrality
| - was an example of reduced support for minimum-wage increases by
| a group of Democrats. Nothing concrete.
|
| Sorry, but the lady doth protest too much.
| finalis wrote:
| The article may not do a good job highlighting where the left
| moves right but I believe that is because that movement is the
| status quo given obstruction on the right.
|
| Remember when "$2,000 checks out the door immediately" became
| $1,400 checks after weeks of delays and the left leaning media
| outlets and thus liberals went along with it?
|
| Remember when Biden dropped plans to help out with student loan
| debt and nobody batted an eyelid?
|
| Remember when Medicare-for-All and Green New Deal were things
| liberals pretended to care about?
|
| The left constantly moves right by accepting the status quo.
| They don't need to document specific examples in an article
| because it is the basis behind every major policy topic for at
| least the last 10 years.
| vsskanth wrote:
| I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national review
| and politico. I wanted to get different perspectives. However, I
| encountered a bunch of issues:
|
| They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes
| it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is
| the most common form of bias I've come across.
|
| In the rare case they do cover the same thing, many articles
| either simply do not mention the other side or present a very
| simplified or exaggerated view and provide an opposing viewpoint.
|
| They cover the same thing differently depending on which party is
| in power. The border crisis is a good example of this.
|
| All of these make it real hard to compare viewpoints with a
| proper reference frame and even treatment. Eventually I just gave
| up and read Politico, Bloomberg and FiveThrityEight now. They
| seem to be used by pros from both sides and mostly report on
| what's "happening" rather than provide opinion. I can then form
| my own opinions.
| losvedir wrote:
| > _They dont talk about or even cover the same things_
|
| Yeah, this is a key thing to realize. People seem to think that
| Fox News, for example, just trots out falsehoods all the time,
| but if you skim the news, I'd say very little is actually
| factually incorrect. It's more about the story selection, who
| they choose to interview to get the quote, how they
| contextualize (or don't) statistics, etc.
|
| But once you realize that, you realize it _can_ apply to, e.g.
| WaPo, which many Republicans say is very left-biased, while
| many Democrats say it 's neutral.
|
| I think an amusing non-partisan example of how story selection
| biases viewpoints is the so-called "Summer of the Shark"[0]
| where for whatever reason shark attacks became a part of the
| summer's zeitgeist and got extensively covered. Meanwhile,
| shark attacks weren't at any particularly elevated level,
| contrary to what many people ended up believing.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_the_Shark
| pydry wrote:
| RT is similar.
|
| Last week in English news it headlined an anti masker/antivax
| March in London which the BBC didn't mention at all.
| jl6 wrote:
| > very little is actually factually incorrect
|
| This is why we need more than just fact checkers.
|
| It's extremely easy to construct a biased, opinion-
| manipulating political hit site composed entirely of truthful
| statements.
|
| Proof by politically-neutral analogy: imagine a newspaper
| that published an article every time a roulette wheel stopped
| on 6, but never for any other number.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Here's another example:
|
| The google vs DuckDuckGo search results for the same exact
| phrase "list of conservatives banned by twitter" yield
| utterly different results. None of the admittedly right wing
| websites are even listed in the google results for that
| search. The only site in common on the first page is Forbes,
| but even then the two articles are different even though they
| came out the same exact day.
|
| If you use google, you'd think that twitter isn't censoring
| conservatives. If you use duckduckgo, you'll think that they
| do.
| boredprograming wrote:
| Fox New's actual news coverage is mostly truthful. But a huge
| amount of their airtime is opinion pieces and media
| personalities who spout BS all day. Tucker Carlson is
| probably the most notorious. Plus they have Republican
| politicians calling in and showing up constantly, and they're
| allowed to say whatever they want.
| Moodles wrote:
| I mean, sure, but why are we talking about Fox
| specifically? CNN, MSNBC, etc. are just as bad. I find this
| ironic since this thread is about how bias isn't
| necessarily about outright falsehoods, but story selection
| and what is _not_ said :)
| boredprograming wrote:
| Fox news personalities frequently allow Trump and his
| allies airtime where they lie about losing the election
| to Biden. I don't know how you get any less truthful than
| that
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| Stacey Abrams lied about being cheated out of the Georgia
| gubernatorial election and then the most recent Democrat
| candidate for President at the time kept up the lie:
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-says-
| stacey-a...
|
| And yet, Hillary Clinton (who made her own claims that
| Russia had helped Trump steal the Presidential election
| from her) was a guest on mainstream news programs over
| and over.
|
| Do you apply the same standards to Hillary Clinton that
| you apply to Trump?
| throwaway8582 wrote:
| How about making up fake stories about Russian
| prostitutes and hackers to try and overturn the results
| of an election that didn't go your way? Anyone that wants
| to complain about Fox News and let CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo,
| and the rest of the "mainstream" media outlets slide for
| printing that garbage after the 2016 election is not
| being intellectually honest.
| boredprograming wrote:
| Russians did try to influence the election, the Mueller
| report resulted in many indictments.
|
| Trump pardoned 2 of those convicted for lying to the FBI
| during these investigations, George Papadopoulos and Alex
| van der Zwaan
|
| And when did anyone try to overturn the election results?
| Hillary conceded within days. Trump still hasn't.
|
| You're in la la land, no point talking to you
| [deleted]
| Moodles wrote:
| They allow the previous president airtime!? Quick,
| someone call the cops.
| boredprograming wrote:
| When he does nothing but lie about election fraud on
| their airwaves? Pretty normal for a news company
| Moodles wrote:
| We should refund the police, and then call them!
|
| What are you arguing about?
|
| 1. Someone mentions Fox being bad for bias in story
| selection.
|
| 2. I ask: why are we singling out Fox specifically?
| Others do it too?
|
| 3. You say: "They give Trump airtime!"
|
| Ok? That is a difference I guess? Not got much to do with
| what we're talking about though?
| boredprograming wrote:
| It's an example of how Fox is less honest than other news
| companies, exactly what you asked for. They let people on
| air spout obvious lies all the time. Find a mainstream
| channel that does the same. I'll wait
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| Day after day for two years, MSNBC and CNN hosts and
| guests went on and on about how Trump was beholden to
| Putin. There was a "pee pee tape", remember? There were
| deals that Trump and Trump Jr. made in a Trump Tower
| meeting that would give Putin certain guarantees in
| exchange for his help in getting Trump elected. Pulitzers
| were given to newspapers that printed one breathless
| anonymously-sourced accusation after another.
|
| None of it turned out to be true. When you compare the
| Adam Schiff memo release with the Devin Nunes memo, you
| can see that Nunes' memo was accurate. Schiff's memo was
| full of misinformation. Schiff was one of those guests
| who appeared on CNN and MSNBC over and over, claiming
| that there was evidence for "Russia collusion with the
| Trump campaign". He later had to retract that repeated
| lie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q2su1iknyk
|
| Mueller and his team of Democrats instead tried to make a
| case for obstruction against a President who waived all
| executive and even most of his attorney-client privilege.
| Even the impeachment-hungry Democrats in the House
| couldn't mount impeachment charges on that weak claim.
|
| What a waste all that was, and it was egged on and
| sometimes even fabricated at every turn by CNN, MSNBC,
| NYT, and WaPo.
|
| But keep pretending that Fox News is some big boogeyman
| or even an outlier in the news business.
| gabriel9 wrote:
| I am not from US. And could not care less who won. I
| think there is no less honest. It is simple, you lie or
| don't. In my eyes they are all bad, and it is up to me to
| inform myself.
| Moodles wrote:
| Indeed. This thread is clearly a lost cause.
| rkk3 wrote:
| > It's an example of how Fox is less honest than other
| news companies
|
| Is it less honest or is it just a narrative you don't
| like.
|
| > They let people on air spout obvious lies all the time.
| Find a mainstream channel that does the same. I'll wait
|
| MSNBC just like the other outrage opinion info-tainments
| has a lack of nuance (what you call lies) in many of its
| narratives.
| mariodiana wrote:
| Jonathan Haidt (who is mentioned in the article) did a
| study years ago. He separated a group of people into
| conservatives and liberals and then gave them a
| questionnaire on politics. Then he got a second group,
| separated them, and gave them the same questionnaire.
| Only he asked the second group of liberals and
| conservatives to answer the questionnaire the way they
| imagined the _other side_ would.
|
| What he found was that conservatives had no trouble
| answering the way liberals do. However, liberals could
| not do likewise. Liberals frequently chose the red
| herrings on the multiple choice questions, the ones that
| exaggerated the conservative positions to the point of
| more or less _demonizing_ conservatives.
|
| That's why we're talking about Fox News, don't you see?
| CNN and MSNBC are _just folks._ Fox News is the Anti-
| Christ.
|
| Even the article itself has this same smell of bias about
| it.
| majormajor wrote:
| I would be curious to see what that looks like today when
| elected Republicans are increasingly spouting what you'd
| call a "demonized" conservative viewpoint if it wasn't
| coming out of their mouths directly.
|
| "Those are just the opinions of a small fringe" was much
| more believable in a pre-Trump world - but now, even more
| than post-Tea Party, the fringe is pushing the agenda.
|
| And even pre-Trump, you can read that study as an
| indictment of the conservative media and it's evolution
| to sensationalism since the 1980s.
|
| To use an example from the linked article: "For
| instance,when conservatives express binding-foundation
| moral concerns about gay marriage--e.g., that it subverts
| traditional gender roles and family structures--liberals
| may have difficulty perceiving any moral value in such
| traditional arrangements and therefore conclude that
| conservatives are motivated by simple homophobia,
| untempered by concerns about fairness, equality, and
| rights." - the vocal conservatives were not expressing a
| very nuanced view, it was the violent fringe that was
| making the most noise and claiming the most airtime even
| in conservative outlets.
|
| If you want liberals to understand your complex
| conservative reasoning, you gotta get the very-un-complex
| trolls off the air!
| atq2119 wrote:
| That seems fair to me.
|
| If this reasoning is correct, then conservatives should
| be becoming worse at gauging liberals' position on social
| justice-related topics, considering how their reporting
| tends to be dominated by extremists as well.
| mariodiana wrote:
| What exactly seems fair? The reply you're responding to
| asserts there was a "violent fringe that was making the
| most noise and claiming the most airtime." Is that fair?
| The discussion, at the time, concerning gay marriage in
| conservative national media was dominated by a "violent
| fringe"? Were their calls for violence? Were there even
| suggestions that violence "may be necessary"?
|
| I'm going to reach here a bit, but are we going to rope
| in the Westboro Baptist Church and pretend these people
| were the "conservative" response? Even if we do that, do
| you recall them--as odious as they are--being violent or
| advocating violence? And if we're not pointing to them,
| who are we pointing to?
| anonfornoreason wrote:
| Not sure why you are getting downvotes. For anyone
| curious, Haidt is a liberal professor who is dedicated to
| figuring out how to get people talking across political
| ideologies. The book that covers this topic is called The
| Righteous Mind and is an excellent read or listen.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| It's being downvoted exactly for the reason that this
| topic is important.
|
| Too many people are hopelessly trapped in their narrative
| bubbles and unable to calmly evaluate arguments against
| what they've been taught to believe.
| Moodles wrote:
| Yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all actually. I'm sure
| both side demonize the other to some extent, and it's our
| natural reaction to look at them both as _equally bad_
| like we 're disciplining two siblings or something, but
| it really seems that right now the left is more
| melodramatic in the demonization than the right. In my
| personal experience, quite a few people I've met seem to
| think if you disagree with them, you must be full of
| hate, racist, sexist, dumb, a gun slinging Christian,
| etc.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| My wife (who is pretty far left), observed that Trump was
| actually many of the things that G.W. Bush was accused of
| being.
|
| I think a major tenet of post-trump Republicanism is
| roughly: "We're going to be accused of being racist and
| conspiracy theorists by the left no matter what we do, so
| there is only an upside to openly courting those members
| of the electorate.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| It's all part and parcel of the same problem. The default
| media narrative bubble leans heavily to the left.
|
| People trapped in that bubble are overly confident in
| what they believe. They aren't often exposed to arguments
| and data that are contrary to what they're told to
| believe over and over whenever they turn on the TV. So
| when these trapped people are confronted with opposing
| arguments or data, they resort to the easy mechanisms
| that relieve their cognitive dissonance. "You're a
| racist" "You're a homophobe" "You're a white supremacist"
| "You want sick people to die in the streets"
| klyrs wrote:
| Another way to look at this is that extremists have a
| significant platform on the right, and that is likely to
| skew the perception of the right by the left.
| tmn wrote:
| Can you give 3 examples of extremists on the right? Would
| just like to understand how people are viewing things
| beprogrammed wrote:
| Then he turned to his conservative flock and said 'See?
| We ARE smarter than them!'
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tchock23 wrote:
| Has this study been repeated recently (rather than 2012).
| Very curious to see if/how the results have changed of
| late.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| I'm currently a registered Pacific Green, lean left, and
| on the political compass I'm basically smack dab on top
| of Bernie Sanders (whom I voted for and donated to in the
| 2016 primaries). And have never voted Republican. So his
| observation is about my own "side" more or less.
|
| But I'm totally unsurprised to see this downvoted here
| only 18 minutes in.
|
| Here's a short article on the paper:
| https://ricochet.com/76902/archives/conservatives-
| understand...
|
| The paper itself: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm
| ?abstract_id=2027266
|
| Here's his TED talk on it: https://www.ted.com/talks/jona
| than_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_...
|
| What's funny is if you bring this up (even with sources)
| to conservatives. They're unsurprisingly unsurprised. But
| if you bring it up to liberals they often get _furious_
| because it goes against their beliefs that they 're the
| more intelligent, more educated "side". Nevermind that
| believing in only two possible sides is six times dumber
| than _astrology_... something "both sides" are about
| equally guilty of. If nothing else I strongly encourage
| everyone to watch his TED talk. It's super informative,
| well delivered, and has a solid message of unity tbh.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But I'm totally unsurprised to see this downvoted here
| only 18 minutes in.
|
| I am unsurprised as well. Aside from any other concerns
| about the comment, its relevance, or the study and its
| methodology, the upthread post, like the popular right-
| leaning media articles on the study, lies about the
| results:
|
| Upthread post: "What he found was that conservatives had
| no trouble answering the way liberals do. However,
| liberals could not do likewise."
|
| Actual article abstract: "Both liberals and conservatives
| exaggerated the ideological extremity of moral concerns
| for the ingroup as well as the outgroup. Liberals were
| least accurate about both groups."
|
| (It also misleads about provenance, saying "Jonathan
| Haidt [...] did a study", when Haidt was third author.)
|
| The actual results (especially liberals being less right
| about typical _liberal_ positions on the axes questioned
| about as well as less accurate about conservative
| positions) are what you'd expect if the axes chosen were
| ones that simply tended to be more _salient_ for
| conservatives.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| I recommend watching his TED talk. It goes into more
| detail, and expounds on the abstract underpinnings of
| both liberal and conservative morals. They're very
| different. The axes apply even outside America,
| consistently.
| mariodiana wrote:
| I'm a fan of Haidt and think his moral "tastebuds" (I
| think he makes that analogy somewhere) is an interesting
| model. I largely buy into it, but I found a really
| perceptive take in this short blog post that came out a
| few years back that's a bit more skeptical.
| https://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/blog/2017/05/26/trump-
| as-...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| I think this piece, referenced in one of the comments to
| the one you reference, is particularly on point:
|
| https://crookedtimber.org/2017/01/22/protestandpolarizati
| on/
| mariodiana wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| I have a friend I haven't seen since high school, though
| I'm connected with him on Facebook. He will outright tell
| you himself that he's a communist--familiar with the
| writings of Marx, etc. We could not be more diametrically
| opposed. However, he's as clear-eyed as you seem to be.
|
| I suspect that most people simply aren't all that
| intellectually curious. I don't remember if Haidt
| explicitly mentioned this, but I think somewhere either
| he or someone commenting on his study asserted that it is
| much easier to pick up the party line of liberals through
| osmosis, since those in education, the media, and so
| forth tend to be liberal. So, even conservatives are more
| readily exposed to the liberal take on things. Liberals
| on the other hand are not.
|
| But the point I'm making by mentioning my friend and
| thanking you is that I suspect that people who _are_
| intellectually curious are more or less inoculated
| against mischaracterizing the side they disagree with,
| since they don 't learn almost exclusively through
| osmosis.
|
| I appreciate your contribution to this thread.
| dlp211 wrote:
| Now how closely do the "What Conservatives believe"
| responses align with FoxNews, Limbaugh, InfoWars, etc.
| and how closely do the "What Liberal believe" align with
| the NYTimes, WaPo, etc.
|
| This study says something, it just doesn't necessarily
| say what you all think it says. It's also wildly
| outdated. Because we now live in this reality:
| Significant majority of Republicans don't believe Biden's
| win was fair[1]
|
| [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-
| press/blog/meet-pr...
| nradov wrote:
| I think you are referring to this study. Your summary of
| the results is basically accurate.
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/jour
| nal...
| parafactual wrote:
| Do you have a link? You may be right, but such a study
| seems very easy to bias, even unintentionally.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Here's a short article on the paper:
| https://ricochet.com/76902/archives/conservatives-
| understand...
|
| The paper itself: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm
| ?abstract_id=2027266
|
| Here's his TED talk on it: https://www.ted.com/talks/jona
| than_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_...
| vaishaksuresh wrote:
| Published in 2012. lol! good times!
| avs733 wrote:
| I'm reading the article you linked down thread and after
| an initial skim I am not confident the article actually
| makes the point you are claiming.
| tw04 wrote:
| I won't say Fox is the only one guilty of it, but they
| intentionally mix what would best be described as "opinion
| pieces" with "real news" and don't really make any effort
| to draw a clear line between the two. The end result is as
| disastrous as one would expect when taking someone's
| personal opinion and selling it as a factual source of
| news.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I mean, the same is true about CNN's opinion pieces, or
| MSNBC's, etc, they are just on the opposite side of the
| spectrum.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| CNN and MSNBC are not the opposite of Fox News.
|
| The opposite would be something like _The Nation_ or
| _Democracy Now!_.
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| While this seems like a great claim, it could be more
| compelling if I could read the supporting argument behind
| it.
| pydry wrote:
| Fox News is the mouthpiece of the Republican Party.
|
| CNN/MSNBC the Democrats.
|
| Democracy Now is essentially the American grassroots
| left. Not generally fans of either party.
| cwkoss wrote:
| This seems much more accurate to my experience as a
| leftist. The insistence from centrist liberals that
| CNN/MSNBC is unbiased seems baffling and delusional.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| What would be the opposite of MSNBC? Or the NYTimes for
| that matter?
| bobthechef wrote:
| Since the NYT is America's Pravda (according to Chomsky),
| then whatever the analogue of the opposite of Pravda is.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Samizdat - if you want to go down that hole.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat
| Moodles wrote:
| Find one positive article from MSNBC or CNN about Trump
| during his presidency?
| adzm wrote:
| There are many.
| httpss://www.cnn.com/2018/07/27/politics/donald-trump-
| economy-trade-gdp-growth-credit/index.html
| Moodles wrote:
| Did you read that article? I mean, even that article has
| the multiple bitchy comments thrown in. I would quote,
| but honestly it would be every other paragraph. But yes,
| the headline is generally positive I guess. Now, could we
| find a similar article for Biden in Fox over the next 4
| years? I would guess probably.
|
| Anyways it's kind of pointless to argue what the
| "opposite" of Fox is as it's really ill-defined. i think
| it's fair to say CNN and Fox are similar to being
| opposites.
|
| Ok, I'm going to do it:
|
| > Presidents usually get too much blame when the economy
| is doing badly, since downturns are often caused by
| outside shocks or cyclical factors, but that also gives
| them a chance to crow when things are going full steam
| ahead. Trump is not the kind of person to pass that up.
|
| > The strong growth number gives the White House a
| significant boost after days of grim headlines, and its
| failure to move on from the President's humiliating
| summit performance with Russian President Vladimir Putin
| nearly two weeks ago.
|
| > It also offers some personal respite for Trump, given
| that he must feel that legal walls are closing around
| him, following news that one of his most important
| confidants, Allen Weisselberg, has been subpoenaed by
| federal prosecutors investigating his former lawyer
| Michael Cohen.
|
| > The New York Times reported on Thursday that special
| counsel Robert Mueller is examining Trump's tweets,
| potentially to see whether they can help him build a case
| that the President acted with malicious intent when he
| sacked former FBI Director James Comey.
|
| > Trump is forever trying to change the subject. With the
| current state of the economy, he may have some
| ammunition.
|
| > Often, the President's hyperbolic assessment of his own
| performance is at odds with the facts
|
| > but he [Trump] often has only himself to blame for it
| getting overlooked, given the daily political turmoil he
| creates.
|
| > Trump's end zone dance might come across as a little
| premature.
|
| It just goes on and on. I'm practically quoting the whole
| article. Just the language alone: "humiliating", "walls
| closing in", etc. Then they quote one poll, presumably
| the one what makes him look as bad as possible. It's just
| ridiculous. I don't know how you can say this article is
| "positive" for Trump. The headline is relatively positive
| (though even then I can feel CNN begrudgingly wrote _some
| credit_ ).
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" Now, could we find a similar article for Biden in Fox
| over the next 4 years? I would guess probably."_
|
| Biden's not the opposite of Trump either. Biden pleases
| some conservatives, which is why he got the nomination
| over Sanders, so that he'd stand a chance of winning over
| "undecided" (ie. right wing, but not extreme right wing)
| voters in battleground states. Many neocons are also fans
| of Biden, so I wouldn't be at all surprised to find
| support of him on FOX.
|
| Now I'd be surprised to find any positive coverage of
| Sanders on FOX.. not to mention people who are really on
| the left like Noam Chomsky.
| Moodles wrote:
| > Biden's not the opposite of Trump either.
|
| Right, which is why this is kind of a pointless thing.
| What the hell does it mean for one media organization to
| be the opposite of another anyway?
|
| I agree I did kind of start it with my earlier comment
| though.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Just one example that comes to mind, within the first 100
| days of Trump's presidency Van Jones praised his
| congressional speech.
| https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/01/politics/van-jones-trump-
| cong...
| rayiner wrote:
| Fox News has moderated a lot over the past few years,
| while CNN and MSNBC have moved quite a bit to the left.
| You see it more on cultural issues than say economic or
| foreign policy issues. Joy Reid, for example, just says
| the most outrageous falsehoods and goes completely
| unrebutted: https://twitter.com/wesyang/status/1403950560
| 907300865?s=20
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Fox News has moderated a lot over the past few years
|
| I routinely read Fox News online. I do not think they
| have moderated over the last 2 years - there was perhaps
| some moderation 4 years ago, but no longer.
|
| CNN has swung leftward, I don't think MSNBC has
| substantially changed.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| I think they mean the word "Moderated" not in the
| colloquial sense of removing content, but in the sense
| that they're opinions are not as strongly right-wing as
| they once were.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yes, this is also the sense I meant it.
| WoahNoun wrote:
| How is that a falsehood? The daughters of the confederacy
| pushed the "civil war was about state's rights" narrative
| that is still taught across the South.
| rayiner wrote:
| Source that it's "still taught across the south?" Because
| that's certainly not what I learned in Virginia 25 years
| ago.
|
| And Reid said "most" kids, not just those in the South.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Fox News has moderated a lot over the past few years
|
| They moved slightly back from Trumpism back toward their
| earlier pre-Trump far-rightism late in the Trump period
| (not abandoning the former, just not going in whole hog
| on it), which might be seen as moderation from a
| tribal/partisan viewpoint (as pre-Trump far-rightism
| currently lacking a major party home, to the extent many
| anti-Trump-but-far-right voices advocated voting for
| Democrats over Republicans despite ideological issues
| with Democrats in 2020 as essential to the defeat of
| Trumpism), but is not moderation ideologically.
|
| While the D-R partisan split is not independent of left-
| right ideology, its not the same thing.
| majormajor wrote:
| I got the "the civil war wasn't about slavery" line fed
| to me in school. Reconstruction was a bad thing, too, and
| it was good when the North stopped meddling. So where's
| the most outrageous falsehood here? The "nothing to do
| with" bit? That's not the exact version I got, but the
| gist was: "the Civil War was about states rights, it's
| just a coincidence that the right in question was the
| right to have slaves, but the South wasn't morally in the
| wrong because states rights are actually that important."
| rayiner wrote:
| The falsehood is saying that "currently, most K-12
| students learn Confederate Race Theory."
|
| I grew up in solidly Republican Virginia in the 1990s
| (even my "liberal" Northern VA county voted against
| Clinton both times) and we certainly didn't learn the
| "Daughters of the Confederacy" version. When we visited
| Monticello, slavery was discussed at length. Teachers
| have discretion so maybe some kids are still learning
| this stuff, but it's a huge lie to say it's "most" kids
| today.
|
| Folks like Reid are massively gaslighting people by
| making it seem like the opposition to CRT is opposition
| to "teaching kids about slavery." Conservatives in
| Virginia weren't up in arms complaining about that when I
| was a kid almost 30 years ago, so it's hard to imagine
| that's what they're doing. The opposition, instead, is to
| people like Reid who are trying to normalize racism
| against white people. It's opposition to people who want
| to turn slavery into the entire narrative, such as the
| 1619 Project, which asserted that "nearly everything
| exceptional about America grew out of slavery":
| https://taibbi.substack.com/p/year-zero
|
| > Out of slavery -- and the anti-black racism it required
| -- grew nearly everything that has truly made America
| exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power,
| its electoral system, its diet and popular music.
| Uehreka wrote:
| Given the number of actual Trump staff CNN has hired and
| put on air, I don't think one can credibly argue that
| they are on the opposite end of the spectrum. As someone
| who generally politically identifies as "left", I can
| assure you we are quite frustrated with them.
|
| MSNBC too! They may not have as many Trump folks on
| primetime panels, but their focus on dumb "Resistance"
| stuff is definitely not what the left wants at all
| (though liberals seem to eat it up).
| cwkoss wrote:
| Isn't the exact same thing true of CNN and MSNBC, but just
| in the other direction?
| holler wrote:
| CNN has gone so far downhill imo due to this. In the past
| five years I've seen a shrinking gap between news and
| opinion, where articles w/o the label are very clearly
| editorialized. It lowers the quality of the product and
| at least for me, I no longer read it as much.
|
| That said, journalists are just humans so it's a
| difficult problem, especially in the heightened political
| climate we've had.
| astrange wrote:
| What "the" other direction? There isn't a single
| dimension here.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Fair point - these dichotomies are often false or
| manufactured.
|
| However I believe that, to a much greater extent than
| citizen support for particular political issues, media
| bias tends to polarize along party-line dimensions
| because of overlapping power structures.
| tomrod wrote:
| I see more pushback, but also find CBS and ABC to be
| relatively objective.
|
| This mapping has proven useful
|
| https://www.adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/
| bobthechef wrote:
| That seems like a preposterous claim. Those are classic
| regime television stations. And I find this diagram
| biased.
|
| Also, "middle" or centrist is not the same as objective.
| The path of least extreme disagreement is not the same as
| the truth (ask a Christian: he'll tell you that Jesus is
| the truth and that the world hates Jesus). Besides, the
| middle of what? The neoliberal paradigm? The current
| spread on offer?
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| Am I the only one who feels Tucker Carlson is so popular
| because he (a lot like Donald Trump) was willing to
| challenge the false idols of the Republican establishment
| (e.g. we need to be at war in Afghanistan/Iraq, the free
| market isn't always the best especially if it leads to
| outsourcing and offshoring, etc.)
|
| Might just be me. I dislike 90% of fox news but I listen to
| Carlson sometimes and never find him to be horrible or BS-y
| (admittedly I don't listen in all the time so I may be
| missing some stuff)
| anonfornoreason wrote:
| I've seen a few clips, they have been pretty bad but with
| kernel of truths that make it hard to make substantive
| arguments against whatever he is ranting on. I personally
| think he's a big stain on news media, even while agreeing
| with a few points here/there there.
|
| For what it's worth, I've only watched in order to try
| and understand other people's viewpoints.
|
| More specifically, I think he's terrible because he has
| mastered the ability to tease out the base instincts of
| people with his messaging, which makes it hard to either
| agree or disagree with his statements with logic. He can
| point to some kernels of truth, and you are left with
| people saying things like "that's just dogwhistling" when
| attacking his viewpoints. In other words, he riles up,
| doesn't cause people to think critically, and overall
| lowers the level of discourse out there.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I pretty much only see clips of Tucker Carlson that are
| posted by liberals or leftists to point at and generate
| outrage.
|
| To me, he seems like a whiner who disingenuously argues
| against things in a way to bolster conservative talking
| points. But, I expect the majority of this is selection
| bias, and only the 'worst' clips are making it into my
| filter bubble.
| Clubber wrote:
| Fear-mongering sells. He's good at it. So is Rachael
| Maddow and just about everyone they put in front of the
| camera to "inform" you.
| rayiner wrote:
| Does anyone watch TV anymore? I read Fox News online, which
| is fine, but I don't think I've ever tuned into shows. My
| parents have CNN on a loop, and even my dad (a die-hard
| Carter fan) calls it "DNC talking points."
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| I think a lot of voters are older, and still inclined to
| get their news from TV.
|
| https://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2017/01/study-
| fox-ne...
| hanselot wrote:
| Some so old they may no longer be alive even? "Election
| fraud is incredibly rare" - this phrase will be etched in
| the history books, similarly to "it's just a flu" The
| left will never live this down.
| mariodiana wrote:
| I've heard people characterize cable news as _kayfabe_
| --the handbook for professional wrestling. Cable news is
| entertainment, and the same way the WWF was eventually
| pressured into changing their name to the WWE, we have to
| hope one day CNN and Fox News (along with MSNBC, etc.) will
| change their monikers.
| echelon wrote:
| > WWF was eventually pressured into changing their name
| to the WWE
|
| There was no pressuring over intent. The World Wildlife
| Fund owned the rights to WWF and sued.
|
| https://www.cnet.com/news/wrestling-loses-wwf-to-wildlife
| mariodiana wrote:
| I'm aware of that, but I don't think that changes things
| much. They chose to call it "entertainment," when they
| could have called it any number of things. But at the
| time they had been under increasing criticism of the
| matches being fixed, etc.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Nope, not even close. Even if we are pretend that all
| wrestling fans were completely unaware that the WWF was
| scripted, that ended in Montreal in 1997 when Vince
| McMahon forced the belt off of Brett Hart. He didn't
| change the name of the company until 2002. Even before
| that, Vince declared it was all a work because he was
| tired of being under the thumb of various athletic and
| boxing commissions. His people did steroids and he wasn't
| going to stop them.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| WWF officially broke kayfabe 1989 way before the name
| change because they didn't want to spend the money
| necessary for live sporting events. Before that pro
| wrestling was regulated just like boxing or MMA, with
| state commissioners and taxes and medical requirements.
| tehnub wrote:
| It seems that the change from WWF to WWE was mainly
| caused by a trademark dispute with the World Wildlife
| Fund, but they used the opportunity to emphasize their
| entertainment focus.
|
| >Mrs. McMahon [(CEO of WWE)] said the company began
| considering dropping the word "Federation" from its name
| when World Wildlife Fund (a/k/a World Wide Fund for
| Nature) prevailed in a recent court action in the United
| Kingdom. The court ruling prevents the World Wrestling
| Federation from the use of the logo it adopted in 1998
| and the letters WWF in specified circumstances. The
| "Fund" has indicated that although the two organizations
| are very different, there is the likelihood of confusion
| in the market place by virtue of the fact that both
| organizations use the letters WWF. The Fund has indicated
| that it does not want to have any association with the
| World Wrestling Federation. "Therefore," said,
| Mrs.McMahon, "we will utilize this opportunity to
| position ourselves emphasizing the entertainment aspect
| of our company, and, at the same time, allay the concerns
| of the Fund." [0]
|
| [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20090119180317/http://co
| rporate....
| tptacek wrote:
| We don't even have to litigate whether Fox News airtime is
| distinctively malignant if we just acknowledge that all
| 24/7 cable news channels are bad. They kind of have to be,
| just by the nature of how they compete and what they have
| to work with in both audiences and source material. Just
| don't get your news from the TV.
| reedjosh wrote:
| And they're all funded by ads.
|
| Between the need to access government figures for
| interview, and their funding sources, how could you ever
| expect straight forward reporting?
|
| If you aren't paying for your media sources, you're the
| product.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _If you aren 't paying for your media sources, you're
| the product._
|
| Even if you _are_ paying, you can _still_ be the product,
| as long as media can make even more money out of it. I
| mean, why wouldn't they? More money is more money.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| A fair point, but I don't think the concession is worth
| what you get out of it. A citizen whose sole news source
| is Fox is considerably less informed than a viewer who
| might watch exclusively CNN (or possibly even nothing at
| all, see [1])
|
| Fox News really is worse, and while there may be lessons
| learned there which can be applied to the other outlets,
| such as insisting on clearer labeling of opinion content
| vs reporting, I think it's an all-lives-matter-style
| distraction to throw up our hands and say there's nothing
| that can be done and they're all equally bad because it's
| a problem inherent in the medium.
|
| [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/study-watching-fox-
| news-make...
| ajoy wrote:
| We (The Factual: https://www.thefactual.com) have been trying
| to solve this issue.
|
| Our tech ingests articles from different publishers, groups
| them into topics based on the story they are covering, then
| analyze and score them based on how informative they are and
| present curated articles as best perspectives from
| left/right/center.
|
| All of this automated and running continuously on our website :
| https://www.thefactual.com/news and also in our app : iOS
| (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-factual/id1537259360) and
| Android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=group.th
| efactu...)
|
| Do check us out.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| I've found that looking at higher level, more commentary based
| news sources helps.
|
| Some examples: Persuasion, The Dispatch, The Bulwark, and an
| assortment of substacks.
|
| I get my news from Reuters with a sprinkling of
| fox/nytimes/reddit thrown in
| lostapathy wrote:
| > They dont talk about or even cover the same things,
|
| This is a big issue. But at the same time - it's not clear to
| me what the solution when every side is pushing hype rather
| than news. How do you publish an "opposing take" on something
| the other side is publishing that isn't real in the first
| place? It's not ideal to even acknowledge lies.
| bnralt wrote:
| I highly recommend experimenting with turning off the news
| completely for a time. You quickly find that the vast majority
| of "Breaking News!" that gets shoveled out simply isn't that
| important for most people, and is there mainly to feed a news
| addiction.
|
| Alternatively, use the Internet Archives to read news from this
| date from 2-5 few years ago. You'll probably find that most
| aren't worth reading, which gives you a good sense of how
| important the news you read today will seem in just a few
| years.
| Grim-444 wrote:
| "They dont talk about or even cover the same things" - this is
| the number one fake news tactic in play. I'm not sure what to
| call it, but it's a 2x2 matrix -
|
| If a group is left-leaning, they'll report on everything good
| about the left and everything bad about the right, If a group
| is right-leaning, they'll report on everything good about the
| right and everything bad about the left. For example, you'll
| almost never see CNN write an article critical about Democrats,
| and you'll almost never see Fox News write an article critical
| about Republicans. So you end up without much overlap between
| the two.
|
| They'll only report on the same things when those common things
| are important enough / loud enough to where they can't ignore
| it, or when they're able to put their own political
| interpretation on it when telling the viewer what to think.
| shrimpx wrote:
| I don't mind that kind of bias, if your 2x2 matrix was right
| -- that each of them reports everything good about their side
| and everything bad about the other side. If that were true,
| you could sum them up and have a pretty balanced total news
| source.
|
| The problem with Fox News and CNN is the biased attitude.
| They report everything good as _amazing_ and everything bad
| as _horrible_. The anchors are "performing" the news,
| telling you with their tone, body language and vocal
| intonations how disgusted you should be or how much you
| should be rejoicing. This phenomenon has infiltrated the NYT
| and WSJ as well, and I've stopped reading both.
| muyuu wrote:
| Not only that, they go out of their way to police the topics
| in forums and social media.
|
| Mentioning the wrong topics gets people labelled as pushing
| "talking points" or "conspiracy theories" with total
| disregard to the factual reality behind. It doesn't serve the
| partisan narrative and that's all one needs to know.
| Insisting will get your suspended, muted, banned or
| deboosted/shadowbanned.
| pydry wrote:
| >For example, you'll almost never see CNN write an article
| critical about Democrats, and you'll almost never see Fox
| News write an article critical about Republicans. So you end
| up without much overlap between the two.
|
| Except for everything Democrats and Republicans agree upon.
|
| Which is a _lot_.
|
| There's a massive amount Americans miss because thet witness
| very lively debate on very circumscribed topics.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > For example, you'll almost never see CNN write an article
| critical about Democrats,
|
| Not true at all. Here's one critical about Democrats as being
| too beholden to progressives:
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/11/opinions/democratic-party-
| pro...
|
| Here's one critical about the current Democratic VP largely
| for being too concerned with (and ultimately ineffective at)
| undercutting Republican talking points.
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/11/opinions/democratic-party-
| pro...
|
| And that's just one day.
|
| Except for stuff responding to new Trump-era revelations,
| they don't seem to have much current criticism of Republicans
| not buried within criticism of how Democrats deal with them,
| representing their actual bias in critical opinion coverage,
| in that it focuses on people currently in power.
|
| (When Republicans held the White House and the Senate, they
| had more direct criticism of Republicans.)
| [deleted]
| Aunche wrote:
| CNN is a bad example of a left leaning news outlet. They're
| quite centrist. The reason mainstream media appears to be
| left biased is because people use the government's
| political center as their frame of reference rather than
| that of the populace. The media caters to political beliefs
| of actual average American. The federal government caters
| to the center of voting power, which is heavily skewed
| towards smaller states which tend to be more conservative.
| This disparity is what people perceive as "left bias".
| bosswipe wrote:
| Super interesting take, thanks! I've always been so
| confused by conservatives labeling all mainstream media
| as left-biased when I, as a liberal, see them as centrist
| or conservative.
| axguscbklp wrote:
| Studies show that "left bias" in mainstream media is much
| greater than it is among Americans in general. For
| example:
|
| "Compared with 2002, the percentage of full-time U.S.
| journalists who claim to be Democrats has dropped 8
| percentage points in 2013 to about 28 percent, moving
| this figure closer to the overall population percentage
| of 30 percent, according to a December 12-15, 2013, ABC
| News/Washington Post national poll of 1,005 adults. This
| is the lowest percentage of journalists saying they are
| Democrats since 1971. An even larger drop was observed
| among journalists who said they were Republicans in 2013
| (7.1 percent) than in 2002 (18 percent), but the 2013
| figure is still notably lower than the percentage of U.S.
| adults who identified with the Republican Party (24
| percent according to the poll mentioned above)."
|
| (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
| fix/wp/2014/05/06/ju...)
|
| "Some of the professional groups have clear liberal
| leanings. People who work in the news media are almost
| exclusively donors to liberal candidates:"
|
| (https://www.businessinsider.com/charts-show-the-
| political-bi...)
| jfrunyon wrote:
| The percentage of the American population which is either
| Democrat or Republican is consistently[1] well[2]
| above[3] 90%[4], so I'm not sure where you're getting
| 54%.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_pres
| identia... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_
| States_presidentia... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2
| 016_United_States_presidentia... [4] https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The percentage of the American population which is
| either Democrat or Republican is consistently[1] well[2]
| above[3] 90%[4]
|
| Even if you read "voting for a D or R candidate in a
| Presidential general election" as "being a D or R", and
| "eligible voters" as "the American population", both
| which are clearly and wildly wrong, your evidence _still_
| doesn't support your claim, because it has 98.2% of 66.2%
| = 65% of eligible voters, which is not "well above 90%".
| axguscbklp wrote:
| Those links show that out of all Americans who vote in
| presidential elections, well above 90% vote for either a
| Democrat or a Republican. However, that does not mean
| that well above 90% of Americans are either Democrats or
| Republicans.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| People lie. I'm not sure why you expect the media to sell
| to people's lies instead of selling to people's actions.
|
| PS Americans also overwhelmingly vote either Democrat or
| Republican in non-presidential elections, even down to
| the city council level.
| axguscbklp wrote:
| What do you mean by "people's actions"? If you mean
| voting, well, Democrats and Republicans get about the
| same number of votes in presidential elections, which
| does not seem to justify your view that "left" media bias
| just reflects the political leaning of the average
| American.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > PS Americans also overwhelmingly vote either Democrat
| or Republican in non-presidential elections
|
| Americans overwhelmingly _abstain_ rather than voting for
| any of the offered candidates, Democrat, Republican, or
| independent or minor party, in non-Presidential
| elections. 2018 had the highest midterm turnout since the
| before the Reagan era, and it reached the whole way up to
| 49%.
| dlp211 wrote:
| Stated vs. Revealed preferences.
| tdfx wrote:
| COM Library has a ranking system for news organizations
| that seems to line up pretty well with my personal
| observations [0]. They show CNN as centrist but left-
| leaning. This agrees with my personal experience, except
| for news stories in the "woke" category, where CNN seems to
| skew far left.
|
| [0] https://libguides.com.edu/c.php?g=649909&p=4556556
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This agrees with my personal experience, except for
| news stories in the "woke" category, where CNN seems to
| skew far left.
|
| You do realize that "woke" as a pejorative originated in
| left-wing criticism of bourgeois, centrist identity
| politics?
|
| So, unless you are saying that CNN has joined that
| leftist critique, I think what you really probably mean
| is that CNN represents a _strongly-held centrist_
| position in that area, not a far-left one.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The recuperation of leftist language critiquing
| capitalist politics as pejorative to anti-capitalist is a
| sight to behold.
| arecurrence wrote:
| Ground News points this out every week in their Blindspot
| newsletter.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I do the same thing, and I've noticed that this "they don't
| present the other side" thing is getting worse with time. I
| recently read [this HuffPo article][0] about how _only 1% of
| American film characters are identifiably Muslim_ ; however,
| nowhere in the article does it even mention the share of
| Americans who are Muslim, nor the share of movie characters
| that are of other religions. These things are certainly obvious
| and important points of context, but the article doesn't even
| broach them.
|
| (According to [1], only 1% of Americans are Muslim, and 60+%
| are Christian--and I would be _shocked_ if 60+% of American
| film characters are identifiably Christian never mind [ _how
| they are portrayed_ ][2])
|
| Worse, this seems to be increasingly prevalent in the academy
| as well. Indeed, the study cited in the article (from
| University of Southern California's Annenberg Inclusion
| Initiative) also doesn't mention these points of context and
| the paper is pretty overtly propagandist.
|
| [0]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/movie-characters-muslim-
| riz-a...
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States
|
| [2]: http://decentfilms.com/articles/hollywood-religion-problem
| nkingsy wrote:
| American media is a global industry and is serving a customer
| base of much more than the US population.
| Server6 wrote:
| True, but they're making most of their money from western
| whiter countries. Which is reflected in their actors/stars.
| However this is already changing and will get better as the
| global market continues to expand.
| stevenicr wrote:
| not sure this is correct. We may need to get actual
| numbers or divide up 'film / media' into different
| segments..
|
| I recall seeing news about big movies, eg transformers
| and others where in order to satisfy the global market,
| ie China, decisions needed to be made.. and given that
| many of those markets appear to be more racist/anti-
| muslim, (obv not 100, but majority I believe)
|
| and your comment seems to be suggesting [hope] that
| things above "will get better as the global market
| continues to expand." -
|
| I'm not chiming in to say this or that is a good or bad
| thing, just trying to clarify that some things may make
| one think catering to broader global markets may not make
| "western whiter countries" more anti-racist or whatever
| is being suggested as 'changing and will get better' - if
| that is the perspective being considered for 'get
| better'.
|
| There are studies showing "diversity" on movie posters
| hurt sales abroad - and of course there has been local
| pushback for whitewashing things for increased sales -
|
| Unless we are talking about gov funded wokeness spreading
| where making money is not a goal. But I did not get that
| impression from the thread here.
| dandellion wrote:
| As a non-american, it's not getting better, it's just
| getting weird. Like this parallel fantasy reality that
| americans have come up with and convinced themselves that
| it's what the world outside looks like, that actually has
| nothing to do with anywhere on earth.
| iagovar wrote:
| It's funny when somewhere in your country is portrayed in
| an american movie or series.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| This is how Americans who aren't from LA or NYC feel as
| well.
| dandellion wrote:
| As a non-american, american media does a terrible job of
| representing anything outside america, so if that's the
| reason I would really appreciate if they could stop it...
| coding123 wrote:
| What are you talking about - We have tons of coverage of
| the following countries in our movies: Genovia, Aldovia
| AND Belgravia
| wincy wrote:
| Wakanda looks so nice people were trying to book
| vacations to go visit!
| dandellion wrote:
| And don't forget my favourite: Macedonia.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I thought Black Panther's portrayal of Wakanda was pretty
| accurate...
| bart_spoon wrote:
| They generally do a terrible job representing anything
| inside America as well.
| mc32 wrote:
| Isn't all feature film global at this point? Are there
| producers in Japan or China who'd say, no I do not want my
| film exported.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Interestingly Mormons are 2% of the US population (twice the
| Muslim %), and I can't think of a single openly Mormon
| character in any TV show I've ever seen.
| 8note wrote:
| Mitt Romney shows up in all kinds of tv shows on fox news
| nitrogen wrote:
| There have been movies, such as The Other Side of Heaven.
|
| But as a former Mormon myself I think entertainment is more
| interesting if it focuses on what we have in common despite
| our differences, rather than focusing solely on amplifying
| differences.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Cole on House, Big Love?
| imbnwa wrote:
| They have a whole state to themselves and they're pre-
| dominantly white. Mormons also produce their own media,
| they're in the middle of making a multi-part Book of Mormon
| series. They're an insuluar sect much like Jehovah's
| Witnesses, so they're not _demanding_ mainstream
| representation on principle, much like the Amish.
|
| Not to say you're not touching on the question of _why_
| we're so enthusiastic in media representation for those of
| the Islamic faith however, but the Mormons are a pretty
| open and shut case
| epage wrote:
| The Expanse had a generation ship for Mormons and a main
| character has a conversation with a Mormon on a transport
| ship.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Aside from HBO's 'Big Love' I can't think of any non-comedy
| fictions shows featuring Mormons.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Starship Troopers but they were more of a "Black man dies
| first in horror movie" type role.
| [deleted]
| chromaton wrote:
| Gary on South Park. Of course, that was 18 years ago.
| There's also a few very minor Mormon characters on The
| Expanse.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| The Mormon characters are minor, for sure, but their
| mission plays a huge plot role. The Nauvoo!
| chromaton wrote:
| Yeah, there's also a lot of Mormon-themed artwork and
| symbolism on the Nauvoo as well.
| mmsimanga wrote:
| Good catch. As someone who works with data for a living I
| know that just about all stats need context to be meaningful.
| I notice a lot of stats in news given without context as you
| have noted.
|
| When analyzing data typically the first thing you do is take
| out the outliers and then focus on the remaining data. News
| outlets do the opposite, the take the outlier and make it the
| headline story and ignore the other 99% of the data.
| sandyarmstrong wrote:
| > I would be shocked if 60+% of American film characters are
| identifiably Christian
|
| How often do you see Christmas used as a plot device? Or a
| church used as a setting? Or a priest character?
|
| I would be shocked if context didn't imply that > 95% of
| American film characters are Christian.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| Certainly not in 60+% of films. And since when is Christmas
| only celebrated by Christians in the West? It became fully
| commercialized and secularized decades ago. Its even a
| major holiday in Japan these days, where less than 1% of
| the population is Christian.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Christmas and church settings don't indicate Christianity.
| Most secular Americans celebrate Christmas or attend
| weddings and funerals in Christian churches or officiated
| by Christian clergy. Indeed, for a very long time it was
| the norm to have one's own funeral or wedding at a church,
| officiated by Christian clergy, even if one was atheist or
| agnostic and even today it's quite common.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Guilty as charged. I'm an atheist (well, I'm ignostic,
| which is similar but I consider the distinction
| important), my wife is agnostic, but we had our wedding
| in a church officiated by a Christian minister.
|
| Why? Because my wife liked the venue, we both wanted a
| traditional ceremony, and we thought it would be a better
| fit with our families, many of whom are devout
| Christians.
| mc32 wrote:
| To emphasize this, some Japanese have "church
| weddings"... sometimes with a fake minister... except
| they are not, in the great majority of cases, Christian,
| or even religious at all. The just like a ceremony. It's
| kind of exotic, I guess.
|
| Fortunately the Japanese don't feel like they are
| othering, or appropriating or anything like that. They
| just want to enjoy something, something different.
| sandyarmstrong wrote:
| Ask people of a non-Christian faith if they agree. All
| the replies here saying Christmas isn't Christian seem to
| be from people with a Christian upbringing, even if they
| are atheist or "secular".
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| We're not debating whether or not everyone of every faith
| celebrates secular Christmas, but whether or not
| celebrating secular Christmas is sufficient to identify a
| character as Christian. By your own admission ("All the
| replies here saying Christmas isn't Christian seem to be
| from people with a Christian upbringing, even if they are
| atheist or secular"), it is _not_ sufficient.
|
| Even if no one of a non-Christian background celebrated
| secular Christmas, "celebrating secular Christmas" still
| wouldn't suffice to identify someone as Christian, but
| rather as either Christian or "from a Christian
| background".
|
| And of course lots of people from Jewish, Hindu, secular
| etc backgrounds also celebrate secular Christmas, as many
| have attested in this thread.
| sandyarmstrong wrote:
| > We're not debating whether or not everyone of every
| faith celebrates secular Christmas, but whether or not
| celebrating secular Christmas is sufficient to identify a
| character as Christian.
|
| Maybe that is what you're debating. It was only one
| example that I gave in my original post.
|
| It seems to me that a lot of people who grew up in the
| dominant culture of the US are jumping to defend
| Christmas as a wholly secular thing. It would be
| interesting to watch if it weren't so typical.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| This is true, but also underlines the very point the
| article was making. In the United States, Christianity is
| the default. Characters are typically only identified if
| the stray from the default. Furthermore, given the sheer
| imbalance of identities in the country, it's a
| disingenuous to claim that say Batman is equally likely
| to be Zoroastrian, because he's not explicitly stated not
| to be.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > This is true, but also underlines the very point the
| article was making. In the United States, Christianity is
| the default. Characters are typically only identified if
| the stray from the default
|
| But Christianity _isn't_ the default, _secular_ is the
| default. When there are identifiably Christian
| characters, they are often some cringey stereotype (the
| religious clique in "Easy A", for example). See also the
| link about "Hollywood's religion problem" for many more
| examples. Hollywood clearly, starkly distinguishes
| between "normal" characters and "Christian" characters.
|
| > Furthermore, given the sheer imbalance of identities in
| the country, it's a disingenuous to claim that say Batman
| is equally likely to be Zoroastrian, because he's not
| explicitly stated not to be.
|
| Right, because that would be unjust. Justice demands
| proportional representation, and you can't have
| proportional representation and equal representation. If
| I create a cult tomorrow I shouldn't have the same
| representation as Atheists or Hindus, who constitute a
| much larger share of the country.
| elefanten wrote:
| Christmas doesn't signify religion in America. And I can't
| remember the last time I saw church in a movie that wasn't
| a comedy using the setting for a set-up
| apocolyps6 wrote:
| Do your Muslim friends celebrate Christmas? Do your
| Jewish friends?
|
| Most non-religious americans are something like Christian
| Atheists. They don't believe in a god, but their
| worldview, ethics, and cultural norms are still
| originating in Christianity.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| That clearly isn't what GP was taking about. The point
| was about what % of film characters are identifiably
| Christian, not what % of film characters hail from a
| country with Christian heritage.
| Epenthesis wrote:
| My Hindu American family "celebrates" Christmas
| (tree/lights/presents/big meal)
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| I watched a Christian apologist recently who said
| basically this.
|
| He was debating a $social-leftist and basically said:
|
| >You say you're not religious, but the things you hold as
| value, the trappings of your ethics, and your decision
| making process seems to be more aligned with judeo-
| christianity than your self-proclaimed naturalist
| atheism"
| damagednoob wrote:
| I watched something similar recently and I don't
| understand why it's so difficult for atheists to concede
| this point. I'm happy that Jesus argues for separation of
| church and state ("Render unto Caesar") and I don't need
| to find a non-religious inspiration. There are many
| examples of Christians coming up with good ideas. The
| fact that they did/do means very little in the debate
| regarding the existence of God.
| munificent wrote:
| _> Most non-religious americans are something like
| Christian Atheists. They don 't believe in a god, but
| their worldview, ethics, and cultural norms are still
| originating in Christianity. _
|
| I like latkes and challah, but that doesn't make me
| Jewish.
|
| All groups influence culture and culture influences all
| individuals. But simply having adopted a piece of culture
| that came from some group does not make one a member of
| that group.
|
| My wife and kids and I all celebrate Christmas. We are
| not Christian.
|
| If celebrating Christmas made one Christian, then anyone
| including a yule log in their festivities must also be
| pagan.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Right. People in English-speaking countries observe Sun
| Day, Moon Day, Tiw's Day, Odin's Day, Thor's Day,
| Freyja's Day, and Saturn's Day every single week.
|
| That doesn't make them Germanic (or Roman) pagans. Ask
| the average person about Thor and you'll probably get
| something based on the comic book character. Ask him
| about Tiw and you're gonna get a blank look.
| takeda wrote:
| To add to it, even the Christmas tree doesn't originate
| from Christianity. It was just adapted from a pagan
| tradition. The Santa Claus image was created by
| commercialism. The original saint Claus is celebrating on
| December 6 (or 7, don't remeber exactly) and that was a
| priest that anonymously was donating toys to children in
| orphanages and later was discovered.
|
| Easter Bunny is another commercialisation of a Christian
| holiday, which has nothing to do with rabbits. It is a
| day, where Christians celebrate Jesus raising from grave
| after being crucified.
| twalla wrote:
| IIRC the pagan origins of Christian holidays and symbols
| have their roots in making conversion more palatable for
| conquered Roman subjects. Christmas and Easter replace
| the solstice celebrations, the Christmas tree came from
| placing evergreen sprigs in the home during winter and
| the rabbit is a fertility thing.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I've always heard it was to make conversion to
| Christianity more palatable, full stop. At least in
| Western Europe most of the conquering was done before
| Rome was Christianized, and they never conquered the
| Germanic peoples who are the pagans who give us most or
| all of the familiar Christian trappings (Yule logs,
| Christmas in December, the word "Easter", Christmas
| trees, elves, etc).
|
| The pre-Christian Romans made conquering easier by
| bringing Roman luxuries (baths, food, wine, commerce,
| citizenship, etc) to conquered peoples and by making
| examples out of those who resisted, but Christianity was
| not part of the package.
|
| Not sure what the Eastern Roman empire was doing with
| respect to conquering and Christianizing, but if they
| converted anyone, I don't think those pagans contributed
| imagery back to Christian holidays as we know them in
| America.
|
| That said, after the Western Roman empire collapsed there
| were lots of European powers who used conversion as part
| of their larger subjugation toolbox.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > IIRC the pagan origins of Christian holidays and
| symbols have their roots in making conversion more
| palatable for conquered Roman subjects.
|
| The same is true, _mutatis mutandis_ , of the retained
| (though radically transformed) Christian elements of
| consumerist celebrations like the modern American
| Christmas.
| krapp wrote:
| The rabbits (and probably the name Easter), I believe
| (someone will correct me if I'm wrong) come from the
| pagan festival of Eostre, a goddess symbolized by a
| rabbit. Although I've also heard that Easter comes from
| Ishtar, so who knows?
|
| Easter definitely didn't originate with Christians,
| though. One of the things that made Christianity's spread
| so successful (apart from having the force of the great
| colonial empires of the Western world behind it) was the
| strategy of syncretizing and recontextualizing local
| pagan rituals, holidays, deities and (for better or
| worse) entire mytho-histories around Christianity.
| munificent wrote:
| _> The Santa Claus image was created by commercialism. _
|
| We Americans celebrating Christmas are _definitely_
| celebrating commercialism, though, so that checks out. :)
| andredz wrote:
| With regards to the pagan origins of Christmas I learned
| quite a bit by reading some of the linked articles here
| (such as the one about Yule or about the Christmas tree):
| https://historyforatheists.com/2020/12/pagan-christmas/
|
| Some quotes from the one about Christmas trees:
|
| >People in the twenty-first century have this bizarre,
| instinctive notion that any custom we have today that we
| cannot rationally explain must be a survival of pre-
| Christian paganism. The idea of "pagan survivals" is so
| widespread that it has basically become the de facto
| explanation to any puzzling or peculiar tradition. People
| essentially just answer the question "Why do we decorate
| trees at Christmas?" with "I don't know, so it must be
| paganism."
|
| >Most of the customs, traditions, and ideas we associate
| with the modern, secular Christmas are products of the
| past two hundred years. If you want to blame something
| for "ruining" Christmas and "taking Christ out
| Christmas," you would be closer to the mark blaming
| twentieth and twenty-first century American capitalism
| than seventh-century BC Canaanite paganism (or whatever
| other variety of paganism you happen to fancy).
| tremon wrote:
| December 6th:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas
|
| > Santa Claus evolved from Dutch traditions regarding
| Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas). When the Dutch established
| the colony of New Amsterdam, they brought the legend and
| traditions of Sinterklaas with them
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| About half of my Jewish friends celebrate Christmas. And
| my one Muslim friend (that immigrated from a Muslim
| majority country) celebrates it too. He also has gotten
| into the habit of saying "god bless" because I guess they
| say that a lot in Georgia?
| totalZero wrote:
| I mean, Muslims believe in God too.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Yes, but they don't celebrate Christmas.
|
| Anyway, Americanized Muslims tend to be quite "moderate",
| that is, they are either apostates or firmly on the path
| to becoming apostates. I don't know if this follows from
| selective immigration or from social pressure to
| assimilate into the liberal civic religion, but it is so.
| So it's not surprising that they would embrace the
| secularized counterfeit that many Americans already
| celebrate, just as they probably end up watching the high
| feast known as the Superbowl and joining into the
| national prostration before the Almighty Game.
| mc32 wrote:
| Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese I know do have a Xmas,
| most of whom are not Christian.
|
| And if I know someone celebrate Chanukah I'll say happy
| Chanukah. Is that wrong?
| echelon wrote:
| Atheists celebrate Christmas. With family, gifts,
| Christmas songs and atmosphere. Just no God or Jesus.
|
| Christmas is _incredibly popular_ in Japan, which isn 't
| very Christian at all.
| ardit33 wrote:
| yeah man, stop talking about all of the non-christians
| like you know them all.
|
| My family does, and we are all mixed. Also the xmass
| tree, was called New Years's Eve tree, and it went up
| every year, right before xmass.
|
| This was even in communist Albania, where religions were
| forbidden. The only thing we changed, was to open
| presents in 1st of jan, instead on the 25th.
|
| The whole xmass tree thing tradition, is an old pagan
| one, and existed way before jessus or whoever was born.
| It is a indo-european thing.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| So what's the argument here? Christians are represented
| proportionately in films if we count secular Americans as
| Christians?
| wutbrodo wrote:
| My parents are non-Christian immigrants to the US and we
| celebrated Christmas every year growing up. Have you
| really not seen this? Especially in the cosmopolitan
| urban environments that Christmas movie settings skew
| towards?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Christmas doesn't signify religion in America
|
| Yes it does...
| cm2012 wrote:
| I grew up going to a school maybe 20% practicing
| Christian. Everyone celebrated christmas, got and gave
| gifts, had family dinners around then, etc.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, dude, that's what it means to have a defacto state
| religion: it becomes the default thing. A classic
| characteristic of state religions is that even those who
| do not believe will institutionally practise. So, for
| instance, even Buddhists in Jordan must not eat in public
| during Ramadan.
|
| Considering everything I was told about America, I was
| surprised to see that it is a Christian nation (I
| expected it to not be because of nominal separation of
| church and state). Instead, many laws are based on
| Christianity, leaders invoke the Christian god for
| justification for actions, and the state has official
| holidays for Christian events.
|
| Modeling America as a Christian nation led to a more
| accurate prediction of reality.
|
| This has led to less surprise on my part than most to see
| that local governments were amenable to bending to
| Christianity a lot more than others. SF has recently made
| specific parking laws for churches that close the
| streets. No such policy exists for synagogues, in
| comparison. Some were surprised. But I wasn't. I expect
| governments at all levels in America to act to privilege
| Christianity.
|
| After all, in action, America is a Christian nation. In
| practice, it is indistinguishable from the UK which has a
| de-jure (and de-facto) state religion.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > Buddhists in Jordan must not eat in public during
| Ramadan
|
| That is very different! Buddhists in Jordan a legally
| barred from doing so, whereas there's no law demanding
| that you actually celebrate Christmas.
| renewiltord wrote:
| There _is_ a law that Federal government workers must not
| work during Christmas, however. You are legally barred
| from having employees who report in to you come in on
| Christmas. If you're a Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist you
| will be given Christmas to celebrate. Come on, this is
| blatantly non-separation-of-church-and-state.
|
| It's not anything that upsets me but observationally it
| is so obvious. M
| hindsightbias wrote:
| > SF has recently made specific parking laws for churches
|
| Context matters.
|
| This is not a general xtian supremacy thing. It is a
| unique historical thing with SF AA Baptist churches whose
| populations were gentrified out of their neighborhoods.
| Their churches remained and they commute from all over
| the Bay Area to attend Sunday mass.
|
| Cops and neighborhoods accomodated this practice, but the
| latest generation of gentrifiers whined and complained as
| they are wont to do so the Supervisors got involved.
| renewiltord wrote:
| To be clear, I do not live in that neighbourhood and I
| don't really mind the America-as-moderate-theocracy
| system in place. You won't see me whining about the
| Christian median parking. I have a motorcycle. SF's
| traffic doesn't bother me and the numerous curb cuts
| advantage me (cars can't park, but I can).
|
| However, the fact that this stuff happens repeatedly for
| Christian institutions and rarely (almost never, in fact)
| for others is not something that escapes me. The state
| does privilege Christianity. That makes sense since
| America is a Christian nation.
| rkk3 wrote:
| > However, the fact that this stuff happens repeatedly
| for Christian institutions and rarely (almost never, in
| fact) for others is not something that escapes me.
|
| Probably just because there are a lot of Christian
| institutions.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is transparently not the case when exceptions are
| made for a Christian institution but not a Jewish one as
| frequently occurred during COVID-19 restrictions.
| rkk3 wrote:
| I'm not familiar with this, care to cite?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > the state has official holidays for Christian events.
|
| If that alarms you, definitely do not go to Europe!
|
| That America has some unimportant vestiges of
| Christianity doesn't make it "a Christian nation" for any
| useful purposes. Yes, Trump did a bit of pandering to
| Christians which fooled precisely no one, but in any
| matter of substance America is resolvedly secular.
|
| If you want an accurate and useful model, think of
| secularism as the religion of the elite minority and the
| law of the land while Christianity is simply the most
| popular plebeian religion. Yes, in rare occasions members
| of the elite need support from the lower classes and will
| pay some vapid lip service to Christianity (consider
| Trump's comical appeal to Christians: "the Bible is the
| best book ever, probably even better than the Art of The
| Deal"), but beyond that secularism is absolutely the law
| of the land legally and culturally.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Trump is far from the only politician pandering to
| religious (especially Christian) interests, nor is he
| very representative.
|
| If Christianity wasn't a major force in America there
| would be no controversy over Roe vs Wade (which everyone
| expects to be overridden soon, thanks to Christian
| activism) nor over gay marriage.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I lived in Europe in de-jure religious nations. The fact
| that you find these comparable is exactly my point.
|
| For other readers, you can model America as parent
| comment or you can model America as I have described it.
| I think you will get more accurate predictions from my
| model but if you don't believe that, ask other outsiders
| who have moved to America (and made it their home, as I
| have). Or come here yourself.
|
| Unfortunately, American identity is tied up in these
| things. The so-called separation of church and state is
| held up on as much of a pedestal as "freedom" with
| predictable effects: evidence contra these principles is
| ignored or considered a threat. But come here and see for
| yourself.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > I lived in Europe in de-jure religious nations. The
| fact that you find these comparable is exactly my point.
|
| You're extrapolating an awful lot from a joke, but in any
| case if Europe fails your test for secularism then what
| countries are more secular? China?
|
| > The so-called separation of church and state is held up
| on as much of a pedestal as "freedom" with predictable
| effects: evidence contra these principles is ignored or
| considered a threat.
|
| The principle of separation of church and state is the
| foundation for American secularism. It's strange to me
| that you're appealing to it as evidence that America is
| particularly religious. Do you reserve "secularism" only
| for polities that forbid religious practice?
| jagrsw wrote:
| > Do you reserve "secularism" only for polities that
| forbid > religious practice?
|
| Having at least o couple of irreligious people in the
| legislative would be a good start :)
|
| https://www.pewforum.org/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/7/2018/12/...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| If by practicing, you mean "going to church weekly" then
| sure, but that is not the necessary condition for
| christmas to be a _religious thing_.
|
| It is extremely common in religions to have a large
| majority of people only doing the most visible festivals,
| not the daily/weekly things, that doesn't mean that the
| festivals are no longer religious.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Probably 70% of the student body was hindu, muslim, or
| jewish. But they still participated as an american
| cultural thing, they just didn't do anything church
| related with it.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Interesting. Where exactly was this?
|
| I grew up in a major Jewish population center in the
| United States, most jews did not celebrate christmas
| outside of the ceremonial going out for chinese food.
|
| Muslim students also did not celebrate xmas.
|
| This is an urban center on the east coast.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > ceremonial going out for chinese food
|
| Wait, what, this is a thing? I'd never heard of that.
| Like, only the Jews would do it? Or more generally it's
| common for everyone to go out for Chinese food on
| Christmas? That has to be regional, if it's true. Kinda
| funny either way.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| In the US most restaurants close on Christmas, with
| Chinese and other Asian restaurants often being the only
| ones open. So if you want to go out to a restaurant to
| celebrate there usually isn't much choice.
|
| I'm sure if more restaurants were open people would be
| celebrating at all sorts of other restaurants as well.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| At least where I grew up, it was more than just "these
| are the restaurants that are open." Perhaps it started as
| that but it is now a cultural tradition.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Oh yes, it is definitely a thing - and really only a
| jewish thing that I know of. I grew up in the mid-
| atlantic, but it is definitely also a thing in NYC.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_American_Chinese_res
| tau...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That is fascinating, thanks for sharing it. I hadn't
| heard of it, but then again, I don't have any interaction
| (that I am aware of, at least) with Jews -- everyone in
| my circle is a Christian or impersonates one.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Eastern queens NYC. A good 70% of the teens with me were
| south asian.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > I grew up in a major Jewish population center in the
| United States, most jews did not celebrate christmas
| outside of the ceremonial going out for chinese food.
|
| Going out for Chinese food is literally a tradition of
| said holiday. It's as much as celebration, as having a
| family gathering for atheists "for Christmas".
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Eh, not really. Christmas may have been a product of
| Christianity (hijacking a pagan holiday...), but it has
| long since become just a western culture tradition with
| no particular religious significance for a lot of people.
| Most Christmas movies don't even mention Christ.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > it has long since become just a western culture
| tradition with no particular religious significance for a
| lot of people
|
| I think that people have a tendency to underestimate the
| degree of Christian influence on their way of life, and
| the vast majority of people who practice xmas are
| Christian, even if they are not weekly church attendees.
|
| I was raised in an atheist household, we definitely
| viewed Christmas as a religious thing. Most of the songs
| are very religious, people go to mass, etc.
| bobthechef wrote:
| > I think that people have a tendency to underestimate
| the degree of Christian influence on their way of life
|
| People are like fish, they often don't know what water
| is. They don't realize that their views are usually
| defections (of defections of...) from Christianity and
| therefore essentially Christian heresies. In similar
| fashion, Christmas is first and foremost a religious
| holiday. The secular version is neuters and changes the
| original to better conform with secular expectations
| while trading on the energy and raison d'etre of the
| original in some weird way. If you think about it, the
| secular version drained of the original religious content
| is ridiculously stupid, like all those Soviet attempts to
| create substitutes for the originals. Call it an idol
| that will one day fade because Christmas is not very
| sustainable when cut from its life giving root for very
| long.
| [deleted]
| solidasparagus wrote:
| Christmas is a very secular holiday. There is still mass,
| but in American culture the religious aspect of Christmas
| is minuscule in comparison to the secular and consumerism
| aspects. "Most of the songs are very religious" is just
| not true for most mainstream Americans.
|
| For most Americans Christmas is about family, Santa
| (Coke's version), Reindeers, Elves, Trees, and Gifts. And
| then local or family traditions which may include mass,
| but for most, it does not.
|
| If you'd like some stats - 90% of Americans celebrate
| Christmas. Fewer than half of Americans consider
| Christmas primarily a religious holiday. Among younger
| generations that is much lower (30% of Millennials
| consider it a primarily religious holiday). A majority of
| Americans say that Christmas is less of a religious
| holiday than it was in the past. Only about half of
| Americans will go to church on Christmas (compared to 82%
| that will spend time with family).[1]
|
| https://www.pewforum.org/2017/12/12/americans-say-
| religious-...
| DerekL wrote:
| > Santa (Coke's version)
|
| "The image of Santa Claus as a jolly large man in a red-
| and-white suit was the standard long before Coca-Cola co-
| opted it for their advertising."
|
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-claus-that-
| refreshes/
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > If you'd like some stats - 90% of Americans celebrate
| Christmas. Fewer than half of Americans consider
| Christmas primarily a religious holiday.
|
| Maybe we're looking at different stats. I'm looking at
| the ones you linked from Pew, which show that 61% of
| Americans who celebrate Xmas consider it to be Christian,
| down from 64% in 2014.
|
| That's supposed to convince me that it _is_ a secular
| holiday?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > I think that people have a tendency to underestimate
| the degree of Christian influence on their way of life,
|
| One is not a Christian because Christianity influenced
| their culture.
|
| > and the vast majority of people who practice xmas are
| Christian
|
| The vast majority of people on the planet are also
| Christian. Does that make "humanity" a Christian
| institution?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > The vast majority of people on the planet are also
| Christian. Does that make "humanity" a Christian
| institution?
|
| The point is that Christianity has become so normalized
| to you that you don't recognize Christian celebration as
| religious.
|
| The fact that you incorrectly think that the "vast
| majority of people on the planet are also Christian"
| proves my point.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > The point is that Christianity has become so normalized
| to you that you don't recognize Christian celebration as
| religious.
|
| So? Doesn't that just serve to lessen its overall
| religiousness? I mean, Christmas's traditions are
| themselves derived from pagan solstice celebrations.
| Wouldn't that make it a pagan institution by your
| reasoning?
|
| Much like how Christians adopted pre-existing traditions
| and slapped a Jesus-shaped label on them, people are now
| slapping a secularity (or, I would argue, consumerist)
| label on to Christmas traditions.
| bobthechef wrote:
| > Christmas's traditions are themselves derived from
| pagan solstice celebrations
|
| Well... [0]
|
| > Wouldn't that make it a pagan institution by your
| reasoning?
|
| Even when, say, a previously pagan practice is
| incorporated into Christianity, it is reinterpreted and
| given a new meaning, though probably in some way related
| to the original _by analogy_. This could be done to help
| the new converts better relate to the new faith and to
| preserve as much of the good in the previous culture as
| possible (in general, Catholicism gladly takes in
| whatever good and reconcilable there is in any
| culture[1]). In agreement with what you say, this does
| not make Christianity pagan.
|
| Whether this is the same as the secularizing or
| commercializing or "consumerizing" of Christmas, I don't
| know. Maybe you could argue that this lumpenreligions are
| doing something analogous to what I just described, but
| this seems like a flaky comparison. Besides, secularism
| is a Christian heresy, so it's more like a heretical
| version of Christmas that's being practiced. The very
| idea of "secularism" is incomprehensible outside of
| Christianity (e.g., in Islam there is only Islam and the
| world of the infidels to be conquered and brought under
| the rule of Allah; the mosque is not an institution like
| the Church, just a building for prayer and thus no
| distinction, much less separation, between Church and
| State is thinkable).
|
| [0] https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-
| edition/refuting-th...
|
| [1] You can give this ultimate justification in "logos
| spermatikos".
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > The fact that you incorrectly think that the "vast
| majority of people on the planet are also Christian"
| proves my point.
|
| No, it means that I confused the terms "majority" and
| "plurality". If 75% of the world _were_ Christian, it
| wouldn 't make "being human" a Christian institution.
| sswezey wrote:
| Christians are a plurality of the world population but
| far from a majority.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populatio
| ns
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| My mistake, but would it change the calculus if they were
| a strict majority?
| hermitdev wrote:
| > Most Christmas movies don't even mention Christ.
|
| Like "Die Hard" ;).
| JAlexoid wrote:
| It does, as much as talking about Sunday as a day off
| denotes Christianity.
|
| Did you know that Sunday is a day off in China as well?
| edoceo wrote:
| Boondock Saints. Has church, not comedy.
| nomdep wrote:
| Daredevil (a Netflix series)
| cwkoss wrote:
| American Christmas is a capitalist holiday with christian
| roots. Christian Christmas is a christian holiday with
| pagan roots.
| TinkersW wrote:
| Christmas isn't Christian
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Actually, I would flip this and say that going to church
| weekly is not a necessary condition for being within
| Christian sphere of influence.
|
| Xmas is most certainly Christian.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Christian Christmas is Christian, but it is very
| different from Secular Christmas, which is practiced by
| Americans of all faiths as well as atheists and
| agnostics.
| asguy wrote:
| > Xmas is most certainly Christian.
|
| ... didn't Xmas start being used exactly for that reason,
| i.e. to separate the event from religion.
|
| I didn't grow up believing in Jesus, but I definitely
| believed in Santa Claus.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > didn't Xmas start being used exactly for that reason,
| i.e. to separate the event from religion.
|
| No, its a Christian abvreviation originating from the
| ancient use of the greek Chi (visually identical to Latin
| X), sometimes along with Rho (Latin P) -- the first two
| letters of Christ in Greek -- as an abbreviation for
| Christ. Itsl dates back to, IIRC, the 16th C with similar
| forms back to the medieval period.
|
| Its been railed about as originating in a modern attempt
| to de-Christianize (or even explicitly paganize)
| Christmas more recently, but that is completely
| ahistorical.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Whatever its origins, I have the distinct impression
| that, in addition to being a shorthand, it is used
| commonly to disambiguate Secular Christmas from Christian
| Christmas. I agree that Fox News blows this out of
| proportion and isn't correct on minutia about its
| origins, but that doesn't mean it isn't commonly used to
| distinguish between secular and religious variants which
| is IMHO the more substantial point.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| There was even a joke back in the aughties about Windows
| XP being "Jesus Christ Edition".
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > ... didn't Xmas start being used exactly for that
| reason, i.e. to separate the event from religion.
|
| No lol, that's just what Fox news said when they were
| talking about the "War on Christmas". It's a historical
| typographical thing where X was used as an abbreviation
| for Christ, you can look it up. Nothing about trying to
| separate it from religion.
| asguy wrote:
| Interesting. I don't know about Fox news, but I do know
| some secular non-Christians that were using it that way.
|
| Edit: Oh, and the Futurama episode. Does that count as
| Fox?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Xmas is most certainly Christian.
|
| The modern American form is a consumerist orgy owing more
| to Macy's, Coca-Cola, and greeting card industry than
| Christianity, that has less in common with the Christian
| holiday some of whose elements it adapted than the
| Christian holiday has to do with Saturnalia.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| There are Christian (and particularly protestant)
| cultural influences and vestiges all around us, in many
| of our attitudes towards things.
|
| The idea that the modern American lifestyle is completely
| divorced from Christianity is only possible because of
| the way in which our culture has become naturalized to
| you.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There are Christian (and particularly protestant)
| cultural influences and vestiges all around us, in many
| of our attitudes towards things.
|
| Sure, that doesn't contradict anything I said, which was
| restricted to a particular response about the modern
| American commercial festival of "Christmas".
|
| > The idea that the modern American lifestyle is
| completely divorced from Christianity
|
| ...is not one I've expressed, so if you want to argue
| against it, go respond to someone actually making that
| argument.
| carapace wrote:
| Gary Gygax on Christmas not being Christian:
|
| https://i1.wp.com/craphound.com/images/gygax-
| xmas-s.jpg?w=97...
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| > How often do you see Christmas used as a plot device? Or
| a church used as a setting? Or a priest character?
|
| Far less than 60% of the time. And you can celebrate
| Christmas without being a Christian.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Please don't read HuffPo, they're as reliable as The Daily
| Stormer.
| mc32 wrote:
| When they present those percentages does that apply only to
| Hollywood films, or films world-wide? And do foreign films
| represent their own populations proportionally, should we and
| they calculate national proportions or global proportions?
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| If one goes to the desert, they should not expect to see
| maple trees.
| clairity wrote:
| christianity, islam, hinduism, along with the eastern
| constellation of buddhism/confucianism are the 4 world
| religions. people of color are roughly 4/5 of the world
| population. even while christianity and white folks are the
| majority in the US, it makes sense numerically to have these
| other aspects of humanity well represented, in addition to
| white and/or christian. what's puzzling is the outsized
| representation of jews/judaism (also roughly 1%) in american
| media considering the stark underrepresentation of black,
| brown, and asian folks, who account for nearly half of the
| population (and growing).
| JAlexoid wrote:
| The last Transformers movie was literally targeted at
| audiences in China. So maybe it's just market forces...
|
| If you indicated that you want to see more minorities cast
| - then you have the option of going to see Moonlight, over
| La-la-land.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > even while christianity and white folks are the majority
| in the US, it makes sense numerically to have these other
| aspects of humanity well represented, in addition to white
| and/or christian.
|
| I'm not white, Christian, or Jewish, and this sentence does
| not make sense to me. Making entertaining is a business,
| and it has nothing to do with what percent of people
| worldwide have what skin color or tribal affiliations.
|
| If people making entertainment predict that they will earn
| the most money by targeting white, Christian, or Jewish
| populations, then they should if making the most money is
| their goal. Have you noticed how every big movie of the
| last 10+ years has a Chinese character? And a scene in Hong
| Kong or Shanghai? Many have Latin American characters as
| well, and Indian, and so on.
| clairity wrote:
| ah yes, the token characters, there to either not
| alienate a foreign market or to meet some superficial
| diversity quota.
|
| the point is that in a world without significant bias,
| we'd expect to see many more people of color and of other
| religions (to name just two aspects) being represented
| because of sheer numbers and because talents are
| distributed widely.
|
| but that doesn't happen in this world.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The only world without a bias might be one where everyone
| is a clone and has the same bank balance.
|
| In the real world, there will always be bias. Height,
| voice, gender, political affiliations. Forget about bias
| in US media, there are multiple Hollywood within India
| itself. And there is nothing wrong with that. They cater
| to different audiences.
|
| And it does not "make sense" for to expect a group of
| Tamil film makers to add a couple white, black, Chinese,
| and Latin American characters of their movie is about
| people who speak Tamil.
| clairity wrote:
| didn't say no bias, but rather without significant bias.
| instead, we have the narrative peddled about how
| inclusive and diverse hollywood is, when the stats speak
| for themselves.
|
| this narrative is one facet of one echo chamber, tying
| back to the original article.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" (According to [1], only 1% of Americans are Muslim, and
| 60+% are Christian--and I would be shocked if 60+% of
| American film characters are identifiably Christian never
| mind [how they are portrayed][2])"_
|
| Yet both Muslims and Christians are in the news a lot, and
| there's a lot of political discussion about them.
|
| It would be refreshing if more mainstream fictional media
| featured them in realistic, three-dimensional portrayals
| rather than as faceless stereotypes, wouldn't you agree?
| phkahler wrote:
| >> It would be refreshing if more mainstream fictional
| media featured them in realistic, three-dimensional
| portrayals rather than as faceless stereotypes
|
| Yes and no. First, so much media has fallen down when it
| comes to character development. Then there's the problem of
| big companies like Disney that are deliberately secular in
| their content.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > First, so much media has fallen down when it comes to
| character development.
|
| That's the handy thing about essentialism, you don't need
| an individual character when you have pre-packaged
| narratives about their race, gender, etc. Rather than a
| complex character, we get a canned Black character or a
| canned White character or a canned Female character or a
| canned Male character. What do you need to know about a
| person that you can't infer from their immutable
| characteristics? (:
| phkahler wrote:
| I recently read that the main character in "They Live"
| had an entire backstory that was never told in the movie.
| Someone (producer, director, ???) Told Roddy Piper to
| create a backstory for his character and he did, and he
| played that part even though it was never shared with
| anyone. I'd thought about that myself for writing - if
| you define each character ahead of time and keep their
| character in mind it will aid writing their parts so they
| are seamless and self-consistent.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > It would be refreshing if
|
| I'm more interested in them making more of an effort at a
| good story.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Yet both Muslims and Christians are in the news a lot,
| and there's a lot of political discussion about them.
|
| I'm not sure what your point is? That Muslims and
| Christians should be grateful that the news media talks
| about them a bit more than the entertainment media? To be
| clear, I'm not arguing that any particular group should
| have more representation; I'm criticizing the media for its
| increasingly propagandist angles.
|
| > It would be refreshing if more mainstream fictional media
| featured them in realistic, three-dimensional portrayals
| rather than as faceless stereotypes, wouldn't you agree?
|
| In general, yes, but that doesn't justify misleading or
| agenda-driven news media. And in any case, every time
| people try to "fix" the entertainment media, we end up with
| awful content (e.g., the GhostBusters reboot) and frankly I
| don't want to sacrifice that much quality for sake of
| representation. My wife and I were just talking about how
| many really good pre-2015 films wouldn't be made today
| because they don't thrust the characters' race, gender, etc
| into the foreground.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" I'm not sure what your point is?"_
|
| My point is that religious people, whether Christian,
| Muslim, or whatever, have a serious impact on our lives,
| and it would benefit everyone if we engaged with them as
| real people rather than fantasy stereotypes.
|
| Fictional media can help with this by giving us insight
| in to what people are really like. My contention is that
| this is more desirable than merely leaving them as
| faceless talking points in the news.
| pgsimp wrote:
| Isn't fictional media rather enforcing the stereotypes?
| And by saying there is a certain way in which media could
| portray, say, Muslims, are you not implying that there
| are certain stereotypes that apply? Without stereotypes,
| how do decide what group certain people belong to?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Ok, so are we in agreement? Your original response
| sounded like you were expressing disagreement.
| threatofrain wrote:
| IMO it takes serious anthropological commitment to have a
| non-idiot understanding of a people. I feel this
| shouldn't be an individual job. Either your entire
| community has deep, embedded relations with another
| community or it doesn't.
|
| Otherwise it's like asking for better sources to read
| about Chinese culture, or like visiting China once a year
| for vacation. You can't read your way into being
| culturally competent. You might even move your entire
| family to China, but it may only be your children who
| truly begin the road to integration. Anyone who is part
| of an immigrant community will have a story of the
| trajectory of cultural competency. It is an optimism
| which must be fulfilled by your next generation.
|
| You can, however, follow generic protocols of kindness
| whilst in ignorance.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Of course, seeing a movie on the Himalayas is no
| substitute for visiting the Himalayas, and that's no
| substitute to living in the Himalayas.
|
| But I'd rather have there be movies on the Himalayas than
| not, even when we are aware it's not a perfect substitute
| for the real thing.
|
| The perfect is the enemy of the good.
| bluGill wrote:
| The problem is that movies influence what we think the
| truth is. Is Tokyo like the Godzilla movies? I would hope
| that everything not obviously related to the fictional
| attack is realistic to how the people actually live,
| because like it or not movies influence us.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| If your only view of Tokyo is what you get through
| Godzilla movies then you definitely have a problem.
|
| The solution is better movies on Tokyo, not no movies on
| Tokyo.
|
| You're in luck, though, because there are plenty of great
| movies on Tokyo -- movies that even people living in
| Tokyo find give great insights in to their own society.
| hanselot wrote:
| I think he means Tokyo Drift.
| threatofrain wrote:
| The standard here is being barely adequate, not perfect.
| Anyone who is part of an immigrant community knows how
| hard it is to be adequate. That's why you pass on this
| optimism to the next generation while you blindly chase
| cultural fads, hoping your kids will fit in.
|
| You smile and nod your way through.
|
| Anyways, the call here is for community integration, not
| for individual action.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Are you saying fictional media are incapable of having a
| barely adequate portrayal of immigrants?
| threatofrain wrote:
| Are you integrated into an immigrant community? Are you
| part of a church that deals with immigration? Or an
| ethnic business community that is part of the immigration
| chain? Or is your community well integrated with those
| you seek to understand?
|
| Why go it alone?
|
| Is one's clarity on community affairs the difference
| between choosing WION and India Times? Or The World
| Journal?
| burnished wrote:
| for me, personally, absolutely not. I want thoughtful
| portrayal of character in media that I consume, but am in
| no way desiring yet more religious representation.
| XorNot wrote:
| This seems like an odd take to me. What is the point of
| film and fiction if not to see and experience things you
| otherwise cannot or would not?
|
| The question I have is what is being preserved by _not_
| having a diversity of backgrounds, ethnicities and belief
| systems in films?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| The parent seems to be suggesting that he doesn't want
| the emphasis to be on diversity, but rather on quality of
| characters. This doesn't imply that the characters have
| to be homogeneous.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Having "diverse" characters does not automatically make a
| movie more interesting. In fact, if you are relying on
| demographics (religion, race, sexuality) alone to make a
| character interesting, there is a very good chance the
| characters are flat, boring, and lazily written.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Of course having diverse characters does not
| automatically make a movie more interesting.
|
| But interesting movies can be made about diverse
| characters as they can about homogeneous characters.
|
| Only depicting homogeneous societies furthers ignorance
| and demonization of people who are different.
|
| Showing more diversity, in interesting, authentic, and
| deep ways is one an important way we have of striving
| towards a society where we better understand and value
| one another, and get along.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Only depicting homogeneous societies furthers ignorance
| and demonization of people who are different.
|
| I think you're arguing against a straw man. It seems
| pretty clear that no one is arguing for less diversity,
| but rather against diversity for its own sake or
| prioritizing it above all other concerns.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I haven't seen a realistic Hollywood portrayal of an
| average American family in the last 20 years because the
| secular corporate culture is so willfully ignorant. This
| is argued as being a feature of interesting content
| though since 'nothing average is interesting'.
|
| It has skewed perception, but whether that matters is up
| for debate.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| What would a realistic portrayal of an average American
| family look like to you?
| hliyan wrote:
| The other big problem is that there are important issues that
| neither side covers, except that is, until it is too late.
| [deleted]
| prepend wrote:
| I tried this for a while and then gave up and read no news
| whatsoever. For important issues, I'll hear about it from
| friends and family in person. In the few situations where I
| wanted to learn more, it was such a slog to search and filter
| through garbage to find even the most simple facts (eg, what's
| contained in recent us covid stimulus package) it's just
| reinforced my decision that putting in routine work just to
| keep up on events isn't worth it.
|
| Rage makes more ad money than facts.
| zwieback wrote:
| I read all those but consider them fairly partisan, at this
| point, e.g. they have to satisfy their clientele. I add Reuters
| and a few others like that to the mix but even that is
| difficult. Sometimes you have to search within the website to
| find coverage for specific stories and it's buried deeper down.
|
| I think the idea that media can be neutral is pretty
| unrealistic anyway. Even non-profits like PBS or government
| orgs like VOA will have their slant so it'll always require the
| extra work.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which
| makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives"_
|
| Check out Counterspin, from the media watchdog FAIR (Fairness &
| Accuracy In Reporting).[1]
|
| They monitor mainstream media and critique it from a left-wing
| perspective.
|
| [1] - https://fair.org/counterspin/
| rainingmonkey wrote:
| Seconding counterspin!
|
| I don't always agree with them ideologically, but I find it
| valuable to hear a perspective on US politics & media from
| outside the usual Right/Center-Right binary.
| takeda wrote:
| From my observation they (at least Fox News) do report on all
| the same things, they just made the articles not fitting their
| agenda buried deep in their websites, and on their TV channel
| they don't report it, or just quickly mention it on their non
| opinion segments.
| ptero wrote:
| I tried this, too and realized similar things. I then decided
| that I do not really care (at least not that much) about
| understanding which way each source wants to spin things. I
| instead want information about the world to form my own
| opinions.
|
| I started reading _international_ news. That is, focus on
| publications outside country X when reading about X.
|
| Reports from Sweden, Korea, Russia and UK (thanks google
| translate!) translated into English, awkward wording and all,
| plus a minimal dose of CNN and Fox works better for me than a
| mix of American media. Just my 2c.
|
| I might even wrap it up as a convenient page or app.
| mrfusion wrote:
| IMO Comparing viewpoints isn't as important as simply popping
| you out of the bubble. The key is to distrust the media more
| than you distrust the "other side".
| bigbob2 wrote:
| Exactly. The reality is there almost always exists more than
| two viewpoints. Maybe it's not done deliberately, but this
| false dilemma may be a big reason the echo chamber effect is
| so powerful. I'll also acknowledge it's difficult to find
| reputable sources which present more than two viewpoints.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| On Facebook it's even worse. I'd you follow every political
| party plus some popular figures on every side during an
| election, you get nothing but extremism from every side.
| Literal right wing nazis as well as "burn it all down"
| leftists, at least a few years ago before I deleted my account.
| rytcio wrote:
| I started to pay really close attention to political news back
| in 2015/2016. There was this crazy phenomenon during the Trump
| administration where both sides felt like the other side was
| living in an alternate reality.
|
| The truth is that news sources for each side presented
| completely different stories. While one side got a certain
| story, the other side was completely silent. So you had two
| groups of people who had two different sets of unrelated
| stories, and very rarely did they overlap. The media did an
| amazing job of putting each group into their own silo, making
| it impossible to discuss anything between groups or for any
| positive Trump news to ever be known to a large percentage of
| the population.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I highly recommend the _Economist_.
|
| Their articles mostly follow a dialectical format -- thesis,
| antithesis, synthesis, with about a third of the article spent
| on each one. I don't know of any other publication whose house
| style is so rigorous in this.
|
| It's also highly editorialized, but very open and transparent
| about the positions it takes -- any bias they have is in the
| open, but is in the final synthesis after they've treated both
| sides.
|
| It also doesn't fall neatly into any liberal/conservative
| divide. It tends to be socially progressive yet only interested
| in solutions that can be practically implemented, pro-free
| market but deeply concerned about externalities and the
| environment, pro-democracy but with hard-headed realpolitik.
|
| Plus probably half of what each weekly issue covers is news you
| won't find in any other American publication, at least -- it's
| a global publication and one of the best ways to simply learn
| about the entire world's political and economic news.
| bogota wrote:
| I have been reading the economist for a while now and im
| curious if you have felt a decline in quality or maybe its
| just my differing in opinion from recent articles.
|
| Mostly i feel more articles coming up that are worded in a
| way to convince the reader or a certain point without any
| data. This is something i never really noticed in the past.
|
| It might just be me though.
| akvadrako wrote:
| That certainly seems true though I wouldn't say it's
| specific to the economist. I've noticed the change in every
| publication, even stuff like the Financial Times.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| I was listening to all of _The Economist 's_ podcasts on
| Spotify until recently. I found their bias grew and grew over
| time until it was just too annoying to listen. I think they
| realized their target market was yuppie (lean strongly left)
| and made the (correct) business decision to cater to them
| exclusively.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I don't recommend using the Economist as your only source for
| international news. It's very deeply ideological in a way
| that is almost invisible if you can't easily compare it to a
| known truth.
|
| It's certainly not only interested in solutions that can be
| implemented. It's interested in solutions that enforce the
| free market, and it paints non-market solutions as
| infeasible, even though they often work and are
| implementable. But this is invisible ideology and very easy
| to mistake for pragmatism, because a pure pragmatist will
| certainly appreciate many market solutions.
|
| The final synthesis is not after having treated both sides.
| It's after having treated _two_ sides, which are editorially
| chosen.
|
| As far as dialectics it would be much more interesting if
| they could dialectically analyze their own internal
| contradictions between democracy and interventionist
| realpolitik, or between free-market fundamentalism and
| concern about externalities. But it doesn't really grapple
| with those, which is a sign that it's only applying
| dialectical thinking in convenient ways.
|
| In any case, the Economist is not any worse than any other
| mainstream publication. Often they do pretty good reporting.
| But you absolutely must not rely on it solely especially for
| foreign reporting where you don't have bearings.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| > In any case, the Economist is not any worse than any
| other mainstream publication. Often they do pretty good
| reporting. But you absolutely must not rely on it solely
| especially for foreign reporting where you don't have
| bearings.
|
| I think this is perhaps misguided. It's not fair to the
| economist to compare an article on, eg. politics in Brazil,
| against the nuanced understanding that a Brazilian citizen
| would have, because most people from North American with no
| other ties to Brazil would have no frame of reference.
|
| In other words, the choice is not, a simplified version of
| the issues vs a nuanced understanding, it's a simplified
| understanding of the issue vs none at all.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I lived in Brazil for many years and read the local news
| closely.
|
| Whenever the Economist published an article on Brazilian
| politics, it was generally far superior and far more
| insightful than anything in the local press. Which
| genuinely surprised me.
|
| Remember -- most local news sources, whether in the US
| _or_ Brazil, aren 't nuanced at all. They're surface-
| level and sensationalistic.
|
| But while Brazil has a home-grown news equivalent of
| _Time_ ( " _Veja_ "), as well as _USA Today_ ( _O Globo_
| ) it simply doesn't have any home-grown news source at
| the level of sophistication of the _Economist_ , not even
| for domestic news.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| For what it's worth, I find the same is true of Canada.
| We have some decent news organizations but whenever there
| is an Economist article about Canada, I find the insights
| a bit deeper and the context more complete.
| I-M-S wrote:
| Interesting, I am often find nonplussed by their cover of
| Canadian stories, especially by what they choose to cover
| - "buttergate" and dearth of some obscure condiment
| Asians use in Vancouver come to mind as recent examples.
|
| I find The Globe & Mail and MacLeans quite solid when it
| comes to news coverage.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| But this is a bit of a false dichotomy. There is no
| reason why you would have to limit yourself to North-
| American sources here. Plenty of news agencies around the
| world have articles in English without the anglophone
| bias it may bring.
|
| And even non-local sources may still bring some
| enlightenment. If you were trying to understand Brazilian
| politics but couldn't read any Brazilian sources, it
| would still be much better to read Anglo, European and,
| say, Middle Eastern reporting and then consider the
| differences in reporting and how they might be linked to
| their worldview.
|
| Besides, oftentimes a simplistic and biased understanding
| whose inaccuracy is not understood is much worse than no
| understanding at all. At least in the second case you are
| aware of your ignorance and will probably be more weary
| of rash action.
| pydry wrote:
| An example of such thinking from last week:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27392455
|
| It used to be a much better magazine.
| 13415 wrote:
| I don't understand why people keep arguing against journals
| or newspapers because they are allegedly ideological or
| biased. Everybody is ideological and biased. Are they
| afraid they might lose all their critical thinking skills
| once they read such a journal and somehow be influenced or
| brainwashed without realizing it?
|
| The people who recommend against those medias already
| believe of themselves that they are better informed and
| able to recognize the bias. If they are that critical, then
| they should have no troubles consuming biased and
| ideological media, and they shouldn't assume without
| further evidence that others don't have the same ability.
|
| Especially in this case it's weird, because the journal is
| called _The Economist_. Obviously you 'd expect some bias
| pro economy there.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| The Economist is one of the least biased sources of news,
| that routinely publishes letters, opeds and articles
| contradicting the sated editorial agenda. Very few other
| news sources actually do that.
|
| They're not perfect, but it sure beats NYT.
|
| If you want the optimal news coverage without needing to
| read a million sources - The Economist, Financial Times,
| WSJ and The Guardian.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| As I said, they show both sides, but they choose which
| two.
|
| They are not as forthcoming with their biases as it
| seems. They mainly set up their ideological oppositions
| as conservatives, but they in fact have a lot in common
| with them. This is especially true for foreign relations.
|
| I'd be happy to see examples of articles that go against
| the Economists' editorial agenda in profound ways and
| that pertain to foreign policy.
|
| If you want news coverage that is any good at all and you
| care about foreign affairs you absolutely have to include
| at least one and preferably two non-anglophone or non-
| western sources that preferably oppose each other.
|
| A good barometer I have for journals as far as foreign
| policy is their coverage of the Iraq War before it began.
| As far as I can see the Economist published almost
| nothing opposing it, limiting themselves to surface-level
| reporting of anti-war arguments in the sole goal of
| defeating them.
|
| I don't understand why you would limit yourself, if you
| had to choose 4 sources, to 4 centrist anglophone
| sources. It seems like a very biased media diet.
| crazygringo wrote:
| If you only read the English language then you're kind of
| mostly limited to "anglophone", no?
|
| And how can 4 "centrist" sources be "very biased"? Isn't
| it literally the opposite?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > And how can 4 "centrist" sources be "very biased"?
| Isn't it literally the opposite?
|
| No, centrism isn't the opposite of bias.
|
| Centrism is a position toward which there can bias of any
| strength. _Position_ of bias on a left /right (or any
| other ideological) axis and strength of bias or two
| orthogonal, continuous dimensions.
| crazygringo wrote:
| In theory, perhaps.
|
| But in practice "centrist" news sources are _far_ more
| likely to present _multiple_ points of view -- e.g. a
| left and right one -- while "left" and "right" news
| sources generally do not.
|
| But at a deeper level, centrism isn't really an ideology
| at all, in the way the left and right can be. You can be
| a hard-core leftist or you can be a hard-core
| conservative, but the idea of a "hard-core centrist"
| doesn't really exist.
|
| So I'd argue centrism _can_ be the opposite of bias in a
| very real way. It 's about dropping bias towards
| ideologies, and treating issues in a practical balanced
| way.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But in practice "centrist" news sources are far more
| likely to present multiple points of view
|
| No, in practice less strongly biased sources are more
| likely to present multiple points of view. Now, the same
| amount of variation can seem more diverse when you tend
| to bucket things into "left/right" binary categories, if
| the center of variation is near the point where you draw
| the line between buckets.
|
| But that's an artifact of forcing things into binary
| buckets making a centrist outlet providing center-left to
| center-right views look more diverse than a right-wing
| publication providing center-right to far-right views.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > This is especially true for foreign relations.
|
| Their latest issue literally has a massive article
| against vaccine nationalism. Their opposition to breaking
| of the Iranian deal.
|
| > A good barometer I have for journals as far as foreign
| policy is their coverage of the Iraq War before it began
|
| That's very arbitrary, considering that 18 years have
| passed. The Economist has changed hands and most of its
| staff.
|
| > 4 centrist anglophone sources
|
| 4 sources that aren't radical, have clear motivation
| behind them. Money makes people write in a particular
| way, that is easy to gauge.
|
| Also - why would I read insane crap on either side, my
| job isn't to read news all day.
| tomkat0789 wrote:
| +1. I sometimes regret subscribing to Financial Times,
| but their bias is pretty easy to identify and
| accept/reject once you understand it. I counterbalance it
| with Jacobian (far-left/communist - choose your adjective
| - news).
|
| There's an adage in math modeling/statistics: all models
| are wrong, but some are useful.
|
| Here, all newspapers are biased, but some are useful.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Jacobin, not Jacobian :)
|
| Unless there is some link between calculus and socialism
| that I have yet to discover
| [deleted]
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I read both the NYT and the Economist, they are quite
| different publications so not really comparable in my
| view.
|
| That said, the editorial stance of the Economist comes
| through extremely clearly in their writings and they are
| unabashedly economically liberal.
|
| Your characterization of NYT as being less ideologically
| diverse really doesn't match my experience.
|
| Your list is incredibly West focused and honestly not
| that ideologically diverse, with the Guardian I guess
| supposed to take the "left" position.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > NYT as being less ideologically diverse
|
| NYT has lost my subscription, after they just straight up
| started running exaggerated stories.
|
| > Your list is incredibly West focused
|
| I read in 4 languages, would you like some news sources
| in Russian, Lithuanian or Italian?
| atty wrote:
| I like their articles, but I can't recommend the Economist
| after attempting to cancel my subscription the last time I
| had one. It took me over an hour of digging through the
| website, and then phone calls where they tried to up-sell me,
| side-sell me, every-way-sell me on discounts and different
| packages no matter how many times I said I just wanted to
| cancel my account. It's possibly the worst experience I've
| ever had cancelling something.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| You do realize that people that manage the subscriptions
| aren't the same that write the content, right?
| cwkoss wrote:
| If you can't opt out of one but not the other, is this
| distinction meaningful?
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Yes. Substance is critical here.
|
| Arguing that Economist is bad, because it was complex to
| cancel your subscription (I see a massive button on my
| account page) is like arguing that a restaurant is bad,
| because they don't accept gold coins as payment.
| ngngngng wrote:
| Just use a privacy.com card and cancel the card when you're
| done with the subscription. I agree that it's trash to have
| to do something like that, but it's a pretty easy solution.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The Economist skews conservative in the sense that it is who
| I wish the conservatives were.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| They're not.
|
| To the point that they had a whole issue dedicated to the
| death of modern conservativism and how their editorial
| policy is classic liberal.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It's a semantic debate, and not a particularly
| interesting one at that.
|
| "Classical liberal" and "conservative" are not
| necessarily at odds. "Liberal" in the sense that you are
| using it is a political philosophy, conservative is just
| a slot to fill in.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| So you're using conservative(adjective to mean slow), as
| not same as Conservative(political philosophy).
|
| Because as political movements they are vey much at odds.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The Economist strikes me as very liberal, and not
| particularly conservative. And by that I mean the
| traditional definition of liberal, not Democratic-Party-of-
| the-US liberal.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Conservatism is a relative term. You can be a
| conservative right-winger, a conservative socialist, a
| conservative liberal or any other kind of conservative as
| long as your social situation fits it. Many articles by
| the Economist _are_ conservative in that they intend to
| defend and conserve the status-quo, especially when
| dealing with foreign policy.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| You're using conservativism vey much in American GOP
| understanding of the term, which has stopped being
| conservative a while ago.
|
| Conservativism is a relative position, but you can't be a
| conservative liberal.
|
| Economist literally had a massive article what is
| conservativism. And - SPOILER - UK Torries used to be
| conservative, while GOP has been reactionary/populist for
| a while now.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I am not. I don't think the GOP definition of
| conservatism admits conservative socialism.
|
| You definitely can be a conservative liberal. The
| American society by and large is founded on liberal
| principles. All you have to do to be a conservative
| liberal is to stick to 18th-19th century liberalism, in
| being a so-called "classical liberal".
|
| I agree that the GOP is reactionary more than
| conservative.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Classical liberalism - complete laissez faire market, no
| government interference and individual wealth creation.
| Today's libertarians are closest to classical liberals.
|
| The term classical liberal exists specifically, because
| conservative liberal creates a massive ambiguity.
|
| And getting back to The Economist - they aren't
| conservative at all. It's a modern liberal magazine, that
| routinely promotes wealth redistribution and support for
| the poor.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| This is a frustrating comment chain for me to read. The
| person you are responding to clearly is already familiar
| with the concept of classical liberalism, and you are
| responding as if they are a dunce.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Just because you and him are both ignorant on political
| philosophy, doesn't mean that they know anything.
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conservatism/
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Conservativism is a relative position, but you can't be
| a conservative liberal.
|
| As a relative politico-economic position, conservative is
| "defense of the position of status quo elites".
|
| In a society with a capitalist (including most modern
| mixed) economy, "conservative" in the relative sense is
| always economically liberal, because the status quo
| elites in a capitalist society are those empowered by and
| dependent on economic liberalism for their position.
|
| ("Classical conservativism" is not relative, and is
| defined relative to the pre-capitalist status quo, and is
| specifically tends to be about the defense of the titled,
| landed aristocracy. But, because that is no longer an
| established elite, there's not a lot of classical
| conservatism left to defend.)
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > upthread claim that you can't be a conservative and an
| economic liberal
|
| Nowhere I claimed that you cannot be economically
| liberal. You intentionally removed context out of my
| claim that conservatives will use economic policy to make
| an ad hominem attack.
|
| Congratulations on coming out a "winner".
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > As a relative politico-economic position, conservative
| is "defense of the position of status quo elites".
|
| That's a very narrow understanding of conservativism.
|
| > "conservative" in the relative sense is always
| economically liberal
|
| Conservatives have often taken steps to restrict market
| forces, that forced radical changes. So no - you cannot
| generalize conservativism to "economically liberal".
|
| But rather than listening to me, feel free to read up a
| scholarly article.
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conservatism/
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But rather than listening to me, feel free to read up a
| scholarly article.
|
| ...which amounts to "lots of people have used it lots of
| conflicting ways, some even denying it has meaning."
| Which, as someone with a political science degree with
| cobsiderable exposure to both political philosophy and
| more common political dialogue, I'm well aware of. If you
| accept that whole space of use and non-use, the upthread
| claim that you can't be a conservative and an economic
| liberal at the same time is more, not less, ridiculous,
| so perhaps you posted your response one comment two far
| down the thread?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Market forces _are_ radical. They can force incredible
| change. I don 't think that meddling in the market and
| supporting the status-quo are mutually exclusive.
|
| I also don't think that being economically liberal means
| letting the market destroy itself or push large societal
| changes.
| bosswipe wrote:
| I agree, it's a traditional conservative business view
| point: less regulation, free trade, free press, democratic
| government with a strong fair legal system.
| dandersh wrote:
| There are some benefits to the Economist, such as the ones
| you mentioned but I don't know that I could recommend it, at
| least without a secondary source for what you're reading
| there.
|
| I stopped reading it about 10 years ago for a few reasons.
| During the housing crisis the coverage wasn't as deep as it
| should have been and I would read articles that were nothing
| more than "nationalizing banks is bad" without explaining
| why.
|
| Their coverage of US politics was also laughably bad. During
| the push to pass the ACA they overstated the GOP's position
| and willingness to deal. I used to get it from a library a
| few towns over so I would be 3-4 weeks behind. One time I was
| reading an article where Charles Grassley was being made out
| to be principled and respected and I'm laughing because he
| had recently endorsed the death panel nonsense.
|
| I really, really wish I could recommend the WSJ, however they
| declined pretty heavily after Murdoch bought them. The number
| of long form articles declined and I was seeing less
| journalism and more ideological fluff in the non-editorial
| sections.
| jollybean wrote:
| "Their coverage of US politics was also laughably bad."
|
| It's an English magazine that's not even 'News'.
|
| Also this: "During the push to pass the ACA they overstated
| the GOP's position and willingness to deal." Is a pretty
| petty reason to not read something. Also, they could have
| been right.
|
| There are better reasons not to read the Economist.
| vincent-toups wrote:
| The Economist certainly doesn't break down easily on the
| American political spectrum, but in the more coherent
| language of higher level policy, the Economist is almost 100%
| liberal.
|
| I agree its a well put together publication, but a socialist
| (for instance) would argue it is deeply ideological.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Well, it _is_ deeply ideological. But if we 're being
| honest, everything is. The Economist is fine to read as
| long as you really deeply understand it's ideology.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| The Economist doesn't hide their ideology and advocacy.
|
| Unlike many "well renowned sources" (ahem... NYT)
| sudosysgen wrote:
| What would you think the ideology of the Economist is and
| where in their website do you get that from? Just asking
| for the sake of argument.
| I-M-S wrote:
| Socially liberal, fiscally conservative. And VERY much
| pro status quo.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| They routinely repeat that their editorial policy is
| liberal. Straight up in the articles they publish, they
| note that.
|
| I listen to their articles and they often repeat this.
|
| Literally typing this into Google would have provided you
| with the link to their website.
|
| https://www.economist.com/news/2020/06/19/frequently-
| asked-q...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| From that webpage, they say that their bias is between
| classical liberalism and centrism.
|
| Now, what is a classically liberal bias, concretely, as
| far as international affairs are concerned?
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Free trade and non-interventionism.
| jarjoura wrote:
| 100% agree, but the problem I have with the economist is that
| it requires serious mental commitment to engage with their
| articles. The meat of the story is buried deep. The only
| times I find myself capable of reading are when I'm traveling
| or commuting.
|
| The issues come weekly with really interesting topical
| stories, so I always add them to my reading todo list, but
| they just pile up so fast.
|
| This past year and 1/2 of WFH life meant, I now have about 50
| issues to go through LOL.
| anonfornoreason wrote:
| "the problem with this news source, is that it requires
| thinking to parse!"
|
| Sorry for the jab, but I think this is our current
| political situation in a nutshell - surface level,
| emotional takes are the primary way people engage in news
| and thus politics. It's hard to engage deeply, but it's
| required in order to build your own narrative, rather than
| just take on someone else's.
| rayiner wrote:
| Bloomberg and Politico are great. Also recommend TheHill and
| RealClearPolitics.
|
| There's a growing number of writers on sub stack covering the
| same issue from different sides. Often this is formulated as a
| response of rebuttal to the left-leaning media's coverage of
| the issue, but that's fine because you still get both sides of
| the story if you read things in conjunction.
| baybal2 wrote:
| When I was living in Canada, I managed to get myself to
| caucuses of Christy Clarke though I wasn't even a citizen.
| Still have few photos of me in a $20 Chinese suit feeling very
| odd in the setting of the Vancouver club.
|
| It's amazing how much scoop you can get on both the
| establishment, and the opposition from first hands.
|
| Just ask, politicians are talkative types. You are blessed with
| living in a country where you don't end on the bottom of a lake
| for asking politician a wrong question.
| dandersh wrote:
| "They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which
| makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives.
| This is the most common form of bias I've come across."
|
| I've noticed this as well. Going from WaPo to Breitbart (or
| vice versa) is like going to an alternate world. When they are
| talking about the same thing often they are doing so in a
| belittling manner
| (https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2016/11/13/safety-pin-
| ant...). I feel like the tone taken by MSM outlets like WaPo
| and the NYT has become harsher and more condescending, but it
| could just be me paying closer attention to it.
|
| Bias by exclusion doesn't get talked about as much as it
| should. One way you can tell when a media establishment doesn't
| like something is that they do what they can to ignore it.
| During the Dem primaries it had become a meme in some left wing
| communities the length the MSM was going to ignore Bernie and
| his popularity. Another popular example is how Noam Chomsky is
| largely shunned by the MSM.
| vmception wrote:
| www.allsides.com
|
| They compare similar headlines and also show you what you might
| have missed because one side doesn't even surface the headline
|
| Edit: this article is about allsides, if you read it
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Not everything is worthy of reporting. I definitely don't align
| with every NYT article that I read but that's the beauty of it
| imo.
|
| After quitting reddit I'm often oblivious to clickbait
| flamebait minutiae that my colleagues all get worked up over.
|
| Also- are there any reputable conservative print news sources?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Ive recently started reading the Tangle newsletter. It's a
| daily drop that focuses on 1 topic and provides the left, right
| and their take on an issue.
|
| https://www.readtangle.com/
| jkubicek wrote:
| I've been a subscriber to Tangle for a while now and I love
| his takes on the news.
|
| He operates just a little to the right of my own political
| persuasions, but even when I disagree with him, it's a
| respectful disagreement. Isaac's positions are nuanced, well-
| reasonsed and kind.
|
| That newsletter is _exactly_ what we all wish political
| debate in the US was like.
| zucked wrote:
| Thanks for this suggestion - Hadn't seen this before but
| previewed and really liked what I saw. Sub'd.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I unsubscribed from that newsletter a few months ago when I
| realized it was just perpetuating the problem by reporting on
| "both sides", even in cases where there wasn't much worth
| talking about on either "side". It's interesting if you would
| like to understand what propaganda the elites in each
| political party would like their base to digest, but it's not
| very interesting if you just want to see what actually
| happened on a particular day.
|
| Someone on Hacker News a while back recommended the Wikipedia
| current events portal[0] and I have to say this feels like a
| more efficient way to consume the news. It feels less tied to
| trending topics and manufactured drama, and is more centered
| on what actually happened in the world that was especially
| notable on a particular day.
|
| I feel like a lot of "news" that's reported in the American
| political media is just ideological argument, which after
| you've read the same argument for the nth time doesn't come
| across as very interesting any more.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
| arecurrence wrote:
| Ground News handles aggregating and showing each source that is
| discussing the same topic event. It has become the first site I
| go to for news and from there I can easily access virtually
| everything else while knowing what the perspective that I'm
| stepping into is in advance.
| marvindanig wrote:
| I recommend the newsletter The Flipside [1] by Annafi Wahed.
| She and the team are doing an amazing job bringing the two
| sides together.
|
| Shout out to Annafi- how are you all doing there?!
|
| [1] https://www.theflipside.io/
| wutbrodo wrote:
| It's difficult because you're so drastically limiting your
| sources (to ones that are all low-quality IMO). Every time you
| read an article and care about the topic, just.... Google it.
| There are a thousand and one independent sources, Twitter
| threads, etc etc etc. I don't consider myself to truly
| understand any binary debate unless I've heard an intelligent
| argument on both sides; it's just not my experience that any
| interesting discussion has a side that's literally meaningless
| (though I'm perhaps begging the question by not finding eg
| Pizzagate "interesting").
| jrm4 wrote:
| Right. Because of these news sources are BUSINESSES. Their job
| is to manage their own "image" to keep people around for the
| advertisers. Like it or not (me, not) this is a much easier way
| to grok what's going on with them. Their priority is viewers --
| mostly _retaining_ them. So you keep with the general idea that
| "you should tell the truth" by choosing which truths to tell,
| and then perhaps "gambling" by once in a while doing something
| outrageous that will excite the base.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which
| makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives.
|
| The coverage/focus is the perspective.
| duxup wrote:
| What is "the other side" ?
|
| Is it some fake news site, or some radio personality's take? Or
| is it some twitter spat / spam?
|
| I don't think 'the other side' is all that simple to cover /
| has an obvious quantity to include with every news article.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| You can't always even get supportive viewpoints of some
| policies. If some policy is too unpopular with the base, they
| seem to just get very quiet about it, or discuss it in very
| general terms.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Google News gives you precisely this portfolio of vendors. Why
| would anyone subscribe to a single news vendor? I'd also advise
| adding WION, Al Jazeera, Axios, and The Guardian + BBC.
| smt88 wrote:
| Google News is a dumpster fire. They include Sputnik and
| other govt propaganda sites from oppressive regimes.
| unknown_error wrote:
| It's gotten significantly worse over time. Are there better
| alternatives that collate news, by topic, from multiple
| sources?
|
| Newsvoice was an app that tried to crowdsource that job
| instead of using algorithms. It very quickly became an alt-
| right cesspool, presumably because those are the same
| people who feel disenfranchised by FAKE NEWS LIBERAL MEDIA
| and so flock to alternative communities.
| axguscbklp wrote:
| I do not see that as a problem. Most news media is at least
| to some extent propaganda and basically all of it is
| biased. At the end of the day, if I want truth then I have
| to evaluate each bit of news media for its credibility
| whether it comes from state funded propaganda or from some
| supposedly impartial organization. So what I want from an
| aggregator is to just show me relevant content without
| trying to sort it by credibility. I trust myself to sort
| news media by credibility much more than I trust any
| aggregator to sort it for me.
| unknown_error wrote:
| Al Jazeera, Guardian, BBC, etc. are all left of center by US
| standards, especially the Guardian (which is way left).
|
| Some center-right outlets that are still worth reading* (and
| I say this as a raging leftist):
|
| The Hill, National Review, Foreign Affairs, Wall Street
| Journal, The Economist
|
| *(as in they provide both informational "what's happening"
| and insightful analysis without venturing into flat out fake
| news... as long as you avoid their editorials and comments)
|
| I suppose those are "classically conservative" news outlets,
| as in "small government but with a general respect for
| evidence-based governance, science, and the truth". I don't
| know of any reputable populist-right/alt-right outlets. I
| don't know if there even IS a reputable populist-right/alt-
| right movement to begin with, but that's another discussion.
|
| Side note: Google News (as of a year or two ago, when they
| revamped their algorithms) unfortunately now also gives you a
| bunch of worthless blogs and fake news (the literal kind)
| outlets. I have hundreds of sources in my "never show this
| source" blacklist and even then it's barely usable. That
| said, it's still a useful way to see different takes on the
| same topic. Their grouping algorithm is a lot better than
| their vetting algorithm. Some of those sources should just
| not show up for anyone.
| threatofrain wrote:
| If you don't like Google News, then you can go with the
| next best -- Apple News.
|
| But then you can see the consequence. Apple News has less
| crazy but sometimes misses entire stories. Google catches
| what Apple misses. For the purposes of understanding the
| news landscape, it is more important to know that a
| conversation exists and to estimate its trajectory, than it
| is to get correct takes.
| unknown_error wrote:
| I would if Apple ever publishes it on Android. They don't
| really believe in cross-platform =/
|
| I only ever really make time for the news on the crapper.
| It's a nice way to compartmentalize. Plus it cleanses the
| soul... shit goes in, shit goes out. Current events are
| too depressing otherwise.
| makomk wrote:
| The Guardian and the BBC basically represent the same
| political faction as say the New York Times and CNN in the
| USA, except obviously with more focus on UK stories. You can
| even see the overlap when they report on stories from the
| other country.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Inter-rater reliability is very useful. You don't simply
| seek novelty, right? Not having the vocabulary to discuss
| the agreement and disagreement of the BBC or the Guardian
| would be a mistake if you want to talk about news fluency,
| as they have made a name for themselves in the west.
| unknown_error wrote:
| The BBC and the Guardian do differ on takes, but both are
| very far cry from the right-leaning outlets. Both are
| part of the same left-leaning echo chamber in that nobody
| on the right trusts either source.
|
| Good luck getting a Breitbart/Newsmax reader to switch to
| even the NY Times or Reuters or AP, much less The
| Guardian.
| danbmil99 wrote:
| I think the internet's control over what you give your
| attention to is a major factor that has not received enough
| attention, so to speak.
| nateberkopec wrote:
| > They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which
| makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives
|
| I remember seeing Twitter chatter from the right re: the Fauci
| email dump, and so I went on various liberal outlets to try to
| get the left-wing perspective, and it was complete crickets.
|
| Especially when it's something I can't just read and form an
| opinion on myself (Fauci's email dump was absolutely massive),
| I depend on journalists to accurately summarize and
| contextualize primary sources. And it's really hard to get a
| straight take when one side won't even bother to write a "this
| is a nothingburger, here's why" article.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Same for Hunter Biden scandals, AZ challenges to election
| audits, etc.
|
| I recommend Sky Australia or NTD Media for factual coverage
| of US major stories.
|
| Sky has the #1 coverage of the lab leak, with daily coverage
| for over a year and just broke the lab's on-site bat zoo.
| (The only bats in Wuhan were inside the lab.)
|
| WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Footage proves bats were kept in Wuhan lab
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANRs4DojOek
| abrahamepton wrote:
| Was it massive? My impression was that it was exactly what
| you'd expect - basically a nothingburger, a few interesting
| tidbits, most of the sensational stuff was taken out of
| context and/or already known and/or flatly misrepresented.
|
| What are some things that we should have taken away from the
| Fauci emails that the broader left/centrist medias missed?
| rhino369 wrote:
| I'm not even sure if its true since most media will barely
| engage with the issue. But Fauci appeared concerned that
| Covid-19 could potentially be the result of a gain-of-
| function research that artificially evolved another COVID
| strain to increase its effectiveness at spreading.
|
| If true, COVID-19 is the biggest scientific fuck up of all
| time. Fauci had allegedly pushed to resume funding that
| sort of research.
|
| Instead, the powers that be sort of dismissed it as a
| conspiracy theory for over a year until it was suddenly
| okay to talk about a few months ago.
|
| Again, I can't even tell if any of that is true because
| most media outlets ignored it.
| creato wrote:
| This should be trivially easy for proponents of that
| theory to prove it if that is in his emails. Just link to
| an un-edited, full context email thread relevant to that
| topic.
|
| So does this exist? If so, just share that link. If not,
| stop pretending that "media bias" is an excuse to
| continue sharing the claim surrounded by unfounded
| conspiracy thinking.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _Thanks for sharing. Yes, I saw this earlier today and
| both Eddie and myself are actually quoted in it. It 's a
| great article, but the problem is that our phylogenetic
| analyses aren't able to answer whether the sequences are
| unusual at individual residues, except if they are
| completely off. On a phylogenetic tree the virus looks
| totally normal and the close clustering with bats suggest
| that bats serve as the reservoir. The unusual features of
| the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1
| ) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences
| to see that some of the features (potentially) look
| engineered._
|
| > _We have a good team lined up to look very critically
| at this, so we should know much more at the end of the
| weekend. I should mention that after discussions earlier
| today, Eddie, Bob, Mike, and myself all find the genome
| inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.
| But we have to look at this much more closely and there
| are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions
| could still change_
|
| Page 3187:
| https://www.scribd.com/document/510220252/Fauci-
| Emails#from_...
|
| HN formatting is primitive, but the relevant sentence is
| "Eddie, Bob, Mike, and myself all find the genome
| inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory."
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| > full context email thread
|
| Nobody who is dumb enough to let such a thing come into
| existence in the first place winds up with a career arc
| that takes them through a position of substantial
| authority at the federal level.
|
| Politicians may be evil but they're not dumb.
| Impassionata wrote:
| These people here in this topic are the vectors for
| misinformation.
| abrahamepton wrote:
| Having worked at a media outlet, it's not particularly
| credible that they "ignored" it. Maybe some of them did.
|
| But if the Washington Post and Buzzfeed (who are also,
| uh, media sources themselves) FOIA'ed 3200 pages of Fauci
| emails, there's a zero percent chance - zero - that
| someone from a bunch of orgs didn't at least take a look.
|
| The reason it looks like they "ignored" it is because
| they didn't see a story to report. Which is how the
| process should work.
|
| So if there were a Fauci email saying, "Yeah, we probably
| created covid, whoops" there's a zero percent chance you
| wouldn't see at least someone linking to the email in
| question. Do you see those links? There you go.
| teclordphrack2 wrote:
| "And it's really hard to get a straight take when one side
| won't even bother to write a "this is a nothingburger, here's
| why" article. "
|
| Gets tiring responding to the rights lies.
| arcticfox wrote:
| From someone else's link, this Tangle site seems pretty
| solid. Specifically on Fauci's emails:
|
| https://www.readtangle.com/p/dr-anthony-fauci-emails-
| coronav...
| my_usernam3 wrote:
| Thanks! I was looking for a summary as well from someone
| who understands that their take is just THEIR take. I find
| it funny that it seems like the most objective people are
| those that confront their subjectivity. And Isaac Saul
| seems to do it well here.
| abrahamepton wrote:
| Just read that and...there's nothing. Fauci's one of the
| most prominent people on the planet, dealing with one of
| the worst pandemics in recent human history, so I'd
| honestly expect his emails to contain way more interesting
| stuff than what the Tangle pulled out. If that's all there
| is, no wonder it's crickets from everybody except the
| right, who have an obvious interest in discrediting Fauci
| and a notable disinclination to give a shit about facts.
| aeturnum wrote:
| >All of these make it real hard to compare viewpoints with a
| proper reference frame and even treatment.
|
| The thing I look for in good political writing isn't
| objectivity, which is mostly fictional, but an honest centering
| of perspective. This has two parts to me - a clear declaration
| about what the author thinks is the right answer and a
| commitment to making sure any opposing viewpoints are given _as
| the holders of them would give them_ before being attacked.
| Like...I do think the US Republican party is not serious about
| many of their stated concerns, but I think it 's easiest to see
| that when you contrast their stated views with their mostly
| political action.
|
| This can get a little distasteful with racist or other hateful
| views, but there's no need to go into detail with the views of
| the groups you are writing against. You just need to describe
| them in a way they can recognize before you tear them apart.
|
| So I guess I do _not_ think good writing requires even
| treatment - it just requires demonstrating that you have
| understood what your opponents have said before you move to
| disagree with it. So, so, so much writing in US politics takes
| place between commentators who, for all appearances, have no
| real understanding of what their opponents want or why they
| might want it.
| gexla wrote:
| Maybe they don't cover the same things because the "things" are
| like their flags they are using to signal each other. It's like
| two different gangs using different symbolism to communicate
| with their own members. They don't need to talk to the other
| side, they need to instead rally their own side.
|
| Maybe study each side like you're studying a gang. Get to know
| the symbolism and language.
| medicineman wrote:
| Please, the closest most of the posters here have been to a
| gang is a WuTang music video.
| mdoms wrote:
| > I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national
| review and politico.
|
| Those are the sources you tried to balance with? Every one of
| those is a fringe hard-leaning source, except maybe Wapo which
| can't be trusted because it's owned by Bezos. You need to seek
| more moderate sources to begin with.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| I've done something similar. If you look at what, say, the
| National Review thinks is important on a given day, and compare
| that to what the NYTimes is reporting on, it's pretty clear
| that we're not merely disagreeing about a particular set of
| facts, we're living on different planets.
| [deleted]
| swiley wrote:
| IMO: any organization employing "journalists" is engaging in
| mass manipulation for hire at this point (both left and right.)
| world_peace42 wrote:
| Fivethirtyeight is not even remotely bipartisan. It's hard to
| forget Nate's role in spreading propaganda polls last election
| cycle and his reaction afterwards when it was clear they were
| all fake.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| I struggle to understand why you need to read "sides" for news
| articles. Are you just referring to opinion pieces?
| Loughla wrote:
| Are you serious? Most mainstream sources have hard left or
| right slant. How do you not see that?
| MarkMarine wrote:
| Oh I see it, I just don't want it and I think reading both
| sides gives you worse galaxy brain than reading none.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Because reporters and papers have biases.
|
| Here's a simple one: Last year, when anti-asian crimes were
| on the rise, the NYTimes dutifully reported the crimes.
|
| But repeatedly omitted details like ethnicity or name, until
| a white attacker made the news.
|
| For those earlier details, the rag the NY Post (conservative
| and borderline tabloid) was the paper to go to.
|
| Eventually--as in many months after--the NY Times stated
| covering the full details because the problem was too
| obvious. Even then the Ny Times uses every opportunity to
| downplay the issue.
|
| I'm sure conservative journalists are just as biased in their
| own way.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| If you like podcasts, try Left, Right & Center by KCRW. Their
| sister show All the Presidents' Lawyers is pretty good too, but
| what I like about LR&C is that it really does show multiple
| sides without a constant yelling fest. Sure there are the
| occasional "you don't really believe that do you?" moments, but
| it's largely civil.
| [deleted]
| dfsegoat wrote:
| I cannot recommend the show and podcast 'Breaking Points', by
| Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball enough. They are top notch
| journalists who formerly hosted a daily news show called
| 'Rising' on The Hill, but left recently in order to be more
| independent and free of advertiser influence (censorship).
|
| While they are on opposite sides of the political spectrum.
| They cut through much of the partisan, mainstream BS - and get
| to the heart of many issues, all while debating ea. other in a
| civilized way.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/breakingpoints
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-k...
|
| It is INCREDIBLY refreshing, if you've fallen into the rut of
| mainstream internet or tv news.
| gre wrote:
| Try the podcast Moderate Rebels as well. It's hosted by Ben
| Norton and Max Blumenthal from https://thegrayzone.com/
|
| https://soundcloud.com/moderaterebels
| ddingus wrote:
| Seconded. I have avoided cable news for a long time now.
| godelski wrote:
| > The border crisis is a good example of this.
|
| In my experience, the biggest contributor to the echo chambers
| is a lack of memory.
|
| I do not think people's memories are bad, but rather they
| willfully ignore the other party's position, never learned it
| in the first place, or are justifying it because their party is
| in power. This is what centrists frequently get mocked at "both
| sides" about. They aren't saying "oh both sides are trying to
| stage an insurrection" they are saying "both sides are not
| going to let immigrants across the border" (but it'll be
| generalized to everything being both sided).
|
| I think the way to cure this is also the way to make parties
| better. Criticism. We should always critique our parties to
| make them better. Unless you believe they are perfect already
| and getting direct commands from god, it is deserving of
| criticism. But we've encouraged a culture where criticism isn't
| (effectively) allowed. It is allowed by certain people who
| speak in a certain way, but not for the average person. (e.g.
| if you are speaking to someone you don't know that well and
| politics are brought up and you criticize something x party
| recently did it will be presumed you are of the opposing side).
| I believe part of this is because we are comparing politicians
| and parties rather than judging them independently (this is
| also why I'm a big supporter of Cardinal voting as opposed to
| the common Ordinal propositions).
|
| This is essentially the root of whataboutism. The classic
| example is one I had my parents many times over the last
| decade. I suggest Trump should be investigated for his
| connections to Epstein given his frequent contact. And my dad
| would be like "but what about Clinton!" and my response has
| always been "yeah, him too." Because it isn't about parties, it
| is about the crime that was potentially committed. If something
| is bad, then it is bad if the other party does it or if your
| party does it. Tribes don't matter. The whataboutism is just a
| distraction technique.
|
| TLDR: Don't forget the past. Criticize everyone. Stop saying
| "what about...".
| mesh wrote:
| I would suggest reading some sources outside the US.
| Specifically, I would recommend the Economist. While the
| Economist has a very distinct view, it does provide a little
| higher level, distanced view of US and world politics.
|
| It has highlighted to me some biases from some of the sources I
| follow on a day by day basis (NYT, Washington Post).
|
| Bonus points for the Economist, because you also get coverage
| and analysis of events across the world many of which get
| almost 0 coverage in US press.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| All the sources you listed are at least somewhat pro-
| authoritarian. Recommend reason.com to round it out.
| smegcicle wrote:
| > They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which
| makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives.
|
| https://ground.news has an interface that highlights which news
| outlets with what general bias are covering which stories,
| which is sometimes fun to take a look at
| merpnderp wrote:
| Modern journalism is about covering the most important
| stories...
|
| With a pillow...
|
| Until they go away.
| dev_by_day wrote:
| This site is great for trying to get different takes
| https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news
|
| I used to do what you did(just read a bunch of major
| publications from differing political orientations) but also
| found issue with not being able to compare different
| perspectives easily.
| brlewis wrote:
| Allsides is prominently featured in the article.
| dev_by_day wrote:
| yes! I meant it more as a +1 to allsides but should have
| clarified that.
| medicineman wrote:
| >implying they read the articles
| liveoneggs wrote:
| just watch C-SPAN and cut out the crap; then compare coverage
| of the same speech or event or whatever. All of the media will
| pick out single words from an hours-long talk and invent their
| own context, ignoring the rest of the hour
| andreygrehov wrote:
| I worked at a large US news agency for several years. It's a for-
| profit shit show.
|
| After watching CNN's technical director saying on spy cam that
| their publication is entirely driven by propaganda, I lost trust
| in all the news agencies out there. Quote:
|
| > Yeah. I mean like Trump, we did it, like when Trump was, I
| don't know, like his hand was shaking or whatever I think. We
| brought in like so many medical people to like all tell a story
| that like, it was all speculation, that he was neurologically
| damaged, that he was losing it. He's unfit to, you know,
| whatever. We were... we were creating a story there that we
| didn't know anything about, you know? That's what -- I think
| that's propaganda, you know? We had nothing else to run with at
| that time. We were like, just taking shots off the bow just
| hoping something would hit, you know?
|
| I'm a massive centrist, not a US citizen, trying to be as
| objective as possible. A shit and for-profit/power propaganda is
| flowing from both ends.
| underseacables wrote:
| I think this is missing the darker point, which is that the main
| stream media along with the political parties that support them,
| are the the echo chamber. It's not that we are caught in an echo
| chamber, rather it's the information from mass media corporations
| that has created the echo chamber. If anything, to break out so
| to speak, is perhaps as easy as simply turning off all news, and
| paying more attention directly to what politicians are saying.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > I think this is missing the darker point, which is that the
| main stream media along with the political parties that support
| them, are the the echo chamber.
|
| They are _part_ of the echo chamber. They aren 't _the_ echo
| chamber. Social media does a fantastic job of demonstrating
| that people naturally construct their own echo chambers. We
| tend to judge the main stream media & polities without
| appreciating a context where they don't exist. It's
| increasingly clear that for all their ills, they do deliver,
| albeit in a flawed and limited degree, on their espoused
| objectives.
|
| They're terrible, except as compared to all the alternatives.
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| Better to pay attention to what politicians are doing rather
| than what they are saying. Take a look at who donates to their
| campaigns, how they vote, and who they hang out with on a
| regular basis.
| jonathanwallace wrote:
| That's why I use https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news.
| Makes it very easy to see across the spectrum.
| imbnwa wrote:
| One thing that comes to mind on this topic is that I neve rhear
| anyone discuss the genealogy of moral outrage in recent America
| culture. Daytime TV in the 90s was _all_ moral outrage and proto-
| reality TV as theatre of legalo-moral adjudication: Jerry
| Springer (the vulgar pinnacle of it), The People's Court, Judge
| Joe Brown, Riki Lake, etc etc. Americans had already proven
| market fit for "outrage media" a long time ago.
| jarjoura wrote:
| IMHO, moral outrage is just a consistent human trait. I don't
| think there was a time or era in known history that we didn't
| shame the other side.
|
| If you want to look at TV entertainment, even something as
| "wholesome" as Lucy or Leave it to Beaver all they way from the
| 50s is chocked full of outrage at anything not considered
| acceptable at the time.
| ggggtez wrote:
| The problem of course is that not every issue needs a "both
| sides" treatment. Sometimes there are questions of objective
| facts that reading lies from alternative sources do not actually
| help you in understanding the truth of the world.
|
| The person who desperately tries to cite "50/50" liberal and
| conservative sources in the article is the worst kind of fence
| sitter. Sometimes, one side or the other is just wrong, or their
| position is disingenuous. It doesn't make sense to provide a fair
| and balanced view when the other view is that maybe there are
| literal demons running the government.
|
| One of these sites outright says they offer a "conspiracy
| theorist" feed. While there is some educational benefit to
| understanding what those people are reading, in the context of
| getting a balanced perspective, we should acknowledge it's
| useless information to most people, if not downright harmful.
| [deleted]
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > The problem of course is that not every issue needs a "both
| sides" treatment.
|
| Exactly. Imagine saying that it's important to be able to make
| an impassioned argument for slavery?
|
| To make it contemporary: Should I be trying to get into the
| mind of a Q Conspiracy theorist? An Antivaxer? How many
| conspiracies do I need delve into and understand such that I
| can make a passionate argument for them?
| briandear wrote:
| > Imagine saying that it's important to be able to make an
| impassioned argument for slavery?
|
| But that's a straw man. Did the virus come from a lab or not
| isn't a "slavery" argument. Should taxes be lower or higher
| also isn't a slavery argument. Are there election
| irregularities also isn't a slavery argument.
|
| These are all issues that, stating opposing facts or even
| conclusions that differ from the Facebook-Twitter "Approved
| Truth," will get you banned.
|
| Even questioning Covid vaccine safety, or even linking to
| mainstream news about safety concerns will get you a "missing
| context" label or outright banned. We aren't allow to even
| hint that the vaccine could be dangerous (when compared to
| other vaccines.)
|
| So yes, there are often two or more sides that have a
| legitimate value in being heard.
|
| When was the last time we had mainline publications or
| socials or even scientific journals shutting down debate on
| scientific research? It's insane. There have even been
| instances of papers that didn't support the Fauci views being
| obfuscated or removed from search results. Or other instances
| of statistical election anomalies being ignored by people
| that would normally be very interested in such things. And
| none of those things are the equivalent of "the other side of
| the slavery argument."
|
| Look at how the left has treated Glen Greenwald, a journalist
| that has earned some credibility with his Snowden reporting.
| Yet, when he points out some of the nonsense parading as
| "fact," he gets accused of being some kind of right wing
| shill. If Glen is being accused of being "right wing," then
| something has gone really wrong. Even Bill Maher is speaking
| out about the lunacy.
|
| Is the vaccine safe? Did Covid come from a Chinese lab funded
| by Fauci? Were there unexplained statistical anomalies in the
| election?
|
| Those are all topics that deserve hearing "both sides." It
| would seem like shutting down debate is indicative of an
| agenda as opposed to a commitment to truth. The lady doth
| protest too much, methinks.
| 8note wrote:
| "are there election irregularities" pretty well is a
| slavery argument.
|
| Its a thinly veiled "I don't think black people should have
| been allowed to vote" and you can verify that by the laws
| states are implementing to ensure they don't vote next
| election
| slibhb wrote:
| > To make it contemporary: Should I be trying to get into the
| mind of a Q Conspiracy theorist? An Antivaxer? How many
| conspiracies do I need delve into and understand such that I
| can make a passionate argument for them?
|
| Yes and it's disturbing that you (and many others) have no
| interest in understanding other people.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| There is no end to conspiracy theories. Why should I be
| obligated to delve into other people's psychosis? I'm not a
| psychiatrist. There are many more constructive things to
| spend time on.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| When such ideas become mainstream enough to start
| influencing politics, it would be a good idea to try to
| understand why those ideas have taken root and grown to
| that level of influence.
|
| Even when such ideas are batshit insane, they are almost
| always indicative of some severe underlying issue. If
| that issue isn't addressed, then such ideas keep growing
| and growing and could eventually lead to disaster.
|
| That Q Anon and the like are taken seriously by as many
| people as they appear to be, enough to start influencing
| mainstream politics, should set off all sorts of alarm
| bells about the state of our society.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| As I said in another part of the thread: For many of
| these conspiracy theories the 'understanding' part should
| probably be more along the lines of epistemic forensics -
| "What kind of misinformation got them to this point?"
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I don't think the misinformation is a cause so much as a
| symptom. The Nazis alleged conspiracy by communists and
| jews, but that misinformation probably wouldn't have
| taken root if Germany's economy wasn't burning to the
| ground because of the Treaty of Versailles. Desperate
| people sometimes cling to crazy ideologies that promise
| to relieve their suffering.
| 8note wrote:
| They aren't strongly held views -- it's much more
| interesting to hear about the things they actually
| believe in rather than today's distraction
| lawn wrote:
| There's a difference between trying to understand and
| explain why crazy ideas take root, and treating the crazy
| ideas themselves as legitimate.
|
| Identify the core issues, absolutely. But trying to
| explain why the earth isn't flat is a waste of time, as
| it won't convince the true believers and it will only
| legitimize the idea.
| briandear wrote:
| Q Anon isn't taken seriously by very many people. It's a
| blown-out-of-proportion phenomenon. The left seems to be
| the one that continues to promote it as if millions of
| people are paying attention to it. I spend a lot of time
| on conservative news and opinion sites and Q Anon stuff
| is never mentioned. Nor are any of the wacky conspiracies
| taken seriously. But the left loves to use that to
| discredit opposing viewpoints much in the same way they
| quickly use the "Nazi" tag when it suits their purposes.
|
| As far as "how we got here," the answer is pretty simple:
| social media shutting down debate and "fact checkers" who
| are really "conforming verifiers" who have been given
| outsized credibility.
|
| Did Covid come from a lab, a year ago was "fact checked"
| by those with conflicts of interest. Yet there wasn't any
| actual fact check -- it used the opinions of certain
| officials rather than actual verifiable fact. If Fauci
| said it didn't come from a lab, that's his opinion. But
| was any data actually presented to dispute the assertion?
| None. The Appeal To Authority isn't a valid fact-check.
|
| The media literally ignores facts if those facts don't
| fit the narrative. And, they use all sorts of rhetorical
| strategies to discredit the other side.
|
| The hatred of all things Trump resulted in media
| organizations losing all credibility.
| slibhb wrote:
| If you were a little more curious, maybe you wouldn't
| dismiss large swathes of the population as psychotic.
| netsec_burn wrote:
| Frankly I don't have the time in my day to entertain every
| perspective and still enjoy life.
| [deleted]
| ABCLAW wrote:
| >Yes and it's disturbing that you (and many others) have no
| interest in understanding other people.
|
| There's an infinite number of ways you can be wrong; it
| isn't on everyone to hermetically disprove all wrongs to
| meaningfully participate in civil society in good faith.
|
| It isn't disturbing for people to want to focus on real
| issues rather than discussing whether or not the president
| is farming baby blood to enact a global immortal one
| government future.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I think this is unfair. You can try to have empathy and
| understanding for someone without knowing the intricacies
| of their beliefs.
| deanCommie wrote:
| > Imagine saying that it's important to be able to make an
| impassioned argument for slavery?
|
| We don't need to imagine this. This is actively happening in
| the American South in their high school _history_ books:
| https://twitter.com/jbenton/status/1404245820103348227 (tweet
| and replies)
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Or imagine having to dedicate equal time in school to the
| flat earth "theory", which can be disproved by video calling
| anyone in a different time zone...
| cbsmith wrote:
| It _is_ important to understand the different sides.
| Understanding a side doesn 't mean it is on equal ground, or
| really any ground at all.
|
| A failure to understand allows the underlying causes to
| remain in place.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Actually I would say it is. Not because the argument for
| slavery actually had merit, but because that position did not
| form in a vacuum and it is important to understand how such
| ideas came to be and why people might be unwilling to give
| them up.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| How are you supposed to argue against something if you don't
| even understand why someone supports what they support? All
| you will end up doing is strawmaning their views which won't
| convince anybody to change their views.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Do I need to understand why someone supports flat earth
| theory to be able to argue that it's scientifically
| invalid? Why is it up to me to figure out how they got
| deluded?
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| You don't _have_ to argue with flat earthers if you don
| 't want to. But if you're going to argue against that
| position then yes, you absolutely must first understand
| why they hold it. Otherwise you'll spend all your time
| attacking straw men and get nowhere with your argument.
| zamadatix wrote:
| How can you both show a claim is scientifically invalid
| and simultaneously not understand the claim? The "why"
| here is the "why of the claim" not the "why they came to
| think that" (though the latter may still be useful if
| you're trying to convince someone but that's a different
| issue).
| 8note wrote:
| More importantly, why does that deserve priority in my
| time, vs say, climate change regulation, or ending police
| violence
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _The problem of course is that not every issue needs a "both
| sides" treatment._
|
| Another point is that there aren't "two sides" to political
| issues but a wide variety of sides and that often, when you
| pick the two supposed sides of an issue, you've actually picked
| the answer - without, say, having to have an argument for this
| answer.
|
| Unpopular note: HN has had too many of these garbage articles
| leveraging this vacuous and manipulative "two sides" rhetoric -
| "Ivy League" article but several others. And these have had an
| actually pretty strong center-right bias and just generally
| detract from the site imo.
| [deleted]
| altcognito wrote:
| Teach the conspiracy!
| abap_rocky wrote:
| The problem with aggregators like this is they themselves have
| their own implicit bias in how they define the boundaries of the
| left and right.
|
| While sites like The Federalist and Breitbart may offer an
| accurate sampling of palatable far right viewpoints, this does
| not extend to the far left. The deficiency is exposed with the
| inclusion of CNN and MSNBC in the far left category. You need
| only look at the 2020 Democratic primary and observe how these
| cable channels reacted to the Sanders campaign[1] to get a sense
| of how incoherent it is to place them there.
|
| What is lost in defining the left border as such is the erasure
| of publications on the far left that help describe some of the
| ideas and thought that drove Bernie's popularity. Of course he
| eventually lost the primary but can we really call CNN and MSNBC
| far left when they played a role in the demise of the most viable
| left-wing candidate in recent US history?
|
| This is an important consideration because a news diet of the
| CNN, NYT, WSJ and Ben Shapiro may appear to be balanced but there
| is no left source that is the same magnitude of the right wing
| Ben Shapiro.
|
| [1]:
| https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1231353446336548867?s...
| karaterobot wrote:
| I wonder why the FCC's fairness doctrine is rarely brought up in
| articles like this. They used to enforce certain standards
| whereby news being broadcast on the public airwaves had to be
| both relevant to the public interest, and presented without overt
| bias. Then, under Reagan, they just stopped doing that, and to me
| that's when an already imperfect news industry started to really
| go off the rails.
|
| It sounds hopelessly naive in 2021, when suggesting that the
| press can even attempt to be objective marks you as a rube. Yet
| it seems like enforcing some expectation of fairness would be an
| improvement over having none at all. It may not be possible to
| actually be objective, but in the same way that we can't stop
| people from killing or robbing each other, we still insist on
| asking them very nicely not to, and holding them to account when
| we catch them at it. Most would say it's better to have some
| pretense of civilization than to just give up trying: why have we
| given up trying?
|
| I'd even suggest that removing the standard of fairness allowed a
| different set of ethics to fill the vacuum: good journalism is
| attention-grabbing and serves the ideological base that forms
| your revenue stream. You could see this happening with the cable
| news explosion in the 80s, but it went supernova with the
| internet, and the changing economics of the post-Facebook era.
|
| Clearly, the FCC can't control the global internet, and broadcast
| television and radio is not much of a factor anymore. So, any
| modern equivalent to the fairness doctrine would likely have to
| come from aggregators like Facebook, Google, Reddit, etc., which
| may seem impossible because it's at odds with their business
| model. But, I'm hopeful because there is a history of industries
| adopting their own standards before they have more restrictive
| ones imposed on them by regulation.
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| I would be in favor of reclaiming some words like "News" with
| regulatory controls. Just like the FDA doesn't allow someone to
| label their product as "Organic" without meeting certain
| standards, I would argue that we should enforce some basic
| standards in order to label yourself as "News" or "Media
| Organization." It would be a slippery slope to navigate with
| the first amendment and the internet but there is a large group
| of citizens that will believe anything if it was on TV and came
| from the "News."
| xmprt wrote:
| This seems like the best approach. No doubt people will
| continue to kick and scream about their first amendment
| rights being infringed upon but as long as they're not
| actually banned from talking it seems perfectly
| constitutional.
| zwieback wrote:
| I wonder how different the polarization is at the local level.
| It's easy to get outraged about policies in another part of the
| country if your position doesn't really affect you. I'm guessing
| people have more nuanced views about, say, fertilizer or
| pesticides if they live in a very agricultural area or about
| investing in mass transport if they live in an urban area.
| eyelovewe wrote:
| It seems to me that culture war posturing is one thing, a
| deliberate source of divisive power that some milk for outrage.
|
| It seems to me that there are some issues with a clear right and
| wrong: the climate emergency. We essentially cannot overreact, we
| should be doing 309% of what we are currently doing to go zero
| carbon. In such a case as the "real world outside our society" id
| involved, it would seem that there are objectively right and
| wrong courses of action, in addition to many complex calculi that
| can have mixed value even if implemented with purely good faith
| and intentions. (Aka actual error)
|
| It would seem that legions of conservative and prudent scientists
| from diverse fields are to be considered "political radicals" for
| merely telling the truth.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| throwawaysea wrote:
| This article mentions Blindspotter, which is a great way to
| explore the bubbles around Twitter accounts
| (https://ground.news/blindspotter/twitter) and also Subreddits
| (https://ground.news/blindspotter/reddit/). For example, try:
|
| John Oliver -
| https://ground.news/blindspotter/twitter/iamjohnoliver
|
| Tucker Carlson -
| https://ground.news/blindspotter/twitter/TuckerCarlson
|
| r/politics - https://ground.news/blindspotter/reddit/politics
|
| r/moderatepolitics -
| https://ground.news/blindspotter/reddit/moderatepolitics
|
| r/conservative -
| https://ground.news/blindspotter/reddit/conservative
|
| BTW Blindspotter is built by Ground News (https://ground.news/).
| They're like All Sides (https://www.allsides.com/) in that they
| provide displays that let you see articles from across the
| spectrum on a given story. But they also measure how much of a
| blindspot there is for the left or right based on how heavy or
| sparse the coverage of a story is from news sources of various
| biases, since much of the time we're not dealing with biased
| articles as much as selective coverage.
| arecurrence wrote:
| Surprised to see you downvoted when so much complaining in this
| thread is already covered by Ground News. I suppose Hacker News
| itself is unable to escape its own echo chamber.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| HN is very, very authoritarian left.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| This is fantastic! Thank you for sharing.
| shrimpx wrote:
| When we speak of centrism in terms of political parties, the
| implicit false assumption in some of this discussion is that
| Trumpism is a legitimate political position. These days when we
| talk about "the right" we largely mean Trumpism -- the GOP's new
| political stance (including Mitch McConnell, btw).
|
| The idea of "centrism" makes no sense with Trumpism on one side.
| "Yes I am pro-democratic republic and I also want to be ruled by
| a dictator who hollows out and weaponizes public institutions and
| muzzles his enemies."
|
| The center means there is common ground but Trump scorched the
| GOP's half of it. The only way I can envision a center is if the
| GOP figures out how to move beyond Trumpism and rebuild
| themselves into a conservative party. Currently the only people
| offering a shred of hope, by for example cooperating with the
| Democratic center, are the likes of Romney, who got booed
| offstage by GOP supporters.
| Black101 wrote:
| I thought that Dang said that posts with more comments then
| points were getting automatically down-ranked yet this post has
| 188 points and 463 comments and it is number 4 on the front page.
|
| Also, this post has only one top level comment on the first page
| of comments.
| patrickscoleman wrote:
| To break free of the sensationalized partisan news, I've switched
| to reading The New Paper's [0] Monday-Friday daily email +
| Wikipedia Current Events [1] (delivered daily via email [2]) + HN
| (I try to check just once a day).
|
| I've found that when the news is less "exciting," I'm a lot less
| inclined to read it. I still know enough to participate in most
| conversations, and if something seems really important, I'll read
| more in other outlets. I still forget most of the news the next
| day (just like I did before).
|
| Overall I feel equally informed and less stressed out and better
| able to focus on the things in my life that have an impact.
|
| [0] https://thenewpaper.co/ [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events [2]
| https://dev.to/kiwicopple/daily-email-of-wikipedia-s-current...
| refurb wrote:
| Nothing wrong with reading biased news sources. I think the
| difference is one should read sources that: 1) are upfront with
| their bias and 2) argue from a more neutral perspective.
|
| You'll learn something reading a liberal or conservative argue
| why their position is correct versus then other side. You can
| usually distinguish these article because they fairly state the
| other side's position.
|
| You won't learn much reading something whose basic premise is "of
| course our side is right, let me tell you about all the bad
| things the other side is up to".
| barbazoo wrote:
| It's not just how biased they are, I'm having issues with how
| little they're about news and how much about pure clickbait. I
| used to think up until recently, that CNN was a legitimate
| (left leaning) news source but it's all "watch this person
| react to that person saying something" and amazon product
| recommendations for stuff no one needs.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| It has been going on for a while. Many of them have gone to
| the hot take reaction style opinion pieces. CNN copied the
| Fox 'formula' to try to get ratings. The 3 panel yell at each
| other format with maybe some news possibly scrolling at the
| bottom. It is not news. It is opinions presented as 'facts'
| when they are usually curated opinions to hit market share.
| The stuff before about 2010 was better disguised but it was
| still very similar to what you observe. Little news, lots of
| opinions. After that point I think they just stopped
| bothering to disguise it much.
|
| It is kind of 'interesting' to watch but you are not going to
| get much out of it. I cut a bunch of that sort of 'news' out
| of my life. It was not giving me news but curated opinions to
| have. I found my stress levels were _so_ much nicer.
| every wrote:
| Here in the US I try to get the majority of my news from NPR and
| PBS, both of whom are heavily reliant on AP. Your mileage may
| vary...
| andred14 wrote:
| The problem is our mainstream news sources lie constantly.
|
| We have caught them in many MANY lies about you know what.
|
| Coercion of people to take experimental drugs goes against the
| Nuremburg Code.
|
| There WILL be trials.
| Noos wrote:
| Nah, the echo chambers are tightening into dominant and
| submissive; it seems like people are because they are reacting to
| patently extreme behavior, but in reality modern culture is very
| much a leftist dominant narrative with a submissive conservative
| boogeyman narrative.
|
| The issue to me is more that the extremes are so extreme as to be
| unworkable; you have people being unironic nazis, monarchists,
| and marxist-communists, so anything else will seem sane and
| balanced. But it's definitely not being out of an echo chamber.
| Impassionata wrote:
| >submissive conservative boogeyman narrative.
|
| The Republican party is engaged in a fascist lie about the
| validity of our elections. Wake up.
| lamontcg wrote:
| I don't understand this fetishism with centrism and all opinions
| being treated equally, and that having made up your mind on an
| issue is necessarily wrong.
|
| When it comes to an issue like, say, climate change, I spent
| years reading the blogosphere, reading blogs like WUWT and
| whatever Judith Curry would come up with, and then the rebuttals,
| sometimes waiting years for the science to come out.
|
| For any issue around climate science, there's probably a web page
| on it at skeptical sicence. I've probably skimmed at least half
| the papers on that webpage. After many years of that (I'm a
| veteran of the mid-2000s global "pause" debate) I've made up my
| mind.
|
| The idea that having made my mind is a horrible thing, is just a
| tactic to try to creates wedges of doubt to try to keep a zombie
| political idea going. One side is getting very desperate because
| of how incredibly wrong they've consistently been.
|
| And implicitly I bet it isn't Fox News viewers that you see
| starting to listen to NPR (although I'm certainly they'll pick
| out some individuals that do) it is predominantly working to get
| the open-minded-liberal crowd and Joe Rogan viewers to spend some
| time letting Fox News pour information into their head in the
| name of being better informed about both sides.
|
| Some news really is equivalent to trans fats and highly refined
| sugars for the brain. Trying to achieve "balance" there isn't
| actually healthy. Some of it is just bad. And the two outcomes
| are either that you're going to get sucked in (and not even
| realize it) or that you're just going to get angry at it.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > The idea that having made my mind is a horrible thing, is
| just a tactic to try to creates wedges of doubt to try to keep
| a zombie political idea going.
|
| You're an extreme minority in how in-depth you've looked into
| the science. The only really rational position for someone who
| hasn't done so is at most vague trust based on the scientific
| consensus. People who both haven't sufficiently looked into the
| science and yet who still have a strongly held belief are part
| of the problem even when they happen to be right.
|
| Then the political implications are a different matter to the
| scientific question. There is a whole range of political
| positions you can come to even given a consensus on the
| science. Do you drastically reduce carbon usage or accept the
| warming and adapt? Maybe both? That is where the political
| x/y/z axes come in.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| >...I don't understand this fetishism with centrism and all
| opinions being treated equally,
|
| Let's be honest here, the direction of this thread, and people
| most enthused about the linked article are people who are
| sympathetic to right-wing ideologies. Currently, because of
| demographic trends, the right-wing is scared that their ideas
| will be run out of the marketplace of ideas. The only way to
| prevent that is to 1. Embrace enlightened centrism, and 2.
| Complain that their opinions aren't being treated "equally".
| stadium wrote:
| > is just a tactic to try to creates wedges of doubt to try to
| keep a zombie political idea going. One side is getting very
| desperate because of how incredibly wrong they've consistently
| been.
|
| Agree completely that it's used as a divide and conquer tactic.
|
| However, convincing the consumers of said wrong information, or
| more than wrong just outright fabrications in many cases, is a
| tough sell. Telling someone that their major belief system and
| ideology is "wrong" will usually harden their beliefs further.
| trophycase wrote:
| Unfortunately the whole "Lab Leak" COVID thing has given them
| another 5 years of legitimacy probably.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| Unfortunately?
|
| This is exactly why living in the default media bubble is
| such a problem. The COVID lab leak coverup was the normal
| state of affairs. It wasn't an outlier.
|
| We saw all last year as the media stood in front of looting,
| rioting, and burning buildings and told us that the protests
| were "mostly peaceful". We heard that the police are
| "systemically racist" and practically hunting black people in
| the streets, but if you looked at the police interactions
| statistics, you saw that it just wasn't true.
|
| We were told by the media last year that Hydroxychloroquine
| was a dangerous drug... simply because Trump suggested it
| might be a good treatment for COVID. Social media companies
| are still banning people for touting it: https://www.dailymai
| l.co.uk/news/article-9671029/Hydroxychlo...
|
| The current normal is for most of the media to lie and push
| Democrat political narratives. Yeah, yeah, Fox News is a real
| counterbalance when they aren't even a tenth of the audience
| of ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, and PBS. There's no social
| media narrative bubble to speak of. It's all Facebook,
| Twitter, Youtube, and on and on.
| adflux wrote:
| Why mention Joe Rogan viewers...?
| tw04 wrote:
| Because Joe Rogan has a habit of hosting individuals who are
| blatant frauds and plays it off as "representing both sides".
| When you have Alex Jones on and let him spew outright lies
| for an hour without questioning any of it, you've lost all
| credibility.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I totally disagree, Alex Jones is a satirist. His biggest
| contribution is being sometimes correct with his outlandish
| claims. And casting doubt of the corporate media narrative,
| which is often just as false, but presented as some sort of
| gospel, that must be accepted with ernest, and repeated
| with one voice.
| mpfundstein wrote:
| have you seen last podcast? he questions a lot of Alex'
| stuff. Further are the three AJs podcasts great
| entertainment
| stouset wrote:
| Maybe, just maybe, we should stop going out of our way to
| provide platforms to influential fraudsters and lunatics?
| adflux wrote:
| Yes, let's silence everyone who doesn't share our view
| and shame everyone who follows him, I'm sure that's a
| great strategy. For creating extremists, that is. Keep an
| open dialogue and dismantle them. If you can't do that,
| maybe they have something worth listening to.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| I think because Joe Rogan-ites tend to be "apolitical" in a
| very specific way (at least in my personal experience). They
| are fundamentally different from the hippies, but still
| believe in sampling many opinions
| Layke1123 wrote:
| Because he has a tendency to be misinformed and spread that
| misinformation.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I disagree. Climate change is a terrible example to prove your
| point. It's an easy one and weakens your argument about
| balance. Climate change has scientific consensus and has gotten
| better over time. Most political issues left/right are
| concerned about issues that are far more nuanced and there
| isn't enough data to back it up, or even if there is data,
| there are gaping holes in methodology and eventually boils down
| to philosophical/ideological discussions about rights, duties
| of citizens and the governing bodies.
|
| People that follow the ideology of echo-chambering that you're
| proposing is exactly what we don't need at this time. Labeling
| centrists with condescendence of fetishism is uncalled for. I
| suggest RTFA.
|
| The press is doing a poor job of omitting facts (which is
| different from lying) because they don't echo back in their
| chambers. People that follow your proposal would be illinformed
| of the facts that are omitted.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| You think that climate change is a settled issue across the
| political spectrum?
|
| I have seen the contrary.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Here is the core problem that I have a hard time
| articulating:
|
| Here is what OP is doing:
|
| 1) Point out ills on the other side - QAnon, Climate
| denial, etc.
|
| 2) Make a sweeping statement that being a centrist means
| giving attention to aforementioned theories and giving
| "equal" importance to both sides. That's not what centrists
| do.
|
| OP's condenscending take on Centrists is based on low-blows
| and not much substance.
| munk-a wrote:
| If we're talking about global fiscal policy in America I'm
| not certain what party you're pointing to as not being neo-
| liberal. There are many problems with a two party system but
| the one America is currently suffering from is that the GOP
| is made up of neoliberals and the Dems are also neoliberals.
| This is why Trump saw success in the primary, and why it is
| extremely foolish to discount demagogues no matter what their
| truly held beliefs. Being able to spin yourself as a non-
| neoliberal, even briefly, makes 80% of America start
| salivating.
| tw04 wrote:
| >Climate change has scientific consensus and has gotten
| better over time.
|
| You do realize that the Fox New crowd and the Republican
| party are still denying that humans have any affect on the
| climate, right? 30 seconds in the comments section on this
| latest story for instance tells you all you need to know:
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-climate-change-
| greate...
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Sure, I do. That's my point - Climate change is an easy one
| to make a point about siding with scientific consensus. I
| don't need a political side to side with why wearing masks
| is beneficial to reducing the spread of the virus.
|
| OP is using CC as a token to make a point that we should
| cease to be centrists. I am asking to listen to both sides
| (even if it is absolute lunacy), figure out what are the
| facts and what are ideological positions which are not as
| clearcut as CC.
| slowhand09 wrote:
| I listened to and contributed to NPR for years, long before
| Trump, Hillary , or Obama were things. I watch Fox news also.
| When you distinguish between news and opinion shows, Fox is at
| least as good as CNN/MSNBC/ABC/CBS. When you watch a cropped
| clip, then the full clip, and the entire circumstances change
| that should be a sign. Notice the Wired example mentioned kids
| in a TN classroom, and it was the liberal kids they implied
| were scared to express their opinions. I'm pretty sure they
| cherrypicked that. Because that is the opposite in most states,
| especially those where the teachers assign specific homework
| based on opinion shows, demonizing specific parties and ideas.
| Your initial point about climate science... It was cooling,
| then heating, now change, and sea level rise. Most people you
| would characterize as "climate deniers" believe in climate
| change. Many do not agree that by adopting electric cars and
| burning ethanol(remember that transfer of wealth?) in the US,
| we control change after crippling our economy while China
| churns out multiple times what the rest of the world does. I'm
| sure they'll stop tho, once the completely dominate the world
| economy. Wanna talk about gun control now?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yes. I'm reminded of the woman who had survived the Holocaust
| and was asked to be interviewed -- where they would also bring
| on a Holocaust denier ... you know, for balance.
|
| Thankfully, she declined. But the point is of course: here we
| are.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Context aside, that sounds like it would have been a powerful
| film. A denier face to face with an eyewitness, presumably
| with the eyewitness prepared with all of the innumerable
| pieces of indisputable evidence. Talk about losing, that's
| losing.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| I've read and even said a lot of uncomfortable things on
| the internet, but seeing someone lament the loss of not
| pitting a holocaust survivor with a denier probably takes
| the cake.
| whatshisface wrote:
| A lot of holocaust survivors have made very cogent cases
| against deniers, you may be underestimating their
| strength. Maybe some people couldn't do that, but other
| people could. It is a lot of people we are talking about.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| This isn't about making a case, it's about giving equal
| credence to the narratives of a holocaust survivor and
| someone who denies it.
| watwut wrote:
| She would be eye witness talking about own experience. It
| is super easy to attack against that or manipulate to make
| her sound crazy. She is not historian to know nuances of
| stuff deniers talk about.
|
| The denier would be prepared too.
|
| Deniers often claim the extend of it was much smaller or
| that leadership had no idea. Victim being tortured cant
| speak of thosez historian could.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| If I read something and it's just super-intense wow how can you
| doubt me you scumbag, I immediately attempt to find evidence
| disproving it. Generally, I look for something that will
| contradict the stance, and the more intense the stance, the more
| I will look.
|
| If I find a source has been manipulative in the past, I lower the
| faith I have in them to be objective in the future.
|
| If someone makes some kind of desperate reach or strawman to
| "win," I wonder what else they are reaching about.
|
| The shorter the quote, the longer the original source text I want
| to find from which it was drawn, because so much gets taken out
| of context.
|
| Similarly, Twitter is too short to allow for nuanced commentary.
|
| If I can find notable hypocrisy from someone, well ... their
| worth goes to about zero.
| oytis wrote:
| In my opinion if you want to break out of echo chambers, you'd
| better read books, not news. I don't mean books written on
| occasion by the same people who write opinion columns and blog
| posts - rather great books that go deeper in how things work.
|
| Among the modern writings, Arendt's Human Condition was a real
| eye opener for me. I hope to find more modern book of such
| quality of thought, but older ones by classic philosophers don't
| lose their relevance either.
| djevdj wrote:
| The glorious promise of the post truth world (Andrew Odlyzko)
| https://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=3061712
| gnicholas wrote:
| I'm not sure this is news or reflects any actual trends in 2021.
| I work in this area and almost all of the tools/websites in this
| article have been around for years -- since Trump's election or
| even before.
|
| If I had to guess, this seems like a well-placed piece to raise
| awareness for the startup Ground News, which has begun
| advertising heavily in recent months (and is the only new tool
| mentioned in the article). Either way, congrats to their team on
| the work they're doing, and on being mentioned in this piece!
| marsrover wrote:
| No they're not.
| mjparrott wrote:
| Almost all media outlets are shifting towards more and more
| opinion content, which drives clicks and revenue for them. Even
| the New York Times has dramatically shifted to opinion content
| and even dramatically increased the share and prominence of
| opinion on their front page.
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