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Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

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Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#231

Post by slice_of_life »

didibus wrote: post #227
slice_of_life wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but please do not come away with the impression that all right-leaning people are unreasonable Nor that even MOST right leaning people are unreasonable. It's all a matter of vantage point. Edit: grammar

I don't think it's a matter of vintage point. It's all about intention. You can work to be more reasonable if you choose to. You can teach people to be more reasonable. Its a skill, a quality that everyone healthy can choose to practice or not. I don't even know what right or left leaning imply. That whole categorization is a joke. Tell me what you want, why you want it and how you believe will work best to get it. O…

> That whole categorization is a joke

It's a very serious distinction. One which wars have been fought over many times over (from the french revolution to the cold war). To trivialize it is more than naive.

> Tell me what you want, why you want it and how you believe will work best to get it

There are many things I personally want but underlying it all is the idea of non-egalitarianism. I want structure in any society where merit and hard-work are given the utmost priority. Why do I want it? Because it is the most natural and most proven way to create proper incentive structures for the best outcome for other humans and myself.

How will I get it? First of all, remove most, if not all, government involvement in citizens' affairs. Allow for free markets to prevail and for the best ideas and the best people to rise to the top. I will take aristocracy over democracy any day. Democracy has become a tool that's been used to take away the liberties of individuals in the guise of freedom and equality.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#232

Post by jahaja »

banned1 wrote: post #43
komali2 wrote: post #37

I'm slowly trimming away the means I acquire news, because it's all becoming so editorialized. Twitter is bombarded with bots and flamewars, reddit is a lost cause, and news.google.com is mainly driven by larger syndications that have mastered the "Big Headlines Sell" strategy. That leaves HN and my little local papers, Mountain View Voice and its ilk. Great for local stories and tech news, but I feel like I'm missin…

Not really. CNN has gone the way of MSNBC (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). HN is the same way when it relates to political news (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). Fox News is, well, Fox News. NPR is, well, for the most part, the Fox News of the left. So on and so forth. In a world of two echo chambers (The Right-wingers and The Left-wingers), it's up to you to make up your mind.…

From an European perspective this is an echo chamber of right-wing news.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#233

Post by [deleted] »

mathiasrw wrote: post #225
[deleted] wrote: post #222

[deleted]

> I'm no joke starting to see the value of Chinese, Singaporean, etc. and maybe even North Korean (!!) censorship - people can't be fucking idiots and destroy the country over stuff on the news if it's not on the news. Sounds like you assume that state based censorship will remove/limit fear from the news. States are the main beneficiary from a fear-based population. It's a tool to direct anger away from relevant are…

[deleted]

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#234

Post by humanrebar »

ew6082 wrote: post #230
systemvanilla wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NPR is known by pretty much every right-of-center person in the nation as being the Fox News of the left. If you're left-of-center you have a stake in NPR's skewed coverage being the neutral truth (because that validates your world view), but it's just not the case. The bias isn't necessarily in the sourcing or the facts, it's in the selective coverage and the constructed narratives and the overt bias in what kind of…

We need to distinguish between NPR the human interest/artsy radio station and NPR News. NPR TV news hour is legitimately the most moderate and unbiased TV news left standing, at least when i watched it last (admittedly been a while).

The tone may be unbiased, but the implied narratives and selection of stories is not.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#235

Post by ZeroGravitas »

smallnamespace wrote: post #202
konradb wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> start taking white blue collar concerns at face value What concerns are these, specifically?

Losing their position in society. Becoming marginalized socially and economically. Being made economically irrelevant by automation, immigrants, or outsourcing. Seeing their beliefs and value systems being ignored, circumvented, eroded of traditional legal support (e.g. gay marriage, Roe v. Wade) and replaced by secularism. Middle-aged white people in the US are seeing increase in mortality while other groups in the…

Many groups that were against the gay marriage ruling, have changed their opinions in the last decade, and are now for it. I believe blue collar workers were among the group that swung the furthest. You specify white blue collar, but white people generally are slightly more pro than black people.

The surprising speed of the change has been explained by some as being due to individuals not actually being against it, but believing that everyone else was against it, and so going with the flow. When it became an issue, it became clear that it was actually only a minority that was against it, so it became socially acceptable to be for it.

There are still some fascinating demographic gaps though, as shown by these nice graphs of pew poll results:

http://www.people-press.org/2017/06/26/support-for-same-sex-...

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#236

Post by akvadrako »

debaserab2 wrote: post #178
banned1 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good point. Thanks for making it. I do read everything, including fringe publications. In the continuum of publications, everybody will find their tolerance for unacceptable to be different. Thanks for your honest comment. I did think about your point before including it. Edit: and i am sorry for offending you.

Oh - I'm not offended at all - it's just disappointing that it's many people's observation that the bias of historically reputable media outlets allow it to be lumped in the same category as a fringe publication. I don't think there's anything wrong with learning from or reading a fringe publication.

Breitbart is unfortunately no longer "fringe". They have a US Alexa rank of 69, comparable to the 57 for Fox News.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/breitbart.com

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#237

Post by krapp »

smallnamespace wrote: post #202
konradb wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> start taking white blue collar concerns at face value What concerns are these, specifically?

Losing their position in society. Becoming marginalized socially and economically. Being made economically irrelevant by automation, immigrants, or outsourcing. Seeing their beliefs and value systems being ignored, circumvented, eroded of traditional legal support (e.g. gay marriage, Roe v. Wade) and replaced by secularism. Middle-aged white people in the US are seeing increase in mortality while other groups in the…

But the thing is - these things aren't only happening to white people.

Everyone is being made economically irrelevant by automation, immigrants or outsourcing. Non-white Conservatives and Christians also feel their value systems are being ignored, circumvented, etc. It's not just white people who wear the blue collars, or work in the mines and steel mills, or who hold those "traditional" American values/

Why then is the explanation of Trump's rise often presented as a reaction to the cultural oppression and disenfranchisement of white people exclusively, when so many of the complaints mentioned as valid reasons for Trump support have nothing to do with race? It seems like an attempt at alt-right retroactive continuity.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#238

Post by humanrebar »

debaserab2 wrote: post #142
banned1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. CNN has gone the way of MSNBC (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). HN is the same way when it relates to political news (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). Fox News is, well, Fox News. NPR is, well, for the most part, the Fox News of the left. So on and so forth. In a world of two echo chambers (The Right-wingers and The Left-wingers), it's up to you to make up your mind.…

That's really disappointing that you list an outlet like Breitbart with all the other reputable publications you name in an otherwise well formed argument. What a sad state of affairs when we've legitimized a publication that identifies itself as central to the political movement that's brought together the xenophobes of our society.

> ...the xenophobes of our society

I'll argue that there are "xenophobes" on the left, it's just that they consider middle America the foreign land. They identify more closely with formally educated people from other countries than Americans who enjoy hunting, processed food, revival churches, etc. The bitter clingers, deplorables, etc.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#239

Post by mtberatwork »

ew6082 wrote: post #230
systemvanilla wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NPR is known by pretty much every right-of-center person in the nation as being the Fox News of the left. If you're left-of-center you have a stake in NPR's skewed coverage being the neutral truth (because that validates your world view), but it's just not the case. The bias isn't necessarily in the sourcing or the facts, it's in the selective coverage and the constructed narratives and the overt bias in what kind of…

We need to distinguish between NPR the human interest/artsy radio station and NPR News. NPR TV news hour is legitimately the most moderate and unbiased TV news left standing, at least when i watched it last (admittedly been a while).

I think you are referring to the PBS NewsHour. (PBS != NPR)

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#240

Post by humanrebar »

axaxs wrote: post #182
komali2 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, what about super nationalist white supremacists? Don't really find them here either.

They exist, and you don't know it. Just as a middle easterner who wants death to gay people, a gay christian fundamentalist, and a black kkk member. Yes, I jest. Sorta. That's what I love about HN, typically. It has a very diverse community that typically leaves religion and politics at the door. And even if we all met, we may kill each other, we get along here in the sake of tech and interesting sciences.

> It has a very diverse community that typically leaves religion and politics at the door.

The fact that it leaves religion at the door means it's not as inclusive as it thinks it is.

Just because a discussion contains a religious component doesn't mean it's argumentative or something.

> ...we get along here in the sake of tech and interesting sciences.

Honestly, the earnest religious are a minority in this kind of context. They're explicitly encouraged to keep that part of them closeted in this context (and, frankly, most other contexts too). I think "we get along" isn't exactly accurate with that in mind.

People are, on a small scale, afraid of religious people. Especially "unrelated, unnecessary" controversy spawning from religious points of view.

I could say that the growth is fear correlates (as described in the article) with decreased engagement in organized religion. How would that go over? Would people appreciate a new kind of thought and a new diverse perspective? Or would they groan and roll their eyes?

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