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America is moving toward becoming a better version of itself

theatlantic.com

151–154 of 154 posts

Re: America is moving toward becoming a better version of itself

#151
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not interested because they want an echo-chamber. This is just intolerance, aka bigotry, with extra steps. It wasn't as if the man's writings were just panned. It was a typical social justice morality crusade.

> This is just intolerance, aka bigotry, with extra steps. Here we have the classic case of interpreting a definition so loose that it gets useless. Everyone is intolerant of something. I'm intolerant of murderers, so by that textbook definition I'm a bigot, but then everyone would be a bigot and we end up with a synonym for "human" - Is that helpful in a discussion?

No, this isn't a case of that. This is the classic Social Justice Jihadi pillorying someone with an opinion that isn't on the approved list. The man was a writer for a week and was removed because he committed a thought crime.

You're just being needlessly obtuse.

Re: America is moving toward becoming a better version of itself

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What media outlets do you recommend that we look to for a more accurate assessment?

The local papers of the regions in question. Certainly not elitist echo-chambers like the Atlantic — a publication that preaches diversity but fires their only conservative writer before he spent five minutes working for them. But coastal publications trying to write about the heartland is as absurd as a small town Texas paper writing about Brooklyn.

I agree that the Atlantic is left leaning, although I'm not sure I would call it an elitist echo chamber.

That said, I don't agree with your premise that coastal publications can't write about the heartland.

I can see why you might dismiss a local paper from a coastal city writing about what goes on in the heartland, as you like to call it, but the biggest national newspapers in our country happen to be coastal publications.

The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today, and LA times have been writing about the whole country (the whole world, actually) for many years. They can afford to send people anywhere in the world to research their stories. They can consult basically any expert they want on any subject. There's a reason local papers go out of business all of the time or get bought out by a larger paper.

It's absurd to compare a small town Texas paper writing about Brooklyn to papers like those I mention above. They have resources and experience that small town papers simply don't have.

I'm also not sure you know how NPR works. A lot of their coverage comes from the local member stations which seems to be exactly what you want, but you refer to NPR as coastal elites anyways.

Re: America is moving toward becoming a better version of itself

#153

> What explains the gulf between most Americans’ hopeful outlook on areas and institutions they know directly and their despair about the country they know only through the news? In their anthropological foray, they notice that people generally get along with local people in local contexts. That's certainly true. A lot of the acrimony, tribalism, and fear comes from the growing divisiveness of American culture at lar…

Bigotry? Because every magazine needs an anti-abortion zealot on staff? For balance? Dear me, where will I get my daily trog talking points if The Atlantic doesn't spoon feed them to me?

Please don't post ideological rants to HN, regardless of how wrong somebody is. It's what we're trying to avoid here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: America is moving toward becoming a better version of itself

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was an appalling failure to investigate his background by the man who hired him, critics rightly pointed our Williamson's equivalency of murder and abortion - which has led to many not too bright folks to actually murdering abortion providers.

Williamson was making a more pointed and subtle point. You probably missed it. Part of the key is that Williamson is generally against the death penalty. He is regularly tongue in cheek and hyperbolic. He is certainly against ex post facto punishment.

No I get it and it's not subtle and talk like that leads to actual violence by people who don't care about subtlety. It's no different than joking about saying second amendment people ought to protest this political official we disagree with. Gleaned from Rand Corp statistics - https://www.cnn.com/2015/11/30/us/anti-abortion-violence/ind...
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