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The American Press Is Destroying Itself

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Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#181

Post by epx »

andrenth wrote: post #178
epx wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in Brazil... I like two say there is no left and right, there are two right-wing parties, each one defending its slice of the status quo (left is pro-privileges of public servants here, which are already majority in top earners)

This seems to imply left = good, right = bad, so when a leftist party does something bad it’s reframed as right wing.

Not at all, and I don't think right-wing people are bad; they just think the status quo is optimum, is a global maxima.

For example, the 'vanilla' right in Brazil in XIX century managed to delay the end of slavery by 6 decades. They thought the country would collapse without slave labor to sustain the agribusiness at the time. Were they inherently bad? Of course not; they thought they couldn't do any better (and of course their opinion was tainted by the fact they owned plantations. It is only human to like the status quo when you are benefited by it. And they were plain wrong, after all. Agribusiness only grew stronger after abolition.)

I classify most 'lefties' here as disguised right-wing people because they also think the public sector is perfect as it is, among other things I don't agree with.

The society needs left/progressive views to go forward, as it needs righties to pay the current bills. But there are much more productive ways to be a lefty. I respect the Green Party here, as well as politicians that have been proposing UBI for 20 years or more, way before it was on vogue.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#182

Post by born_a_skeptic »

Woberto wrote: post #174
born_a_skeptic wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Help me understand what is wrong with that statement. If he fishes there regularly and sees (what he believes) are immigrants dumping trash, then isn't that statement true? How do you what he saw? This seems like splitting hairs.

You yourself said "what he believes". Not "what he knows". That's not an insignificant detail. That seems like slander, really. Also, without proof, how can anybody say whether it even did or didn't happen? There are so many credible sources with proof of large companies polluting water, why not use that as an example?

I get what you are saying and agree there is a difference between knowing something and believing something.

However, when someone believes something is true, that can mean multiple things, I take it to mean they think there is a high probability of something being true. He’s basically guessing. That means the only thing we have to go off of is Tucker’s word because he was there. And, as I ballpark estimated above, he’s generally correct when he says something according to the fact checking website, so I think he’s got credibility.

Also, Tucker talks about fly fishing every so often on the show, it’s a passion of his, so it’s very possible he has seen people, who he thinks are immigrants, dumping stuff.

Again, this feels like we are splitting hairs. He's pretty consistent about his view regarding immigrants (depends on situation). You may disagree with him, but that doesn't mean he is wrong.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#183

Post by giardini »

Woberto wrote: post #176
aww_dang wrote: post #108

>I always question, why does a Black life matter only when a white man takes it?... Like, if a white man takes my life tonight, it’s going to be national news, but if a Black man takes my life, it might not even be spoken of… It’s stuff just like that that I just want in the mix. Because the dominant media narrative has a fetishized view of violence, racism and victimhood. Combine this with their overarching savior c…

I don't think I see the logical consistency you're talking about. In one case, there is a black man killing another black man. To me it seems highly unlikely that race was a motivating factor. In the other case, there is a white man killing a black man. Without further knowledge if the situation, we can't say whether race was involved here either - but in so many recent cases we have seen that race is near the root o…

Woberto says>"there is a black man killing another black man. To me it seems highly unlikely that race was a motivating factor. I dunno! Maybe that black man is statistics-savvy and reads the FBI's UCR [Uniform Crime Report} statistics each year:

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

(see the upper-left corner of the spreadsheet)

So he knows that a black man is ~10 times more likely than a white man to kill him. When he encounters a white man in an alleyway at night he might give that white man a "pass" but if, under the same circumstances, he meets a black man...well, what are the odds?

So possibly, even in the case of black on black murder, race can matter very much. Especially if blacks are more highly educated (and read crime statistics or grok them). BTW white men read the same stats.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#184

Post by remote_phone »

the_af wrote: post #166
remote_phone wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re proving the article perfectly. I read the entire thing. And you don’t read more than me.

Oh, I'm pretty sure I do read more than you. I also don't assume we live in the same country. Keep your condescending attitude to yourself.

Nah you don’t read more than me. It’s funny that someone who claims to read so much can’t get through an article because it’s “too long”. I’m pretty sure you don’t read very much.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#185

Post by mcphage »

downerending wrote: post #162
mcphage wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These days I just can't stomach what they're doing. It's a measure of how far they've fallen that Donald Trump doesn't seem that bad (by comparison). What do you think the Left is doing that makes Trump seem not so bad?

Harsh enforcement of a numbing philosophical and social conformity, for starters (e.g., cancel culture).

If you hate the cancel culture on the left, your mind is going to be blown when you find out what the right has been doing.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#186

Post by mcphage »

JPKab wrote: post #154
mcphage wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kneeling before people you've never met to atone for the sins of of other human beings who happen to share your skin color might be something that's normal to you. It is utterly alien to the vast majority of the American public. Kneeling together in humility with other people is a weekly occurrence, if you’re Catholic.

I was raised as a fundamentalist Christian. I don't know the reasoning in Catholicism, but was told to kneel in church as a show of humility and submission to God. I was also told that this was reserved only for God. I'm no longer religious. I couldn't tolerate the bigotry towards gay people. But the idea of kneeling for a human being repulses me.

If the act of kneeing at all is a problem for you, then I don’t know what to tell you. But kneeling to others, and kneeling with others—joining in with others who are kneeling—are very different actions. I’d suggest you not conflating the two.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#187

Post by claudeganon »

hedora wrote: post #180
claudeganon wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, giving bigotry a prominent position and mass circulation is what protects and furthers democracy. History certainly agrees with your sentiment.

Well, there were a bunch of white nationalists in Germany doing all sorts of terrible stuff, and the news decided to filter the message to match their sponsors’ ideology (by adding fake stories about eating babies, and suppressing stories about death camps). How did history judge that again?

It was US state policy to reject Jewish refugees while our wealthy industrialists conspired to profit from the Nazi regime. The German American Bund had branches across the US and Hitler‘s writing was featured in the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/1941/06/22/archives/the-art-of-propa...

If you’re going to invoke Godwin’s Law type arguments, you at least have to know the actual history.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#188

Post by the_af »

remote_phone wrote: post #184
the_af wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I'm pretty sure I do read more than you. I also don't assume we live in the same country. Keep your condescending attitude to yourself.

Nah you don’t read more than me. It’s funny that someone who claims to read so much can’t get through an article because it’s “too long”. I’m pretty sure you don’t read very much.

Oh, but I do read more than you, and in more languages. People who are smug like you and think people reading too little are "the problem with our country" read very little themselves. They tend to assume the world is as small as they are, and overplay their meager achievements like reading through a New Yorker article.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#189

Post by mancerayder »

roenxi wrote: post #7

I think this piece rambles on against the far-left a bit to much to be useful. The political dialogue is currently in territory that is Important. Normal families are under significant financial pressures, the legitimacy of major institutions (police, presidential elections, government solvency) is open to questioning. Global conditions are tense, let alone America's internal problems. This is a time for sober discus…

> I think this piece rambles on against the far-left a bit to much to be useful.

The NYT is far-left? Self-censorship in there is one of the core topics of the article. And many other mainstream left (and some not even political) journals are mentioned. It doesn't feel like you've read the article in any depth if that's your takeaway.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#190

Post by phaus »

danaris wrote: post #30
phaus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Centrists would be somewhat rare it it hadn't become a slur for both extremes to label anyone that's not an extremist. Moderates are far more common than centrists. But these day's you're either completely toxic and insane or you get ridiculed as a centrist for not caring enough.

[flagged]

This is exactly what I was talking about. You make a bunch of assumptions about peoples' political opinions that are incorrectly portraying them as centrists and supporters of nazis if they don't adopt your world view. "Us or them" is killing America. Lack of nuance and intelligent discourse is destroying us.

There's more to the extreme left than "Everyone deserves to be treated equally and with dignity."

Politics in the US lacks nuance. You can be politically moderate and lean towards the left. It isn't simply conservative wolves in centrist clothing.

I can vehemently disagree about many things that extreme leftists do and still vote for one over Donald Trump. But that doesn't mean voting for Donald Trump automatically makes someone a Nazi either.

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