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Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

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Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#311

Post by sudosysgen »

vincent-toups wrote: post #239
crazygringo wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

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.

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.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#312

Post by selimthegrim »

quickthrowman wrote: post #113
bpodgursky wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Aside from HBO’s ‘Big Love’ I can’t think of any non-comedy fictions shows featuring Mormons.

Starship Troopers but they were more of a "Black man dies first in horror movie" type role.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#313

Post by myko »

andreygrehov wrote: post #140
myko wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm not a voter, but isn't 51% vs 47% is basically a flip of a coin result?

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

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#314

Post by jfrunyon »

axguscbklp wrote: post #267
Aunche wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 state…

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…

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_presidentia... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidentia... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#315

Post by firebaze »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #154

> “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.

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.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#316

Post by tptacek »

boredprograming wrote: post #263
losvedir wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

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.

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.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#317

Post by whoooooo123 »

sandyarmstrong wrote: post #124

> 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.

> 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.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#318

Post by myfavoritedog »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #95
myfavoritedog wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#319

Post by buzzert »

fartcannon wrote: post #36

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 comm…

This sounds like a Reddit-wide problem. I stopped going to Reddit years ago because of this.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#320

Post by JAlexoid »

renewiltord wrote: post #176
cm2012 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up going to a school maybe 20% practicing Christian. Everyone celebrated christmas, got and gave gifts, had family dinners around then, etc.

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 b…

> 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.

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