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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

#661

Post by reedjosh »

anm89 wrote: post #616
cwkoss wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dimensio…

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.

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.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#662

Post by tmn »

klyrs wrote: post #607
mariodiana wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Can you give 3 examples of extremists on the right? Would just like to understand how people are viewing things

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#663

Post by JAlexoid »

dragonwriter wrote: post #511
JAlexoid wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

> 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".

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#664

Post by ardit33 »

apocolyps6 wrote: post #221
elefanten wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#665

Post by rkk3 »

boredprograming wrote: post #505
Moodles wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

> 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.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#666

Post by bluGill »

rejectedandsad wrote: post #321
bluGill wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but the democrats did spend 2017 looking for every excuse to impeach Trump they could find.

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.

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.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#667

Post by AzzieElbab »

bobthechef wrote: post #503
ghostpepper wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the opposite of MSNBC? Or the NYTimes for that matter?

Since the NYT is America's Pravda (according to Chomsky), then whatever the analogue of the opposite of Pravda is.

Samizdat - if you want to go down that hole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#668

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

standardUser wrote: post #592
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#669

Post by throwaway894345 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #627
dahfizz wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> 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.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#670

Post by oytis »

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.

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