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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

#681

Post by ABCLAW »

anm89 wrote: post #598
ABCLAW wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Anyway yeah, I'm a centrist and it's not because I'm trying to be neutral, it's because both sides are terrifying cesspools You aren't being neutral. Your position is a very strong affirmative for the current status quo. You don't want anyone to be able to enact change. That's an understandable position, but it isn't neutrality. Especially not if the status quo is actively negative for certain people. As an aside, t…

>Anyway yeah, I'm a centrist and it's NOT because I'm trying to be neutral > You aren't being neutral. My claim is that I'm not neutral and that I'm also not trying to be neutral. >If your goal is to never be critiqued because you can't stand to be wrong, Speaking of strawmen.

It's a bit tough to understand how you reconcile this position with your original paragraph.

>Attacking the center is always the craziest narrative to me. It's saying: not only is it not okay to disagree with me and be on the other side, it's also not okay to not passionately agree with my exact side. The only right way to view these complex issues is to sign your name to join my party and then hold the party line, and everything else is unethical. I can't imagine a more obnoxious political viewpoint than that.

Your position is that holding a position and critiquing those that don't hold it is the most obnoxious political viewpoint to take. How can you adopt and advocate for any political position, then, other than a 'non-position' which doesn't actually adopt any stance?

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#682

Post by throwaway894345 »

anm89 wrote: post #346
fancyfish wrote: post #287

The elephant in the room is that this sort of enlightened centrism, while it sounds noble, rests on several ill-formed assumptions. The first is that, by reading from both sides, they’ll balance and you’ll arrive at an enlightened center. This assumes the Overton Window is balanced, stationary, and not tilted to one side or the other. You’re beholden to the good judgement of each side to not move themselves further l…

Attacking the center is always the craziest narrative to me. It's saying: not only is it not okay to disagree with me and be on the other side, it's also not okay to not passionately agree with my exact side. The only right way to view these complex issues is to sign your name to join my party and then hold the party line, and everything else is unethical. I can't imagine a more obnoxious political viewpoint than tha…

> It somehow seems like some of these people are more offended with the center than the other side.

I think this holds well beyond that particular subreddit. I think this is horseshoe theory in action. The klansman isn't the real threat, it's the moderate who won't toe the progressive line.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#683

Post by mlac »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #646
mlac wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but I'll counter: >You aren't being neutral. Your position is a very strong affirmative for the current status quo. You don't want anyone to be able to enact change. It's not that I don't want ANYONE to enact change, I just don't want people with extreme views enacting change. And it's this all-or-nothing discussion that drives the country apart and makes for little or no common ground on major issues. Th…

I'm not sure how "Extreme views enacting change" => Centrism.

I was replying to OP: "Your position is a very strong affirmative for the current status quo. You don't want anyone to be able to enact change."

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#684

Post by crazygringo »

ghostpepper wrote: post #448
sudosysgen wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recommend using the Economist as your only source for international news. It's very deeply ideological in a way that is almost invisible if you can't easily compare it to a known truth. It's certainly not only interested in solutions that can be implemented. It's interested in solutions that enforce the free market, and it paints non-market solutions as infeasible, even though they often work and are implemen…

> In any case, the Economist is not any worse than any other mainstream publication. Often they do pretty good reporting. But you absolutely must not rely on it solely especially for foreign reporting where you don't have bearings. I think this is perhaps misguided. It's not fair to the economist to compare an article on, eg. politics in Brazil, against the nuanced understanding that a Brazilian citizen would have, b…

I lived in Brazil for many years and read the local news closely.

Whenever the Economist published an article on Brazilian politics, it was generally far superior and far more insightful than anything in the local press. Which genuinely surprised me.

Remember -- most local news sources, whether in the US or Brazil, aren't nuanced at all. They're surface-level and sensationalistic.

But while Brazil has a home-grown news equivalent of Time ("Veja"), as well as USA Today (O Globo) it simply doesn't have any home-grown news source at the level of sophistication of the Economist, not even for domestic news.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#685

Post by Impassionata »

creato wrote: post #72
rhino369 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even sure if its true since most media will barely engage with the issue. But Fauci appeared concerned that Covid-19 could potentially be the result of a gain-of-function research that artificially evolved another COVID strain to increase its effectiveness at spreading. If true, COVID-19 is the biggest scientific fuck up of all time. Fauci had allegedly pushed to resume funding that sort of research. Instead,…

This should be trivially easy for proponents of that theory to prove it if that is in his emails. Just link to an un-edited, full context email thread relevant to that topic. So does this exist? If so, just share that link. If not, stop pretending that "media bias" is an excuse to continue sharing the claim surrounded by unfounded conspiracy thinking.

These people here in this topic are the vectors for misinformation.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#687

Post by adflux »

stouset wrote: post #605
mpfundstein wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you seen last podcast? he questions a lot of Alex' stuff. Further are the three AJs podcasts great entertainment

Maybe, just maybe, we should stop going out of our way to provide platforms to influential fraudsters and lunatics?

Yes, let's silence everyone who doesn't share our view and shame everyone who follows him, I'm sure that's a great strategy. For creating extremists, that is. Keep an open dialogue and dismantle them. If you can't do that, maybe they have something worth listening to.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#688

Post by gruez »

anm89 wrote: post #632
laputan_machine wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example of the second type? I see this kind of strawman argument against centrism all the time, yet I rarely see "worst of both worlds" outcomes in a political sense

Meta comment: I'm not allowed to vote specifically on this comment. I can vote on its parent and children. Does anyone know why that might be the case?

It's probably to prevent pointless tit-for-tat downvotes from replies. eg:

1. user A makes a comment

2. user B downvotes user A for disagreeing with him, makes a reply saying why user A's wrong

3. user A sees the downvote (or not), downvotes user B for disagreeing with him, makes a reply saying why user B's wrong

continue ad infinitum.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#689

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #336
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When such ideas become mainstream enough to start influencing politics, it would be a good idea to try to understand why those ideas have taken root and grown to that level of influence. Even when such ideas are batshit insane, they are almost always indicative of some severe underlying issue. If that issue isn't addressed, then such ideas keep growing and growing and could eventually lead to disaster. That Q Anon an…

As I said in another part of the thread: For many of these conspiracy theories the 'understanding' part should probably be more along the lines of epistemic forensics - "What kind of misinformation got them to this point?"

I don't think the misinformation is a cause so much as a symptom. The Nazis alleged conspiracy by communists and jews, but that misinformation probably wouldn't have taken root if Germany's economy wasn't burning to the ground because of the Treaty of Versailles. Desperate people sometimes cling to crazy ideologies that promise to relieve their suffering.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#690

Post by myfavoritedog »

watwut wrote: post #625
myfavoritedog wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you in a lot of ways, although my problem with the center is: When Democrats want to blow out the budget by spending $10 trillion and then centrist Republicans say, "Okay, we'll do $5 trillion", there's nowhere to go besides further to the right. is to give either of those groups as little power as possible The only two groups that even talk about decreasing the power of all the extremists are Libertaria…

Historically, democrats make debt smaller and republicans larger.

Actually, nobody makes the debt smaller. They monkey with the deficit, but the debt continues to grow.

But your original claim is a naive talking point based upon who happened to be President at the time. Often, the Congress has a lot more to do with what happens spending-wise.

Clinton was a good example. The Republicans were the ones who reined in the budget under Clinton, but somehow Clinton liked to talk about how he had "balanced the budget".

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