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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

#951

Post by bena »

cwkoss wrote: post #767
krapp wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. I'm not even claiming you're wrong, but again, if we can't trust anyone to determine what truth is, why should we believe you? How can you prove you're right without invoking exactly the same sources of truth that are being discredited as untrustworthy due to their biases? Once you play the "Who controls the truth?" card, it applies as much to you as anyone else. That argument becomes infinite and recursive when…

Epistemological proofs are an impossible standard. Take in what you think has credibility or value and make a personal judgement.

But his point is that's not what's being asked. The original poster in this sub-discussion said "trust on one" then posted something he regards as "truth" to counteract "the narrative".

He was rightly called out for being someone we can't trust by his own definitions.

"Trust no one" is a bad philosophy because it's infinite regress. And anyone who claims to follow that philosophy at some point reaches a point where they have to be hypocritical and trust someone because unless they've acquired all of this information firsthand by being everywhere at all times they can't say they didn't acquire the information from someone else. And since someone isn't no one, we can't trust them.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#952

Post by throwaway894345 »

bushin wrote: post #881
throwaway894345 wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always heard it was to make conversion to Christianity more palatable, full stop. At least in Western Europe most of the conquering was done before Rome was Christianized, and they never conquered the Germanic peoples who are the pagans who give us most or all of the familiar Christian trappings (Yule logs, Christmas in December, the word “Easter”, Christmas trees, elves, etc). The pre-Christian Romans made conq…

> Not sure what the Eastern Roman empire was doing with respect to conquering and Christianizing, but if they converted anyone, I don’t think those pagans contributed imagery back to Christian holidays as we know them in America. Carol of the Bells

Interesting, but I’m not seeing anything on the Wikipedia page that suggests it was actually pagan (only that the original chant predates Christianity; not that there is any religious significance whatsoever) nor does it seem to have been Christianized by the Eastern Roman empire to convert people.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#953

Post by myko »

dang wrote: post #937
myko wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Says the supporter of the party that literally used impeachment twice to try to get rid of a President they didn't like. He deserved to be impeached, claiming otherwise shows your lack of judgement. > If there is a political party in the USA flirting with fascism, it's the Democratic party. Says the person defending the guy who tried a coup against the USA The previous POTUS deserves to be in jail, like his lawyer…

Please keep political flamewars off HN. This whole subthread is wretched and the sort of thing we're trying to avoid here. You guys have the rest of the internet if that's what you want. Also, personal attacks are not ok and will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. You did that in multiple places in this thread. Please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.h…

No problem, thanks for the heads up.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#954

Post by 13415 »

bena wrote: post #948
13415 wrote: post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people keep arguing against journals or newspapers because they are allegedly ideological or biased. Everybody is ideological and biased. Are they afraid they might lose all their critical thinking skills once they read such a journal and somehow be influenced or brainwashed without realizing it? The people who recommend against those medias already believe of themselves that they are better in…

Media is already plural. Medium is the singular.

That's true. Although it's worth mentioning that "mediums" is also accepted as a plural of "medium" in English, but not when it's used for communication media.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#955

Post by klyrs »

tmn wrote: post #662
klyrs wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Atwater's Southern Strategy: attract racists, without saying... you know the rest. He said that a long time ago, but the strategy is obviously still in play (see e.g. Thomas Hofeller, bithers, blatantly anti-mexican and anti-muslim quotes from the party)

The far right keeps showing up bearing the battle flag and nazi flags -- and Flynn, Stone, and Trump appear to love groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Other Republicans who speak out about that get cancelled.

Jerry Sexton's "who knows, maybe some of us will be slaves one of these days."

And the QAnon candidates.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#956

Post by chevill »

mikepurvis wrote: post #408
tptacek wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A fair point, but I don't think the concession is worth what you get out of it. A citizen whose sole news source is Fox is considerably less informed than a viewer who might watch exclusively CNN (or possibly even nothing at all, see [1]) Fox News really is worse, and while there may be lessons learned there which can be applied to the other outlets, such as insisting on clearer labeling of opinion content vs reporti…

While I can technically see that some news organizations are worse than others, my issue is that they are all so bad that they are actively doing significant damage to the world and most of the time they are doing it consciously and intentionally, so I don't really get much utility trying to distinguish them from one another.

And yet while they are all genuinely terrible due to trying to remain profitable AND trying to advance their personal political agendas, people are always trying to use the excuse that "its better than X" to justify supporting them.

My solution would be to ignore the news completely, but that solution isn't effective because I know multiple people that insist on ranting about everything they see/hear from the media on a daily basis.

IMO the media is very important for civilization, but somehow we have accepted that deceit, manipulation, and failure are the golden standard.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#957

Post by alentist »

jonathankoren wrote: post #933
alentist wrote: post #897

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every poll of Americans and religions shows Christianity as by far the most popular choice. There is simply no way to square your idea that nonreligious is the default when over 70% of Americans identify as Christian.[0] GP is talking about representation in film . That's what this whole subthread is about.

When you're the default, you have representation in all media, even without it being explicitly stated, because the audience already assumes it. Why? Because there's no reason to believe that the character is anything except the most common case in society. Some would even describe being the most common case and not having to explicitly be called out for representation as privileged.

> When you're the default, you have representation in all media

Not true.

> there's no reason to believe that the character is anything except the most common case in society

Not true.

You are simply throwing out baseless assertions.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#958

Post by dandersh »

jollybean wrote: post #431
dandersh wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some benefits to the Economist, such as the ones you mentioned but I don't know that I could recommend it, at least without a secondary source for what you're reading there. I stopped reading it about 10 years ago for a few reasons. During the housing crisis the coverage wasn't as deep as it should have been and I would read articles that were nothing more than "nationalizing banks is bad" without explainin…

"Their coverage of US politics was also laughably bad." It's an English magazine that's not even 'News'. Also this: "During the push to pass the ACA they overstated the GOP's position and willingness to deal." Is a pretty petty reason to not read something. Also, they could have been right. There are better reasons not to read the Economist.

Multiple examples of a publication's analysis being found lacking and a reaction of no longer consuming it as a result is not "pretty petty". I'm reading them for their non-US coverage, and if I find their US coverage to be lacking(which it was despite your attempts at gaslighting otherwise) than it is reasonable to question their non-US reporting and not waste time on it.

No, they were proven to have been wrong. I provided a specific example of their analysis being wrong, one which you did not address. The ACA passed along party lines after almost a year of deliberation. The GOP spent the subsequent decade running on "repeal and replace" only to get seriously close once. There are multiple other examples (McConnell declaring the goal of making Obama a one term president, refusing to conduct hearings to confirm Garland to the SC after recommending him, etc.) of where the GOP was acting in bad faith, which is also what you are doing here.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#959

Post by jonathankoren »

alentist wrote: post #957
jonathankoren wrote: post #933

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're the default, you have representation in all media, even without it being explicitly stated, because the audience already assumes it. Why? Because there's no reason to believe that the character is anything except the most common case in society. Some would even describe being the most common case and not having to explicitly be called out for representation as privileged.

> When you're the default, you have representation in all media Not true. > there's no reason to believe that the character is anything except the most common case in society Not true. You are simply throwing out baseless assertions.

I’m going to go out on a limb, and guess you’re a straight white male from a middle class or upper middle class background, raised in a home that celebrates Christian high holidays, and have no major disabilities.

I can tell this, because you’ve never considered what representation means to you.

You crow about how being the default isn’t representation, but you have nothing to back that statement up except your hurt feelings, because it doesn’t even hold up to even a cursorily examination of popular culture, or history as it’s commonly taught.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#960

Post by jonathankoren »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #919
jonathankoren wrote: post #878

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Christianity isn’t the default, secular is the default. When there are identifiably Christian characters, they are often some cringey stereotype (the religious clique in “Easy A”, for You seem to believe that in your face conservative white evangelical Protestants are the only Christians. This speaks more to your own biases than society’s. Every poll of Americans and religions shows Christianity as by far the m…

> You seem to believe that in your face conservative white evangelical Protestants are the only Christians. This speaks more to your own biases than society’s. I grew up Catholic, went to Catholic school, "Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus", etc but carry on. > Every poll of Americans and religions shows Christianity as by far the…

> Every poll of Americans and religions shows Christianity as by far the most popular choice. More popular choice of what? Music? Films? Television?

Of AMERICANS. I even gave you a link. Do the minimum amount of work.

> I don't doubt this. I'm really not sure why you're framing this as a Catholic vs Protestant thing. I get the feeling you think I'm using "Christian" to mean "white evangelical protestant", but for the life of me I can't figure out why

Because all the examples you give are coded that way. You could have used any of numerous examples of explicitly observing Christians in media that aren’t WEPs, but that’s not what you went with

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