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The case against crisis-mongering

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Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#91

Post by bart_spoon »

spamizbad wrote: post #46
thinkharderdev wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I think that there is quite a lot of non-fearmongering media out there. The Economist strikes me as a good example. And in general I think if you read any "respectable" (Economist, NYT, WSJ, WaPo, La Monde, etc.) newspaper as a whole on a day-to-day basis you wouldn't come away from the experience being especially scared or fearful. The problem is that it all gets dumped into the social media slurry and what…

The Economist does a fair bit of fearmongering when it comes to China and inflation.

I think one dimension of crisis mongering is how drastic the stakes are portrayed. Its one thing to discuss discerning trends or potential problems, and another to portray every problem as a struggle of between good and evil in which the balance of the universe hangs. The Economist tends to stick to the former side of the spectrum than the latter in my experience.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#92

Post by leereeves »

anigbrowl wrote: post #84
OrvalWintermute wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are we talking about someone that believes in free speech, a free press, private property, the Rule of Law, opposes cancel-culture, believes in social policies, free elections, Separation of church & State, supports a progressive taxation, abhors violence as a way to change govt, and generally supports the constitution? Or, are we talking about someone that believes in controlled/regulated speech, a controlled press,…

Ooh! 21 tropes in 2 sentences, that's very impressive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

Actually 10 distinctions between "liberals" and "progressives", demonstrating that there are many criteria by which progressives are closer to communists than to liberals.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#93

Post by ttonkytonk »

There’s a big tradition on the left dating back at least to Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs, the Climate” of insisting that building a zero-carbon future requires the adoption of radical anti-capitalist politics. And I think that people who insist that liberalism can’t reckon with contemporary crises are from that school of thought.

But it’s completely absurd.

As long as capitalism is the guiding light of society, it's probably absurd to think a solution is possible.

The capitalists control the politicians, and the voting populace underestimates the degree to which they can be manipulated.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#94

Post by leereeves »

somebodynew wrote: post #79
namdnay wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What wrong with “law as a living construct”? So only the bill of rights is valid and we should drop the other amendments?

The eleventh amendment was a "bug fix" to the constitution. The original constitution had wording that accidentally allowed a citizen to file a suit against a state directly in the supreme court. Nobody in the government intended for this to be possible, but citizens began suing states and this conduct was upheld as constitutional. At the time (1794), this was resolved by amending the constitution to make the desired…

Good example. Opposing "law as a living construct" doesn't mean the law shouldn't be amended or "we should drop the other amendments", it means the courts should follow the law as written (including amendments) and not redefine it as they choose.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#95

Post by cblconfederate »

hliyan wrote: post #76
hiddencache wrote: post #10

Regardless of what Tyler Durden said: > "We’re the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war, our Great Depression is our lives." The 90s were a pretty fortunate decade. The threat of nuclear war had passed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the economy was chugging along fine, and terrorism hadn't yet taken centre stage. Certain…

I remember only two international crises -- the Gulf War and Serbia. when protecting the Earth against asteroid impacts started receiving what felt like more than its fair share of news coverage, even as a teenager I knew that the world must be in a great place. With the Internet taking off, I thought it would be the dawn of a golden age. Of course, that came to an abrupt halt on 2001/9/11.

american culture had done that decades ago. the political culture of outrage did spill over, a little, but it didn't really catch on anywhere else

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#96

Post by throwawayboise »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #80
jerf wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they are sick of it, but not because the grandparent post is wrong. They're sick of it because the emergency is "supposed" to be something you can overcome, feel triumphant about, and move on to the next thing. But the emergencies in the media don't work that way. It doesn't matter how much you recycle, the media will keep screaming about catastrophe. It doesn't matter how many solar cells adorn your roof, th…

What I gather from your comment is that the media thrusts big societal issues (sustainability, climate change, child abuse, crime) upon the individual. When the individual tries to address these issues with their own actions or purchases, it's has zero impact on the reporting of the crisis. I can conclude that the only sane things for an individual to do is not to counter these issues with individual actions, but to…

> switch off the media completely and live life as best as one can

This is what I do. And I am confident that no matter what choices I make individually, they have no impact whatsoever on a global scale.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#97

Post by andi999 »

h2odragon wrote: post #21

Humans are built to survive adversity. We got so good at it, we took over the planet. Now there's lots of humans who haven't ever faced serious challenges (by previous standards of everyday survival), and they need to feel the drama and triumph humans are programmed for even without the actual life threatening events that used to prompt those feelings. So for many, there's always going to be an imminent apocalypse th…

With imminent apocalypse do you mean things like acid rain/tree dying, energy (oil) crisis, next ice age coming, nuclear destruction of the planet, nuclear hazard of power plants, Ozon layer depletion?

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#98

Post by namdnay »

leereeves wrote: post #94
somebodynew wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The eleventh amendment was a "bug fix" to the constitution. The original constitution had wording that accidentally allowed a citizen to file a suit against a state directly in the supreme court. Nobody in the government intended for this to be possible, but citizens began suing states and this conduct was upheld as constitutional. At the time (1794), this was resolved by amending the constitution to make the desired…

Good example. Opposing "law as a living construct" doesn't mean the law shouldn't be amended or "we should drop the other amendments", it means the courts should follow the law as written (including amendments) and not redefine it as they choose.

So a civil law system, rather than common law? Yeah they have that in France, it comes with its own issues (very slow to adapt - women only got the vote in the 60s, and the death penalty was still there until the 80s if I remember correctly)

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#99

Post by AlbertCory »

There's an old, old saying in the news business, which predates 9/11 and almost everything else:

"If it bleeds, it leads."

There was always an incentive to lead with disaster. I'm probably mangling this quote, but someone (British?) said about the media:

"They can't tell the difference between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization."

To which the response was "Actually, a veteran newsman knows perfectly well which one is the better story."

That kind of sensationalism seems almost quaint now. Everything is the collapse of civilization.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#100

Post by leereeves »

namdnay wrote: post #98
leereeves wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good example. Opposing "law as a living construct" doesn't mean the law shouldn't be amended or "we should drop the other amendments", it means the courts should follow the law as written (including amendments) and not redefine it as they choose.

So a civil law system, rather than common law? Yeah they have that in France, it comes with its own issues (very slow to adapt - women only got the vote in the 60s, and the death penalty was still there until the 80s if I remember correctly)

Not just in France. Most of Europe and the Americas use a civil law system, except for former British colonies.[1] This includes many nations that gave women the right to vote before the US did. And as for the death penalty, well, the US still has that.[2] So your examples haven't convinced me that civil law is slow to adapt.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#/media/File:Map_of_...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dustin_Higgs

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