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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

#761
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American media is a global industry and is serving a customer base of much more than the US population.

As a non-american, american media does a terrible job of representing anything outside america, so if that's the reason I would really appreciate if they could stop it...

They generally do a terrible job representing anything inside America as well.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#762

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…

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…

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 informed and able to recognize the bias. If they are that critical, then they should have no troubles consuming biased and ideological media, and they shouldn't assume without further evidence that others don't have the same ability.

Especially in this case it's weird, because the journal is called The Economist. Obviously you'd expect some bias pro economy there.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#763
post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, I do not live in that neighbourhood and I don't really mind the America-as-moderate-theocracy system in place. You won't see me whining about the Christian median parking. I have a motorcycle. SF's traffic doesn't bother me and the numerous curb cuts advantage me (cars can't park, but I can). However, the fact that this stuff happens repeatedly for Christian institutions and rarely (almost never, in fact…

> However, the fact that this stuff happens repeatedly for Christian institutions and rarely (almost never, in fact) for others is not something that escapes me. Probably just because there are a lot of Christian institutions.

This is transparently not the case when exceptions are made for a Christian institution but not a Jewish one as frequently occurred during COVID-19 restrictions.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#764
post #603
post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The middle between truth and lie is a lie. The middle between torture and fredom is less bad torture. I could continue, but that is the point.

A "centrist" who looks at each issue and takes the average of the mainstream parties' positions is a fool, and will be wrong more often than someone who picks a party and follows along with their beliefs. Someone who looks at each issue and comes to their own conclusion is likely to end up with views that will not line up cleanly with any political coalition, and must choose which issues to compromise on when decidin…

A political party is a compromise - a bunch of people who've decided they can accept one-another's redlines and non-negotiables.

A sane person doesn't just choose a party and adopt their party-line; a sane person works out what their opinions are, and maybe then chooses to support a party with policies that are sufficiently congruent with their views. Or not.

People who don't think for themselves are not really participating in politics. They're kidding themselves. They should voluntarily refrain from voting.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fox News has moderated a lot over the past few years, while CNN and MSNBC have moved quite a bit to the left. You see it more on cultural issues than say economic or foreign policy issues. Joy Reid, for example, just says the most outrageous falsehoods and goes completely unrebutted: https://twitter.com/wesyang/status/1403950560907300865?s=20

I got the "the civil war wasn't about slavery" line fed to me in school. Reconstruction was a bad thing, too, and it was good when the North stopped meddling. So where's the most outrageous falsehood here? The "nothing to do with" bit? That's not the exact version I got, but the gist was: "the Civil War was about states rights, it's just a coincidence that the right in question was the right to have slaves, but the S…

The falsehood is saying that “currently, most K-12 students learn Confederate Race Theory.”

I grew up in solidly Republican Virginia in the 1990s (even my “liberal” Northern VA county voted against Clinton both times) and we certainly didn’t learn the “Daughters of the Confederacy” version. When we visited Monticello, slavery was discussed at length. Teachers have discretion so maybe some kids are still learning this stuff, but it’s a huge lie to say it’s “most” kids today.

Folks like Reid are massively gaslighting people by making it seem like the opposition to CRT is opposition to “teaching kids about slavery.” Conservatives in Virginia weren’t up in arms complaining about that when I was a kid almost 30 years ago, so it’s hard to imagine that’s what they’re doing. The opposition, instead, is to people like Reid who are trying to normalize racism against white people. It’s opposition to people who want to turn slavery into the entire narrative, such as the 1619 Project, which asserted that “nearly everything exceptional about America grew out of slavery”: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/year-zero

> Out of slavery — and the anti-black racism it required — grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system, its diet and popular music.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#766
post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, the fact that this stuff happens repeatedly for Christian institutions and rarely (almost never, in fact) for others is not something that escapes me. Probably just because there are a lot of Christian institutions.

This is transparently not the case when exceptions are made for a Christian institution but not a Jewish one as frequently occurred during COVID-19 restrictions.

I'm not familiar with this, care to cite?

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#767
post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On June 12, 2016, Mateen spent just over three hours in PULSE from the time he began slaughtering innocent people at roughly 2:00 a.m. until he was killed by a SWAT team at roughly 5:00 a.m. During that time, he repeatedly spoke to his captives about his motive, did the same with the police with whom he was negotiating, and discussed his cause with local media which he had called from inside the club. Mateen was rema…

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.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fox News has moderated a lot over the past few years, while CNN and MSNBC have moved quite a bit to the left. You see it more on cultural issues than say economic or foreign policy issues. Joy Reid, for example, just says the most outrageous falsehoods and goes completely unrebutted: https://twitter.com/wesyang/status/1403950560907300865?s=20

How is that a falsehood? The daughters of the confederacy pushed the "civil war was about state's rights" narrative that is still taught across the South.

Source that it’s “still taught across the south?” Because that’s certainly not what I learned in Virginia 25 years ago.

And Reid said “most” kids, not just those in the South.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#769
post #8

I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national review and politico. I wanted to get different perspectives. However, I encountered a bunch of issues: They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is the most common form of bias I've come across. In the rare case they do cover the same thing, many articles either simply do not…

"They dont talk about or even cover the same things" - this is the number one fake news tactic in play. I'm not sure what to call it, but it's a 2x2 matrix - If a group is left-leaning, they'll report on everything good about the left and everything bad about the right, If a group is right-leaning, they'll report on everything good about the right and everything bad about the left. For example, you'll almost never se…

I don't mind that kind of bias, if your 2x2 matrix was right -- that each of them reports everything good about their side and everything bad about the other side. If that were true, you could sum them up and have a pretty balanced total news source.

The problem with Fox News and CNN is the biased attitude. They report everything good as amazing and everything bad as horrible. The anchors are "performing" the news, telling you with their tone, body language and vocal intonations how disgusted you should be or how much you should be rejoicing. This phenomenon has infiltrated the NYT and WSJ as well, and I've stopped reading both.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Americans support an abortion ban, but they also support exceptions for rape or incest. If the fetus is a human person with rights, there should be no exception. If the fetus is not a human person with rights, then restrictions of any kind are unjust. The provenance of the fetus has no effect on the moral liceity of killing it. It's a lazy opinion formed by appeals to emotion.

> Most Americans support an abortion ban, but they also support exceptions for rape or incest. This is news to me, can you qualify this statement?

https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-aborti...

> Fewer take the position that in all cases abortion should be [...] legal (25%)

75% of Americans support some kind of ban (with differing positions on what loopholes should be carved out.)

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