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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

#891

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#892

Post by paulddraper »

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…

> ill-formed assumption...by reading from both sides, they’ll balance and you’ll arrive at an enlightened center.

Not at all.

1. The assumption is that reading from multiple sides, you'll arrive at the enlightened position, center or otherwise.

This is the same assumption as in a courtroom. The idea isn't that the prosecution and the defense are both equally valid positions. (They don't.) The idea is that vigorous argument will yield the truth.

2. There's a lot of news that isn't necessarily "a side" but that you'd miss from a monotonous diet.

For example, in Jan 2020 I watched some Tucker Carlson episodes on Fox News. At the time the news media was overwhelmingly focused on Trump's first impeachment, but Carlson chose to cover this new "Chinese coronavirus."

I want to know what's going on in the world and it's absurd to think one particular source covers it all, even it wanted to.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#893

Post by alentist »

ABCLAW wrote: post #570
anm89 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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…

> Your position is a very strong affirmative for the current status quo.

Non sequitur.

> You don't want anyone to be able to enact change.

Non sequitur.

> If your goal is to never be critiqued because you can't stand to be wrong, and that's why you've adopted a 'centrist' standpoint

Strawman.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#895

Post by TechBro8615 »

throwawayboise wrote: post #350
boredprograming wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fox New's actual news coverage is mostly truthful. But a huge amount of their airtime is opinion pieces and media personalities who spout BS all day. Tucker Carlson is probably the most notorious. Plus they have Republican politicians calling in and showing up constantly, and they're allowed to say whatever they want.

I mean, the same is true about CNN's opinion pieces, or MSNBC's, etc, they are just on the opposite side of the spectrum.

On CNN it’s an “analysis.”

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#896

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #594
NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently a registered Pacific Green, lean left, and on the political compass I'm basically smack dab on top of Bernie Sanders (whom I voted for and donated to in the 2016 primaries). And have never voted Republican. So his observation is about my own "side" more or less. But I'm totally unsurprised to see this downvoted here only 18 minutes in. Here's a short article on the paper: https://ricochet.com/76902/arch…

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#897

Post by alentist »

jonathankoren wrote: post #878
throwaway894345 wrote: post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is true, but also underlines the very point the article was making. In the United States, Christianity is the default. Characters are typically only identified if the stray from the default 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 example). See also the link about “…

> 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…

> 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.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#898

Post by thu2111 »

TrispusAttucks wrote: post #869
southeastern wrote: post #852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I think one way to demonstrate that is to consider a particularly contentious debate. Say, the Palestine-Israel conflict. If you're on the side of Palestine, agreeing with Israel only leads to more death and hate. If you're on the side of Israel, agreeing with Palestine only leads to more death and hate. The center doesn't know what to think-- it's complicated but it definitely needs to end. So the centrist…

False dichotomy. Strawman. Just because someone is centrist doesn't mean they don't know what to think. It usually means they have a nuanced position on an issue that doesn't conveniently fit into a box that is red or blue.

All the people I know who like to think about issues deeply generally hate to be described as left or right and much prefer to reject labels.

Sometimes I'm not sure they actually can't be labelled, and sometimes the difficulty in labelling them comes from an overall lack of coherency rather than a truly uncategorisable position, but, I don't know anyone who calls themselves a centrist and could talk about politics in any depth. Centrism seems mostly, at least where I live, to be what people call themselves when they just support the status quo and wish politics would go away.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#899

Post by XorNot »

Noos wrote: post #158
XorNot wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But since his fanbase has a lot of LGBT, they felt betrayed because he did so The LGBT community was [1] and still are violently attacked for the mere act of existing. The idea that people's political beliefs, what, don't affect other people who live in that country? Is insane. Voting is a political act which affects others. If someone votes for a politician who gives cover and support to a group which - as an exam…

Reading about Trump on this, he seems to flipflop more than be hateful or anything; in one breath he supports same sex marriage, in another he restricts certain federal aspects like gender dysphoric individuals being allowed in the military. The actual content of what he did for LGBT seems to be a minor negative mostly surrounding limiting federal power over employment; he refused to put up any fight against same sex…

It's irrelevant whether this is a Trump thing, a Biden thing or a Bernie Sanders thing. Politics effects people's lives. This attitude that you can vote for candidates or policies which would destroy other people's lives and not be criticized is some entitled privilege.

Being "cancelled" isn't some autonomous process, it's not a button that gets pushed it's people reading about an issue and making a personal decision they're entitled to make. What I do with my free time and money, and who I choose to support is my decision to make. Not yours.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#900

Post by stouset »

adflux wrote: post #687
stouset wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you understand that there’s an immense difference beteeen silencing those you disagree with and not personally inviting them to spread their bullshit to an audience of tens or hundreds of millions of your own followers?

> Keep an open dialogue and dismantle them. If you can't do that, maybe they have something worth listening to.

Climate change denialism, antivaxers, and flat earthers have all thrived in an environment of open dialogue. Do you believe they have ideas worth listening to?

The gish gallop is a depreddingly effective tool, and not one generally leveraged by people on the right side of a debate.

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