but it's also about not simply giving in to the outlandish because you want to create a safe space. that means calling someone out for what is usually some form of aggression without alienating or offending, putting real social capital on the line, and requiring self-restraint, courage, a bit of charisma, and more.

and then you have media organizations like npr itself, nytimes, and twitter actively trying to play both sides, instigating while also trying to claim the moral high ground, feeding divisiveness.

it's hard, and takes active, willful effort from (nearly) everyone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

more to the point, i just heard a real example of the kind of empathy and compassion we need by nba hall-of-famer isaiah thomas on tnt's "the arena" airing right now, of all places.

it was in relation to LA county sheriff alex villanueva calling out lebron james to put up money for the recent shooting of two sheriff deputies in compton. this is a powder-keg issue here in LA right now. the knee-jerk reaction would have been to put down the sheriff for an unreasonable emotional outburst, but isaiah basically extended his hand and narrated how he understood where the sheriff was coming from, even if the demand was not exactly well thought out.

that's really hard to do in the moment, and my respect for isaiah just rose significantly because of it.

Point being, what you saw sells ads better than if Walker Cronkite reported it because it's emotionally charged. All this really kicked into gear with Rush Limbaugh because he was allowed to sit there and just rant for 3 hours and get people riled up. When you consume any news, look for clues that they are trying to get you riled up. Look for emotional words like "obliterated," "destroyed," etc. particularly in the headline (which reporters don't control). News is a business and are bound by the same profit/loss laws as any other business.

it's not meant to be fact-rich/low-opinion news, and they make that obvious by not mimicking a news format, unlike many other "news"-like shows, which is entirely acceptable. there is room for a few opinion shows in the mix. but it's the opinion shows disguised as news shows that are insidiously problematic, and that's increasingly all of them.

we're entirely in agreement that the profit motive drives news and news-like organizations in a race to the bottom toward attention-grabbing infotainment rather than staid factual news.

it's almost as if we need to break off high-value, low-engagement news organizations into fully independent non-profits that are funded by a pool of income from the infotainment industry for the right to continue delivering low-value, high-engagement infotainment, rather than intermixing the two.

>it's almost as if we need to break off high-value, low-engagement news organizations into fully independent non-profits that are funded by a pool of income from the infotainment industry for the right to continue delivering low-value, high-engagement infotainment, rather than intermixing the two.

We absolutely do, and I think there is a demand for it, just not sure how it would ever get funded because the investors would always want the higher return the anger-tainment style would bring. I try to focus on individual / independent journalism when available. I'm just starting to (audio)read Woodward's new book, and it seems pretty fair so far. I thought his last book seemed fair also. The difference of the new book is quite stark compared to the media's take on it recently.

I remember early in his presidency, watching a Trump speech. A short while later I saw news coverage on that same speech and it was like they weren't even talking about the same event.

I long for the good ole Walter Cronkite news casts. (I didn't mention fox commentators because that's beyond the beyond, they're way worse).

Is this because you disagree politically or because they’re “beyond the beyond, they’re way worse” or whatever thoughtless, meaningless comment Was typed?

Polarization has been increasing in the US for longer than that. Many of these tendrils stretch all the way back to the founding days of the US, but I think the real uptick of this modern flavor is hate started with Newt Gingrich:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich#Role_in_politica...

My judgement may not move the conversation any further. I'm too emotionally wound up. I could do without the personal experience of the community which spawned this artificial divide. But then again, it's all I have, so I might as well use the hard lessons as well as the good times.

Never been in the same room as the founder of the (so-called) Christian Coalition. I hope. Grew up in Athens Georgia around that time, it was considered a small town. It wasn't all bad, but it took thousands of miles and decades of years before I could enter a Christian Church without wanting to run away.

Not because he was bad - he wasn't. He was an honorable man. So honorable he got rid of earmarks, the allocation of funding to particular projects.

The result of this being that there is very little reason for people to cross the aisle. Previously, you had to keep working with the other party to keep the gravy train on schedule. Now?

For bonus points, ask if the cost of gridlock are higher or lower than the cost of the earmarks.

Perhaps Newt was a catalyst in Washington, but I think the broader cultural change was less related. Even as a lifelong liberal, I recall the 2000s as being a period of liberal snark toward conservatives, especially in the media and on the emerging Internet (I know some will argue that conservative policies are horrible so they deserved to be treated this way, but such arguments miss the point of civility: you debate bad ideas; you don’t attack people). It wasn’t the sort of ruthless display we see today, but it was relentless and it went on for more than a decade. Conservatives generally maintained decorum, but eventually the dam burst and the resentment cascaded over and Trump arrived on the scene to personify the middle finger that many on the right wanted to give to those they felt mistreated them for so long.

None of this is meant to impute blame or innocence on anyone, but to serve as a framework for understanding how we got here as that is prerequisite for getting black to a healthier state.

The ironic part is that you allow a partial pass due to bad conservative policies, but during the time period to which you refer, the liberals were anti-gay marriage (DOMA anyone?) and ramming through “tough on crime” laws that they now decry as racist.

Like, I get it, it's ironic- he opposed a climate change and wildfire bill and his house burned down. What really scared me though was realizing I don't think the reaction would have been much different if he himself had burned to death in the fire.

That, more than anything else, has contributed to the coarseness of the discourse. Well, that and the 4chanisation of everything. Maybe the right could rein in the "libtard" and "cuck" discourse a bit too? Oh, and the death threats that prominent women get.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ocasio-cor...

There's at least one a month that makes international news? And several thousand demonstrators in the streets for hundreds of days that think they're not justified? And it turns out that the police lie about events unless there's footage, and sometimes even then?

Here's the latest one: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/police-shooting...

Even basic statistics knowledge should make this obvious.

It doesn’t matter that people are rioting. It turns out they routinely lie about events until there is footage too. Crowds riot about dumb/wrong things all the time. Sports games come to mind.

You just linked to an example where a wanted violent criminal was reported to police for violating a restraining order against a woman he previously allegedly raped, who then disregarded the cops orders, decided to fight with them and put them in a headlock, refused to comply again after being shot with tasers, refused to comply again when the gun was drawn, and instead reached for a deadly weapon while in lethal striking distance of an officer. I think you proved my point, not yours.

What you are missing is that you also make mistakes as a human being, and when you have terrible consequences of that happen, it might be nice if people on some opposite side of a political spectrum don’t laugh at you about it and say you deserved it, but stay quiet because they also know they are fallible and make mistakes.

I am truly shocked you are ok with someone dying because of some mistaken political point of view. This tbh has no place in a supposedly civil place like HN (or America? Or the world??)

This is the language and thought pattern that is the problem. It is not okay to use this kind of language.

The 2000s were absolutely not a decade of decorum, for conservatives or anyone in politics. The 2004 election was a massive turning point toward where we are today, and the 2008 election meltdown culminated the Republican party turning itself inside out in ways Gingrich really did directly catalyze a decade and a half prior.

We wound up with the Tea Party at the end of the 2000s and American political discourse went from an already slippery slope to a freefall.

I didn't understand this at the time, but everything I saw or read supported this worldview. Newspapers, magazines, schools, academics. Since I was left of them generally, I thought the world was too conservative. When conservatives complained about the mainstream media, it was always in context of mainstream journalists mocking them. For me, I saw it as conservatives mocking their extremists.

Fast forward to today, and I cannot imagine how frustrating it must have been to be a conservative then. That idea, that conservatives are bad, evil or crazy, was pervasive and all encompassing and smug.

Nowadays, for me, it's not about agreeing, but about listening. Hearing what people actually say rather than what a journalist says they say is quite enlightening.

I think this explains a big chunk of the Trump vote. Many voters saw in him someone who would not take the smug mockery without a fight.

It's also why there is such a disconnect with respect to the Russian collusion allegations. To those inclined to trust the mainstream media, it is a settled question: of course Trump colluded, and anyone who can't see that is crazy, evil or dumb.

Those who feel misrepresented by the mainstream media, don't see how that allegation isn't just more of the same egregious lying they have experienced first-hand for decades

It is such a wide gap in outlook

I hope that one day the US can come to agree on the facts. But many situations seem to be like Scott Adams says: two people watch the same movie and see two different narratives.

Look at where it's got them - conspiracy theories about pedophile pizza parlours. I'm struggling to frame the events of the last two decades as "the story of how we realized that conservatives were reasonable people after all".

Ongoimg anti-racist riots for example: are they a long overdue correction to a deeply flawed and misguided nation that oppresses a large fraction of its own citizens? Or are they a symptom of post-modernist moral relativism run amok, whereby political leaders have abandoned their responsibility to maintain public safety and order? Or perhaps they are a minor local dust up, blown out of proportion by a greedy, cynical media? Perhaps some combination of those?

If one skews left, one will be inclined to dismiss the concerns of the right as unreasonable, perhaps even hypocritical. Do that habitually enough, and conservatives will come off as entirely out of touch; and so will you, to them.

I recommend really striving to understand the point of view of your political opponents, not by reading leftist think-pieces about what the right thinks for example, but reading reasonable presentations of conservative arguments. So, more National Review and less Breitbart, for example. Less focus on "qanon pedo-pizza" who are the black block anarchists of the right, and more on people who makes sense even if you ultimately disagree.

I'm sorry, but I just don't think this is a helpful or accurate framework. Liberals spent 8 years snarking about conservatives because Bush was president, doing all his Bushy things. What about the following 8 years, when Obama was president? Can you specify at what point exactly you think conservatives lost their sense of decorum?

I mean christ, Trump _still_ brings up Vince Foster.

Or, say, I'm a disabled person and someone tells me they think social services should be cut so people like me can die off for the good of humanity. It may be actively emotionally harmful for marginalized people to be listening to toxic opinions that they are worth nothing.

(EDIT: To be clear I think listening to opinions I disagree with in good faith is a good thing that we need more of in society. However, I also believe marginalized voices are, by sake of being marginalized, are forced to engage in a significantly higher volume of significantly more emotionally taxing opinions, and therefore may need to protect themselves, and that isn't wrong.)

Justice Ginsburg and Justice Scalia disagreed on just about all of these issues and got along fine. I don't think that's because they didn't care about their respective principles and about the issues that were at stake. I think it's because, as a point of fact, we have to live in a society with each other regardless of our differences. And most of those differences are genuinely rooted in good or at least understandable intentions in the first place.

As supreme court justices we can assume that they had a basic foundation of psychological and material security - a position of prestige, a job for life, healthcare and so on.

I believe it is a lot easier to summon the "higher thoughts" necessary to be civil when ones personal position is more secure, so to achieve a more civil society it may help to work to make more insecure people secure.

It is so hard to accept others and let them articulate their view.

As a general principle, sure.

BUT.

I don't think it is reasonable to expect anyone to peacefully[0] tolerate fundamental values that fundamentally challenge their right to exist.

We may admire genuine saintliness, but expecting it (and taking people to task when they don't measure up) is a bridge too far.

You may have the right to say that you think I and my extended family should be exterminated, but I damn well have the right to — at the very least — get in your face about it.

After all, the solution to bad speech is more speech, right?

[0] Note that one can be non-violent without being peaceful.

My reservation is that most of the time this kind of argument is made, it’s because someone wants to take the most extreme cases and use them to construct some dubiously over-generalized argument. For instance, over a hundred years ago the Supreme Court themselves did this, notoriously stating “but certainly there isn’t the freedom of speech to shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater!” and then using that to construct an argument to justify throwing someone into prison for distributing pamphlets about resisting the draft.

In the here and now, there is a far bigger problem with people taking normal political disagreements and catastrophizing them into excuses to break friendships and disown family members than there is with people literally advocating for genocide.

This is literally the opposite of the original claim which is to try and understand where people are coming from and to listen to them as if they’re reasonable actors. You are doing the exact shit you’re accusing others of- assuming bad faith in their intentions and arguing against the bad faith intentions in a discussion about how to take good faith intent in arguments.

Because webmaven's comment was slightly ambiguous. While I don't think he meant to imply the specific connotations that I have concerns with, this is a public forum where it's possible that the audience could certainly infer those connotations, which makes it relevant to address them. Especially because it's a central part to the issues that we're discussing.

I tried to be conscientious about this and went out of my way to strongly imply that I didn't think webmaven meant to imply these connotations. Note, for instance, how I transition from using the second-person pronoun in the first paragraph ("If you are just making that point...to introduce nuance...", "I think I can agree with everything you said") to the passive voice and third person in the second paragraph ("most of the time this kind of argument is made", "someone wants to take the most extreme edge cases"). Maybe I should have been more clear about it, but that's what I was going for.

> Why ask if I read the first paragraph and not assume in good faith I read the whole post and respond to relevant portions I have a response to, just like any other reasonable human being?

You have contributed nothing to the discussion other than to make personal accusations that I am "not really listening at all here" or "doing the exact shit you’re accusing others of". In that light, I am assuming good faith by assuming that you're sinking to that level not because you're a troll or a jerk, but because you're genuinely misunderstanding me. That's why I asked if you read the first paragraph--because I thought that if you understood what I was trying to convey with it and read the rest of my comment with it in context, that would clear up your misunderstanding. Apparently that wasn't enough. I hope this comment is.

I'm not saying we haven't achieved anything... wide-spread recognition of basic human rights, near abolishment of slavery, valuing democracy and self-determination have all been taking to new heights over the last few generations. But at the moment all this is looking pretty fragile.

And personally, RBG's death today left me feeling more than ever that we're on a knife's edge, and that we could fall right back into those millennia-old patterns that are only occasionally interrupted by a century or so of "relative peace". Or worse.

And I'm not even an American nor live in the US!

Over time I've come to realize that usually there's a legitimate reason why someone believes what they do. Often they are either optimizing for different things, or view the matter differently.

If listening to someone's opinion is actively causing emotional harm, then sure, don't listen to them. But I worry very much about the rise in offense-taking. Perhaps it's an illusion but I've felt it's become incredibly difficult to talk to people with different [political, etc] opinions than my own: not because of me, but because of their attitude towards dissent.

I think that might be the most important time to listen to them. If merely hearing an opinion threatens your model, that’s probably a warning sign indicating that your own ideas are fragile and unsustainable, and they need to be exposed to ideas that challenge them. Engage with painful ideas, break your own models down and reformulate them into something more robust. I think the unwillingness to do this is what leads to the problems you mention.

I’m reminded of “The Coddling of the American Mind”

This doesn't strike me as a universal truth. It's good as a general principle to test your ideas against ones that challenge them and make sure they're as robust as possible -- but if that "challenging idea" is "your group has no right to exist," then it's not reasonable to argue "if merely hearing that you have no right to exist threatens your model, that's a warning sign that your own ideas are fragile and unsustainable," is it?

My point was more like, if person X really does feel that way, then sure they can retract themselves from discussion. But they should do so knowing it’s their own failing/weakness and not blame it on the other person being “toxic”.

That’s not the opinion though. That’s exactly what the parent is referring to. You need to listen, understand, and empathize before assuming that people who don’t agree with you must be racist.

"white silence is violence"

googles

Still no idea how that could be applied to my post - but I am most definitely white, and after a bit of introspection, can't think of anything I've constructively done to address racism outside of late-night internet posts.

So whilst I'd like to think I was "non-racist" - I do now feel a bit shitty that I entertain the cognitive-dissonance of being "anti-racist" and "not having ever done anything that was anti-racist"

Then if I cookie-cutter myself out to everybody else - I now see how racism flourishes, whilst the majority tut-tuts.

Was that your point?

The idea is that ineffectual discourse without actual efforts towards reform is a method of signalling that one wants change while benefiting from the status quo of oppression.

Discussion is great, but the discussion is supposed to result in change, not a vortex of words which have no connection to reality.

When people advocate for lofty civility above all else when the status quo is violent, aggressive, demeaning and unjust, it shows that the priority is not justice; it is the maintenance of the current order.

Is this position accurate? I don't know. There's obviously countervailing concerns regarding having a chilling effect on the market of ideas, but like all tough questions, it's likely a difficult situation with no clear cut answer and two virtues being traded-off against each other. This seems to be borne out by the fairly dramatic spectrum of positions adopted on the issue across the globe.

So question comes down to, did I have the moral obligation to act?

Personally I lean towards yes, but can at least understand where the people who say no might be coming from.

While I agree that silence is violence at its face is literally false, that's the general principal it's meant to invoke, that injustice can only be stopped when bystanders cease to tolerate it. The victim cannot stop it, and the perpetrator won't. Thus those who tut tut and move on with their day become complicit in allowing it to continue.

That is what the commenter is feeling vaguely guilty about, and it's a healthy thing to feel. I know I have guilt in my past where I have failed to help someone when I had the opportunity, and that guilt that comes from recognition of that has driven me to be less of a bystander later in life.

You could debate what the morally correct thing is or isn’t if you want, but you can’t debate that you committed an act of violence.

Kudos to you for leading by example.

But genuinely do appreciate your reply - makes that little voice in my head feel "less alone"

What was interesting/depressing was my "how about a creed" post was getting a few up-votes, then the moment I replied below saying maybe I was a "crap anti-rascist", my OP started to get down-votes.

Text hadn't changed, but by putting some context around it, it was read differently.

It could be just a reflexive thing to seeing a given username show up too often. I wouldn’t presume it was any deeper than that.

In my OP I very deliberately stuck to abstracts that I'd hoped "nobody could disagree with".

And nobody seemed to - until I put more words beneath it.

You're right though - engaging with your own posts is perceived as negative. People read the platitude and hit 'like' - the more you put beneath it, the greater the opportunity for something to annoy somebody (and scroll up to try to kill the thread)

We may not agree but I will always listen to you. I will always consider your opinion with respect and will endeavor to understand your reasoning. My views are not set - my goal is to listen to arguments to come to an informed position, I can honestly take forward

I was trying to explain that because the internet has increased the visibility of ones opinions to a global scale, and a recent increase in the use of both public shaming as well as punitive financial measures (fired from job, boycott) it could be dangerous to opine about anything.

The systems and histories in place we battle with are much bigger, and much older, than we are. Unless your explicit goal is to set out to change the world (which frankly is a shitty goal and usually leads to some kind of genocide), literally the best advice is "think globally, act locally", as "outdated" as that saying I suppose now is.

Except that it is especially true when what you want is positive social change. Think about the implications of someone who first implements your initial original post ("just stop and think for a sec"), and then also implements your second ("is there anything I can do here?"). That's enough. Literally that, when applied on a large scale, would change the world, in a way far more positive than riots and social justice movements.

See, humans are really terrible creatures. We have a bad habit of overcorrecting and, you know, killing millions of people in the name of an ideal. We've done it what, dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of times.

It's the difference between water carving a river, and a nuke carving a crater. The first one takes longer but is alot less destructive.

Then I lost your thread.

Then I agreed with you, "we're terrible"

We should do what we can do, what fate and hard work have placed in front of us.

"Change the world" as a cause in and of itself has killed far too many people to be considered a valid goal. We all believe our vision for the world is the right or best one, except it seems we're actually pretty bad at forcing the world to look like us.

You were berating yourself for believing in anti-racism, while not actually physically doing anything about it. My point was this: These are not contradictory things, and don't let emotional blackmailers convince you otherwise. You do what is in front of you to do, and only that. If there's not actually anything in front of you to do, that's it. Is there or isn't there? That's 100% up to you. I can't say there is or there isn't. But it is important to question even the statement that there is something to do because otherwise you get caught in a Kafka trap of never actually living in a just world (tilting at smaller and smaller windmills until you're swinging at air).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...

I think speech can definitely lead to violence - and speech can also counteract it. Neither directly, but the delta has real-world repercussions.

Or to look at it the other way - can you come up with an example of violence, that wasn't preceded by rhetoric?

I don't disagree with you on that. We can say "A can lead to B" and "A can counteract B".

I'm lost at the leap to "A is B" and "NOT(A) by COLOR = B".

I could speak or not speak, and even do so out of negligence or spite. My choices may have effects and consequences, but violence does not mean "anything with effects and consequences".

It feels too much like the missing piece is "this is what we say the word means now, QED". It's all too convenient that a conversation can be shut down by calling it violence. Implicating people is divisive. By it's own logic, redefining violence to include speech is itself a form of violent speech because it causes conflict.

That's me! I'm in that creed.

People associating their identity with their politics is when trouble starts. That's when it becomes really threatening for them to even consider alternate perspectives, because if they change their mind, they will change who they are and who they can be friends with.

It's possible to separate the two, whereby an idea on how society should be organized is just that: an idea, to be considered, adopted, discussed, and abandoned as new information becomes available.

One really poisonous idea I see circulating is "either you are for <some thing> or you are a <bad person>" Either you support riots or you are a fascist Either you punch Nazis or you are one Related, just as terrible, "Time for discussion is over. If you're on the fence at this point, you are <bad person>" These kinds of memes increase polarization, and stop discussion. A person who says something like that can no longer have a calm exchange of ideas with their grandma

One thing that strikes me as key to this polarization is how pervasive are some generalizations we make today and how the individual is lost when we make them. I've seen racists make the comment "Black people are ...." (won't repeat that here) but then I see activist say "Black people are (ex. disadvantaged.)" Are there no quite privileged black people? (millionaires, billionaires, etc) Don't lower class people face a pretty similar set of challenges no matter their skin tone? When you look at it, both arguments are generalizing equally as aggressive. My question then is: are all generalizations wrong or only some?

I think this process of grouping people has ome currents of thought tend to generalize two aspects to it, people who group other people when making statements and people who in some search of uniqueness, group themselves into it? As a non-American, coming from a very heterogeneous country I find it hard to follow how many people will self-identify so readily with a group and in the process lose some of their individuality. Maybe I speak from "privilege" as someone who due to upbringing and origin, felt a quite distinct individual, so I cannot say for sure. I just think this currents of thought harm more by dividing into groups and with many individuals satisfying their need of identity there.

As for generalizations, the English language has an unfortunate construction that allows speakers to be ambiguous about their intent when making a generalizing statement. For example, "Men are violent" is a misleadingly meaningless statement. Does it refer to some men? To all men? Is it referring to the fact that men tend to be more violent, statistically, as a group? That assertion is ambiguous, but the always-truthful qualification "some" sits uncomfortably close to the always-unfair and bigoted "all". Bigots of all stripes rely on this ambiguity.

I don't think generalizations are bad necessarily, but to honor the dignity and diversity of individuals, it's vital to avoid this ambiguity, and to always be explicit about the generalization that you're making, and then your statement can be evaluated for what it is, pro or con. E.g. Instead of a Men are violent say what is meant, clearly: Some men are violent. In general men are violent. Most men are violent. All men are violent. Now at least we have a statement that can be agreed with or disputed, instead of motte-and-baileyed

The political discourse across the globe has taken a sharp turn away from this over the last 40 years in particular. There was a brief window between the end of the Cold War and 9/11 where many had hope this was going to be the new normal. I remember feeling that sliver of optimism as I entered adulthood. No more.

Vote for people who are called "flip-floppers", by their opponents. Change your own opinions when the data changes. Be the change you want to see.

I’m afraid you do not understand the fire with which you are playing.

“Why would I listen to these whiners? I already know what I want.”

I'm curious to know how frequently you have encountered one of your liberal friends debating with an educated conservative. Likewise, I'm curious to know how frequently you've encountered one of your conservative friends debating with an educated liberal. Over the past couple of years, I've run into a number of people who simply couldn't believe that an educated liberal/conservative existed, primarily because they grew up in an area where there weren't many people with differing political views. It's a dangerous trap to fall into, because it allows you to categorize the other political party based on only the rhetoric of elected officials and on the interpretation from media. I have yet to meet a conservative or progressive who matches the caricature of either portrayed by politicians or entertainers.

One would hope that it'd be orthogonal to conservatism/liberalism or any other political spectrum, but I suspect it's not.

When I was growing up, there was no Fox News channel nor any of the cable news channels (I remember when MSNBC was a brand new thing). News was something you watched for 1 hour in the evening.

24 hours news + trench digging/tribalism have done a horrible number on modern discourse.

Thing is, I think that that's because before, there WAS no discourse, not really. It was slower. Most of the conversation was had by those you watched on TV. Alot fewer people participated. The internet DID democratize that, with frankly predictable results.

Not saying we should have done differently but I do think we need to come to terms with what that means (e.g. realizing it's forcing us into zero-sum thinking and consciously choosing something else).

Don't forget that well before Fox News there was a AM radio, and Rush Limbaugh was national in the 80's. I definitely remember how his talking point impacted my high school's debate team's rhetoric.

Agree that zero-sum thinking is a net-negative.