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.
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.