It doesn’t matter very much if one side is more crass, or tells more obvious lies.
It matters a lot if everybody has derelicted the attempt to represent views and understandings across the spectrum, and it’s important that we be able to distinguish that situation from just blaming a particular actor.
Perhaps you have something deeper to offer though?
Agreed.
> there is no "spectrum"
Only true in a pedantic and useless sense.
It certainly is possible to cluster and organize political preferences.
> there are only "particular actors" and people decide in real time which particular actors they prefer to focus their attention on.
Without further explanation this is just a frame which doesn’t add meaning on its own.
Overall it’s not clear what you have added here.
No. It's true in the sense that you cannot impugn a particular part of the spectrum for the actions of individuals because there is no way to reliably quantify dishonesty much less attribute its distribution across a poorly defined political continuum.
> Without further explanation this is just a frame which doesn’t add meaning on its own.
In other words, dishonesty is everywhere and it's trivial to collate a mountain of cherry-picked evidence from a particular part of the continuum to support the conclusion that a certain part of the continuum is dishonest.
> Overall it’s not clear what you have added here.
Your pretentious snark is bad form and unnecessary.
This isn’t pretentious snark. It’s an expression of surprise, and feedback that you really don’t seem to be making a clear point.
You reduced my original comment to “everyone is biased, this is not a deep insight”.
I thought you might have something deeper to add, so I was surprised not to see it.
“It's true in the sense that you cannot impugn a particular part of the spectrum for the actions of individuals because there is no way to reliably quantify dishonesty much less attribute its distribution across a poorly defined political continuum.”
This seems like a re-statement of the original comment I made in response to the post about FOX. I guess we agree about that.
It continues not to be clear what you are trying to add.
Yes, we agree on this point, what I'm critiquing is your injection of this obvious fact into a discussion about a specific event that can be attributed to the particular type of misinformation spread by FOX, the fact that "there is ideological distortion going on everywhere" is beside the point, obviously that's true, so what? If an oil spill dumps millions of barrels into the ocean and someone exclaims "wow, these oil spills are really destroying the environment" your response is akin to "yes, but pollution is a global problem that includes more than just oil spills", yes, nobody is arguing otherwise, so what's your point?
So really you are just saying this was caused by FOX.
You could have just said that.
In my view our political environment is much more complex than that and involves a pattern of escalations which can’t be so reductively disentangled.
I accept that you disagree with this.
When the NYT misrepresents something, for example, it contributes to the narrative of distortion just as much as when FOX openly claims there is distortion.
FOX news as far as I am aware has maintained that there is no evidence of election fraud, and called the election for Biden very early, so it’s not clear how you attribute this event to them. I don’t watch it, so I could be wrong about this, but it wouldn’t change the point.
The problem is not so easily attributable to a particular media outlet.
I wish it were that easy.
Read more closely, that's not what I said.
> a specific event that can be attributed to the particular type of misinformation spread by FOX
So no, I didn't say this was caused by FOX.
That sounds like you are saying FOX is a cause, although perhaps not the only cause.
If you don’t want it to sound like that, why not explain what ‘particular type’ of misinformation you think the event is attributable to?
FOX is now regarded as a traitorous part of the MSM by Trump supporters because they didn’t push that narrative.
Newsmax is the channel that has been pushing it as if it is true.
FOX has been reporting that there is no evidence that the election was stolen.
Possibly. I follow occasional links to fox, have done some searches and also read reporting about FOX.
I don’t watch it every day because I find it unbearable, as I do CNN and really any TV news.
Can you link to a piece where they report that the election was stolen?
Every news outlet is reporting on people who claim it was stolen, but that is not the same as claiming it themselves.
Here is a nice piece which explains why our current crisis can’t so easily be reduced to a particular piece of rhetoric.
Of course Trump is the proximate cause, and nothing justifies his lies about the election, but there is a lot more going on than that.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/american-cr...
If all we had to deal with is bias in decision making which resulted in suboptimal outcome, things would still be okay, as long as people making decisions and in position of authority (which includes voters) are still honestly thinking that one strategy will yield the best outcome for all of society.
But as soon as people start being dishonest for self-interest reasons, they've subsumed the goal for their own, that's the real problem. I'd rather have someone in charge whose not the best at coming up with strategies and approaches that meet the goal, possibly due to their bias or other reasons, but is at least trying their best, then someone whose trying to manipulate support and slowly put goons they control in various positions so that they can just focus on their own self-interest and promotion while pretending to everyone that this is in our interest.
The hyperpolarization is not to do with the right vs left dichotomy so much as it is a deliberate, encouraged-by-both-sides establishment of a false dichotomy designed to pen people into a small range of discourse. Some call this the Overton window; the deliberate establishment of contrasting narratives in a 2-pronged strategy was perfected in America by Arthur Finkelstein in the mid-20th century and is becoming an art form today.
If you can see FOX as a "right wing propaganda machine" but can't see the other MSM networks as being equally polarizing machines aimed at a different half of the audience, you're missing the shot.
The solution is to see the false dichotomy for what it is, look at who is pushing it, and look at what direction both "sides" actually push for. If you're on the right, they want you to have your attention and energy soaked up in this useless Stop the Steal push for Trump, who actually didn't accomplish any of the things his populist base asked for (immigration control, really bringing back American jobs, giving a shit about the working class). If you're on the Left, they want to soak you up with Biden instead of the more progressive policies that someone like Bernie or Tulsi Gabbard espoused. Either way, you're being played if you allow your energy to go toward supporting one of these useless figureheads instead of critiquing the system itself.
What changes which he implemented do you feel where behind these improvements?
If I posited the idea that he was simply riding a wave of positive economic progress established under the Obama administration, how would you counter that?
2. Imports from less-regulated low-cost places like China were impacted by tariffs, favoring American workers. Retaliatory tariffs were largely unsuccessful.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une...
Wage growth is more complex. However, this too doesn't seem to be immediately correlated with Trump's policies.
> During Obama’s last four years in office the average weekly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers went up 4.9%
I'd furthermore question that anyone is very good at accurately assigning proximate causes for people doing what people do, but the more economically minded tend to get upset when you do that as they're rather fond of their equations.
FOX was created explicitly by Ailes and Murdoch to prevent a second Nixon style teardown of the GOP. It's the reason Disney wanted absolutely nothing to do with the news arm when it acquired the rest of the Fox media empire - it's a capitalist enterprise only in the sense that it's profitable as a side effect of their main goal.
You mean the meme-graph one? Don't think so. Every time I take a quiz based on that it lands me near the center, yet I don't resonate with any self-proclaimed centrist I've talked to.
> FOX was created explicitly by Ailes and Murdoch to prevent a second Nixon style teardown of the GOP.
I don't think the intent decades ago particularly matters compared with their actions presently, which are as aimed (at the level of the individual Fox employee) towards revenue and clicks as anyone - just going after a different market niche than MSNBC et al. The ownership is going after propaganda and narrative control, of course; the whole point of what I am saying is that both sides are doing that.
> it's a capitalist enterprise only in the sense that it's profitable as a side effect of their main goal.
The fact that you can't see that that's true of the other side of the media is very telling. WaPo and friends lose money every year, but will never, ever be shut down. What could the reason for that be, other than to use it as a propaganda mouthpiece?
Honestly. If you can turn on an MSM network right now and not hear the propaganda baked into every sentence, you need to turn off all media, read some old books, disconnect for a few months, and come back when you have a perspective wide enough to realize that both sides are being harmed, and having their animosity aimed at one another, rather than at anyone who is actually doing the harm.
(This may be easier for me to see as a non-American, of course. I shouldn't blame someone who has been soaking in yank propaganda their whole lives for having difficulty taking off the blinders.)