CBS Commentary - The Unbearable Smugness of the Press
34 replies, posted
[quote=CBS]And can you blame them? Journalists love mocking Trump supporters. We insult their appearances. We dismiss them as racists and sexists. We emote on Twitter about how this or that comment or policy makes us feel one way or the other, and yet we reject their feelings as invalid.
It’s a profound failure of empathy in the service of endless posturing. There’s been some sympathy from the press, sure: the dispatches from “heroin country” that read like reports from colonial administrators checking in on the natives. But much of that starts from the assumption that Trump voters are backward, and that it’s our duty to catalogue and ultimately reverse that backwardness. What can we do to get these people to stop worshiping their false god and accept our gospel?
We diagnose them as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused medical problems with demonic possession. Journalists, at our worst, see ourselves as a priestly caste. We believe we not only have access to the indisputable facts, but also a greater truth, a system of beliefs divined from an advanced understanding of justice.
You’d think that Trump’s victory – the one we all discounted too far in advance – would lead to a certain newfound humility in the political press. But of course that’s not how it works. To us, speaking broadly, our diagnosis was still basically correct. The demons were just stronger than we realized.
This is all a “whitelash,” you see. Trump voters are racist and sexist, so there must be more racists and sexists than we realized. Tuesday night’s outcome was not a logic-driven rejection of a deeply flawed candidate named Clinton; no, it was a primal scream against fairness, equality, and progress. Let the new tantrums commence!
That’s the fantasy, the idea that if we mock them enough, call them racist enough, they’ll eventually shut up and get in line. It’s similar to how media Twitter works, a system where people who dissent from the proper framing of a story are attacked by mobs of smugly incredulous pundits. Journalists exist primarily in a world where people can get shouted down and disappear, which informs our attitudes toward all disagreement.[/quote]
[URL="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/commentary-the-unbearable-smugness-of-the-press-presidential-election-2016/"]Source[/URL].
Read the full article. A really, really great piece on the failure of the media in this election, and a self-admission of blame from the journalist who wrote it. It can also be pretty easily extended to the overall attitude of the left side in general during this election.
Tbh the media in general is so terrible that it's angering
people who fall senselessly to left wing and right wing and facist and socialist and communist and every type of propaganda are gullible
yet the sad thing is, I say that and I don't even know how much of this I've fallen to myself. There's so much garbage everywhere that there is no way to actually know what is true any more.
[QUOTE=J!NX;51362873]Tbh the media in general is so terrible that it's angering
people who fall senselessly to left wing and right wing and facist and socialist and communist and every type of propaganda are gullible
yet the sad thing is, I say that and I don't even know how much of this I've fallen to myself. [B]There's so much garbage everywhere that there is no way to actually know what is true any more.[/B][/QUOTE]
The notion that this is true reflects the ultimate failure of the mainstream media.
[QUOTE=Dr. Evilcop;51362899]The notion that this is true reflects the ultimate failure of the mainstream media.[/QUOTE]
Failure on societies part, because the entire point was to create confusion
in short; bad guys one (the media)
[QUOTE=J!NX;51362904]Failure on societies part, because the entire point was to create confusion[/QUOTE]
Was it? Or are they just telling their audiences what they want to hear?
[QUOTE=J!NX;51362873]yet the sad thing is, I say that and I don't even know how much of this I've fallen to myself. There's so much garbage everywhere that there is no way to actually know what is true any more.[/QUOTE]
If you're ever in doubt that what you're reading is propaganda, check the source.
If they have no source, don't trust the article.
If they have a source, and it's a terrible source, don't trust the article.
If they have a source, and it's dangerously misleading, don't trust the article.
I applied this with Keith Olbermann and his youtube show and now I take everything he says with a grain of salt because on a few occasions he would be telling the truth but it's a misleading truth.
There have been vocal critics that have for years talked about how the media was getting more and more politicised and more and more trying to craft a narrative, it was inevitable a number of outfits would end up drinking their own kool aid.
We saw Colbert on election night in shock that he never knew what was happening, we saw the same from pretty much every news station. MSNBC, for all their faults managed to recognise what had happened.
[video=youtube;zY3nRgEZTm8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY3nRgEZTm8[/video]
The media let down the American people, but some of the people let themselves down. To speak from personal experience the last 15 years has seen both sides going into their shell, where calling the other side names superseded arguments and since discussions often became heated exchanges both sides started assuming their side was correct. The right though got shellacked in 08 and 12, they had to rethink their approach and the views they held. The left, at least a decent chunk of it, fell into a positive feedback loop. Bush was bad, so Democrats are good, People opposing Obama are racists so we are the good ones, people opposing Hillary are deplorable so we must stop them. Each election we saw wilder claims until we had a VP that is an actual bigot and, thanks to rarely making an accurate prediction, the label didn't carry the weight it should have.
Scott Adams made some [URL="http://blog.dilbert.com/post/152998516891/the-de-hitlerization-of-your-brain"]great points[/URL] about how this election was the first time a lot of people experienced the "bad guy" winning. Now we see people trying to understand how they managed to be so blind but we also have the protesters and others overreacting because they had the "[URL="http://blog.dilbert.com/post/153080448451/the-cognitive-dissonance-cluster-bomb"]Cognitive Dissonance Cluster Bomb[/URL]" dropped on them..
[QUOTE=ROFLBURGER;51362939]If you're ever in doubt that what you're reading is propaganda, check the source.
If they have no source, don't trust the article.
If they have a source, and it's a terrible source, don't trust the article.
If they have a source, and it's dangerously misleading, don't trust the article.
I applied this with Keith Olbermann and his youtube show and now I take everything he says with a grain of salt because on a few occasions he would be telling the truth but it's a misleading truth.[/QUOTE]
Haven't we just learnt that the trusted sources are terrible themselves? Bar trolling through CSPAN and the AP we would be putting ourselves at the mercy of the same people now realising they managed to bullshit themselves.
ah, what a wake up call.
Gotta Say, as Russian i am far more closer to understanding topic of media bias than many of you has given me credit for. I was called a bigot, a putinist, vatnik, product of propaganda and cetera. And all while i kept to notion of reminding everyone that in modern geopolitics there is no place left for morals, that people at power and the media that appeal to them has been part of a big plan to fabricate social tendencies, fitting opinions in a stream projected onto their agenda. But i was always opposed by those who were soo loyal to idea "Russia bad 100%, no care for details", providing picture painted to them from western sources, without questioning their nature.
"Our news 100% journalist bias, your information is propaganda".
Now look where a fuck you are. Confused, enraged and sad, it is only now that we start hearing about Hilary being a shitfuck choise to begin with. Befor 8th november, whatever was thrown at her was dismissed as less disastrous than any Trump's fart. Your media was making her a saviour of nation, and you were furiously protecting that image. You wanted anything better than Trump, forgetting what exactly was soo bad about him? Accusations? Banter? Shady Money?
Well guess what - scandals and accusations are part of any presidential campaign, us, russia, europe. But you blowed it out soo friggen much that in your image Trump could singlehandenly exile million people.
Goverment is an organisation compromised from many institutions where a head of state exist as reflection of entire goverment's policies relayed through his position rather than a central figure to take decisions for an entire apparatus.
What i am saying is : you all bought it, and it's time you admit it. This reaction, riots and depression is not a product of election itslef, but of propagandistic nature of media coverage that western population used as prime source of information in comparison to other ideas.
This is the new standard of the world you live in - there is no unbias media, there is no reprecussion for bias media as long as it is fitting to agenda they seek, and if you deny any of that still, that means you are as much exposed to propaganda as you believe other side of argument is.
[QUOTE=karimatrix;51363062]ah, what a wake up call.
Gotta Say, as Russian i am far more closer to understanding topic of media bias than many of you has given me credit for. I was called a bigot, a putinist, vatnik, product of propaganda and cetera. And all while i kept to notion of reminding everyone that in modern geopolitics there is no place left for morals, that people at power and the media that appeal to them has been part of a big plan to fabricate social tendencies, fitting opinions in a stream projected onto their agenda. But i was always opposed by those who were soo loyal to idea "Russia bad 100%, no care for details", providing picture painted to them from western sources, without questioning their nature.
"Our news 100% journalist bias, your information is propaganda".
Now look where a fuck you are. Confused, enraged and sad, it is only now that we start hearing about Hilary being a shitfuck choise to begin with. Befor 8th november, whatever was thrown at her was dismissed as less disastrous than any Trump's fart. Your media was making her a saviour of nation, and you were furiously protecting that image. You wanted anything better than Trump, forgetting what exactly was soo bad about him? Accusations? Banter? Shady Money?
Well guess what - scandals and accusations are part of any presidential campaign, us, russia, europe. But you blowed it out soo friggen much that in your image Trump could singlehandenly exile million people.
Goverment is an organisation compromised from many institutions where a head of state exist as reflection of entire goverment's policies relayed through his position rather than a central figure to take decisions for an entire apparatus.
What i am saying is : you all bought it, and it's time you admit it. This reaction, riots and depression is not a product of election itslef, but of propagandistic nature of media coverage that western population used as prime source of information in comparison to other ideas.
This is the new standard of the world you live in - there is no unbias media, there is no reprecussion for bias media as long as it is fitting to agenda they seek, and if you deny any of that still, that means you are as much exposed to propaganda as you believe other side of argument is.[/QUOTE]
"Hey guys let me remind you about myself and my obsession with defending Russia and how you all persecuted me for my beliefs, not because I drag it around with myself everywhere!"
Your self centered tendencies aside, I believe most users of websites such as this have had a distrust in media (especially television news) and have found both sides to be at fault and didnt fall for anything. The issue here is you are trying to generalize an entire population as "falling for it" when we can't control how everyone else thinks and acts.
A good example of this is how we point out your distorted view on reality but you still as you said still stick to your guns! Or how when our abrasive users attack you on this, you become further cemented in your views just like with this election!
See I can draw parallels on stuff no one cares about too, or we could focus less on "who is right and can feel superior" and more on "how do we fix this political scene that requires you to be a sociopath in both USA AND RUSSIA (not to mention the world)?"
And on a final note, the realization that news/politics is intertwined and shady has been around forever, why this article is important is because a mainstream news site is finally acknowledging it directly so your point doesnt even matter.
[QUOTE=karimatrix;51363062]ah, what a wake up call.
Gotta Say, as Russian[/quote]
oh my god it's karimatrix. I'm going to have to dissect this post aren't I?
[quote]i am far more closer to understanding topic of media bias than many of you has given me credit for.[/quote]
no you aren't lol
if you genuinely practiced what you are preaching, you wouldn't have peddled pure russian propaganda like a bigot, a putinist, a...
[quote]I was called a bigot, a putinist, vatnik, product of propaganda and cetera. And all while i kept to notion of reminding everyone that in modern geopolitics there is no place left for morals, that people at power and the media that appeal to them has been part of a big plan to fabricate social tendencies, fitting opinions in a stream projected onto their agenda. But i was always opposed by those who were soo loyal to idea "Russia bad 100%, no care for details", providing picture painted to them from western sources, without questioning their nature.[/quote]
I think the world is in agreeance with Russia being pretty fucking shit with that whole Ukraine business. Everyone had a right to shit on you for your skewed vision of the world.
[quote]"Our news 100% journalist bias, your information is propaganda".[/quote]
And it still is. Let's compare CNN and Russia Today.
CNN:
- Partisan Lean (Always Democrat)
- Misleads the public on occasion (For example, they said it was illegal to view WikiLeaks stuff, which is true but the government won't knock on your door for it but they like Clinton so it helped her that they said it)
- Funded by consumers and sponsors
Russia Today:
- Heavy pro-putin lean
- Outright lies to the public
- Quite literally funded by the Russian Government (STATE SPONSORED)
- Was made with the intent on brainwashing the world
- Considered a source of propaganda by many reputable sites
Hell, MSNBC supported Bernie because they liked him. And Bernie didn't pay a single cent to them to write good stories about him.
[quote]Now look where a fuck you are. Confused, enraged and sad, it is only now that we start hearing about Hilary being a shitfuck choise to begin with.[/quote]
Where were you for the election? A good chunk of democrats on facepunch know and knew that she's a shit candidate from the start. Our defense is, and will always be "She's better than Trump."
[quote]Befor 8th november, whatever was thrown at her was dismissed as less disastrous than any Trump's fart.[/quote]
Because almost everything that was thrown at her was utter garbage. Ever since Benghazi, liberals couldn't take anything from the right seriously anymore without actual evidence.
[quote]Your media was making her a saviour of nation, and you were furiously protecting that image. You wanted anything better than Trump, forgetting what exactly was soo bad about him? Accusations? Banter? Shady Money?[/quote]
No one forgot what was bad about him. It's the #1 reason why people supported Clinton in the first place.
Do you really think the media just said "Trump is bad. NO REASON GIVEN THO?", no they aired all his terrible fuck ups with it.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/JIit6Gc.png[/img]
[quote]Well guess what - scandals and accusations are part of any presidential campaign, us, russia, europe. But you blowed it out soo friggen much that in your image Trump could singlehandenly exile million people.
Goverment is an organisation compromised from many institutions where a head of state exist as reflection of entire goverment's policies relayed through his position rather than a central figure to take decisions for an entire apparatus.[/quote]
Except these aren't normal presidential scandals. The pussy remarks, him not paying taxes, his plan to unlawfully ban muslims from the united states, his "some are good people" remarks. The list goes on.
Compare that to the last election. "47% of Americans don't pay taxes" was the biggest issue and that's nothing compared to Trump's scandals. The Clinton scandals were pretty huge too.
[quote]What i am saying is : you all bought it, and it's time you admit it. This reaction, riots and depression is not a product of election itslef, but of propagandistic nature of media coverage that western population used as prime source of information in comparison to other ideas.[/quote]
No, it's a result of pessimism, opposing views, and the lack of understanding in how government works. But time will only tell.
[quote]This is the new standard of the world you live in - there is no unbias media, there is no reprecussion for bias media as long as it is fitting to agenda they seek, and if you deny any of that still, that means you are as much exposed to propaganda as you believe other side of argument is.[/QUOTE]
No one is denying this. We all know American media is shit and they all have their own agendas. But to compare it to Russian media is just bonkers.
[QUOTE=J!NX;51362873]Tbh the media in general is so terrible that it's angering
people who fall senselessly to left wing and right wing and facist and socialist and communist and every type of propaganda are gullible
yet the sad thing is, I say that and I don't even know how much of this I've fallen to myself. [B]There's so much garbage everywhere that there is no way to actually know what is true any more.[/B][/QUOTE]
That's why logic isn't the only thing you need to win an argument, because I believe (heh) we take a lot of our beliefs on faith and convenience and logic < faith for most people unless their position is completely untenable, and even then. Just think of religion, it serves a cause in our personal lives. Even if you actually are on the right side, you need something powerful to appeal to people.
I don't think susceptibility to propaganda is political at all, by definition it's anything that is used to convince somebody. We like having our worldview reaffirmed
[sp]btw this even applies to you people who jerk themselves off over how RASHUNAL and LOGICAL you are because you are very likely still working with a lot of assumptions that you don't scrutinize. That's okay.[/sp]
Didn't Aldous Huxley make a point of this in Brave New World? The truth would be drowned out with irrelevance, and we'd be too passive and egotistical from having too much. Honestly as I watched the American media I felt like there was no regulation, the BBC here at least has a editorial standards it abides by; which felt vacant in this election.
[QUOTE=Dr. Evilcop;51362899]The notion that this is true reflects the ultimate failure of the mainstream media.[/QUOTE]
Mainstream media is better than the utter jokes that is 'new media'. Barely any 'new media' outlets come even close to the quality of old media. Perhaps Vox and 538 are close, but the highest quality 'old media' outlets (in my view, The Atlantic, NYT, Commentary Magazine, Washington Post, are the best in the US) are all much better.
[QUOTE=Vasili;51364171]Didn't Aldous Huxley make a point of this in Brave New World? The truth would be drowned out with irrelevance, and we'd be too passive and egotistical from having too much. Honestly as I watched the American media I felt like there was no regulation, the BBC here at least has a editorial standards it abides by; which felt vacant in this election.[/QUOTE]
You need to be careful when talking about a Huxley-esque dystopia, in the same way you need to be careful about talking about an Orwellian dystopia.
In Huxley's dystopia, it's not just the over-abundance of information that creates the complete loss of meaning for information, it's also the over-stimulation of pleasure and increasingly revisionist attitudes of the society. Where "hard" morality, Christian morality for example, is replaced with "Fordism" or "Fruedism," where there's no reason to even care about the political process because you can go to your orgy-porgies to eat and fuck as much as you like and take as many drugs as you want in between to keep yourself unaware of how terrible things are otherwise.
Much like how in Orwell's dystopia, it's not just Cameras and laws, (which leads to people crying Orwell when fascism and Stalinism are still trying to get their pants on) it's the systemic revision of facts to suit the narrative, the rigid class divisions of society and the 3d chess levels of autocratic manipulation of any possible perceptions of reality by the ruling elite.
[QUOTE=karimatrix;51363062]ah, what a wake up call.
Gotta Say, as Russian i am far more closer to understanding topic of media bias than many of you has given me credit for.[/QUOTE]
couldn't be that you completely trusted your local state news instead of an actual government report with evidence before right?
I looked at his other commentary and this stood out to me:
[quote]Sure, OK. But every time you talk to someone who has a media job in New York or D.C., you're probably talking about someone who has skills that our economy rewards, regardless of upbringing. They can write or speak or analyze something complex. They have abilities that haven't yet been outsourced or automated. The people who report and talk about the news, for all their griping about low wages and the decline of print, tend to do quite well in our globalized economy.
The white working class is made up of people without such gifts. And moreover, because no set of policies can prioritize everyone, they were always designed to be the losers of our globalized economy. Their jobs would be taken away in the name of efficiency, with the marginal upside that the goods they purchase would be cheaper because they were now being made for less by people overseas.[/quote]
[quote]So what we're left with is a bunch of beneficiaries of the current economic order discussing the losers of the current economic order. And this raises the question of whether people who have a lot to gain from the status quo are well equipped to report accurately about how it's cracked up.
Because that is what we're seeing, a profound upending of the order of things. And predictably enough, journalists have been among the last people to realize this development, which makes more sense when you consider that the news is reported and analyzed by globalization's winners, even as the subject increasingly becomes globalization's losers.[/quote]
As much as I despise the resentment towards a globalized economy, this hit the nail on the head. [I]There is no upside to cheaper consumer goods if the people who lost their jobs can't buy them.[/I] They have no alternative jobs available, and if they do their new jobs pay nowhere near as well as their former manufacturing jobs.
The biased 'journalists' fail to acknowledge this, they are the ones who have gained from the new economic system. Hillary and her Clintonites for some unimaginable reason thought they could get the white vote without campaigning through the Rust Belt or that she could ride on Obama's coattails and the minority vote would help her.
Neither the establishment of the Democrats or the Republicans wanted to help these people, they did not want compensate them for their loss or provide training for jobs in new industries.
[I]Yet despite all this, it was Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump who reached out to these people and tapped into their anger.[/I]
But no, it was [B]her turn[/B] and here we are.
This is why I don't consume as much news (or if any).
Not just the press, but many of us on the political left. Most of us, even. I'm guilty of being dismissive towards Trump and his supporters, as well. I failed to take them seriously, and instead reacted with ridicule, handwaving their perspective aside. While I still find it fundamentally broken, I can't help but regret not engaging more respectfully and legitimately. If enough if us had done so, it may have changed a few minds, made an honest difference.
Every one of who acted in this way is just as responsible for the rise of Trumpism as those who voted for him.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;51365061]Not just the press, but many of us on the political left. Most of us, even. I'm guilty of being dismissive towards Trump and his supporters, as well. I failed to take them seriously, and instead reacted with ridicule, handwaving their perspective aside. While I still find it fundamentally broken, I can't help but regret not engaging more respectfully and legitimately. If enough if us had done so, it may have changed a few minds, made an honest difference.
Every one of who acted in this way is just as responsible for the rise of Trumpism as those who voted for him.[/QUOTE]
It's refreshing to see some of y'all being introspective about it.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;51365061]Not just the press, but many of us on the political left. Most of us, even. I'm guilty of being dismissive towards Trump and his supporters, as well. I failed to take them seriously, and instead reacted with ridicule, handwaving their perspective aside. While I still find it fundamentally broken, I can't help but regret not engaging more respectfully and legitimately. If enough if us had done so, it may have changed a few minds, made an honest difference.
Every one of who acted in this way is just as responsible for the rise of Trumpism as those who voted for him.[/QUOTE]
Just because lots of people think something means we should act like their ideas are perfectly legitimate? We reacted with ridicule because Trump is ridiculous, because for the most part he supports a mix of impossible policies and the politics of racial resentment. 'Understanding' Trump supporters, unless you genuinely believe that economic factors are the cause of Trump, would mean fatally compromising yourself with the ideas of the populist right, which should be unacceptable to anyone who is either anywhere vaguely on the left or a conservative. The people are a mob, and sometimes the mob needs to be ignored.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;51365061]Not just the press, but many of us on the political left. Most of us, even. I'm guilty of being dismissive towards Trump and his supporters, as well. I failed to take them seriously, and instead reacted with ridicule, handwaving their perspective aside. While I still find it fundamentally broken, I can't help but regret not engaging more respectfully and legitimately. If enough if us had done so, it may have changed a few minds, made an honest difference.
Every one of who acted in this way is just as responsible for the rise of Trumpism as those who voted for him.[/QUOTE]
While this is very true, we can't just turn around and blame everything on ourselves when somethings really weren't.
Even engaging in arguments here in good faith resulted in many Trump posters resulting to memes or unprovable assumptions.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;51365181]While this is very true, we can't just turn around and blame everything on ourselves when somethings really weren't.
Even engaging in arguments here in good faith resulted in many Trump posters resulting to memes or unprovable assumptions.[/QUOTE]
It's a bit ironic hearing you talking about good faith when you were very vitrolic towards Trump supporters to the point where you had to be banned to calm down.
Let's also keep in mind here, that a lot of the voters on both sides weren't so much voting "for" their candidate as they were voting "against" the other side.
Trump fucking terrifies me. Not least because you can apparently never be sure of anything in regards to the bastard. But I'm not going to pretend like Clinton was some kind of angel by comparison.
I can say, with absolute certainty, that were I an American voter, I'd have gone for Clinton [I]purely because I don't want Trump's proposed plans to go forwards.[/I]
And doesn't that just say it all? The fact that so many people have basically stated that this year's election was essentially trying to decide which scumbag out of two scumbags was the least bag-like and full of scum?
The fact that the Electoral College basically made millions of people's votes irrelevant can't have helped the situation, either. Not after there was all this huff and puff about "You need to register to vote because your votes matter!!!"
Except that they apparently don't, and even if they did, both the candidates were about as appealing as a burning mole corpse.
Democracy: The only popularity contest where you can narrow it down to the two least popular people on the planet, [I]somehow.[/I]
[QUOTE=Svinnik;51365213]It's a bit ironic hearing you talking about good faith when you were very vitrolic towards Trump supporters to the point where you had to be banned to calm down.[/QUOTE]
Oh yeah because arguing with Cructo is like arguing with a sane individual
You can go ahead and say I never, ever took things on good faith
but you'd be wrong
A lot of the Trump supporters, the people who lost their jobs, had no college education which while is certainly demeaning yet true is a major factor to remember.
They were from a generation who typically went into the workforce right out of high school. They didn't go to college and learn the merits of debating and challenging other views or study economics and policies. You take into account all of that and I can understand why both the Left and Right can't stand each other.
The Left tries to explain why certain policies that once worked will no longer work, and the Right either does not understand or resort to stereotypes. The Left grows frustrated and resorts to insults and this just reaffirms the Rights belief.
The core of this problem was neither side tried to understand the others perspective.
[QUOTE=LtKyle2;51365580]A lot of the Trump supporters, the people who lost their jobs, had no college education which while is certainly demeaning yet true is a major factor to remember.
They were from a generation who typically went into the workforce right out of high school. They didn't go to college and learn the merits of debating and challenging other views or study economics and policies. You take into account all of that and I can understand why both the Left and Right can't stand each other.
The Left tries to explain why certain policies that once worked will no longer work, and the Right either does not understand or resort to stereotypes. The Left grows frustrated and resorts to insults and this just reaffirms the Rights belief.
The core of this problem was neither side tried to understand the others perspective.[/QUOTE]
Wrong.
The left does not attempt to debate or try to even get their points across in a decent manner, either. They spit in your face and tell you you're a fucking moron for not viewing things the same way, and in turn most of the people on the right get angry... then it escalates forever.
This applies for both sides anymore. College education has nothing to do with it.
[QUOTE=Robman8908;51365706]Wrong.
The left does not attempt to debate or try to even get their points across in a decent manner, either. They spit in your face and tell you you're a fucking moron for not viewing things the same way, and in turn most of the people on the right get angry... then it escalates forever.
This applies for both sides anymore. College education has nothing to do with it.[/QUOTE]
I've seen it from this very forum.
HumanAbyss most notably and others consistently engaging with various Trump supporters who either cannot refute certain points and do not comment and end up resorting to stereotypes.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;51365061]Not just the press, but many of us on the political left. Most of us, even. I'm guilty of being dismissive towards Trump and his supporters, as well. I failed to take them seriously, and instead reacted with ridicule, handwaving their perspective aside. While I still find it fundamentally broken, I can't help but regret not engaging more respectfully and legitimately. If enough if us had done so, it may have changed a few minds, made an honest difference.
Every one of who acted in this way is just as responsible for the rise of Trumpism as those who voted for him.[/QUOTE]
I know I didn't engage in any debates here and shit much lately and my opinion might look unwelcome, but that's a pretty important lesson to understand. At some point, on one issue or another, everyone is extremely prone to getting stuck in echo chamber or otherwise think "well, the people who don't think like me must be deluded idiots, I'm tired of talking to them, they refuse to understand my objectively right arguments so I'll just dismiss them out of hand". At that point you yourself become a deluded idiot for someone else and any kind of dialogue dies.
When I say [b]everyone[/b], I mean it. When its ordinary people, that's fine, but when it's the media becoming infected with this mindset it becomes a huge problem, especially in a society that is so dependent on information as the one we all happen to live in, as in, modern society. When "mainstream" media pushes certain audiences away from it, said audiences seek other sources of information, various fringe media that aren't being held to the same standards. That's an actual responsibility of the so-called Fourth Estate, the one power that consistently seems to fail to grasp its own potential. That's the one thing missed in the OP article as well - "they" don't just "hate us". "They" basically move to the internet and find conspiratard-level shit, stuff that by design reaffirms any fringe beliefs regardless of minor details.
Hey my points are pretty stellar.
And my jokes are fly too.
[QUOTE=Tudd;51365767]Hey my points are pretty stellar.
And my jokes are fly too.[/QUOTE]
We know the dakimakura is the one writing those though
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