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If media defends the powerful, or attacks the powerless, it is bad.
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Apr 29, 2021 20:59
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aas Bandit posted:TL; DR - A big part of this equation is that social media has simplified concentration and refinement of Stupid poo poo For Fringe People (and given those people a greater appearance of legitimacy). This enables unlikely poo poo like the election of a failed con-man to the highest office in the country. What makes you uniquely qualified to speak on the "brokenness" of other people? Your post and the blog quote both assume a position of moral and factual authority that are never earned. What makes those other "crazy" people wrong and in a bubble, and what is it that makes your communities (online and otherwise) not part of their own bubble? In that whole long post you point out several flaws of internet structure and examples of how people can be disconnected from reality by them, but you never even confront the possibility that your own communities may be one of those. Trump voters were idiots pulled in by a con man but... Biden voters weren't? What politician isn't a con artist? It is the job of every politician to make themselves universally liked, and to fool people into believing that they will get something out of voting that politician into office. If the only thing they get is warm fuzzies, they have been conned. Every time we vote we are getting conned. We are not better than the Trump voters. If anyone in this scenario has the moral high ground, it's the people who don't vote, because they realize there is no move that they can take that is not serving the interests of a con artist. Your constant assertion that They Are The Stupid People but that you are separate and above them is really gross and exposes your complete inability to see flaws in your own perspective.
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May 2, 2021 20:34
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James Garfield posted:The difference is that there is a logical argument for Trump voters being conned: some white Obama voters in dying rust belt towns thought he would do things to bring back jobs, but he didn't and just did generic Republican policies with even more racism. I'm not sure I agree that they were conned (unclear that thinking Trump would bring back jobs is actually why they voted Trump) but it's at least fact based and follows from the premises. What makes the believing the lies from Obama more fact-based than the lies from Trump? They both lied constantly. In fact there's an argument to be made that Trump was actually more honest about how he'd behave in government, because he didn't bother trying to keep up a facade of respectability. Either way, if the voters for either of them didn't get what they were promised or expected, they were conned, basically by definition. quote:As far as I can tell, the full extent of the argument that Biden voters were cheated is "all politicians are equally bad but I am above it all because I am very smart". No? We have 50 years of political history with this man, unless his personality suddenly changed overnight we know exactly how he'll behave in political office. If things he says run counter to that history, we have a very clear legacy to look at to make predictions. If they believe he would be the most progressive president since FDR, they were conned. Anyway, I'm not trying to turn this into an argument of "is Biden good or bad", just trying to make a point about media literacy and the behavior of politicians. I also want to make a really strong point here. I do not believe the people who were misled or conned are stupid. I believe this way for both Trump voters and Obama/Biden voters. We live in a media environment where finding some kind consistent narrative that can lead to good decisions is incredibly hard. I'm obsessed with finding good media sources and spend a far far greater time than the average person looking for and assessing them, and even still I believe that my media consumption is deeply flawed and leads me to all kinds of wrong assumptions. So no one who was mislead is stupid. But to the extent any of us are able, we should try to give others a strong sense of media literacy. Hence this thread, I guess. quote:Like Discendo Vox said in the OP, assuming that everything is equally bad just results in you throwing out everything that disagrees with your preconceptions, because it isn't possible to be equally skeptical of everything. I don't assume that everything is equally bad, but I do always assume that I am being lied to, to some degree. The structures of power and propaganda predictably lead to a certain type of person pursuing it. If you ask any random person if they'd want to run for office, even some small local office, they'll look at you like you're crazy. Even most political activists with extremely strong ideological beliefs that drive them very very rarely want to put themselves in that position. It takes a person who is more interested in gaining power and prestige than having privacy. It takes a person who is completely willing to lie and show confidence on things they're not confident on (because doubt doesn't get votes), and a myriad of other traits that make them a person who should be treated with extreme distrust. Could there be exceptions to this? Probably. But I see no reason to change my expectations of the powerful to be deferential based on possible exceptions, the onus is still on them to prove otherwise. But that doesn't mean they're all the same. I have and will continue to support candidates and politicians around the country who I believe are doing good things. But I just put no weight into what they say, only the actions they take, because I go in with the assumption that everything they say is dishonest. And more to the topic of the thread, that mindset is particularly important in our current media environment, which is manufacturing consent at astounding levels, practically tripping over themselves to praise the rhetoric of national figures, completely ignoring how frequently that rhetoric is in direct opposition to the actions of those figures.
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May 2, 2021 23:08
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