Did that actually happen? I'd love to see a citation if it did.

It happened on MSNBC. Can't remember who it was.

Pass me a bottle, Mr. Jones.

(Special thanks Ted Cruz for the heads up to not support this guy.)

They knowingly endorsed a kiddie diddler, honestly what's the difference at this point?

I realized today that one of the bright spots of the catastrophic rise of the far right in recent times is that all the things I've said over the years that I thought were sexist, racist, or generally offensive, likely wouldn't even register a blip on the radar anymore in comparison to mainstream rhetoric being used by conservatives.

David Cross said this on his standup special, Shut Up You ****ing Baby.

If you ever want to nostalgically revisit the immediate aftermath of 9/11, it's a great way to do it. That comedy album is a real time capsule. It's also incredibly funny.

Yeah, but... political correctness.

It's probably not a coincidence that far-right elements case into prominence in American national politics at around the same moment when some on the left would throw around the charge of white supremacism for the most banal and inoffensive matters. I think some have moderated their rhetoric a little bit since Trump was elected, because the sheer absurdity of it has become undeniable. But, like, back in 2015 and 2016, you could be accused of being a white supremacist for, I don't know, having a white doctor and a white dentist? Here's an article from 2016 that dealt with accusations that Bernie Sanders was a white supremacist. It also goes into some of people's completely skewed definitions of that term.

But... yes, as I was saying, it's noteworthy that while one part of the country has sanitized its political language so much (although while also becoming extremists in other ways), the other has become somewhat more overtly racist.

I wonder what would happen to a person who only got their news from the newswire services. (And USA Today. lol!) I guess I'm with the people on reddit who point out that the chart itself has a liberal bias. I'd guess that the guys who made this are technocratic liberals, given that the chart visually suggests that "analysis" is on the same spectrum as tabloid fabrication, and closer to it than facts. It implies that the most reliable, trustworthy news sources are the sources that present facts without any kind of analysis, as if analysis necessarily accompanies partisan bias, and is therefore, somehow involves fabrication that distances it from the truth.

That chart looks superficial and unscientific to me. It is also squarely inside the American media bubble. As far as I'm concerned, most of them are identical.

I just check memeorandum.com for whatever dumbass headlines the American media is peddling today (and then only clicking on thehill.com, nytimes.com, or some liberal rag like dailybeast.com if I feel like it), and assume if it doesn't hit ft.com or news.ycombinator.com, then it doesn't matter to me.

Also, how the heck did The Intercept get ranked so highly on the "quality" axis, lmao

Mic should probably be significantly lower on that metric too. And Buzzfeed should be higher.

It's funny that New Republic is "more liberal" than The Nation, The Intercept and Democracy Now. The Nation, The Intercept and Democracy Now are all leftist (in the strict sense, where leftist is opposed to liberal) publications. New Republic is a center-left liberal magazine, but its tone is as aggressively critical as The Intercept -- and probably more irreverent and mocking.

Is it actually that bad? I don't think the quality of the reporting (or the journalistic work more broadly) is low. It's a very ideologically driven publication, but that doesn't mean that it can't also be high quality. Just because a certain set of assumptions and what ideological commitments are inform a publication doesn't mean the journalistic work is (necessarily) low quality. All analysis approaches its subject with some set of assumptions.

Well I haven't read it in quite a while, but because the reporting is original, it's definitely going to be highly informative. It's just that the tone of the articles are way over the top and alarmist. Or maybe I am just thinking of Glenn Greenwald.

In my experience, the editorial tone of the publication as a whole is pretty similar to the incredulous tone of Greenwald.

Or maybe the people with their ear to the floor felt a resurgence of this stuff was coming.

Are you seriously trying to blame a resurgence of white supremacy on people who look for it in odd places?

Like, I get you wanna do the "both sides" memes as often as possible but some of these takes are pretty lackluster.

It’s just as credible to suggest that an expansion of left wing identity politics is a reaction to forces seeking to normalize racism and violence against minorities. Fox News wasn’t invented in 2015, folks.

I think I hate this social ebb theory thing even more than the horseshoe theory.

Dude, no. I think it's more likely that similar forces are at work on both the left and the right that drive people towards more extremist views. I don't think that one is the cause of the other (at least not simply), but rather that they're simultaneously mutually reinforcing as well as driven by dynamics from within.



**** off? This is how I see the world. If you disagree, disagree with my arguments on the merits and let's discuss it. There's no need to make it personal.

I agree there are similar forces; they're economic ones. Everybody feels more squeezed since the great recession. It just sounds like you want to excuse people who choose to take this problem and turn it against minorities by blaming the left. If that's not what you're doing, fine, but I find myself reading things from you that sound like that.

Remember Occupy Wall Street? Those were the days.

No, I take issue with liberals because I think that liberals because liberals often take for granted that liberalism is a neutral, ideologically impartial, view from nowhere (to quote Thomas Nagel) standpoint, when, in fact, it's a standpoint that is just as much constricted by the tradeoffs that underlie every ideological framework.

To put it more succinctly, liberals, I believe, are more reluctant to acknowledge their blind spots, because they're more insistent that they couldn't possibly have blind spots, than other political groups within society. That's why I'm generally more critical of liberals: not because their sins are more egregious, but because I find that liberals are exceptionally allergic to self-criticism in the first place.

I don't think the left (in the stricter sense) suffers from this, at least not to the same extent that liberals do. And I suspect that's in part because if you're not in the mainstream, its incumbent on you to articulate your position in a way that it isn't for the dominant ideology. But I think it also has to do with the philosophical origins of liberalism in the Enlightenment tradition (and yeah, I'd go all the way back to Descartes for that, if you want me to elaborate.)

I don't think it's necessarily the case that the conditions are economic, depending on what you mean by economic. (So what do you mean?)

Given me an example of something I've said that would justify what you're saying about minorities. Frankly, I don't understand what you mean here.

Those were the days

Yeah, we've mentioned here before that as a simple psychological fact: people who believe they are unbiased are more prone to bias, generally speaking.

I already said what I mean. Microeconomics for individuals. Simple facts of life. Costs have increased but wages haven't. Nobody expects this will improve. People don't have as much confidence in the mainstream because of it. The people who are diverging basically become more socialist or more fascist in their thinking. In particular, this means whether people blame this problem on agents of class warfare or on racial differences.

There are things worth being more critical about than the fact you don't like how liberals take criticism. I have plenty of things I don't like about liberals as well. I'm left wing, myself. Being left makes you intolerant of liberals almost by necessity. But they aren't the primary force to combat.

We have talked about this, but I think the issue is just as much philosophical and ideological as it is psychological.

Do you think conservatives are more aware of their political biases than liberals?

I disagree. We are capable, to some extent, of controlling what we do. We should get our house in order.

Maybe specify among different types of conservatives. In particular, don't just pick a columnist who can give nice rhetoric, try imagining your typical Republican voter, and if we're taking averages that would imply a person sympathetic to Trump.

If you're talking about purging anyone who won't support medicare for all, sure.

I'm not into "purges".

Look, I think if candidates in a certain district can win on a Democratic Socialist suite of policy ideas, they should run. But it's not going to be popular in every district, unfortunately. I'm into building consensus, not getting just enough power that you can do whatever you want without dissenters being able to do anything about it. It should be clear by now that that doesn't work, and only means more conflict in the long run.

At the same time, I acknowledge that consensus is impossible to achieve if your opponents are dedicated to disagreeing with you no matter what you do. We have to recognize that that is the problem that needs to be solved: how do you produce the conditions that make governance by consensus possible, when the other side is completely committed to obstruction?

It's a really, really hard problem, and unfortunately I don't think the solution is that you take a more radical position assuming that if you get what you want the causes of disagreement will evaporate. But consensus is the only way: otherwise, you just have alternating presidents coming in promising to undo everything their predecessor did.

yikes..

was about to protest one "yikes" until I saw another "m'lady", and will now raise you a "kek"

In general: psychologically speaking no, philosophically speaking, yes. But it also depends what kind of conservative we're talking about.

I'm still waiting for a woman to violate my personal space by tossing a m'lord my way. Well... that actually doesn't actually make sense for various reasons, so nm.

I'm a "conservative" of the Teddy Roosevelt variety.

Lol, what is this m'lord/m'lady thing?

Hmm, quite a problem.

I mean, it’s exactly what you said Eversor. ~30% of Americans are unhinged and full of rage and literally want America to be destroyed. They are beyond reason and wholly devoted to the cause.

It seems obvious to me that there are only two options, and you’ve rejected one of them.

Yep. As I've said in the past, I'm pretty fatalistic when it comes to the future. But when the bar for success is high, you can't just pretend that it isn't. So failure seems likely.