Listening to some repeat the idea the hate predominates the left because of Antifa isn't new, but it sure is tiresome. People taking anecdotal evidence from videos that lack context and putting them up as "evidence" is only part of it.
Every time I hear this, my response is that real hate isn't 200+ people marching with tiki torches because they think jews will replace them, but rather the insidious corners of the Internet that thrive on framing the threat as black, immigrant or something else. I think back to this article, "Inside the Trial of Dylann Roof", that points back to his own source of information that led him to murder nine people during a prayer service. The Council of Conservative Citizens website is still up, sharing gems from inforwars and feeds on "US Illegal Alien Crime Reports" and "Muslim Statistics". Yeah, its just free speech, right?
“Your brain tells you ‘Hey, I got this from three different sources,’ ” she says. “But you don’t realize it all traces back to the same place, and might have even reached you via bots posing as real people. If we think of this as a virus, I wouldn’t know how to vaccinate for it.”
So, just some place holders here on stuff that matters to me.
Did a US candidate for President collude with Russia in exchange for well-timed leaks of hacked information that would damage the opposition candidate?
If you watch Rachel Maddow, you might be easily convinced. Don't be.
Read Matt Taibbi and proceed with caution, realising that making outlandish accusations prior to having evidence destroys credibility. Trump is destroying credibility without anyone's help.
The Financial Times makes one confident that this isn't being invented out of thing air.
Politico tells you it's unfolding as we get about our day jobs.
In your free time, read stuff by Masha Gessen (and here and especially here) and the reporting in The New Yorker, which makes one more sober in navigating the intoxicating headlines.
This new travel ban does nothing to make me safer. Zero. It's just as xenophobic as the last one, but carefully re-written to acknowledge and avoid all the valid legal arguments that got it shot down on the first attempt.
But even with the re-writing, the new effort is still based on several absurd assumptions. First, and like the previous order, that there is no vetting, which is silly. Go ahead! If you don't believe me.
This American Life (...really good, especially "Heavy Vetting", which highlights that Trump is, again, talking about things about which he has zero knowledge).
Given that there is vetting, why is the administration not talking about what is wrong with vetting we now have in place? I'll posit a guess. Because that assumption is bullshit. Anyone read any case studies about what went wrong in San Bernardino or Orlando that justify this approach? Me neither. FiveThirtyEight makes this point, among many others that highlight why the rationale for this whole thing is baseless.
...by narrowing the order so that current visa holders are not affected, the administration undermines its argument that the ban is needed because existing vetting procedures are insufficient to protect national security. Courts could interpret the decision to exempt current visa holders from the new restrictions as an admission that the status quo visa vetting procedures are adequate. “Leaving in current visa holders also undermines the argument that these nationals per se pose a unique threat, and that the current vetting process is inadequate to deal with this threat, which is their whole argument,” [David] Bier said (immigration policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute).
The second assumption is that this is "vital" according to the Secretary of State. Why!?! Where is the threat coming from? Somalia, Iran, Libya, Syria, Sudan and Yemen? No, it isn't. Check. Or check the source of the data from the Cato Institute.
So why? Why is this so important for keeping me and my family safe? There is no answer. The policy is just taking advantage of six countries, most very poor and suffering from the most tragic recent history imaginable. They, unlike Iraq, won't put up a very strong fight. That's all. Just a meaningless piece of policy that sounds tough while doing nothing to address the real issue.
Also, all that huffing and puffing by the POTUS about how the first ban was so well done and correct is basically forgotten in this new version. (I guess we won't SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAGE!) The new version seems to be written by calculating hyper-partisans whose only real goal is to save face from their first effort. I'd leave it at that and assume that the whole thing will pass in four months, but I suspect that what they are really doing is pushing the lines of acceptability even further. Get this one through based on flawed assumptions and push even harder next time. For the life of me, I can see who that serves in the long-term.
The most concise rationale against the new executive order is by Amy Davidson in The New Yorker, Trumps Decisive New Travel Ban. She asks: "How much power does President Trump have to divide people, and how willing are Americans to play along?"
Well, first, everything would be a bit more true if Trump would release his tax returns, but that's not the main point of this post.
"Nothing is true and everything is possible" seems to be the tweeter-in-chief's ruling strategy, fuelled by Mark Levin and cheered on by everyone's favourite Fox News cheerleader for Trump. (It's also the title of a book by Peter Pomerantsev, whose written some good articles in the London Review of Books, including Putin's Rasputin, very relevant to all of this. But that gets a bit too off my clear preference to discuss Fox News).
I know it's a stupid question, but how the fuck does Hannity get away with this...again and again. Raving and ranting with no check or concern for presenting the enormous shadow of a doubt surrounding all of these issues.
"Russia is bullshit", or so I've heard many times over recent weeks from social media. A story invented out of thin air to deflect from an embarrassing loss by the Democrats.
Now, I am going to admit, there is no way to be sure that Obama did not illegally tap phones in Trump Tower. I cannot prove that Ted Cruz's father didn't kill Kennedy. I can't prove that something bad did not happen in Sweden last night. I will also admit that I cannot prove that 3-5 million people did not vote in the election, handing Clinton the popular vote. If pressed, I also couldn't really prove that Obama was born in Hawaii, especially if trying to speak to someone who watches Infowars (Don't watch the video, just know that it exists -- Can you imagine that the POTUS calls the NYT "fake news" and tells Alex Jones "Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down"?)
And I will admit that if you look long enough and close enough, as it appears Stephen Hayes has done in The Weekly Standard, you can find some reasonable questions that deserve an answer.
But, let's focus on why Hayes thinks "March 4, 2017, will end up being a rather consequential day in the presidency of Donald Trump".
He points out that either:
The president used thinly sourced media reports to float a conspiracy theory about his predecessor and he was wrong; or
Citing thinly sourced media reports, he overstated the details of an actual investigation into his activities or the activities of those around him, alleging presidential involvement without evidence; or
Citing thinly sourced media reports, he accurately accused the former president of doing something highly illegal and accidentally uncovered what would surely be one of the biggest scandals in U.S. history.
I think the two critical points are the repetition of the phrase "thinly sourced media reports" and that this is all in the "context" of a person who has, to put it as mildly as humanly possible, often states and tweets things that are untrue.
And, going back to everyone's favourite Fox News cheerleader for Trump, he seems to assume, like the President, that there are facts when there are none. The fact is there are questions. Which leads back to the really galling thing about this, Trump's tweet: "Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!"
It now appears, watching the rhetorical gymnastics of of the WH Press Secretary, that he didn't "just find out" anything. He read some thinly source media reports and accused Obama of McCarthyism. That's the only fact I can see verified in all this.
It's hard to pick a quote from this column, The Vertigo Presidency, in the Wall Street Journal, but here's a sample on the outcome of presidential tweet dumps:
Repeat these convulsions at the current rate of two or three a month, and the result could be a Seinfeld presidency—a show about nothing, only this time devoid of wit and sweetness.
If this is their take in that left wing rag, I ask again, how the fuck does Hannity get away with raving and ranting with no check or concern for facts, which he doesn't have.
It’s possible that Trump aides were wiretapped as part of a broader FBI probe into the connections between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin or were simply recorded, as had been the case with former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, during the routine monitoring of Russian officials. But there is no reason to think that Trump himself had been a target of the wiretapping, nor that Obama interfered in the lawful workings of the FBI.
...
There is a good reason why Trump and his partisans are so apoplectic about the prospect of a special counsel, and it is precisely why it is imperative to appoint one: because otherwise we will never know the full story of the Kremlin’s tampering with our elections and of the Kremlin’s connections with the president of the United States. As evidenced by his desperate attempts to change the subject, Trump appears petrified of what such a probe would reveal. Wonder why?
John Dean, Richard Nixon’s White House counsel in a The New Yorkerpodcast had some interesting comparisons with other scandals:
“If there’s any lesson from Watergate, or from Iran-Contra, or the Lewinsky affair,” he says, “it is that if you don’t have a problem, what you truly do is you say to the F.B.I. or whomever, ‘Come in and talk to my staff.’ ” He says that this is not how Trump officials are currently behaving. “Rather, they’re trying to knock down press reports that are getting the various whiffs of these investigations and putting them out there. That’s just not the way innocent people deal with these issues. I’m sorry!”
Let's all agree. I need to stop watching Hannity. Hayes is right that March 4, 2017 is a pretty consequential day. And only those who think Rafael Cruz killed Kennedy would put their money on the scenario that Trump accidentally uncovered one of the biggest scandals in US history.
Terri Gross asked the most important question on Wednesday in her interview with
Mark Mazzetti, the Washington investigations editor for The New York Times. The full interview is great, but it's the last question that really touched a nerve for me.
TG: ...My impression is because things have gotten so charged between President Trump and the press, because the president has made so many accusations that the press, including the failing New York Times, is - they're really purveyors of fake news, that the leakers are criminals, that this is all a terrible thing, I feel like I hear an extra note of caution in your voice in trying to be so fair and so trying to be exemplary and not offering anything that's opinion that goes beyond fact that you can document in a really neutral way.
So I'm wondering - I guess my question is what impact is President Trump's accusations about the press having on you personally in your life as a reporter?
How flipping true is that?! I'm not anything more than a concerned citizen, yet I feel that pressure Gross observes when Mazzetti speaks. I am really careful to check sources and try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I rarely believe anything unless I can read it on some generally right-of-centre media outlet. I'm asking myself: "Is this just left wing hyperbole?" This is exactly what the administration wants. Does he say a word about Info Wars or Breitbart? He openly insists that we watch Fox and Friends! Their not the enemy of the people, just everyone else.
Horse shit. Thank you for making the observation, Terri.
I thought about linking to one of Info Wars recent videos, but it makes me sick to hear it. I don't wish him on you.
Here is Mazzetti's answer to the question.
MM: I mean, you can't deny that the atmosphere now is, as you said, very, very charged where it's combative so quickly to such a great level that it's hard to know, you know, where it leads with the president, you know, citing individual news organizations as purveyors of fake news. You know, investigative reporting involves, you know, exposing things that are either exposing wrong doing or just shedding light on things that for various reasons powerful people have tried to keep secret. That creates tension.
And so I guess what I'm saying is that the - you can't ignore that we are in this unprecedented climate now where the White House and the president himself actively questions the role of the press and has declared them enemies. That is the truth. But what I'm saying is we have to figure out - we have to respond the right way. And in my mind, it's continuing to do stories even if it's things that he might not like or the administration might not like.
The issue of the "Sweden attack" should be taken seriously, as this article in The Guardian one year ago tries to do, with a warning about how mis-steps and cover ups will be used. What should not be taken seriously is a leader who is looking for any example he can find to justify his xenophobia.
Read this analysis on Slate, watch the film (on the previous link) and the Fox hyperbole, which is the apparent source of Trump's statements on Sunday. The President is way, way out of line if this is how he's going to rile up the crowd. Notice that the article featured at the sensationalised intro -- Sweden's rape rate under the spotlight -- to the film is about Julian Assange and rape culture, not about Muslims or immigration. Ah, details, right?! That article from 2012 (!!!) actually talks about a whole range of other issues that influence the rise in rapes, few of which are mentioned in the fear mongering short film.
So, I get this video from a friend on Trump's press conference. I listen...
I am surprised! I wonder if this is really on www.foxnews.com. Yeah, it is, with a very different headline: "Trump slams press reports of 'chaos' in the White House". Same talking heads, different message. We call it good editing.
On the basis of totally distorted information from the newly elected leader and his administration, we are crushing the very concept of empathy. On the basis of no proof that the US will be safer, we are -- it feels to me -- driving a knife through the heart of tolerance for people who have waited years, followed rules, in some cases risked their lives, and who are guilty of no other crime other than being born in certain jurisdiction.
Please listen to this week's story on This American Life and just try to convince me that "It’s Working Out Very Nicely". To hear this series of stories and then say were putting "America First" is gaspingly cruel.
I don't believe that the stated purpose is the real purpose of this executive order. In the rationale pursuit of security objectives, you don't marginalise your expert security agencies and fail to vet your ideas through a normal interagency process. You don't target the wrong people in nutty ways when you are rationally pursuing real security objectives. When do you do these things? You do these things when you are elevating the symbolic politics of bashing Islam over any actual security interest. This will cause hardship and misery for tens or hundreds of thousands of people because that is precisely what it is intended to do.
It is a hard day when you find yourself wishing that this whole string of events stems only from gross incompetence.
In my opinion, nothing matters more right now than getting rationale adults to speak with more discipline about these critical concepts. Failing to make a distinction is extremely dangerous, as I tried to explain before. But this problem seems to be getting worse.
Biased news: The New York Times has a bias. The Wall Street Journal has a bias. Examples are not needed as you can clearly see their bias on a daily basis on their Editorial pages. If you want to understand different sides, read both papers. But please do not conflate bias with "incorrect" or "fake".
Incorrect news: Journalists get it wrong, even in the NYT an WSJ. That's the point of a "Corrections" section in print media and why many online articles will have italic text at the bottom or an article that explain how and when an article was corrected. When you get it wrong, you correct the error and apologise. Example: Reporting that the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from Oval Office. One might argue that this was a reporter with bias also making a mistake. Not good at all, but pretty common. If one writes a lot of incorrect news, they usually don't last very long at the NYT or WSJ.
Meaningful discussion is hard to come by these days. We are invalidated before we open our mouths.
In a quest for more thoughtful tools, I've thought back to the Revisionist History podcast called The Lady Vanishes, which was broadcast long before the election. This is more about the concept of moral licensing in the context of women artists and leaders, but it is more relevant to me in thinking about Obama, race and what I consider jaw-dropping xenophobia coming out of the new President.
Concise summary of moral licensing from the blog post:
...when people are presented with the opportunity to demonstrate that they are good, moral people, they are more apt to follow that opportunity by expressing support for inequalities that they might otherwise not be willing to admit to. That is, given the opportunity to demonstrate that we are “good” people, we’re more likely to engage in “bad” behavior. Social psychological research discovered that, for instance, we’re more likely to support racially prejudiced views after having been primed with an opportunity to say that we’d be willing to vote for a Black presidential candidate. When we demonstrate “good” moral qualities publicly, we feel more justified in supporting systems of inequality in public ways, too.
I think about this every time I read something on race these days.
No, no, no! Absolutely no way in hell can she say the Trump campaign "litigated this all through the election, people didn't care". I want to see Trump's taxes! Words matter and conflicts of interest matter and if this becomes a partisan issue, we are absolutely a entering a world of no accountability. Transparency is needed to demonstrate that there are no serious conflicts of interest.
What he said many, many times is that they would be released once the audit is through. I am a patient man and, while I disagreed with his logic during the campaign, I have to accept that people voted for him without needing to see these prior to voting. But at no point did I hear anyone say that the election was meant to decide if people wanted to see them.
I am heartened to see that it has three times the signatures required in four days to get a response. Your Voice in the White House to let your opinion be heard.
The New YorkerPolitics and More Podcast continues to have great discussion. This is a great exchange, particularly the discussion on whether to resist Trump in The Power of "No" (@08:24).
Jelani Cobb: One of the things that has been notable to me is that when Chuck Schumer talked about the areas that Democrats could work with Trump... Dorothy Wickenden: And Sanders too, has indicated this to the rage of many of his followers... JC: ...I think if was a little bit alarming because, in the kind of ethic of saying "everyone should be given a chance" -- that seems to function as if this is a normal political situation and I think it is anything but that. And finding areas in which you can work with the Trump administration, it seems almost as if you would reward bad behaviour and thereby possibly make it more entrenched. DW: Democrats were outraged by Senator Mitch McConnell's successful plot to thwart Obama's legislative agenda from 2009 on. It just work in the House and the Senate. Should Democrats become the party of "No"? JC: I don't think it is so much the Party of No, because I don't think that Barak Obama and Donald Trump are analogous. I think we are look at something that is of its own kind and there is a real kind of concern -- Do you work with someone who has flouted the norms of releasing your tax returns? Someone who has politically mainstreamed white nationalism? Someone who has spoken in really troublesome and problematic ways about women and has a slate of really questionable views? I don't think that winds up being the same thing as obstructionism.
I just had a lengthy social media exchange that brought up a grievance of conservatives. Trying to represent one person's view as best I can, he said that I fail to understand that many conservatives have been so frustrated with "liberal bias of the mainstream media" that they now feel it is gratifying to see us "complain about fake news" -- finally feeling their pain, so to speak.
But my problem with this is that he conflates bias with fake, which is a big problem.
This exchange also touched on my concerns in a blog post I had drafted but never finished -- now is the chance.
There has been much on the idea of fake news. Most interesting is the Planet Money story on Finding the Fake New King. It became an even more surreal story when covered on Full Frontal a few days later. This is all disturbing, but I can't help worry that it has shifted attention away from Fox News and it's role in the growth of fake news.
I know, I know...this has been dragging on for years and I am sure I sound like just another liberal who can't get out of my National Public Radio, New York Times and New Yorker echo chambers. That is exactly what the person in the above-mentioned exchange told me was my problem. But Fox is and has always been different -- my most recent posting about this being just prior to the election. I don't mind media having a leaning to the left or right. The real crimes are in the demise of journalism. One of the reasons I like The Economist is that is often prefaces its editorial content with a disclaimer about ideological beliefs on free trade or open borders or other elements that affect it's content. But that is not what Fox does. Every time I watch -- and I force myself to do so -- I feel like it's an exercise in bad journalism. Leading questions, implicit assumptions and just half truths.
To be honest, in recent weeks I've really valued and enjoyed reading right wing media that I rarely consumed before. The National Review and Wall Street Journal have some great points and remind me what it felt like to actually have a debate. I feel like my assumptions are challenged. But that isn't how I feel with Fox.
It didn't take me 30 seconds to find clips on Fox that suggest the same talking point that was made to me in this social media exchange I mentioned. Listen to this nonsense on Fox. More shitty reporting! If anyone on Fox took the time to listen to Planet Money or this great interview on Fresh Air with Craig Silverman of Buzzfeed or the countless other investigations on this, they'd understand why the distinction between "fake news" and bias is critical.
What is important about the Fresh Air interview is that it shows pretty clearly why Fox wants to conflate the issue -- conservatives benefit from it! Indeed, I'd say fake news, is the logical outcome of bad journalism, for which I think Fox is the poster child. Can anyone find me a liberal media outlet that is dismissive of "fact-checking"? I only hear this from conservatives.
This was the most interesting bit of the interview with Sliverman was this comment about how Facebook is considering it's role in combatting fake news, by which I mean the shit that is made up by someone for the purpose of making advertising revenue in selling hoaxes.
When you flag something as offensive on Facebook, it's possible that it may automatically then be scanned by an algorithm and realize that that is an image, for example, maybe they've already banned. But a lot of the time it ends up in front of a person on their content review team who has to make a judgment call. And I can tell you from speaking to people in conservative media,[emphasis is mine] they are extremely concerned.
One, they view Facebook as a liberal organization. They think it's biased against conservative points of view. And two, they're extremely concerned that if Facebook starts trying to weed out fakes, they're going to have people with a liberal point of view who disagree with an article potentially suppressing it. And so there is risk now of suppression of free speech and suppression of different points of view if these things were to go in the wrong direction.
The President-elect has shown and shows on a daily basis that he has no problem lying, just like many politicians do (as pointed out by that nonsense Fox clip). The challenge to the media and to those of us who consume it is to believe in facts, or at least that the pursuit of facts is a worthy goal, not matter what Fox's "fair and balanced" news tells you.
Let's use this topic as a lesson of the media talking past each other. That's a nice way of me saying a lesson in conservative media (WSJ) talk past very legitimate concerns of the liberal media (NYT).
No, Suzanne Maloney, writing-in-the-WSJ, this isn't about the "chattering classes" being aghast at a just any old CEO being nominated for Secretary of State. The NYT made this point fairly emphatically (editorial link above), as do I. It is about that CEO having worked his entire professional career for one company with, allegedly, a long history of strategically working to combat science and, as if that were not enough, that CEO also having conflicts-of-interest with the head of state of a nation currently accused by the CIA of intentionally trying to destabilise the faith in the US electoral process. Your column inches given to the boy scouts is ghastly amid these extremely serious concerns.
Now, of course I can't fully prove that statement about ExxonMobil having a long history of combatting science, but it seems pretty clear, as I have been learning from Doubt is Their Product, that ExxonMobil has been one of the key examples of companies strategically working to create doubt about the negative externalities of their business model.
From Chapter 18, "The Bush Administration's Political Science":
There are thousands of scientists on our side of the debate and a mere handful on the other, but uncertainty can reign in the mass media and the public mind if that handful has a large enough megaphone--and they do because they are underwritten by ExxonMobil, by all analyses the hands-down largest funder of the warming deniers. According to the authors of the internal ExxonMobil memo titled "Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan", "[v]ictory will be achieved when...average citizens 'understand' (recognize) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the conventional wisdom."
Let's be fair. Can we link Tillman to this memo? No. Is he responsible for the whole company? No. Does having worked in Russia disqualify him? No. Does working with oil and gas disqualify him? Of course not.
But...and this is a huge, "but"...why on earth at this time and in this context would Donald Trump select such a person from such a company and with such a working relationship in Russia? Why, after promising to "drain the swamp", would he think that appointing the CEO of a company ranked No. 8 in lobbyists (2014) is a good idea?
I am against Rex Tillerson because his appointment raises doubt about the institutions of the United States in such a way that is extreme. Diversity matters of experience matters! Rex Tillerson does not have a diverse work history and even if he is the best diplomat on the planet, his CV and conflicts of interest radically undermine the very idea that we have checks and balances in our political system.
"I almost unleashed my beautiful Twitter account against you, and I still may", said Donald Trump, according to Megan Kelly, when threatening her after she aired a story with Daily Beast reporter who defended articled about Trump's divorce, in which his first wife accuses Trump of rape in sworn testimony, later disavowed. Kelly also makes this clear.
I want to focus on the alleged threat by Trump. This is our future President. And I have been hearing very disturbing stories about this trend in which people (sometimes Trump) point to someone on twitter and all hell breaks out in their lives. Not all of these are linked to Trump, but if you haven't heard, get a taste...
And now this, yesterday, aimed at a Union leader, Chuck Jones, who was critical of Trump's recent deal with the Carrier company in Indian. Trump then tweeted and the man's phone started ringing.
Such a "beautiful Twitter account"!
Did Trump attack all these people? No.
But Kelly's accusation basically identifies the behaviour directly (i.e., he knows exactly what he's doing!) and yesterday's tweeting confirms that the President-elect is acting like a troll, or at least using his tweets to direct trolls in very, very disturbing ways.
This must stop! And by must stop, I have no naive expectations that it means trolling will stop. I mean the fucking President-elect must stop and condemn this and work to "Make America Safe Again", which means being able to criticise people without the fear of death and rape threats flooding a person's life and making them fear for the safety of their family and children.
There is much to be said about the Kelly interview on Fresh Air (really, listen to it), but the most important take away is connecting the dots. Troll behaviour is not fun and games and it requires Trump to stop acting like a troll.
He is "sorry about all that". What? I guess I want to trust that this is a person who has done serious damage to civil discourse is now actually recognising his mistake.
But then this interview last week with Scott Simon -- and the whole emphasis on Benghazi being a "game-changing moment" for people on the right -- seems silly. He suggests this made conservatives just as shocked after the 2012 election as liberals feel shocked today.
But why was it a game-changer? Perhaps because of the way media used it to sledge hammer away at credibility of the administration and Clinton. One can argue for years, literally, about this, but The Economistsummed it up pretty well and as far as I know, that newspaper isn't a tool of any particular party. It highlights that there were mistakes, but nothing to validate the use of the tragedy as a political sledge hammer, Fox News. This gets at why I still don't believe Beck. If he can compare the post-election shocks without addressing Trump's on-going abuse of the findings around Benghazi, he still doesn't really understand my main problem with Trump (and Beck's previous life on Fox). From The Economist article:
Undaunted [by the final report findings], on June 23rd Mr Trump told NBC that Mr Stevens “was left helpless to die as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed.” His interviewer, Lester Holt, pushed back, noting that there is no evidence that she was sleeping. “Excuse me, wait, it went on for a long period of time and she was asleep at the wheel, whether she was sleeping or not, who knows if she was sleeping,” Mr Trump replied. Mr Holt looked unimpressed. But Mr Trump does not care what media fact-checkers think. He has anger to stoke, and for that, crying “Benghazi” will continue to do very well.
That's the problem. Facts don't matter and Beck doesn't seem to take full responsibility for his role in that slide into a fact-free world.
That said, his voice in the NYT piece is one I tend to agree with these days, which is something I never thought I'd say.
We really need to get more disciplined with name-calling.
@09:56 in this thoughtful podcast -- What Kind of Conservative is Trump? -- there is a discussion about whether Republicans care about inequality, linked to David Remnick's essential reading from his interview with Obama in the New Yorker. The response by Matt Lewis paints a common and incorrect version two concepts. In the "menu of values", he describes a choice between equal opportunity (I assume he means his ideology) or equal outcome (I assume he means the other ideology).
I associate equal outcome with Soviet-style socialism, not the more common concept of an equal playing field.
This is relevant given a huge hang up in this election over Bernie Sanders being a "socialist" and the lingering association with Obama as something similar, as though the only concept of that word is a striving for equal outcome. I don't know any politicians who support the idea of equal outcome. No, Mr. Lewis (@11:52) I don't think a discussion of "fairness" would cause liberals to say that fairness "means everybody gets the same amount".
Yes, that's a small example, but one that really gets under my skin. And this is a New Yorker podcast! Let me not even mention what I hear come out of the mouths of other media outlets.
Here's another example from This American Life, an episode called Red State, Blue State that explored why it was so hard for opposing sides to talk to one another in the 2012 election between Obama and Romney. It feels quaint to hear it today.
The journalist, Lisa, is asking Ron about why he has a falling out with his friend, Frank, when he found out that Frank was voting for Obama.
Lisa Pollak: Frank recalls you calling him a Socialist.
Ron Sexton: Absolutely. And I did, and I still believe it. When Frank takes umbrage at the fact that I called him a Socialist, what he doesn't understand or doesn't accept is that he is in love with a Socialist. This man that's in the White House is the most brilliant president we've ever had for Frank Mills and others like some of his friends. And Lisa, it offends me to hear that while we're going down the tubes.
Lisa Pollak: He says his feelings were hurt. Why not just agree to disagree and put those differences aside? Why is that hard?
Ron Sexton: I would lay it on this-- the stakes are too high to consider it simply as agree to disagree. I don't agree to disagree. Frank needs to change his opinion because his view on the conduct of this society will kill it.
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