Bernie NO! How dare you support the candidate most likely to advance the ideas and agenda you believe in! The fictional idealized Bernie Sanders that I built up in my mind would never compromise like that!
Clearly this must be some kind of Clinton conspiracy. They must have secretly lobotomized you and replaced your brain with the evil clone of Hillary Clinton and Satan's love child.
Bernie NO! How dare you support the candidate most likely to advance the ideas and agenda you believe in! The fictional idealized Bernie Sanders that I built up in my mind would never compromise like that!
Clearly this must be some kind of Clinton conspiracy. They must have secretly lobotomized you and replaced your brain with the evil clone of Hillary Clinton and Satan's love child.
He just doesn't want to end up mysteriously murdered/suicided.
This isn't about the presidential election per se, but there's a really fascinating (and really really long) article in this month's Atlantic as to why the US government, and politics in general, is so broken:
"Our severly fractured system is plagued with a 'chaos syndrome.' Like a disorder that attacks the body over time, chaos syndrome is the product of decades spent demonizing and disempowering political professionals and parties... by weakening entities that historically held politicians accountable and prevented naked self-interest; by reforming the system to death; and by allowing the disorder to be exacerbated by ideological polarization, social media, and the radicalization of the parties' bases.
Party-dominated nominating processes, soft money, congressional seniority, closed-door negotiations, pork-barrel spending - put each practice under a microscope in isolation, and it seems an unsavory [and corrupt] way of doing political business. But sweep them all away, and one finds that business is not getting done at all. The political reforms of the past 40 or so years have pushed toward disintermediation - by favoring amateurs and outsiders over professionals and insiders; by privileging populism and self-expression over mediation and mutual restraint; by stripping middlemen of tools they need to organize the political system. All of the reforms promote an individualistic, atomized model of politics in which there are candidates and there are voters, but there is nothing in between. Other, larger trends, to be sure, have contributed to political disorganization, but the war on middlemen has amplified and accelerated them."
I don't know what bothered me more about Reince Priebus quoting Twilight Sparkle: that he was taking the quote entirely out of context or that I knew exactly where that quote was from.
I was going to ask if there was any science behind media bias meaning anything but then I remembered that "the media" doesn't exist, moreso in the Information Age than ever before. Trying to research its effects would be like trying to research the ecological implications of unicorns.
I was going to ask if there was any science behind media bias meaning anything but then I remembered that "the media" doesn't exist, moreso in the Information Age than ever before. Trying to research its effects would be like trying to research the ecological implications of unicorns.
I don't think you're right about that. Biases in "The Media" can certainly have an effect on those who consume their output. Framing is known to be enormously powerful (see: most of the inciting incidents driving the BLM movement). But it's very much up for debate as to whether the media is what places these ideas to begin with or if they simply crystallize ideas that their audience already, in some form or another, believe.
Mike over at Idea Channel put up a video about this only a couple of days ago. To check it out, hit the link in the doobly doo.
You're using a premise I'm not sure is valid: that the media is a clear and definite entity. There is certainly a lot of bias from individual sources, but I don't know what set of them would constitute "the main stream media", especially with the plethora of sources growing out of the digital age.
The majority of people (who I remind you are much older than most of us) still get their news from cable and network news shows. I think 'the main stream media' is still a viable term for the near future.
I can comment here. I had an in person conversation with my, super conservative, father recently. He decided to try and justify his hate of a religion (Islam) that well over a billion people hold. His justification was "after 9/11 where was the outcry from all these supposedly moderate Muslims you speak of?" His argument was basically, if that sort of thing happened there'd be an outcry from the moderates and because there wasn't I'm justified in hating an entire religion, region and race.
Now obviously there's a million and one ways to refute this most of them involve calling him on it and nothing good can come of that. Plus he's my dad, and believe it or not he's a reasonable guy, he was just misinformed. My refutation was 2 seconds of my phone, then 10 minutes of statements, outcries and offers of aid from governments of predominantly Muslim countries and prominent groups of Muslims.
He changed his tune on a dime, he immediately went from "where was the outcry?" to "why wasn't this made obvious to the American people?". Now I still have a long way to go with him, obviously, but the point I'm making is he gets what little news he gets from fox, and only then when he's got nothing better to watch, like a ball game.
I'm imagining he's the scary old guy we're all terrified will vote in an angry beaver with a bad toupee. He's not a terrible person, just uninformed and unwilling to do anything about it.
And that right there is the crux of my argument. The mainstream media is definitely a thing for one data point, and it really matters.
The majority of people (who I remind you are much older than most of us) still get their news from cable and network news shows. I think 'the main stream media' is still a viable term for the near future.
Do they? Google says only 1.9 million people watch CNN, MSNBC, or FOX in a 24 hour period. Voter turnout in 2012 was nearly 130 million. I realize that it's not necessarily the same 1.9 million every day, but it can't be very much. Newspapers of all things are pretty strong (with readers not with money) with nearly %70 of adult Americans reading them in print or online. But then newspapers are a broad category with a wide variety of ownership, so it's more difficult to assess their bias compared to just the three television sources we discuss.
If "main stream media" exists, it's broader than people act and we need to define it better.
Comments
Not saying it is. But it might be.
Newty no
Like this:
Republicans = Good.
Traditionalism = Good.
Trump and Gingrich = Republicans.
Trump and Gingrich = Good Traditionalists.
Muslims = Bad.
Gay = Bad.
Communists = Bad.
Barack Obama = Bad.
Barack Obama = Gay Communist Muslim.
Clearly this must be some kind of Clinton conspiracy. They must have secretly lobotomized you and replaced your brain with the evil clone of Hillary Clinton and Satan's love child.
"Our severly fractured system is plagued with a 'chaos syndrome.' Like a disorder that attacks the body over time, chaos syndrome is the product of decades spent demonizing and disempowering political professionals and parties... by weakening entities that historically held politicians accountable and prevented naked self-interest; by reforming the system to death; and by allowing the disorder to be exacerbated by ideological polarization, social media, and the radicalization of the parties' bases.
Party-dominated nominating processes, soft money, congressional seniority, closed-door negotiations, pork-barrel spending - put each practice under a microscope in isolation, and it seems an unsavory [and corrupt] way of doing political business. But sweep them all away, and one finds that business is not getting done at all. The political reforms of the past 40 or so years have pushed toward disintermediation - by favoring amateurs and outsiders over professionals and insiders; by privileging populism and self-expression over mediation and mutual restraint; by stripping middlemen of tools they need to organize the political system. All of the reforms promote an individualistic, atomized model of politics in which there are candidates and there are voters, but there is nothing in between. Other, larger trends, to be sure, have contributed to political disorganization, but the war on middlemen has amplified and accelerated them."
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/
Also, this:
"This isn’t merely a statement of Donald Trump’s wacky personal beliefs. This is what the contemporary Republican Party stands for, in its own words."
Mike over at Idea Channel put up a video about this only a couple of days ago. To check it out, hit the link in the doobly doo.
EDIT: Why did I write that....
Now obviously there's a million and one ways to refute this most of them involve calling him on it and nothing good can come of that. Plus he's my dad, and believe it or not he's a reasonable guy, he was just misinformed. My refutation was 2 seconds of my phone, then 10 minutes of statements, outcries and offers of aid from governments of predominantly Muslim countries and prominent groups of Muslims.
He changed his tune on a dime, he immediately went from "where was the outcry?" to "why wasn't this made obvious to the American people?". Now I still have a long way to go with him, obviously, but the point I'm making is he gets what little news he gets from fox, and only then when he's got nothing better to watch, like a ball game.
I'm imagining he's the scary old guy we're all terrified will vote in an angry beaver with a bad toupee. He's not a terrible person, just uninformed and unwilling to do anything about it.
And that right there is the crux of my argument. The mainstream media is definitely a thing for one data point, and it really matters.
If "main stream media" exists, it's broader than people act and we need to define it better.