"Americans somehow becoming more trusting of one another"
I don't trust conservatives, bigots, fanatics or any kind, idiots, lunatics, liars, or just generally untrustworthy people. Yes, I'm aware there is a LOT of overlap between those groups and that most of these align with one political group in particular. That brings the possible trust pool in the US to somewhere between 0 and 40 percent, depending on location. Of course, unless they're wearing Confederate flags or MAGA gear, it can be difficult to spot them visually, so there has to be a vetting process before you can trust someone.
Jedediah Purdy was celebrated as a sort of wunderkind in the late 1990's for being against irony and snark, in a book he wrote about it: For Common Things - Irony, Trust, And Commitment In America Today.
I didn't read it, but I remember thinking at the time that being against irony was like being against other literary tools or being against growing old. He's a wordy wordsmith, and he thinks Big Thoughts, but he wasn't able to step outside his intersectionality of male, white, educated, adored by his parents, etc. to understand why people might be reluctant to agree with him (as Robyn points out).
I seem to remember him implying that Seinfeld was the banner carrier for a specific kind of corrosive irony and sarcasm. It didn't lead to much more than and SNL sketch where Jerry played a character named "Jedidiah Purdy." The criticism didn't do too much to dent Jerry's Porsche buying budget.
The suggestion is always that liberals disarm and be sweet to fascist to make them nice. If democracy weren’t clinging by a thread I might care if we get to standing around a potluck table linking arms and singing kumbaya together. (My selfish stepdaughter’s theory) I just want to win. Even Netherlands is tilting right. India is gone. These are bad scary times.
"High Broderism" is the term of art for Jed's prolix disgorgement of words. The Atlantic keeps promoting these "reasonable conservatives", failing to recognize the inherent contradiction in the concept. The most recent to escape confinement from their pages is David French.
IDIOTS: Let's see, we have the asshole and the oppressed. The asshole is scary, and what if the asshole doesn't listen to me? I'll just go the oppressed, act like I'm on their side, and then pep-talk them into shutting up and taking one for the team. They're sensitive and reasonable, so I can use that against them.
Hey, Oppressed...
OPPRESSED: FUCK OFF. Go talk to the Asshole!
ASSHOLE: You got something to say to me?
IDIOTS: NO! No no no. No. Nope. No no. (Writes article) Everyone is so stubborn and unreasonable!
If I have to read one more think piece on our divided nation… well, I’ll just continue to not read them. It’s not merely a political disagreement when one side would obliterate the rights of the other to vote, choose when or whether to have children, love whom they love and identify however they like. It’s beyond a policy discussion when one side refuses food assistance for kids and won’t consider staunching the flow of firearms that are the leading cause of death among children. And there is no “both-sidesing” with people who don’t believe in facts, or elections.
I will say this much. I think it was easier to trust Walter Cronkite, for instance, when we knew that certain checks and balances existed to keep him from spewing the kind of propaganda that passes for programming on Faux and friends. Those checks were removed by Reagan as 'bad for business', and we got Faux not long after. I could go on, but it ain't getting any warmer out, and I've got to pick up some groceries.
"Ronald Reagan's FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine which, since 1949, required media to present both sides' opinions in the rare event they weren't just reporting straight news," the post explained.
"A Democrat-controlled Congress passed a bill to re-instate the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Reagan vetoed the bill," it continued. "Fox News followed in the 1990s. America is now more polarized and misinformed than ever."
FALSE. I have since I first started to be on Wonkette I have tried to all of you out there who say thie stupid shit that...
THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE ONLY APPLIES TO OVER-THE-AIR BROADCASTS ON TV AND RADIO AND DOES NOT HAVE ANYTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH CABLE OR INTERNET OR STREAMING.
I know that many of you are too young to have been around and may never have even had over-the-air broadcast TV,
No, the Fairness Doctrine did not apply to cable/internet/streaming stations which *did not exist at the time*. But it did establish a set of ground rules for what was acceptable on our airwaves, that well might, as Maybe notes, have been expanded to apply to those new media as they arose.
Instead, we have a doctrine repealed in 1987 - and Rush Limbaugh unleashed nationally in 1988. We also had ownership limits - a cap on how many television, radio, and print outlets a single company could own - that rose from seven of each in 1985 to 20, 20, and 12 by 1994. And in 1996, we got Faux, which spread like a cancer across the nation.
Would those rulings, if let stand, have prevented the media morass we find ourselves in today? No way to say for certain, but it seem fairly likely they would have made an impact; and their loss is a loss to us all.
PS - I'm old enough to have voted for Jimmy Carter, and I've had a broadcast license in the past. So yeah, I have Opinions where this is concerned.
Jimmy Carter was the first person I voted for, so I get that. I used to hang around a local radio station late at nighte with some friends that worked there, but also at one time I worked at a pirate radio statsion. Ironically the fake call letters that were used back then were resurrected as a local non-commercial station.
If the Fairness Doctrine were reinstated, it would likely be expanded. Though policing the Internet will always be very difficult. It's global, for one thing.
I could see it very easily expanded to cable and to streaming services, but I think the internet would be a tough call for the reason you mention.
But if cable was included, it could cause many problems for Fox News and Fox Nation, which would make a huge inroad to eliminating outright lies and disinformation.
It was easier to trust any TV journalist, PERIOD, when many of them still possessed rudimentary integrity and decency. Cronkite would never have spewed Faux Noise shite. Nor would Chet Huntley, Nancy Dickerson, etc. etc. etc.
So far, all the replies I've read seem to agree that it's preposterous to expect us to trust those striving to harm us. I'll consider trusting roughly 1/3 of my fellow citizens when they stop endangering women and minorities.
Thanks! I didn’t want to read 800 comments. I agree completely with not endangering women with anti-abortion laws. A person is autonomous. When you say minorities, are you talking about racial minorities, or all minorities as all encompassing (sexuality, gender identity, etc.)
"Privilege" has been defined as having the luxury of ignoring a conversation. E.g., if you are not trans and have nobody you care about who's trans, you can choose to ignore politicians' anti-trans messages and actions, and perhaps to vote for them based on other criteria. If you're trans, as I am, you are never going to say "I'm voting for Smith. Sure, he wants to kill me, but I really like his tax policy."
I am really tired of (mostly) white, heterosexual, cisgender men telling me I should calm down. Cisgender men will never face arrest or prison time for their partner miscarrying. Their right to vote, as long as they aren’t a felon, is never in question. Their right to bodily autonomy is never in question. When I was raped, my rapist was assumed innocent, and the law bent over backwards trying to make sure his feelings, rights, and future weren’t harm by him raping me.
Don’t @ me with “Not All Men”. I am aware not all men. But far too many. I am so tired and so very angry.
Thank you Robyn, for reading that drivel so we didn't have to. I keep seeing the same thing over and over in my local op-ed. Calls to get along with zero acknowledgement of why we aren't "getting along" to start with.
Recently Adam Conover had a guy on his podcast talking about "what the left gets wrong about the right," and the main talking point was the left doesn't think the right has any principles. I would highly recommend listening to it as it has some interesting and nuanced points. But here's the thing. After listening to it I kept comparing it to reading a book on Zen Buddhism; it's all well and good to sit in a comfy chair and be high minded about a clump of dirt, but as soon as you get up and stub your toe all that meaning flies out the window and you're cursing God for your existence. Likewise, all the interesting and nuanced points about conservative principles fly out the window when you remember literally anything about these clowns.
Having principles and following them are two different things, much like New Year's resolutions. Repubs also have family values, but they are trump family values.
Yeah, NO. I heard nothing 'interesting' *or* 'nuanced'--just the same bothsides horseshit with a glaze of pretension and some attempts to prettify fascism.
I've been meaning to revisit that episode. I'll try to defend my take. But also I really want to stress it's all too high minded to have practical value
I've just seen so much dreck like that which, whether it *intends* to be 'high minded' or not, does nothing but serve the purposes of Rethug sociopathy.
Perhaps one: Conservatives are dedicated to the creation and maintenance of systems of hierarchy, power and domination for THEMSELVES inevitably enforced by violence and its threat. See also: Wilhoit's Law.
Look, I think the probably is that centrist pundits don't trust me. Just a few years ago here on The Wonkette, I proposed a new law requiring anyone who wants to force others to give birth to donate one organ to me. I would get to choose which organ they had to donate, but I promise not to choose an organ that would "unduly burden" forced-birthers. I also would get the right to pass on any organ I can't personally use.
However, the centrist pundits didn't trust me! They thought I might choose an organ they needed. Clearly, society would be better if conservatives and centrists just trusted me and passed the Forced Birthers Must Donate Organs Act!
"Americans somehow becoming more trusting of one another"
I don't trust conservatives, bigots, fanatics or any kind, idiots, lunatics, liars, or just generally untrustworthy people. Yes, I'm aware there is a LOT of overlap between those groups and that most of these align with one political group in particular. That brings the possible trust pool in the US to somewhere between 0 and 40 percent, depending on location. Of course, unless they're wearing Confederate flags or MAGA gear, it can be difficult to spot them visually, so there has to be a vetting process before you can trust someone.
"The trains ran on time". Mussolini's last words?
Jedediah Purdy was celebrated as a sort of wunderkind in the late 1990's for being against irony and snark, in a book he wrote about it: For Common Things - Irony, Trust, And Commitment In America Today.
I didn't read it, but I remember thinking at the time that being against irony was like being against other literary tools or being against growing old. He's a wordy wordsmith, and he thinks Big Thoughts, but he wasn't able to step outside his intersectionality of male, white, educated, adored by his parents, etc. to understand why people might be reluctant to agree with him (as Robyn points out).
Here is McSweeney's on him:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/1999/10/12jedediah.html
I seem to remember him implying that Seinfeld was the banner carrier for a specific kind of corrosive irony and sarcasm. It didn't lead to much more than and SNL sketch where Jerry played a character named "Jedidiah Purdy." The criticism didn't do too much to dent Jerry's Porsche buying budget.
The suggestion is always that liberals disarm and be sweet to fascist to make them nice. If democracy weren’t clinging by a thread I might care if we get to standing around a potluck table linking arms and singing kumbaya together. (My selfish stepdaughter’s theory) I just want to win. Even Netherlands is tilting right. India is gone. These are bad scary times.
"High Broderism" is the term of art for Jed's prolix disgorgement of words. The Atlantic keeps promoting these "reasonable conservatives", failing to recognize the inherent contradiction in the concept. The most recent to escape confinement from their pages is David French.
IDIOTS: Let's see, we have the asshole and the oppressed. The asshole is scary, and what if the asshole doesn't listen to me? I'll just go the oppressed, act like I'm on their side, and then pep-talk them into shutting up and taking one for the team. They're sensitive and reasonable, so I can use that against them.
Hey, Oppressed...
OPPRESSED: FUCK OFF. Go talk to the Asshole!
ASSHOLE: You got something to say to me?
IDIOTS: NO! No no no. No. Nope. No no. (Writes article) Everyone is so stubborn and unreasonable!
"please stop taking the boot on your neck so personally."
If I have to read one more think piece on our divided nation… well, I’ll just continue to not read them. It’s not merely a political disagreement when one side would obliterate the rights of the other to vote, choose when or whether to have children, love whom they love and identify however they like. It’s beyond a policy discussion when one side refuses food assistance for kids and won’t consider staunching the flow of firearms that are the leading cause of death among children. And there is no “both-sidesing” with people who don’t believe in facts, or elections.
Divided? It's gotten to the state of shrapnel.
https://twitter.com/mikawilson777/status/1746228145072574481?t=xGBDKZpUr6kGjMr0Orb_-Q&s=19
I will say this much. I think it was easier to trust Walter Cronkite, for instance, when we knew that certain checks and balances existed to keep him from spewing the kind of propaganda that passes for programming on Faux and friends. Those checks were removed by Reagan as 'bad for business', and we got Faux not long after. I could go on, but it ain't getting any warmer out, and I've got to pick up some groceries.
Also when news was not for-profit and designed to be entertaining rather than accurate.
From part if a fact-check in USA Today...
"Ronald Reagan's FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine which, since 1949, required media to present both sides' opinions in the rare event they weren't just reporting straight news," the post explained.
"A Democrat-controlled Congress passed a bill to re-instate the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Reagan vetoed the bill," it continued. "Fox News followed in the 1990s. America is now more polarized and misinformed than ever."
FALSE. I have since I first started to be on Wonkette I have tried to all of you out there who say thie stupid shit that...
THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE ONLY APPLIES TO OVER-THE-AIR BROADCASTS ON TV AND RADIO AND DOES NOT HAVE ANYTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH CABLE OR INTERNET OR STREAMING.
I know that many of you are too young to have been around and may never have even had over-the-air broadcast TV,
No, the Fairness Doctrine did not apply to cable/internet/streaming stations which *did not exist at the time*. But it did establish a set of ground rules for what was acceptable on our airwaves, that well might, as Maybe notes, have been expanded to apply to those new media as they arose.
Instead, we have a doctrine repealed in 1987 - and Rush Limbaugh unleashed nationally in 1988. We also had ownership limits - a cap on how many television, radio, and print outlets a single company could own - that rose from seven of each in 1985 to 20, 20, and 12 by 1994. And in 1996, we got Faux, which spread like a cancer across the nation.
Would those rulings, if let stand, have prevented the media morass we find ourselves in today? No way to say for certain, but it seem fairly likely they would have made an impact; and their loss is a loss to us all.
PS - I'm old enough to have voted for Jimmy Carter, and I've had a broadcast license in the past. So yeah, I have Opinions where this is concerned.
Jimmy Carter was the first person I voted for, so I get that. I used to hang around a local radio station late at nighte with some friends that worked there, but also at one time I worked at a pirate radio statsion. Ironically the fake call letters that were used back then were resurrected as a local non-commercial station.
If the Fairness Doctrine were reinstated, it would likely be expanded. Though policing the Internet will always be very difficult. It's global, for one thing.
I could see it very easily expanded to cable and to streaming services, but I think the internet would be a tough call for the reason you mention.
But if cable was included, it could cause many problems for Fox News and Fox Nation, which would make a huge inroad to eliminating outright lies and disinformation.
It was easier to trust any TV journalist, PERIOD, when many of them still possessed rudimentary integrity and decency. Cronkite would never have spewed Faux Noise shite. Nor would Chet Huntley, Nancy Dickerson, etc. etc. etc.
Are there any divergent thoughts in the comments ,or is everyone pretty much in agreement?
So far, all the replies I've read seem to agree that it's preposterous to expect us to trust those striving to harm us. I'll consider trusting roughly 1/3 of my fellow citizens when they stop endangering women and minorities.
Thanks! I didn’t want to read 800 comments. I agree completely with not endangering women with anti-abortion laws. A person is autonomous. When you say minorities, are you talking about racial minorities, or all minorities as all encompassing (sexuality, gender identity, etc.)
All of them potentially, and particularly those already being attacked.
Thank you
"Privilege" has been defined as having the luxury of ignoring a conversation. E.g., if you are not trans and have nobody you care about who's trans, you can choose to ignore politicians' anti-trans messages and actions, and perhaps to vote for them based on other criteria. If you're trans, as I am, you are never going to say "I'm voting for Smith. Sure, he wants to kill me, but I really like his tax policy."
I am really tired of (mostly) white, heterosexual, cisgender men telling me I should calm down. Cisgender men will never face arrest or prison time for their partner miscarrying. Their right to vote, as long as they aren’t a felon, is never in question. Their right to bodily autonomy is never in question. When I was raped, my rapist was assumed innocent, and the law bent over backwards trying to make sure his feelings, rights, and future weren’t harm by him raping me.
Don’t @ me with “Not All Men”. I am aware not all men. But far too many. I am so tired and so very angry.
Thank you Robyn, for reading that drivel so we didn't have to. I keep seeing the same thing over and over in my local op-ed. Calls to get along with zero acknowledgement of why we aren't "getting along" to start with.
Correct. Way too much "both-sides"ing here.
Recently Adam Conover had a guy on his podcast talking about "what the left gets wrong about the right," and the main talking point was the left doesn't think the right has any principles. I would highly recommend listening to it as it has some interesting and nuanced points. But here's the thing. After listening to it I kept comparing it to reading a book on Zen Buddhism; it's all well and good to sit in a comfy chair and be high minded about a clump of dirt, but as soon as you get up and stub your toe all that meaning flies out the window and you're cursing God for your existence. Likewise, all the interesting and nuanced points about conservative principles fly out the window when you remember literally anything about these clowns.
Still. https://youtu.be/8CNOS0v8v5c?si=LOAWUx6UH6E5WniM
Having principles and following them are two different things, much like New Year's resolutions. Repubs also have family values, but they are trump family values.
Yeah, NO. I heard nothing 'interesting' *or* 'nuanced'--just the same bothsides horseshit with a glaze of pretension and some attempts to prettify fascism.
I've been meaning to revisit that episode. I'll try to defend my take. But also I really want to stress it's all too high minded to have practical value
I've just seen so much dreck like that which, whether it *intends* to be 'high minded' or not, does nothing but serve the purposes of Rethug sociopathy.
You don't have to defend anything though. 😊
Oh, the "right" has principles
Nazi principles
Jim Crow principles
https://twitter.com/mikawilson777/status/1746228145072574481?t=xGBDKZpUr6kGjMr0Orb_-Q&s=19
Perhaps one: Conservatives are dedicated to the creation and maintenance of systems of hierarchy, power and domination for THEMSELVES inevitably enforced by violence and its threat. See also: Wilhoit's Law.
"the left doesn't think the right has any principles." And they are correct.
It's a little hard to discern any principles on the right when they keep acting like hypocrites, lying, projecting or all three.
And there you go - being all judgmental....
Look, I think the probably is that centrist pundits don't trust me. Just a few years ago here on The Wonkette, I proposed a new law requiring anyone who wants to force others to give birth to donate one organ to me. I would get to choose which organ they had to donate, but I promise not to choose an organ that would "unduly burden" forced-birthers. I also would get the right to pass on any organ I can't personally use.
However, the centrist pundits didn't trust me! They thought I might choose an organ they needed. Clearly, society would be better if conservatives and centrists just trusted me and passed the Forced Birthers Must Donate Organs Act!