US Politics Mega-Blog - Page 115

On December 25 2018 10:19 Danglars wrote:
I also dislike the notion that because we have some criticism of the press that I believe is fair and accurate, that is somehow equivalent to the left's war against facts.

That’s politics folks. Oh, and Merry Christmas.

On December 25 2018 13:37 GreenHorizons wrote:


I appreciate your turn of phrase but if you think it is applicable to myself or Neb I don't think you have a very good grasp of our perspectives.

On December 25 2018 13:50 Danglars wrote:

Not to your specific contentions, just to the thought that it's so droll that [the other guys] have false complains that cloud the real complaints the I HAVE!

On December 25 2018 13:56 GreenHorizons wrote:


That's part of the problem. That you're attributing trashy liberal politics to people for which they don't apply. When Neb or I talk about a "war against facts" it's not the same argument that you're attributing.

Trump is a habitual liar. Perhaps you don't end up with the same total number or attribute the same significance as people like Neb or myself, but you can't possibly maintain the position that Trump is an honest broker.

On December 25 2018 14:04 Danglars wrote:

What part of calling out the media from the right means that I believe Trump speaks honestly?

You really need to dig deeper into what it means about both sides saying the other's media figures lie/distort/"fake news"/war on facts.

But if you really want to focus in on what you and Neb *accept* as "war against facts," then my sidebar isn't as relevant.

On December 25 2018 14:10 GreenHorizons wrote:


So what is it you're suggesting with your commentary? Then I'm Curious what you think it's relation to neb or myself is?

On December 25 2018 08:26 Nebuchad wrote:
I also dislike the notion that because we have some criticism of the press that I believe is fair and accurate, that is somehow equivalent to the right's war against facts.

On December 25 2018 10:19 Danglars wrote:
I also dislike the notion that because we have some criticism of the press that I believe is fair and accurate, that is somehow equivalent to the left's war against facts.

On December 25 2018 22:05 Nebuchad wrote:
I would go as far as to say that I agree with you that the media doesn't treat you as well as the democrats. You view this as unfair. But "fairness" implies some sort of equivalence between the two. When Trump lies constantly, as GH pointed out, the media has to be "unfair" in its reporting, by saying that he lies constantly. That makes sense. If the media were to do something else - and often, it does -, that would be a war against facts.

That's not the only topic of contention obviously. Climate change, and more generally money in politics, is the biggest. And while the media has been a little better in general at calling the lies of Trump, they have let that one slide completely (presumably because the liberals benefit from that as well).

This can happen in international news too: yesterday night, I just heard something on the radio that can be translated "The democrats said that Trump is responsible for the shutdown". No, fuck off. That's not news. Trump IS responsible for the shutdown, that's a fact. Don't report it as if there were two sides.

The very fact that you keep complaining about the media when the media is way overly fair to you is part of the war against facts.

On December 26 2018 01:35 Nebuchad wrote:
There is a disconnect between your argument and your conclusion. You present the media using false stories against the right to make the argument that we have the same perspective but reversed and it depends on the subjective evaluation of the speaker. But if your arguments are correct, it's not subjective: you are correct, and I'm wrong. The media isn't simultaneously too nice to progressives and too nice to conservatives, one of us has to be wrong. We can try and figure out who if you want, but we cannot "agree to disagree" or "unite in our distrust of the media" or whatever, those are incoherent responses to the way the argument is laid out.

Given the general lack of progressive points of view in the media (as opposed to liberal), and the overall reliance on neutrality (ask what the liberal dude thinks, ask what the conservative dude thinks, no follow-up), I think it's fairly clear where the bias of the media lies. It's also coherent, given that these are corporations: they are looking for profit, and favoring establishment liberals and conservatives in the US today is obviously the profitable move.

On December 26 2018 03:03 Danglars wrote:

The contradiction is present in your first reply to me. Your opinion is that certain conclusions of yours drawn from facts are just facts and should be reported as facts. That establishes your blurred line between opinion and facts and one reported as the other. You want there to be a declared winner in who’s responsible and for that to be reported as such. I think the best you can do in this world is present both sides and the barest of facts, given that we will likely still disagree about what the facts show and what can be fairly concluded from them. The examples are in the previous post.

On December 26 2018 02:52 GreenHorizons wrote:
From my perspective liberals and conservatives have more in common than liberals and socialists so when Danglars suggests that the right doesn't get a fair shake all I see is the right being given more than their fair share of deference.

The idea that corporate media disproportionately smears the right doesn't even make sense to me since practically everything they present is favorable to the right.

One look at corporate coverage of Beto should settle any confusion there.

On December 26 2018 04:27 Nebuchad wrote:


Everything I believe is an opinion, I'm a subjective viewpoint, that's kind of how it works. I believe some things with a high degree of certainty and others I'm less sure of, but either way, those are opinions. If some of my conclusions are wrong, I'd like to be shown that, rather than to have people tell me that's my opinion: I had that figured out already.

It doesn't follow from your reasoning that the best course of action is to present both sides and the barest of facts. Just because some will continue to disagree doesn't absolve the media from doing their job correctly and reporting the truth (as best they can). In all of the situations where one political side has a good point and the other doesn't (that happens all the time: climate change, net neutrality, tax cuts for the rich... in the near future in Switzerland we're going to vote on whether corporations should be able to violate human rights when they aren't in Switzerland, hmm clearly it's hard to tell which of the two sides is correct there!), if we present the news the way you offered here, we're doing the public a disservice. They should be able to tell that one side is better than the other, and if they can't, that's a failure of the system: they are actively less informed politically because of what they are being shown. That is bad.

If we consider situations where it's not "obvious" what the correct answer is, it's also interesting to see situations where they don't go for neutrality when confronted with that type of question. If we discuss neoliberalism, they won't be looking for the two sides of the discussion, cause all of the establishment agrees on that. Let alone if we discuss capitalism. More recently they had an almost universally pro-war message in response to Trump removing troops from Syria. If you look at the political forces in the US, you have the establishment liberals and the establishment republicans both in agreement for more war, and to the left and to the right of that, you have people who are against that. It's a little more complicated than that of course, but schematically that's what happened, and that's why it was so difficult to find anyone in the media in agreement with the general principle of removing troops. This shows almost single-handedly that the bias doesn't operate in favor of the left.

On December 26 2018 04:53 Danglars wrote:

Hey, as long as you get the fact that “one political side has a good point and the other doesn't” (as you put it) is going to be different person to person, we aren’t that far apart. I think several of your obvious ones are anything but obvious, and value a media that simply reports what both sides think. As you say, “hmm clearly it's hard to tell which of the two sides is correct there!” ... as in people are able to come to these conclusions despite hearing both sides. As long as I hear you griping about the state of Swiss media, I am relieved that there’s still hope for your country’s governance and public policy.

On December 26 2018 05:08 Nebuchad wrote:


I can't really do politics in a post-truth world, and I suspect that you don't either, except when it suits you in conversations like these.

I don't want to always come back to climate change, but this is the best example. One side has all the scientists, all the data, a coherent viewpoint, no reason to lie. The other has politicians who receive donations from corporations that actively benefit from climate change not being real, arguments that fall apart upon the barest of scrutiny like those of Crowder (whose incentive is also obvious), and people who bring snow globes to congress as if that were an argument. Of course I'm being unfair here by picking on easy targets, but this is not a debate where there are two honest sides. This shit is happening, and it's been obvious for a while now. Remember the dude who used to say that scientists had an incentive to say climate change was happening because it gave them a reason to work, while he was himself receiving a bunch of money from big oil? You probably don't, cause that type of projection and hypocrisy happens so often in debates on subjects like these that it's not exactly noticeable. Everytime the media pretends that there are two sides to something like this, as if the gentleman who just received one zillion from this oil corporation is an honest actor in the debate that would result in regulating the business that just gave him one zillion, we are losing valuable time.

You know as well as I do that "despite hearing both sides" thing is not true. Debates show who is the better orator, not who has the better narrative. It's actually often helpful to have no facts when you debate, cause truth tends to be complicated and messy, while a lie can be made to look extremely simple and easily spread. That is the governing principle of propaganda.

On December 26 2018 00:43 Danglars wrote:

This was kind of my presumption on how you felt on the issue. I really do feel the opposite. And I'll repeat my comment to GH that pointing out Trump's lies on the basics like crowd sizes is proper. It's a factual error and Trump does it a lot.

But stuff like responsibility, and *aspects of* climate change, shutdown, and money in politics ... not really. It calls for conclusions and opinions. You say Trump is responsible. I say decades of politicians lying their ass off on border fences/walls, nay even border security, is responsible. But Trump is certainly the proximate cause. Others would say the stupid move to fund-all or fund-nothing brinksmanship is, as opposed to funding departments at regular intervals to keep them responsive to Congress ... be transparent to us or see your funding be put on hold. Still others hold the opinion that it's Democrats intransigence all the way down.

It's really a conclusion drawn by the reporter influenced by his or her worldview, and it's all the way down. You're much better off including the bare facts for the reader to form an opinion, and what both sides say about them.

If there was a bigger mix of political opinions (last I read, four-to-one in favor of the Democrats) among journalists, then (the adopted term) "fake news" would skew more evenly both directions, instead of constantly correcting or spinning false stories damaging to Trump and the Republicans. NPR reports that Donald Trump Jr gave testimony opposite of Cohen's new testimony. Oh wait. The Guardian reports that Manafort talked to Assange in Ecuador. Oops. Changed to mushy allegations from facts based on anonymous sources. I have a big problem of the rush to publication of damaging stories before corroboration, and attribution to anonymous sources that the reader cannot evaluate and may be single-source-spread.

That's my view of stories from the major news publications with large circulation, and that's why I take the opposite view of yours: factually false and deliberately misleading stories disproportionately smear the American right, and going with the view that both sides do it, or it's really the reverse, is wrong and mistruth. You should expect that the same certainty you place in your read of the situation, I place in mine. And I can only speak to the dominant American media, not European or Swiss media, because I only read English and Spanish, and only a handful of UK publications in European influences. That last sentence of yours I would mutate to: The very fact that you keep complaining about unfair treatment when the media is way overly fair to you is why your opinion is ignorant.

On December 27 2018 13:11 GreenHorizons wrote:
After the first two years of Trump's presidency I feel reasonably confident neither major party can possibly address the problems we're facing now and in within our lifetimes.

If someone disagrees I'd love to hear how they think they could, I'll even grant 100% party control of every branch including the judiciary (once one has tried and failed in a more realistic political climate).

“Do the Dems realize that most of the people not getting paid are Democrats?”

His tweet comes after on Christmas Day he said that federal workers back what he is doing, and have urged him to ‘stay out until you get the funding for the wall.’

"These federal workers want the wall,” he said. “The only one that doesn't want the wall are the Democrats.”

On December 28 2018 02:35 Nouar wrote:


As long as humans are in charge, and the world made up of separate countries, with the most common form of government being democracy, running capitalism and trying to earn money individually instead of working towards the greater good and the planet ? I agree.
Some countries made it work somewhat, with the population being overall really happy (northern Europe mainly), but it's going downhill due to other parts of the world.

Do note that I do not know of a better solution that would not be a utopia, bound to fail after a few years due to human greed.
(Any such solution would require to control a steady level of population, and we now enter the realm of unacceptable ethics...)


On another note, your dear president :




There's... a slight issue in these two statements :-D