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The free TV time gifted to Trump for saying outrageous things gave him a decided signal boost over his rivals. On the other hand, the media did not give suffic
by Steltek 10y ago
The free TV time gifted to Trump for saying outrageous things gave him a decided signal boost over his rivals. On the other hand, the media did not give sufficient time to a sane counterargument whereas a well-regulated forum might offer that opportunity.
Unfortunately, that's not what we see from the balance of Trump supporters online, who are not at all hesitant to flag or brigade opposing viewpoints regardless of merit.
- problems 10y agoI'm not so sure, I think the media gave plenty of time to sane counterargument. Even CNN, which I constantly see blamed as an evil by both the left and right, they'd air his stuff, then go and critique it and debate it for quite a while afterwards. I think ultimately not as many people are interested in the critique and debate portion and perhaps more importantly, and I think many supporters just didn't care about a lot of the outrageous stuff he said because their alternative seemed even worse. They were basically left no choice but to dismiss it. If the options were better, even just one of them I think this whole thing would have worked out a lot nicer. But instead a lot of people were caught in the middle debating the better of two evils. I'm sure many will argue it was clearly one way or the other, but I'm pretty sympathetic to both arguments here. Education, debate and rationality can't solve that in a really significant way, only better options can.