5 ms·

The "common person" is honestly pretty depressing. The common person primarily votes based solely on a historical allegiance to a political party (be it indivi

by munk-a 6y ago

The "common person" is honestly pretty depressing. The common person primarily votes based solely on a historical allegiance to a political party (be it individually formed or inherited) with about 75% of America essentially being unmovable D or R safe votes. Censorship is a hard question and I think we do need to have better laws promoting free access to material (even "libelous" material) but this is also an area where I think it's pretty clear the government has failed in a big way - twitter + FB shouldn't be news platforms, the dumb news aggregators (like google news) do a pretty good job of being dumb platforms, but those commentary platforms are being run by private entities that can "censor" speech as they like depending on how it benefits or harms their platform. America is in a bit of a crisis right now since the extreme partisan divide has driven the real media (print, TV) to actually split into mutually disproving and incompatible bubbles. On election night one half of the country is going to be absolutely astounded since everything they consumed said their candidate was going to win. I'm not certain what the solution is but some moderation is required to prevent the apparent acceptance of some pretty hateful views along with conspiracy theories. The Internet introduced clickbait to the world in a manner it never previously conceived of - tabloids have been around for ever but never gotten serious consideration - suddenly major political figures are embracing and re-packaging tabloid headlines and it's a bit of a crisis of information for our society.

dasudasu 6y ago
With two parties divided along ideological left-right lines, it’s expected that a majority won’t be switching side too often in their lifetime. The opposite would be ideologically weak parties doing a form of clientelism that would change according to the trends of the day.
- munk-a 6y ago
  Comparing the US system with parliamentary governments - I reject the assumption that the two parties are clearly divided along left-right lines. People all have a pretty wide diversity of opinions there are plenty of people I know that are both pro-life and pro-medicare for all - they don't have a home in the US political system and thus have to settle for one party of the other. The US's two-party entrenchment forces this false appearance of an us vs. them political battle. It's true that in the US you can only legitimately vote for either D or R in races and that this further entrenches the two parties - but issue voters should be flowing pretty freely between the two parties as their individual focuses shift.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  > The opposite would be ideologically weak parties doing a form of clientelism that would change according to the trends of the day. Like the Southern Strategy, the Blue Dog Democrats, Tea Party, and Donald Trump (party-switcher). Look at the radical positions calling themselves "conservative" today, getting more extreme since the 1980s when religous extremists stated taking over the Republican Party. One-third of US voters are Independent not registered to a party. The US electoral system forces to parties, but those parties change and are sometimes replaced.
Spivak 6y ago
> The common person primarily votes based solely on a historical allegiance to a political party (be it individually formed or inherited) with about 75% of America essentially being unmovable D or R safe votes. This is one of those statements that sounds bad on the surface but is actually totally reasonable and has nothing to do with some trope about the "uninformed masses" or whatever. Locally the individual matters a lot more but at the national level voting histories show that the party dominates. People have "disqualifying issues." And this is totally rational. Being black and voting R is nuts -- same if you're gay. And if you're pro-life then voting D is unpalatable. These kinds of polarizing issues very nearly define the party line. So yeah, if you go the polls in Nov and don't know if you're voting D or R (nationally) then you're probably crazy uninformed. The actual decision making happens during the primaries where people suddenly have an entire group of people who aren't immediately disqualified and the internal discussion gets a lot more nuanced.
- rayiner 6y ago
  > Being black and voting R is nuts -- same if you're gay. I'm not sure if its objectively "nuts" but almost 25% of LGBT voters supported Romney over Obama. That's accounting for the fact that openly LGBT voters are much younger than other voters: twice as likely to be 18-34 and half as likely to be 55+. Median age is about 35, versus 50 for the overall population. Romney won 37% of folks 18-29 and 51% of folks 45-64. There are too many gay republicans to call them all "nuts."
  - kelnos 6y ago
    Obviously all people have different kinds of policy opinions, and the "R" and "D" buckets are way too coarse to describe everyone. Someone who is gay can just as easily be a fiscal conservative (for example) as someone who is straight. But what I can't understand is how someone -- even if they agree with most of their chosen party's platform -- could vote for a party whose leadership largely wants to erase them. I just don't understand someone who is gay voting for people who believe that their sexual orientation is a "choice", many also believing that it's a "sin" that should be forcibly "re-educated" out. Certainly calling them "nuts" is dismissive, disrespectful, and doesn't help us understand what's going on, but... really, I do not at all understand what's going on.
jerf 6y ago
'The "common person" is honestly pretty depressing.' The "common person" is the one doing the moderating on the platforms. There is no pool of superintelligent, superwise, super-everything people doing the hard work of moderating on the platform. It's just common people. It's not even a good sample of common people. It has a very particular slant to it; very American, for one thing.
arminiusreturns 6y ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again; it's the same justification that has been used to justify moves away from democracy. "Those poor dumb plebs, they just don't know any better, we, the elites, know whats best, so we should reduce the amount of democracy!" [1] 1. https://archive.org/details/TheCrisisOfDemocracy-TrilateralCommission-1975 https://archive.org/details/TheCrisisOfDemocracy-TrilateralC... You say "some moderation is required to prevent the apparent acceptance of some pretty hateful views along with conspiracy theories", but the entire point is that then you are giving over to some other person or entity the power and ability to decide what you get to read. I think this should be rejected as a slippery slope made of ky-jelly. "Don't take security in the false refuge of consensus and the feeling that whatever you think you're bound to be okay because you're in the safely moral majority." "It is not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard, it is the right of everyone in the audience to listen, and to hear, and every time you silence somebody, you make yourself a prisoner of your own action, because you deny yourself the right to hear something." - Christopher Hitchens [2] 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY bonus (the whole speech is quotable): "Dr. Johnson was waited upon by various delegations of people, to congratulate him of the nobility of the quality; of the Commons; the Lords; and also by a delegation of respectable ladies of London, who tended on him in his Fleet Street lodgings and congratulated him: "Dr. Johnson," they said, "We are delighted to find that you have not included any indecent or obscene words in your dictionary." "Ladies," said Dr. Johnson, "I congratulate you on being able to look them up". Anyone who can understand that joke, and I'm pleased to see that 10% of you can, gets the point about censorship especially prior restraint as it's known in the United States where it's banned by the first amendment to the constitution. It may not be determined in advance what words are apt or inapt, no one has the knowledge that would be required to make that call and - more to the point - one has to suspect the motives of those who do so, in particular: the motives of those who are determined to be offended; of those who will go through a treasure house of English, like Dr. Johnson's first lexicon, in search of filthy words to satisfy themselves and some instinct about which I dare not speculate."
secondcoming 6y ago
'hateful' is entirely relative. What's wrong with conspiracy theories? They're as harmless as The X Files.
- munk-a 6y ago
  I'm going to need some sources on conspiracy theories being harmless - Pizzagate[1] lead to someone firing off live rounds in a pizza parlor, QAnon is also tied to some kidnappings[2], anti-vaxers have led to somewhere in the range of 50-60k deaths[3] - anti-maskers... it's a bit too early to tell but some folks put the number around 130k[4]... Conspiracy theories aren't harmless. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory 2. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/15/qanon-violence-crimes-timeline https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/15/qanon-violen... 3. https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/anti-vaxxer-views-blamed-as-measles-deaths-rise-15-per-cent-1.4717303 https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/anti-vaxxer-views-blamed-as-me... 4. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/health/covid-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/health/covid-deaths.html
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - rightbyte 6y ago
    [3] doesn't claim any numbers on how many surplus deaths 'anti-vaxers' are the cause of.
    - munk-a 6y ago
      Ah sorry - to infer, the MMR vaccine had measles on a steady downward trend - the article is highlighting a 15% raise in cases. I think it's safe to attribute 15% of the 140k worldwide deaths to the anti-vax movement since we were actually approaching eliminating that disease (like we did smallpox)
sam_goody 6y ago
RealClearPolitics makes a point of presenting articles on both sides of the spectrum and has grown tremendously. I am cautiously optimistic that there are a lot, lot, lot of people (like myself) that are interested in trying to balance their views, and make a point of reading both sides - especially when a headline is sensational. I don't think Google news is as balanced as RCP, but it sure beats just reading CNN or Fox!
- munk-a 6y ago
  I think RealClearPolitics is a great example of solid reporting - I avoided it (along with the intercept and 538 which is weirdly now sort of a news site) in the example above since I'm not certain how sustainable they are in the long run - they may exist because the internet being here means some pretty nice balanced news sources are eventually bound to appear... but corporations have a way of eating media sources that don't say nice things about them. I do really hope that RCP and a lot of the other independent media (even the highly left-slanted ones like TYT) manage to survive and thrive - but I think aggregated news is a thing that has value and I think that maybe highly opinionated commentary of news (like you'd see on twitter/facebook) also has value since it allows for more room for advocacy of ideas.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  RCP is "diverse" compared to CNN or Fox offering opinions from center (mayyybe center -left) Bloomberg/Politico/NYMag to far right (Federalist), with a clear Right bias. Their founding mission to provide diversity to balance the Liberal Mainstream Media. They have nothing Left like Mother Jones or Jacobin. The farthest left they go is in linking to Biden endorsements, but Biden is a centrist establish Democrat who has been endorsed by most of the pre-2016 Republican party. It's obvious from the list of sources: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ https://www.realclearpolitics.com/

by munk-a 6y ago

dasudasu 6y ago

With two parties divided along ideological left-right lines, it’s expected that a majority won’t be switching side too often in their lifetime. The opposite would be ideologically weak parties doing a form of clientelism that would change according to the trends of the day.

munk-a 6y ago
Comparing the US system with parliamentary governments - I reject the assumption that the two parties are clearly divided along left-right lines. People all have a pretty wide diversity of opinions there are plenty of people I know that are both pro-life and pro-medicare for all - they don't have a home in the US political system and thus have to settle for one party of the other. The US's two-party entrenchment forces this false appearance of an us vs. them political battle. It's true that in the US you can only legitimately vote for either D or R in races and that this further entrenches the two parties - but issue voters should be flowing pretty freely between the two parties as their individual focuses shift.
srtjstjsj 6y ago
> The opposite would be ideologically weak parties doing a form of clientelism that would change according to the trends of the day. Like the Southern Strategy, the Blue Dog Democrats, Tea Party, and Donald Trump (party-switcher). Look at the radical positions calling themselves "conservative" today, getting more extreme since the 1980s when religous extremists stated taking over the Republican Party. One-third of US voters are Independent not registered to a party. The US electoral system forces to parties, but those parties change and are sometimes replaced.

Spivak 6y ago

> The common person primarily votes based solely on a historical allegiance to a political party (be it individually formed or inherited) with about 75% of America essentially being unmovable D or R safe votes. This is one of those statements that sounds bad on the surface but is actually totally reasonable and has nothing to do with some trope about the "uninformed masses" or whatever. Locally the individual matters a lot more but at the national level voting histories show that the party dominates. People have "disqualifying issues." And this is totally rational. Being black and voting R is nuts -- same if you're gay. And if you're pro-life then voting D is unpalatable. These kinds of polarizing issues very nearly define the party line. So yeah, if you go the polls in Nov and don't know if you're voting D or R (nationally) then you're probably crazy uninformed. The actual decision making happens during the primaries where people suddenly have an entire group of people who aren't immediately disqualified and the internal discussion gets a lot more nuanced.

rayiner 6y ago
> Being black and voting R is nuts -- same if you're gay. I'm not sure if its objectively "nuts" but almost 25% of LGBT voters supported Romney over Obama. That's accounting for the fact that openly LGBT voters are much younger than other voters: twice as likely to be 18-34 and half as likely to be 55+. Median age is about 35, versus 50 for the overall population. Romney won 37% of folks 18-29 and 51% of folks 45-64. There are too many gay republicans to call them all "nuts."
- kelnos 6y ago
  Obviously all people have different kinds of policy opinions, and the "R" and "D" buckets are way too coarse to describe everyone. Someone who is gay can just as easily be a fiscal conservative (for example) as someone who is straight. But what I can't understand is how someone -- even if they agree with most of their chosen party's platform -- could vote for a party whose leadership largely wants to erase them. I just don't understand someone who is gay voting for people who believe that their sexual orientation is a "choice", many also believing that it's a "sin" that should be forcibly "re-educated" out. Certainly calling them "nuts" is dismissive, disrespectful, and doesn't help us understand what's going on, but... really, I do not at all understand what's going on.

jerf 6y ago

'The "common person" is honestly pretty depressing.' The "common person" is the one doing the moderating on the platforms. There is no pool of superintelligent, superwise, super-everything people doing the hard work of moderating on the platform. It's just common people. It's not even a good sample of common people. It has a very particular slant to it; very American, for one thing.

arminiusreturns 6y ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again; it's the same justification that has been used to justify moves away from democracy. "Those poor dumb plebs, they just don't know any better, we, the elites, know whats best, so we should reduce the amount of democracy!" [1] 1. https://archive.org/details/TheCrisisOfDemocracy-TrilateralCommission-1975 https://archive.org/details/TheCrisisOfDemocracy-TrilateralC... You say "some moderation is required to prevent the apparent acceptance of some pretty hateful views along with conspiracy theories", but the entire point is that then you are giving over to some other person or entity the power and ability to decide what you get to read. I think this should be rejected as a slippery slope made of ky-jelly. "Don't take security in the false refuge of consensus and the feeling that whatever you think you're bound to be okay because you're in the safely moral majority." "It is not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard, it is the right of everyone in the audience to listen, and to hear, and every time you silence somebody, you make yourself a prisoner of your own action, because you deny yourself the right to hear something." - Christopher Hitchens [2] 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY bonus (the whole speech is quotable): "Dr. Johnson was waited upon by various delegations of people, to congratulate him of the nobility of the quality; of the Commons; the Lords; and also by a delegation of respectable ladies of London, who tended on him in his Fleet Street lodgings and congratulated him: "Dr. Johnson," they said, "We are delighted to find that you have not included any indecent or obscene words in your dictionary." "Ladies," said Dr. Johnson, "I congratulate you on being able to look them up". Anyone who can understand that joke, and I'm pleased to see that 10% of you can, gets the point about censorship especially prior restraint as it's known in the United States where it's banned by the first amendment to the constitution. It may not be determined in advance what words are apt or inapt, no one has the knowledge that would be required to make that call and - more to the point - one has to suspect the motives of those who do so, in particular: the motives of those who are determined to be offended; of those who will go through a treasure house of English, like Dr. Johnson's first lexicon, in search of filthy words to satisfy themselves and some instinct about which I dare not speculate."

secondcoming 6y ago

'hateful' is entirely relative. What's wrong with conspiracy theories? They're as harmless as The X Files.

munk-a 6y ago
I'm going to need some sources on conspiracy theories being harmless - Pizzagate[1] lead to someone firing off live rounds in a pizza parlor, QAnon is also tied to some kidnappings[2], anti-vaxers have led to somewhere in the range of 50-60k deaths[3] - anti-maskers... it's a bit too early to tell but some folks put the number around 130k[4]... Conspiracy theories aren't harmless. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory 2. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/15/qanon-violence-crimes-timeline https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/15/qanon-violen... 3. https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/anti-vaxxer-views-blamed-as-measles-deaths-rise-15-per-cent-1.4717303 https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/anti-vaxxer-views-blamed-as-me... 4. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/health/covid-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/health/covid-deaths.html
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- rightbyte 6y ago
  [3] doesn't claim any numbers on how many surplus deaths 'anti-vaxers' are the cause of.
  - munk-a 6y ago
    Ah sorry - to infer, the MMR vaccine had measles on a steady downward trend - the article is highlighting a 15% raise in cases. I think it's safe to attribute 15% of the 140k worldwide deaths to the anti-vax movement since we were actually approaching eliminating that disease (like we did smallpox)

sam_goody 6y ago

RealClearPolitics makes a point of presenting articles on both sides of the spectrum and has grown tremendously. I am cautiously optimistic that there are a lot, lot, lot of people (like myself) that are interested in trying to balance their views, and make a point of reading both sides - especially when a headline is sensational. I don't think Google news is as balanced as RCP, but it sure beats just reading CNN or Fox!

munk-a 6y ago
I think RealClearPolitics is a great example of solid reporting - I avoided it (along with the intercept and 538 which is weirdly now sort of a news site) in the example above since I'm not certain how sustainable they are in the long run - they may exist because the internet being here means some pretty nice balanced news sources are eventually bound to appear... but corporations have a way of eating media sources that don't say nice things about them. I do really hope that RCP and a lot of the other independent media (even the highly left-slanted ones like TYT) manage to survive and thrive - but I think aggregated news is a thing that has value and I think that maybe highly opinionated commentary of news (like you'd see on twitter/facebook) also has value since it allows for more room for advocacy of ideas.
srtjstjsj 6y ago
RCP is "diverse" compared to CNN or Fox offering opinions from center (mayyybe center -left) Bloomberg/Politico/NYMag to far right (Federalist), with a clear Right bias. Their founding mission to provide diversity to balance the Liberal Mainstream Media. They have nothing Left like Mother Jones or Jacobin. The farthest left they go is in linking to Biden endorsements, but Biden is a centrist establish Democrat who has been endorsed by most of the pre-2016 Republican party. It's obvious from the list of sources: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ https://www.realclearpolitics.com/