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1. It's fair to say the President was outmatched by the job. If he wanted to be a dictator, he was incompetent. But the damage to the immediate office of the p
by Digory 6y ago
1. It's fair to say the President was outmatched by the job. If he wanted to be a dictator, he was incompetent. But the damage to the immediate office of the president is worth considering. No honest person wants to work close to this man, and that's new.
2. The media, in new and unusual ways, has abandoned the goal of neutrality in reporting.
3. The university and corporate culture is overwhelmed with demands for every discipline to consider the "Whiteness problem." What does this description remind you of in American life right now?
"Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."
4. The restriction on liberties during the pandemic is new in its breadth and uniformity. It was one thing for un-modern medicine to act regionally in 1918. It's another thing to shut down a Country along the same lines in 2020. We're writing off two years of education for most kids, taking on huge amounts of debt, and shuttering small businesses -- based on a testing regime that seems little better than reading entrails.
We are a tired, angry, debt-laden people unable to agree on the facts. We distrust our formerly-shared institutions. We distrust science if it contradicts political norms.
It's been a bad year.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mullingitover 6y ago> 2. The media, in new and unusual ways, has abandoned the goal of neutrality in reporting. Which media are we talking about? There have always been left, neutral, and right-leaning media, but in the last four years the neutral media was painted as being biased against the president because they reported the facts. The facts, they're very unflattering. The president has brought the pro wrestling 'heel' character into national politics and reporting on that reality is not bias. > It's another thing to shut down a Country along the same lines in 2020. The actual mandated shutdowns were pretty weak and pretty temporary. The real damage to the economy has come from people being rational actors and voluntarily practicing social distancing, resulting in heavily stifled demand. See: Sweden. Famously not mandating lockdowns but their economy suffered nonetheless.
- arrosenberg 6y ago> Which media are we talking about? There have always been left, neutral, and right-leaning media, but in the last four years the neutral media was painted as being biased against the president because they reported the facts. The facts, they're very unflattering. The president has brought the pro wrestling 'heel' character into national politics and reporting on that reality is not bias. I think it's more the way they are playing both sides. The best example being the New York Times — a well-beaten, but still-living horse. They get painted as biased for reporting the facts about Trump, but simultaneously they engage in palace intrigue journalism that softens the administration's image and run it well ahead of page 6. That's not neutrality, it's duplicity.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Digory 6y agoOn media, the NYT predicament seems clear: >“Philosophy schmosiphy,” wrote a researcher at the Times whose Slack avatar was the logo for the hamburger chain Jack in the Box. “We’re at a barricades moment in our history. You decide: which side are you on?” The Times has always been liberal. But among liberals, employees at the Times think norms have eroded to a "barricades" moment, and perceive the old "he kept the paper straight" neutrality as a betrayal of progress. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/inside-the-new-york-times-heated-reckoning-with-itself.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/inside-the-new-york-...
- mullingitover 6y ago> The Times has always been liberal. They're liberal in the same way the democrats who endorsed the invasion of Iraq were liberal - that is to say, weakly centrist in right-leaning environment.
- wnkrshm 6y agoI don't think Trump damaged the office of the president or the institutions. He's actually a quality tester (or a malicious user), the flaws in the institutions were there before, he's the first to abuse them in this way. Security and anti-terror laws, as well as propaganda for the Iraq war and other militant and jingoistic opinions were the beginning of this. If the flaws aren't fixed, the US may get a competent dictator within our lifetimes.
- Digory 6y agoYeah, it's a both/and, I think. The Q. was about changes to norms, and the Imperial President norm is just bad, not new. But no one wants to limit it, in case they win next time.