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> Talk to the peoples that grew up there. Where they fear their neighbors Well I can talk to my parents who grew up in the Jim Crow south where they weren’t tr

> Talk to the peoples that grew up there. Where they fear their neighbors Well I can talk to my parents who grew up in the Jim Crow south where they weren’t trusted to drink from the same water fountain go to the same school or get in the same pool. Or today you can look at any neighborhood’s NextDoor forum when they see a black person “suspiciously” walking in the neighborhood and entering a home with their key. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/ving-rhames-officers-pulled-guns-home/story?id=56890288 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/ving-rhames-officers-pulled-gu... Not to mention we just elected a President who ran on Haitians are eating pets and fear mongering of “other”.

ethbr1 2y ago
> Not to mention we just elected a President who ran on Haitians are eating pets and fear mongering of “other”. Prompted by unverified claims going viral on TikTok. Ceding mindshare to organizations whose only allegiance is to profit (and therefore eyeball time) is a loss, even compared to a world of less-than-perfect professional journalism. Journalism as a well-funded, independent, competitive market for news is the cornerstone of any democracy. Because without it, a populace can't be educated enough to vote in even their own best interests. (Exhibit A: Trump being elected on a manufactured illegal border crossing crisis)
- scarface_74 2y ago
  So you blame TikTok for a grown man and our now President getting his information from TikTok? The population doesn’t want to be “educated”. They knew exactly what they were getting. How do you “educate” people who in their heart believes that for instance saving Israel will bring on the second coming of Jesus during the rapture and if they condone the “gay lifestyle” they are going to burn for eternity and the nation will be set on fire?
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    I blame the lack of alternatives to TikTok. The US no longer has a market of well-funded, professional sources of journalism. (Of the kind and scale that existed before ~2010) It has for-profit partisan outlets and social media, and those are insufficient substitutes to power a democracy.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      Again, you blame one of the candidates - someone who we would hope surrounded himself by experts - for believing what he saw on TikTok? There were plenty of alternatives to TikTok to get information that was more credible than a Chinese own media company.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        I do not blame one of the candidates: I blame the failing US media landscape. Look at NYT revenue [0], and it's the largest and most solvent of the big papers left. Newsrooms of everything after it (WSJ, WP, LAT) are even more gutted. 24/7 news channel "journalism" isn't a substitute, even when you can find it between the filler shows. And it takes money to fund high quality journalism. Facebook and Google hijacked those funding streams, but then didn't use those profits to fund an actual replacement. Instead, their platforms (and the ones that came after them) reward attention algorithm hacking and race-to-the-bottom in content quality. And now, they've decided that even funding a fact checking function is inconvenient to their bottom line, so ditched that responsibility as soon as the political winds allowed them to. [0] https://m.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NYT/new-york-times/revenue https://m.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NYT/new-york-times/r...
- mistermann 2y ago
  >Journalism as a well-funded, independent, competitive market for news is the cornerstone of any democracy. A cornerstone. Another cornerstone is popular memes like this, our culture is composed of thousands of them, and they control how we think.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    The. Memes are only reflections of things people already know. When's the last time you saw a meme that taught you something or made you think about something more deeply? The vast majority are cotton candy facts.
    - mistermann 2y ago
      Have you something even remotely resembling a proof for this set of rather interesting claims of fact?
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        I was asking you, specifically. When was the last time?
        mistermann 2y ago
        Just now: "Perception is reality". Now, can you transfer some of that impressive courage toward the task of answering the question I posed to you?
        ethbr1 2y ago
        If you're unable to think of a time, any answer of mine would be moot.
        mistermann 2y ago
        "Now" is a point in time. I used a very unpopular meme though, so unpopular you may not be able to see it.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  Conservatives haven't spent decades opting in to getting all their information from Fox News and AM radio hosts spewing hate because it's more accurate. People want to consume what agrees with their beliefs. As long as Americans continue to believe they are a magical place with magical people that you can't compare to anywhere else for advice, that the Civil war was fought over "state's rights", that we disliked the Nazis in the 1930s, that certain TYPES of people are intrinsically better than others, that we are a "christian" nation, we will never get better. Hell, even media made for people who don't actively hate LGBTQ types STILL treats the civil war like just some small kerfuffle and it's fine that two brothers on opposite sides of the war just needed to reconcile and love each other and that's totally fine even though one of them signed up to fight and die for a regime who's entire purpose was the continued enslavement of millions of black people for the crime of being born black. A significant portion of our country is outright TAUGHT IN SCHOOL that the civil war was a war of "Northern" (read: those goddamned coastal elites) aggression. The south fired the first shot for fucks sake. Why do you think those people would EVER choose to consume news that tells them: "Sorry, you've kind of been lied to for a long time and actually your ancestors were kind of bad people doing kind of bad stuff and also uh we genocided the indians and also the Nazis were pretty popular here and holy shit you should see the horrible stuff we did under the guise of 'science' when we discovered Eugenics let us claim black people were inherently inferior. Because their skull was the wrong shape. No I'm serious" How do you get someone to believe something they absolutely do not want to believe in and they don't even respect the primacy of material fact like "The southern states literally said they were fighting to maintain slavery IN THEIR SUCCESSION DOCUMENTS"? You can't force another human to respect and understand reality when they spend their entire existence and have built their entire worldview around "No, the people telling me my country did bad things in the past are actually the enemy"?
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    As much as I am aware of the perils of states rights, I’m almost in favor of a smaller federal government that lets each state fend for itself and let the Blue richer states have higher state taxes and lower federal taxes. Then for instance like minded states could form alliances. A true Federalist country. And yes I am well aware of my own hypocrisy only living in GA and FL my entire life and I know that the south would even be worse for people of my skin color if it weren’t for the civil rights legislation of the 60s, the official abolishing of segregation, etc
codr7 2y ago
Yep, the fear has to go, and it will.

ethbr1 2y ago

> Not to mention we just elected a President who ran on Haitians are eating pets and fear mongering of “other”. Prompted by unverified claims going viral on TikTok. Ceding mindshare to organizations whose only allegiance is to profit (and therefore eyeball time) is a loss, even compared to a world of less-than-perfect professional journalism. Journalism as a well-funded, independent, competitive market for news is the cornerstone of any democracy. Because without it, a populace can't be educated enough to vote in even their own best interests. (Exhibit A: Trump being elected on a manufactured illegal border crossing crisis)

scarface_74 2y ago
So you blame TikTok for a grown man and our now President getting his information from TikTok? The population doesn’t want to be “educated”. They knew exactly what they were getting. How do you “educate” people who in their heart believes that for instance saving Israel will bring on the second coming of Jesus during the rapture and if they condone the “gay lifestyle” they are going to burn for eternity and the nation will be set on fire?
- ethbr1 2y ago
  I blame the lack of alternatives to TikTok. The US no longer has a market of well-funded, professional sources of journalism. (Of the kind and scale that existed before ~2010) It has for-profit partisan outlets and social media, and those are insufficient substitutes to power a democracy.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Again, you blame one of the candidates - someone who we would hope surrounded himself by experts - for believing what he saw on TikTok? There were plenty of alternatives to TikTok to get information that was more credible than a Chinese own media company.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      I do not blame one of the candidates: I blame the failing US media landscape. Look at NYT revenue [0], and it's the largest and most solvent of the big papers left. Newsrooms of everything after it (WSJ, WP, LAT) are even more gutted. 24/7 news channel "journalism" isn't a substitute, even when you can find it between the filler shows. And it takes money to fund high quality journalism. Facebook and Google hijacked those funding streams, but then didn't use those profits to fund an actual replacement. Instead, their platforms (and the ones that came after them) reward attention algorithm hacking and race-to-the-bottom in content quality. And now, they've decided that even funding a fact checking function is inconvenient to their bottom line, so ditched that responsibility as soon as the political winds allowed them to. [0] https://m.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NYT/new-york-times/revenue https://m.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NYT/new-york-times/r...
mistermann 2y ago
>Journalism as a well-funded, independent, competitive market for news is the cornerstone of any democracy. A cornerstone. Another cornerstone is popular memes like this, our culture is composed of thousands of them, and they control how we think.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  The. Memes are only reflections of things people already know. When's the last time you saw a meme that taught you something or made you think about something more deeply? The vast majority are cotton candy facts.
  - mistermann 2y ago
    Have you something even remotely resembling a proof for this set of rather interesting claims of fact?
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      I was asking you, specifically. When was the last time?
      - mistermann 2y ago
        Just now: "Perception is reality". Now, can you transfer some of that impressive courage toward the task of answering the question I posed to you?
        ethbr1 2y ago
        If you're unable to think of a time, any answer of mine would be moot.
        mistermann 2y ago
        "Now" is a point in time. I used a very unpopular meme though, so unpopular you may not be able to see it.
mrguyorama 2y ago
Conservatives haven't spent decades opting in to getting all their information from Fox News and AM radio hosts spewing hate because it's more accurate. People want to consume what agrees with their beliefs. As long as Americans continue to believe they are a magical place with magical people that you can't compare to anywhere else for advice, that the Civil war was fought over "state's rights", that we disliked the Nazis in the 1930s, that certain TYPES of people are intrinsically better than others, that we are a "christian" nation, we will never get better. Hell, even media made for people who don't actively hate LGBTQ types STILL treats the civil war like just some small kerfuffle and it's fine that two brothers on opposite sides of the war just needed to reconcile and love each other and that's totally fine even though one of them signed up to fight and die for a regime who's entire purpose was the continued enslavement of millions of black people for the crime of being born black. A significant portion of our country is outright TAUGHT IN SCHOOL that the civil war was a war of "Northern" (read: those goddamned coastal elites) aggression. The south fired the first shot for fucks sake. Why do you think those people would EVER choose to consume news that tells them: "Sorry, you've kind of been lied to for a long time and actually your ancestors were kind of bad people doing kind of bad stuff and also uh we genocided the indians and also the Nazis were pretty popular here and holy shit you should see the horrible stuff we did under the guise of 'science' when we discovered Eugenics let us claim black people were inherently inferior. Because their skull was the wrong shape. No I'm serious" How do you get someone to believe something they absolutely do not want to believe in and they don't even respect the primacy of material fact like "The southern states literally said they were fighting to maintain slavery IN THEIR SUCCESSION DOCUMENTS"? You can't force another human to respect and understand reality when they spend their entire existence and have built their entire worldview around "No, the people telling me my country did bad things in the past are actually the enemy"?
- scarface_74 2y ago
  As much as I am aware of the perils of states rights, I’m almost in favor of a smaller federal government that lets each state fend for itself and let the Blue richer states have higher state taxes and lower federal taxes. Then for instance like minded states could form alliances. A true Federalist country. And yes I am well aware of my own hypocrisy only living in GA and FL my entire life and I know that the south would even be worse for people of my skin color if it weren’t for the civil rights legislation of the 60s, the official abolishing of segregation, etc

codr7 2y ago

Yep, the fear has to go, and it will.