Can anyone recommend a commentator on recent political events that isn’t deliberately biased? Or maybe the lack of such a person is merely a reflection of the ideas the author is trying to explain.
“You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.”
Yeah, let’s avoid that.
If you disagree with me, then how would you measure or determine objectivity?
> 3. Every item will be written or produced to inform, analyze and explain. Axios will never be a platform for incitement or argument. We will never have an opinion section.
I mean, how do you know you aren't just looking for an excuse? It's very upsetting to see people on "your side" doing stuff like attacking their own government. Are you absolutely sure you don't want to talk about left violence just to make yourself feel better?
I disagree.
BLM (e.g.) was about protesting against police brutality and racism. These are bad things in themselves. The fact that some of the protests turned violent is bad, but it was not their intent. In the course of 2020, how many millions of people marched in support of BLM movement? 15-26:
* https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-flo...
On a 'per capita' basis, what was the rate of violence for all of that activity? They were overwhelmingly peaceful:
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summ...
Settle and Portland were the main two exceptions:
* https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1302643852545646594
Should we go into the violence instigated by the authorities against peaceful BLM protestors?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_photo_op_at_St._J...
Meanwhile the insurrection was about fighting the results of a valid election. The purpose of gathering was bad in itself (notwithstanding the delusion that the election was stolen) and the violence only added to the badness.
Lastly, major political leaders on both sides condemned the violence occurring at BLM:
* https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/01/fac...
* https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/01/07/fac...
Whereas some political leaders seemed to encourage aggression/violence at MAGAstock.
One perspective is that centuries of systemic racism lead to Black Lives Matter protests, which were largely peaceful. Social media was a tool used to organize the protests, but did not lead to them.
One perspective is that decades of polarization has led to more extreme views further from an objective reality, which was further enabled and amplified by social media.
One of those realities argues that a massive conspiracy coordinated a secret interference with the election, so that Joe Biden won (but Republicans were allowed to gain quite a few seats in Congress.)
(Yes you can tell which reality I believe, and I can't quite figure out what reality is believed by those that support the invasion of the Capitol building. Perhaps someone can educate me.)
If you cannot agree on some of the above perspectives, then we aren't starting from a shared reality in which we can debate which comments are justified, which are biased, which are uninformed.
Clearly technology has affected politics in the last five years. That doesn’t mean it was the sole source of said political action.
This seems so tritely obvious to me I don’t know why it needs to be debated.
Using social media for disinformation campaigns is not equal to using social media to organize peaceful protests. The fact that 7% of those protests involved some kind of violence (which includes escalation by police, counter-protests, opportunistic looters and yes, perhaps some protestors who have plenty of reason for anger escalating to violence) does not take us to the conclusion that social media caused these protests. They were not based on a disinformation campaign. They were based on violent events that took place.
The belief that the election was stolen is not based on violent events taking place. The claims of evidence have all been hand-waving, such as misunderstanding the Blue wave due to a much higher percentage of mail-in ballots going to Democrats, which was caused by disinformation about mail-in ballot fraud.
Looks like we're debating which reality is based on facts, and it does need to be debated. If we had a shared reality, then perhaps there could be debate on what data points need included in an article exploring social media used in disinformation campaigns, but we do not share the same perspective on what is reality.
Head on over to http://thedonald.win if you want to see the narratives they're believing, I check it out a few times a week, some comments from today: "Remember, it's not over til it's over," "Follow Trump's lead," etc - they don't understand, nor do they care to understand the election process - that there are poll watchers from any party that are present at the counting, they don't care to reason to understand they lost the election. They also have bought into a whole bunch of different conspiracy theories - they consider the Democrats as tyrants when it's Trump who's clearly attempting a coup to become a tyrant, suggesting maybe he'll even be President for 3 terms, etc; there's countless proof points relating to his behaviour that he's a tyrant wannabe.
The cause is Trump et al's rhetoric of lies to rally his base, along with the problem with the political system and mainstream media - more specifically, the duopoly and how mainstream media conglomerates that perpetuate whatever industrial complex fed narratives for "their side" want, leading to only two core mainstream narratives for either the Democrats of Republicans.
Andrew Yang's main policy proposals would break apart the duopoly - expanding the narratives - and take power away from the current mainstream media companies:
- Freedom Dividend/UBI so people can think clearly with less stress,
- Ranked Choice Voting so people aren't wasting their vote and don't feel obligated to vote one of two incumbents,
- Democracy Dollars to wash out lobbyist money from industrial complexes/bad actors by a factor of 8:1 (via $100/year to every eligible voter to contribute to politician of choice),
- Journalism Dollars - same idea, each citizen can "vote" with money allocated to them for journalism - local or national to cover what they have interests in knowing about.
I think I'm forgetting another core policy - but also he wants to implement a government option for healthcare similar to "Medicare For All" - but not killing off private insurance due to the consequences of disrupting that industry immediately - will all strengthen Democracy because it's strengthening, taking care of, people.
I can’t really respond to your comment if you just write a block or rambling text that has little connection to anything.