forclosure
Well-known member
i know we've never talked before but Silicon Valley yeah? you must be making GOOOD p's over there
No Future for the GOP?
- Thread starter vimothy
- Start date
mind_philip
saw the light
I have a pretty modest job as a writer/editor for a middle-rank tech company. My wife is the high flier (and the reason we came over here/qualified for visas etc.)
forclosure
Well-known member
what does she do? and i have ask do you really hear as many tech multillion/billionaires going off about their products that they swear is going to change humanity as is reported and talked out?
also is your company one of those places where the only ethnic person(s) as part of staff is the security guard(s)?
mind_philip
saw the light
I joined during the pandemic, so I've never actually been on site at the place I work (and don't intend to, as I negotiated to be a fully remote worker when they hired me), but I don't think there's much diversity from what I've seen on Zoom. I live in Palo Alto, so you do see quite a lot of people pitching their startups in the coffee shops etc. but all the boasting is directed solely at the people who could give them serious money - it's all pretty single minded.
To bring it back to politics, it's a classic socially liberal, economically conservative kind of place, as most people are educated, in their forties and very well paid. Which in America makes you fine to be a democrat, as there isn't an economically 'liberal' party as far as I can tell.
To bring it back to politics, it's a classic socially liberal, economically conservative kind of place, as most people are educated, in their forties and very well paid. Which in America makes you fine to be a democrat, as there isn't an economically 'liberal' party as far as I can tell.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Wouldn't the GOP be considered economically liberal, pushing for fewer governmental interventions in business affairs, on behalf of this or that ethical/social concern? EG less estate tax, "corporations are people too" etc.
The GOP strikes me as more liberal in the economic and political sense, whereas the Democratic Party strikes me as more liberal in the social sense, but I could be proven wrong.
The GOP strikes me as more liberal in the economic and political sense, whereas the Democratic Party strikes me as more liberal in the social sense, but I could be proven wrong.
mind_philip
saw the light
Yeah, it's all a bit of a smokescreen, as the GOP tends to raise deficits faster than anyone.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Yeah I think all the platitudes and principles ultimately yield to financial convenience and tact, at least insofar as it can be gotten away with.
I just think of anarcho-capitalism, or even just moderate liberal economics, being more of a GOP thing than a Democrat thing, but maybe thats just a superficial association.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
I just think of how free market dynamics favor the wealthy, IE favor capital, and how the principal opposition to this would be labor. But then again I'm also under the impression that the Democrats have been less committed to the interests of labor since neoliberalism, but I don't have any concrete policy examples to point to here.
Leo
Well-known member
Tell that to Disney.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
I think this is the first time I clicked on any Youtube content from the New York Times, because it surprised me that they'd associate with something this critical of the Democrats, and of progressivism in general. I'm impressed. I don't know who the major stakeholders are for NYT, but I will say that I've been under a pretty solid impression, however vaguely, that they're partisan. Content like this indicates to me that they're willing to actually critique the Democrats.
The top comment summarized my thoughts pretty well:
From the video's description:
It’s easy to blame the other side. And for many Democrats, it’s obvious that Republicans are thwarting progress toward a more equal society.
But what happens when Republicans aren’t standing in the way? In many states — including California, New York and Illinois — Democrats control all the levers of power. They run the government. They write the laws. And as we explore in the video above, they often aren’t living up to their values.
The top comment summarized my thoughts pretty well:
From the video's description:
It’s easy to blame the other side. And for many Democrats, it’s obvious that Republicans are thwarting progress toward a more equal society.
But what happens when Republicans aren’t standing in the way? In many states — including California, New York and Illinois — Democrats control all the levers of power. They run the government. They write the laws. And as we explore in the video above, they often aren’t living up to their values.
Leo
Well-known member
wake up, @Clinamenic! that video is seven months old. it's a boring stereotype to write off the Times, they have plenty of content that's down the middle and critical of whoever deserves to be criticized.
IdleRich
IdleRich
In general I think that a lot of damage has been done by people arguing that "they are all the same" in various fields.
For instance in The UK you have The Sun and The Guardian - both newspapers that have their flaws and which are partisan, but the standards of reporting are simply higher in The Guardian, they are stricter in verifying facts and they do not deliberately misrepresent facts or omit things they find inconvenient with the aim of influencing readers.
Similarly the Mail and, particularly now, The Telegraph have no separation between the owners and editorial policy, meaning that these once venerable organs have now become mouthpieces for their owners with the main function of pushing policies that benefit them.
To simply say "they are all the same" and treat them in the same way would be a huge error.
I've picked news organisations here for my examples as you were talking about the NYT, but the same is also true of politicians at times, or, I dunno, sometimes two experts or scientists on different sides of an argument.
I think it's all part of the general assault on truth we have seen over the last few years. This constant refrain we hear "they all lie" "none can be trusted" "they are all the same" etc has had an insidious effect.
And it is very useful to certain people who want to present their own "alternative facts". We find ourselves in a situation where in many debates truth has become - to all intents and purposes - simply whatever is said by the person who shouts loudest.
So for me it's really important to slip into this kind of laziness (not accusing you here @Clinamenic - your comment reminded me of this kind of thinking and that it exists but I'm not extrapolating from one short phrase to attempt to describe how you think).
Just to be clear, I'm not even saying that there is always a good guy and a bad guy or anything like that. It might be that you're dealing with two unreliable sources giving info on a particular issue, it's still worth assessing which is the most unreliable and which has most reason to lie right now.
For instance in The UK you have The Sun and The Guardian - both newspapers that have their flaws and which are partisan, but the standards of reporting are simply higher in The Guardian, they are stricter in verifying facts and they do not deliberately misrepresent facts or omit things they find inconvenient with the aim of influencing readers.
Similarly the Mail and, particularly now, The Telegraph have no separation between the owners and editorial policy, meaning that these once venerable organs have now become mouthpieces for their owners with the main function of pushing policies that benefit them.
To simply say "they are all the same" and treat them in the same way would be a huge error.
I've picked news organisations here for my examples as you were talking about the NYT, but the same is also true of politicians at times, or, I dunno, sometimes two experts or scientists on different sides of an argument.
I think it's all part of the general assault on truth we have seen over the last few years. This constant refrain we hear "they all lie" "none can be trusted" "they are all the same" etc has had an insidious effect.
And it is very useful to certain people who want to present their own "alternative facts". We find ourselves in a situation where in many debates truth has become - to all intents and purposes - simply whatever is said by the person who shouts loudest.
So for me it's really important to slip into this kind of laziness (not accusing you here @Clinamenic - your comment reminded me of this kind of thinking and that it exists but I'm not extrapolating from one short phrase to attempt to describe how you think).
Just to be clear, I'm not even saying that there is always a good guy and a bad guy or anything like that. It might be that you're dealing with two unreliable sources giving info on a particular issue, it's still worth assessing which is the most unreliable and which has most reason to lie right now.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Yeah I'm not really familiar with the NYT's history, recent or otherwise, or the positions it takes/supports. I'm more just voicing a vague impression that I'm under, and how this one piece of content challenged that impression.
And while I'm still uncertain about board/executive members of these publications - and in general how their personal beliefs manifest, however fragmented, as editorial strategies - thats not really the full extent of my mild distrust, if I can even call it distrust. I think people naturally perceive and relay information differently, based on whether they agree the positions taken in that information, and that this instinct is liable to manifest on higher-order levels such as a publication - especially when you consider the economic incentives of appealing to certain audiences.
And while I'm still uncertain about board/executive members of these publications - and in general how their personal beliefs manifest, however fragmented, as editorial strategies - thats not really the full extent of my mild distrust, if I can even call it distrust. I think people naturally perceive and relay information differently, based on whether they agree the positions taken in that information, and that this instinct is liable to manifest on higher-order levels such as a publication - especially when you consider the economic incentives of appealing to certain audiences.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
IE I don't think partisan coverage should be conflated with corruption. I think part of it is the market circumstances of a given publication, how they get a readership foothold, etc.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I do think that there are indeed two separate issues here - I mean there are probably loads of issues, but there are two important ones here that are often mixed up in people's minds. So yeah, with news organisations I think it's important to consider the impartiality or otherwise and also the quality (I'm including corruption within that for these purposes as I think it has a bearing on the quality).
So thinking of UK newspapers as something I know relatively more about. You have on the right; Times, Telegraph, Mail, Sun... and some others that slip my mind just now. Then on the left you have the Guardian and The Mirror. And there is a newspaper called The Independent which claims to be neutral but which to my mind is really more left-leaning. So all of those partialities are acknowledged and not really disputed (with the possible exception of the Independent). But in terms of the quality of the reporting I would say that The Guardian probably is the highest. Times and Telegraph have both been traditionally high too, whereas The Sun is an absolute shit-rag and The Mail has a horribly tarnished record going right back to when it supported the Nazis before WW2*. I actually don't know to much about The Mirror or the Independent but I will say that the former is a tabloid whereas the latter at least aspired to be something of a higher quality.
Anyway, above I mentioned the Telegraph and Times and to me they represent quite a dramatic change in that, when I was growing up, my parents (being home counties Tories, or worse actually, aspiring to be that) naturally took The Telegraph which at that time was a decent newspaper, I might not have agreed with its editorial line and it might have seemed weird that the letters page was dominated by retired majors from Surrey, but the bits at the front where it reported news tended to be truth and correct. And even the editorials might make arguments and not those whose conclusions I agreed with, but they tended to be based on factual statements and the arguments had more to them than demagoguery and thinly veiled attempts to push the owners' line. And I think the same for the Times. But now the Barclay Brothers just use the Telegraph to write what they want, the standards have irrevocably declined and it well documented that they spike stories so as not to annoy people they want to court or, famously on one occasion so as not to lose advertising from HSBC. It's really shit but dangerous shit cos Mum and Dad still think it's a newspaper and it's not any more. It's actually quite sad I think. But yeah it's a perfect example of something that was always partial but once had high high quality and now does not.
I think that The Times is similar in that of course it now pushes Murdoch's line. But, it seems strange to say it, I actually think that compared to the Barclay Brothers, Murdoch has some kind of standards, and he doesn't quite take the piss to the extent they do. As a rule his news outlets push for deregulation and so on, but I think that probably is something he believes in (and which happens to make him money), whereas the BB have no particular beliefs in that way beyond selfish accumulation of money.
*As an aside, one particularly astonishing episode was a few years back when the Mail made a number of vicious personal attacks on the father of Ed and David Milliband who were both influential Labour politicians. They claimed that he was essentially a traitor to the UK, I think because of a single diary entry written when he was 17, per wikipedia "On 27 September 2013, the Daily Mail published an article disputing Ralph Miliband's patriotism with the headline The man who hated Britain" It seemed utterly crazy to me that a newspaper should choose pick this fight and then try and make its point by raking up a period during which it originally supported Hitler and the British Union of Fascists while its target - a Polish Jew - was first fleeing Belgium and then volunteering for the British navy where he saw three years of active service - and yet this sort of mendacious and hypocritical nonsense is entirely typical. And worst of all is that they somehow got away with it.
So thinking of UK newspapers as something I know relatively more about. You have on the right; Times, Telegraph, Mail, Sun... and some others that slip my mind just now. Then on the left you have the Guardian and The Mirror. And there is a newspaper called The Independent which claims to be neutral but which to my mind is really more left-leaning. So all of those partialities are acknowledged and not really disputed (with the possible exception of the Independent). But in terms of the quality of the reporting I would say that The Guardian probably is the highest. Times and Telegraph have both been traditionally high too, whereas The Sun is an absolute shit-rag and The Mail has a horribly tarnished record going right back to when it supported the Nazis before WW2*. I actually don't know to much about The Mirror or the Independent but I will say that the former is a tabloid whereas the latter at least aspired to be something of a higher quality.
Anyway, above I mentioned the Telegraph and Times and to me they represent quite a dramatic change in that, when I was growing up, my parents (being home counties Tories, or worse actually, aspiring to be that) naturally took The Telegraph which at that time was a decent newspaper, I might not have agreed with its editorial line and it might have seemed weird that the letters page was dominated by retired majors from Surrey, but the bits at the front where it reported news tended to be truth and correct. And even the editorials might make arguments and not those whose conclusions I agreed with, but they tended to be based on factual statements and the arguments had more to them than demagoguery and thinly veiled attempts to push the owners' line. And I think the same for the Times. But now the Barclay Brothers just use the Telegraph to write what they want, the standards have irrevocably declined and it well documented that they spike stories so as not to annoy people they want to court or, famously on one occasion so as not to lose advertising from HSBC. It's really shit but dangerous shit cos Mum and Dad still think it's a newspaper and it's not any more. It's actually quite sad I think. But yeah it's a perfect example of something that was always partial but once had high high quality and now does not.
I think that The Times is similar in that of course it now pushes Murdoch's line. But, it seems strange to say it, I actually think that compared to the Barclay Brothers, Murdoch has some kind of standards, and he doesn't quite take the piss to the extent they do. As a rule his news outlets push for deregulation and so on, but I think that probably is something he believes in (and which happens to make him money), whereas the BB have no particular beliefs in that way beyond selfish accumulation of money.
*As an aside, one particularly astonishing episode was a few years back when the Mail made a number of vicious personal attacks on the father of Ed and David Milliband who were both influential Labour politicians. They claimed that he was essentially a traitor to the UK, I think because of a single diary entry written when he was 17, per wikipedia "On 27 September 2013, the Daily Mail published an article disputing Ralph Miliband's patriotism with the headline The man who hated Britain" It seemed utterly crazy to me that a newspaper should choose pick this fight and then try and make its point by raking up a period during which it originally supported Hitler and the British Union of Fascists while its target - a Polish Jew - was first fleeing Belgium and then volunteering for the British navy where he saw three years of active service - and yet this sort of mendacious and hypocritical nonsense is entirely typical. And worst of all is that they somehow got away with it.
shakahislop
Well-known member
I keep thinking that I want to check to see if this is right about the Telegraph, that it used to be pretty reality-based rather than the odd senile thing that it's become now. I have the same impression but I don't know if it's just that I formed the former impression when I was a child and didn't know better. I never actually do check though.
IdleRich
IdleRich
But my understanding is that the New York Times has always been regarded as a paper of very high quality. They had that hugely embarrassing episode when it turned out one reporter had been making up all his stories - and after that they had a very public apology and a huge amount of breast-beating which was seized upon by its enemies as evidence that was completely incompetent and dishonest. Similarly at some point about 15 or 20 years the BBC withdrew a story with an apology (I think that if I remember correctly the story was not even disproven but they admitted they were not one hundred percent certain and so they felt they had to withdraw it) - again their apology and acknowledgement of mistakes made were gleefully taken by The Mail, The Sun etc etc and used as a stick to beat them with.
But the thing to me is that it's quite clear that a cursory examination of either the Sun or Mail could easily find many many worse errors, clear lies and stories sometimes even on different pages of the same edition that contradicted each other, most of which they simply forgot when they became inconvenient, or else printed a tiny apology at the bottom of page 23. One thing that people have often asked for as a rule in the press is that apologies should be given the same prominence as the stories that they correct. If one day the headline was CLINAMENIC IS A PAEDOPHILE and the next four pages were entirely devoted to lists of your vile crimes, I think that you would be a little disappointed if later evidence revealed that they were completely mistaken and, to make up for a it, they put a tiny box underneath the crossword clues that said "On May 10th of this year, our headline may possibly have been written in such a way that some people may have mistakenly construed it to imply that Clinamenic is a paedophile. We would like to make it clear that he is not and we unreservedly apologise for that unfortunate misunderstanding".
But the point here is that a number of papers took those episodes to mean that the BBC and NYT were indeed just the same as them - whereas I think that a more reasonable conclusion was that actually, mistakes of that nature were much rarer in those outlets than in those celebrating their fall from grace, and that the mistakes that they do make are taken far more seriously. In short, it was to me, more evidence that these things are certainly not all the same...
But the thing to me is that it's quite clear that a cursory examination of either the Sun or Mail could easily find many many worse errors, clear lies and stories sometimes even on different pages of the same edition that contradicted each other, most of which they simply forgot when they became inconvenient, or else printed a tiny apology at the bottom of page 23. One thing that people have often asked for as a rule in the press is that apologies should be given the same prominence as the stories that they correct. If one day the headline was CLINAMENIC IS A PAEDOPHILE and the next four pages were entirely devoted to lists of your vile crimes, I think that you would be a little disappointed if later evidence revealed that they were completely mistaken and, to make up for a it, they put a tiny box underneath the crossword clues that said "On May 10th of this year, our headline may possibly have been written in such a way that some people may have mistakenly construed it to imply that Clinamenic is a paedophile. We would like to make it clear that he is not and we unreservedly apologise for that unfortunate misunderstanding".
But the point here is that a number of papers took those episodes to mean that the BBC and NYT were indeed just the same as them - whereas I think that a more reasonable conclusion was that actually, mistakes of that nature were much rarer in those outlets than in those celebrating their fall from grace, and that the mistakes that they do make are taken far more seriously. In short, it was to me, more evidence that these things are certainly not all the same...
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
And for the record, I’m no paedophile. The adrenochrome I ritualistically self-administer is 100% synthetic.
Well, fine, 99% synthetic.
Well, fine, 99% synthetic.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I was actually gonna say that the rot probably did start before Barclay Brothers though. Under Conrad Black it was a vanity project again for sure but I do think that he was vain enough to think that a better newspaper made him look better and made some sort of effort at quality control. But he did let his wife Barbara Amiel write a column every now and again which, as a rule, she used to repeatedly call for the utter destruction of Palestine and to claim that the world had a moral duty to utterly eradicate all Palestinians from the earth. Or more fairly, let's say she had a view on the Israel/Palestine issue that was somewhat lacking in nuance and rather one-sided.
I think Private Eye used to have a column called The Book of Amiel which took the form of a Bible verse in which the Prophet Amiel - who seemed to be somewhat stricter than Leviticus - repeatedly called for the repeated smiting of Palestine ye unto its sons and verily even unto its sons' sons that they be scattered into the wilderness and there they be the food for lions and alligators and also for bears until they call on the earth to fall on them and hide them but they cannot escape the righteous nukes of the righteous and there will be a great weeping and The Lord will sayeth unto them I know ye not for they be fornicators and sinners and it will be better for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than it will be for someone from the Gaza Strip and they will be cast naked into the lake of fire and eternal torment etc etc
I remember one particular column when in which she compared being forced to move into a smaller mansion cos her husband (as with so many Tory peers) had to go to jail, to the holocaust and she said that her packing 900 suitcases of designer clothes and "fleeing" in several lorries was something that all Jews had to be prepared for cos the establishment was always out to get them. Especially if their husband stole millions of dollars and then was caught on a hilarious video going to the Telegraph offices in the middle of the night and taking away and destroying filing cabinets filled with incriminating documents that a judge had specifically ordered him not to interfere with in any way I suppose.