Eric Weinstein’s Tweet isn’t really about the “race” of this perpetrator and the “race” of this victim. Tomorrow there will be another incident in which the “races” will be reversed and then that news coverage (and lack thereof) will also be reversed. THAT is what is tragic. We are now divided so sharply that we refuse to see the humanity in members of outgroups.
To satisfy our selectively-blinded morality and to sell commercials, our respective teams of “news” media now look only for facts that fit predetermined narratives, ignoring everything that doesn’t fit. In other words, our “news” stories are pre-written nuance free, with a few blanks left open for tonight’s names and tonight’s minor details. And since there is so much going on, they will easily find the stories they seek, the kinds of stories that are guaranteed to make us nod, then clench our fists, then vomit our anger at the opposing team on social media.
We and our teams of “news” media have trained each other so very well that these insane battle lines now seem inevitable. So much so that if Jesus, The Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King all suddenly appeared and earnestly reminded us to love both our neighbors and our enemies, it would would unite us, if only for a moment. We would tell them all to go fuck off.
Much of the commentary on FB missed my point. If you reversed the “races,” this story would run heavily for a month in many left-leaning publications. We now have news that is largely segregated between political left and right. The traditional news media is heavily curated to push political views by only picking stories that support the narrative. Good luck finding any NYT news critical that insurance will not cover hundreds of millions of $ of ruinous costs to Minneapolis small businesses that were torched and shattered during the “protests.” Where is news coverage from the left when when public institutions like NMAAHC and Sandia Research Laboratories blatantly urge racism as a remedy for racism? We’ve all seen this on the political right for decades – FOX has brought this brainwashing through story-selection to a high art.
This felt need by news media to shelter us from counter-narratives should insult us, should outrage us. We are not being treated like adults. We are not being trusted to read accounts from various conflicting perspectives in order to come to our own analysis. This is a massive problem that is turning neighbor against neighbor. It is turbo-charging a Manichean view, the law of the excluded nuanced middle, where if someone is not completely agreeing with us, fuck them. This leads to ad hominem attacks (including attacking thoughtful public intellectuals like Eric Weinstein as “Russian trolls”). Do you know what this approach begets? Ever more of the same. We have sickened ourselves by indulging in this charade that we can passively sit back and read the “news.” Responsible people actively seek out news that directly challenges their comforting narratives, and those decreasing numbers of thoughtful people are increasingly being scorned by the primary tribes (and their affiliated news providers) in the US.
What for years was subtle has become blatant. Background: In 1960 JFK inspired me to become a liberal Democrat. In 2009 Nancy Pelosi inspired me to become a liberal independent.
In 1980, living in Bogota, Colombia, I subscribed to Time magazine which arrived a few days late every week. I read a story about ABSCAM, an FBI sting operation targeting politicians. It listed eight members of Congress, and identified the party affiliation of only one: Republican. It indicated that there were a number of other elected officials being charged. Still a kneejerk Democrat, I assumed the rest of the scoundrels were also Republicans. Imagine my surprise on returning to the US and discovering that the congressman was the only Republican in the group; all the rest were Democrats.
I had already noticed that the Washington Post made sure to mention in the initial paragraphs party affiliation in articles favorable to Democrats or unfavorable to Republicans, and to put party affiliation several paragraphs further into articles favorable to Republicans or unfavorable to Democrats. I read WaPo daily, and NYT at least twice a week. Eventually I assumed that this had to be part of both newspapers’ stylebooks.
In 1984 I voted for a Republican for the first time. I noticed that the veil of the Temple was not rent. In 1992 I voted for an independent. I remained a registered Democrat, and volunteered for former Governor Douglas Wilder’s short campaign for the Democrats’ Senate nomination. I still voted in the 2004 Democrat primary in Ohio, supporting Lieberman. In 2009, after Nancy Pelosi returned from an international diplomacy tour, I quit.