“News Media” Continues its Role as Unabashed Advocate
From Glenn Greenwald. This is disgraceful behavior by the Washington Post "Fact-Checker."
Much of our legacy news media has proudly decided that its role is no longer to let the fact fall where they may, letting readers decide who they will vote for. Rather, the new role is to tell readers who to vote for, consciously and premeditatedly withholding evidence that puts their favorite candidate into a bad light. What's really amazing is that this disinformation is being shoveled to readers in plain view. It's as if the WP is simply daring people like Greenwald to call them on their journalistic malpractice (which he repeatedly does). But they don't care, because they have a bigger megaphone than he does at the moment.
So much of what I see today reminds me of Brandolini's Law:
Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage that emphasizes the difficulty of debunking false, facetious, or otherwise misleading information:"The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.
One Suggestion for Hacking a Path out of the Wokeness Thicket
I'm feeling sad today, perhaps because I read too much "news." I struggle when I try to identify any institution that is functioning well. Perhaps the court system is the best example of an (imperfect) functioning institution, although the elephant in the room is that those who don't have the money to hire good lawyers are almost always fucked over by those who have lawyers. Okay . . . but when both sides have good lawyers, the system seems to work fairly well fairly often.
Some of our newly dysfunctional institutions have been captured by Woke ideology, resulting in a thick atmosphere of fear in which smart people intentionally say untrue things so that they don't get yelled at by the mob, which can result in suspension and job loss. It's a terrible situation in many institutions, especially in news media and colleges. I base this on personal stories I've heard from several self-censoring professors who are afraid to engage in a free exchange of ideas in the classroom. I've reported many of these problems at this website over the past two years.
When I feel this sort of melancholy, I actively seek out good news, and I usually find some reason to be hopeful. Today, it comes from one of my favorite writers and thinkers, Jonathan Haidt, who participated in a discussion group at Heterodox Academy (I was one of many HxA members attending). It was a long discussion and there were many speakers. Here's an excerpt from Haidt's presentation:
It's the climate of fear. I'm actually starting a new book on this. It's called Life After Babble: How we lost the Ability to Think Well Together. The core idea is that social media, made reputational destruction democratized, incentivized and freed from accountability. And that's what happened in 2014. And that's why we've had a climate of fear since 2014. So you're right to be afraid.
But here's what I've learned in the last couple years: almost everybody is reasonable. Leaders are the ones who get shot with little darts. Whenever they you know, it's as though they're physically getting shot with darts. And so they all came very quickly. But those who hold out, those who don't cave-- if you just wait a week--it's a hurricane inside of a hall of mirrors, and it blows on to something else a week or two later. So the people who stand up to it and don't bend a knee and don't bow down, they end up looking very, very good. So what I'm trying to develop is the idea that every field needs high professional standards, and a big part of that is depoliticization is not being on a team not fighting for politics, but living up to your standard as a professor doing research. You're a scholar, and what I hope we can develop an HxA is this notion of very high professional standards. If you're a true professional, you live your standards, and then you should be unafraid. We're not there yet, but I think that's that's where I think we can get to very quickly.
SCOTUS: The Function of Free Speech is to Invite Dispute and Stir People to Anger
The next time someone tells you that you need to be silenced because your speech is offending them, mention this quote from the U.S. Supreme Court opinion of Terminiello v. Chicago (1949), reversing a disturbing-the-peace conviction of a hate-monger. Justice Douglas wrote the opinion, which included these gems:
The vitality of civil and political institutions in our society depends on free discussion. As Chief Justice Hughes wrote in De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 365, 260, it is only through free debate and free exchange of ideas that government remains responsive to the will of the people and peaceful change is effected. The right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is therefore one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes.
Accordingly a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea. That is why freedom of speech, though not absolute, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, supra, 315 U.S. at pages 571-572, 62 S.Ct. at page 769, is nevertheless protected against censorship or punishment, unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest. See Bridges v. California, 314 U.S. 252, 262, 193, 159 A.L.R. 1346; Craig v. Harney, 331 U.S. 367, 373, 1253. There is no room under our Constitution for a more restrictive view. For the alternative would lead to standardization of ideas either by legislatures, courts, or dominant political or community groups.
Politico Comes Full Circle on Hunter Biden Laptop Archive: Provides Window into Massive Corruption by News Media
Now that the presidential election is over, Politico's reporter has admitted that many documents found on Hunter Biden's laptop were authentic. This finding reverses the pre-election position of Politico, and is not a mere factoid. Rather, this admission corroborates Glenn Greenwald's analysis and evidence that left-leaning media was corrupt and complicit with the deep state leading up to the election. In sum, reporters refused to do their jobs as reporters and it led to fake news. I used to hate that term, but I can no longer deny that large swathes of our "news" is concocted . . . fake (e.g., several years of hysterical fact-free reporting on alleged Trump-Russia connection). The motivation was always clear - - left-leaning legacy news outlets hated Trump and made it their mission to avoid four more years of Trump.
Do I need to repeatedly write that I voted for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and that I find Trump deranged, incompetent and dangerous? My concern in this post is not about who would make the better president. My concern is that the news media should always do its job, publishing important facts regardless of who the evidence helps or hurts, allowing the voters to decide what is important. The opposite of that happened regarding Hunter Biden's laptop, part of a growing trend. In the new way of discussing important national issues, one denies or hides evidence that conflicts with one's preferences. Proud and arrogant confirmation bias is the way many of us make decisions now, instead of relying on Enlightenment values. These are sad days, indeed. It reminds me of how we formerly ridiculed Pravda, the official newspaper of the communist party of the USSR.
Greenwald's Tweet on the Politico reversal is the first of a long thread that makes an airtight case against the news media. I highly recommend the entire thread:
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