The Crisis of American Democracy Distilled

[136or142]

The problem with American democracy is the Republican party

Excellent job proving what he said was right in the first response and using so few words to do it.

“Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation and Radicalization in American Politics,” by Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts.

There are a lot of books on networks, social media, propaganda, polarization and American politics. This is the best.

Packed with data, it is organized by a clean, simple story, which is that it’s the right vs. the rest, not the right vs. the left. The authors identify a right-wing ecosystem, led by Fox News and Breitbart, and it amounts to its own political universe. What happens on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere is in significant part a result of an ideological feedback loop, self-consciously manipulated by the right.

In the process of documenting all this, the authors raise serious questions about some widespread understandings. It’s too simple, and in important respects wrong, to say that social media are driving political polarization. The role of the Russians in the 2016 election turns out to be more complicated, and more subtle, than people think.

It’s not right to say that the right and the left have their own echo chambers; the left doesn’t, at least not in anything like the same sense. The authors also have a host of ideas about how to make democracy work better.

Cass Sunstein book review

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-17/best-books-of-2018-politics-poker-and-bob-dylan

That polarization is the problem and that Republicans are responsible for the polarization are not mutually exclusive.

[136or142]

The problem is our media particularly cable news  as Fox News is the Republican Hack Channel, MSNBC is the Democratic Hack one while CNN is just sensationalist bs  whichs leads to people being more uninformed and partisan. The fact is the media has done a terrible job of reporting the news for at least the past 20 years and its no surprise that polarization has dramatically increased during this period .


The fact that people were more informed about various issues and less partisan during an era where news would only be shown for 30 minutes a day and during special events shows you how big of a failure cable news has been

Polarization has increased much more among Republicans.

[136or142]

The problem is our media particularly cable news  as Fox News is the Republican Hack Channel, MSNBC is the Democratic Hack one while CNN is just sensationalist bs  whichs leads to people being more uninformed and partisan. The fact is the media has done a terrible job of reporting the news for at least the past 20 years and its no surprise that polarization has dramatically increased during this period .


The fact that people were more informed about various issues and less partisan during an era where news would only be shown for 30 minutes a day and during special events shows you how big of a failure cable news has been

Polarization has increased much more among Republicans.

While that may be true , the reason for that is because of Fox a cable news company .


Cable News has literally done a terrible job for decades now (All 3 major channells have done a terrible job) and they still manage to get worse and worse

Fox 'News' only started in 1996.  Before that was Newt Gingrich, and before that was Lee Atwater and Pre Fox Roger Ailes, and before that was Rush Limbaugh.

There is no equivalent of any of this with Democrats.

[136or142]

The paradox of the media issue is that liberalism and leftism spent centuries assaulting the sources of "orthodox truth": "Believe in X, not the Church or the State." There came a point when they were finally in a position to themselves be the sources of orthodoxy, and they were surprised that alternatives would emerge. "Why would anyone question the media when we are the media!?" It gets even funnier when you consider that liberal punditry longs nostalgically for a time when they were considered the unquestionable authorities on everything. It's almost as though there's a spirit of the past they would like to recapture; perhaps they would like to "Make America Great Again"? Tools and arguments are entirely rotational based on who controls what.

The stupid and false myth of the 'liberal media.'

[136or142]

The paradox of the media issue is that liberalism and leftism spent centuries assaulting the sources of "orthodox truth": "Believe in X, not the Church or the State." There came a point when they were finally in a position to themselves be the sources of orthodoxy, and they were surprised that alternatives would emerge. "Why would anyone question the media when we are the media!?" It gets even funnier when you consider that liberal punditry longs nostalgically for a time when they were considered the unquestionable authorities on everything. It's almost as though there's a spirit of the past they would like to recapture; perhaps they would like to "Make America Great Again"? Tools and arguments are entirely rotational based on who controls what.

The stupid and false myth of the 'liberal media.'

We can talk all day about how the media unfairly covered Trump to the detriment of both his primary opponents and the Clinton campaign, but the fact is that the fretting by media personalities during the campaign and afterwards was all of a certain type. I don't dislike the media--far from it, they're how I get most of my news! That said, things such as conferences on the "Fourth Estate" occurred in an environment where, for the organizes and speakers, it was unimaginable that one might credibly doubt what they have to say all of the time! The ethos of journalism calls on people to question authority, but fails to account for when large news corporations are themselves authorities--they have the power to employ conscious and unconscious bias, to choose what to cover, and to issue public cries for certain causes. It of course doesn't help that news agencies have now liberally mixed the transmission of information with the opinion-based roles of "talk show hosts". Yes, Fox does this too. Maybe more than any other channel, I wouldn't know. That doesn't excuse the purveyors of "real" news any bit. And when journalists and, perhaps with far more guilt, news anchors and talk show hosts are called to account, they tend to hide behind journalistic principles. They're a fine set of principles. But merely laying claim to certain values means nothing in and of itself--otherwise, the Church would have no scandals.

I don't know what this has to do with what you wrote originally.

[136or142]

The paradox of the media issue is that liberalism and leftism spent centuries assaulting the sources of "orthodox truth": "Believe in X, not the Church or the State." There came a point when they were finally in a position to themselves be the sources of orthodoxy, and they were surprised that alternatives would emerge. "Why would anyone question the media when we are the media!?" It gets even funnier when you consider that liberal punditry longs nostalgically for a time when they were considered the unquestionable authorities on everything. It's almost as though there's a spirit of the past they would like to recapture; perhaps they would like to "Make America Great Again"? Tools and arguments are entirely rotational based on who controls what.

The stupid and false myth of the 'liberal media.'

It's not stupid or false. It's incomplete, certainly, and typically subtle. Mainstream media articles almost always assume "liberal as default" in their day-to-day writings. They use terminology which frames debates on left-wing terms. Right wing movements are framed as "anti-" ("anti-abortion rights" as opposed to "pro-life" or "pro-fetal rights", "anti-immigration" as opposed to "pro-immigration control", "anti-gay rights" as opposed to "pro-religious freedom" etc.) while similarly restrictive left wing movements are framed are "pro-" ("pro-gun control" as opposed to "anti-gun rights", etc.). On the rare occasion that the left is cast as "anti-", it's always against something obviously bad such as "anti-sexual assault" or "anti-hate speech" when they could just as easily be cast as "anti-due process" or "anti-free speech" on their respective issues.

When international/local events such as the Argentinian abortion vote occur, you're much more likely to see interviews and reporting from the perspective of the left-wing group. A left-wing victory is cast as a victory for progress, while a right-wing victory is a "disappointment" or a setback. Statements by the right as taken as uncharitably as possible (e.g. "second amendment folks" implying a call to assassinate Hillary, Trump's comments about subgroups being generalized to larger groups, Trump's recent "I didn't have to do this" comment, Kavanaugh's comments as "bitter" rather than legitimately aggrieved) while similar statements by the left are interpreted away or simply not covered. Outlandish stories such as the Covington or Sussie stories are repeated as fact immediately because they fit a predefined narrative and disappear when they're proven wrong.

This biased framing is especially pernicious because (I'd bet) a lot of the media likely doesn't realize they're doing it. It just feels natural to them.

Pro-fetus instead of anti abortion is fine by me.  Most people in the media now ridiculously refer to them as 'pro life.'  Anti gay rights are far from the same as 'pro religious freedom'  (maybe pro 'freedom' for 'religious' people to dictate how others live their lives)  and that you equate the two certainly suggests it's you who have the extreme bias.

However, in regards to Trump, while I think there is no question the media in general has a lot to answer for in terms of the initial extreme amount of coverage that he received and that he wasn't taken or treated initially as a serious candidate, I think it's also clearly the case that he was for quite a long time given the benefit of the doubt.  For instance, it wasn't until months later that the media checked on Trump's false claim that he opposed the Iraq War from the beginning, and only later did they determine that it was false.  I think it's hard to dispute that this led to some foolish people believing that Trump was the 'peace candidate.'

[136or142]

The paradox of the media issue is that liberalism and leftism spent centuries assaulting the sources of "orthodox truth": "Believe in X, not the Church or the State." There came a point when they were finally in a position to themselves be the sources of orthodoxy, and they were surprised that alternatives would emerge. "Why would anyone question the media when we are the media!?" It gets even funnier when you consider that liberal punditry longs nostalgically for a time when they were considered the unquestionable authorities on everything. It's almost as though there's a spirit of the past they would like to recapture; perhaps they would like to "Make America Great Again"? Tools and arguments are entirely rotational based on who controls what.

The stupid and false myth of the 'liberal media.'

We can talk all day about how the media unfairly covered Trump to the detriment of both his primary opponents and the Clinton campaign, but the fact is that the fretting by media personalities during the campaign and afterwards was all of a certain type. I don't dislike the media--far from it, they're how I get most of my news! That said, things such as conferences on the "Fourth Estate" occurred in an environment where, for the organizes and speakers, it was unimaginable that one might credibly doubt what they have to say all of the time! The ethos of journalism calls on people to question authority, but fails to account for when large news corporations are themselves authorities--they have the power to employ conscious and unconscious bias, to choose what to cover, and to issue public cries for certain causes. It of course doesn't help that news agencies have now liberally mixed the transmission of information with the opinion-based roles of "talk show hosts". Yes, Fox does this too. Maybe more than any other channel, I wouldn't know. That doesn't excuse the purveyors of "real" news any bit. And when journalists and, perhaps with far more guilt, news anchors and talk show hosts are called to account, they tend to hide behind journalistic principles. They're a fine set of principles. But merely laying claim to certain values means nothing in and of itself--otherwise, the Church would have no scandals.

I don't know what this has to do with what you wrote originally.

Okay.

Okay, well how about this. When was this mythical time when liberal orthodoxy dominated?

[136or142]

The "polarization threatens liberty" argument ignores a very key fact - the centrists are the ones who disdain democratic rule, not the "extreme" ideologues.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/23/opinion/international-world/centrists-democracy.html

Just look at the small House vote against the Patriot Act in 2001 for a good example. It was almost exclusively from the most left-wing Democrats and the most right-wing Republicans.

Except right now Donald Trump has been threatening democratic institutions for the last two years (fortunately fairly incompetently) and pretty much the entire Republican Party has rolled under him.

You can't make a broad conclusion off a single data point in regards to the vote on the Patriot Act.  It's also not exactly intellectually honest to say that anybody who voted for the Patriot Act doesn't support democracy.  There certainly are problems with the Patriot Act, but most of those who opposed it didn't offer anything beyond 'don't do anything' which wasn't exactly a viable response at that time either.

In regards to the survey, it breaks down 'centrists' vs 'far left' and 'far right' with people self identifying on I gather from looking at the survey itself a 1-10 scale. if the 'centrists' are anybody from 3-8, they comprise 80% of people.  I'm not sure that you can determine much from a survey like that.

Also, as has been pointed out here previously, the questions were asked on a 1-4 scale. It could simply be that the 'centrists' did not give many '1' or '4' answers as they might be the least likely to 'strongly' believe in something.  So, that would also skew the results.

Essentially, it's probably not the case that that study provided evidence of what it claimed to show.

[136or142]

The problem is our media particularly cable news  as Fox News is the Republican Hack Channel, MSNBC is the Democratic Hack one while CNN is just sensationalist bs  whichs leads to people being more uninformed and partisan. The fact is the media has done a terrible job of reporting the news for at least the past 20 years and its no surprise that polarization has dramatically increased during this period .


The fact that people were more informed about various issues and less partisan during an era where news would only be shown for 30 minutes a day and during special events shows you how big of a failure cable news has been

Polarization has increased much more among Republicans.

No, both parties have polarized a lot:
Here and here and for a broader historical context here.

Republican Extremism and the Myth of “Both Sides” in American Politics

https://kottke.org/18/10/republican-extremism-and-the-myth-of-both-sides-in-american-politics