sebastian_dangerfield |
03-20-2018 11:53 AM |
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
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Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
(Post 513848)
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Agreed.
I think one could subtitle it with "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
I particularly liked the criticism of think tanks and the press. They happened to hit me while I'm reading Taleb's latest, Skin in the Game, in which the author rips think tanks, pure academia, and punditry, and the dilettantes they attract, for a solid 40 pages of the introduction.
Abstract thinking has its place, but its track record in recent world affairs is deplorable. Robert McNamara? Iriving Kristol? Bastardizations of Milton Friedman's work?
And modern "journalism," captured as it is? (NYTimes's greatest sin was cheerleading for the Iraq war.) MSNBC? FOX? The Fourth Estate is a trailer park. And they're dumb as all fuck. Is anyone surprised a reporter is dim or lazy enough to think something is worth printing solely because it was said by someone who works for the "[Insert] Institute"?
I recall one politician asking the right question about Iran: "Why aren't they entitled to have a nuclear program?" We can argue, of course, about whether we have a right to prevent them from having one for our own interests. But there is no credible argument that a sovereign nation may not be allowed to pursue a nuclear program.
But... that politician was Ron Paul, so the media said, "He's crazy!" Nevermind the point made. The media killed the messenger, a la Bill Maher after 9/11 ("How dare anyone say the highjackers were not cowards!").
This article is truly depressing because it clearly makes the case that the high information voter often isn't that much more enlightened (in any manner that matters) than the low. In many instances, they've simply absorbed different qualities of opinion paraded as fact. Or in some instances, biased tripe.
If Iran wants reactors, it has every right to pursue their acquisition. If we don't like it, we have a right to do whatever we can to stop it. ...And then suffer the criticisms ensuing from doing so. It'd be nice if the press wrote that. It never will.
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