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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Here's another article that works pretty much as a Cliff's Notes of the book: https://heterodoxacademy.org/coddlin...american-mind/

Thank you, that is much more useful.

I'm not sure why anyone thinks that book is important. It seems like an effort to spend a lot of time refuting arguments that aren't worth it for a problem that isn't much of a problem.

If conservatives have created a conservative media similar in influence to that of the mainstream media, and the mainstream media trends left, and the conservative media trends right, then there's equivalence.

But they haven't.

You might say the mainstream media does not trend left. This is incorrect. Even mainstream media people will admit it does. And a cursory search of honest articles on the subject acknowledge the fact. (That the mainstream media pays enormous attention to Trump does not refute this. The attention it pays to him is almost exclusively in the form of criticism.)

It's astonishing and frightening that someone as smart as you would say this. But not surprising, since you recently you said that the mainstream media are doing the Democrats' bidding.

Just to scratch the surface, it is categorically not true that the mainstream media pays attention to Trump almost exclusively in the form of criticism. I wonder what planet you are on. To take a single recent example, the news has been dominated recently by Trump's hyping of a bunch of poor Hondurans walking in Mexico, a thousand miles from the US border, which has called an invasion. If all you mean is that you can find people in the media who have criticized Trump for this, that is correct, but that is not what you said.

You might say the right wing media has a disproportionate effect because it nakedly lies, while the mainstream media does not. There, you'd be correct. But the right wing media is much smaller than the mainstream media, so any enhanced influence it gains from peddling propaganda is met if not overcome by the mainstream's much broader reach. Also, the propaganda only works on the right wing base. It actually precludes the right wing media from gaining a bigger audience, as moderates and intellectually honest conservatives and independents find it distasteful.

There is no left-wing media that counterbalances the right-wing media.

It is ubiquitous. The extreme left and right are both refusing to live in a factual world.

As are you, when you say things like this.

Some people, apparently you included, think there's significant earnestness among the advocates of the extreme left (and perhaps the right). I think that applies to some of them, but not to the people who are shaping and pushing the agendas of these groups. They are gamers.

Who is "shaping and pushing the agenda" of which "groups"? WTF are you talking about? This was a conversation about how you equate when conservatives respond to arguments they don't like with lies and lefties respond with accusations of bigotry. Now it's about the agendas of shadowy groups?

The usefulness of it was in describing both groups in total. Again, you seemed to be arguing there's a significant amount of earnestness behind the extreme left's anti-speech behaviors. I see very little of it. I see lying by refusing to allow any discussion that might refute their narrative and delusion (to earnestly align hard right or left, one has to be delusional).

As Adder is my witness, there are a lot of people who earnestly believe that there is a lot of bigotry afoot in this country and who point it out when they think it's relevant. I see very little lying involved in that. I really don't know what you're talking about, and maybe you could provide a specific example that illustrates it.

If you use an ad hominem as the left and right do, you are trying to avoid having a discussion on merit for a reason. that reason is because you fear you may not be able to sustain your argument on the merits. You are precluding the uncovering of a weakness in your position. Perhaps that's not lying. Maybe there's another word for it. But it shares 99% of the same DNA with a lie.

If you believe that whenever someone on the left introduces the idea that bias is relevant to what is being discussed, that it's really a calculated lie to subvert the conversation and an ad hominem attack on the speaker, then what you are saying makes a lot of sense.

Of course, you don't believe that. You are now going to explain that you're really just talking about the extreme left, the unnamed nutballs who exercise an enormous influence on your understanding of reality and run amok on college campuses, crippling the fragile psyches of the next generation. You have a fertile imagination.

I would not place Klein in the category of the extreme left.

No, no one would. And that's my point. Your extreme left is a chimera without any influence.

Sure. Political correctness demands that people not say certain things that, even though factual, are deemed hurtful, impolite, or would undo certain academic views of how society should be arranged. This precludes a full view of reality. Trump just flat out bullshits. His reality is not reality. But neither is the reality political correctness seeks to mold. In both cases, you're not seeing What Is Actual. That Trump's lies are truly in bad faith and more absurd than many PC lies doesn't change the fact: Both revel in the non-factual. In the end, bullshit's bullshit, however you get there. And it's all bad.

If you define PC that way, sure, maybe that makes sense. If you define a bicycle as a gilled, scaled creature that swims in the water, then you can say crazy things about bicycles, too, that make sense by their own logic.

I'll give you an example. PC says that the term "redskin" should be avoided in favor of, say, "Native American." There's nothing about the term "redskin" that is in any way more "factual" than the term "Native American." Asking that people substitute one term for the other does not "preclude a full view of reality." It is true that it's an effort to use language in a way that is constitutive of how people think and behave, but you're really not engaging with the real arguments for PC, so it's not surprise that you end up saying silly things about it.