if everything you’ve tried so far has failed, maybe you should try something different. Right now, the neutral gatekeeper institutions have tried being biased against conservatives. They’ve tried showing anti-conservative bias. They’ve tried ramping up the conservativism-related bias level. They’ve tried taking articles, and biasing them against conservative positions. I appreciate their commitment to multiple diverse strategies, but I can’t help but wonder whether there’s a possibility they’ve missed.
The blatant anti-conservative bias in the media and on campus makes no sense if you think that their goal is to open the minds of those who agree with them or of those who disagree with them. However, it makes perfect sense if you think that their goal is to close the minds of those who agree with them.
My theory of political speech is that it has exactly that purpose: to close the minds of those with whom you agree. That theory is spelled out in The Three Languages of Politics.
The new edition will be out next week, and it is currently available for pre-order. Comments on Amazon refer to the first edition. The new edition has been revised and extended.
Hypothesis: This strategy only works when you have a dependable ~50% voting bloc provided by the 2-party system. Let’s test the hypothesis!
They already have it, just not in the swing states.
A few more NAMs, even just letting the ones already here come of voting age, and they can do whatever they want and still cross the 50% threshold.
Vaclav Havel writes about another goal, which is to have people “live within a lie” and to censor themselves, to submit, to go along to get along:
They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.
I think that’s what the sign pinned to the board in Scott Alexander’s hospital is doing, and probably that’s what it’s for.
Dalrymple has added that constant humiliation is also a prime motive, so that no one forgets who’s boss.
The left realized awhile back that “reward allies, punish enemies” was a lot better then reasoned argument for generating loyalty. If you really want to fight progressivism, you don’t produce a set of facts or logic why its bad for society. You show that being a progressive will reduce your status and being against progressives will increase it. Credibly showing that means seizing power, which is by far the most important thing.
Let’s top it off with the chimps getting beaten up for going for the banana by the other chimps who never even experienced the fire hose.
To sum up Alexander says the media is biased against conservatives and then adds in a anecdote from a college graduation(which I do not believe) and that’s that.
He must have missed the last year somewhere.
“The 2016 election pointed to something we already knew, but needed confirmation on a national and global scale: earned media, both social and traditional, is significantly more effective in driving market awareness then paid media (advertising). During the GOP primary, anti-Trump groups within the GOP spent nearly $30 million in advertising to unseat Donald Trump as the party’s potential nominee! But during the same period Trump drove $400 million in high-stakes news coverage – without spending a dime.
With Donald Trump, we now have a good benchmark for what ubiquitous media coverage looks like. Compared with 2012, Trump earned more than three and a half times (3.5x) the media value of Barack Obama and more than six times (6x) that of Mitt Romney. Time will tell if Trump’s media benchmarks prove the exception or the rule.”
http://www.mediaquant.net/2016/11/a-media-post-mortem-on-the-2016-presidential-election/
Trump spent, what, 40 some odd years honing that form of guerilla marketing? I suspect it will be tried, but perhaps less successfully. On the other hand, isn’t all the “That’s racist! and That’s racist! and That’s racist! Everything is racist, we just need to make up the story for why!” kind of the same thing?
That reminds me to say that one of the fascinating things to me is how much h8 is directed at the right for doing what the left has been doing. They H8 Fox News, but they just can’t see how Fox is just right-biased media, but more honest about it. It’s like as long as they can keep saying they aren’t left-biased they don’t have to grapple with it. See also the hilarious 60-minutes spot on “Fake News.” Just keep saying you are the real news and that makes the other guys the fake news. Okay, so the left side doesn’t have the racists who skew nationalist, but we have a 2-party system. That just means you have the lefty wackos.
I do not totally disagree. But to claim that conservatives do not get covered is plainly not true.
True, Trump did cultivate that sort of thing for a while so he is(as you say) an outlier.
But think of when his cultivation occurred. Birtherism.
And it was covered by everyone.
OTOH, I remember a long time ago, when Obama met with Rep Congressmen to talk about healthcare. It became obvious in ten minutes that Obama knew more than anyone in the room. Fo News cut away.
I missed networks cutting away from trump
Allow me to point out how you do disagree 😉
Trump is not a conservative. And I presume that the networks were covering him in the beginning more for the schadenfreude of all the damage he was doing to the Republican Party. Then they were like, “Oh sh_t, this sh_t show might actually hit the fan.”
It was very late when they realized that what they thought was damage they were doing was actually helping him, and the Republicans if you believe helping Trump actually helps Republicans. Tons of people still aren’t sold on that, btw.
Media also have to make profits and need views and page clicks, so they aren’t JUST biased progressive hacks, btw.
Liberal media gave Trump lots of free negative coverage. Turned out though that they were so far off from most of the country that what they thought was negative was viewed as a positive by many.
Sorry, but you think anyone but Trump would sign on to this healthcare apocalypse?
Oh, and they continued long, long after the primary was over in covering this menace. Pretty clearly shown in the link I provided.
Why don’t you believe his stories?
They seem very similar to several things I’ve experienced first hand since the election. I witnessed and anti-Trump tirade by a performer during a Christmas musical performance in the Sydney Opera House for instance. It’s just one of many things I could point to that his post remind me of.
“The right’s view that the institutions lean liberal is hyperbolic, but not without foundation. ”
E.g. Like, OMFG, how is it possible to overstate it I literally can’t listen to NATIONAL Public Radio (and stay married, because my better half likes it…or at least, it’s always available), and I’m not even a conservative. Is something like 90% liberal in academia and journalism and non-profits (not to mention government, DC went 90%+ for Hillary) ‘about right?’
“Yes, CNN leans liberal, but it’s not as liberal as FOX is conservative,”
Based on whose definition of the Overton Window? I guess I should give these guys credit for finally noticing the problem, but they are slow-walking it a bit here. And by the way, don’t do us any favors with your proposed solutions.
Scott probably is a bit sick of being cuck, but when you’re that invested in it your whole life its hard to call it all a sunk cost.
I think an important dimension of the process is the extent to which the average intelligent person might rely on the news to inform him about things he knows little about. They might–so there’s a lot to be gained from controlling “the Narrative.”
Imagine the harried and hurried middle (or better, Upper Middle) class suburbanite who knows little about inner city minorities except for what he learns from the media.
He will certainly learn one thing from the New York Times. Fortunately, the perspective is a bit different if he reads the Wall Street Journal. So there are multiple perspectives.
Imagine how many separate topics like that exist.
Inner City Poverty
Gun Crime
Foreign Aid to Third World Nations
Political Islam and Terrorism
Illegal Migration
Taxes, Tax Reform, and the Incidence of Taxes
Educational Outcomes in K-12
Family Structure
There are dozens of things that the average person can’t know a lot about. What to do?
1. Read / watch the news for a few minutes and hope this results in being better informed, and we need more government and policies and this and that and another new idea…and we’re making progress…
2. Take the cynical view of whatever the issue is about, “It’s all about the money” and hold onto one’s wallet.
3. Ignore everything possible and “cultivate one’s garden” as Dr. Pangloss said at the end of _Candide_
My experience is that people adopt political views mostly to get along, especially if your an UMC woman. So your view on immigration or Islamic terror will probably be shaped by wanting to fit in with friends or not have tension with a foreigner at work. Facts and logic of varying degrees of truth will be produced to justify what your subconscious already decided would help you fit in best.
This is exactly right. Most people aren’t subject to “persuasion” at all on public issues, they just try to figure out what opinions they need to affirm to get along and fit in. Thus, MSM propaganda blaming the “Right” for every problem is not so much persuading anyone as signaling to non-thinkers which side they should be on. This also explains how people can be maneuvered into voting against their own interests (whether by Right or Left) or contrary to their own professed values (as, for example, when pro-Lifers vote for Democrats) – they are not independently reflecting on how the policies of the candidates they are voting for will affect their interests or advance their values but responding to signals indicating which candidate is socially acceptable.
Many of us have probably been in a relationship and noted the moment, we can see it so clearly in the body language, where our partner is waiting to find out what our opinion is so they can adopt it themselves, whatever it is.
Right now, the neutral gatekeeper institutions have tried being biased against conservatives. I wondering if the job market is the chief problem for conservatives in the media.
1) In terms of the MSM, does that include Cable News? Sure we can complain about NYT and WaPo but don’t most people get news from TV? Cable News loved Trump and often cut away in the election to his rallies. Or liberals are fucking awful at talk radio while slightly better at the blogs.
2) It is not just left and right here. I would note the MSM is dominated by hawks and I can not name a major ‘Peace Dove’ speakers in the media. I believe that is Jon Stewart got so popular during the Bush years because he was one of few media voices against the war. Quick name a noted Dove speaker at a MSM!
3) In terms of college, I always colleges have increasingly liberal because potential conservative professors focus more on higher paying. I remember seeing a chart in 1992 that Economic PHd earned less than Economic Master Degree holder on average.
4) I always assumed the reason for the limitation of the conservative media is becoming Rush Limbaugh pays a hell of a lot better than being David Brooks.
Look at the NYT columnist…The two most dovish writers are the Economic (Krugman) and the religious one (Douthat). Other wise it is liberal hawks versus neocons.
“The two most dovish writers are the Economic (Krugman) and the religious one (Douthat). Other wise it is liberal hawks versus neocons.”
To borrow from Dave Rubin, regressives aren’t that liberal. The liberal hawk impulse seems to be humanitarian, as crazy as that turns out in practice. “That mean old Assad is oppressive.” The Neocon impulse is more Pax-Americana, “make the world safe for America’s corporate interests.” They end up bickering over which countries to invade first. They seem to be able to agree on the brown people countries.
I’m a bit surprised Krugman is dovish. But shouldn’t all true liberals be dovish? So, maybe the media aren’t really “liberal” in that sense, but we all just agree to that shorthand.
Try this on and see how you like it. Maybe a nice political re-alignment would be for true (classical) liberals to join up with true (paleo) conservatives and libertarians and the Neocons and Regressives can join together as Statists.
You would need some kind of grand bargain on the things they conflict on. Immigration. Trade. Freedom of Association/Religious Freedom.
Not all of it would have to be based on government policy either. Some of it would just be cultural. Could libertarians admit sexual libertinism has been a disaster? Admit that what they see at a gay pride parade is grotesque? Most seem unwilling to question these things as private individuals (hey man, that self destructive behavior is just like your choice and stuff). I don’t think its primarily just about government policy.
Such are bargain might exist, but it would only come about if they agreed the alternative was worse and engaged in a lot of real politik. You’ll also need more personal courage then many of those groups have shown in the past.
That said, Donald Trump did show the way if anyone wanted to follow up.
Judging by the 2016 there is Party re-alignment in process and we don’t know what that is. (To honest the Party re-alignment of Clinton versus Reagan lasted a while.) I do remember seeing HRC campaign advertise spending in GA and a couple trips to TX and thinking she has a plan to win 2024.
And yes Democrats are moving Urban and Republican rural with battles in suburbia but I don’t all this shakes out.
In the long run there is no Republican party without deportations. Nor a libertarian party. Nor anything other then vacillation between carious kinds of progressivism.
In terms of liberal MSM, we tend to focus on NYT and WaPo and yes they dominated useless Liberal Hawks and Neocons. To be honest, I am not sure why that is because most Democrats did not agree with either Obama or Trump bombing Syria in 2013 or 2017. Or that Obama beat HRC in 2008 because she voted for Iraq.
Frankly, I wish we did cut military spending $300B and cut corporate taxes by $300 B as most military spending is assisting other nations.
I have this concept, which I’ll coin here as “argumentum ad remedium.” You can’t say “Mainstreme media isn’t left because FOX NEWS!” Fox news was the remedy for the leftiness. The whole point is that there is an audience for truly neutral info that just isn’t being serviced. So we would expect to see relief valves.
Well hasn,t the MSM really lost its position since 1990? Network news is almost afterthought and MSM focuses only on WaPo and NYT. And Fox News is as much impact on media as WaPo or NYT. And also since NYT and WaPo have had higher subscriptions being ‘Anti-Trump’ then maybe they are not the MSM anymore.
“Or liberals are ___ awful at talk radio while slightly better at the blogs.”
They have NPR, why would they ___ with tiny little markets and syndication?
Maybe I think NPR is F’ awful as well. Yea, it really does sound like listening to bad college professor.
Arnold, I have a book title for you, but nothing more than that.
“Kling to their guns and religion”