Why the Left Can't Stand The New York Times
cjr.org
cjr.org
However, this article does a very poor job of summarizing my frustrations with the NYT so often doing little more than repeating the arguments of both sides without validation or investigation. It mentions "non-newsworthy articles", but, in NYT-style, does little to prove the claim beyond offering two anecdotes.
I suppose this article DOES explain my frustrations well, by means of example rather than explanation.
I prefer less conjecture in my news. Ideally, I just want the known facts to be delivered to me without political bias and I want to be encouraged to make up my own mind. If I wanted, like you said, to hear the biased arguments from the left or from the right on a given issue, Id just tune into MSNBC or Fox News. For my money today, the Economist delivers what Im looking for to a much greater degree than the Times does.
"I'm liberal" could mean anything from "I'm classical liberal" to "I'm metaliberal" with anything in-between; it only means that you're not an authoritarian, in the grand scheme of the political compass.
I have never seen a self proclaimed postmodern neomarxist. You're the bogeyman for the alt light, an impossible oxymoron, the eternal devil.
I've heard lots about various liberals, but what does a self proclaimed postmodern neo-marxist believe?
Do you believe all society is power struggle, and that language is the primary means by which this fight is won? Do you see gender and race as the new classes in the marxist analysis? Do you think that all discourse is ultimately about power, and not the truth?
Seriously, I've heard many, many things about the postmodern neo-marxist, most of them self contradictory. I've never heard from a self proclaimed post modern neo-marxist. How would you describe yourself?
Here's an open secret: Power is nothing more nor less than the dual of responsibility. All society is a struggle to manage responsibilities and power, not just power; as we build social constructions, we weigh the dual problems of ensuring that people will fulfill their responsibilities as well as not abuse their powers.
Language is interesting. A century of postmodern mathematics has demolished any hope that language is meaningful on its own. Instead, we see that language is the medium by which humans convince other humans to do things; it is a medium of responsibility and power. When a person says to another, "I see a cat," they are asking their partner to alter their worldview such that they are cognizant of a hypothesized cat which was not a feature of their subjective outlook.
Race and gender are interesting mostly because people are so stupid about them. Marx couldn't have known; science has marched on. At this point, gender's basically done; the closest we have to gender is the idea that people play symbol-games with each other in order to indicate mating preferences. If we include the fact that some 2% of people are intersex, then gender really goes into the bin along with all gendered language.
Similarly, race cannot withstand the basic mathematics of pedigree collapse and genetic mixing. It's gotten to the point where the self-aware racists have to call themselves "race realists" -- they know that they have nothing if science cannot back up their claims of the existence of races. As we shift to phenotype-oriented thinking, ethnic ancestry stops being culturally important.
Discourse can't be about the truth, because of Tarski's Undefinability of Truth. I think that Hofstadter's closest to the right mark, and that discourse is about perspective. To the extent that discourse is about esteem, it's also about respect. To the extent that discourse is about power, it's also about responsibility.
I would describe myself as a straightforward metaliberal rationalist, an anti-fascist, an examiner of evidence and possibilities.
Edit: You know why alt-right folks dislike this so much? It's because they cannot stand it when people are straightforward and honest about the ambiguity and nuances in our society, and they hate when people are well-read and well-considered.
I really enjoy https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/ where they dont scald you with a stream of news daily, have strict moderatorial policy and take their time to lay out the factors, documents and opinions on a lot of topics. Unfortunately, I dont see how this can be commercialized and expanded. Still a great source to form your opinion.
The Times does have its problems but so do many other news outlets today. With the impeachment proceedings currently happening, its become more apparent. Journalists write half-baked reports or stories that are simply not true, regardless of their political biases. Of course, the next day, they'll issue corrections to these stories but as the saying goes: "A lie travels halfway round the world before the truth straps on its boots". These journalists are in constant competition to get the story out before others and the quality and integrity of the journalism sometimes suffers because of this - to get the story out faster, they will fail to follow all the threads and verify that the information they have is actually true. Not to mention, though corrections are issued when errors occur, they don't have to give any of the advertising money back - this to me seems like a set of bad incentives.
I've heard the political spectrum is really a circle-- if you go far enough right (or left) you end up at the other end of the spectrum. To me, it's now a little more credible.
at least recycle it!