“You’re Pure Evil”: NY Times Indicts An America That’s Lost Its Mind
There's a great Op-Ed in The New York Times on Sunday that takes a critical look at the rapid deterioration of political discourse in America.
In it, Frank Bruni faults both Republicans and Democrats but ultimately, blame is laid at the feet of the internet.
The piece is a ringing indictment of social media and the extent to which it allows those with a penchant for confirmation bias to connect with like-minded (and sometimes wrong-headed) individuals at lightening speed and with remarkable
APPLAUSE!! All good and all true! Social media, even the little comments section after non-political stories allows people to place judgement or blame onto subjects in the story — demeaning mothers, fathers, siblings, teachers, bosses, etc., all total strangers other than what was printed in the story, and yet some really horrific comments are made and other people “pile on” with their like/dislike marks, with no thoughts as to how those words may affect the family or friends of the subject. Some really crude and vicious statements. I have said many times that those comment sections should be discontinued. Easy fix and would stop the spread of contaminated news, but it draws readership and attention, so nobody shuts it down. At least take control and enforce stricter rules and don’t bow down to accusations of “censorship”; instead, enforce Supreme Court’s 1919 decision in the case Schenck v. United States. The Court ruled unanimously that the First Amendment, though it protects freedom of expression, does not protect dangerous speech.
I’ve been on that campaign wagon for a long time….. then along comes Trump. And he takes it to a new level. He stands at a podium with a microphone, constantly displayed by every news outfit in America – “left and right” – and due to the rhetoric that is spewed from his mouth, he is “newsworthy” and then is even more promoted and the more he is seen, the more people hear him and see him. Opinions of him are reported as well since crowd behavior responds in his rallies. Then the media is reporting the growth of the anger and at some point Trump puts the media in a pen because now he has turned against the media calling them fake and slime, and all that grows. There are uproars in his crowds and calls them names and has them “removed” forcibly if necessary, all the while telling the crowds to punch ’em or watch his back! Now, while all this is going on, he belittles McCain and then a man with disabilities and a fat guy in the crowd and crying babies and it is just ridiculous how many more people watching the news becomes angrier and it continues to build with his incredible disrespect and how he has split the viewers into two groups, lovers and haters.
Then those two groups not only react to him, they react to each other. And the way he ran his campaign with very negative comments and name calling and flat out lies and the anger of the lovers and haters has grown rapidly. Cut to the end and he wins. Now that has really fueled the two groups. And he stands and smiles smugly and his hate filed rhetoric is getting worse because now he is the President and he demands respect. And this Ugly Person takes over the nightly news and continues to display horrid behavior towards dignitaries of other countries, just being the bully he is and has been since long before he became the President. Out of his wrath he has revoked or seriously altered many long standing regulations or has appointed people completely unqualified to head government departments and so much more!
And whomever has the ability to control Presidential behavior in any way possible, does nothing. And the two groups of Americans he created, Lovers and Haters, he continues to bait and to incite with his angry speeches and those ridiculous childish tweets.
So, there’s your problem.
– Murphy
This is an excellent piece that merely hints at some kind of contextual parallel in equal “baiting” of one party versus the other. The subtext is probably a good one because their is a case for both sides being guilty on some level. There are still some facts that one cannot ignore, most republicans are NOT racists but most racists are conservative independents or republicans.
This was NOT the case for many years after the Civil War because the Democratic party in the southern US was mostly/more racist and many would eventually change their party affiliation. So who do you want to blame the democrats the republicans, how about the actual person who is doing the racist “sh*t”.
Whose better for taxes, religious freedom, your health and care of your family, job creation, safety of our nation? It’s the person not the party. Who is lying to you about the things that matter in your life? Facts do matter, honesty does matter especially in tough times and that exactly what we have coming. Choose wisely “Padawan” and may the farce be without you.
Unfortunately, the piece covers the symptoms of a greater problem being enabled by social media and yet does not name the real problem. How we receive, interpret, catalog and store information regardless of the source – is based on if – and how we were taught our critical thinking skills. Actually, the same accusations of people getting too much faulty and incorrect information off the internet – was once similarly accused of the printed media. “You can’t believe everything you read.”- indeed.
Our education system politics and its administrators are primarily at fault (this coming from someone who works with several colleges and universities – and IMO each by my experience are guilty of the same) by not creating an educational environment that has all fields framed within the constant testing of critical thinking skills – be it math, science, and or especially the humanities which tend rely more on philosophy and less on science/reproducible data. The students produced are gullible – no to political and religious schemes, but big money marketing schemes (medical and pharma) that also exploit those that aren’t critical of the information they receive.
Left, right, up or down slanted Media can create all the information it wants without factual basis or with selected and cherry picked facts, but the skilled critical thinker will generally detect this corruption in short order. Clearly and sadly, this is not a capability of the vast majority of US citizens today. Given that we are led by people who are also unskilled critical thinkers – or worse purposefully biased thinkers (bought and paid for), it doesn’t appear that this will change any time soon.