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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   23240 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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This is just how it works now. Semi-functional establishment institutions have squandered most of the bipartisan trust and goodwill they once enjoyed. When they screw up, often through a mix of mostly incompetence and some malice/political maneuvering, this is first ignored by a wholly partisan mainstream media and then picked up by a right-wing information ecosystem whose sole epistemological lodestar seems to be "does it make progressives look maximally bad?". This leads to the most unhinged takes bubbling up to the surface which allows the technically-not-lying-but-who-are-we-kidding mainstream media to enact their "right-wing conspiracy theorists pounce"-shtick. Which then leads to pundits on the dissident right to scramble for something, anything, that makes their inanity seem "directionally correct".

It's all so tiresome.

This leads to the most unhinged takes bubbling up to the surface

But lots of these takes are not unhinged.

FEMA distributes relief to migrants and illegals. That's not a conspiracy or furtive rumor. That's a basic function it performs with budget allocations and press releases and grants. Noticing that FEMA is now claiming to be out of money is not some weird partisan non-sequitur. It's a basic observation of cause-and-effect: they spent money on illegals and now are out of money for Americans.

Likewise, rumors about FEMA getting in the way. This is rumoring of the worst sort, but it's also correct to talk about it. You have first-hand accounts of people claiming that FEMA officers are confiscating relief and getting in the way. Imagine that that happened to you -- well, some guy on twitter concluded that this is just all part of a broken media incentive infrastructure, so it doesn't matter if it's true or false. Comforting!

It's a basic observation of cause-and-effect: they spent money on illegals and now are out of money for Americans.

But those are separate earmarked categories of funds. The FEMA Disaster Relief Fund was down to $1 billion dollars on hand and moved to "Immediate Needs Funding" until Congress passed a bill providing an additional $20 billion at the end of last month. But the FEMA Shelter and Services program spending money on migrants ($650 million in 2024) was never part of that. Both are under FEMA but my understanding is that there's not some unified pool of FEMA funds, you might as well blame NASA. And obviously "FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund is about to run out of money" stories are generally overblown in the first place, since Congress is going to provide it additional funds as needed.

But lots of these takes are not unhinged.

Sure. And a functioning media ecosystem would be able to discuss these cases without partisan mud-slinging.

And I don't doubt that there are cases of FEMA dysfunction. But that's not under dispute here. The more interesting claims are that FEMA is deliberately, systemically, and strategically witholding help from those in need to help Harris win the election.

Imagine that that happened to you -- well, some guy on twitter concluded that this is just all part of a broken media incentive infrastructure, so it doesn't matter if it's true or false. Comforting!

Meditating on the potential emotional state of a potential truth-teller not being believed does not really tell us much about whether the person making such claims is actually telling the truth. Facts over feelings cuts both ways.

I find it equally tiresome, but I think anyone who's ever labored under the assumption that politics or say the media was ever at bottom about anything more than competing moral tribes with different visions of society's future, is deluding themselves.

For example, just the other day I was watching Piers Morgan's regretful debate with Mehdi Hassan over Israel/Palestine. Mehdi being a big player in the same space Piers is, clearly knows how the game is played, and spanked Piers pretty hard on his own show. It makes for great soundbites and entertainment, but is no way to conduct an honest debate.

I find it equally tiresome, but I think anyone who's ever labored under the assumption that politics or say the media was ever at bottom about anything more than competing moral tribes with different visions of society's future, is deluding themselves.

Maybe I have just grown much more cynical over the years, but I remember that the propaganda of, say, 20 years ago, was much more refined. Now it is just insultingly stupid, in a taunting "we know that you know we know you know we are lying, what are you going to do about it?" kind of way.

20 years ago the American media hadn't had it's back broken by social media and journalism was a profession rather than an advocacy platform.

Part of what makes professions different from trades is their willingness to punish their own for violating standards. Flaws did and do exist, but the economic downturns meant that there was a gradual shift towards the survivors being people willing to work for less (because they were more willing to work for ideology), and these people in turn- many of them more junior entries who had less experience and thus lower paychecks in the first place- were more inclined to punish on the basis of ideological deviation than on lack of adherence to style.

That explains the ideological conformity and the zeal of the survivors. It does not explain the total lack of subtlety.

I... generally don't associate conformist zeal with subtlety in the same person?

To clarify- the more subtle people were the professionals. The professionals were not the survivors.

I mean, you can both be zealous and competent at what you do, no? And if what you do is propaganda production...

You're conflating (and changing) the standard of comparison. Competent is not synonymous with subtle, particularly in a context where survival (a screening factor for what is / is not competent) is characterized by exceptionally enthusiastic support for a cause.

Being unsubtle is not a lack of competence in and of itself. Competence is the characteristic of what it takes to succeed. The metric of success in the selection effect to be a modern journalist is surviving as a modern journalist, not being a subtle propagandist.

You are correct. Signalling piety and subtlety are sometimes at odds. Willingness to believe in the correct kind of bullshit is a strong shiboleth.

I think my hiccup is that I think subtle propaganda is synonymous with effective propaganda and that, therefore, a subtle propagandist is synonymous with an effective propagandist for the cause which in turn would translate into signalling value. That is evidently not the case. But why?

Compare, say, Jon Stewart and Jon Oliver. People here will argue that the former was just as much of a propagandist as the latter, but he was definitely more subtle, and hence more effective. Why do we only get the Olivers now and not the Stewarts?

More comments

Well one problem has been that technological developments and social trends have made it easier by lowering the costs for people with cheap contributions to have a voice. I was one of the few skeptical and somewhat cynical naysayers among those I knew who took the opposite position and usually went around championing things like the democratization of the media or X or Y, and allowing people to have a voice, saying its going to raise the aggregate level news quality among people's media diet. Instead you got the reverse, more along the lines I more or less thought it would, where the signal to noise ratio became so out of hand that the bad drives out the good, and mediocrity rules the waves from one end to the other.

None of these things ever get pitched on the harm they'll do to society when the first appear and gain traction, but instead it's all about the great and wonderful and productive things it'll enable us to do. But the noble and moral uses of these things only ever end up being a footnote and an afterthought to their real uses. Mindless consumerism. Intellectual laziness. Style over substance. I really don't understand how it seems like nobody ever saw this coming. I saw it coming from a mile away. But maybe I'm just that pessimistic.

Idiots on Twitter is one thing. Midwits on the payroll of the NYT is quite another.

I’m reminded of Gay — a NYT editor. I can’t remember if she tweeted that when Bloomberg spent 500m on his political he instead could’ve given the 327m Americans over a million dollars each or merely saw the tweet and ran with it as a story for Brian Williams.

In either case, she had more than enough time to think “that sounds crazy — is the math right.” And either she can’t do basic basic math or she doesn’t care.

That was peak cable news comedy.

Williams showed a screen-grab of the tweet during the broadcast that read: “Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The US population is 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million and still have money left over. I feel like a $1 million check would be life-changing for most people. Yet he wasted it all on ads and STILL LOST.”

Speaking in disbelief, Williams said: “When I read it tonight on social media it kind of all became clear.”

Even more embarrasingly, in the middle of reading out, the tweet remarked: “Don’t tell us if you’re ahead of us on the math.”

NYT Editorial Board Member Mara Gay then agreed: “It’s an incredible way of putting it. It’s true. It’s disturbing. It does suggest what we’re talking about here which is there’s too much money in politics.”

In all seriousness these days, it can be hard to tell the difference. Bari Weiss could've passed as someone they hired off Twitter.

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