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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   34277 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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The people who want that (and are cancelling as a result) are operating on a cargo cult mentality about what makes an institution prestigious and valuable themselves. They seem to imagine that these outlets simply saying things while being who they are makes those things consensus. This is just a justification for entryists to seize these orgs and draw down any credibility they have for what are often silly causes.

I had a similar thought reading a thread from a few weeks ago about how "the Democrats own the language". We had users on this very forum arguing that "the consensus" is whatever the media says it is and the only thing i could think to say was something to the effect of "thats not what that word means."

I think there is a sort of mind that gets so wrapped up in the world of symbols and symbol manipulation that they have trouble imagining that "The Truth" could be a lie, or that Dan Rather and Brian Stelter might be less than Reliable Sources

The charitable take is that those people are just cynical about the ability of the media to falsify enough consensus to let their allies entrench their wins.

Which does happen. After seeing people go along with X or Y long enough you can easily believe that they can just make something true if they all stick to the same line.

But I don't know what to say: they've just manifestly failed at locking Trumpism out of the Overton Window. Whatever their ability to nudge things, it's not infinite and they've bottomed out here.

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