I know you said you’re no longer hard left, but you sure sound hard right when you go on about the mainstream media like this.
I can be center-left in my beliefs (having single-payer healthcare, providing a social safety net, enacting sensible gun control, etc.) and also call out liars.
But the right wing in America is opposed to all three of those things.
When what is reported in the media directly contradicts, or at the very least, actively omits, observable fact, I have to wonder what the hell is going on. I think the mainstream media has done us a terrible disservice with its 24-hour news cycle consisting of endless panels populated by “experts” and “analysts” who editorialize everything and provide little actual reporting. When the NYT tells me a person is one thing and actually listening to that person tells me they’re something else, I naturally question the rest of the NYT’s reporting and the filter through which it’s being run. I think we’ve passed the point where we can trust the big media companies to give us a fair representation of reality. Nobody wants to be a mere reporter anymore; they want to be an influencer, gain followers, and spread their message.
How is this unique to the left? Fox News, Breitbart, Infowars, the Rebel, and pretty much all of talk radio along with vast segments of YouTube are right-wing examples of exactly this.
There’s tons of content out there that never makes it into the popular discourse because it’s not covered by the major media outlets. The danger is separating fact from fiction/conspiracy and not allowing yourself to fall into a very deep, dark place.
This is very vague. You’re generally right on this particular concept but I’m curious, what are you referring to?
The reason I defend people like Peterson, aside from agreeing with some of his views (certainly not all), is that he was the same guy saying the same things before he got famous. If I felt he was modifying his message to suit a particular audience in order to gain followers and make more money, I’d lump him in with the rest of the opportunists and set him aside. And now that he is famous, people have a lot to say about him and his ideas. Some of it is justified, and some of it is patently dishonest.
I can’t speak to who he was before, but he definitely tailors his message to an audience. And it worked big time. I don’t know if there’s ever been a more immediately successful self-help guru. He became a millionaire in just a couple years from it. And he definitely frames his religious arguments in a way to appeal to potentially secular people in order to win them over to his Christian philosophy, and is outright dishonest in doing so. For example, his argument that lacking an inherently Christian worldview leads to criminality is not true. The more secular a state, the less violent crime there is.
As far as me moving more to the right, I’ve tried to be more honest with myself about the hypocrisy I see on the left. I told myself for a long time that the left was “better” than the right, but I no longer believe that. Both sides have their virtuous members and their loons. The Rs still probably have more loons, but the left’s loons are starting to catch up. I’d like to see a strong center that pushes outward and squeezes the loons on both sides.
The great irony here is that there was a centrist in the 2016 election, and her name was Hillary Clinton. I was and am opposed to her because she was a centrist, but ultimately the right-wing loon won over the centrist. Of course he did lose the popular vote by millions, so obviously the nation at large is more centrist than the electoral map would imply. The loons on one side are in power right now and control all three branches of government. So in terms of loons on the federal level one side has a near monopoly on lunacy.
Also, if you’re gay then the left certainly is better than the right. That’s just a fact for gay or lesbian people. They have their interests more in mind than the right does. If you’re a poor person with a sickly kid that you can’t afford to take care of, then the left is better than the right. It’s subjective, of course, but the whole notion that all sides are equally bad is not an idea that most people will or even should accept.