There's a proper response to "accusations of bias" from alt-right white-nationalist thug media. Never mind whether the accusations "looked likely to lead to a Congressional investigation".
The response is to tell them to fuck off, and that the professional editors in your private company will continue to do their job however they see fit.
The only reason it looks alt-right white-nationalist to you is because anyone on the left who disagrees with prevailing left wing dogma is branded a heretic and a bigot, and shut down quickly.
Take The Guardian. They employ people like Jessica Valenti and Laurie Penny who publish feminist clickbait. Then they aggressively moderate comments which explain why those two are ill-informed at best and dishonest manipulators at worst. Then they do a "study" where they demonstrate how much harassment their female writers receive, by considering every deleted comment to be an instance of harassment.
Alternative hypotheses are not welcome, and there is no accountability. Actual studies like Pew's about the magnitude and nature of real harassment are ignored, or spun by cherry picking. The dogma remains: women have it worse, and it's because they are women. This system gets them more traffic and attention, so they are encouraged to continue, even as they insist it's terrible and someone should stop it.
I may be missing something here, but what do your two paragraphs of axe-grinding about women have to do with his remark about American "alt-right white-nationalist thug media"?
What does two paragraphs of axe-grinding about woman like Jessica Valenti and Laurie Penny have to do with American "alt-right white-nationalist thug media"? Take a look at the narratives they've been pushing about Truump and the evils of the alt-right lately.
Your comment implies that the commentor was axe-grinding with women in general. The complaint was about two particular women writers at the guardian using their own sex and feminism as a shield against criticism and fuel for their own click bait.
> Your comment implies that the commentor was axe-grinding with women in general. The complaint was about two particular women writers at the guardian using their own sex and feminism as a shield against criticism and fuel for their own click bait.
So it's okay for you to infer what other people mean, but not okay for me to do it? Where did I say "women in general"? Why would my post imply what he said, when everyone can read exactly what he said and interpret it for themselves, just like you did?
He's grinding an axe (completely out of nowhere) about "feminist clickbait", "female writers", the "dogma" that "women have it worse", and singling out two women (and "people like" them) as examples. What am I supposed to do, pretend he's talking about men?
Likewise, why should I pretend that he said "some women" when he didn't? I have no idea what proportion of women he has a problem with.
None of this is relevant to my point though, which was that his rant about women (however many it may be) had absolutely nothing to do with what he was replying to, and was simply an attempt to inject this particular hobby horse of his into a thread where it doesn't belong.
How do you know he has a problem with (just) two women? Did he say that? No. Even now he hasn't said that. On the contrary, he specifically said "people like" the two examples he named.
Are you genuinely telling me you don't know what "people like" means in this context?
> It's you that made it ambiguous by claiming he had a problem "with women".
The words "with women" don't even appear in any of my comments, in any context at all, so I don't know where you're quoting that from. I actually said "I have no idea what proportion of women he has a problem with".
And if my understanding of another person's comment (which is still there, in his own words) somehow made that comment "ambiguous", why are you not finding it ambiguous?
I think The Guardian is a bad example of this. Their articles follow a particularly narrow group of viewpoints. They will never have the mainstream (liberal) appeal as the New York Times or the Washington Post.
Incidentally, which pew studies? In my anecdotal experience, harassment is a pervasive issue e.g. I personally dont know of any urban woman not adversely affected by street harassment. Like a lot of things, it is a couple of men doing a whole lot of damage.
I keep feeling like the whole alt-right anti-PC movement seems to be born of things people said online or corner case behavior in insulated Universities. Like, who cares? Most men I know who love the anti-PC movement would, in the moment, gladly intervene if a woman is getting verbally harassed and is visibly shaken up. Mention Valenti to the same person and they fly into a rage. Like wut?!
Most feminist and LGBT activists groups aren't talked about by Jezebel and are doing great work.
tl;dr: Message to alt-right activists everywhere: Talk to minority rights activists in person outside of emotionally charged protests. You'll find you don't disagree by much.
> Most men I know who love the anti-PC movement would, in the moment, gladly intervene if a woman is getting verbally harassed and is visibly shaken up. Mention Valenti to the same person and they fly into a rage. Like wut?!
I'm a man, I dislike men who are asses to women and women who are asses to men. I'm finding it consistent and deeply un-wut-worthy. Heck, it seems I sometimes even care about men vs men and women vs women too.
Telling people who aren't aligned to with the liberal intelligentsia to fuck off is exactly what got us in the current mess. Most people are reasonable, but when the reasonable and rational media ignores their issues, we leave the door open to demagogues and dictators. How else could a silver spoon like Donald Trump ever claim to represent the everyman?
I think you're misinterpreting me, and also distorting my words significantly, which I object to. I didn't say we should tell people "who aren't aligned with the liberal intelligentsia" to fuck off. I was speaking narrowly about lawyers from places like Breitbart; i.e., the kinds of folks who have been trying to apply pressure to Facebook and making accusations.
>Telling people who aren't aligned to with the liberal intelligentsia to fuck off is exactly what got us in the current mess.
I am so sick of this argument that Trump's victory is somehow the fault of bubble-trapped city-dwelling liberals for not understanding how the rest of the country thinks. Trump supporters are the ones who have either been manipulated to vote against their own interests; implicitly elected a Republican administration no different from the ones that they now claim to have rejected; ignored the obvious signs that Trump is of the same "elite" ilk that seeks to exploit them; been duped to amplify social hatred and reinforce the worst bigotry and sexism of the right-wing; benefited from many of the federal supports they claim to hate; or neglected the existential peril of their belief that the economy is more important than the planet's ability to sustain life; if not all of the above. Should the left have picked a candidate that is more aligned with the issues of the working class? Absolutely. Does that mean it's entirely on them? Hell no.
To put some perspective on this, I am from Minnesota, I was there in 1998 and I helped Jesse Ventura get elected. It had a remarkably similar vibe of unexpected victory up-ending the establishment. Of course Jesse Ventura is much more of a rational and thinking man than Trump, but the race was similar in that no one took him seriously and he won in a huge upset against the major party candidates.
The thing with Trump is that liberals everywhere still can't get over what an asshole he is and what a disaster this is, but that fact that an asshole like him gets elected is very telling. We need to observe and understand this. Saying that people were duped and are idiots is not an interesting story, it doesn't help us make a better future, and quite frankly Trump supporters are not all idiots and bigots. What the intelligent Trump supporter would say is that establishment politicians have duped everyone too, and that Hillary was not going to further your interests. Granted Hillary was definitely the lesser of evils, but I don't think there's a cut and dried case that her policy was going to help the low to middle classes. Plenty of blame to go around here.
If you want to know why Trump got elected, it's because most people don't have a basic clue as to how the foundations of this country actually works. Seriously, go ask 100 random people what the national debt is, and I doubt you'll get more than 1 or 2 who have any sort of clue.
>What the intelligent Trump supporter would say is that establishment politicians have duped everyone too, and that Hillary was not going to further your interests
And that is why your "intelligent" Trump supporter is still clueless in this case, because he just voted in a white house full of career politicians (Newt Gingrich? Are you kidding me?). It's clear that Trump was mostly a protest vote against the establishment, but it was an incredibly hollow one and made literally no sense if the supporters looked beyond catchy slogans and strongman signaling. And every Trump voter, no matter how intelligent or decent or caring, still cast a vote for a racist and sexist candidate and that is something I find to be unconscionable.
Again with the racist accusation. You are either trolling or you have no intention of ever understanding why Trump supporters supported Trump, or you're just venting your anger from Hillary's humiliating defeat.
Trump actually promised to surround himself with experienced people, so "a white house full of career politicians" should not surprise anybody. It's keeping a campaign promise.
There was little protest vote. This was about corruption, job loss in the heartland, and some very non-racial issues with immigration.
Personally I blame it on the left's constant, ruthless beratement and demonization of Christian|white|rural|blue-collar|conservative people. I'm not surprised they pushed back after a decade of bullying in the name of tolerance.
Oh yeah I forgot it was the evil left that was demonizing people during the past ten years. Certainly no Christians during that time berated and demonized someone just on the basis of say, their sexual orientation or religious beliefs.
Give me a break. The right lost the culture wars (for good reason as their regressive social policies trampled all over civic rights) and this is them sending our country into a suicide because they'd rather die than face the reality that America is no longer a white monoculture.
Your reasoning is basically "maybe if you weren't so mean to the white supremacists Trump wouldn't have happened". Are we supposed to appease neo-Nazis and ignorance now? There were racially motivated attacks across the country last night, all done in the name of Trump. It does not look good.
Have you been on Twitter lately? If you phrase one thing the wrong way you get branded as a bigot, racist, sexist, whatever, and the torches and pitchforks come right out. If you don't see the parallels between the extreme right and the extreme left and prescribed moral code of what ideas and views are acceptable to express then you are not as smart and objective as you think you are.
You guys wanted to have it too fast and too easy. You though you can change things by passing laws and silencing criticism with media hysteria. You celebrated your superficial legal victories while completely ignoring the fact that sentiments against "affirmative actions", "LGBT rights", feminists, Muslims, Blacks and whatnot had been steadily growing for ten years all over the West.
You gave voice to the most bitter representatives of minorities to sell them as victims to the general population and didn't mind that the venom they spill enrages everybody else. As if you completely didn't expect that one day somebody may give voice to the most bitter of your opponents.
That's the first-level analysis. Let's dig deeper...
Why would one believe a so-called "protectionist" who has actually off-shored jobs?
Why would one believe a billionaire who claims to not be part of the establishment? A billionaire who was a celebrated part of the establishment during the '80s, in New York. That den of conservative values?
Why would one trust a candidate who was essentially a left-leaning Democrat until he decided to run for President?
Why would one believe a candidate who contradicts himself, is difficult to pin down on any policy details, and who says different things to different groups to a degree that's unprecedented, even for a politician?
Anybody can say anything. If you believe someone this erratic, you almost have to be wilfully ignorant of human nature.
Well, for many of your examples I would say they fit both candidates, with small adjustments. So the only choice is to go with the one that currently states what the voters agree with.
I'm always fascinated that people don't realize that what one side says today the other side said yesterday.
First of all your use of biased language is ridiculous, you are as bad as the 'alt-right white-nationalish thug media' and I wish people like you had no place in rational discussions.
Second if you tell them to "Fuck off" you risk losing a significant chunk of your user base who believes their content and information is being manipulated against them. Facebook isn't in the politics business, they are in the social networking business. If Facebook is seen as political at all then a competing business will set up a service to sell to the other side. Look at what happened to mainstream media channels. Claims of liberal bias in the media giants directly led to the success of Fox News.
>And Facebook is already seen as political; that ship has sailed.
I don't think that's true. Certainly the extremes on each side will say that. But I think everyone in the middle doesn't. I don't. Certainly not in the same way as I see Fox News/CNN/MSNBC as political.
It's funny that you don't think people marching in the streets, blocking traffic, screaming obscenities and destroying things right now aren't bullies.
The response is to tell them to fuck off, and that the professional editors in your private company will continue to do their job however they see fit.
Period, paragraph.