Creating a narrative and promoting it for a political agenda

    This is how everyone savvy is doing it, yes ALL SIDES now, not just alt-right. It's our new paradigm. How MSM outlets deal with it, whether they filter it and create balance, or end up feeding certain agendas by covering what the aglorithms rule are hot, that's the thing:

    Comments

    good Noah Smith thread pondering the reality vs. the narrative and buying into the delusions of grandeur as regards the alt-right:

    1/One thing I think the coup attempt of 1/6 did, besides galvanize institutional awareness of a rightist threat, was to expose how militarily weak the rightists are.

    — Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) April 17, 2021

    2/In the 90s we envisioned the far right as a vast network of well-trained militias. In the 00s we envisioned Blackwater mercenaries being used as rightist paramilitaries in a civil conflict.

    In reality, we got a rabble of out of shape 50-year-old boat dealers.

    — Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) April 17, 2021

    3/They managed to get past the police by doing the old "toe the line between goofy and serious" trick that online Nazis perfected in web forums. But that trick won't work twice.

    — Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) April 17, 2021

    4/There was no mass defection from the military or the National Guard to the rightist cause. Nor will there be, at least not unless the situation changes hugely and unexpectedly.https://t.co/HCV5PGGyDA

    — Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) April 17, 2021

    5/But in fact this lesson should have been apparent earlier. The protests of summer 2020 saw no massive columns of rightist militias turning out to menace and cow the protesters.

    — Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) April 17, 2021

    6/In fact when the Three Percenter militia tried to march to counter the NFAC march in Louisville, they were utterly outnumbered and overawed.https://t.co/EYQSn0fPSG

    — Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) April 17, 2021

    7/In the Pacific Northwest, where the protests turned violent, leftist militias again outnumbered and overmatched rightist ones.https://t.co/gn9pLWt6wH

    — Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) April 17, 2021

    8/And in terms of general potential manpower, the left has all the young people. https://t.co/Gt6dCQSBxa

    — Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) April 17, 2021


    9/Without young people, without paramilitary dominance, what hope would rightists have in any civil war?

    Some surely envision a mass armed uprising by police departments, but this would be easily crushed by the Guard and the military. Nor will it happen.

    — Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) April 17, 2021

    11/Thus, rightists inclined toward further belligerence should take a look at their overwhelming military inferiority, and stand down.

    (end)

    — Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) April 17, 2021

    John McWhorter (Columbia University bio)

    Why is it unenlightened to admit that Daunte Wright was killed by accident? Or to acknowledge that cops kill whites as casually as they kill black people? Or enlightened to call me a white supremacist for speaking the truth?
    by @JohnHMcWhorter https://t.co/sEqjpX84DU

    — John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) April 17, 2021

    excerpts from the above (no paywall that I could see)

    THE VICTORIANS HAD TO ACCEPT DARWIN. WE NEED TO ACCEPT THAT COPS KILL WHITE PEOPLE AS EASILY AS THEY KILL BLACK PEOPLE.

    Otherwise, our conversation on race is deeply and perniciously fake

    @ substack, April 16

    [...] The problem is the sheer volume of the white cases. We just don’t hear about them. As I write, what about Hannah Williams? Or this hideous case? No, I’m not laboriously smoking these cases out when they are just weird exceptions to a general rule. They are the norm. It’s just that they don’t make national news. It really is that simple, and that sad, and that destructive to our national conversation about race.

    Funny thing – nothing makes this clearer than the Washington Post database of cop murders. Just pour a cup of coffee and look at what it shows, month after month, year after year. As South Park’s Cartman would put it, “Just, like, just, just look at it. Just look at it.”

    Yet, the enlightened take on the issue serenely sails along as if that database proves that cops ice black men regularly while white men only end up in their line of fire now and then by accident. The database reveals a serious problem with cops and murder, period, quite race-neutrally [....]

    [....] true enlightenment, my friends, means opening yourself up to counterintuitive realities. I know – you may think that the counterintuitive reality we need to open up to is that black people are killed by cops because of their color. But that’s a little 1990 now. The cops are meaner to black people, no doubt. But not to the extent of casual murder. “Enlightened” America must open its mind, as “enlightened” Victorians opened up to Darwinism, to the simple fact that cops kill white people just as easily as they kill black people.

    This is not conservative think-tank groupthink. This is truth, folks. If only smart Americans would open up to what is good news about black people’s condition. Black people do not need to walk around in fear that white cops will kill them because they are black. Yes, I meant that and will write it again. Black people do not need to walk around in fear that white cops will kill them because they are black.

    “But, but … he just, he just …” NO! I “just” nothing. I say this because of the following simple fact:

    Cops kill white people just as easily as they kill black people.

    I know there’s a bit more we will hear.

    But the disproportion … !

    Yes, yes – but please see my post on Derek Chauvin on that issue, which in no way disproves anything I have written. Black people are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by cops, and exactly 2.5 times more likely to be poor, and data shows that poverty makes you more likely to encounter the cops, as even intuition confirms. This is why somewhat more black people are killed by cops than what our proportion in the population would predict.[....]

    Reflect also: most people who take to the streets about cases like Daunte Wright are not thinking about the fact that black people are killed by cops 2.5 times more than their representation in the population would predict. They are protesting because all they see in the news is the black people killed, and have no way of imagining that whites are regularly killed in the same way and in much greater numbers.

    * * *

    Once more. Every time the media broadcasts the murder by cop of a black person, ask yourself if it’s really true that a cop wouldn’t have done it to a white person – and then go to, for example, the Washington Post database and see cops doing just that.

    And upon that, we will settle upon an honest national conversation about the cops as murdering people in race-neutral fashion. Or at least we should.

    also see these related tweets

    Killed because black? She wasn’t. Just an anecdote? What of endless cases of dumb cops killing just PEOPLE? More black ones “disproportionately” yes - bc cops are sicced on more poor people of all colors. BUT what? Intersectionality? Um, okay. https://t.co/52sjQfsvC3

    — John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) April 16, 2021


    I have often written that we simply never hear about whites killed by cops in the same ways as blacks. But I've never quite known of a parallel to one case: what happened to Tamir Rice - till now. https://t.co/8URhWrcYCL

    — John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) April 14, 2021

     





    there's a lot of hindsight 20-20 you can do with this whole thing, especially if one was a less experienced news reader at the time, along the lines of the satanic child care stories. This one was like a real "doh!" for me, I always mistrusted her but didn't see her shtick that clearly, do now:

    Women are urged to adhere to damaging societal beauty standards? There must be a CONSPIRACY behind it? A journalist is murdered by ISIS? Too easy, must be faked and a CONSPIRACY

    — Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) April 20, 2021


    I talked about this today with @nickgillespie but fear, wielded specifically and skillfully, is extremely effective.

    — Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) April 20, 2021

     






    China - ready willing and able to help:


    a uniter not a divider, obviously trying to redirect to narratives that all Americans can share, like it or not:

    America’s national parks are irreplaceable treasures. They amaze us, inspire us, fill us with pride, and belong to all of us in equal measure. This National Park Week, I want to hear about your favorite memory at one of our national parks. Share by replying to this tweet. pic.twitter.com/oI7xXpUCQd

    — President Biden (@POTUS) April 21, 2021


    edit to add, "1776 Unites" that McWhorter is referring to there  is "a Woodson Center Project" Woodson Center's mission is Transforming lives, schools, and troubled neighborhoods, from the inside out.https://woodsoncenter.org/. I don't honestly haven't spent the time checking them out enough to know whether they are just pushing a counter-narrative of their own or actually trying to deal with reality.


    wow this exclusive by WaPo is kind of important, don't know where to plop it except here-important not to assume bigwigs are buying up newspapers or other cos. for ideological purposes, sometimes they might just want to play with the company's pension funds!!!



    earlier thread

    more on policy framing interacting with a narrative here


    China's foreign ministry likes a lot of The Woke Narrative:


    Russia Today (RT.com) is recognized as blatantly doing it by Twitter and Facebook

    SubTweet highlighted by Matthew Yglesias, who retweeted it.




    Meant to post these together - it was so refreshing watching Jon Batiste accept the Oscar for a mixed effort (Trent Reznor industrial?) in a mixed room, and he was just so warm and thankful to all these people and orgs. I watched a few Batiste videos where he did a New Orleans Krewe line with Colbert's entire band to welcome Jim Carrey, Batiste doing a slamming Mozart challenge/duet with this tiny Jewish guy from Big Bang Theory who played in that Meryl Streep opera movie. Batiste went to Julliard - and he seems happy - who knew art didn't have to feel pretentious?

    Oh, fond memory of brief stint in New Orleans, these little cafes or leftover speakeasy's where everyone who could play would pick up some axe or other, i even did it once, out of my league, but all a good time. Music used to be the great equalizer, all voices come together, styles mixed upon styles, you'd get black Bad Brains playing thrash, Aerosmith mashed with RunDMC, Eric Burdon with War, black percussionists as part of the Allman Brothers in the Deep South, Prince's ever mixed up assortment of multiethnic, multigender musicians... It's all Mardi Gras, or was.

    I'm very careful to never criticize a musician or style of music too much - i never know when I might start liking it, as a phase or permanently. You can make fun of Nancy Sinatra but then she gets like a drug, a perverse kitsch, a fashion. All these musicians who had each others' backs - stick together in the vampire music industry. Often the weirdo finds his or her calling, that special place, a "style".


    re:  so refreshing watching Jon Batiste accept the Oscar for a mixed effort.. in a mixed room, and he was just so warm and thankful to all these people and orgs

    I looked it up, totally fits with the culcha he was raised in:

    ...Jon Batiste was born in Metairie, Louisiana, one of seven brothers in a Catholic family.[1][8][9] He grew up in Kenner, Louisiana.[2] His parents, Estella and Jean Batiste, were owners of a grocery store and a hardware store in the 9th Ward of New Orleans.[8] ....

    Among other things: wrath, envy and pride are 3 of the 7 deadly sins. And you have no business preaching unless you are called and then trained for the priesthood. Furthermore, the customer is always right....etc

    Edit to add 6 of the 7 Christian virtues: temperance, charity, diligence, patience, gratitude, humility.



    as he said, makes one curious...


    can't stay at a place that doesn't proselytize the narrative:

     



    Just hit me looking at this detail picture of this old broadside how the elites did it during the Enlightenment - forthrightly but politely:

    ....a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires, that they should declare the causes, which impel them to the Separation....


    Where's the outrage? Maybe they read Poor Richard's Almanack, published 1744 by Benjamin Franklin?

    Tart Words make no Friends: spoonful of honey will catch more flies than Gallon of Vinegar.


    A New York Post story about Kamala Harris triggered conservative outrage. Almost all of it was wrong. Now the reporter has resigned.

    By Paul Farhi @ WashingtonPost.com, 

    April 27, 2021 at 7:14 p.m. EDT

    A longtime New York Post reporter said she has resigned after being “ordered” to write a false story that claimed undocumented minors were being welcomed to the United States with copies of a children’s book written by Vice President Harris.

    “The Kamala Harris story — an incorrect story I was ordered to write and which I failed to push back hard enough against — was my breaking point,” Laura Italiano tweeted Tuesday afternoon, several hours after her viral article about the books had been deleted from the Post’s website and replaced with corrected versions.

    Italiano, who has written for the Post since the 1990s, according to news archives, could not be immediately reached for comment.

    Since the Post published the story on its front page Saturday, the conservative mediascape has been in an uproar over the supposed distribution of Harris’s 2019 book, “Superheroes Are Everywhere,” at migrant shelters. A slew of prominent Republicans expressed outrage over the possibility that taxpayers were funding the program. Even the White House press secretary was grilled about it.

    And then on Tuesday, in a one-sentence note at the bottom of the original online article, the Post acknowledged that almost none of it was true.

    “Editor’s note: The original version of this article said migrant kids were getting Harris’ book in a welcome kit, but has been updated to note that only one known copy of the book was given to a child,” it read in full.

    In fact, it’s not even clear whether a child actually received that single copy of the book, which was photographed by Reuters on a vacant bed at a shelter in Long Beach, Calif., last week. It was one of many items, including toys and clothing, donated by residents in a citywide drive [....]


    She'd like one narrative in particular to stop:


    Kreeger's 10 simple rules to survive a pandemic as a female research scientist... (if you're lucky)

    https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1...



    Some diffs in narrative


    this is the root of a real gnarly problem is it not?

    If you claim to be a democracy of some sort, you have to deal with the narratives that "the masses" buy into. After, they are the ones deliver food to your table, fix your car when it's broke and the holes in your roof.

    Primary school public education is fundamental here, it's the only chance society has to change generational thinking passed down by parents to children. Hence, there's always warring about what narratives are taught there.


    It's not a messed up elitist idea. It's an objective truth. It's unwise to say it if you want their votes but that doesn't make it false. I'm glad that there are some people picking vegetables, driving trucks to bring them to the store, and putting them on shelves but it doesn't require much intelligence to do that. Almost all intelligent people could do all those thing but most of those who do those things couldn't switch jobs with the elite and perform them well.


    There's a pretty tiny percentage between our smartest and our dumbest. We learn largely the way we did 200 years ago with only a little improvement in quality and speed, and our ability to communicate is stunted. That's our biggest challenge - how do we skip forward significantly?

    Waitbutwhy.com

    Let’s zip back in time for a second to 50,000 BC and kidnap someone and bring him back here to 2017.

    This is Bok. Bok, we’re really thankful that you and your people invented language.

    As a way to thank you, we want to show you all the amazing things we were able to build because of your invention.

    Alright, first let’s take Bok on a plane, and into a submarine, and to the top of the Burj Khalifa. Now we’ll show him a telescope and a TV and an iPhone. And now we’ll let him play around on the internet for a while.

    Okay that was fun. How’d it go, Bok?

    Yeah we figured that you’d be pretty surprised. To wrap up, let’s show him how we communicate with each other.

     

    Bok would be shocked to learn that despite all the magical powers humans have gained as a result of having learned to speak to each other, when it comes to actually speaking to each other, we’re no more magical than the people of his day. When two people are together and talking, they’re using 50,000-year-old technology.

    Bok might also be surprised that in a world run by fancy machines, the people who made all the machines are walking around with the same biological bodies that Bok and his friends walk around with. How can that be?


    Tiny in the ways we've developed to measure it but huge as it plays out in the world. I don't really like to talk exclusively about intelligence but about knowledge and intelligence combined. There is a correlation between the two at least in that intelligence affects the speed and ease of acquiring knowledge. The gulf between the smartest and the dumbest in knowledge and intelligence in todays world is huge

    When two people chat it may be similar to how two people chatted 50,000 years ago but when two elites discuss, or write or read, about their field of study it's not at all like a conversation had 50,000 years ago. Two doctors discussing a patient will not sound anything like two witch doctors discussing a patient. Many of the words they use are only a few hundred years old and have no equivalent 50,000 years ago


    Agreed. What will be permitted to be discussed is at stake in professional arguments.


    But i don't think those doctors are oh so much smarter - they just study the terminology and rules of health & medicine, while others do engineering or law  or finance or something else. But is it Zuckerberg that's smart or people who work for him, or are they largely worker drones just working on a software assembly line, taking their lunch pail to the beanbag equipped warehouse? Most people use hours more than smarts to succeed. Sure, there's a difference between people, but even the smarts part is limited usually. But how do we make intelligence improvement go exponential, allow people to absorb languages and doctoring and computing and lots of other info at the same time? While the amount of information in the world goes exponential, the capabilities if most people are a slightly raised line. How to escalate ability, speed learn, increase bandwidth to multiply info intake by 10, and then the wisdom to use that info...


    There is still a fundamental difference between the elite and the working class. Again, most of the jobs done by the working class can be easily learned and performed by the elite but most of the working class would be incapable of learning let along performing the tasks of the elite. Sure there are some intelligent people in the working class by choice, bad luck, or psychological problems but by and large most are intellectually stuck there. I was one of them. I worked as a musician, computer programmer, electronics repair, store clerk, on an organic farm, night watchman, home health care, landscaper, electrician, in several different factories, handyman doing plumbing, painting, electric work, ect. It took me significantly more time to learn to read an electronic schematic and trace down faulty components than it took me to learn plumbing. Even working as a drone on a software assembly line requires more intelligence than a drone on the assembly line in a factory. And the best of the software programmers are far above the average drone on a software assembly line.

    to add: It might seem like I'm bragging again but I'm not really. I was an intellectual among non-intellectuals for much of my life mostly because of psychological reasons. I was never a great programmer and I didn't study it in college. I took a 12 week course on programming in COBOL in the army to get a secondary MOS. Among two dozen other army recruits in the class I was far and above the best in the class. I wizzed through the material and was bored with the speed of the class as others struggled. I got perfect scores on every test and it was easy for me. Now it may be that had I competed with the best programmers at MIT I would have been the one falling behind. I'm not claiming to be a Google level programmer. But among these working class army recruits I stood out. And only the highest scorers on the army entrance exam were allowed to apply to be computer programmers. So my experience in this and many other endeavours convinces me that a disparity in intelligence exists and it's  significant. When people don't see it I wonder if they've ever spent time with the working class, because I've spent most of my life there.


    Your report is interesting. My experience in the building trade is similar and different. Some people want the most highly skilled but under their terms of employment.

    I used to be the one they were looking for but now don't care.

    I can do what I can do.


    Oh, i largely agree - though besides just the McJobs and skilled jobs, there's the managerial skilled & generic plus something above. But i used to have more confidence in the US upskilling it's labor force so it wouldn't need to compete as much with the rest of the world, could do more high productivity work, more differentiated work. But the companies themselves seem to want just a vat of replaceable workers with a few specialties - certified in some trendy area that'll be untrendy in 3 years, then back in the pool.



    Tom MIA (deleted?)


    found same Tom toon elsewhere and copied it fair use


    Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones will join the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s journalism school in July as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism.

    Hannah-Jones, who covers civil rights and racial justice for The New York Times Magazine, won the 2020 Pulitzer for commentary for an essay she wrote as part of The 1619 Project, which highlights the long-term consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans.

    The appointment marks a return to the university for Hannah-Jones, who earned a master’s degree at its Hussman School of Journalism and Media in 2003.
     

    https://chapelboro.com/news/unc/1619-project-writer-to-join-unc-journalism-school-faculty


    by rmrd0000 on Sun, 05/02/2021 - 1:09p

    My excerpt from the above that was posted on my "Humanities Academia in Crisis" blog entry.

     The project has been among the most widely read and debated works of journalism in recent years. While many praised it as a needed reassessment of American history, some scholars disputed it as excessively harsh in places.

    And the announcement notes that Knight Chair Professorships is a foundation-funded program to bring working professionals from outside the tenure-track-scholarly system to teach students practical skills of journalism

    Hannah-Jones began her career as an education reporter in North Carolina. She then worked at The Oregonian and at ProPublica before joining The New York Times in 2015. She tweeted Monday that she will continue to work for The Times.

    The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation endows the Knight Chair professorships, which allow top professionals to teach journalism students

    In her case it is activist journalism to promote a narrative framing, not scholarly history.

    She is going to teach them how to, as Wasow emphasizes at the top of this thread

    “Focus on conflict. Feed the algorithm. Make sure whatever you produce reinforces a narrative. Don’t worry if it is true.”

    Further, from the wikipedia entry,

    it should be noted that her Pulitzer was for "commentary", more commonly referred to as "Op Ed"

     she won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her work on The 1619 Project

     It is basically admiring of her skills at changing narrative in mass media.

    And that her vita is not as a historian, but as an activist journalist: AND THAT SHE DOES NOT HAVE A PHD, ONLY AN M.A. IN JOURNALISM

    She graduated from the University of North Carolin Huassman School of Journalism and Media with a master's degree in 2003, where she was a Roy H. Park Fellow.[8][9]

    Career[edit]

    In 2003, Hannah-Jones began her career covering the education beat, which included the predominantly African American Durham Public Schools, for the Raleigh News & Observer, a position she held for three years.[6]

    In 2006, Hannah-Jones moved to PortlandOregon, where she wrote for The Oregonian for six years. During this time she covered an enterprise assignment that included feature work, then the demographics beat, and then the government & census beats.[3]

    In 2007, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the 1965 Watts riots, Hannah-Jones wrote about its impact on the community for the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Commission.[10]

    From 2008 to 2009, Hannah-Jones received a fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies which enabled her to travel to Cuba to study universal healthcare and Cuba's educational system under Raul Castro.[11][12]

    In 2011, she joined the nonprofit news organization ProPublica, which is based in New York City, where she covered civil rights and continued research she started in Oregon on redlining and in-depth investigative reporting on the lack of enforcement of the Fair Housing Act for minorities.[13] Hannah-Jones also spent time in TuscaloosaAlabama, where the decision in Brown v. Board of Education had little effect.[14]

    Hannah-Jones was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.[15]

    1619 Project[edit]

    Main article: The 1619 Project

    In 2019, Hannah-Jones launched a project to re-examine the legacy of slavery in the United States, timed for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia.[31] Hannah-Jones produced a series of articles for a special issue of The New York Times Magazine titled The 1619 Project.[32] The ongoing initiative began August 14, 2019 and "aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative." [33] The project featured essays by a combination of staff writers and academics including Princeton historian Kevin M. Kruse, Harvard-trained lawyer Bryan Stevenson, Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond, and SUNY historian Anne Bailey. In the opening essay, Hannah-Jones wrote "No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed." The project also included poems, short fiction, and a photo essay. Originally conceived of as a special issue, it was soon turned into a full-fledged project, including a special broadsheet section in the newspaper, live events, and a multi-episode podcast series.

    In 2020, Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her work on the 1619 Project.[34] The award cited her “sweeping, provocative and personal essay for the ground-breaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America’s story, prompting public conversation about the nation’s founding and evolution.”[35] Her paper was criticized by historians Gordon S. Wood and Leslie M. Harris, specifically for asserting that "one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery."[36][37][38] The article was “clarified” in March 2020 to read "for some of the colonists".[39] There was also debate around whether the project suggested the nation was founded in 1619 with the arrival of enslaved Africans rather than in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence.[40][41][42] Speaking to New York Times opinion writer Bret Stephens, Hannah-Jones said the suggestion of considering 1619 as a jumping-off point for interpreting US history had always been so self-evidently metaphorical that it went without saying.[43]

    New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute named the 1619 Project as one of the 10 greatest works of journalism in the decade from 2010 to 2019.[44]

    Controversies and criticism[edit]

    Criticism of the 1619 Project[edit]

    In the fall of 2019 the World Socialist Web Site interviewed four leading historians who had major problems with the 1619 Project. This included the leading historians of the American Revolution and the Civil War. Brown University’s Gordon Wood, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on the American Revolution, “couldn’t believe” that Hannah-Jones had argued that the American Revolution was fought to protect slavery.[45] Princeton’s James M. McPherson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for work on the Civil War, stated that he was “disturbed by what seemed like a very unbalanced, one-sided account, which lacked context and perspective on the complexity of slavery.”[46]

    On October 6, 2020, twenty-one scholars from around the United States signed a letter prepared by the National Association of Scholars asking that Hannah-Jones’s Pulitzer Prize be rescinded. The letter pointed out, among other things, factual mistakes, Hannah-Jones’ unwillingness to engage with critics, and that the New York Times had quietly dropped several of her key arguments in later versions of the 1619 Project.[47]

    also, this is the opposite of what historians are supposed to do:

    Other Controversies[edit]

    On April 19, 2020, Hannah-Jones stated in a since-deleted tweet that "There is a difference between being politically black and racially black." This caused critics to accuse her of race-baiting and virtue signaling, and they used the quote to discredit the 1619 Project.[48]

    Finally, her admiration for Ida B. Wells (to the point of using her name as her screen name of Twitter), is clarifying as to her role and agenda:

    Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting[edit]

    In early 2015, Nikole Hannah-Jones, along with Ron Nixon, Corey Johnson, and Topher Sanders, began dreaming of creating the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting.[49] This organization was launched in Memphis, Tennessee, in 2016, with the purpose of promoting investigative journalism, which is the least common type of reporting.[49] Following in the footsteps of Ida B. Wells, this society encourages minority journalists to expose injustices perpetuated by the government and defend people who are susceptible to being taken advantage of.[49] This organization was created with much support from the Open Society FoundationsFord Foundation, and CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.[49]

    She is a 'MUCKRAKER", just as Ida was, which is to be an activist journalist, to pick out stories and narratives to tell and publicize that will hopefully promote change of societal agendas.

    This is not what historians are supposed to do. They are supposed to tell a WHOLE STORY whether they like what it says or not, to the best of their ability.

    This is, however, THE SAME THING that Caolan Robertson describes trying to do in the article cited by Omar Wasow at the top of this thread Focus on conflict. Feed the algorithm. Make sure whatever you produce reinforces a narrative. Don’t worry if it is true.

    No doubt in my mind that a major part of what Hannah-Jones will be teaching as a specially invited journalism professor from the "outside world" is exactly what Robertson was doing, the same methods.


    The current teaching on slavery is literally a whitewash

    The 1619 Project begins a corrective

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/08/28/teaching-slavery-schools/

    There have been other efforts to challenge the pathetic version of slavery taught in schools.

    "In the ways that we teach and learn about the history of American slavery," write the authors of a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), "the nation needs an intervention."

    This new report, titled Teaching Hard History: American Slavery, is meant to be that intervention: a resource for teachers who are eager to help their students better understand slavery — not as some "peculiar institution" but as the blood-soaked bedrock on which the United States was built.

    https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/02/04/582468315/why-schools-fail-to-teach-slaverys-hard-history

    The biggest concern of Leslie Harris, a historian who criticized the 1619 Project from within, was that placing slavery at the forefront of the Revolution who lead critics to dismiss the overall endeavor.

    From Harris.

    Overall, the 1619 Project is a much-needed corrective to the blindly celebratory histories that once dominated our understanding of the past—histories that wrongly suggested racism and slavery were not a central part of U.S. history. I was concerned that critics would use the overstated claim to discredit the entire undertaking. So far, that’s exactly what has happened.

    https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248
     

    We will see how Wells performs as a professor and section chair. The book version of the 1619 Project arrives in November. 

    So far, Wells refuses to be canceled..

     


    In the Politico article above, Leslie Harris noted the following about two of the critics of the 1619 Project.

    By the time Gordon Wood and Sean Wilentz were publishing their first, highly acclaimed books on pre-Civil War America, in the early 1970s and mid-1980s, respectively, academic historians had begun, finally, to acknowledge African American history and slavery as a critical theme in American history. But Wood and Wilentz paid little attention to such matters in their first works on early America.

    In Wood’s exhaustive and foundational The Creation of the American Republic(1969), which details the development of republican ideology in the new nation, there is only one index listing for “Negroes,” and none for slavery. In his first book, Chants Democratic (1984), Wilentz sought to explain how New York’s antebellum-era working class took up republican ideals, which had been used by some Founding Fathers to limit citizenship, and rewrote the tenets to include themselves as full-fledged citizens. Yet Wilentz’s work largely ignored issues of race and black workers, even though New York had the largest population of enslaved black people in the Colonial North, the second-largest population of free black people in the antebellum urban North, and was the site of the most violent race riots of the 19th century. As I wrote in my own 2003 book, Wilentz created “a white hegemony more powerful than that which existed” during the era he was studying.


    It's great to throw these "largest" and "second-largest" around without numbers. By 1790 there were fewer than 5000 free blacks in New York. That may be significant for New York's history, but not so much for a history of antebellum America.

                  White           Free       Slave

    1790.    314,366      4,682      21,193

    1810     918,699     25,333    15,017

    1860.  3,831,590.   49,145        -

    https://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/statistics_on_slavery.htm

    ETA - as a little kid in the South, i recall quite a lot of discussion of blacks and slavery in antebellum US, even in early grades. They're saying this was ignored til 1969 or later? Or just that there's not as much as they'd like mentioned?


    The comments were about New York City's history. Harris' book title: In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 (Historical Studies of Urban America).


    Hawley's setting up his own narrative:


    WATCH: BLM protesters bring traffic to a halt pissing people off and then demand pissed off commuter be arrested cuz he's pissed off.

    https://www.rawstory.com/marvin-scott-protest/

    WATCH: the horrific antics of the white man, almost as horrific as the unfeeling Chauvin in the George Floyd case!!!


    Yeah, that's the white privilege narrative. whypipple with cars feel entitled to the streets created for cars.

    Funny that anti-car pro-bicycle people utilize a variant of this narrative, only it's not about race, it's about drivers of cars. They too act like Nazis who feel entitled to the streets which were originally created for cars.

    Ah but lately I notice angry pedestrians have a narrative as well (and some car drivers too) striking back against bicyclists who act like Nazis and think they own the road now that they have their own lanes....

    which begs the question about what's gonna happen when there's driverless cars--I vaguely recall there's a dystopian futuristic movie where near-human robots are brought in to do coliseum-like shows for humans where they are tortured in various ways and the humans cheer?

    Cue up the famous Rodney King plea here....


    Facebook's decision on readmitting Trump is going to enrage people. But there's more to the story

    Opinion by Christopher A. Bail  @ CNN.com, 5 hrs. ago

    Four months ago, Facebook announced former President Donald Trump had been suspended indefinitely from its platform. On Wednesday morning, Facebook's oversight board -- a first-of-its-kind group of legal experts and human rights leaders -- will announce its decision about whether Trump will be permanently banned.

    Facebook's decision will be a litmus test for social media platforms' capacity to draw the line between the protection of free speech and public safety. But no matter what the outcome, one thing is certain: it will enrage many Americans, and even more will feel helpless about the prospect of political reconciliation on social media. So before Trump takes the spotlight in ongoing discussions about social media and politics once again, is there anything that we -- the citizens of social media -- can do to stem the tide of polarization on our platforms?

    That question may seem wrongheaded. By popular accounts, it was social media companies that trapped us inside ideological echo chambers, ignored misinformation campaigns that divided us even further and built algorithms that radicalize us for profit. But what if I told you that the evidence for each of these claims is surprisingly thin?

    Four years ago, I founded the Polarization Lab at Duke University. We use the tools of computational social science to research the key drivers of political polarization and build new technology to help social media users implement insights from our research.

    Social media companies are by no means blameless for our current situation. But the latest research indicates that most people are not stuck inside political echo chambers, misinformation can have surprisingly little impact on our views and algorithms probably only radicalize a tiny fraction of people.

    These findings may seem surprising, but they are actually quite consistent with decades of research about public opinion. Most people don't care very much about politics, and those that do usually have very strong views that are difficult to change. The small group of people who follow politics closely enough to erect strong echo chambers around themselves also see and share the vast majority of fake news [....]


    Hopefully, the 1619 Project will act as a counter to the real nonsense that opponents of critical race theory want taught in classrooms 

    From Tennessee:

    Tennessee state Rep. Justin Lafferty (R) on Tuesday argued that the three-fifths compromise should be held up as a positive but "bitter" part of U.S. history when arguing for a bill that would prohibit critical race theory from being taught in Tennessee public schools.

    The Tennessee House of Representatives was debating a bill, HB0580, that would prohibit critical race theory from being taught in schools.

    “I’ve sat here praying for about five or 10 minutes about how I'm going to try and address the body in this issue. Still not sure I have the answer, but if you guys will bear with me, I'll see where it takes us,” Lafferty said on the House floor.

    The lawmaker went on to argue that the agreement to count three-fifths of a slave population when determining taxation and representation in the U.S. House was intended to help end slavery “well before Abraham Lincoln. Well before Civil War.”

    He said it “was a direct effort to ensure that southern states never got the population necessary to continue the practice of slavery everywhere else in the country” by limiting the number of representatives slave-owning states had in Congress.

    It's an argument that occasionally comes up among lawmakers, though historians generally agree the three-fifths compromise, which was reached in 1787 increased the power of slave-holding states. Slavery was not abolished in the U.S. for another 90 years

    He also lauded the country’s founders for “biting a bitter, bitter pill” of slavery in order to ensure the support of the southern states in the Revolutionary War.

    “I don't hear that anywhere in this conversation across the country. I don't know how we've gotten here. I don't know what we do about it, but talking about changing our history — changing is not the right word — talking about incorporating another view of history, while ignoring the very writings that we have access to is no way to go about it,” Lafferty said.

    After Lafferty stopped speaking, Republican members of the House stood up and applauded his remarks.

    https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/551773-tennessee-legislator-praises-3-5-compromise-on-state-house-floor
     

    This nonsense is acceptable to legislators oh so worried about CRT.


    Who needs 1619 when we got Wikipedia:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-fifths_Compromise

    Sounds like 3/5 was suggested to keep the South from being taxed fully on slaves - a national tax that never happened, but as "compromise" they let the South count non-voting slaves as 3/5 a vote, a huge boon for Southern power, not realized so much at that time, but a decade or 2 later as the invention of the cotton gin led to a huge expansion of slaves in sparsely populated new states (Daniel Boone's pioneering legacy), slave states could then keep up with high immigration northern states (and a pretty powerful enticement to expand slavery - a kind of forced gerrymandering with black people as census tokens)

    How encouraging the South to fight *after* the war is fit is one of those great leaps of logic from our suthurn education system, requiring 6th grade eddykayshun/12 years of skoolin'.


    If that is the Southern education system, 1619 should be no problem.

    No school system is being forced to teach information from the 1619 Project

    Other gems from the current system:

    Louisiana Lawmaker Wants to Ban ‘Divisive Concepts’ Like Critical Race Theory, Also Wants to Teach About the ‘Good’ in Slavery

    https://www.theroot.com/louisiana-lawmaker-wants-to-ban-divisive-concepts-lik-1846782815

    From Senator Tom Cotton

    Tom Cotton describes slavery as a ‘necessary evil’ in bid to keep schools from teaching 1619 Project

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/27/politics/tom-cotton-slavery-necessary-evil-1619-project/index.html

    Given the crap currently taught, 1619 might bring a needed change.

     

    Robert Woodson publishes a counter to 1619.

    Robert Woodson's "Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers" is set for release on the 11th. We will get his rebuke of 1619 in a series of essays by various authors.

    https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/02/19/these-black-scholars-and-leaders-rebuke-1619-projects-narrative-of-victimhood/


    What the hell? "Politicians are foisting off bastardized history" is right up there with "dog scratched himself".

    Again, show me where Wikipedia isn't enough to describe basic history, without a major spin and propaganda job like 1619? You didn't like Southern Lost Cause mythology - why do you think critical rice theory mythology is more edifying? Why not history? Just yesterday Judges Berman Jackson Tóře the DoJ a new asshole for presenting a final conclusion as a "protected deliberative document" - we all know what happens when we draw the conclusions first and then write the justifications. 1619 will turn out no different - it's an exercise in self-stroking masturbation and mutual dry humping presented as "history". Fine if you do it in your bathroom, not in public. Rosy Palms and Sticky Wicket are accepted expert citations among experts.


    I'm ignorant of critical race theory. I'm not happy that someone at 1619 said that preserving slavery was a motive for the American Revolution. Lord Dunmore's proclamation probably brought some Virginians over to the patriot side. But that was after the conflict began, and long after the agitation began. I'd have to see a record that Jefferson, Franklin, Henry or the others said that a threat to slavery was the reason they were doing all this stuff. King George wasn't out to abolish slavery, so far as I know.


    nice comment Aaron, and love that you're wandering on this thread...but then you're an old hand at reading and deconstructing narratives with your interest in IP (the many "stories" you must have read!)


    The Mansfield Judgment of 1772 (Somerset vs Stewart) did gave some hope of emancipation at least in England and Wales proper, though actual scope of the ruling was limited (slaves could refuse return elsewhere but received no citizens rights) and slave trade wasn't abolished til 35 years later with slavery another 25-30 years. But still, among many US slaves at the time of the Revolution, Britain became seen as a more likely horse to bet on for eventual freedom (King George not really weighing in on the topic, however):

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/dirty-little-secret-115579444/


     Since the British offered freedom to the slaves of rebels it's natural that slaves would see the British as liberators. But I think the 1619 lady was saying that Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, and the others were motivated by the aim of protecting slavery(before the war began, presumably).


    Oh, the 1619 lady's crazy - I'm just talking about normal documented history.
    There's a lot of Black History we don't know - same as a lot of other topics (e.g. the recent documentary on Native Americans in Rock 'n Roll). Not everything has to be rolled out as a suppressed conspiracy - we overlook stuff due to lack of time, etc - just presenting interesting topics as overlooked but interesting is prolly enough. Making them the centerpiece of a whole new questionable blaming/scolding approach to history was bound to have blowback.


    Bonding around a lie as a kind of hazing/initiation ceremony


    Now here's "working to outlaw indoctrination of one narrative in public institutions":


    Matthew spots more distorting narratives for and against distorting narrative:

    In each of these stories there is such a contrast between the headlines and the text of the legislation, with both GOP legislators and angry liberals seemingly invested in overstating the drama. pic.twitter.com/V2oE4AFlJf

    — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 7, 2021

    When we say our algorithms are not for your kinda narratives, we mean it: Twitter Suspends Trump's New Account For Trying To Evade The Ban On His Old Account

    By Tommy Baer @ Forbes.com, May 6

    TOPLINE

     Twitter has suspended an account created to share posts from a website recently launched by former President Donald Trump, claiming the new handle is an attempt to bypass the suspension of his personal account, in the latest move by a major social media company limiting Trump's ability to spread his message.

    KEY FACTS

    The new site, "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump," went live Tuesday, as did its accompanying Twitter handle, @DJTDesk.    

    By late Wednesday night, the account had been suspended

    A Twitter spokesperson told Forbes: "As stated in our ban evasion policy, we'll take enforcement action on accounts whose apparent intent is to replace or promote content affiliated with a suspended account." [....]


    Which narrative is which?


    I have noticed in the past that tribal narratives of all kinds do often have a problem fitting in with The Olympics' own longtime (and very transparent) narrative of competition between nation states!


    Beware things like ...when government officials abused by Trump were instinctively deified by liberal Twitter and cable TV... Especially when your own health and life are at risk - enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.


    Fake net neutrality campaign finally recognized as fake net neutrality campaign.

    https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_6094159ee4b05af50dcd45dc


    Tribal narratives are the air that Identity Politics breathes:

    The Nazis did it, why not everyone else, huh?

     


    How small numbers win


    sounds so familiar somehow


    You may have posted this already, not worth taking time to check ;-) or else your comment is about the paradigm itself, how minority views/concerns gain the most acceptance 


    Oh I didn't mean the article, I meant it sarcastically, about certain interactions herewink


    Not really - those minority views haven't got accepted or mainstreamed - the blog's just gotten smaller.


    Not many profitable narratives to push today:


    Unhappy Days


    Show of strength @ Apple Weakly

    Nothing says power like 2000 women bonding together to take in 1 obnoxious dude

    (thank God he's Hispanic - hate to have another chit against us whiteys)

    https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22433437/apple-hire-antonio-garcia-ma...


    wow that's this guy, I follow him on Twitter, he's a very eloquent writer of the european type, author of the best seller Chaos Monkeys. He's more into deconstructing narratives rather than creating them. He's certainly no misogynist of the base internet incel type or geek, more "courtly" if anything. I vaguely recall seeing him tweeting a couple adoring things about his little daughter. I guess I could imagine a little of Pablo Picasso type attitude towards wimmin in him, but then again not really. I'd certainly have no problem with working for him! Your link does make it sound like he's the classic male geek type and he's not that at all, I didn't realize it was about the same guy until I googled.


    Conor Friedersdorf on The Verge story:

    Block the box... but also, investigate all potential hires for any bygone wrongthink published in their writing careers. Does no one understand how giving these incentives to hiring bureaucracies at major corporations will chill expression for everyone?https://t.co/ea3GY1iD8q pic.twitter.com/JC18RjdERy

    — Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) May 13, 2021

    I should add to his point with this: in reading his Twitter feed over time, Garcia Martinez appeared to me to take this job (which he never identified what it was, just mentioned it in general and then would tweet about being back in the city) as doing it NOT because he needed a job, because he didn't, and he actually preferred living away from the city, on a houseboat of some sort. But he was tempted by a chance to give "Silicon Valley" one more try, to get it to do things better than he described in "Chaos Monkeys" and elsewhere. So basically it sounded like they recruited him, not the other way around. Possibly as a "creative", someone with alternative ideas on how to do things.

    Which makes Friedersdorf's point more pungent, about bureaucracies, how they stifle speech and creativity.

    One thing I'm sure of: Garcia-Martinez would have a "well then take this job and shove it" attitude, carry on with your crap that you apparently need, I'll gladly leave. Very similar in many ways to Yglesias' situation at Vox.


    And what do you do about the ladies on Goodreads who give him 3.5-5 stars over on Goodreads? Some acknowledging how misogynistic he is yet liked or loved it anyway? Should they write to Apple management too, or are we back to the small numbers thing - we give more consideration to intolerant people's opinion than tolerant ones'. Cause the latter are chill, the former are Banshees (am i allowed to appropriate that tribe still?)

    [oh, i thought Banshees were native Americans of some sort, but instead it's a misogynistic term for faeries who herald death, or a seminal goth 80s band with a female singer who i met in a cafe/book reading one night and took to a gay bar for the sake of her friend.]


    these things are always "eye of the beholder", and ocean-kat's reaction is a perfect example of that, but here is a good example of the whyfore of the Goodreads wimmin:

    Comment from a (female) reader who, like many, picked up 'Chaos Monkeys' due to the brouhaha, and is now discovering that the book is actually an unfiltered look at tech and entrepreneurship and has very little to do with what's painted in the current narrative. pic.twitter.com/udZdBulNkY

    — Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm) May 20, 2021

    also this is from a techie, and I think that Garcia Martinez is playing an important role in voicing how people like Tevi feel but don't have the luxury of saying "take your job and shove it":

    I appreciate your words more than you know. The hate out there chills me to the bone.

    — Tevi Hirschhorn (@tevih) May 20, 2021

    Myself, I probably will not every read "Chaos Monkeys", I consider that history that I don't have time for. And actually, like with Yglesias, I prefer that he not have a corporate position so that he will continue to speak his thoughts freely instead of censoring himself for a job. (That's very much about talent, not freedom of speech; I am an elitist that way, I do wish many without talent would censor themselves a bit more!) I very much enjoy his romantic style of commentary on Twitter. And that really doesn't have anything to do with the topic of this thread, it's an individual's interpretation of life rather than a narrative being pushed for a political or some other agenda. He doesn't push it on others, he observes, like Proust. Is my favorite kind of writing.

     


    Chaos Monkeys touches on my world, so is more interesting than it would likely be to you.
    Especially since the bubble in SV is likely quite different from NY - both investment & art.
    But it's useful to consider *how* he parses the situation, which can then be used for other milieus.
    1 big item is how "culture fit" is its own kind of discrimination/preserving the bubble while pretending to be tolerant.
    Another is that the startup is more times than not *offering the team or individuals to bigger companies*, not actually selling the product or service they think is their purpose. It's a weird shell game.
    Now there are all these incubators - basically startups are *paying* for the honor of being pre-interviewed by possible tie-ins to better companies, no guarantees - some kind of grooming that Jeffrey Epstein would appreciate.
    I also got a kick out of a major industrial company - GE or equivalent - giving a whopping $4000 to the winner of a hackathon (who would then sign over the rights of the winning idea) - there's a sucker born every minute.
    So considering in New York what people *say* they're doing vs *what they actually do* is of paramount importance.
    I'd imagine it helps read the tea leaves for NFTs, new culture focus, etc. - while some scratch their heads saying "this isn't what we do", you might be able to come back with "well duh, yeah, cuz X is really doing Y..." or conversely, "they think this is our business, but that's just lipstick on a pig, the real cash/payout is...." and analyze all these latest trends for business worth, or look for gaps that actually provide an opportunity.
    When i was little, my brothers would tell me, "go get me a soda from the fridge - we'll time you", and like a sucker I'd do it. Somehow decades later I feel it hasn't really changed - just the fridge is bigger and the companies are bigger jerks than my brothers and I'm joined by lots of other suckers. Knowing when you're being scammed should be freshman level stuff at least.


    Silicon Valley behemoth that stores data on everyone around the world didn't know what a guy wrote 5 years ago in a best seller about Silicon Valley.


    He's tweeted a real good "gotcha" now, Apple will be sorry they didn't keep him on, after writing a best seller on that world and then having time off to ponder what it really all meant, i.e., coulda shoulda woulda, he was probably an invaluable asset, a real smart recruitment of someone who could break up groupthink

    Après moi, le déluge.https://t.co/w8irq2fXJK

    — Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm) May 20, 2021

    Best of luck, Apple. This will be your life now every week.

    If the US isn't careful, the Chinese are going to eat them and their tech sector alive.

    — Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm) May 20, 2021

    I'm pretty sure of one thing: Steve Jobs would be real happy with him, though arguing with him all the time.

    Edit to add:

    Live shot of Apple's Slack community manager right now. pic.twitter.com/IGjpnsvwOl

    — Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm) May 20, 2021

    Rebekah Jones, the COVID Whistleblower Who Wasn’t (about Florida Covid data)

    Remarkable story https://t.co/wI5KYSmUJP

    — Ben Smith (@benyt) May 13, 2021

    Found retweeted by Maggie Haberman; Ben Smith is NYTimes' media columnist

    Edit to add Smith's second tweet:

    Here's @zeynep on progressive delusions about Florida death rates https://t.co/yXptIRgmcc

    — Ben Smith (@benyt) May 13, 2021

    "@zeynep" writes on Complex systems, wicked problems. Society, technology and more. @UNC professor. Word in @TheAtlantic@NYTimes My newsletter is @insight : http://theinsight.org

    Her full name is Zeynep Tufekci She is McColl Term Associate Professor, UNC School of Information and Library Science.


    Ouch. Plus why does everything we know about Covid seem to be wrong?

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/01/why-does-the-pandemic-seem...


    could be it's all wimmin's fault cheeky


    You know the Chaos Monkeys guy fired from Apple for his misogynistic rant about women? That was to say how lame all the other women were, but his was brilliant and persevering and ruthless and would go all Ninja Warrior if she needed to take someone out... , my girl is red hot, your girl aint diddley squat...

    I'm worried that where guys have (or had) a reputation for being better joke tellers, for even having tons of jokes ready to tell, while many women may not have a single one, that just the idea of getting the joke will be lost, or appreciating humor - all turned literal.

    I read Chaos Monkeys, and the writing is pretty brilliant - he's not just telling a Silicon Valley tale - he's doing his best to make every paragraph funny, irreverent, interesting - and pretty much succeeding, far past this LinkedIn motivation porn with cringey dad humor and what not. And the reward for writing brilliantly is... canned. Well, he gets to sit on his expensive yacht and sail around the Seattle coastline, so not a tale if woe, but i can only imagine how shitty work-life in the 90's would have been if every bit of humor had been denied, not to mention flirting in reasonable circumstances. We're all getting weird.

    (tho someone who'd worked at WaPo said there were basically no women in decent management positions so they had to go outside to hire rather than promote from within. So again, these check marks at the top aren't the whole story either)


    He basically has an answer for you in his latest tweet:

    Once in my teen years, we were taking a family photo and someone suggested I kneel in front to fit everyone into the frame.

    My flinty Cuban grandma suddenly interjected 'de rodillas nunca!'. 'On your knees, never!'

    She ordered me to stand instead.

    Thinking of that now.

    — Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm) May 14, 2021

    Maybe it's that Cuban blood, Yglesias has it too?

    In following him (which I did because it was very very clear he was a good writer, just having read tweets by him and nothing else, with a sophisticated, almost jaded worldly cultural outlook,) I learned he was a cat fan, rather than a dog guy. A cat guy is not the sign of a misogynist, rather it is a male who is sometimes bewitched and bedazzled by the other sex. It's a dog guy who throws a cat down the stairs if it claws something and can't stand their independence, dog guys like the fawning unconditional adoration that comes from a dog.


    yes Yglesias is empathetic:


    He is writing a story, aggrandized non-fiction, like the half lies more interesting embellishments i tell when back from travel. Part is of course his personality, and the Cuban and other specific traits help give it a unique flavor - he doesn't know who Lady Gaga is, hates music, yadda yadda. But also he has some keen perceptions of people and situations, and a nice spiced up gift for description without (IMHO) coming across too much.*

    Imagine Hunter Thompson writing, yet worried about job references afterwards. Fear and Nothingness in Las Vegas. This new world is gonna suck. In the book, there are just lots of things to *think about*, unique perspectives whether you agree or not. Isn't that much of why we read?

    I remember a while back a book "my cousin, my gastroenterologist",back in the 80s where it felt like the writer was trying to cram way too much in, trying to be clever. Here it feels stuffed but largely effortless, while still being an excellent practical business book... (Like any TED Talk, don't take it too literal). well done 


    Story actually does very much belong on this thread. Woke cancellers are pushing certain narratives but those are very situationally limited and myopic, and one could say, selfish:

    When you work with the Chinese government and Dr. Dre but declare that someone with no history of violence at all renders you unsafe something is amiss.https://t.co/jMU6Flit84

    — Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) May 14, 2021

    Corporate U.S. likes this, they don't have to stretch too too much to keep all you elites as employees and customers.

     


    Again Taibbi is great when he stays away from Russia.

    And here's that paean of affection that jumped out at me as well - misogyny? The boy's in love, and this is way into the applaud zone of non-sexual female appreciation for a Cuban:

    British Trader, on the other hand, was the sort of woman who would end up a useful ally in that postapocalypse, doing whatever work—be it carpentry, animal husbandry, or a shotgun blast to someone’s back—required doing.

    One has to look hard in adventure movies for females sharing the weight like this - Angelina Jolie as co-assassin in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Karen Allen drinking Sherpas under the table in some Indiana Jones, the resourceful Muslim women in Battle for Algiers slipping through heart stopping checkpoints and setting off café bombs....


    heh, got to admit this is a good one as to the Apple-Woke-Employee-Narrative:

     


    Personally I believe CNN & MSNBC does this too, especially in its nighttime programming. Including complaining about media not covering it, whatever it is. It's just different topics, of course.


    It's part of marketing - "tune in here for what the others won't tell you" - basic differentiating 


    Promoting Controversy (& saving it)


    another example of the desire to tell a narrative ignoring the face of reality



    related to speaking one's mind if not science, Antonio Garcia Martinez is getting really pissed now:


    I've read several passages of his book and they are extremely misogynistic. When I ran a painting business I would have fired someone who talked like that pretty quick. 


    First, he's writing, not talking. What does he talk like? we don't really know.
    Not sure which passages you're referring to,so can't really assess, but I have pointed out repeatedly
    that the most famous one is "these other girls are useless, but my girl is clever & would put a bullet in someone's back for me" - not really a comment about "all girls" at all. When he's describing Sheryl Sandberg at work, he's quite quite flattering. He has nothing but good things to say about the co-worker he bangs in the closet - good sportsmanship that he doesn't let a little nookie ruin a professional relationship, right? (and it was largely a *tech* status fuck - she was his equal at the keyboard)
    Third,he's being Hunter Thompson of Silicon Valley, up there with Wolf of Wall Street. Remember "A Million Little Pieces" that turned out to be largely faked? That's poetic fiction for you - truthy. But fiction.
    But still, would we assume the author of "American Psycho" was really a psycho, or get him fired for something written in that book where he kills off his date, dropping a chainsaw on her from 4 flights up?
    When Truman Capote wrote "In Cold Blood" and let his persona get a bit close to the killer's, was he blackballed?
    Was Apple offended by the passage where Jobs treats Wozniak like so much underpaid Polish nightshift worker labor?
    And no, this isn't a painting business - the guy runs through pretty high stakes, high paced Wall Street & Silicon Valley worlds. Part of what he's describing is the distorted world. Is it more misogynistic how he talks about women, or how few women have any real stature in Silicon Valley, the bro culture with very few females? For broadcast conventions, women are largely dolled up fuck toys as eye candy. Am I more misogynistic for saying it, or are they more misogynistic for doing & being it?


     not really a comment about "all girls" at all.

    Image

    Gracia's book wasn't fiction. It was claimed to be and written as an autobiography.

    "Is it more misogynistic how he talks about women, or how few women have any real stature in Silicon Valley, the bro culture with very few females?"

    Is one member of a misogynistic culture who writes an unapologetically misogynistic book about that misogynistic culture worse than the misogynistic culture? I suppose the whole is worse than any one part of the whole. But it's not a question I care to spend much time thinking about or discussing

     


    Not fiction, no, just Hunter Thompson exaggerated semi-Virtual Worlds tech geek speed dating version of the Bay Area ecosystem that reflects the 12 hour a day coding for life milieu - cinema verité, no? Notice the part of the quote someone left out, and tell me the purpose of the juxtaposition of these 2 descriptions, one that seems to have walked out of a trailer for an Angelina Jolie movie or Terminator movie as sidekick:

    Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit. They have their self- regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they’d become precisely the sort of useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel. British Trader, on the other hand, was the sort of woman who would end up a useful ally in that postapocalypse, doing whatever work—be it carpentry, animal husbandry, or a shotgun blast to someone’s back— required doing. Long story short, you wanted to tie your genetic wagon to the bucking horse of her bloodline. Which is why I was less nervous than I should have been on a random Saturday in July, when I showed up for a brunch appointment and found her uncharacteristically moody. She complained of feeling nauseated and slightly out of it. With perhaps too much offhandedness, while grabbing the local newspaper off her couch, I suggested, “Well, perhaps do a pregnancy test.” 

    "Not fiction", eh? It's half Silicon Rom-Com, Harry met Sally stuff with a startup vibe and no time for an actual relationship 

     If you had been standing on the corner of Broadway and MacArthur Boulevard in Oakland the night of March 7, 2010, you would have seen a curious sight. A heavily pregnant woman, bent over in pain and scarcely able to walk, was being half carried, half dragged across the street by a tall, goateed man. The woman could barely stand, and needed to pause and cling to either the man, or any fixed object, as they struggled across the last couple hundred feet. Every ten paces or so, the woman would double over and gasp in pain, bringing everything to a halt. The man was simultaneously trying to check for traffic, keep his female companion from collapsing, tow a large suitcase, and navigate the whole lurching ensemble toward the emergency room door. That goateed man, gentle reader, was me. The woman was a former City of London derivatives trader. She was thirty-seven weeks pregnant. We had known each other for thirty-nine weeks. Let’s rewind before we fast-forward again. “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.” If you ever run across an online dating profile with the above as a tagline, be aware you’re in for one fucking life-changing date. I had found British Trader’s profile while searching for the keyword “sailing.” Thematic searches (e.g., “physics,” “PhD,” “beer”) were my way of finding some iota of common ground with which to structure an introductory message. At the time, online dating sites distinguished themselves mostly by the demographics of their members. Craigslist was for escorts, fat chicks in Fremont, and serial killers. OkCupid was for penniless hipster chicks who lived in shared flats in the Mission. Match.com was for professional women busy with the time-honored tradition of husband shopping. Choose your audience, and write your ad copy. Mine was heavy on the sailing and outdoor adventuring. Zero mention of diaper changes and daycare drop-offs. Truth in advertising, more or less. She had vaguely Slavic-looking cheekbones and feline eyes. Her Match profile photo featured her at the tiller of a boat, which instantly quintupled her attractiveness. Message led to dinner date. Dinner date led to an opera outing...

    Dating 101 for Frisco, including the "helping/dragging the pregnant concubine across the street as she nears dropping Baby 2.0 Early Release in the middle of the intersection, no Help Desk in sight... nothing tongue-in-cheek or exaggerated, right? When he runs through the 4 types of dating sights, that's an earnest evaluation of their female clientele, right?

    Gracia's book wasn't fiction. It was claimed to be and written as an autobiography.

    Yes, that was my complaint about "Autobiography of a Vampire" - totally misleading - i sometimes had the feeling the guy wasn't a vampire at all, pissed me off.


    Yes, that was my complaint about "Autobiography of a Vampire"

    It's absolute nonsense to compare it to Garcia's autobiography. I'm not interested in playing a game with that level of bullshit


    It's called "a joke". Though if you didn't get Garcia-Martinez's humor, I doubt if you'll get mine.

    BTW, as others have pointed out, Apple has a multi-million dollar deal with Dr Dre for their highly popular Beats ear pods, even tho Dre talks about the bitchez in much much more misogynistic terms than Antonio. But that's just fictional songwriting, right? He doesn't hold the sluts in such contempt in real life, certainly not enough to be denied work in a paint shop.


    I never found the argument that x is acceptable because y is worse convincing. If that's the argument we can just say "Hitler" and be done with all discussion of anything less.


    So hypocrisy, lack of justifiable standard, arbitrary decisions are all ok - like suddenly deciding we should protest Elon Musk on SNL but not Donald Trump, despite Trump emoting worse traits in almost every category and very few positives - it's all good! Let's just make shit up as we go, including using works of partial fiction/truthiness as standards by which we judge ppl in real life. Yum! Makes it easier to hire the guy you like & fire the guy you don't, cuz the argument just cuz ones worse than the other isn't really an argument!

    PS - and that Dr Dre is a main symbol of Apple now, not just any old advertising section program chief. Would Dr Dre be prohibited from taking Antonio's job, it is there another arbitrary rule to invoke (like he's hip, he's good looking, he's smooth... you know, one of the normal standards we work by)


    Antonio splains it all



    Debunking a 1990's narrative, that far right extremists are all white racists (repeat of just posted on extremist news thread):

    Many (most?) activists and academics are working under an outdated model of anti-gov extremist demographics.

    This isn't the 1990s.

    Black, Brown and extremist: Across the far-right spectrum, people of color play a more visible role https://t.co/EvW9RqpVhl

    — JJ MacNab (@jjmacnab) May 17, 2021

    Just thinking how if FBI and CIA and other detective types fall for narratives and don't keep an open mind, stuff could happen like: lots of people could die.


    beginning excerpt; my underlining because I think that's a major point that many far righties believe:

    Brandon Rapolla is not who springs to mind as the face of the far right.

    Rapolla’s brown skin, a reflection of his multiracial ancestry, is at odds with images of White guys in self-styled militias wearing camouflage in the woods. The militia stereotype is so entrenched, Rapolla said, that airline ticket agents have refused to believe him when he gives them a heads-up that he’s on a domestic terrorism watch list.

    “This one lady — she was Asian — she said, ‘Darling, you don’t look like a domestic terrorist. It’s a mistake,’ ” Rapolla recalled. “I said, ‘Nope, I am. That’s what I’m labeled as.’ ”

    Rapolla, a 46-year-old former Marine, has participated in four armed standoffs with the federal government, including the “Bundy Ranch” episode in 2014. He was active in two far-right factions — the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters — and co-founded the Pacific Patriots Network to boost cooperation. His trajectory, he said, shows how people of color are carving space in movements that are generalized as exclusively White in membership and racist in ideology.

    Rapolla’s father has roots in China and Guam, while his mother is a mix of Scandinavian, Inuit, Mexican and Greek ancestry. None of that matters, he said, when he stands alongside fellow “patriots” who share his concerns about government overreach and Second Amendment rights.

    “People on the far right are automatically labeled as racist,” Rapolla said. “It’s a weapon used by elitists in order to keep their power where they want it.”

    People of color are playing increasingly visible roles across the spectrum of far-right activism. Today, non-White activists speak for groups of radicalized MAGA supporters, parts of the “Patriot” movement, and, in rare cases, neo-Nazi factions. Although a few have concealed their identities, many others proudly acknowledge their backgrounds and offer themselves as counterpoints to charges of pervasive racism in right-wing movements.[.....]

    article is by Hannah Allam and Razzan Nakhlawi, National Security researcher


    On the victim olympics thing, which is not always about political agenda, often just a competition for the bottom spot, for the *most conspired against* crown, I guess:

    For the afternoon crowd: I wrote an essay about how an Amazon glitch was briefly, and almost joyously, treated as an instance of persecution. https://t.co/o2H4iIemMv

    — Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) May 18, 2021

     



    then there's buying into a narrative for the demographic's $$$$$$$$:

    Demi Lovato identifies as non-binary and changes pronouns to they/them

    The singer announced the decision to use gender-neutral pronouns as "this best represents the fluidity I feel in my gender expression." They added, "I’m doing this for those out there that haven’t been able to share who they truly are with their loved ones."

    This news is a Twitter "Event", gets it's own url to a page with lots of news stories and tweets.

    I am curious as I suspect these "Events" are for sale.I suspect this is similar to the olden days where you have a P.R. agent you pay to get you in Variety or New York Post's Page Six. In the past they would often use a semi-sex-scandal story to show how sexy and desirable and news worthy you were, how interesting your persona was and how it would attract fans and haters, readers and debate. (The Donald used to try to pretend he was a P.R. agent to gossip media, pushing stories about himself.)

    In any case, I am cynical , I think this shows Demi Lovato appealing to the demographic that would be interested in this and to be controversial enough to cause attention but not too controversial as to attract a lot of bad actors.

     


    David here (who I know little about) judging from this single reply, seems like the ultimate brutal narrative-killing type of guy surprise:


    Not vanishingly rare or the ultimate status symbol or either?
    Occasionally an extra word or 2 helps make a point.


    Oh really, you don't say?


    Trendy And accepted topics get approved. Challenging an accepted area largely won't get funded anyway, even tho something like this eccentric mRNA approach is where breakthroughs happen (but not often)



    Cheney & her narrative
    Can't let it go - winning is still everything.
    (and that "we'd won" was precisely because of the tasteless, largely illegal fight they pulled off, Roger Stone's "Brooks Brother rebellion" & that special interference by the Supreme Court - she believes her own shit still)
    Think Kavanaugh got his lift on that event as well.





    Jay Rosen on why the GOP narrative is what it is:



    It's certainly a question that's always irked me. And it really is all about compelling narratives. More like this article would really help.


    Thought-provoking (especially as a secular Jew, and as one that has been deep in the modern tech world and one that appreciates language) that he thinks we don't even have the language to logically discuss Israel in contemporary reality

    Israel is a people with a state and a religion, and a government willing and able to do anything to protect its citizens, whether the enemy be COVID or Hamas.

    Everything about that is loathsome to the contemporary Western liberal.

    — Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm) May 30, 2021

    Current political discourse doesn't even possess the language to discuss the very notion; Israel is conceptually outside the entire Overton window of polite Western discourse.

    Which of course is why Israel commentary in US or Europe is both so shrill and uninformed.

    — Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm) May 30, 2021

    Does synch with how so many basically approach it using one ancient narrative or another.


    UNC donor on 1619: "just the facts, ma'am"

    https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_60b43983e4b02a79db8f6679


    thread:


    a hint that Omar Wasow is thinking along scholarly lines on this topic, which is absolutely fabulous:

    he got only one person answering his tweet publicly so far, here's the discussion

    Do they even have "Mass Comm" departments at most universities these days or are they called something else?


    excellent review from January of how various media had covered the Jacob Blake case, those who stuck with facts and those who fanned the flame of their narrative, following with mentions of how elected officials had worse behavior than media:

    I think he's right to make the latter point, whether from left or from right--and there are definitely more who do it on the right, of course--as this is why most people don't trust politicians going back centuries, if not millennia (read some Roman political graffitti sometime.) And in particular those who are swing voter and independent types usually voice the opinion that they don't trust politicians and/or the parties.

     The important point: the western mid-century ideal of a professional independent media not being out to push political narratives (unlike "Fleet Street" or Hearst yellow journalism) is not something to disparage, but something we might still demand with our media choices. It may be an impossible ideal to achieve but striving towards it could solve a heckuva lot of serious divisiveness problems (remembering how Walter Cronkite had a stellar trustworthiness rating with the American public and he managed to narrate stories based on facts just fine, didn't just do dry facts and figures and policy.)

    Pre-emptive: Crying but but the other side does it worse, why don't you pick on them and screaming that Holden is being disingenuous by choosing this example, that is not going to fly with someone like me. It's all bad and this is a good example of the left being bad. It is what it is. I truly do believe this country not only has no need for left versions of Tucker Carlsen, but that it is extremely harmful. And any media person and any politician that doesn't do it is exactly the kind I fully support!


    p.s. big part of the problem: anger, fear and hate sell:


    Matthew Fisher was killed for drug money, not as a hate crime - but when the victimhood feels so good, turning off the rhetoric is tough to impossible - truthyland wins 


    Trump shuts down blog! NO RATINGS!!! A LOSER!!!

    While some who have been de-platformed have found a home on other right-wing social platforms, Trump’s blog didn’t do much to encourage anyone to stick around, which helps explain why it disappeared into an internet black hole.https://t.co/syxXfVlRD7

    — CJR (@CJR) June 3, 2021

    Read it. 

    He's 75 in a little over a month with tons of court cases to handle.

    So what is Trumpism story from now on without Trump?

    Those who are into the narrative he is, that the election was stolen are going to be forever tarnished by Jan. 6. activists who are also being prosecuted. That's going nowhere growth-wise, ratings-wise.

    Those who loved him for the anti-political-correctness culture wars of his twitter feed and rally rants, they are still there. They've actually been a major part of the GOP base for quite some time.But without his daily shot of encouragement it's going to be different.

    I would suspect in that case, it's important for the left not to feed the trolls on culture wars issues when they are raised, like by  Marjorie Greene, Ted Cruz or Matt Gaetz types? I do think nefarious non-U.S. actors will try to take advantage of doing that, though. Just asking, thinking. Trump fans will no doubt always be there, but without his daily encouragement it will be their memory of what Trump was like, not someone manipulating them daily.

    He never really had a narrative that made any sense besides: Trump narcissist attacking the politically correct.


    this too

    CNN's Dana Bash reported Thursday morning that former President Donald Trump is "more obsessed than ever with the 2020 election," with one former Trump aide telling her that the former President is only listening to "the bottom of the bottom of the crazies in the barrel."


    more; it's the new Trump story and he's sticking to it:

     


    Hah the "Patriot Takes" user name tells you what you need to know: they watch for the crazies' narratives so you don't have to:


    Now here's a group trying to refresh and invigorate their narrative but the result seems to be parody of themselves and the video is actually just entertaining in a video game or comic book sorta way:

     




    he has added:


    and now he's getting carried away and freaking out:


    Fire extinguisher didn't "blow up" - there was confusion from the riots of who did what, Palmer did hit another officer with a fire extinguisher, Sicknick appeared to be sprayed by bear spray, he supposedly died from "natural causes" with 2 strokes the next day, but almost certainly the illegal assault of madmen on the Capitol played a role in those natural causes.

    As for Russian anything, they like feeding disinfo. Many still feel Russiagate was fake, partially thanks to disinfo from the Steele Report deflecting attention to lesser players.



    here's the reporting busting the narrative for those who might not have seen it:


    No prob on hangs - if happens to >4 again, make the comment you want to keep start with a different word, and then I can click & delete all the problem children in one go. But certainly easier than some of Dick Day's back in the good ole day (hi Dick, wherever you are!)




    Four Democratic Senators using mass murder victims as pawns in a long term narrative about victimhood, absolutely for craven political purposes:


    now here's a "first generation American" House Democrat who knows how easy it could be to leave that all behind and just commemorate Americans losing their lives:

    So easy not to fan the divisiveness and identity group thing. Why o why do they continue to do it? It just agitates, feeds more fear of "the other" whoever the other might me.


    They've identified who they think their base is, and keep pandering & feeding them. It's one thing if it's based on truth, but eventually it becomes "at any cost".


    oh lordy if it really became a hot thing:


    always check with Daniel Dale about current hot political narratives:




    Hamburgers, Fauci and election fraud: How Biden World combats disinformation

    The White House has two dozen staffers working on it. And they’ve outsourced even more.

    By NATASHA KORECKI @ Politico.com, 06/16/2021

    [....] It’s a pervasive problem that Democrats believe they must aggressively confront in 2022 and 2024. And it’s one that the White House isn’t taking on alone. Outside, allied organizations have assumed different roles in monitoring and determining what content is consumed on social media.

    Combating misinformation (falsehoods) and disinformation (intentional falsehoods) can be a massive undertaking that requires intense and meticulous social media tracking. It also means confronting social media platforms, which can create First Amendment issues for the White House, if it is viewed as trying to restrict content.

    Building Back Together, an advocacy group closely aligned with Biden, has assumed the role of battling social media outfits, including Facebook, on behalf of the White House, in an ongoing effort to keep false election narratives off the platform. The DNC has taken on more of the hand-to-hand combat in defense of Biden and other Democrats, as well as keeping track of emerging themes it has identified as building momentum on the right.

    One such focal point is critical race theory. The academic concept of civil rights scholars was barely a blip on social media in 2020. But since January, there have been 25 million interactions involving critical race theory on Facebook, according to a DNC analysis. Discussions about transgender sports, too, have dominated conservative sites, said Durigan, aimed at stoking fears that an executive order Biden signed protecting transgender people from discrimination would “destroy women’s sports.”

    BBT is monitoring social media companies and recently called on Facebook to launch a comprehensive review of the role its platform played in the run-up to the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building. A BBT senior adviser described the group’s role as holding platforms like Facebook accountable as Democrats move into the midterms and 2024. That has meant discussing Facebook’s response to its complaints that it isn’t moving quickly enough to take down false information.

    BBT regularly updates the White House officials on the group’s latest data, according to the adviser, including how the narrative of fraudulent elections is evolving. The adviser stressed that while there are political ties between the group and the White House, it does not act as an arm of the White House.

    Bob Bauer, the attorney who is heading up the voting rights program for BBT, said the group considered the most dangerous false narrative on social media to be the claim that “the electoral process is corrupt.”  [....]

    The Biden White House strategy is not unlike that of the Biden campaign: let conspiracies or extreme falsehoods live in the dark corners of the Internet, with the belief that addressing such claims head-on will only prop them up.

    That doesn’t mean a hand’s off approach though. The White House’s Office of Digital Strategy employs about two dozen staffers who work to monitor and, if needed, combat disinformation, including encouraging different sites to fact-check false content. In most cases, their mandate is to fend off falsehoods by ensuring a steady stream of factual and positive information flows onto social media platforms [....]


    two "P.O.C." sick to death of the racism narratives dominating the MSM, including "public" radio:

    others, of unidentified skin color, chime in:



    now that's definitely a Titania tweet for the ages laugh


    Wesley Yang continued his riff on NPR's overwhelming slant:

     


    There's a parallel to @ShitNonprofitsSay


    Nationalizing outrage


    more on outrage, but selling it for profit (with subsequent polarization) being one of the main problems upsetting our democracy

    is by Anne Appelbaum & Peter Pomerant​sev

    if you hit a paywall, I see a significant-sized excerpt is here:

    https://snfagora.jhu.edu/publication/how-to-put-out-democracys-dumpster-fire/


    There’s no basis for the Fort Lauderdale mayor’s claim that a deadly Pride truck crash was a “terrorist attack against the LGBTQ community.” The driver, a 77-year-old unable to walk in the parade, and the victims were all members of a gay men’s chorus. https://t.co/bUxGPXSftc

    — Daniel Dale (@ddale8) June 20, 2021

    it's horrible really to use a tragedy this way! and he's not that sorry about doing so:


    Democrats should probably be wary of the media narrative that all non-national GOP are aligned with Trump and pandering to Trumpies and that's why Congressional GOP act the way the do SIMPLY BECAUSE IT'S NOT ALWAYS TRUE, as a matter of fact it hasn't been true in the majority of cases "when the rubber has met the road":

    The most brutal debunking of Trump’s fraud claims yet — from Republicans

    By  Aaron Blake @ WashingtonPost.com, 

    The Republican Party’s response to former president Donald Trump and his allies’ wild, baseless claims of voter fraud has been anything but courageous. It’s been entirely clear most reputable members of the GOP are uncomfortable responding, often instead lodging watered-down or adjacent claims. Some Republicans have spoken out but generally only when forced to pick a side — such as when their state became the focus of Trump’s lies.

    But when the rubber has met the road, GOP lawmakers have routinely landed on one side: against Trump’s claims.

    Perhaps the starkest example of that came Wednesday, from a Republican-led state Senate committee in Michigan. A report from the Oversight Committee makes little mention of Trump, instead focusing on claims made by allies or general conspiracy theories about the vote count in Michigan. But the committee was brutal in statements on those claims, just about all of which can be traced to Trump in one way or another.

    The sum total is a broad, unsparing repudiation of Trump’s fraud claims in Michigan.

    Let’s recap some of the key findings on the voter-fraud theories pushed by the former president, Rudolph W. Giuliani and other Trump allies [....]


    oy yeah I totally agree that collective guilt narratives of all kind are rampant in media and all levels of education now and I do think they are very perverse and very harmful to society:

    In a psych experiment, participants were less likely to blame all Muslims for terrorism when they were asked if they blamed all white people for Dylan Roof. Promoting collective guilt, all over media now, is undermining our best tools to counter bigotry. https://t.co/FtXG5AQGqL https://t.co/aWymnM0tGc

    — Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) June 26, 2021

    Worse than ever, worse than when this was said (especially worse because people are actually into promoting themselves fitting into stereotyped groups against "the other" stereotypes!)

    And so we must say to every American: Look beyond the stereotypes that blind us. We need each other. All of us -- we need each other. We don't have a person to waste. And yet for too long politicians have told the most of us that are doing all right that what's really wrong with America is the rest of us. Them. Them, the minorities. Them, the liberals. Them, the poor. Them, the homeless. Them, the people with disabilities. Them, the gays. We've gotten to where we've nearly themed ourselves to death. Them and them and them. But this is America. There is no them; there's only us. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice, for all. That is our Pledge of Allegiance, and that's what the New Covenant is all about.

    How do I know we can come together and make change happen? Because I have seen it in my own state. In Arkansas we're working together and we're making progress. No, there's no Arkansas miracle. But there are a lot of miraculous people. And because of them, our schools are better, our wages are higher, our factories are busier, our water is cleaner and our budget is balanced. We're moving ahead.

    I wish, I wish I could say the same thing about America under the incumbent President. He took the richest country in the world and brought it down. We took one of the poorest states in America and lifted it up.

    ~ Bill Clinton acceptance speech, Democratic nomination, July 1992 




    creating a narrative and promoting it for: RATINGS! (note the narrative blatantly includes an enticement to watch to help him keep the show on the air! must be losing audience, lacks the daily Trump-tique?)


    DEEP STATE SPEAKS:



    This is a really great resource for following how left and right-wing narratives about rapidly evolving stories develop. https://t.co/7RQK2moZca

    — Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) July 15, 2021

    a couple of tweets from Cammock's thread:

    [....]


    Anyways, if you're wondering what we do, here's a brief overview of our kind of analysis: https://t.co/24P4vUjp62

    — Shaun Cammack (@shaunjcammack) July 15, 2021

     


    Post-modernism: narratives compete

    thread...



    The linguist sees attempts by a group to tribalize and segregate further with a magic language, i.e., basically performance art using code words, rather actually honestly communicate with all others in order to progress:




    (Rufo is famously anti-woke, btw.)


    Cross-link FOR MONETARY PROFIT, not so much for a political agenda

    HOW AT&T HELPED BUILD FAR-RIGHT ONE AMERICA NEWS


    Perfect example. Make up a story the masses will like. Ignore that there's numerous other billionaire philanthropists trying to fix or remake this world to their goodwill specifications, which is a more complex problem. Instead create a trend out of three persons which feeds populist anger (eyeballs):




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