“The Indigo Blob can weave superficially compelling narratives, often involving a lot of whataboutism. Biden pardoned Hunter? Well, what about Trump pardoning Paul Manafort? Those school closures were bad? Well, what about anti-vaxxers? Not on board with full-blown wokeness? Well, then you’re in league with the fascists. But these stories have become increasingly desperate and implausible. The Indigo Blob suggested that it was “ageist” to be concerned about Biden wanting to be president until he was 86. It said that educated white men brought about Trump’s victory, even though college-educated whites were actually the only group of men who didn’t swing heavily MAGA.”
you’re literally combatting whataboutism with whataboutism. The inverse where you pull equally fringe stories from right wing publications would read like “they said sandy hook was a hoax, they said to inject yourself with bleach, they said vaccines are a hoax” like come on
yeah i kinda knew what I was in for once the buzzwords came into play. “Superficially compelling”, how is a feeling superficial? Something’s either compelling or it’s not. Reeks of thesaurus writing
"Something's either compelling or it's not" is academic posturing, drawing on sterile dictionary based nit-picking. Very evidently something can have a 'superficial' feeling and the assertion compelling or not is just simply classic fallacious excluded middle logical fallacy being used as a mode of arch criticism
"reeks of thesaurus writing" in fact reeks of academic snobbishness gussied up to pretend to be a criticism of substance rather than essentially an ad hominem.
Whether Silver is correct in his judgment here is another matter - maybe yes, maybe no (personally not per se convinced but worth its airing), but this kind of assertion is the very illustration of the effect Silver (and Musa Al Gharbi in a different flavor) have put their fingers on.
Splitting people up into broad categories that lumps southern black democrats or LGBT people with people on the coasts is silly. I reject that there’s any merit to it 🤷🏼♀️
Would the merit not come from the exact fact you share - that there is diversity in those groups and thus change would come from them? Diversity's purpose is evolutionary pathways opening up which allow for change. It sounds to me like saying maga has a low deviation and thus less open to an evolution, in contrast to The Village.
Calling the Democratic party the party of the "educated" should be corrected to "college graduates." Neither my husband, a carpenter, or my father, an electrician, went to college, but were much more aware of physics and electronics and allied sciences than most of the "educated." They were both Democrats. I would not call either of these men not "educated." But Democrats today would find them unacceptable as, like you, they would be characterized as "uneducated."
Did I say they were? I think they're important, valuable skills.
I'm just pointing out that you're language policing Nate for using pretty standard language to describe people who went through higher education as "educated." I'm guessing your politics are conservative, and conservatives typically excoriate the left for its insistence on language policing and identity politics. And, then you come around and say "Actually, they're not 'educated' they're 'people who have experienced college educations.'" It's pretty funny to me, honestly.
Thank you. Anybody who doesn't know how judgmental "The Village" can be about your "official" level of education, hasn't spent any time around the "The Village."
I heard someone in my Ivy-educated circle once say "I would never move to San Diego--I would be the only educated person there!". That's the level of snobbery possible.
Most of the people getting college degrees these days are not scholars, stop acting like they are. We have been pumping midwits through the system in record numbers for decades.
I'm reminded of that poll that Loewen pulls out in his "Lies My Teacher Told Me" about opinions on Vietnam in a post-Tet environment. It turns out that the more advanced your degree was, the more you believed the government line about Vietnam, in the same timeframe and environment that Johnson ended his re-election bid in 1968. Loewen's point was that the more college you had, the better indoctrinated you were to accept the signals from on high.
Keep in mind that a very likely factor with that was who was being sent to the war, as conscription had a college student exemption. There was a strong degree’s parents had kids that went to college bias, still.
I think this is dismissal of an important point in how people are characterized as "educated." If college graduate is meant to equal educated, then say that.
Then that isn't education, it's knowledge and experience. Educated specifically refers to having gone to a school and received formal lessons and instruction. Being educated correlates with being knowledgeable, but it's not the same thing. You can be educated and still not knowledgeable, and you can be knowledgeable without education.
I don't think all college graduates should be lumped together as Dems and Kamala voters, either. My husband and I were both college graduates (and so on), but like many others like us, we're Trump voters. Too much over-generalization going on.
Terms like "educated" and "uneducated" are just categories that political hacks and pollsters use to ply their pundit trade. Nobody IRL thinks about people this way and everybody recognizes how intelligent one has to be to excel at a trade. Don't let this silly article make you feel that your husband or father are not appreciated.
Thank you so much. Both are dead now but skills I watched and learned from them have stood me in good stead, probably more in daily life than my college degree. My husband got me a tool box for a birthday present and made sure I knew how to use each tool as he built me many book shelves.
I'm with you there-the people I know who think pretty deeply about the issues and are big-picture types definitely lean either blue or libertarian. It doesn't really matter their education: they "get it". If you think correlation = causation, you aren't a thinker, period. I don't care where you went to school.
I got through about half of this before realizing it was just another smear-the-left post and dropped it. This is why I dropped my subscription… so much idiocy about what the “left” cares about.
If anyone says a frigging thing about Biden pardoning his son, with the pardons Trump pulled in his first presidency, they are just part of the group that has turned a blind eye to Trump’s behaviors. Spare me.
I guess you didn't get to the part where Nate called out this precise response to the Hunter Biden pardon as an example of the sort of whataboutism that is handicapping the expert class. Good job embodying the flaws identified in the article!
Yeah it's not a great one. Most people really don't care about Biden pardoning his son. He is on the way out anyway. And it is understandable. There is just no comparison between this and pardoning actual violent criminals from J6 (if it happens).
I've been a fan of Nate back from the firedoglake days, and I so deeply wish that Nate had more non-Riverians helping him form his worldview.
In my view, Trump's victory was a repudiation of institutions, not the left, and certainly not the far left, who also critique some of those very same institutions. Trump's victory IS a vote for "burn it all down" and chaos, because as Nate has pointed out, when you are far behind in a game, chaos is a logical choice - high potential downside but also probably the only potential for high upside.
As but one example, take schools reopening. The same "illiberal academics" he is critiquing so much were probably the loudest voices calling for schools reopening - see Emily Oster's heroic data gathering work at Brown to prove that teachers were dying at the same rate in places schools reopened vs schools remained closed, or Thomas Kane's work at Harvard demonstrating early and often the negative academic effects of school closures, especially on elementary school students. The "Bernie Sanders/labor" wing that Nate says he "doesn't fight with" were the ones who fought the longest and hardest to keep schools closed - the length of time schools were closed were directly related to the strength of the unions, NOT the blueness of the states (which is hard to disentangle but not impossible). For example, San Francisco and Denver are both very very blue, but Denver has much less strong teacher's unions, and the schools there reopened 10 months earlier.
I could continue for quite some time, point by point, but my overall point is that I think the River has dangerous blind spots, as I think we'll see in this next administration with Elon Musk at the helm of so much power. I hope Nate is open to re-evaluating his current worldview, because I think he is missing quite a bit.
On the other hand look at the extent to which moderate liberals have been excommunicated from the modern Democratic party. Trump represents the first time that Elon Musk has voted for a Republican in recent memory.
Thanks for replying. In my first read, your two sentences seem to be two disconnected points, because I don't see tremendous evidence that Elon Musk was ever a "moderate liberal". A few more thoughts below explaining more:
I am not sure who you mean by "moderate liberals" - eg, the former Blue Dog caucus in Congress? People with 90s Clintonian beliefs about racial politics? People who would have called themselves "pro-life"? I think some of those groups have changed as the world has changed (eg, some who would have been Blue Dogs are now in the Sanders wing of the party), but am curious to know who you are referring to more specifically.
Any other unpopular issues you'd like the Democrats to adopt? With respect to the last two those are issues that old school Democrats used to push for but which they have since given up on--because they are not popular with the median voters
Exactly. Slaw needs to look up the definition for progressive. It means to move forward, step by step. Of course the civil rights fights of today are not the same as they were 30 years ago. That's the point.
Thanks for clarifying. I suspect we'd have to agree to disagree here; I'm not sure 100% of the current Democratic coalition OR the current Democratic party leadership believes in these things, either. Of course some do, and some make speeches and policy pronouncements to that effect. But I don't think a very large number of people have been barred from either for disagreeing.
I think currently, being pro his business interests has led him to be pro-Trump, because he is annoyed by the guardrails on SpaceX and his internet satellite interests. I also think he has cultural sympathies with many in Trump's circle (see: Joshua Benton's 10000 word essay on Musk in the Atlantic, among others)
I think Musk has always somewhat libertarian in wanting fewer regulations, but also been pro HIS businesses (not the same as the "pro-business" vote), and while Tesla was one of his big projects and Democrats were more "pro-green" than Republicans, he was vaguely Democratic.
Thank you for saying what's on my heart. And I just want to point out that as a PhD neuroscientist, I took my lumps in this article along with the rest.
On the advice of my therapist (literally, and non-ironically), I've decided to close my circle of influence to the 200-300 people I see on a daily basis, and have completely cut myself off from the Purple Blob. No WaPo, no NYT, no MSNBC, no CNN, no social media whatsoever.
Nate, you're all I have left to connect me to the larger world and I'm actually pretty happy about that right now.
I don’t see at all why it would be a bad decision, in consultation with one’s therapist, to go cold turkey for a while and focus on people one knows personally.
I'm assuming these are people encountered during the course of work. A teacher, retail worker, food service worker, or receptionist would easily encounter a few hundred people daily.
I've limited my news content considerably with positive outcomes.
1) Most news content is not germane to my life. I read economic data religiously as it applies to my work, but I have little need to read most political and national news.
2) Much of the news is intended to play off of emotions. Humans aren't designed to engage in all of the most emotional content globally. It either desensitizes or overwhelms. I don't need to know about every school shooting and actor that dies, especially when it is sensationalized for maximum views.
3) To understand an opinion writer you need to read them enough to have deeper context of their perspective and values. I'd rather have a few writer I understand and respect than taking all comers. There are too many ignorant views.
My mind (and yours) is an amalgamation of the idea we receive and synthesize. If you improve the relevance of the incoming signal, the quality of your thoughts and fruits of your actions will be better. You need to curate to avoid echo chambers and allow diversity, but news consumption should not be open ended.
I didn't take it as reducing consumption is problematic, I took it that reducing consumption to the point where you only get your information from a single source is problematic. I would say it is very problematic.
I would suggest you at least find two sources that don't agree all the time. Winnowing yourself down to a single source of information is very problematic, it should be obvious why.
Good move. I used to tell myself a story that I kept myself informed so that 'they' couldn't do their sh*t without me at least knowing what was what. It was a fallacy. I became better informed through less emotional contagion.
After repeatedly assuring the public that he had no intention of either pardoning or commuting his son's sentence
I'm not convinced that this is the biggest story ever--surely most people aren't surprised that politicians lie. But on the other hand the idea that it can be dismissed or waved away is just as flawed. At the very least it reinforces public sentiments that there is one system of justice for the little people and another for the people that matter.
If he wasn't Biden's son, he almost certainly would never have been prosecuted in the first place. So, in a sense, you're correct that there are different standards for different people (and, in fact, Trump is now benefitting from that fact with the suspension of all the various prosecutions he was facing).
Quite a while before hunters tax fraud was referred for prosecution, it started with tax audit by the IRS. From all available evidence, it’s established well beyond any reasonable doubt that Hunter did in fact commit several different types of financial and tax fraud on over $7 million in income.
The assertion that “Hunter would never have been prosecuted if he was not the President’s son” relies fundamentally on asserting that either:
(A) “the initial examination by the IRS of Hunter’s tax filings of $2.3M, $2.1M, and $1.1M in 2017-2018 would not have occurred if you were not the president’s son,” or
(B) “After having been audited after an initial examination, and evidence of tax fraud having been committed on millions of dollars in income, Hunter’s tax case would not have been referred for prosecution if he were not the President’s son.”
People reporting over $1 million in taxable income have an average chance of 1.1% of being audited for any given fiscal year. But the probability of an audit being triggered, rises a lot if you have any of the following circumstances (and Hunter’s situation involved every one of these, nearly maximizing his chances of being examined if not directly audited):
1. Disproportionate or Unusual Deductions
2. Use of Complex Tax Shelters
3. Offshore Accounts and Foreign Income
4. Luxury Asset Purchases
5. Repeated Losses in Hobby-Like Activities
For anybody with that level of income and circumstances reported on their filings, the baseline for being examined was at least 5% in every tax year from at least 2010. The cumulative probability of a random examination by the IRS by the time that the examination actually started is around 33% - if we exclude the most significant trigger for an investigation, which is under reporting income. Although honestly, some of “goods and services” that he listed as business expenses deducted from his personal income, probably drove the likelihood of an examination to 100%.
Your argument, as well as Joe’s argument this prosecution was politically motivated “war politics” does not bear up under cursory scrutiny of the facts.
Hunter Biden was prosecuted for breaking the law. He failed to declare his income from his dealings with the Chinese and on the board of Bursima from 2016 - 2019 and filed a false tax return in 2018. He owed $1.4 million in unpaid taxes. If anything being Joe Biden's son probably kept him from going to jail sooner.
Wake up to reality. He was continually protected as Biden’s son. The whole of the National Security apparatus brazenly lied to the public about his laptop to protect him and his father and perhaps alter the 2020 election outcome.
Yes, Trump has a habit of accusing others of doing things that he and his team are actually doing. Or, even if he himself isn't doing the bad thing, if he observes that it happens to anyone, he often asserts it is also happening to him.
I think in this case its the reverse. When Trump’s legal problems started a few years ago, he and many on the right shouted politically motived, and that others are not prosecuted for the same things. The left were up in arms about due process, and the law is the same for everyone. Now Biden and many on the left have taken a leaf from Trump and are claiming politically motivated.
Do you think it matters that Trump just selected a completely unqualified lunatic to serve as FBI director who is obsessed with going after Hunter Biden. Kash Patel has made it clear that he wants to use his position to punish political enemies. Not pursue justice. I would do whatever I could to protect my son from that.
Yeah, that's why they won't prosecute him, not because this was all a complete circus in the first place. Trump sold state secrets and is advocating for the death penalty for Hunter for lying on a gun permit. This has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with enraging his base. As we have discussed, your propaganda machine is robust. It should be with all that Russian funding.
“The Indigo Blob can weave superficially compelling narratives, often involving a lot of whataboutism. Biden pardoned Hunter? Well, what about Trump pardoning Paul Manafort? Those school closures were bad? Well, what about anti-vaxxers? Not on board with full-blown wokeness? Well, then you’re in league with the fascists. But these stories have become increasingly desperate and implausible. The Indigo Blob suggested that it was “ageist” to be concerned about Biden wanting to be president until he was 86. It said that educated white men brought about Trump’s victory, even though college-educated whites were actually the only group of men who didn’t swing heavily MAGA.”
you’re literally combatting whataboutism with whataboutism. The inverse where you pull equally fringe stories from right wing publications would read like “they said sandy hook was a hoax, they said to inject yourself with bleach, they said vaccines are a hoax” like come on
Thought the same thing reading the post. Right-wing media would cease to exist if they couldn’t use whataboutism to ‘justify’ everything.
yeah i kinda knew what I was in for once the buzzwords came into play. “Superficially compelling”, how is a feeling superficial? Something’s either compelling or it’s not. Reeks of thesaurus writing
"Something's either compelling or it's not" is academic posturing, drawing on sterile dictionary based nit-picking. Very evidently something can have a 'superficial' feeling and the assertion compelling or not is just simply classic fallacious excluded middle logical fallacy being used as a mode of arch criticism
"reeks of thesaurus writing" in fact reeks of academic snobbishness gussied up to pretend to be a criticism of substance rather than essentially an ad hominem.
Whether Silver is correct in his judgment here is another matter - maybe yes, maybe no (personally not per se convinced but worth its airing), but this kind of assertion is the very illustration of the effect Silver (and Musa Al Gharbi in a different flavor) have put their fingers on.
"MAGA is too far gone"
"The Village has more capacity for self-correction, by contrast."
Splitting people up into broad categories that lumps southern black democrats or LGBT people with people on the coasts is silly. I reject that there’s any merit to it 🤷🏼♀️
Would the merit not come from the exact fact you share - that there is diversity in those groups and thus change would come from them? Diversity's purpose is evolutionary pathways opening up which allow for change. It sounds to me like saying maga has a low deviation and thus less open to an evolution, in contrast to The Village.
So far it has been MAGA that has evolved with the inclusion of more of The River while The Village is stuck in quicksand
i don’t really understand your point
Calling the Democratic party the party of the "educated" should be corrected to "college graduates." Neither my husband, a carpenter, or my father, an electrician, went to college, but were much more aware of physics and electronics and allied sciences than most of the "educated." They were both Democrats. I would not call either of these men not "educated." But Democrats today would find them unacceptable as, like you, they would be characterized as "uneducated."
This comment is the equivalent of the people who put "school of life" in the education section of their facebook bio.
I don't think building houses (UBC) or wiring schools (IBEW) are the simple skills you assume they are.
Did I say they were? I think they're important, valuable skills.
I'm just pointing out that you're language policing Nate for using pretty standard language to describe people who went through higher education as "educated." I'm guessing your politics are conservative, and conservatives typically excoriate the left for its insistence on language policing and identity politics. And, then you come around and say "Actually, they're not 'educated' they're 'people who have experienced college educations.'" It's pretty funny to me, honestly.
No. I am a lifelong registered Democrat who finds that dismissal of the working class by my party has been a terrible shift in their stance.
Thank you. Anybody who doesn't know how judgmental "The Village" can be about your "official" level of education, hasn't spent any time around the "The Village."
I heard someone in my Ivy-educated circle once say "I would never move to San Diego--I would be the only educated person there!". That's the level of snobbery possible.
Most of the people getting college degrees these days are not scholars, stop acting like they are. We have been pumping midwits through the system in record numbers for decades.
"Excellent Sheep".
I'm reminded of that poll that Loewen pulls out in his "Lies My Teacher Told Me" about opinions on Vietnam in a post-Tet environment. It turns out that the more advanced your degree was, the more you believed the government line about Vietnam, in the same timeframe and environment that Johnson ended his re-election bid in 1968. Loewen's point was that the more college you had, the better indoctrinated you were to accept the signals from on high.
Keep in mind that a very likely factor with that was who was being sent to the war, as conscription had a college student exemption. There was a strong degree’s parents had kids that went to college bias, still.
My how times changed, huh?
Is it though? How is learning a trade not 'education'?
'School of Life' is vague and doesn't imply you have learnt anything of substance. Being qualified in a trade does.
So...do you look down on people who put "school of life" in that section?
Yeah not because they didn't go to college but because feeling the need to put something there reveals self-consciousness, which is embarrassing.
This is the conservative version of demanding that people call you "xe/xir".
The whole damn country's come down with Little Guy Syndrome. Anything that can be taken as a slight, will be.
I think this is dismissal of an important point in how people are characterized as "educated." If college graduate is meant to equal educated, then say that.
Then that isn't education, it's knowledge and experience. Educated specifically refers to having gone to a school and received formal lessons and instruction. Being educated correlates with being knowledgeable, but it's not the same thing. You can be educated and still not knowledgeable, and you can be knowledgeable without education.
UBC and IBEW apprenticeships are rigorous and formal.
And the most obvious case in point is Trump. He has a college degree, but knows virtually nothing other than self-interest.
I think he is using it pejoratively on purpose to call out Democrats for thinking the way you are pointing out.
I don't think all college graduates should be lumped together as Dems and Kamala voters, either. My husband and I were both college graduates (and so on), but like many others like us, we're Trump voters. Too much over-generalization going on.
Terms like "educated" and "uneducated" are just categories that political hacks and pollsters use to ply their pundit trade. Nobody IRL thinks about people this way and everybody recognizes how intelligent one has to be to excel at a trade. Don't let this silly article make you feel that your husband or father are not appreciated.
Thank you so much. Both are dead now but skills I watched and learned from them have stood me in good stead, probably more in daily life than my college degree. My husband got me a tool box for a birthday present and made sure I knew how to use each tool as he built me many book shelves.
I'm with you there-the people I know who think pretty deeply about the issues and are big-picture types definitely lean either blue or libertarian. It doesn't really matter their education: they "get it". If you think correlation = causation, you aren't a thinker, period. I don't care where you went to school.
LOL
I got through about half of this before realizing it was just another smear-the-left post and dropped it. This is why I dropped my subscription… so much idiocy about what the “left” cares about.
If anyone says a frigging thing about Biden pardoning his son, with the pardons Trump pulled in his first presidency, they are just part of the group that has turned a blind eye to Trump’s behaviors. Spare me.
This isn’t an airport you don’t have to announce your departure.
I’m looking forward to you silently heading off to go pound sand 👍🏼
I guess you didn't get to the part where Nate called out this precise response to the Hunter Biden pardon as an example of the sort of whataboutism that is handicapping the expert class. Good job embodying the flaws identified in the article!
Whataboutism is a major part of Silver's article. Just saying.
Whataboutism was the entire Harris message. What about Trump.
Worked great for her too.
Yeah it's not a great one. Most people really don't care about Biden pardoning his son. He is on the way out anyway. And it is understandable. There is just no comparison between this and pardoning actual violent criminals from J6 (if it happens).
So the logic is we shouldn’t hold Democrats to any standards at all because Trump is worse?
Bye!
Don't let the door hit you on the a$$.
I've been a fan of Nate back from the firedoglake days, and I so deeply wish that Nate had more non-Riverians helping him form his worldview.
In my view, Trump's victory was a repudiation of institutions, not the left, and certainly not the far left, who also critique some of those very same institutions. Trump's victory IS a vote for "burn it all down" and chaos, because as Nate has pointed out, when you are far behind in a game, chaos is a logical choice - high potential downside but also probably the only potential for high upside.
As but one example, take schools reopening. The same "illiberal academics" he is critiquing so much were probably the loudest voices calling for schools reopening - see Emily Oster's heroic data gathering work at Brown to prove that teachers were dying at the same rate in places schools reopened vs schools remained closed, or Thomas Kane's work at Harvard demonstrating early and often the negative academic effects of school closures, especially on elementary school students. The "Bernie Sanders/labor" wing that Nate says he "doesn't fight with" were the ones who fought the longest and hardest to keep schools closed - the length of time schools were closed were directly related to the strength of the unions, NOT the blueness of the states (which is hard to disentangle but not impossible). For example, San Francisco and Denver are both very very blue, but Denver has much less strong teacher's unions, and the schools there reopened 10 months earlier.
I could continue for quite some time, point by point, but my overall point is that I think the River has dangerous blind spots, as I think we'll see in this next administration with Elon Musk at the helm of so much power. I hope Nate is open to re-evaluating his current worldview, because I think he is missing quite a bit.
On the other hand look at the extent to which moderate liberals have been excommunicated from the modern Democratic party. Trump represents the first time that Elon Musk has voted for a Republican in recent memory.
Thanks for replying. In my first read, your two sentences seem to be two disconnected points, because I don't see tremendous evidence that Elon Musk was ever a "moderate liberal". A few more thoughts below explaining more:
I am not sure who you mean by "moderate liberals" - eg, the former Blue Dog caucus in Congress? People with 90s Clintonian beliefs about racial politics? People who would have called themselves "pro-life"? I think some of those groups have changed as the world has changed (eg, some who would have been Blue Dogs are now in the Sanders wing of the party), but am curious to know who you are referring to more specifically.
The old Democratic coalition did not believe in microaggressions or men competing in women's sports leagues.
The old Democratic coalition also didn't believe in gay marriage or legalized weed. Culture evolves.
How about open borders or defund the police?
Or how about gun control and the death penalty?
Any other unpopular issues you'd like the Democrats to adopt? With respect to the last two those are issues that old school Democrats used to push for but which they have since given up on--because they are not popular with the median voters
Exactly. Slaw needs to look up the definition for progressive. It means to move forward, step by step. Of course the civil rights fights of today are not the same as they were 30 years ago. That's the point.
Culture evolved badly in every one of the points both of you bring up.
Thanks for clarifying. I suspect we'd have to agree to disagree here; I'm not sure 100% of the current Democratic coalition OR the current Democratic party leadership believes in these things, either. Of course some do, and some make speeches and policy pronouncements to that effect. But I don't think a very large number of people have been barred from either for disagreeing.
Seth Moulton.
I think currently, being pro his business interests has led him to be pro-Trump, because he is annoyed by the guardrails on SpaceX and his internet satellite interests. I also think he has cultural sympathies with many in Trump's circle (see: Joshua Benton's 10000 word essay on Musk in the Atlantic, among others)
I think Musk has always somewhat libertarian in wanting fewer regulations, but also been pro HIS businesses (not the same as the "pro-business" vote), and while Tesla was one of his big projects and Democrats were more "pro-green" than Republicans, he was vaguely Democratic.
By his own account he voted almost exclusively for Democrats, until 2024. And you're familiar with that comic strip he posted from Colin Wright?
Oh, I'm not! I'll look it up, thanks.
Thank you for saying what's on my heart. And I just want to point out that as a PhD neuroscientist, I took my lumps in this article along with the rest.
On the advice of my therapist (literally, and non-ironically), I've decided to close my circle of influence to the 200-300 people I see on a daily basis, and have completely cut myself off from the Purple Blob. No WaPo, no NYT, no MSNBC, no CNN, no social media whatsoever.
Nate, you're all I have left to connect me to the larger world and I'm actually pretty happy about that right now.
What an astonishingly bad decision.
Many people overindulge in online content.
I don’t see at all why it would be a bad decision, in consultation with one’s therapist, to go cold turkey for a while and focus on people one knows personally.
The bad decision is not limiting ones online content. The bad decision is limiting ones online content to just Nate Silver.
My first thought was the bad decision was having 200--300 people you know and meet with frequently!!!
I'm assuming these are people encountered during the course of work. A teacher, retail worker, food service worker, or receptionist would easily encounter a few hundred people daily.
Sounds exhausting.
Welcome to my life, Ross.
I've limited my news content considerably with positive outcomes.
1) Most news content is not germane to my life. I read economic data religiously as it applies to my work, but I have little need to read most political and national news.
2) Much of the news is intended to play off of emotions. Humans aren't designed to engage in all of the most emotional content globally. It either desensitizes or overwhelms. I don't need to know about every school shooting and actor that dies, especially when it is sensationalized for maximum views.
3) To understand an opinion writer you need to read them enough to have deeper context of their perspective and values. I'd rather have a few writer I understand and respect than taking all comers. There are too many ignorant views.
My mind (and yours) is an amalgamation of the idea we receive and synthesize. If you improve the relevance of the incoming signal, the quality of your thoughts and fruits of your actions will be better. You need to curate to avoid echo chambers and allow diversity, but news consumption should not be open ended.
Reducing their consumption of online news media is an 'astonishingly bad decision'?
Why? What bad outcomes are you predicting will befall them as a result?
I didn't take it as reducing consumption is problematic, I took it that reducing consumption to the point where you only get your information from a single source is problematic. I would say it is very problematic.
Except for the 200-300 people I interact with on a daily basis. Other than that, a single source.
I would suggest you at least find two sources that don't agree all the time. Winnowing yourself down to a single source of information is very problematic, it should be obvious why.
What an astonishingly thoughtful & intentional response.
should we not write really mean Twitter type replies on here then!
You mean “𝕏” lol
Elon deadnames his own kid. We are certainly allowed to do it to his website.
Good move. I used to tell myself a story that I kept myself informed so that 'they' couldn't do their sh*t without me at least knowing what was what. It was a fallacy. I became better informed through less emotional contagion.
A dad took care of his son on the way out the door. Biden not my guy but I am a dad.
After repeatedly assuring the public that he had no intention of either pardoning or commuting his son's sentence
I'm not convinced that this is the biggest story ever--surely most people aren't surprised that politicians lie. But on the other hand the idea that it can be dismissed or waved away is just as flawed. At the very least it reinforces public sentiments that there is one system of justice for the little people and another for the people that matter.
If he wasn't Biden's son, he almost certainly would never have been prosecuted in the first place. So, in a sense, you're correct that there are different standards for different people (and, in fact, Trump is now benefitting from that fact with the suspension of all the various prosecutions he was facing).
Quite a while before hunters tax fraud was referred for prosecution, it started with tax audit by the IRS. From all available evidence, it’s established well beyond any reasonable doubt that Hunter did in fact commit several different types of financial and tax fraud on over $7 million in income.
The assertion that “Hunter would never have been prosecuted if he was not the President’s son” relies fundamentally on asserting that either:
(A) “the initial examination by the IRS of Hunter’s tax filings of $2.3M, $2.1M, and $1.1M in 2017-2018 would not have occurred if you were not the president’s son,” or
(B) “After having been audited after an initial examination, and evidence of tax fraud having been committed on millions of dollars in income, Hunter’s tax case would not have been referred for prosecution if he were not the President’s son.”
People reporting over $1 million in taxable income have an average chance of 1.1% of being audited for any given fiscal year. But the probability of an audit being triggered, rises a lot if you have any of the following circumstances (and Hunter’s situation involved every one of these, nearly maximizing his chances of being examined if not directly audited):
1. Disproportionate or Unusual Deductions
2. Use of Complex Tax Shelters
3. Offshore Accounts and Foreign Income
4. Luxury Asset Purchases
5. Repeated Losses in Hobby-Like Activities
For anybody with that level of income and circumstances reported on their filings, the baseline for being examined was at least 5% in every tax year from at least 2010. The cumulative probability of a random examination by the IRS by the time that the examination actually started is around 33% - if we exclude the most significant trigger for an investigation, which is under reporting income. Although honestly, some of “goods and services” that he listed as business expenses deducted from his personal income, probably drove the likelihood of an examination to 100%.
Your argument, as well as Joe’s argument this prosecution was politically motivated “war politics” does not bear up under cursory scrutiny of the facts.
👍👍👍👍👍👍
Google "IRS whistleblowers". It sure looks like there was a concerted attempt to protect Hunter Biden.
ROFL
Was there an argument in there somewhere?
Hunter Biden was prosecuted for breaking the law. He failed to declare his income from his dealings with the Chinese and on the board of Bursima from 2016 - 2019 and filed a false tax return in 2018. He owed $1.4 million in unpaid taxes. If anything being Joe Biden's son probably kept him from going to jail sooner.
Wake up to reality. He was continually protected as Biden’s son. The whole of the National Security apparatus brazenly lied to the public about his laptop to protect him and his father and perhaps alter the 2020 election outcome.
Ironically, that is the exact same argument Trump used.
Yes, Trump has a habit of accusing others of doing things that he and his team are actually doing. Or, even if he himself isn't doing the bad thing, if he observes that it happens to anyone, he often asserts it is also happening to him.
I think in this case its the reverse. When Trump’s legal problems started a few years ago, he and many on the right shouted politically motived, and that others are not prosecuted for the same things. The left were up in arms about due process, and the law is the same for everyone. Now Biden and many on the left have taken a leaf from Trump and are claiming politically motivated.
Do you think it matters that Trump just selected a completely unqualified lunatic to serve as FBI director who is obsessed with going after Hunter Biden. Kash Patel has made it clear that he wants to use his position to punish political enemies. Not pursue justice. I would do whatever I could to protect my son from that.
Otoh the Big Guy may be interested in concealing his role in the affair.
He didn't pardon himself....
How much longer is he going to be around? There's no need.
Yeah, that's why they won't prosecute him, not because this was all a complete circus in the first place. Trump sold state secrets and is advocating for the death penalty for Hunter for lying on a gun permit. This has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with enraging his base. As we have discussed, your propaganda machine is robust. It should be with all that Russian funding.