Within the last few weeks, some of the news outlets I follow have been lumped in with a few “alternative media” bloggers and platforms which I decided to follow as well. They lean considerably to the left, and while they have a general “anti-establishment” message, I'm finding myself in familiar gut-feeling territory in how they choose to approach attempting to tear down their “oligarchical oppressors.”
One thing that seems hotly debated is whether or not a handful of super-rich people are to blame, or just the influence they're able to administer via AI algorithm and the dissemination of information. Here, I think the buck stops at the audience. If your website gets less traffic, which the evidence suggests many left-wing sites are (though no corollary right wing statistics are quick to follow), the people looking to be best informed dig that information up. It may mean they have to dig harder. It may mean a good portion of the pieces adjacent to the actual news have a significant enough bias and bullshit factor that your site no longer belongs that high up.
Here, I envision an ardent left-wing blogger describing me as shilling for my masters. Why would I defend the censorship of ANY ideas! Let alone from the sides I would proclaim to agree with? As with most things, I'm not about censorship, but I am about doing more work than anyone seems to want to bother with. And if you have the self-righteous dignity of being “more right” in your side-leaning views, it's your responsibility to piece together your view from considerably more sources and examples than any one algorithm should be capable of deterring or dissuading you of. You can, for example, read a book or 10.
I'm not a believer that combating extremes makes for a reasonable middle. I think the middle is bred from struggle. I think to take an extremist position is to shield yourself from a kind of criticism you're either too intellectually inferior or afraid to deal with. The most ardent defenders of The Truth like to use as many vagaries and catch-all words that sound good on paper as anyone else. Someone truly struggling to be impartial borrows sentiments and couches them in something outside of the rhetoric, like history or statistics. Mind you, not the “easy” history of a Texas schoolbook that whitewashes slavery or the “statistics” of metrics both outdated and designed to obscure what they're speaking to.
That's the depth of what's been lost on most of our cultural conversation. Cite GDP ten thousand times over the course of an hour on a “mainstream” media platform. If you don't know or care what GDP really stands for, what it's actually counting and what it's not, or if you trust Rachel Maddow implicitly to not invoke it mutually ignorantly to bolster a point, or if you can't trace back your narrative talking point as one literally listed on the agenda of the Cato Institute, your lock on the truth is faulty. I'm not scared good information will be suppressed. The ones who don't know how to find it barely know how to process it when they do, and even more rarely bother to take action. “Alternative” and “anti” media want the same victim status as someone saying, “No one is listening to me!” as they testify before The Supreme Court or make their rounds on the talk show circuit.
Yes, our basic structure of how to distribute power is flawed and broken. Yes, wealth is concentrated to overtly deadly degrees in the wrong hands. Yes, we need to overhaul and hold people accountable. That doesn't happen with whiny blame games. You have to get involved. Create your own algorithm. Promote your Google alternatives. Compete. Use your money smarter to personally affect people door-to-door in a way the Koch's never will whether they spend 4 or 40 million to influence your election. These tools have power, but they also have as much power as you're willing to offer them.
I think you should be able to read any piece of information and have red flags going off. “Oh, that's not what this book said,” “Hmm, I saw a great refutation on that in this documentary,” “Wow, every other word is an example of this logical fallacy,” “I know the author they cited, he's a known charlatan,” “Look how they've related that statistic to undervalue the degree in which black people are getting killed at twice the rate of whites.” If you can't do that, you don't know enough and you're probably incredibly dishonest.
The Truth, as far as I can tell, doesn't even lie in “the middle,” it barely exists at all unless you're actively working. It speaks to the tentative truth of science. It speaks to the growth and “maturity” you can achieve over time. It's the only undeniably manifest thing that any one of us is contending with at any moment. You work to create something or you're working against what someone else has. If you'd bother to work harder, you'll cry less in the face of the slurry of facts and opinions you don't understand and environment that isn't as conducive to your happiness to which you feel entitled. The phrase, “Capitalism. The worst of all economic systems, except for all the others” comes to mind. In the same vein, I'd no sooner abolish the military and intelligence agencies, or even the idea that we should ever intervene, than I would welfare or dismiss ideas of a universal basic income. If you bother to read enough about your target, you can comfortably say the CIA shouldn't have fucked about in South America, but they also have prevented an insane number of disasters. They're a mixed bag with extremes, like every human and human endeavor. You can call for more accountability and transparency without calling for their heads.
What I can tell you, is the more you try to hide behind your IQ, your expensive and prestigious degree, your “personal experience” having been targeted or generally lambasted, or think because someone was willing to give you a platform or money for your view, you're probably playing more obscure ignorant populist cards than you'd like to admit. Popularity on its face isn't concerned with truth. Your own message contends the corrupting force of money. “Smart” isn't synonymous with “wise” or “thorough.” And no matter how compelling the anecdote, it's one feeling or impression in a sea of billions.
The truth of existence includes the smallest atom out to the ends of the accelerating universe, and you have a blog that's seeing some extra attention lately. There's always room for more context.
