ShivaX
3267
Greenwald doesn’t fall into the mainstream category, but he also doesn’t deserve a thread of his own.
Edit: I guess he technically did his stupidity on Fox? Not moving it.
Menzo
3268
Greenwald isn’t even trying to hide his pro-Russia stance anymore.
Greenwald is a tool, but I am curious what the actual policy is there, though. Is there some general anti Russian propaganda policy? If these aren’t bots, what’s the actual rule they’re breaking? Presumably Twitter isn’t saying its users have to support US foreign policy goals at all times.
CraigM
3270
My guess is these are probably troll farms/ bots. It is certainly the Occam’s razor most likely reason.
antlers
3271
Right, Twitter has a general policy against “artificially” amplifying messages. Their algorithm picked up these accounts; that’s what they were banned for. The content of the messages didn’t matter to the removal; it was included in the announcement for informational purposes, but that is too confusing for some people, I guess.
I don’t know why she thinks this makes her look good, does she never read replies to her tweets? (and a belated thanks to all the people here teaching me about Magaman and the NYTimes hot takes)
Enidigm
3273
Honestly i think the continued incomprehensibility of the NYT editorial staff does reflect something more important than a lot of left critiques seem to get, which is that these coastal liberals really, really, really don’t understand the middle part of the country, and their desperate attempts at doing so always come off as strange, off-target, or otherwise tone deaf, willing to toss their own people under the bus in order to make room for these strange, bbq eating, football loving religious nuts. I actually suspect this has to do with the decline of regional and economic mobility - 80 to 120 years ago, everyone came from “middle America” to make their way in the big city, and so still had some fond or not so fond but either way understanding of rural / less-urban life. Now the academic / intellectual setting Left Coast are by and large born and raised there.
I was listening to a academic-leaning philosophy podcast and while i love the people involved it was clear these NY / Left Coast people really, really don’t understand the rest of the country - and moreover, really (really!) if they had to, would be happy to toss them aside to get the areas of the country fixed that they want. That left coast politics is about appeasing / disarming this bizarre middle America that they only care about in the broadest sense, like they don’t like girls getting kidnapped in Nigeria or floods in Indonesia sense, because they have to, because middle American has broken the political system and prevents any change or progress. They don’t want middle America to suffer, but if the rapture hit tomorrow and middle America disappeared, the collective sigh of relief they would make would change the weather.
Being unable to understand the middle, the Left… doesn’t know how to fix the country. Their best bet it to basically outnumber them and win slim majorities here and there, because they have more or less abandoned addressing them in any kind of cultural sense. It certainly doesn’t help when the Right has more or less openly declared themselves to be their mortal enemies and that this same middle America, rather than being a reserve of empathy and support, would guffaw a collective LOL if California or NYC slipped into the sea.
Again, 45% of the people in Iowa voted for Biden. 45% of the people in Ohio voted for Biden. It isn’t like the Democratic Party, or the Left, have only ‘coastal liberals’. If anything, it is the pretense that the left is only coastal elites that causes the NYT to go so far wrong so often.
Enidigm
3275
Well that’s a good point, but it’s like i always tell the Conservatives that surrounded me (besiege?): the Republican party is the party of one kind of person, the Democratic party is the party of everybody else, and it’s a lot harder to be everything to everybody else at the same time.
But it’s clear that why people vote Democratic in places like Texas or Iowa is much, much harder not just for the Democrats but also for coastal “elites” to understand, because they’re nothing at all like them either and their issues have an enormous spectrum of overlap, from 90% overlap to nearly none. That’s why i kept saying middle America rather than “Democrats” or “Republicans”. I assume that they assume that much of the support for Democrats in flyover country is protest voting against Conservatives… but that might be an inference too far as well.
But the thing is, liberal elites in Texas and Iowa aren’t driving national narratives in Democratic or Progressive circles, because Texas and Iowa aren’t centers of media, entertainment and news.
I think it is a mistake to think that there are no liberals or leftists in places like Cleveland or Houston. It is not the case that there are no liberals or leftists who understand the circumstances on the ground, the lived experience of, the Midwest or middle America. And that is not the problem with the NYT. The problem with the NYT is that it is owned and run by wealthy people, and it is going to reflect the political sensitivities of wealthy people, and what that means in this particular era is pretending that white racist bigotry isn’t the core of the political agenda on the right.
Nesrie
3277
Rural America exists in the coastal states. They don’t have to go to Middle America or even the South to find these individuals. CA can just go North and East, real North, not San Fran but north north. Oregon can basically just get off I-5 in the North and Mid section and look at basically the rest of the states. WA has a big chunk.
No matter how many times the Midwest claims to be some mythical unicorn race that their enemies, labeled by them, don’t understand, it’s simply not as unique as they claim. White evangelicals, towns rotting around industries and factories long abandoned, little white utoptias, some literally create so by law, struggling with seeing a generation walking around them that doesn’t look like them, the very idea that they might not be able to go to their graves using the same slurs their parents frequently flung at the dinner tables… none of this something someone has to go to the mid-west to see. They’re neighbors, right here.
Calelari
3278
Or, y’know, the San Joaquin valley exists.
Nesrie
3279
I’d have to know California demographics better than I do for that, but I do know the stupid ideal of the state of Jefferson isn’t taking a part of California with it because it’s full of coastal elites.
Basically the bit down the middle from Sacramento past Fresno. I’m semi-surprised San Joaquin itself is blue, but it has been many many years since I’ve been there.
via Politico (I know, I know)
Nesrie
3281
Okay I see. There is this spot in there and east too. As you can see at the top there combine with the bottom here:
That would be the poorest state in the union, the state of Jefferson, where everyone can mourn the loss of timber and lumber mills, paper factories and fight with conservative groups over the fate of fish and birds vs farmers.
I mean really almost no state is so blue or so red that there isn’t a neighbor in there somewhere to get a feel for where the social, economical and just general dislike of other people comes from. It makes a nice story that you have to go to miles of cornfields, or dairy land perhaps lean against a drilling rig or two to try and understand something, but most literally don’t have to go to the middle of part of the country to find similar ideologies. Republicans are not nearly as rare and the rare unicorn only found in specific forests as they portray themselves to be on TV.
There are people here who still somehow believe that we’re going to get timber back. There are people here who still think the the mills will return. There are people here who somehow believe the water wars will go away. And we still have diners where old people go to bitch about people who are not them. And the Harley groups are around too wondering why after decades of chasing off any new groups that their favorite store has an aging demographics and not much new blood. I think see more of those with three wheels now than two these days if not actually four which… is that even a motorcycle anymore? I digress.
Scuzz
3282
Fresno County is blue, but remember that Devin Nunes district is part Fresno county and part of the red below it. Probably anything east of Fresno itself on that map could be red. In general the eastern foothills in all of California is red.
I call it “driveby country.”
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
