For the past 6 years, I & a few other journalists have been trying to get the mainstream press and political elites realize the major danger posed by the radical right. Unfortunately, moderate and liberal elites deluded themselves into thinking that conservatism wasn't a cult.

Thread: Conservative Policy and the Trump Presidency

On the last full day of the Trump administration, I think it's useful to examine why he accomplished so little legislatively. TLDR version: American conservatism has almost no policy program.

The most important thing to know about conservative politicking is that people do not vote FOR Republicans, they vote AGAINST Democrats.

The GOP is dominated by a minority of far-right activists and wealthy donors who have views that their own voters don't support.

American conservatism is premised on the twin ideas that the New Deal & Great Society were immoral and that God himself created America and that we should honor this creation by establishing full Christian supremacism in which LGBT people, atheists, and Muslims have fewer rights.

Because God created America, this means that conservatives believe in essentially no domestic policy of any kind. If it wasn't literally in the Constitution, then the feds shouldn't be doing it is their opinion.

This is not, however, how things used to be in the GOP.

For much of its history, American conservatism was a sort of intellectual parasite on the Republican party which was run by a mix of moderates and liberals. They actually had domestic policies. Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon had many policies that actually helped America.

Thread: People love to rag on Nate Silver for his arrogance & they should, but he's merely an example of a larger issue that the web has made it easy to draw inferences from data without knowing the context in which it lives. 1/x

Alexander Pope's warning that "a little learning is a dangerous thing" has never been more true than an age in which we can obtain information about anything without being able to understand it.

Having data doesn't mean you can use it.

Western society has a very significant problem that expertise in one area is often conflated with expertise in others.

Men are the main culprit. We have been socialized to think we know more than we do. There are many studies showing this. Here's one:

Not only do men think we're smarter than we are, we also overestimate our own attractiveness:

Male overconfidence has lots of negative implications for society. The biggest is that too many men in media have amassed followings by speaking confidently about subjects they don't understand.

Nate Silver finds Donald Trump appalling, but his shtick isn't all that different.

Conservatives love to complain that everyone is against them: professors, journalists, intelligence officers, social media companies, and so on.

I used to as well until I considered that maybe having problems with everyone else isn't their fault, it's yours.

I was reminded of that realization when I read this important NYT article about how Facebook keeps weakening news source quality controls because conservative content gets disproportionately effected by them.

Unfortunately, this great piece of reporting by @MikeIsaac, @sheeraf, & @kevinroose didn't mention the greatest challenge in AI news signal processing: Humans can barely separate conservative & far-right content. Which means computers can't either.

This techno-semiotic conundrum originates from the fact that in the US, because there is no moderate conservative tradition, the gravitational center of the right is far removed from the political center.

More plainly, this means that almost all the energy and organizing on the right exists on the far right.

This is not the case on the US left where there is a strong moderate tradition capable of organization and force projection. Ask Bernie Sanders if you disbelieve.

Thread: Meaning and loss in American conservatism

I've written a lot about how Christian supremacism (expressed and implicit) is the underlying objective of most Trump supporters but the psychology of American conservatism is very important in its descent into madness.

We're seeing it manifested heavily in the present moment as Trump and his followers are forced to contemplate the loss of the presidency but it's important to realize that losing is the psychic core of the U.S. right.

Trump's repugnant demeanor and prior history of political moderation is what made him so reviled by conservative activists and donors in 2015 but his angry victim complex so deeply resonated with the GOP base that this is why he won the primary.

American conservatism has been obsessed with death and loss since it emerged in the 1940s. The utter humiliation of Herbert Hoover and the rapid growth of federal spending and regulation under FDR was an existential moment for the corporate barons who started the U.S. right.

The rise of explicitly atheist Marxist-Leninism was also immensely triggering of long-time fundamentalist fantasies of persecution and death before the return of Christ. Most Christians don't see John's Apocalypse as a literal text but fundamentalists do.

This is a thread on @EspinaNonoy ‘s FB which clearly shows what he means by a “mob howling for blood” — calling for summary execution of the killer cop. What follows is his post on the “attempt to twist the narrative of the uproar that followed the Paniqui executions.” (More)

The new lie, he notes, “blithely claims that so-called human rights advocates he been calling for the lynching of the cop and his kid while Duterte's disciples sought a trial.” (More)

“The truth is - and this is so easy to check on social media - the mob howling for blood, including that of the child, was made up of BOTH pro- and anti-Duterte partisans, though predominantly the former” (more)

“many professing shock and outrage at the double murder even as their social media accounts cheered on the deaths of drug suspects and, later, of activists-terrorists-who-the-fuck-cared-about-the-difference.”

“As for the many human rights advocates I know, and they come from the different colors of the political spectrum, I can vouch that they erupted in righteous anger, demanding justice, but not a single one of them even hinted of wanting the killer cop summarily executed.”

A PLEA TO U.K. JOURNALISTS

You clearly signed up to the #dontmentiontheschools omertà from August to December.

No questions regarding why @educationgovuk allowed bubbles of 300, no SD, no masks, interchanging classes of 30 and poor ventilation

You refused to ask the questions

Parents watched our children and teachers get unnecessarily infected.

Yes, not all of them died, yes not all of them were hospitalised but THEY WERE unnecessarily exposed in school settings and you sat by and did nothing for FOUR MONTHS

We begged for your help...

We provided the UNSCIENTIFIC guidance to schools issued by @educationgovuk

We showed you how completely against ALL OF THE BASIC SAFETY MEASURES required in all other indoor settings where households mix it is.

We asked you to ask why it was this way...

Until the moves to close one or two days early by schools prior to Christmas were rejected, until the Unions began to take steps to protect their members, YOU showed no interest.

You were complicit in continuing to polarise the schools debate into OPEN vs CLOSED

...when the accurate discussion needed to be;

1. OPEN SAFELY for in-person education provision
or
2. Temporarily provide remote education until number 1 can be done

Why is this? Who gained from this polarisation?

THREAD:
Hey guys, fun thread on #AccessJournalism gone, er, wrong?
Miller's publicist-trio (wait, ahem "journalists") are at it, yet AGAIN helping Miller and propping him up. Of course, we're talking about @jdawsey1 @AshleyRParker @PhilipRucker.
cc: @PostBaron

First, a little 'explainer' on Trump World. One of the things unique to Trump World (and this was a thing during the 2016 Campaign, too) is you want 'helpers' in the media not just in general but for the audience of one: i.e., Mr. Trump.

Trump World people, more than any other ecosystem, uses journalists (who are happy to oblige, in exchange for leaks) to put out narratives they want out there... not just in general but narratives they want TRUMP to read.

This is because, a big thing in the WH, is to put an article in front of Trump. (Trump doesn't read books but he does voraciously read articles.) So you want a report that says how loyal you are to him and then, whoops, that article finds its way to his desk.

Recently, I'd heard (and this isn't any big intel I had -- everyone knows this) that Trump is fuming about how his people have sort of checked-out on defending him. (He's right about that, actually.)

@StephenFlynnSNP @NHSGrampian

This is how bullies operate, they will say you are to blame but not care about why! Mrs Dickson and her practice has misrepresented me for the last time.

It was her staff who were rude and hung up on me because it was 16:50pm and she was tired.

The fact is, for the what 20th time, holburn medical got my prescription wrong, the day before Christmas Eve after ordering well in advance.

I have anxiety disorder, they know this. I had every right to be annoyed and while I was firm but not aggressive or shouting.

Her receptionist told me for NO REASON to "stop shouting" even though I was just speaking. When I tried to say 'hey, I'm not shouting, I just am annoyed and want help' she hung up the phone on me.

I called back and tried to explain what happens to someone else, who was also rude. I explained and said 'look, I'm working tomorrow, I need to know this is sorted', to this the woman rudley snipped back with zero empathy "well, we are working too"... This blew my mind.

I was not calling their work into question and I was in no way trying to boast, I was just trying to get help but when I said 'won't, I'm not trying to be funny ' this second woman turned it into an argument and hung up! I was left awestruck at this treatment.

If journalism and the press are "the first draft of history," as many reporters and media like to say, then many more of them and their organizations need to have the temerity, intellectual honesty, and integrity to call out what happened in Washington, DC and simultaneously...

...in other places across the country on January 6, 2021, exactly what it was, coordinated domestic terrorist attack, insurrection, and rebellion. There is a constitutional break down in progress, and in some ways it seems that journalism is part of the constitutional crisis.

With all of the reportation around the Black Lives Matters marches and the violence and vandalism that was attempted to be seeded, the news media had absolutely no hesitation in reporting out the incidences while leaving plenty of space for doubt...

...even when it was crystal clear that peaceful marchers had nothing to do with the negative incidents. Sabotage was the specific goal, and the saboteurs were Proudboys and other racist, anti-government, anti-democratic elements aligned with Trump. But equivocating analysis.

...and false equivalency in reporting persists. Thus, unhelpful even harmful dialogue, discussion and propaganda has been permitted to persist to color the goals and objectives of the marchers, unfairly sway public opinion, and stunt some of the progress of that movement.