Great little mild mannered 'rant' by Mead re media bias and the stagnant ideological bubble world the press inhabit that has disabled their critical faculties - these people have spent so long hemmed in by a leftist worldview that they are simply at this point incapable of objective reasoning - and in some cases this incapacity is deliberate as ideologues as a matter of course misreport and twist 'facts' - for ideological purists, facts are only those things that seem to fit with a 'truth' predetermined by them - anything that doesn't fit that agenda is by definition wrong and therefore not worthy of consideration and so can legitimately then be suppressed or excluded, and thus the growing intolerant homogeneity and group think that characterises much of the progressives' bubble world.
Mead still thinks there's free speech in America, it's just been rendered inept and misguided by an entrenched bias. I dunno - free speech is about disagreement and argument and debate - its very nature is adversarial and full of conflict - and therefore it cannot exist in a world where the only disagreement permitted is that between like minded people - that is a sham free speech - that is allowed speech and therefore inherently dictatorial - and therefore it's not at all surprising that American campuses and the left in general are increasingly manifesting a fondness for autocracy - in their ideologically fevered minds they are absolutely convinced that if you don't agree with them there must be something wrong with you.
I agree with Mead and have been saying such for a long time: the deleterious effects of this entrenched bias enables bad thinking which leads to bad and deeply flawed policies and strategic postures which produces bad and very dangerous outcomes - proof of this is popping up all over the place, overseas and at home. And I don't see how you fix it - liberals act as if it doesn't matter that Obama is an awful president, they act as if the bad outcomes are beside the point - they act as if the only outcome that matters is the country being pushed left. How can you fix something like that? As the saying goes, you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into - and the progressives' mindset is not governed by reason, it's governed by a blinding ideological zeal that the media and press seem incapable of or unwilling to push back against. And thus we stumble towards the abyss.
Mead still thinks there's free speech in America, it's just been rendered inept and misguided by an entrenched bias. I dunno - free speech is about disagreement and argument and debate - its very nature is adversarial and full of conflict - and therefore it cannot exist in a world where the only disagreement permitted is that between like minded people - that is a sham free speech - that is allowed speech and therefore inherently dictatorial - and therefore it's not at all surprising that American campuses and the left in general are increasingly manifesting a fondness for autocracy - in their ideologically fevered minds they are absolutely convinced that if you don't agree with them there must be something wrong with you.
I agree with Mead and have been saying such for a long time: the deleterious effects of this entrenched bias enables bad thinking which leads to bad and deeply flawed policies and strategic postures which produces bad and very dangerous outcomes - proof of this is popping up all over the place, overseas and at home. And I don't see how you fix it - liberals act as if it doesn't matter that Obama is an awful president, they act as if the bad outcomes are beside the point - they act as if the only outcome that matters is the country being pushed left. How can you fix something like that? As the saying goes, you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into - and the progressives' mindset is not governed by reason, it's governed by a blinding ideological zeal that the media and press seem incapable of or unwilling to push back against. And thus we stumble towards the abyss.
