Fair point. Bias was the correct term. There are left wing outlets such as The Washington Post and right wing such as Fox News.
Exactly, though I don’t think WaPo and NYT lean as far left as Fox News does right. (I mean, it’s a bit hard to compare since Fox is TV and the other two are newspapers, but not even the most opinionated columnists in those papers come close to the frothing-at-the-mouth rage and disdain exhibited by the Fox News shows.)
One has to take their own biases into account. Those on the right say the same thing about left leaning outlets, as leftists say about right-wing media. I'm fairly centrist in many ways, yet you being more on the left, probably view me as right wing, which isn't true. I disagree with the right on many things from having a free for all on guns, to teaching creationism as fact in school.
It's very difficult to say who's worse.
Not even slightly difficult. The right has set out to vilify tots opponents at all cost while putting on a pedestal individual selfishness and lack of empathy, and wants to enshrine their personal religious beliefs into law. The left, while sometimes overzealous, fundamentally wants tolerance and consideration for fellow humans. Speaking just of the political parties, they’re both severely corrupted by lobbying money. But in terms of who is worse, it’s not even a contest.
I've encountered just as much intolerance from the left. They love to vilify those who disagree with their ideas. If you express concerns regarding single sex spaces and irreversible treatments on children, then your labelled a transphobe, who wants to erase trans people. If you disagree with their policies based on CRT such as affirmative action, you're called a white supremacist. They fail to see that those concerns are often not based on prejudice but unintended consequences of their policies, however well-intentioned they may be. Those with such Conservative views get deplatformed, by educational institutions. Of course this isn't the case off all leftists, just some, same as those on the right.
While one can disagree on whether such people are actually transphobic or not, here’s the difference in the “vilification” as I see it: Someone on the left calling someone a transphobe as a reaction to an anti-trans statement or action is basically a statement of perceived fact. It’s not a condemnation of the person as such. (And in fact, a huge part of the left’s approach is education, meaning that they don’t think that the others are irredeemable.) In stark contrast, the right routinely calls the left “evil” (using that word). As I said, it’s a biblical interpretation, and it’s one that leads them to believe and act as though the left is an evil to be slain, not an ally who’s gone astray.
Well they often advocate people with such views being fired from they jobs, with some success, so they clearly are vilifying people.
The way Larry Elder has been accused of white supremacy is terrible. Or perhaps you don't think white supremacy is evil, so it's okay to say that? I also find the racism spouted in this case pretty disgusting. Fine, disagree with his views and criticise his debating tactics, but don't being the colour of his skin into it. The person who wrote the article is clearly looking at it through the lens of critical race theory.
[url]https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-20/recall-candidate-larry-elder-is-a-threat-to-black-californians[/url]
Here's a link to a post here, accusing some Republicans of being evil.
[url]https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/diversity-equity-and-inclusion/msg4366939/#msg4366939[/url]
I can understand how some more extremist leftist opinions can be seen as evil, even if they're well-intentioned. For example the extreme pro-choice side who want to permit abortion, for any reason, including eugenics, right up to the point of birth. I'm also fully aware of the evil inflicted by the pro-life movement who have made it impossible for women to get some medicines which can damage a pregnancy, even though they're being used to treat other conditions, not to induce a termination.
I don’t know how much hands-on experience you have with USA. (I’m American and have lived about half my life there, back and forth, with friends and family both in the liberal north and the conservative rural Deep South, so I’ve seen it all from up close.) I just hope you aren’t basing your opinions on how the left and right in USA behave on what you see on the news and social media. Because it’s not an accurate portrayal, since those tend to focus on the extreme fringes of both. What’s far less obvious is that the far-right fringe isn’t nearly as far from the average Republican voter as the far-left fringe is from the average democrat voter. The far-left fringe gets almost as many eye rolls from the average democrat as it does from the right. In contrast, mainstream Republican politics of today are essentially what was far-right fringe just a decade or two ago.
I wish I’d saved some interesting analyses of this disparity that I’ve come across over the years, because it really cannot be understated how large the disparity is between the two sides and their fringes.
The other aspect that bothers me about the issue is the wide belief by conservatives that a) they represent the majority of Americans, and b) that they are the “real” America and the rest of us are illegitimate. On point a, this is created by the maps during elections showing huuuuge swaths of the USA in red. What gets forgotten is that this doesn’t show to what degree a jurisdiction was more red or blue, and that a giant red state in the Midwest represents far fewer voters than a small blue state on the east coast. Maps that instead show blue and red dots whose size indicates voter numbers show that conservatives aren’t dominant, and that far, far more of the country appears as purple than as clearly blue or red. As for point b) I find it arrogant of the right to dismiss the coasts (typically as “coastal elites”, despite the fact that those same coastal cities are also home to lots of poor people who are anything but elite) as if we somehow just don’t count, simply because they declare it so.
It's true, I am basing my opinion on social media and my interaction with Americans online. There isn't much else I have to go on. What strikes me is the more extremist leftists views such as the one on abortion I mentioned earlier, seem to be more widespread and tolerated, than the more extreme right-wing views such as the pushing of creationism in school.
(Replying as a block since the bbcode is so nightmarishly difficult to properly edit on mobile.)Yes, I perceive you as quite right-leaning because the arguments you claim about the left aren’t the things the left says and does, but rather the things the right falsely
claims the left says and does.
For example abortion: neither left politics nor advocacy groups are actually pushing for zero-restrictions abortions for any reason. This is a false claim made by the right (together with completely fictitious accounts of late-term abortions being commonplace). The right is constantly arguing that the left pushes abortion as a form of birth control, that is, as a lighthearted everyday way to deal with pregnancy. In actuality, the pro-choice movement is the one pushing for strong sex-ed to prevent pregnancies to begin with, and unambiguously believes that abortion is the last resort. Pro-lifers believe that late-term abortions (which are statistically
extremely rare, not the commonplace occurrence the right lies about it being) need to remain available for when the health of the mother is in jeopardy, or the fetus isn’t viable anymore. They
do not believe that it’s something to be used at-will at any time (not that any woman is going to go through 8 months of pregnancy and at the last minute decide “yknow what, nah”; it’s something decided on early on).
In contrast, when the left accuses the right of pushing creationism or other biblical BS in school, that’s because that’s what the right is
actually doing, as evidenced by many, many, many attempts (many successful) to enshrine that into state or local law!! That and the fact that they (both constituents and politicians) expressly state that they want to do just that. They don’t even hide it any more. So when the left says it’s what the right is doing, it’s not an exaggeration!
These two examples perfectly exemplify why I firmly believe that the right doesn’t play fair, and that the left does for the most part. The dishonesty/arguing-in-bad-faith of the left simply is not anywhere near as extreme as that on the right.
“I don’t have much else to go on” - then listen to (and believe) what people like me, who actually
do have more to go on, tell you.
My own political views are center left (drifting more left as I get older), with huge amounts of disdain for both parties. But my disdain for the GOP has grown dramatically the past few years as they’ve completely divorced themselves from logic, facts, justice, and even the most basic principles of the constitution. (That thing they claim to revere, but then stomp on at every turn.) In my entire adult life, there’s only been one presidential candidate I voted for that I actually somewhat liked — all the rest (including the current one) were simply voting for the candidate I disliked less.
Evil: that post doesn’t even name anyone. My point is that republicans routinely call liberals “evil” and the “enemy” who “hate America”. Their words, not mine. But the point is not that it’s impossible to find counterexamples. But the frequency and vociferousness with which the right uses those descriptions for the left are vastly higher than the reverse. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that, as a left-leaning American, my media consumption skews left. Then it would stand to reason that I would encounter far more instances of the left using such terms to describe the right. But I don’t. In contrast, even just dipping a toe into right-leaning media finds many such examples.
Firing vs vilifying: do not agree with your equating those things. Firing someone for employing biblical values in a secular job (especially government) is not vilifying them, it’s firing them for not doing their job as required by law. And even where the law is vague, saying “that person is not fit to do that job” is NOT the same as saying “that person is evil” or “that person is an enemy of America”, which are real things republicans say.
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