Some people refuse to update their priors after they graduate from high school/college. Who those people are gets more obvious with every passing year.
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Thankfully the readership isn’t buying it, as shown by some of the top-ranked comments:
I don’t belittle Trump voters for who they are or what their social and economic circumstances may be, but I do blame them for thinking that a narcissistic, felonious two-bit con man demagogue is the answer to any of their problems.
Sure. Let me know when they’re willing to extend the same courtesies to americans that don’t look like or live like them, and I’ll consider it.
I agree we should address their positions with candor and with evidence, and with objectivity.
But, I also know they have come to their stand on Trump by immersing themselves – willingly – in their own prejudices. Trump supporters haven’t been “left behind” economically and socially, they have “chosen” to stay behind, to dismiss the value of education, to ignore evidence about gender issues, to cling to old myths and prejudices. And if they haven’t consciously made these choices, then they did it out of moral and intellectual laziness.
Sure, we all have a “right” to our personal views, but the right does not confer the legitimacy or the accuracy of those views. Someone may claim that the Earth is flat, may say “that’s my view, and I have a right to believe what I believe!”, but I don’t have to respect that he/she has embraced a claim that science has proven to be absolutely wrong.
And so it’s hard for me to “respect” those who say Donald Trump is fit to be president when he has demonstrated totally in his own words and deeds that he is NOT fit to be president.
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It’s 100% this. Normal people stop trying to active think about or follow politics after college and their opinions calcify. Boomers still think the GOP is the party of the Reagan era and they will never learn otherwise no matter what Trump does.
They don’t think it, they know the difference. They just don’t want to acknowledge it so they promote what they’d like the Republican Party to be instead of what it obviously is.
It’s why you can’t logic them out of it, you can’t logic someone out of consciously playing pretend.
This is also why when it becomes personal via their child going gay or whatever they easily pivot. They didnt have an actual principle in the first place. Just pretend and trolling when confronted on it.
I have several such people in my life.
Same article:
…since at least 2008
Worth the 2 minutes to watch jbouie cook:
https://x.com/jeffjarvis/status/1830399625787822379
He never names his employer but it seems obvious he has a solid contempt for how bad the Times is on this stuff. The NYT story on this event is cited multiple times above for falsely claiming they didn’t know they quoted Hitler and for presenting a longtime Republican as a free-thinking former Democrat until the pandemic.
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This is like a parody of the pitchbot. “Donald Trump is a huge asshole, here’s why that’s a problem…for Kamala Harris.”
The piece itself doesn’t even really match the headline:
Harris is being criticized by Republicans for a lack of policy specificity and reversing previous positions on fracking and immigration. But her adoption of centrist positions also appears to be squeezing Trump and frustrating his efforts to land a decisive political attack. Her decision to take on high grocery prices with a vow to clamp down on supermarket giants might explain how she’s narrowed the gap with Trump on who is most trusted on the economy.
The flap over Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery last week also showed how the ex-president’s hardball tactics could hurt him as much as her.
JBouie is showing up trying to do a good job the right way (aka what newspapers did for decades and the ideal that they are supposed to try to live up to), and everyone else at the Times is like, “Get a load of this idiot, he thinks what we do here is capital-J Journalism. He doesn’t even realize all we do is bullshit to maximize pageviews! What an idiot!”
Dunno when his contract is up there, but I doubt he’ll be back.
(To be clear, he’s the good guy here and he’s every bit as intelligent as his colleagues. Some of them may be dumb, but most of what he has that they lack is simply morality and idealism.)
fwiw I just realized he posts stuff on TikTok daily, downloaded it just to follow him, he’s really good
https://x.com/Uncrewed/status/1831400083499458634
Pack it up boys and girls - we’ve got a winner!
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Worst take of the year goes to the Churchill was worse than Hitler guy.
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The fact that journalism appears to be solidly in “any click is a good click” mode really sucks, it’s like those videos of dumb “life hacks” that are designed to be made fun of
Nazis get their own bracket because otherwise they would always win.