Friday, January 3, 2020
Data Talks
The materials revolution is both a big deal and under appreciated compared to the ICT revolution. https://t.co/r6YBYNEqm8
— Yakov Feygin (insert holiday pun here) (@BuddyYakov) December 1, 2019
Revered leader, austere scholar, and mourners - random chance or a fifth column?
It seems almost petty and paranoid to make much ado about word choices. To the point of absurd. But when the choices are so outside the norm and when there seems to be such a pattern to them . . . ? It is almost as if our residual mainstream media are firmly in the camp of the enemies of the nation.
“Most revered military leader” now joins “austere religious scholar” and “mourners” trying to storm our embassy as word choices that make normal people wonder whose side the American mainstream media is on pic.twitter.com/JR83xMYCtO
— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) January 3, 2020
I see wonderful things
This hot coiling of a large-diameter rod after electro-galvanization shows how a big spring is made https://t.co/N1UNVoDamV pic.twitter.com/CIMpTBjXNq
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) December 1, 2019
Thursday, January 2, 2020
Advocacy mis-measurement syndrome?
It comes across as just another social justicey rant complaining about bias and stereotypes and discrimination, etc. but it isn't quite that. This is one of those storms in a teacup that just don't have much of a clear picture of what is going on.
I see some cryptic allusions here and there about some alumni or student video out of Wisconsin's flagship university University of Wisconsin Madison. It is one of the ironies of modern life that so many claims of abject racism arise from universities where the entire milieu, student, professors and administrators, are notably and materially to the left of the rest of the nation. For enterprises which seem so strongly committed to anti-racism, the claims of systemic racism are surprisingly frequent.
I think it is simply a product of philosophical monomaniacalism. People see what they want to see and if you put a bunch of left leaning, social justice enthused postmodernists into one place, of course they are going to see what they hope to see.
After several sightings of this as a controversy, I finally read the NYT's account of the issue, In a Homecoming Video Meant to Unite Campus, Almost Everyone Was White by Julie Bosman, Emily Shetler and Natalie Yahr.
I had gleaned enough from the allusions to know that the core issue was supposed to be an absence of people of color in the two minute video, so I had my eyes open, ready to count.
Well, yes. It is pretty white. But so is Wisconsin. Is it disproportionately white? Could be, but there were a couple of other things which stood out to me first.
Not only is the video clearly very white but it is also disproportionately female. Across the entire university population in the US, 55-60% are female and that is what appeared to be the case in the video. I would have guessed perhaps 55%. However, apparently the student body at UWI is pretty balanced at 51% female, 49% male. So we have a sex mystery as well as a race mystery. The video looks much whiter and female than the population at large. What gives?
But there was something even more interesting going on and that had to do with the structure of the video itself.
I had rather expected that the video would be a collage of various student events - clubs, sports, dining halls, etc. But that wasn't the case. About half the 2 minute video consisted of unstaged large-scale public events. Panning around the football stadium for example, a ten second segment of the runners and walkers by the lakeshore, wide-angle scenes from around campus. These certainly conveyed overwhelming whiteness but since they are unstaged and public, they don't really indicate any sort of bias. They are filming what is there and what is there is pretty white.
The remaining minute of time in the video is divided between two remaining categories of scenes. About half of them are selected shots of 10-20 people doing one thing or another such as escorting prospective students in groups around campus, doing some sort of UWI choreography, etc. Still fairly sizeable groups of people and, because they are pretty fast pans of scenes, kind of hard to do any sort of quick racial census.
The last category are the closer in shots of small groups of 2-10 people. A little easier in that case to pick out someone who might be Asian, someone who might be Hispanic, someone who looks like they might be African-American.
But the upshot is that the whole video is much more random selections of shots from around campus of large groups of people which makes it less likely that there is any inherent editorial bias. The problem appears not to be that they deliberately (or accidentally) shot a video with no African-Americans. The problem appears to be that there just aren't that many African-Americans at UWI Madison.
One more observation before I move off the video. A few months ago I had the opportunity to watch the commissioning of a class of newly minted US Marine Lieutenants, perhaps six hundred of them out on a parade field. One of the striking things was similarly how white the candidate body seemed. Why would that be? The Marines have a pretty aggressive outreach program, tend to be pretty aware and conscientious of gathering the best of the best wherever they can find them. So why the disparateness? Familial traditions of military service? Random chance? Something else?
My suspicion was that part of the issue was simply one of optics. At a few hundred feet distance, White, Hispanics, and Asians, particularly when in common and standard uniforms, can all appear to be closely alike on a color continuum scale. Under the circumstances only distinctly dark African-Americans stood out as different in color. Perhaps the Marines were more diverse than they appeared merely because of optics.
Well, that was part of it. Native Americans and Asian-Americans appear to be represented in rough proportion to their population (source). African-Americans are distinctly underrepresented at 8% compared to their general population position of 13%. But when you consider college degree requirements and absence of criminal convictions and other similar requirements, 8% might not be all that much out of line with the population who can actually meet those requirements.
The point being that, at a distance, a crowd can appear to be much whiter than it is. Perhaps that is part of what is happening at UWI?
But that can't be the totality of the explanation. I wouldn't think.
What is the African-American population of Wisconsin? The NYT says 6.7% but Wikipedia and the Census says 6.3%.
What percent of UWI student population is African-American? From the NYT article, though they do not calculate the percentage, the numbers are such that 3.3% of the student body is African American. So three percentage points less than the population at large. But, just as with the Marines, you would have to adjust that to identify the population with the minimum required test scores. For the Marines, they can get about 2/3 of the African-American candidates they want. If we were to apply the same rough rule of thumb, we might estimate that UWI is getting 3.3% of their student body to be African-American when they could expect to get 4%. So, definitely a shortfall but on a very small population base.
The upshot is that comparing Wisconsin demographics and UWI, particularly taking into account the effect of test scores, UWI doesn't appear to be too far out of whack on its demographics. Its just a pretty white state.
Given that the video is mostly large panoramas of large groups of random people, it doesn't appear that there is actually much of an issue of deliberate editing to omit populations. Given that male and female are 49:51 in the student body but in the video appear more like 45:55, there is clearly something going on in which random selections of public groups are simply not aligning with the numeric statistics in a fashion that is not intentional.
The NYT and Twitter commenters are working hard to make there be an issue. They can't really say what the issue is. And eyeballing the video, it doesn't look like there actually is much of one. It is just a function of large numbers and random chances.
It almost looks like the racial grievance advocates are really complaining about their minority status per se rather than complaining about any actual malicious acts or bad faith.
But who knows? There is always a backstory. Perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye. But I suspect what is going on here is much more a function of optics and random chance and small numbers than it has to do with any particular element of identitarianism.
I see some cryptic allusions here and there about some alumni or student video out of Wisconsin's flagship university University of Wisconsin Madison. It is one of the ironies of modern life that so many claims of abject racism arise from universities where the entire milieu, student, professors and administrators, are notably and materially to the left of the rest of the nation. For enterprises which seem so strongly committed to anti-racism, the claims of systemic racism are surprisingly frequent.
I think it is simply a product of philosophical monomaniacalism. People see what they want to see and if you put a bunch of left leaning, social justice enthused postmodernists into one place, of course they are going to see what they hope to see.
After several sightings of this as a controversy, I finally read the NYT's account of the issue, In a Homecoming Video Meant to Unite Campus, Almost Everyone Was White by Julie Bosman, Emily Shetler and Natalie Yahr.
I had gleaned enough from the allusions to know that the core issue was supposed to be an absence of people of color in the two minute video, so I had my eyes open, ready to count.
Well, yes. It is pretty white. But so is Wisconsin. Is it disproportionately white? Could be, but there were a couple of other things which stood out to me first.
Not only is the video clearly very white but it is also disproportionately female. Across the entire university population in the US, 55-60% are female and that is what appeared to be the case in the video. I would have guessed perhaps 55%. However, apparently the student body at UWI is pretty balanced at 51% female, 49% male. So we have a sex mystery as well as a race mystery. The video looks much whiter and female than the population at large. What gives?
But there was something even more interesting going on and that had to do with the structure of the video itself.
I had rather expected that the video would be a collage of various student events - clubs, sports, dining halls, etc. But that wasn't the case. About half the 2 minute video consisted of unstaged large-scale public events. Panning around the football stadium for example, a ten second segment of the runners and walkers by the lakeshore, wide-angle scenes from around campus. These certainly conveyed overwhelming whiteness but since they are unstaged and public, they don't really indicate any sort of bias. They are filming what is there and what is there is pretty white.
The remaining minute of time in the video is divided between two remaining categories of scenes. About half of them are selected shots of 10-20 people doing one thing or another such as escorting prospective students in groups around campus, doing some sort of UWI choreography, etc. Still fairly sizeable groups of people and, because they are pretty fast pans of scenes, kind of hard to do any sort of quick racial census.
The last category are the closer in shots of small groups of 2-10 people. A little easier in that case to pick out someone who might be Asian, someone who might be Hispanic, someone who looks like they might be African-American.
But the upshot is that the whole video is much more random selections of shots from around campus of large groups of people which makes it less likely that there is any inherent editorial bias. The problem appears not to be that they deliberately (or accidentally) shot a video with no African-Americans. The problem appears to be that there just aren't that many African-Americans at UWI Madison.
One more observation before I move off the video. A few months ago I had the opportunity to watch the commissioning of a class of newly minted US Marine Lieutenants, perhaps six hundred of them out on a parade field. One of the striking things was similarly how white the candidate body seemed. Why would that be? The Marines have a pretty aggressive outreach program, tend to be pretty aware and conscientious of gathering the best of the best wherever they can find them. So why the disparateness? Familial traditions of military service? Random chance? Something else?
My suspicion was that part of the issue was simply one of optics. At a few hundred feet distance, White, Hispanics, and Asians, particularly when in common and standard uniforms, can all appear to be closely alike on a color continuum scale. Under the circumstances only distinctly dark African-Americans stood out as different in color. Perhaps the Marines were more diverse than they appeared merely because of optics.
Well, that was part of it. Native Americans and Asian-Americans appear to be represented in rough proportion to their population (source). African-Americans are distinctly underrepresented at 8% compared to their general population position of 13%. But when you consider college degree requirements and absence of criminal convictions and other similar requirements, 8% might not be all that much out of line with the population who can actually meet those requirements.
The point being that, at a distance, a crowd can appear to be much whiter than it is. Perhaps that is part of what is happening at UWI?
But that can't be the totality of the explanation. I wouldn't think.
What is the African-American population of Wisconsin? The NYT says 6.7% but Wikipedia and the Census says 6.3%.
What percent of UWI student population is African-American? From the NYT article, though they do not calculate the percentage, the numbers are such that 3.3% of the student body is African American. So three percentage points less than the population at large. But, just as with the Marines, you would have to adjust that to identify the population with the minimum required test scores. For the Marines, they can get about 2/3 of the African-American candidates they want. If we were to apply the same rough rule of thumb, we might estimate that UWI is getting 3.3% of their student body to be African-American when they could expect to get 4%. So, definitely a shortfall but on a very small population base.
The upshot is that comparing Wisconsin demographics and UWI, particularly taking into account the effect of test scores, UWI doesn't appear to be too far out of whack on its demographics. Its just a pretty white state.
Given that the video is mostly large panoramas of large groups of random people, it doesn't appear that there is actually much of an issue of deliberate editing to omit populations. Given that male and female are 49:51 in the student body but in the video appear more like 45:55, there is clearly something going on in which random selections of public groups are simply not aligning with the numeric statistics in a fashion that is not intentional.
The NYT and Twitter commenters are working hard to make there be an issue. They can't really say what the issue is. And eyeballing the video, it doesn't look like there actually is much of one. It is just a function of large numbers and random chances.
It almost looks like the racial grievance advocates are really complaining about their minority status per se rather than complaining about any actual malicious acts or bad faith.
But who knows? There is always a backstory. Perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye. But I suspect what is going on here is much more a function of optics and random chance and small numbers than it has to do with any particular element of identitarianism.
Previous economic game results have overestimated third parties’ willingness to punish transgressors on behalf of strangers
A great reminder that many sociological research findings lack confirmation in real world environments. From When and Why Do Third Parties Punish Outside of the Lab? A Cross-Cultural Recall Study by Eric J. Pedersen, et al. From the Abstract.
Punishment can reform uncooperative behavior and hence could have contributed to humans’ ability to live in large-scale societies. Punishment by unaffected third parties has received extensive scientific scrutiny because third parties punish transgressors in laboratory experiments on behalf of strangers that they will never interact with again. Often overlooked in this research are interactions involving people who are not strangers, which constitute many interactions beyond the laboratory. Across three samples in two countries (United States and Japan; N = 1,294), we found that third parties’ anger at transgressors, and their intervention and punishment on behalf of victims, varied in real-life conflicts as a function of how much third parties valued the welfare of the disputants. Punishment was rare (1–2%) when third parties did not value the welfare of the victim, suggesting that previous economic game results have overestimated third parties’ willingness to punish transgressors on behalf of strangers.
Hermetically sealed epistemic vacuums and the coercive state
From 2019 Was Another One Of Those Tough Years For The "Experts" by Francis Menton. Well, yes. Coercive statism in an hermetically sealed epistemic vacuum almost always leads to expert recommendations with disastrous outcomes.
But do supposed “experts” like scientists or economists in and out of the government really have a clue what they are doing? Or are they just ordinary humans who use the cover of credentials and position to see how much power they can seize unto themselves at everyone else’s expense? Let’s consider some examples that come up here at the end of 2019. I have three good ones for today.There are some entertaining doozies.
Media in modern times
That is sort of what I feel like from two or three relatively insignificant but telling items over the past couple of days.
Three, maybe four days ago, I heard a segment of an NPR piece. The discussion was about the contrasting positions between John McCain and Mitch McConnell on campaign finance reform. Even though there was a lot of spin and bias in the reporting, the segment was interesting. John McCain always took the high road reformer position - money should not determine the outcomes of elections. Fair enough. But the basic objective was enable through intrusive and restrictive laws which restrict fundamental Bill of Rights clauses.
Mitch McConnell's position is equally clear. Free speech is free speech. The government does not get to choose who can say what through which channels.
Both positions have their nobility and both can clearly be abused. But McConnell's criticism is searing - the government should not be allowed to control what people say in elections.
The other message that came through the NPR reporting was a clear institutional interest. NPR journalists were clearly longing for the imagined memory of a time when only a few companies were allowed to shape the national reporting. It was a few (basically the TV channels) players communicating to many (the entire public).
Now, owing to technological change, it is a many to many model. Everyone can craft their own channels to an astonishing array of news sources ranging from individuals to enterprises to foreign sources.
The Mainstream Media has been stripped of their institutional authority and lost their marketplace credibility. The NPR segment was trying to set up a two player model - either the public determine elections or rich people determine elections. But the unstated longing and subtext message was that there is a third model to which NPR wished to return. The model where an oligopoly of news sources sets the narrative and agenda and thereby determine elections.
The criticisms of mainstream media against their critics is often interpreted as leftwing news media bashing rightwing critics. And there is significant truth to that. But the other way to frame it is that the mainstream media are desperately fighting a rearguard action against the proliferation of alternate news sources and channels.
As an example of the importance of channels, I offer much maligned Twitter. More and more of my news comes directly from a host of experts whom I follow directly on twitter or on their own blogs. Not journalists. Experts whom journalists used to interview. Why should I listen to the spin and bias of Journalist SMITH when I can access the knowledge and opinions of Experts JONES and BROWN directly?
The MSM no longer has the power of selecting experts.
So the idea of the MSM fighting a rearguard action to defend their old oligopolistic privileges was already on my mind.
Then over the weekend, there was an attack on the US embassy in Iraq which quickly had the MSM raising parallels to the attack on our Benghazi embassy under Clinton. There seemed almost an unseemly media glee that Trump might suffer the same humiliation as did Clinton (see here for some other examples). It reminded me of a BBC interview in 2003 in the lead up to the Iraq invasion when the BBC interviewer, reflexively anti-American, was aggressively trying to coach historian Antony Beevor (author of 1998 classic Stalingrad) to forecast that the American invasion would come to grief at a siege of Baghdad. Beevor, as a respectable intellectual, was both trying to be politely responsive but also not serve as a political mouthpiece for an empty-headed journalist. It was one of those moments of naked media bias on display that are both embarrassing and horrifying.
But the parallel between Benghazi and Baghdad quickly unravelled. One call from the embassy quickly yielded 120 rapidly deployed Marines and the mob dissipated. The media did not get the rock upon which the USS Trump would crash which they so desperately desired. Or, at least, not yet.
But there were some more particular parallels which reflected poorly on the MSM and which they did not seem to consider. At Benghazi, the initial State Department position, unquestioned by the MSM despite evidence to the contrary, was that the attack on the Benghazi embassy was merely a mob incensed by a video and which got out of hand. There was a whole dog and pony show across the Sunday news programs where experts and administration spokespeople all lined up to push the lie which was unquestioned by the accommodating journalists.
Of course, it quickly emerged that there had been intimations that there was going to be a terrorist attack, that this was a terrorist attack, and there was no issue about video-incensed mobs. It was a terrorist attack which no one wished to acknowledge.
So it was especially striking how the New York Times chose to frame this terrorist attack on the American embassy in Iraq.
Click for replies. Note the ratioing
Mourners? This feels just like the video-incensed mob deception abetted by the MSM. As best I can tell, what happened was a week or so ago, the Iranian-funded Hezbollah terrorist group operating in Iraq rocketed an American compound, killing an American contractor. The US responded a few days later with a missile attack which killed more than two dozen Hezbollah terrorists across multiple locations. The Hezbollah Iraqi front group then attacked the American embassy in Baghdad. From all the pictures, the attackers were clearly under command and control in a coordinated attack. They were all young men between twenty and forty and half of them were in uniform.
Mourners? It is hard to see that as an appropriate and impartial description of the terrorist attackers.
The actual NYT article, Protesters Attack U.S. Embassy in Iraq, Chanting ‘Death to America’, is hardly any better. It provides more relevant background but tries to make this primarily about Trump and his responses rather than the act of Iranian terrorism which it is.
The NYT does acknowledge that Hezbollah is backed by the Iranians. In one paragraph out of a nearly fifty paragraph article it further acknowledges:
You can't help but feel that the Times's anti-Trumpism hasn't extended into anti-Americanism.
The final big incident fueling this perception of the MSM as an enemy of the people is the church shooting in Texas this past Sunday in which two parishioners were killed by a mentally ill street person before being killed by a member of the congregation's security team.
USA Today led the charge into enemy of the people territory with this opinion piece.
Note the ratioing.
That apparent call to twitter-mob and investigate the members of the church security team set off some strong negative responses.
So did the opening lines of the piece itself:
All three of these items:
Three, maybe four days ago, I heard a segment of an NPR piece. The discussion was about the contrasting positions between John McCain and Mitch McConnell on campaign finance reform. Even though there was a lot of spin and bias in the reporting, the segment was interesting. John McCain always took the high road reformer position - money should not determine the outcomes of elections. Fair enough. But the basic objective was enable through intrusive and restrictive laws which restrict fundamental Bill of Rights clauses.
Mitch McConnell's position is equally clear. Free speech is free speech. The government does not get to choose who can say what through which channels.
Both positions have their nobility and both can clearly be abused. But McConnell's criticism is searing - the government should not be allowed to control what people say in elections.
The other message that came through the NPR reporting was a clear institutional interest. NPR journalists were clearly longing for the imagined memory of a time when only a few companies were allowed to shape the national reporting. It was a few (basically the TV channels) players communicating to many (the entire public).
Now, owing to technological change, it is a many to many model. Everyone can craft their own channels to an astonishing array of news sources ranging from individuals to enterprises to foreign sources.
The Mainstream Media has been stripped of their institutional authority and lost their marketplace credibility. The NPR segment was trying to set up a two player model - either the public determine elections or rich people determine elections. But the unstated longing and subtext message was that there is a third model to which NPR wished to return. The model where an oligopoly of news sources sets the narrative and agenda and thereby determine elections.
The criticisms of mainstream media against their critics is often interpreted as leftwing news media bashing rightwing critics. And there is significant truth to that. But the other way to frame it is that the mainstream media are desperately fighting a rearguard action against the proliferation of alternate news sources and channels.
As an example of the importance of channels, I offer much maligned Twitter. More and more of my news comes directly from a host of experts whom I follow directly on twitter or on their own blogs. Not journalists. Experts whom journalists used to interview. Why should I listen to the spin and bias of Journalist SMITH when I can access the knowledge and opinions of Experts JONES and BROWN directly?
The MSM no longer has the power of selecting experts.
So the idea of the MSM fighting a rearguard action to defend their old oligopolistic privileges was already on my mind.
Then over the weekend, there was an attack on the US embassy in Iraq which quickly had the MSM raising parallels to the attack on our Benghazi embassy under Clinton. There seemed almost an unseemly media glee that Trump might suffer the same humiliation as did Clinton (see here for some other examples). It reminded me of a BBC interview in 2003 in the lead up to the Iraq invasion when the BBC interviewer, reflexively anti-American, was aggressively trying to coach historian Antony Beevor (author of 1998 classic Stalingrad) to forecast that the American invasion would come to grief at a siege of Baghdad. Beevor, as a respectable intellectual, was both trying to be politely responsive but also not serve as a political mouthpiece for an empty-headed journalist. It was one of those moments of naked media bias on display that are both embarrassing and horrifying.
But the parallel between Benghazi and Baghdad quickly unravelled. One call from the embassy quickly yielded 120 rapidly deployed Marines and the mob dissipated. The media did not get the rock upon which the USS Trump would crash which they so desperately desired. Or, at least, not yet.
But there were some more particular parallels which reflected poorly on the MSM and which they did not seem to consider. At Benghazi, the initial State Department position, unquestioned by the MSM despite evidence to the contrary, was that the attack on the Benghazi embassy was merely a mob incensed by a video and which got out of hand. There was a whole dog and pony show across the Sunday news programs where experts and administration spokespeople all lined up to push the lie which was unquestioned by the accommodating journalists.
Of course, it quickly emerged that there had been intimations that there was going to be a terrorist attack, that this was a terrorist attack, and there was no issue about video-incensed mobs. It was a terrorist attack which no one wished to acknowledge.
So it was especially striking how the New York Times chose to frame this terrorist attack on the American embassy in Iraq.
Hundreds of Iraqi mourners tried to storm the United States Embassy in Baghdad, shouting “Down, down USA!,” in response to deadly American airstrikes this week that killed 25 fighters https://t.co/jrAtON72eR
— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 31, 2019
Click for replies. Note the ratioing
Mourners? This feels just like the video-incensed mob deception abetted by the MSM. As best I can tell, what happened was a week or so ago, the Iranian-funded Hezbollah terrorist group operating in Iraq rocketed an American compound, killing an American contractor. The US responded a few days later with a missile attack which killed more than two dozen Hezbollah terrorists across multiple locations. The Hezbollah Iraqi front group then attacked the American embassy in Baghdad. From all the pictures, the attackers were clearly under command and control in a coordinated attack. They were all young men between twenty and forty and half of them were in uniform.
Mourners? It is hard to see that as an appropriate and impartial description of the terrorist attackers.
The actual NYT article, Protesters Attack U.S. Embassy in Iraq, Chanting ‘Death to America’, is hardly any better. It provides more relevant background but tries to make this primarily about Trump and his responses rather than the act of Iranian terrorism which it is.
The NYT does acknowledge that Hezbollah is backed by the Iranians. In one paragraph out of a nearly fifty paragraph article it further acknowledges:
The upheaval comes at a critical time for Iraq and for the United States’ role in the country. Mass protests in recent months against poor governance have weakened the government and underscored the criticism of Iraqis who feel that Iran has too much sway over the country’s politics.There is no mention in the article of the protests roiling Iran, some portion of which are directed against Iran's adventurism in the region (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen) and financial and military support for Hezbollah and the Houthi. Money and lives being wasted while Iranians themselves suffer economic turmoil and collapse.
You can't help but feel that the Times's anti-Trumpism hasn't extended into anti-Americanism.
The final big incident fueling this perception of the MSM as an enemy of the people is the church shooting in Texas this past Sunday in which two parishioners were killed by a mentally ill street person before being killed by a member of the congregation's security team.
USA Today led the charge into enemy of the people territory with this opinion piece.
Opinion: Jack Wilson is exactly the type of person you want around with a gun because he's a firearms instructor. But we know nothing about the at least six other parishioners who also appeared to draw their handguns. And that's terrifying. https://t.co/od0vfGftjU
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) January 1, 2020
Note the ratioing.
That apparent call to twitter-mob and investigate the members of the church security team set off some strong negative responses.
So did the opening lines of the piece itself:
Jack Wilson is a hero alright. It took him only six seconds to kill a gunman at a Texas church, saving countless lives.Rather than celebrating saved lives, USA Today, via the opinion piece, seems to be mourning the damage done to their crusade against the Second Amendment. Is it any wonder that the glib enemy of the people snark actually has resonance.
Unfortunately, that kind of split-second heroism has been turned into a PR tool by gun advocates.
All three of these items:
NPR pining for its days of privilege determining the outcome of elections;All reinforce the idea of the MSM as enemy of the people. The commercial, technology, and political trends of the past five years have been unkind to the MSM. Their first actions of 2020 do not suggest that they have a line-of-sight on their core issues or how to deliver fact-based reporting to a news consuming public now inundated with alternative, and often more accurate, news sources.
NYT misreporting an attack on an American embassy (again);
USA Today inadvertently telling its readers that their lives are worth less than the damage from their survival owing to a gun in the hands of a good man
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