hilzoy: I find it hard to convey my contempt for this. (And I am not normally into contempt.) All smugness, no actual argument. www.nytimes.com/2024/07/04/o...

I find it hard to convey my contempt for this. (And I am not normally into contempt.) All smugness, no actual argument. www.nytimes.com/2024/07/04/o...

Opinion | Why I Don’t Votewww.nytimes.com If casting a ballot is merely expressive, then the same is true of not casting one.

The closest thing is this: "I cannot change the fact that financialization, environmental spoliation, drug addiction, the hollowing out of the public sector and the subsuming of virtually every aspect of human existence into reality-augmenting digital media ...

... are making this country an uninhabitable wasteland — and neither can any president I expect to see elected in my lifetime." Oh really? Your civics class neglected the existence of environmental and financial regulation, not to mention addiction research and treatment?

You are unaware that the government can provide public spaces where people can do things other than look at their phones, play video games, and get high? Poor you. But there's no reason to subject the rest of us to your ignorance and lack of imagination, still less for the NYT to give them space.

"Why bother to rescue that drowning child? The real problem facing me, I mean us, today is an overwhelming sense of ennui and boredom, and no amount of so-called "rescue" and "CPR" and "getting that poor child to dry land" can cure those!"

Child was on her phone and deserved it anyway.

My God, have you seen this additional context?

This is a dumb article, but also isn't the author's first rodeo, and his other writing shows the real reason he doesn't vote "But my principal reason for declining to take part in elections is moral. It involves, I suppose, a private objection to democracy itself." theweek.com/articles/802...

😱

Yeah it’s dumb but it’s also a fucking outrage. You don’t publish this on the 4th of July by accident.

But wait, there's more! (Thanks to the indispensable capitolhunters)

The NYT politics and opinion desks are just a menace.

Jamelle Bouie tho

I like Bouie a great deal. I like Krugman (sometimes his politics takes are bad, but I like him and otherwise respect him greatly). Probably others! But Bouie is not on the editorial board (and lives 300+ miles from its meetings). I don't know if Krugman is on the editorial board, but doubt it.

People forget that one of the strategies of the New York Times is to keep just enough good people and do just enough good journalism to maintain their devoted loving loyal liberal readership so that it is to precisely those people to whom they push the right wing sh*t which is their functional task.

Apparently, you haven't seen the threads on Twitter on people canceling their subscriptions to Nyt.

I very much appreciate the degree to which people are finally waking up to this game and rejecting it. That doesn't mean the NYT's game has changed, just that not all the rubes are still buying it.

Well, the premise is garbage. "If casting a ballot is merely expressive . . . " But it's *NOT*! Christ, I don't vote to express an opinion. No one should. One should vote with the goal of enacting good policy. The idea of a vote as "expression" is corrosive to democracy!

the idea that voting is ("merely" as the subhed has it, or even primarily) "expressive"—rather than first and foremost active participation in a collective decision making process—is so deeply pernicious

It's probably for the better that that guy doesn't vote, frankly

Of course you saw the follow-up where he actually HAS voted in the last several elections? His world-weary superiority is merely a pose to discourage others from voting. He himself actually believers it is good and does it. Just vile vile vile shit.

interesting that there are no comments allowed on that piece. The NYT is definitely making some choices lately on what views they think are publishable.

Except for the date and the name of the candidate, 60 years on this ad still seems just about right. youtu.be/gRp_BUMeapg?...

Presidential ad: “Daisy” from Lyndon B. Johnson (D) vs. Barry Goldwater (R) [1964—FEAR]youtu.be “Daisy,” 1964 Lyndon Johnson (D) vs. Barry Goldwater (R) Johnson’s emotionally chilling and controversial TV spot “Daisy” was pulled from the air for fearmongering. The resulting news coverage was the equivalent of today’s going viral. Studies show that when it comes to political advertising, we feel first and think later. So the most impactful campaign ads aim for our hearts—fear, anger, hope and pride—and they run the gamut from stirring to downright dirty. I Approve This Message, an exhibition about the emotional impact of political advertising in a landscape altered by the internet, was scheduled to open at the New-York Historical Society in September 2020. The COVID-19 lockdown halted those plans, but we want to share a few of the exhibition’s ads, particularly as we head towards election day on Nov. 3, 2020. The Birth of Election Ads and 9 Classic TV Spots, read more: http://behindthescenes.nyhistory.org/i-approve-this-message-the-birth-of-election-ads-and-9-classic-tv-spots/ Generous support for exhibitions that address the cornerstones of citizenship and American democracy provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and HISTORY. Exhibitions at New-York Historical are made possible by Dr. Agnes Hsu-Tang and Oscar Tang, the Saunders Trust for American History, the Seymour Neuman Endowed Fund, and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. WNET is the media sponsor.

In the spirit of the day, I would fully support putting the whole sorry lot that greenlit this op-ed in the stocks for the day for citizens to throw rotten fruit at them

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