I've talked to you guys before about how very
few things in life and in politics are black
and white and that
really the difficult thing is to figure out
the gray areas and most things are gray areas,
at least to some degree. And unfortunately
it's not just that some people go into this
black and white thinking mode when it doesn't
make sense to do it. We actually have a problem.
We're increasingly our media infrastructure,
our political infrastructure. It's based on,
and it's even expecting and rewarding black
and white positions, which is to say hot takes
hot take culture nuance. Even seeing both
sides is not rewarded. It doesn't get clicks
and it just is not encouraged. And so we see
this vicious circle where there is less and
less nuanced thinking over time, and I could
pink pick a bunch of different examples, but
let's just do two from this week to illustrate
what I mean that almost nothing is completely
one thing or the other example. Number one.
At the end of Donald Trump's state of the
union this week, Nancy Pelosi ripped up Donald
Trump's speech and was seen tossing it on
the desk in front of her and immediately political
Twitter, corporate political analyses in the
spin room after the event. Everybody had to
stake out a position on this and you had people
on one side saying, this is a genius example
of resistance and female empowerment and Nancy
saying F you to Donald Trump and it's the
best thing in the world. And then you had
people attacking Nancy Pelosi saying, this
is total puppeteering. It's worthless imagery.
While Nancy Pelosi is part of the establishment,
she's a terrible person. She's part of what's
wrong with America. And you then had people
who thought it was bad attacking people who
thought it was good on Twitter and elsewhere
and it was just a mess. And everybody just
needs to calm down.
This isn't a huge thing where you need to
stake out some all encompassing definitive
position. What Nancy Pelosi did by ripping
up the speech was a funny conclusion to a
state of the union that was a completely farcical
reality show with Trump behaving like a reality
show hosts springing metals on people bringing
in surprise guests. And in that context I
was feeling similar to Nancy Pelosi. By the
end, the eye-rolling, the exhaustion from
the ridiculousness of the show and ripping
up the speech felt almost like a fitting conclusion
to the farce of the state of the union. And
at the same time, while it was visually funny
and kind of a funny thing at the end, it doesn't
really further the resistance. It doesn't
help remove Donald Trump, but it doesn't deal
with the policy issues that we're trying to
deal with. So it's not terrible and it's not
genius.
It's not to be attacked horribly. It's not
the most powerful example of progressive activism
either. It's okay that it's just sort of funny
and doesn't do much for us. Let's now focus
on the way in which state of the unions have
become reality shows and half the country
loves it. That's what's important, not taking
a black and white view on Nancy ripping up
paper. Let me give you one other example,
and it comes from the state of the union.
Donald Trump, during the speech attacked Venezuelan,
president Nicolas Maduro, and then he also
had brought in as a guest in the upper mezzanine,
Juan Guido and proclaimed Guido the rightful
president of Venezuela. And you had people
who were on one side refusing to even acknowledge
Trump's criticisms of Maduro, others insisting
that this was a tremendous principle than
defiant move to fight against Maduro is raping
and pillaging of Venezuela, uh, and so on
and so forth.
Let's calm down. Nicolas Maduro was not a
good guy. He's been bad for Venezuela. We
can agree on that part while still being 100%
opposed to Donald Trump. Once again, getting
the United States involved in Latin American
regime change through his this time, it's
overt propaganda. He brought [inaudible] to
the state of the union when the status of
what is going on in Venezuela is very much
in question. The U S cannot be involved down
there. This is exactly what the United States
should be staying out of. It's disgusting
to see Donald Trump do this and it makes the
criticisms of guava as a U S backed puppet
ring true, but Maduro is still terrible. It's
okay. It's not all or nothing, and I could
pick other examples, but the point is we get
nowhere when the expectation is that we have
to stake out some black and white hot take
because sometimes things are black and white,
but very, very rarely and unfortunately the
whole system supports doing the black, white
hot takes stuff.
It gets shared more, it does better on social
media. It's more likely to trigger comments,
but let's at least try to be aware of this
structural bias and understand that it's a
little more boring in the gray area, but it's
actual reality and that's where we should
mostly be operating.
