Re: OT: Youth In Asia

Dale Houstman <dmh7@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
RichL wrote:
Dale Houstman <dmh7@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Lizz Holmans wrote:
See, that's the problem. The sites you posted to are *advocacy*
sites, they're not neutral. While I agree with a lot of what
they say, at this point they're a dime a dozen on both sides of
the article, and I'd rather see an unbiased analysis of the pros
and cons.
The idea that anyone can be truly 'unbiased' is one of the great
myths of modern politics -- along with the ridiculous notion that
'moderate', 'bipartisan' centrism is always better than
passionate, polarised debate. Some issues are just too profound
and important to treat as mere detached, academic exercises.
There comes a point where the material forces of history are just
too strong; *everyone* has a stake in what happens, one way or
another, and thus a bias, even if they don't consciously realise
it. An open mind and willingness to at least *listen* to opposing
views is always necessary, of course. But as they say, 'Keep your
mind open, but not so open that your brains fall out.'
Oh, piss off, Sean.

Why? What Sean is saying is perfectly correct as far as I can see:
there IS a "disease of dualism" in modern life (and particularly in
U.S. politics which swings back and forth between two very similar
sides which actually represent an incredibly small arc of actual
thought on a subject, and this has led to a media that "naturally"
assumes that all "real" solutions lie between the expressed
positions of the two dominant parties. But this is almost never
true: most real solutions to any problem lie outside those supposed
"extremes". We have a withered political discourse in this country
that leads to a lot of ballyhoo and panic over almost nothing, and
no organized position from which to critique the shadow play that
passes for debate, aided greatly by a media owned by major
corporate players in defense plants, and other vested interests.
you might not like Sean, but the expressed opinion is perfectly
valid.

I don't take issue with this view, but unfortunately it was written
in response to my post in which I was *not* advocating centrism but
rather simply having a more informed basis than I do at the moment
for deciding my views on the issues.


Well, I wasn't addressing you, although Sean's response does (in his
way) address your notion that an "unbiased" view exists or can exist,
with the idea (which I think is valid) that first, there is no such
thing as an unbiased view in most political/cultural matters, although
it may exist in such subjects as astronomy: in other words, politics
is about taking a stand and defending it. There can be no unbiased
view about - say - health care reform because there is really no
objective reality which defines a set limit to solutions and
instrumentations, etc.

I'm using "unbiased" in a narrower sense than you are here. Simply put,
what does the legalese in the various bills under consideration mean, in
plain English, without being colored by various individuals' fantasies
such as killing grandma, to take one extreme, or we can cover everyone
at the level of Congressmen and Senators without it costing a dime more,
to take the opposite extreme.

In political discourse, the word "unbiased" is
akin to the word "bi-partisan" and is both naive and and insult to
true problem-solving, because - as the political lines are drawn
tighter and tighter, and drift continually to the right, the "middle
ground" becomes increasingly conservative; to seek that middle or
unbiased or bi-partisan arena is simply to surrender to the drift.

I don't take "unbiased" as being synonymous with "bipartisan" at all.
To me it simply means cut the bull*** and tell me what the bills really
say.

The actual solutions lie not in assuming that there is some viable
(and honest) median, but in fighting to win back lost ground, and
actually being strongly opinionated. In the health care debate,
although there are various ways to get to a useful solution, those do
not (at the moment) lie between the liberals and the conservatives:
the conservatives have fronted utter lies and corporate finagling,
not solutions to a problem, but an affront to intelligence. The
liberals are only marginally better, having abandoned so much ground
that they now lie only yards from their supposed enemies, who are
determined to drag them into the mudhole they inhabit. The best
solutions are scarcely being discussed at all, and when they are they
are being discussed by advocacy groups. So no matter where you look,
you will eventually be forced to choose between advocacies, and not
find the Blue Rose of "non-bias". In the news media, this entire idea
of "objectivity" has reduced the news to a manipulated puppet of
corporate culture, because that culture makes no pretense of being
"unbiased". We need more advocacy, backed by a realignment of
communication/media control laws (another Clinton kick in the ass of
democracy), to flush out the nutters and give more media diversity,
so the conversation is not ruled by corporate hacks.

Yet you miss the point. How do I know whether a given proposal for
health care, for instance, is effective to "win back lost ground" if I
don't know what's really in there?

Does a "public option" actually have some hope of providing insurance
coverage for the "have-nots" in any affordable and meaningful way, or
are we better off pushing for a single-payer system of some sort?

As I've said on many occasions, the vast majority of so-called
"civilized" nations manage to cover a much greater fraction of their
citizenry at a fraction of the per-individual cost of the *current*
system in the US. How do we know whether a bill under consideration is
actually a move in the right direction (coverage, cost)? Are we going
down the wrong path to achieve these goals?

This has nothing to do with any desire on my part to achieve a
"centrist" solution, in fact I believe that a legitimate, *unbiased*
answer to these questions would make it clear that a pathway that is
much to the left of what's being considered might be necessary.

It simply means moving forward on the basis of factual information that
can be gleaned from what is being proposed, rather than hype. And yes,
the left can be just as guilty of generating hype as the right.


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