Outrageous projection - NYT "Groupthink Has Left the Left Blind" (Bret Stephens)
This is utter bullshit - publishing it so you can see how the other side thinks of us. Mostly, it tells us how THEY think
A constricted view of the world leaves progressives surprised by the world as it is.
Bret Stephens
By Bret Stephens
Opinion Columnist
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/opinion/liberal-media-censoring.html
This year, several high-profile writers have left left-leaning publications after running afoul of what they describe as a pervasive culture of censoriousness, groupthink and intellectual-risk aversion. This month, Donald Trump once again stunned much of the liberal establishment by dramatically beating polling expectations to come within about 80,000 votes of another Electoral College victory.
It’s worth asking whether there’s a connection between the two — that is, between the left’s increasingly constricted view of the world and the increasing frequency with which leftists are surprised by the world as it is.
What, today, is leftism, at least when it comes to intellectual life? Not what it used to be. Once it was predominantly liberal, albeit with radical fringes. Now it is predominantly progressive, or woke, with centrist liberals in dissent. Once it was irreverent. Now it is pious. Once it believed that truth was best discovered by engaging opposing points of view. Now it believes that truth can be established by eliminating them. Once it cared about process. Now it is obsessed with outcomes. Once it understood, with Walt Whitman, that we contain multitudes. Now it is into dualities: We are privileged or powerless, white or of color, racist or anti-racist, oppressor or oppressed.
The list goes on. But the central difference is this: The old liberal left paid attention to complexity, ambiguity, the gray areas. A sense of complexity induced a measure of doubt, including self-doubt. The new left typically seeks to reduce things to elements such as race, class and gender, in ways that erase ambiguity and doubt. The new left is a factory of certitudes.
It’s from that factory that writers like Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald have fled, and from which many other independent-minded thinkers will, sooner or later, follow. For them, the loss isn’t devastating: They have large followings and can use new digital platforms like Substack to make a generous living.
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paywall warning. I already sent him a comment (not published yet) - any with NYT subscripts should cram the comments section!
= new reply since forum marked as read
