Depository for off topic / political posts (NO brexit related posts please)

Silvaire wrote:

@MedEwok, how much time have you spent in the US?

None so far. I wonder how that matters for this discussion, however. I guess what you are playing at is that reading about a country can only get you so much insight, and I will of course concede that that is true. I know this from reading what the English-speaking media writes about Germany. Firstly, the way the country is portrayed seems to mostly depend on the writers own political leanings. Then, there is often a “grass is greener on the other side” effect. UK media in particular seems to be increasingly in awe about modern Germany, and often paints it as a model country where everything is efficient, fair and works. Which, quite honestly, is absolutely not my impression as a lifelong citizen of this country…we could do so much better in so many regards.

So I assume my view of the US will be similarly warped by what the media is writing about the country. I try to read as many sources as possible, although I admit there is a problem because many reputable media sites are nowadays behind a paywall, and I already have a subscription of two German papers online and are unwilling to pay for more international media access, which often turns out to be merely the same story forwarded by the press agencies.

I certainly want to visit the US at some point in my life, ideally combining it with some flying there, but that will have to wait (nothing to do with either Covid or US politics btw. … the kids will just have to be more grown up for us to really enjoy such a trip)

Capitaine wrote:

My great-uncle’s thought process from the 2001 election:

no way can I vote for Bush, ever
I can’t vote Democrat
I can’t waste my vote
no way can I vote for Bush, ever
…
He voted Bush

Well yeah, the bipartisan system in the US is part of the problem. If the US had proportional representation and no direct elections of the president, like we don’t directly vote for the Chancellor, then situations like this would be less likely to occur.
Come to think of it, the US does not actually have direct elections of the president…

MedEwok wrote:

I certainly want to visit the US at some point in my life, ideally combining it with some flying there, but that will have to wait (nothing to do with either Covid or US politics btw. … the kids will just have to be more grown up for us to really enjoy such a trip)

Come in mid-winter one year and go flying, any time in my plane is free. You’d learn more about how things really work in a week than by reading for 10 years. I had this experience in Italy (notably), Germany and Slovenia, three places that are all quite different than the US and also each other. I’ve spent enough months in those to see reality versus BS. You’d probably still find some things annoying but I bet they’d be different than what you think based on second hand info.

there is a problem because many reputable media sites are nowadays behind a paywall

Yes this is precisely the problem. The educated mainland Europeans mostly read the Guardian because all the others cost money. Well, there is the Daily Trash which is free and does get a lot of real stories before anybody else, but needs to be read with care because there is so much trash. I have just noticed that Adblocker has started to work on it again, after many months

For some reason the Guardian is not yet behind a paywall. I say “for some reason” because it is really hard to make money otherwise, but they are holding out for as long as they can.

Like every newspaper, the Guardian runs a specific agenda. Of course if one is left-wing (by that I mean in the broadest sense, including all the current PC positions) then this is great but it is still a specific agenda. One cannot pretend it is objective. A lot of the stuff it prints is total tosh.

If The Times was free online then one would get a better view of the UK because it is more “down the middle”.

The fact is, that neither Trump nor Pence have cearly stated they would concede when so asked

Of course they will concede! What else can they do? Do a military coup? The US is a fully functioning modern country… just as much as e.g. UK or Germany.

Trump will be a showman till the very end; you can be sure of that

Peter wrote:

If The Times was free online then one would get a better view of the UK because it is more “down the middle”.

Not “The Independent”?
I did not like article in “The Times” about Grant Shapps – it appeared to be unprofessional, one-sided and biased.

I used to read the Independent but stopped a few years ago. It is now called The Eye…

Yes The Times get stuff wrong, like all of them. Recently I spent hours on the phone to a BBC Wales reporter who was researching why the Sala PA46 was N-reg; to be fair to her she did try to understand, and I possibly made a bit of an effect, but they still ran a crap story. The problem is that most news hacks are not particularly bright; the bright ones can’t stand the modern “dumb it down for IQ < 20” trends and end up leaving, or doing an Andrew Neil

Very hard to find quality detail coverage of anything.

@MedEwok, a big part of the problem of media coverage of the US is the fact that most (all?) correspondents are based on the East Coast, typically in NYC or Washington, D.C. and rarely, if ever, get out into the real world. The US, as presented in Europe, appears to be a monolithic country like, say, France. Nothing could be further from the truth, it is not called the United States of America for nothing. I’d even venture to say it’s more like the EU with a more powerful central government, than any one country.

Having lived in several countries around the globe and worked in many, many more, I’ve always been surprised by the discrepancy in reporting and the reality on the ground. Again, this very often has to do with where the correspondents are based, which typically is the capital city, which in turn very often dances to a totally different tune than the rest of the country.

LeSving wrote:

Hasn’t this always been the case? Pre internet, the newspapers or magazines weren’t free. At least today you still can see the news from a whole bunch of sources for “free” on TV.

Well no. There was a “golden age” of the Internet, roughly between 1995 and 2010, where more or less everything on the net was freely available. Newspapers would subsidise their own sites through their print revenue and advertising. Of course, this was no sustainable businesses model in the long run, even more so since many people stopped reading “mainstream” media entirely and got all of their news via social media.