Illustrated | robynmac/iStock, Twitter, Wikimedia Commons . Much has been made of the way Twitter serves as a megaphone for popular anger that's made more intense by the speed of the news cycle and the distinctive malice and ineptitude of the Trump White House. On this week's episode of Beg to Differ with Mona Charen, Eli Lake joins regular panelists Linda Chavez, Bill Galston, and Damon Linker to discuss Trump's abandonment of the Kurds, and the difference between small presence as force multiplier and "endless war", the growing problem of the U.S. being perceived as an unreliable ally, the latest on the impeachment inquiry, the 2020 elections, and Rudy Giuliani's curious Ukraine connection. In that case, Twitter would have to be understood as an engine of antagonism, augmenting and amplifying a deeply ingrained human predilection for discord and dispute, quite apart from the substance of what anyone is fighting about at any given time.
Thanks to Twitter, we now know that the same dynamic can arise spontaneously, with fresh ire directed at a new manifestation of the partisan enemy nearly every day. Three-and-a-half years into a political era launched and sustained in large part by the social media platform, these two (related) views are indisputable. They display an impulsiveness and unhinged rage at political enemies that is incompatible with reasoned thinking about how we might go about governing ourselves, heal the divisions in our country, and avoid a collapse into civic violence that could usher in tyranny. The single best thing for both politics and journalism would be for Twitter to go out of business tomorrow.
The unverified character of the allegation did nothing to keep a slew of commentators from suggesting that the president was now on the verge of facing near-certain impeachment and removal from office for his crimes. A review of Gerald Posner's God's Bankers. The main teenager featured in the video was treated as the face of entitled white supremacy, his smile (or smirk) as he faced the counter-protester serving as proof that he is the direct successor to the bigots who stood against the Civil Right Movement. Damon Linker has been a guest on 43 episodes. But pinpointing precisely what is so politically and culturally pernicious about Twitter can be challenge, in part because its awfulness has multiple dimensions. Search query Search Twitter. It turns politicians, political staffers, reporters, editors, pundits, and analysts into petty, vain, childish, showoffy, hostile, vindictive, dogmatic, impulsive, careless versions of their best and most professional selves. The more one expresses outrage at the evils of others, the more one gets to enjoy the adulation of the virtual mob. See all 1,510 articles → Search Articles Articles. Both conspired to help put Donald Trump in the White House. They were asserting, for the sake of advancing an agenda of the far left, that mathematics is a cultural construct and thus that the expression "2+2=4" is arbitrary and could easily have been "2+2=5" if only our culture had asserted it to be the case.
The Washington Post-Outlook, September 19, 2010, "Turning Right." This byline is mine, but I want my name removed. We may be dangerously close to finding out.
But what if the causality runs just as much in the other direction — not from tribalism to ideological conflict, but the reverse?
The 2000 presidential election, on steroids, Trump is the only one being honest about the Supreme Court fight, America is facing a crisis of political legitimacy, Trump avoids tax return questions as he brings yet another truck to the White House, The bigger truth revealed by Trump's taxes, Illustration by Lauren Hansen | Images courtesy iStock, Why a Biden blowout is still the most likely result. On this week's episode of Beg to Differ, host Mona Charen is joined by regular panelists Bill Galston and Damon Linker, and by special guest Sarah Longwell, to discuss the first two impeachment inquiry hearings.
We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. What Twitter shows us is a real-time ultrasound of the souls of America's cultural and intellectual elite and its most committed activists — the people in charge of disseminating knowledge and who take the lead in organizing political action in our society.
Twitter Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. As dozens of reputable media outlets and many more media personalities on Twitter pronounced over the following day, this was an act that if true would be a very big deal. Twitter is a place, finally, that all-too-often transforms otherwise thoughtful people into a furious mob.
", The New York Times Book Review, February 1, 2018.
Do we know that 2+2=4 because of a generalization from the repeated and unvarying experience of bringing one group of two things together with another group of two things to make one group of four?
Twitter is a place where the means of communication vastly intensifies the always-powerful drive for speed in the news business. Damon Linker has been a guest on 43 episodes.
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