As a fact-checker (or someone in that rough sphere), is there a concern that post-Trump, focusing your efforts on what is more often political nuance & tone will inadvertently feed the #fakenews phenomenon?
In other words, could you be bringing a nuke to a knife fight?
And could you accidentally cause a MAD escalation?
An example that made me think of it was Daniel Dale on Twitter, fact checking what was essentially mild political hyperbole from President Biden. But how can the general public properly weight tweets like this? Right now, it is “Daniel Dale fact-checks Biden on vaccines” and to a reader, would seem to weigh the same a Trump fact check...which it clearly isn’t.
Maybe hashtags to differentiate between outright Trumpian lie & political nuance?
Is this a fear shared among other journalists? That you’ve been slamming yourselves against such a heavy boulder that, with it gone, you’ve just become accustomed to pushing that hard and might pulverize a perfectly “normal” statement and actually increase the feeling of mistrust? Balanced against, obviously, giving too MUCH slack, and letting the new administration slide from nuance to deceit because they are unchecked.
This a great post and analysis - I am, however, torn on if Trump really made so much of a difference on the economy, as, when I look at all available economic indicators until 2019 (2020 is too much of an outlier, and simply blaming Trump for the slump is too simplistic), I simply see them keeping up with the previous trends from Obama’s. I understand the arguments on the unemployment rate, and that it might have been outstanding that the trend continued there; other than that, I did see in other sources that hourly wage growth was actually lower under Trump (until 2019) than under Obama; he had also added more jobs to the economy (in absolute numbers) in his last three years than Trump on his first 3 (again, until 2019). So I am not so sure if I would really say that his economic record is really better than Obama’s, who inherited a huge slump from Bush.
I will not criticize this post, Isaac, nor take issue with any part. It is masterful. Everyone should read it and I hope every reader will forward it as many times as I will. You nailed it.
I am an engineer both by training and by nature. When you seek to change a complex system, whether to fix it or improve it or alter how it works, anything you do will first perturb it. Then it begins to oscillate, back and forth in sometimes complex ways, as it resists the change while also seeking a new equilibrium: a phenomenon that we engineers call ringing. The wild swings will slowly damp down, over time, as the system operates in a new mode, moving to what we call steady state. I think that's what is happening now in America. The ringing has just begun to subside.
The email is hiding the final two paragraphs that is hosted on the substack page.
And thanks.
As a fact-checker (or someone in that rough sphere), is there a concern that post-Trump, focusing your efforts on what is more often political nuance & tone will inadvertently feed the #fakenews phenomenon?
In other words, could you be bringing a nuke to a knife fight?
And could you accidentally cause a MAD escalation?
An example that made me think of it was Daniel Dale on Twitter, fact checking what was essentially mild political hyperbole from President Biden. But how can the general public properly weight tweets like this? Right now, it is “Daniel Dale fact-checks Biden on vaccines” and to a reader, would seem to weigh the same a Trump fact check...which it clearly isn’t.
Maybe hashtags to differentiate between outright Trumpian lie & political nuance?
Is this a fear shared among other journalists? That you’ve been slamming yourselves against such a heavy boulder that, with it gone, you’ve just become accustomed to pushing that hard and might pulverize a perfectly “normal” statement and actually increase the feeling of mistrust? Balanced against, obviously, giving too MUCH slack, and letting the new administration slide from nuance to deceit because they are unchecked.
This a great post and analysis - I am, however, torn on if Trump really made so much of a difference on the economy, as, when I look at all available economic indicators until 2019 (2020 is too much of an outlier, and simply blaming Trump for the slump is too simplistic), I simply see them keeping up with the previous trends from Obama’s. I understand the arguments on the unemployment rate, and that it might have been outstanding that the trend continued there; other than that, I did see in other sources that hourly wage growth was actually lower under Trump (until 2019) than under Obama; he had also added more jobs to the economy (in absolute numbers) in his last three years than Trump on his first 3 (again, until 2019). So I am not so sure if I would really say that his economic record is really better than Obama’s, who inherited a huge slump from Bush.
I will not criticize this post, Isaac, nor take issue with any part. It is masterful. Everyone should read it and I hope every reader will forward it as many times as I will. You nailed it.
I am an engineer both by training and by nature. When you seek to change a complex system, whether to fix it or improve it or alter how it works, anything you do will first perturb it. Then it begins to oscillate, back and forth in sometimes complex ways, as it resists the change while also seeking a new equilibrium: a phenomenon that we engineers call ringing. The wild swings will slowly damp down, over time, as the system operates in a new mode, moving to what we call steady state. I think that's what is happening now in America. The ringing has just begun to subside.
If you prefer perhaps a simpler analogy for the Era of Trump, here is 10:24 that says it all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfK79Xblpus