Category Archives: Thought for the Day

Alternatives

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Dan Charles, By Returning To Farming’s Roots, He Found His American Dream:

Eighteen years ago, on New Year’s Eve, David Fisher visited an old farm in western Massachusetts, near the small town of Conway. No one was farming there at the time, and that’s what had drawn Fisher to the place. He was scouting for farmland.

“I remember walking out [to the fallow fields] at some point,” Fisher recalls. “And in the moonlight – it was all snowy – it was like a blank canvas.”

On that blank canvas, Fisher’s mind painted a picture of what could be there alongside the South River. He could see horses tilling the land – no tractors, no big machinery – and vegetable fields, and children running around.

This is David Fisher’s American Dream. It may not be the conventional American Dream of upward economic mobility. But dreams like his have a long tradition in this country. Think of the Puritans and the Shakers and the Amish. These American dreams are the uncompromising pursuit of a difficult ideal.

The scene that David Fisher imagined, on the New Year’s Eve almost two decades ago, has turned into reality. It’s called Natural Roots Farm.

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Readings for Election Day

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Readings for Election Day:

And a closing thought:

Think about what a world would look like if it were run by people with peaceful and contented minds.

-Dan Kervick

 

Thought for the Day – October 7, 2016

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Suppose a candidate for high office stood up and said “We face many difficult collective action problems. Here’s how I suggest we address them…” Suppose he was a Senator from Vermont named Bernie Sanders.  He’d get looked at like he had three heads.  He’d get called a communist and worse.  Until there’s widespread acknowledgement that we face collective action problems we’re unlikely to make much progress towards resolving them. We’ve been subject to decades of propaganda that there’s no such thing as a collective action problem. Just getting to acknowledgement that there are is a major challenge.

Thought for Debate Night

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Food for thought from Matt Taibbi, Stop Whining About ‘False Balance’:

News media outlets are increasingly coming under fire for the sin of “false balance” or “false equivalency.” The New York Times, one of the outlets most often accused of this offense, recently defined the term:

“The practice of journalists who, in their zeal to be fair, present each side of a debate as equally credible, even when the factual evidence is stacked heavily on one side.”

The crime of The Times, according to some of its readers, has been its coverage of the Clinton email and Clinton Foundation stories. As one Times reader put it, “There’s too much at stake in this election for the media to stoke the belief that Hillary’s mistakes (which she has definitely made) are even close to par with Trump’s.”

When Times public editor Liz Spayd essentially told readers that her paper was just doing its job and that readers should just suck it up and deal, she was hit with a torrent of criticism.

A pack of pundits – one might call them the false-equivalency priesthood – lashed out through pieces like “Why the Media Is Botching the Election,” “Media Should Stop Treating Trump and Clinton as Equals,” “Does the New York Times Have a False Balance Problem?” and countless others.

It’s getting ridiculous. Two quick thoughts:

1) The people complaining about “false balance” usually seem confident in having discovered the truth of things for themselves, despite the media’s supposed incompetence. They’re quite sure of whom to vote for and why. Their complaints are really about the impact that “false balance” coverage might have on other, lesser humans, with weaker minds than theirs. Which is not just snobbish, but laughably snobbish. So, shut up.

2) One of the main reasons the news media has been dumbed down over the years is because audiences have consistently rejected smart, responsible journalism in favor of clickbait stupidities like “Five Things You Didn’t Know About John McCain’s Penis” and “Woman Strips Naked in Front of Police Officers. You Won’t Believe What Happened Next.” The Bachelor and Toddlers and Tiaras crush Frontline. And people wonder why Donald Trump gets a lot of coverage?

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