[gpsx]

Having grown up in West Virginia and now living Silicon Valley, I see extremes from both sides. And they both _really_ think the other side is dumb. And that the president (Obama or Bush) is purposely trying to destroy the country. It is like two people in a marriage that has gone bad. Is there any way to fix it?

My two cents is that a place to start is to try to make a single news source that both sides can read, to help us try to get on the same page. The news source would have to not generate viewers by inciting them to anger. Maybe some thing like a newspaper but with peer reviewed articles by people from both sides?

[ethbro]

That's a culture shift (I've got family who worked DNR in WV).

The "single news source" came up heavily in pg's recent writing on inequality et al. The cogent point he made, I think, was that the important part is not whether the source is authoritative or accurate but that it's universally experienced.

And I don't think we'll get that back. I think the best we can hope for is benevolent mix algorithms in Facebook, Google, etc that incorporate reliably sourced articles by people with different viewpoints than our own.

[DrScump]

"the important part is not whether the source is authoritative or accurate but that it's universally experienced."

This is very well said. In Silicon Valley, for example, there has been only one major newspaper publisher for over 60 years.

[caf]

My experience is that such a news source would quickly be denounced as irretrievably biased by both sides.

[gpsx]

I think you are right. But maybe it can be made such that some segment of both sides of the population could buy into what it says. After all, contrary to the popular saying, there are not just two types of people.

[refurb]

Having lived in very conservative and very liberal areas of the US, the rhetoric is hilariously similar from both sides.

People in liberal areas talk about the south as if it were some backwards place, yet most have never even visited.

People in conservative areas think California is full of hippies, yet again, have never been there.

Guess what? People just disagree on politics! Always will. It doesn't mean one side is right and one is wrong.

[FeepingCreature]

Can somebody please start "Useful News"?

Tagline: "Useful News. We optimize for your outcomes, not your outrage."

Joke aside: "News for your benefit" would be something I'd actually buy.

Every article has an annotation listing the chance that the topic will affect you if you're [list of population groups]. Every cite is sourced, every paragraph optimized for how you can make use of this information. If there's nothing important to say, we'll leave the page blank.

God damn I want this.

[tamana]

Nearly ño one on the left ever accused Bush of purposely destroying the country. The accusation we a mix of incompetent mismanagement and cynical exploitation for profit.

[coddingtonbear]

Really, it comes down to what you mean by "America"; my understanding of the "[president] is destroying America" crowd is that they're commenting more on destroying America's "America-ness" than actually dismantling the nation.

Right now, on the right, you have people making claims that Obama is a closet authoritarian bent on dismantling the constitution, taking away our guns, and forcing your small town to not have a nativity scene afront their courthouse this year. Turning back the clock by a decade, those sorts of claims are not very far off from the claims of people (like a rather-younger me) on the left that Bush (or, perhaps, Cheney) were intentionally using the September 11th attacks as a tool for stripping us of our constitutional freedoms. Although obviously not a majority opinion; those sorts of views were definitely not uncommon during the Bush era.

[gpsx]

That is true the left did not accuse Bush or purposely trying to destroy the country. But they did accuse that of Cheney and some others.