1/11 A real problem is the notion that there is something called 'objectivity.' This is a myth. There is no theory--not a single one--of truth that withstands scrutiny. We don't know what truth is and can never know.
2/11 Qualitative scholars, including critical theorists, acknowledge their own social locations relative to the subjects at hand, empowering readers to ferret out not so much bias as the perspective from which authors perceive their topics. It's a necessary honesty.
3/11 We should note here further that quantitative scholars do not escape bias. They are merely excused from the requirement to talk or even think about that bias.
Numbers *never* tell a whole story. Statistics are about aggregates.
4/11 Indeed #neoliberalism's failing lies in a presumption that even if a rising tide fails to lift all boats, it lifts *most* of them, and therefore it adopts a prescription on utilitarian grounds.
5/11 But #neoliberalism turns out to sink far too many other boats, in actuality, a majority of boats while mistaking the extreme lifting of a few outlying boats for the lifting of most or all.
Economists are coming to understand this even if politicians choose not to.
6/11 In choosing #neoliberal dogma, politicians choose a narrative that supports their donors. That motivation is a bias that the ideologues, pointing to their quantitative misrepresentations, refuse to acknowledge.
7/11 Media scholars will tell you something similar about journalism and so-called objectivity. Its history lies in appeal to advertisers, that enabled now-mainstream newspapers to offer cheaper subscriptions and outcompete old labor rags, sinking the latter.
8/11 So-called 'objective' journalism is, even when newsrooms insist on their independence, constrained by what advertisers will tolerate, as expressed via publishers, the now-usually corporate owners.
9/11 Those constraints create an atmosphere, a situation in which journalists operate. "Objectivity" is nothing more than the view from that particular, significantly constrained perspective.
10/11 The pretense that objectivity, a "God's eye view," exists is, in fact, a lie meant to avoid unsettling the status quo, indeed with journalism even to keep consumers "in a buying mood" and thus supporting advertisers.
11/11 The controversy that @benyt writes about is in fact about the preservation of that pretense of objectivity, a pretense that does disservice to a truth we can't even properly define.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
1/4 A difference on the Left between those who could hold their nose and vote for @JoeBiden and those who could not may lie in the @DemoSocialists' substitution of the movement (think "means") for achievement (the "end" as social and environmental justice).
2/4 If you see the movement itself as an achievement, you're likely to settle for an incremental approach that may take decades or centuries to achieve a desired end.
3/4 If, on the other hand, you're concerned about people dying, people being killed, through elite indifference, fecklessness, greed, or outright malice, that might not be good enough.
1/4 I don't know how much of a "hidden" pro-@realDonaldTrump vote there may be that the surveys are missing.
I am convinced there is almost no enthusiasm for @JoeBiden and that a lot of folks might not turn out to vote for him. This obviously suits @TheDemocrats just fine.
2/4 The real issue here is that the #Election2020 will absolutely fail to address serious problems in the U.S. The constitutional oligarchy is simply incapable of responding to a dire need for change.
Voting will not solve this problem.
3/4 Meanwhile, @realDonaldTrump has converted #BlackLivesMatter protests into a confrontation with secret police. This is no longer about racism and the impetus for politicians to implement change, already eviscerated by nonviolence, is now entirely absent.
But any critical theorist is going to raise at least an eyebrow at the power relationship between the president of the U.S. and an intern.
3/6 It's a little too easy to say in such cases that women have the right to name their own experiences, whether as assault, as rape, or as consensual. And yet we can't forget that they do.
1/8 Okay, so we see here that @HeerJeet really, really, really hates @ProjectLincoln because @danpfeiffer really isn't all that favorable towards them either. But I like the article too.
3/8 @HeerJeet notices, apparently from the article, that @ProjectLincoln spends little on swing states. I notice from the article that their work seems mostly aimed inside the beltway. That's also where #neoconservatives have the most influence.
1/9 So I might have mentioned that about one or two quarters after I started my Master's program, it was taken over by hard, solipsistic, post-modernists.
2/9 Solipsism, by the way, is the idea that you can only be sure of what's in your own head. The physical world is abstract, represented through the senses, and knowable only to an uncertain degree. It isn't wrong, but it isn't very useful as a life philosophy.
3/9 I'd actually explored solipsism when I was in Sacramento City College. I considered the idea that reality could be whatever I made it.