alt Hacker NewsAs someone who is very personally interested in the intersection between different political opinions, I really like how this article side-stepped individual issues to present the argument that Amazon is bad as a whole. “Ok, you don’t connect with BLM? Let’s talk about something else.” I find very, very often that conservatives & liberals are talking past each other and cannot even understand why the other side is making the argument they are. This is the first time in a while I’ve seen that side-step motion applied productively.
I agree with the authors conclusion about Amazon, but even if you don’t, you should think about how polarized the nation is and what political issues we can try to coalesce on.
It felt pretty insulting to me. It had the smug, sarcastic, holier-than-thou kind of flavor to it—"there are only 3 ways to think about things, I already know more than you do about who you are and what you believe, you must be one of THAT tribe of one-dimensional dummies, here's YOUR flavor that I've so generously dumbed down for you."
Kind of like the "didactic" voice that the young men on YouTube use when they're cosplaying documentarians or newscasters.
It works better for authors who genuinely know what they're talking about--but in most cases, the closer you look at something, the more complexity you notice, and the less breezily confident you are about it. So often, it's like this—"reheated nachos," do the kids call it? A big sassy omnibus "take" of "takes," more than, like, facts and analysis? All building up to a meaningless language-of-empowerment call to action?