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Notes -
I want to toss out a little bit of a call to action everyone (wait wait not that kind of call to action).
Something I found tremendously helpful in the last few days was viewing and readings things I don't usually do.
Admittedly I was doing this because I was freaking out like many and desperate for information and content - but I found Bernie's quick speech, which was phenomenal. I've never been a Young Turks guy but I thought what Cenk was saying was great. Yeah it may not be perfect but that's fine.
We should look for things that just add new information yes, but the calming and temperature dialing down stuff is out there, even if you are in favor for turning on the gas.
Diversify.
I think that's especially important because this place has some huge intellectual/knowledge blind spots. At times we definitely are speculating on things which every normie on /r/television knows and has sorted out for instance (I forget the specific thing that made me think of this, I think it was something on HBO).
Of relevance now, many of us had heard the name but didn't really know who Charlie Kirk was before this. I'd hazard a higher percentage of normie boomer conservatives knew who he was than people here.
That leads to an underemphasized portion of the discussion I've seen here which is that the inside baseball people knew him and many of them were friends with or respected him or whatever - they are all shook. Maybe that's a good thing because it can generate some calm and change if we are lucky.
It's also important when it comes to all of the contrarian "actually he's a..." type discussion.
He was closely connected to people in the media class on both sides and the people currently in power and that will mold what is coming for good and for ill.
As a recommendation I started listening to 2Way Morning Meeting. The most recent two episodes are obviously not representative of the overall content but are still great.
Helps remind me that the adults are still out there and may in fact manage to keep things other control.
Cenk and some of TYT as of late have mellowed out. I always tried to keep my ear close to the ground and always tried to keep left-wing content somewhere in my media diet, lest I put myself at risk for living out the world in my own bubble. I think they've realized to some degree that it doesn't pay dividends to advancing your cause by being ham fisted and angry all the time at your political counterparts.
I first remember getting that impression when I saw a brief clip between Cenk and Patrick Bet David that seemed unusually civil, considering the gulf between their political views. You can still find Cenk occasionally raging on Piers Morgan and I can't really blame him for that. I wonder if Piers really is as dumb as he presents himself at times or if it's part of his overall act. Ana Kasparian's appearance on Tucker Carlson really surprised me and I always thought she was even more of a lunatic than Cenk was when she was having a moment. In either case it's good for them to broader their horizon and engage in active discussion with those they disagree with more than satirizing and sneering at them and conservatives should do the same as well.
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