In juxtaposition, Sullivan’s and Coates’ pieces provide a miniature history of how a certain variety of self-congratulatory openness to inquiry is in actual fact a barbed thicket of power relations. What Sullivan depicts as a “different time” when “neither of us denied each other’s good faith or human worth,” is, in Coates’ understanding, a time where he was required to “take seriously” the argument that “black people are genetically disposed to be dumber than white people” as a price of entry into the rarified heights of conversation at the Atlantic. The “civility” and “generosity of spirit” that supported “human to human” conversation is juxtaposed to Coates’ “teachers” who didn’t see him “completely as a human being.” What was open and free spirited debate in Sullivan’s depiction, was to Coates a loaded and poisonous dialogue where he could only participate if he shut up about what he actually believed.

NYT needs "a voice from the right," but not a voice from the ACTUAL right (which is oriented around white resentment, not any discernible governing philosophy). They need a voice from the Conservatism of the Mind, the noble, principles-base conservatism they imagine. [These conservative columnists] are just playing their role in a very old parlor game, where Serious Conservatives tell liberals they are bad and wrong (that's what "intellectual diversity" means to elite center-lefties) and liberals proceed to engage in self-loathing hand-wringing about it. In the name of "exposing readers to diverse viewpoints," NYT is, in practice, obscuring the true nature of today's right. Virtually the entire political elite & most NYT readers are in denial about what the right has become & that denial is increasingly dangerous.

Raddatz repeats big lies that are D.C. narrative—that Iran is a threat, that entitlement programs are ‘going broke’—during the debate as a showing of ‘objectivity’ as a journalist. Bullshit. These establishment journalists are creatures of the DC and corporate culture in which they spend their careers, and thus absorb and then regurgitate all of the assumptions of that culture. That may be inevitable, but having everyone indulge the ludicrous fantasy that they are "objective" and "neutral" most certainly is not.

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression ‘everyone is entitled to their opinion.’ Perhaps you’ve even said it yourself, maybe to head off an argument or bring one to a close. Well, as soon as you walk into this room, it’s no longer true. You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to what you can argue for.

My excursions make me better because it’s the only time I stop to really examine my process. I’m an adult with responsibilities, but fiddling will always be a priority.

As Paul Ford says, “The fundamental question of the web.” Discussions about examples thereof, with Paul Ford himself contributing.

This isn’t a recovery, in any sense that matters. And policy makers should be doing everything they can to change that fact.

"Let me think about that." In other words: with a glut of information, we're trying to form opinions and take action on it all just as fast as it's coming in, and we're suffering for it.

Nitsuh Abebe on why being wrong doesn't make you a bad person, and why 'support' is weak sauce.