Any Gaming sites that aren’t all so left wing? Rowling & Other Catastrophes

LexW 2020-07-24 16:18:22 UTC #184

Note that she didn’t win anything here. That’s an important distinction. No judge or jury nor the civil legal system was actually engaged.

A company that isn’t a law firm, but has some lawyers that work for it, wrote a threatening letter on her behalf, that’s it.

I would say even under British libel law, she would have lost the case for sure if the other side hired competent libel lawyers. The trouble is that’s incredibly expensive, and you can end up out a large amount of money even if you win. Which is why it’s a rich man’s game. I was reading about a case earlier where someone won a libel suit, got their costs, but because of the way costs work (you don’t get 100%, as I know from personal experience - we fought the government and won, my wife and I, and got our costs, but we like 85% of what we actually had to spend, and that was actually pretty good) still left them £20k in the hole.

That sort of argument isn’t really relevant in libel cases, typically. The litigant needs to prove harm, and that would have been virtually impossible here, because this was a mildly-worded (if clumsy) deal that didn’t actually call her unpleasant (which is an allowable opinion anyway - you can’t really get sued for calling someone a hypocrit or a jerk or even a piece of shit, because it’s all opinion - you need to go further), nor outlined the harm she alleged it implied.

You don’t need erasure to mean violence - if you, the litigant can say it’s false that you erased anyone, and that it’s harmful that you were accused of it, you’re good (as long as you can quantify that harm to some degree).

Had she gone to court, she’d have faced two big challenges:

Locating stuff that went beyond allowable opinion and into statements which are going to injurious - this tends to specific claims - vague implications don’t usually cut it.
Quantify the harm done by the non-allowable stuff (any “harm” done by allowable stuff is ignored).

The threatening letter, for example, referred to how it was unacceptable to talk about Picasso/Wagner in this context, because the letter claimed this implied she was like them. That is not going to work in court. You can’t say “Oh by proximity he sorta implied I suck as bad as someone who sucked hard!”. No. That’s not a libel case. That’s wank

And the ridiculous apology referred to the same sort of stuff.

And that’s just nonsense. What might have been riskier is saying “Rowling’s words have harmed trans people” or something, but I’m not even sure they said that - it looks like they didn’t. It seems more like they said “Some trans people have said they were harmed by Rowling’s words”, which again, yeah that’s not going to work in court.

Zephro 2020-07-24 16:46:37 UTC #185

Well fair enough and thank you for the clarification.

Internet 2020-07-24 18:52:23 UTC #186

The problem I have with the New York Times is that they don’t consider the consequences of what they publish. That’s why I purposely chose to include a non-political example of their irresponsibility: raw milk. In the last decade or so, they published 11 articles giving the both-sides treatment to raw milk. And they keep on reporting doctors saying it’s dangerous and can kill you, and random people saying it’s delicious and safer than people think. This created a false equivalence between medical experts and people with no training at all: in essence, saying their views were equal.

Then, shocker, two people died from a practice that doctors said was obviously unsafe. The New York Times had a hand in those deaths by giving a dangerous practice free publicity.

Following Tom Cotton’s advice has a non-trivial chance of leading to civil war. That’s monstrously irresponsible. If there’s a .01% risk of causing a civil war that kills 10 million people, they are in essence, putting a thousand lives in serious jeopardy. This is why you don’t publish dangerous rhetoric. The size of your megaphone needs to create a commensurate sense of responsibilities. The institution of the New York Times has largely decided to ignore those responsibilities, even as reporters are increasingly aware and outspoken.

Above I made an argument some people may not agree with, so here's a realistic scenario for how army troops posted in cities right now could lead to civil war.

BTW, if you don’t see it, let me outline the following steps: Trump, a president with shaky legitimacy, sends the army to places that did not vote for him. Once there, it is viewed as an occupation force by protesters already upset at the socially sanctified use of violence against citizens. Protesters voice strident demands and refuse to comply with what they see as illegitimate orders. The army engages protesters by gassing them, waterboarding them, and abducting them in unmarked vans. The death rate escalates, because the US army is a lethal force that is spectacularly bad at colonial style occupations. A protester is about to be seized. Fellow protesters, fearing for the life of their comrade throw bricks at members of the army. Members of the army classify protesters as a threat / no longer civilians, and respond as they are trained to and fire into the crowd. The city, fearing that if they don’t respond will see their first amendment rights trampled pick up some of the many, many, many guns in America and engage in shootouts with the army. The situation escalates and large sections of the country no longer recognize the legitimacy of the current system as they already feel disenfranchised. Rocks fall, everyone dies.

alms 2020-07-24 20:55:09 UTC #187

Y’know, I’m completely with you on the dangers of bothsidism; even though I have no horse in this race, I wonder if the raw milk debate really is the best example of it?

There’s lots of stuff that has potential risks out there, but we don’t talk about that, because those risks are well understood and accepted.

For instance, if someone died after drinking pasteurized that was wildly beyond its BBE, most folks would probably not think of making a case against milk consumption as a dangerous, irresponsible practice. Drink it while it’s good, just don’t if it’s gone. Simple.

Now, if you’ve been reading this and thinking, what the hell alms? are you defending raw milk?? are you out of your freaking mind? are you a damn anti-vaxxer?! (fear not) – well, keep in mind raw milk is perfectly legal in the EU. It is regulated, like many other things, to guarantee safe consumption, but nobody seems to think it’s a health hazard, as long as certain basic rules are followed. This is also the case for many other non-EU countries.

(Additionally, food safety is usually not part of your average MD’s area of expertise, so it is indeed possible that in this particular case an ordinary MD’s opinions are not more qualified than those of a regular person, but just legitimized by the white coat effect.)

So with that hopefully cleared up, what are the chances that a newspaper wants to push or defend raw milk consumption, just because they think it’s a great idea for your health or well-being, and they love you so much?

I would say very slim.

It seems like the whole raw milk has been appropriated by politics, too, in a similar way as anti-vaxxing or the supposed civil right of not wearing a mask during the COVID19 pandemic.

In fact, I suspect the take away from all of this is, it might be somewhat hard to find a good example of bothsidism that isn’t politicized. I’m keeping my mind open, just in case, but I cannot readily think of one.

Zephro 2020-07-24 21:14:21 UTC #188

Also 2 people died, out of how many eating it vs how many read NYTs articles… The direct line of consequence is hard to trace.

Let alone unpasteurised stuff definitely being legal here in Europe.

LexW 2020-07-24 22:31:50 UTC #189

I think you’re missing the point because of the specific example.

The issue is that NYT wasn’t pitting two scientists against each other, one who thought pasteurized milk was the only way, one who thought unpasteurized was fine, it was pitting an scientist against a rando non-scientist with opinions, and treating both like they were actually valid.

That’s what makes it irresponsible bullshit in this case. If you can’t even dig up a scientist to defend the other side of science-based proposition (which this absolutely is), then you either should do a one-sided take, or not do the story at all. Anything else is bad, irresponsible journalism.

Hell, if they couldn’t find a US scientist willing to defend unpasteurized milk, they could have got a European one.

Also, you’re playing it as if raw milk being illegal is a fanciful thing, where it’s actually illegal or barely legal in a lot of countries, including some in the EU - Scotland for example, or Scandinavia, which only allows “barnyard” sales, not sales to consumers or via shops. The risks are well-understood, I agree, but that’s not the issue.

On top of this, whilst it’s not as often discussed, the US has another issue here - it’s dairy farms, indeed cow farms in general, are frequently horrific compared to EU/UK farms (which have vastly higher standards for animal welfare), and the primary issue here is that they are full of nasty bacteria. So raw milk produced in the US is going to be significantly more likely to poison you than EU raw milk (which still manages to make a surprising number of people sick - in France it’s the main source of stapphyloccal infections from food, for example).

You’re also not really incorrect to state raw milk is “perfectly legal” and “regulated to guarantee safe consumption” in the EU. Neither is actually true. As I noted, some countries make it illegal, or tightly limit how it can be sold.

But AFAIK, and I can’t find anything to contradict this, only support it, the is no EU-wide regulation of raw milk beyond requiring very clear labeling that it is raw milk. Rather the EU lets countries apply whatever regulations they see fit. This means some countries have very tight restrictions and rules, and others have fewer. France is one of those with fewer, for example, and as a consequence, more people get sick. I’m sure France views this as a worthwhile sacrifice for great cheese, and it’s not like the US can sneer, given they let people have guns willy-nilly.

In the US the pro-raw-milk crowd aren’t scientists or doctors, note, or even really cheese-makers or the like, they’re hippies and conspiracy theorists who attribute magical properties to raw milk. If the NYT was responsible, they’d just have a scientist outline what the issues with raw milk are, and what sort of regulation you’d need to reduce risk, and why they’d need a system of farm inspections and certificates far beyond what they actually have to reduce the infection levels to EU levels. But the raw-milk crowd are also opposed to that. They’re against regulations and inspections, even if it would let them legally do what they want, because they’re hippies and don’t want “The Man” telling them what to do.

Yes but it’s not left or right or whatever, it’s just like, troll politics. It’s an opinion, that a tiny number of idiots naturally come up with, and then papers like the NYT and various websites needlessly amplify for the sake of creating controversy for clicks/sales. The NYT is absolutely guilty of that.

What does politicized mean here?

The conventional definition is: “cause (an activity or event) to become political in character.”

That’s what the NYT is actively doing by presenting it in this way. They’re responsible for politicizing this ludicrous issue. If you present something as scientist vs scientist, it’s not really political, it’s about the opinion of scientists, and you can actually probably fairly say which opinion is preponderant and so on. But when you put a scientist up against some random idiot (which sadly includes medical doctors, given the incredibly stupid or insane people who somehow obtain medical degrees), you remove it from the realms of science and the rational, and move it into the realm of opinion, and thus politics.

That’s the reason you can’t think of an example that isn’t politicized. Because to do the “both sides” thing, you actively push something into the political realm, even if it wasn’t before.

The classic British example is ultra-qualified up-to-date scientist vs Nigel Lawson, a thick, smug, oily politician who has a GSCE-level science education from the 1940s, to discuss climate change. This was something the BBC repeated countless times (paying Lawson far more than the scientist to appear, as a bonus). Nigel Lawson knew absolutely nothing about climate change. Not a damn thing. Except that he didn’t believe in it, and was quite loud about that. And please ignore the direct financial links he had to companies causing climate change. The BBC certainly obliged him in ignoring those links.

This should never have been a political issue, it should have been a science issue. The BBC should have been noting, every time it was discussed, that far more scientists were on one side than the other. The debates weren’t even debates, because it was a scientist talking about the science and what was actually happening, and an ignorant politician mindlessly denying it or pulling out ridiculous talking points which seemed to be from some 1980s Exxon briefing.

But no, the BBC treated this random idiot as if we should equally respect, his view equally consider, and it would be unfair to point out that he was financially profiting from the companies involved.

He did stuff like blatantly lie, get called on the lie by the scientist, and then just keep repeating the lie. And the BBC “journalist” involved would inevitably end up defending Lawson (until near the end). And BBC just couldn’t find scientists with extreme anti-climate change views, so they kept bringing him on, endlessly. The other main people were engineers (also not scientists, note) employed by petrochemical companies, and occasionally just the execs of those companies. None of those people should ever have been airing their views and being treated as the same as a scientist.

As a Brit, I am shocked you think it’s simple as that. It’s not legal at all in Scotland, and it’s barely legal in the UK.

Zephro 2020-07-24 22:41:32 UTC #190

Errr if its illegal in Scotland why are they having a legal battle about the exact tests they perform on unpasteurised cheese in Scotland https://gff.co.uk/scottish-cheesemakers-taking-fss-to-court-over-new-raw-milk-tests/ ?

Unpasteurised milk is super rare, my Mum’s the only person I know who goes near the stuff but she lives next to a farm, but the 2 people who died in the link above ate unpasteurised cheese, which is relatively normal to find in shops.

alms 2020-07-25 00:10:49 UTC #191

Despite some differences, I am failing to see irreconcilably different stances on key points between my post and yours, Lex.

I am mildly perplexed by your reaction and the idea that, if indeed one (or few) EU country had banned raw milk altogether (which is not Scotland’s case, but never mind), then it must follow that “raw milk is illegal in the EU”.

If raw milk is illegal everywhere in the EU, and has no legit use in any EU country, then “raw milk is illegal in the EU” would be uncontroversial truth and I’d readily agree.
If raw milk is banned in one or few countries, but not all of the others, then saying “A is legal in the EU” does not seem to me like a misrepresentation of the reality of raw milk in the EU.

IOW “raw milk is legal in the EU” doesn’t necessarily mean it must be legal everywhere. Unless the EU has rules forcing all countries to either allow or ban a certain substance, then the individual country can deploy their own regulations, and this is by design.

Internet 2020-07-25 01:52:38 UTC #192

An accusation of bothsiderism is an inherently political charge, because it refers to manufacturing sides to make a controversy and all controversy is political now. Bothsiderism claims that one side has been artificially elevated in prominence, and that the arguments from that side should be delegitimized. They repeatedly put mothers and uncredentialed authors next to doctors of infectious diseases and people from the CDC.

As an aside, your claims about the EU are nowhere near as definitive as you claim. It’s illegal in all of the Nordic countries and Denmark. It’s so heavily regulated in Germany that there are only 80 farmers who can sell it (effectively a soft ban). And France is tightening restrictions on it right now after a cheese recall.

Here’s an example that I swear is symptomatic; the article starts with a Brooklyn housewife who claims:

Typical NYT bullshit

“I no longer have to take thyroid meds, which every doctor said I would be on for the rest of my life,” she told The Brooklyn Paper. She said that her son drinks two cups of raw milk a day and is healthier as a result. “Basically, we spend a little more money on food,” she said, because raw milk is more expensive than pasteurized supermarket milk, “so we don’t have to pay the doctor.”

Later in the same article:

“Raw milk is dangerous,” John Sheehan, the director of the F.D.A.’s Division of Plant and Food Safety, said in a telephone interview. “Avoid it all costs. Do not give it to your children… There are no signs that it is curative of any disease.” Then it ends with a reporter / book-writer who calls the medical establishment “hysterical.”

The article should have never run. A newspaper does not have to publish unsubstantiated claims, and when public health is at risk, they shouldn’t. Here’s another article that equates an electrician to scientists trolling through CDC data.

More NYT journalistic malpractice

“It’s the best milk you can drink,” said Walter Radziwillowicz, 54, hoisting four half gallons. Mr. Radziwillowicz, an electrical contractor from Plainville, said he had drunk it regularly in his native Poland. “I love the taste. I like the smell,” he said. “It’s richer in calcium and richer in everything else.”

Buried near the end is, “The center released a report in December that looked at 2005 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It said that raw dairy products accounted for 30 percent of dairy-related outbreaks of illnesses in the United States, including 70 percent of outbreaks from milk. It also showed that while food-borne illnesses overall declined in 2005, dairy outbreaks increased.”

Here’s where I’m going with this. The evidence is unequivocal. In the 11 raw milk articles I read they only quote a biological expert who’s in favor of raw milk once. The rest of the support is either by random people on the street and industry group. From their own reporting its clear that there’s a solid scientific consensus. Raising false claims to prominence and then fact-checking them serves to publicize those claims to the susceptible, thus increasing the prominence of false claims.

As I suspect we’re all saying, the Times created or elevated a controversy in order to create sides. Not once, but repeatedly. That’s their MO. The Times bothsiderism is a symptom of their deeper comfort with publishing unsubstantiated claims and outright lies sometimes. Giving misinformation and malefactors a microphone is bad for the body politic, bad for journalists, but apparently good for the New York Times.

LexW 2020-07-25 10:27:07 UTC #193

“Perfectly legal”, the actual phrase you used, not merely “legal”, and that conveys something a lot stronger, in my experience of English, than is possible if it’s illegal or highly restricted in some countries. It is implies there is no significant legal issue or barrier. That is not true. A more accurate summary would be that in some countries, raw milk is “barely legal”, and others its highly regulated.

Also, Zephro is wrong, it is illegal in Scotland - see my link for him below. It is an actual offence to sell it. They just have a loophole for its use in cheese. The reason it has this status is that 21 people died from drinking raw milking in Wishaw in 2006.

If you’d just said it was legal rather than perfectly legal, I agree, I wouldn’t have seen as much of a difference, though I’d still have pointed out Scotland as a counter-example (because this is something my Scottish family has talked about).

But you’re still missing the main point that topics are rendered political because news organisations like the NYT treat them not as scientific issues to be determined by fact and science and research, but points of opinion to be determined by arguments. But having non-scientists go up against scientists, and be treated as having an opinion of equal worth, they totally trash the value of the science, and of objective facts in general. This seems pretty relevant right now.

“It is an offence to place raw milk or cream on the market for direct consumption in Scotland - this includes distribution.”

https://www.foodstandards.gov.scot/business-and-industry/industry-specific-advice/dairy#:~:text=Raw%20milk,species%20farmed%20for%20its%20milk.&text=Mandatory%20pasteurisation%20also%20protects%20the,borne%20pathogens%20such%20as%20E.

So I can’t comment on your story, but it is unequivocally illegal to sell raw milk/cream for consumption in Scotland.

With the cheese, I imagine there’s an exception because it’s indirect - but note that you article has the cheesemakers upset because the method of detecting diseases is “too sensitive” - i.e. will detect too many (there is no suggestion it will lead to false positives).

Zephro 2020-07-25 11:44:31 UTC #194

So? The original thing was 2 people died from eating cheese from unpasteurised milk. Not drinking the milk directly. Unpasteurised cheese is super fucking common in the UK and legal, even in Scotland.
Like loads of the parmigiano reggiano you buy…
https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/Product/sainsburys-parmigiano-reggiano-200g

LexW 2020-07-25 15:19:33 UTC #195

The original thing was that the NYT frequently gives space to non-scientist nutjobs who claim that raw milk (not cheese derived from raw milk) has magical healing properties, and treats them as equal to scientists discussing it.

Alms claimed raw milk was “perfectly legal” in the EU, which isn’t really correct, given how many nations either outright ban it, or tightly restrict it.

It’s true that cheese made from it is legal in most/all of the EU, but that’s not what the NYT has been effectively promoting (at least not in the articles I’ve seen). And the 21 people who died in Scotland in 2006 died from drinking actual raw milk, not from cheese.

So basically cheese is a side-story, and I agree that including the 2 people who died from that isn’t terribly helpful.

But again, they’re promoting raw milk, as in milk, not cheese derived from it.

alms 2020-07-25 15:28:01 UTC #196

May I point out that raw milk has been a staple food, in those societies that had access to cattle, until about the first half of the twentieth century?

For raw milk to be safe, hygiene and freshness are of paramount importance. Pasteurization extends both the shelf life of milk, and drastically reduce the pathogen charge, hence making it safer and more convenient.

Pasteurized fresh milk already has a relatively short shelf life, for today’s standards, thus it is no surprise it has largely displaced raw milk for direct consumption. Making milk last longer is the reason behind the popularity of other techniques like microfiltration and heat treatments (UHT, Flash-Heat, etc).

The main reason there is usually no problem with eating cheese made with raw milk, is that the cheese itself forms an environment that is hostile to pathogens, the same basic principle that is shared by the many different techniques mankind has discovered over the centuries to preserve food.

Flip-side is, the cheese must mature for a long enough time to be fully safe. As manufacturers are often looking for ways to make more stuff in less time, being too greedy may indeed prove dangerous.

That said, the number of foods that are potentially risky is massive. Going into details would make many lose their appetite.

Det.Bullock 2020-07-26 21:14:46 UTC #197

IIRC Parmigiano needs two years to be ready for consumption (one year and change if it’s just Grana Padano), I doubt the milk being raw counts.

Jerkzilla 2020-07-27 01:14:03 UTC #198

First off, sorry for the late reply.

Second of all, that might have been bad phrasing, but NYT not liking Trump was a separate point to their front page being left of center. I know full well that Trump was contentious for a large section of Republicans. At least when I posted that, the offending articles mentioned here had nothing to do with neoliberalism. The point being that the Cotton op-ed is a drop in the proverbial bucket of not-actually-fascist-opinions published in NYT, that its impact is virtually zero. Hence mentioning NYTs stance on Trump.

On a sidenote, the reason I mentioned what their front page looks like is because, neoliberal or not, it seems to align with the Democratic party line (or at least Joe Biden’s, anyway), hence the left-of-US-Center remark. For example, the only article not in favor a minimum wage increase that I could find in a reasonable timeframe is referenced in this AIER bit, ironically.
I get that this falls far short of our definions for “Left” in Europe, but if they mostly back Democratic party initiatives, which are by and large interventionist*, does that not put them left-of-center in the American frame of reference?

*and best I can tell from their editorials going back to april, they do.

alms 2020-07-27 02:29:10 UTC #199

There we go again. It does not matter where a particular country sits in the political spectrum.

To drop the Godwyn hammer on this again, if a nation had only two parties:

the Nazi Party
the Ultra Nazi Party that also wants to Final Solution kittens

Calling #1 leftist because it sits left of #2, would either be missing the point by a million miles or deliberately misleading: they’re both Nazis.

alms 2020-07-27 03:14:27 UTC #200

Dear Valued Member,

we regret to inform you that your License of Internet Expert on Italian Matters has been suspended, pending a review process as mandated by our three-strikes policy.

Parmigiano and Grana are essentially two different variants of the same product, so if one requires twelve months to mature, there is no stringent reason for the other to be different. Indeed, this can be confirmed by a quick Wikipedia search.

The long aging is due to the following reasons:

huge size of the wheels
rules that have to be respected in order to be granted the use of the name
differences in the texture, with longer aging resulting in a firmer, crisper cheese, while shorter yielding a softer one.

The length of the aging process, generally speaking, depends on the specifics of the cheese being made, with the US rules requiring as little as 60 days of aging.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go suspend myself.

Det.Bullock 2020-07-27 05:24:09 UTC #201

alms:

Det.Bullock:

IIRC Parmigiano needs two years to be ready for consumption (one year and change if it’s just Grana Padano), I doubt the milk being raw counts.

Dear Valued Member,

we regret to inform you that your License of Internet Expert on Italian Matters has been suspended, pending a review process as mandated by our three-strikes policy.

Parmigiano and Grana are essentially two different variants of the same product, so if one requires twelve months to mature, there is no stringent reason for the other to be different. Indeed, this can be confirmed by a quick Wikipedia search.

The long aging is due to the following reasons:

huge size of the wheels

rules that have to be respected in order to be granted the use of the name

differences in the texture, with longer aging resulting in a firmer, crisper cheese, while shorter yielding a softer one.

The length of the aging process, generally speaking, depends on the specifics of the cheese being made, with the US rules requiring as little as 60 days of aging.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go suspend myself.

Uhm, I don’t get how that’s different from what I said (something in my phrasing perhaps?), grana and parmigiano are the same cheese (the early process that gives the peculiar texture is identical) only parmesan is aged for two years (at least) instead of one, ok grana is 9 months and parmigiano is at least a year, got misled by the fact that most of the parmesan sold is usually aged more than the bare minimum of one year. Parmigiano has a much stronger taste than grana as a result. But usually we treat them as two separate things here, believe it or not different kind of cheeses even when they are very similar is usually serious business here italians usually being the food snobs that they are (well, there seem to be a few more differences but I guess to a non food snob would probably sound nitpicky).

Also IIRC there are plenty of cheeses that need to age for months even if their whatever (believe it or not most cheeses here don’t come in wheels and in fact in italian we don’t even call parmigiano wheels “wheels”, we usually use the term “forma”, literally “shape” and I don’t know how that’s supposed to translate in english in a way that makes actual sense) is much smaller than a parmigiano or grana wheel.
I’m also curious what the other two strikes are supposed to be (is one relative to the thing about ice cream in Carmen Sandiego?).

Jerkzilla 2020-07-27 08:48:48 UTC #202

Blockquote
To drop the Godwyn hammer on this again, if a nation had only two parties:
the Nazi Party
the Ultra Nazi Party that also wants to Final Solution kittens
Calling #1 leftist because it sits left of #2, would either be missing the point by a million miles or deliberately misleading: they’re both Nazis.

That’s obvious but not relevant. My interpretation of the discussion was that NYT pulled the readership to the right based on a couple of examples: the Cotton op ed, Bari Weiss and that other guy. All I’m arguing is these are the exceptions, not NYT’s default. Their position on the political spectrum relative to what centrist means in the US is perfectly sufficient. I don’t need NYT to be straight up socialist for the inital point to be valid.

LexW 2020-07-27 12:08:17 UTC #203

Biden is a pretty extreme centrist, and politically is certainly a neoliberal of the most basic kind.

Minimum wage rises aren’t a particularly leftist issue, they’re a strongly centrist one, but more to the point, they’re also popular with the Republican base. They’re also a very neoliberal approach to pay issues.

I can find more examples with time. But that’s definitely not a good example for a “leftist” issue.

The NYT aligns with the Democrats because the Democratic leadership is, for the most part, aging political centrists. Leftists vote for the Democrats because America is a two-party system and a vote for anyone else is basically a vote for the Republicans, who are definitely currently pretty seriously right wing.

Biden himself, for example, is on most issues to the right of most non-social issues than say Ike Eisenhower (Republican president 1953-1961). And it’s not like Americans don’t know this. I see my wife’s aunts and stuff, who are rural people, and many of them Republican voters, doing stuff like putting up lists of policies Eisenhower had, with the usual “You thought this was Bernie?! Surprise, it’s Eisenhower!” stuff.

The tricky bit is social issues, which until recently, were entangled with fiscal policies in such a way as to be inextricable. And some people are trying to go back to that. Trump, for example, is trying to bring back the Republicans being pro-racism/anti-black (as they were in his younger days), where his more recent predecessors agreed “racism is bad” and didn’t try to make it worse. But he’s less pro-homophobia than some of those - and LGBT issues are far less of a left-right divide than they were.

There’s no doubt that the NYT is broadly liberal on social issues. But that’s not all there is. And neoliberalism is extremely liberal on social issues. But not on fiscal issues, or war issues, or the like.

Not really, no. America has a left. It has sizable support, especially (but not exclusively) among under-50s. People who want fiscal policies more in line with Europe and the UK. It’s a whole big thing. Some of them even want leftist fiscal policies with right-wing social policies, confusing the matter further (for example, being pro-national-health-care, but also pro-guns is not actually that uncommon in the US, or pro-national-healthcare, but anti-abortion). This is why America has such a “swing vote” and so on. It’s not that the people don’t have opinions - it’s that their opinions are more a mix of what is labeled left and right. This is also why centrism is having some problems, because a lot of voters really don’t like centrist policies.

There are no major publications or news channels that really support the left, though, and that’s not because there isn’t demand, it’s because the sort of people who control the media are not the sort of people who share or desire to promote actual-left viewpoints, by and large (and to be fair, younger people have a lot less interest and faith in those publications - in part because of their trolly stunts).