#discourse

Healthy debate has been replaced by automatic sensors that eliminate the need for actual talking during a filibuster - a la 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.' Robust debate is necessary in a democratic society. Instead, our discourse has been relegated to media spin by expert entertainers. ↗

— Douglas Wilder

#automatic #been #debate #democratic #democratic society

Amongst the many trials to which the human mind is subjected, that of holding intercourse, real or imaginary, with the world of spirits: of finding itself alone with a being terrific and awful, whose nature and power are unknown, has been justly considered the most severe. ↗

— Joanna Baillie

#nature

Things it is not polite to discuss at the dinner table: politics, religion, and the walking dead. ↗

— Mira Grant

#religion

Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition. ↗

— A. R. Ammons

#besides #class #differs #discourse #everything

Contention is inseparable from creating knowledge. It is not contention we should try to avoid, but discourses that attempt to suppress contention. ↗

— Joyce Appleby

#avoid #contention #creating #discourses #inseparable

Almost anything is better than three network TV outlets completely controlling the national discourse with their nightly broadcasts. We've moved a long way from that, and that's important. ↗

— Jimmy Wales

#anything #better #broadcasts #completely #controlling

In America, everyone is entitled to an opinion, and it is certainly useful to have a few when a pollster shows up. But these are opinions of a quite different roder from eighteenth- or nineteenth-century opinions. It is probably more accurate to call them emotions rather than opinions, which would account for the fact that they change from week to week, as the pollsters tell us. What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using this world almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in the CIA or KGB. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information--misplace, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information--information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge? ↗

— Neil Postman

#ignorance #knowledge #media #nate-silver #opinions

Public discourse has been polluted now for decades by corporate-funded disinformation - not just with climate change but with a host of health, environmental and societal threats. The implications for the planet are grim. ↗

— Michael E. Mann

#change #climate #climate change #decades #discourse

Open debate and full discourse on the topic of torture is a double-edged sword. ↗

— Charles D. Ellison

#discourse #double-edged #double-edged sword #full #open

Getting rid of Bin Laden is good for the cause of peace worldwide but what counts is to overcome the discourse and the methods - the violent methods - that were created and encouraged by Bin Laden and others in the world. ↗

— Ismail Haniyeh

#cause #counts #created #discourse #encouraged