#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Healthy debate has been replaced by automatic sensors that eliminate the need for actual talking during a filibuster - a la 'Mr.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

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

There are reasons why Religious Right Evangelicals will continue to dominate religious discourse, not only in their own sector of the Christian community, but also in what transpires in mainline denominations. ↗

— Tony Campolo

#christian #community #continue #denominations #discourse

I proceed with the proper subject of this discourse; namely, the further changes in scientific belief, which have occurred within my own recollection, even since the time when I first aspired to authorship, now forty- five years ago. ↗

— Asa Gray

#aspired #authorship #belief #changes #discourse

The point is that television does not reveal who the best man is. In fact, television makes impossible the determination of who is better than whom, if we mean by 'better' such things as more capable in negotiation, more imaginative in executive skill, more knowledgeable about international affairs, more understanding of the interrelations of economic systems, and so on. The reason has, almost entirely, to do with 'image.' But not because politicians are preoccupied with presenting themselves in the best possible light. After all, who isn't? It is a rare and deeply disturbed person who does not wish to project a favorable image. But television gives image a bad name. For on television the politician does not so much offer the audience an image of himself, as offer himself as an image of the audience. And therein lies one of the most powerful influences of the television commercial on political discourse. ↗

— Neil Postman

#campaigns #debate #democracy #discourse #elections

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

I think it is very difficult today to have a reasoned public discourse on any controversial subject. Certainly, election years present a complicating factor. ↗

— John Poindexter

#certainly #controversial #difficult #discourse #election

The level of discourse in this country is falling to a depth that cannot be sustained. ↗

— Martin Frost

#country #depth #discourse #falling #level

Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a desiccated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagara of similar opinions, and convert them into--what else?--another piece of news. Thus we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing. ↗

— Neil Postman

#elections #irrelevance #media #nate-silver #news