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Lately I’ve been considering the passing fancy that the left-right framing of bias is itself evidence of a conservative bias because its fulcrum is the debate over governance in itself and that “left-leaning” is a construction of conservative monoculture.
A left leaning bias doesn’t privilege party affiliation because that’s fleeting and local. The left is more apt to frame bias in differences of race, gender, sexuality, education, economics, colonialism, and other kinds of power.
It’s more akin to bias as defined in scholarship: asking whose experiences are considered and whose experiences are not, does the speaker benefit personally from the outcome or the approach.
The various groups within the left needn’t ally with one another: there’s no a priori definition of the left. Instead it encompasses all views who do not consider tradition and/or the end of governance as the first step toward liberation.
This is why the idea of a left bubble is (partly) laughable. By nature of our politics, we’re exposed to voices that are not our own.
(This brilliant thread makes a better point on that though... ) https://twitter.com/romancingnope/status/1324362906079809543
(This brilliant thread makes a better point on that though... ) https://twitter.com/romancingnope/status/1324362906079809543
Take the pandemic. Left leaning writers certainly had an interest in measuring the effects of different government responses, yes. But there was also an intense focus on the sexual and racial politics of shutdowns and in the classification of essential work.
We didn’t hear conservative voices investigating, say, the childcare disparities of the shutdown. Conservative media was concerned with first blaming Democrats and immigrants and secondly questioning the necessity of government action.
So the “mask or no mask” question is a conservative debate, and, forced to engage, the left did not move forward on gender or racial equality. There were other benefits to engagement - saving lives - but you might see why centering the mask debate reveals a conservative bias.
It’s not just that conservatives are more likely to oppose masks, it’s that asking the question at all (but especially in a staged left-right debate) is beneficial to conservative views and takes up space that could better serve minority communities.
Anyway. This is my thought. Please don’t make this about the octopus.
