The Free Press writers split fairly evenly 3 ways in the last election, Harris - Trump - 3rdparty/none, according to Bari Weiss. That's encouraging, as it reduces (though does not eliminate) the chance of reading someone on your side or another who is not completely starkers. It always has a few articles about everyone simmering down and trying to be gracious. I am not a subscriber, and you will only see the first few paragraphs, as usual. You Don't Need the Same Politics to Surf Together. The author is trying to be fair, low-key, even affectionate about his brother-in law. Yet look at the choices made and not made in the descriptions. His brother-in-law is described as vaccine skeptical, but he does not describe himself as vaccine obedient. Perhaps that would be too strong, but it is there. Not even "vaccine advocating." It just sits there that he believes the default, his brother-in-law is the one who is a bit unusual. He describes the other as Joe Rogan-listening, but does not put forth any similarly controversial or stereotypical figure who he listens to that might allow others to slot him negatively. He mentions that his brother-in-law is an electrician, fine. He "mentions" that he wrote for the Obama White House (at 24!) and went to Yale. Not college, mind you, not a political speechwriter, but at the White House.
So are we all, I suppose, and I likely notice it more coming from one direction than another. Yet I think such things are more persuasive in the long run because they slide behind our intellectual awareness to our social sense of who are the best people, the right people, the ones we want to be part of. When I was a child, "batteries not included" was a joke illustrating that we were smart enough to have seen through the advertiser's pitch on TV. Direct propaganda we defend against more easily. When it is under the radar we are tricked into thinking that we have figured all this out ourselves, that no one has put one over on us. We are independent thinkers, after all.
Hmmm....I agree with this in general, but I think the vaccine skeptical argument is a bit off. Getting a full series of vaccinations is the default for people in every state, and by quite a wide margin. From what I can find the lowest states about 62% of kids have completed the main series in the first 3 years of life, and the highest state is 92%. So being "vaccine skeptical" is actually a more notable distinguishing characteristic than the other way around, both due to relative proportion of the population and that it's an active choice.
ReplyDeleteAnother example might be that we refer to "single moms" but much less often "married moms", in large part because for years one was the default. We've also had endless debates about if cisgender is a necessary way to refer to non-trans people, or if we should just consider people non-trans unless otherwise specified. I think when there's a clear majority in one direction it's less clear that you're required to add a modifier.
I admit I was thinking of COVID vaccines specifically, which for some reason I thought was implied. That is not explicit in the text, is it? For the larger questiuon of childhood vaccines, I think you are quite right.
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