Pete, Pete, and Repeat walk into a bar...

Let me try to connect the dots...

I've been listening to a podcast called "The Best of the Left", and last week there was a discussion about metaphorical echo chambers. According to Wikipedia, "the term echo chamber is any situation in which information, ideas or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission inside an 'enclosed' space." I gather it is not an actual enclosed space, but instead the simple act of talking to, reading, or listening to opinions that already agree with one's own (thus reinforcing them as correct).

When you hear someone say, "you're preaching to the choir," they are basically saying to you that the echo chamber of your relationship is redundant, in this case.

The point made in the podcast, or what caught my ear, dealt with a study that sought to determine whether readers of online news were ghettoizing themselves into echo chambers, and only reading information from sources that reflected their opinions.

Turns out, they don't, defying the expectations of researchers.

The study showed that bloggers and their readers alike, prefer to read what the other side is saying. Thus, ideologies are defined dialectically, in relation to one another, rather than through echo chambers. Blogs go a step further, creating a venue where people can interact with the "other" side. Posting comments to a blog is one example of how this process works, mechanically speaking.

Another nail in the coffin of the newspaper industry!

This relates to Turkey, in a minute...

I was raised, like most Americans, on the assumption of an objective media. The idea that journalism should report "just the facts, ma'am", and that the field brought with it none of the dishonest taints which accompany academia, politics, or discussions around the water-cooler.

Thus was I in for a shock, my first summer in Turkey. Myself a young leftist at the time, I learned through leftist friends of leftist newspapers and leftist magazines. These were clearly and aggressively ideological publications, and available in most news-stands (except those owned by the political right). A magazine rack provides a number of political stances, and while searching for one, a reader inevitably learns about others. Publications are also pressed to keep each other honest, because what could be more fun than discrediting your ideological foes.

Some of these papers are sufficiently extreme, that they are constantly being closed by the government, and then re-organizing under different names. One specifically, Gündem, used to print a "Victims" column, everyday featuring a journalist, lawyer, or revolutionary killed by the Turkish "Deep State". To carry Gündem in public was to declare to other Turks your ideological stance.

I remember a man in Tatvan, who was holding up his Gündem such that any passerby could see the headline and title as they passed. I felt that he wasn't reading, so much as making a statement about his politics, a proclamation of his leftist-ness.

Certainly, it was an act of defiance. Gündem was shut down in 2005.

The New York Times seems intended for hippy-pussies by comparison.

I noticed long ago that Turks are generally more politically aware. My political persuasion often differs from those with whom I speak, but there is clearly a mutual understanding of the political spectrum, the agents of political change, and the means available for exercising power. We disagree, but we understand one another. It's like we're speaking the same language, even though we're not.

Turkey is a military state. What I find interesting, is that with political action literally paralyzed by the threat of imprisonment or extra-state assassination, dissident voices constantly emerge from all points of the political spectrum. Their contribution to the larger conversation resonates meaningfully. The closest thing we have to this is Jon Stewart getting into an argument with Tucker Carlson.

Either ours is a fundamentally conservative country, or our leadership has complete control, for the differences between liberals and conservatives never come down to ideology, but rather policy. Americans all seem to want basically the same things. I know I'm failing to define this clearly, but I'll need to think on it more. The Turkish Left and Right want radically different things for Turkey (different from each other and different from what the Turkish state presently provides).

I could be wrong (and perhaps I ran from the America of my parents' generation, and not mine), but I get the sense Americans just want a middle/upper-middle class, college educated, nuclear family, lifestyle. Something which could be described as "Compassionate Capitalism", which is maybe also eco-friendly.

My ideology leads me to want collective ownership of the means of production and democratic participation in all levels of society, also maximization of local political authority into smaller geographic areas than nations (of our size) would be appreciated.

Those are distinctly different goals...