Tech writer: Social Media Endangers Knowledge

Wikipedia, “one of the last remaining pillars of the open and decentralized web, is in existential crisis” — and it has nothing to do with money, warns Hossein Derakhshan at Wired. The problem is “a flattening growth rate in the number of contributors,” symptomatic of “a general trend around the world: The very idea of knowledge itself is in danger.” Where the Internet initially was “a purely text-based medium” and “a tool to pursue knowledge,” social networks now focus “our attention on videos and images, rewarding emotional appeals —‘like’ buttons — over rational ones. Instead of a quest for knowledge, it engages us in an endless zest for instant approval.” Moreover, the medium “reduces our curiosity by showing us exactly what we already want and think, based on our profiles and preferences.”

Conservative: Political Contempt Is out of Control

Marc Thiessen at the American Enterprise Institute laments “our national descent into political contempt” with the ongoing feud between President Trump and a Gold Star widow. It should be “obvious to all” that Trump, though not entirely blameless, “flubbed what was intended as a compliment.” What Thiesses finds “reprehensible” was that a congresswoman who boycotted Trump’s inauguration and called for his impeachment chose to “publicize and politicize” his remarks. Also shameful: “the media feeding frenzy, with reporters unquestioningly reporting her comments and then calling other Gold Star families to see if Trump had insulted them” too. Sadly, we’ve reached the point where a president’s “efforts to console grieving families who lost loved ones in a time of war is considered fair game for political attacks.”



From the right: Dubya’s Finest Hour

Former President George W, Bush’s speech last week is being touted as an attack on Trumpism, which is “accurate — as far as it goes,” suggests Abe Greenwald at Commentary. In fact, he says, Bush was “aiming for (and achieved) something loftier”: making the case “against the pervasive discontent that’s driven many citizens throughout the Democratic West to a politics of grievance and revenge.” For Bush, “ridding the world of evil still means, in part, advancing the cause of human liberty. And that’s really what his speech was about.” His words “stand as a marker of where we want to be after the current political enthusiasms fail to deliver.” Indeed, Bush’s decency, “contrasted with the indecency of the moment he was describing, was the most powerful rebuke to American self-doubt that we’ve seen since Trump was elected.”



Culture critic: Time for Hollywood To Oust Polanski

The Daily Beast’s Marlow Stern says, “whatever sense of probity Hollywood had left was sacrificed at the altar of commerce” at the 2003 Academy Awards. That’s when Roman Polanski was awarded the Oscar for Best Director for “The Pianist” — which he was unable to accept because, having pled guilty to “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor,” he’d fled the country. But while Hollywood luminaries have been quick to condemn Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby for sexually predatory behavior, “they’ve repeatedly defended Polanski.” Moreover, “Hollywood’s A-listers have continued to flock to his films.” Now four more actresses have accused Polanski of sexual assault when they were young teens. Says Stern: It’s time Hollywood stopped aiding a “convicted sexual predator.”



Policy wonk: Pensions, Politics & the NJ Teachers Union

New Jersey’s public pension and health-benefits system “is a looming disaster that threatens the future of the state,” warns Michael Lilley at NJSpotlight.com. Indeed, “by fiscal year 2023, the state’s annual pension and benefit costs are projected to rise to $11.3 billion, or an unsustainable 27 percent of the state budget.” The crisis “is the direct result of public-sector unions” — particularly the NJ Education Association, which “generally gets what it wants” — “using their enormous political leverage to increase benefits for their members, regardless of the state’s ability to pay.” New Jerseyans “must wake up to the reality that we have allowed a special interest to rig our political system for its own benefit” and reverse this “corrupted status quo.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann