Month: June 2017

Vox is center-left opinion with well-documented conflicts of interest masquerading as objective analysis, but every now and again they have something resembling reporting. Such was actually the case — despite the explosive headline “Persuasive proof that America is full of racist and selfish people” — when they interviewed Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a former Google data scientist and occasional New York Times contributor. In addition to backing up the assertion that anonymity fosters both nastiness and honesty, that article established an apparently strong correlation between the frequency of certain internet searches and broader trends in our polarized voter population around election day. I found the interesting big data analysis lurking behind the volatile headline to be most fascinating for supporting what I believe to be a general dysfunction of the mainstream progressive dialogue today and a major liability for Democrats.