"What I've found is that there is a tremendous interest in these issues, across the political spectrum, sort of left-right terms we used to describe people don't really hold here exactly"
About this Quote
McChesney is doing two things at once: inviting a bigger audience in, and quietly indicting the way we talk about politics. By saying there is "tremendous interest" across the spectrum, he’s making a strategic claim about coalition: the problems he’s pointing to (likely media power, democracy, communications policy) aren’t boutique concerns for one tribe, but pressure points people feel in their daily lives. It’s an argument for urgency without sounding apocalyptic.
The more pointed move is the second half: "left-right terms we used to describe people don't really hold here exactly". That "used to" is a sly time stamp, suggesting our inherited categories are not just inadequate but outdated, a kind of political VHS tape we keep trying to play. He’s also signaling that these issues scramble the normal partisan incentives. Media consolidation, platform governance, surveillance, union power, propaganda: you can find libertarian objections, populist anger, progressive reformism, and conservative distrust of elites all circling the same facts for different reasons.
Subtext: if you insist on treating everything as red vs. blue, you end up protecting the status quo. The line "don't really hold here exactly" is careful, almost academic, but it does rhetorical work. It gives permission to disagree on ideology while agreeing on diagnosis. For a critic, that’s the opening needed to shift the debate from identity and party loyalty to structures - who owns what, who controls access, who sets the terms of public speech.
The more pointed move is the second half: "left-right terms we used to describe people don't really hold here exactly". That "used to" is a sly time stamp, suggesting our inherited categories are not just inadequate but outdated, a kind of political VHS tape we keep trying to play. He’s also signaling that these issues scramble the normal partisan incentives. Media consolidation, platform governance, surveillance, union power, propaganda: you can find libertarian objections, populist anger, progressive reformism, and conservative distrust of elites all circling the same facts for different reasons.
Subtext: if you insist on treating everything as red vs. blue, you end up protecting the status quo. The line "don't really hold here exactly" is careful, almost academic, but it does rhetorical work. It gives permission to disagree on ideology while agreeing on diagnosis. For a critic, that’s the opening needed to shift the debate from identity and party loyalty to structures - who owns what, who controls access, who sets the terms of public speech.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|
More Quotes by Robert
Add to List
