[HN Gopher] Foreign Affairs at 100: A look back at the first issue
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Foreign Affairs at 100: A look back at the first issue
Author : wannabebarista
Score : 50 points
Date : 2022-08-15 14:40 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bcmullins.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (bcmullins.github.io)
| bigcat12345678 wrote:
| I booked half year subscription, and had deep disappointment.
| Each and every article is without the basic substance on how the
| ideas were developed and what the reasoning behind their
| consequences. All articles are pure ideology showcasing of the
| author, who might or might not believe what they stated in the
| article...
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| An academic journal that might appeal to you is _Survival_ [0],
| from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Even
| though it is academic in nature, with the corresponding quality
| and standards for publication, it is largely jargon free and
| not too lost in the weeds.
|
| [0]: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tsur20/current
| gxqoz wrote:
| I enjoy the breadth of the reviews in the back but typically
| only read 1 or 2 of the main articles. Sometimes there's an
| article that's in-depth on some country you don't hear that
| much about in other sources which justifies the subscription
| cost.
| EarthIsHome wrote:
| That's the point of the magazine: it's to spread ideologies
| around. If you want to know what people in the state department
| (or adjacent/influential) are thinking, then "articles" in this
| magazine are one way of peering into their minds.
|
| One example of this is the the Mr. X article. It was published
| anonymously in Foreign Affairs. Mr. X was George Kennan, a US
| diplomat, who popularized the strategy of containment which
| ended up as US foreign policy during the Cold War. [0]
|
| So, if you want to know what's en vogue in certain foreign
| policy groups in US and western society, then Foreign Affairs
| is a very good magazine... But your point is right: I found
| very little substance and critical evidence to back many of the
| ideas presented when I had a subscription.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Article
| pessimizer wrote:
| > That's the point of the magazine: it's to spread ideologies
| around. If you want to know what people in the state
| department (or adjacent/influential) are thinking, then
| "articles" in this magazine are one way of peering into their
| minds.
|
| No more than the pre-Bezos Washington Post (as awful as the
| post-Bezos WaPo, except the headlines were less linkbaity),
| because the same family of billionaires owned both.
| uoaei wrote:
| More broadly, this perspective applies to most (all?) "news"
| media sources today. Actually fringe outlets are on average
| much worse, passing through the land of ideology toward pure
| virtue-signalling.
|
| The goal of reading news today isn't necessarily to get
| facts: those are accessible through implicit analysis and
| triangulation of the many perspectives offered for public
| consideration, and unfortunately that takes a lot of time and
| energy to the point where it needs to be one of your daily
| routines to get "caught up". The goal of simply reading news
| more generally is to understand the ideologies driving
| decisions in the halls of power (legislators, ministerial
| positions, and "deep state" a la The Blob).
|
| Chomsky's _Manufacturing Consent_ was treated as an
| instruction manual by those whom it did not already describe
| at publication time, and the entire public discourse has
| seemed to be infected by such a strain of bad-faith ideology
| propagation as opposed to good-faith dialectics. It is a
| prisoner 's dilemma after all -- if you make a good-faith
| argument, your opponent will capitalize on it in a bad-faith
| manner to dominate the narrative.
|
| The most significant positive change to my media literacy was
| in paying attention to which authors represent which
| viewpoints, and which platforms publish which authors for
| which reasons.
| subsubzero wrote:
| You may need to look past the ideology to get interesting facts
| the authors are presenting. I am an avid reader of the
| economist as it shines a light on foreign news like few
| publications do, and even though its rather toned down than say
| the New York Times on opinion, it still shows through in alot
| of articles. Stuff like globalism is great for the average
| worker, the US should adopt a land value tax, etc. I don't
| agree with alot of the stuff they say and just filter it out
| but there is alot of really great news stories you may be
| missing.
| dron57 wrote:
| Out of interest. Why don't you like a land value tax? To me
| it seems like a great market based solution to American's
| lack of housing - which is a huge drag on our total economic
| growth.
| rollinDyno wrote:
| Cute little article I enjoyed reading.
|
| It seems to me that in terms of organization the author does not
| mention that the first section of current editions are usually
| organized around a single topic, and then there's a loose
| collection of essays.
|
| I'm also curious whether the second release allowed readers to
| write replies, or whether this came much after.
| euroderf wrote:
| In the 70s I read it cover to cover, but after Reagan took office
| they started going deep into the ideological crazy. Haven't
| hardly looked at it since.
| hereforphone wrote:
| So they disagreed with your world view?
| lkrubner wrote:
| Are you suggesting that all world views, no matter how
| ignorant or contradictory, are equally valid?
| hereforphone wrote:
| Do you believe that the views you perceive as ignorant and
| contradictory, are objectively ignorant and contradictory?
| Could there be any bias in your perception?
| vkou wrote:
| Do you believe that no views are ignorant and
| contradictory? Or do you simply believe that we aren't
| equipped to tell them from ones that aren't?
|
| If it's the former, I will have to say I disagree (If I
| could put words to it, in a manner that you would find
| ignorant and contradictory, and bad-faith and self-
| serving.) If it's the latter, then there's no point in
| discussing, well, anything.
| [deleted]
| karaterobot wrote:
| I read it more like "did you unsubscribe to the magazine
| because the quality decreased, or because it took an
| editorial position you disagreed with?"
|
| We always talk about the importance of understanding
| opposing viewpoints.
|
| There's value in paying someone to say things you already
| think, but in a better way than you could. But, there's
| also value in reading the best version of an argument you
| despise, and reckoning with it.
| caycep wrote:
| I don't know if that was bc reaganites just took over a lot
| of the FP establishment for a while... at least recently,
| I've noticed their list of invited writers seem to reflect
| "bothsidisms" no matter how wacky.
| wannabebarista wrote:
| You especially see this in the occasional response articles
| where several invited authors offer rapid-fire responses to
| a featured article. When there are a limited number of
| reasonable positions to take, wackiness is bound to seep
| in.
|
| Not that this is particularly wacky, but here's an example:
| https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-
| states/2021-0...
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(page generated 2022-08-15 23:01 UTC)