In an alternate world, the NYT predominantly prints left leaning rants like this one. The people that read it nod vociferously, they write passionate sweary rants for people who enjoy passionate and sweary rants. Up and down America those people who skew left agree, up and down America people who skew right don’t bother to read it. In the same way that someone as left as this would pick up a right wing paper.

Ultimately you’d just have a printed version of Twitter. Hurling paper aeroplanes of meaningless political drivel at each other from idiot bunkers and pointless echo chambers. Your critique of the centre ground position which the NYT takes is basically that anyone who doesn’t agree with your world view is an idiot for not seeing the world as you do.

That is also the view of the right wing.

Those of us who sit in the centre ground, who enjoy balanced journalism and nuanced political positioning find it baffling. We like our journalism without ad-hominem attacks and dog-whistle rhetoric. Why? It’s the difference between journalism and propaganda. And because pieces like this influence young impressionable young people. Pieces of writing like this are dangerous. Not because you can’t say the things that you have said, but because in critiquing a centrist newspaper for not agreeing to report the news the way you want it, you are screaming ‘fake news’. That is devaluing impartiality and good quality journalism in a way that reminds me of a certain orange someone.

When viewed objectively and from the centre ground, you’re not so different you and him. You’re just using bigger words.