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Another excellent piece by Taibbi about corona
invite response
2020 May 4, 11:03am 583 views 2 comments
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1
Ceffer
2020 May 4, 11:27am
Ceffer
2020 May 4, 11:27am
Is Taibbi attaining a focus through the Gonzo Fog? Will wonders never cease? He still sound like a frog trying to sit on ten different lily pads. When he starts goose stepping in his sleep, I'll be impressed by his wannabe transformation.
Or, I could just smoke a big fattie and enjoy the ride.
Or, I could just smoke a big fattie and enjoy the ride.
2
Bd6r
2020 May 4, 11:35am
Bd6r
2020 May 4, 11:35am
Ceffer says
That's kinda normal for a person who tries to make up his own mind without blindly following dear Fuhrers of the day. Another good example of a person who listens to arguments and thinks is Dave Rubin.
I have often disagreed with Taibbi, but he has always been interesting and thoughtful.
He still sound like a frog trying to sit on ten different lily pads.
That's kinda normal for a person who tries to make up his own mind without blindly following dear Fuhrers of the day. Another good example of a person who listens to arguments and thinks is Dave Rubin.
I have often disagreed with Taibbi, but he has always been interesting and thoughtful.
A consistent lament in these pieces was the widespread decline in respect for “experts” among the ignorant masses, better known as the people Trump was talking about when he gushed in February 2016, “I love the poorly educated!”
The Atlantic was at the forefront of the argument that The People is a Great Beast, that cannot be trusted to play responsibly with the toys of freedom. A 2016 piece called “American politics has gone insane” pushed a return of the “smoke-filled room” to help save voters from themselves. Author Jonathan Rauch employed a metaphor that is striking in retrospect, describing America’s oft-vilified intellectual and political elite as society’s immune system:
Americans have been busy demonizing and disempowering political professionals and parties, which is like spending decades abusing and attacking your own immune system. Eventually, you will get sick....
In the Trump years the sector of society we used to describe as liberal America became a giant finger-wagging machine. The news media, academia, the Democratic Party, show-business celebrities and masses of blue-checked Twitter virtuosos became a kind of umbrella agreement society, united by loathing of Trump and fury toward anyone who dissented with their preoccupations.
Because this Conventional Wisdom viewed itself as being solely concerned with the Only Important Thing, i.e. removing Trump, there was no longer any legitimate excuse for disagreeing with its takes on Russia, Julian Assange, Jill Stein, Joe Rogan, the 25th amendment, Ukraine, the use of the word “treason,” the removal of Alex Jones, the movie Joker, or whatever else happened to be the #Resistance fixation of the day.
When the Covid-19 crisis struck, the scolding utopia was no longer abstraction. The dream was reality! Pure communism had arrived! Failure to take elite advice was no longer just a deplorable faux pas. Not heeding experts was now murder. It could not be tolerated. Media coverage quickly became a single, floridly-written tirade against “expertise-deniers.” For instance, the Atlantic headline on Kemp’s decision to end some shutdowns was, “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice.”
The new piece by Goldsmith and Woods says we’re there, made literally sick by our refusal to accept the wisdom of experts. The time for asking the (again, literally) unwashed to listen harder to their betters is over. The Chinese system offers a way out. When it comes to speech, don’t ask: tell.