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Believing this requires significant sane-washing of the last 8 years of media. I mean, to pick a random example off the top of my head that Youtube reminded me, Joe Biden's mental decline. The behavior of those in the media is completely unhinged and totally detached from reality, not to mention nakedly self serving. They've gaslit all of the country on an industrial scale about innumerable topics, or instituted a bizarre form of cognitive mutilation where you are only permitted to think of fact in ways they have told you that you are permitted to think of them. Impossible tangles of double-think abound for sex, gender, crime, equality, equity, you name it.
I would hope Elon has better sources of information than I have. But, to pick at Zelensky's 4% approval rating Hanania leads with, is it even possible to know what the real number might be? Also, I'm supposed to be assessing these "debunks" in a media environment where all the election polling around our own election was purposeful lying. Trump's internal polls showed him winning. Biden and then Kamala's internal polls showed him winning. At no time during the entire election cycle did anyone's internal polls show anyone but Trump winning. Public polls on the other hand, with the exception "low quality" pollsters like Rasmussen, all showed Harris winning. The Harris campaign even went so far as to gaslight the nation claiming Trump was lying about his internal polls as a pretext for election denial.
So why should anyone believe anything these people say about Zelensky's poll numbers? How can they possibly claim to be more credible than just making shit up? If Trump and Elon want to parade around some fake numbers the IC gave them that serve their agenda, they are in good company. Well, maybe not good company, but you know what I mean. Don't pretend this is a deviation.
I mean, this is just naked revisionist history and sane washing right here.
What past is he talking about? "Misgendering" was a ban on sight offense on every social media platform. Books about it were banned, at least temporarily. Liberals didn't calmly argue with conservatives about where to get news from, they banned it. It's pure imagination that anyone, anywhere, was calmly debating what sources of information were preferable to seek the truth. It was a boot stomping on a human face thinking the roles would never be reversed.
Furthermore, I keep going through Hanania's supporting evidence, like "Editor-in-chief of The Federalist joins others in repeating repeating the completely made up lie about Zelensky meeting with Democrats beforehand." except, oh wait, here is a Democrat tweeting about meeting Zelensky before the Trump meeting. Just finished a meeting with President Zelensky here in Washington. He confirmed that the Ukrainian people will not support a fake peace agreement where Putin gets everything he wants and there are no security arrangements for Ukraine. . Did the original rumor name the wrong Democrats? Yes. Is it a made up lie that Zelensky met with Democrats beforehand? Absolutely not.
Frankly it's barely worth the effort to continue to pick apart these sour grapes that Hanania isn't making the living on Twitter that he used to or expected to. Though I am especially tickled he cites Elon being on the wrong side of an argument with Sam Harris about how bad COVID was going to be. The same Sam Harris who has horribly beclowned himself with extremely motivated reasoning about the measures that he still believes were justified to deal with it. Elon might have been wrong about the numbers, but he was directionally correct about how serious to take it. Especially in retrospect, and especially compared to Sam Harris.
Reversed stupidity is still not intelligence.
Why not apply this level of learned helplessness to Musk? Surely he’s burning credibility, too.
True, but entirely over-applied by centrists nowadays when talking about the right's or right-aligned responses. In fact, I most often see it deployed as a statement when a centrist is commenting on one of the issues the left is not able to articulate a right wing argument on, and because most centrists live in left wing media environments, they too cannot articulate the RW theory of the issue.
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You know, I want to take a longer stab at this part. This is less "What I believe" or even "How I think things should be" and more "Is this just the human condition?"
What even is credibility? Is it being absolutely truthful and aligned with reality in every word you say? Or is it delivering the goods, what you said along the way be damned? Musk has a long record of optimistic timelines for various technological achievements. I recall full Falcon 9 reusability was regularly years behind where Musk would confidently say it would be. All's said and done though, none of those "lies" mattered. SpaceX developed a fully reusable rocket and nobody else is even close a decade later, much less beat SpaceX to market in the few years Musk was off in his estimates.
I also recall the story about how Tetris was licensed to Nintendo. Some businessman shamelessly lied that he had the rights to it, signed the paperwork with Nintendo, and then flew off to Russia to do whatever it took to actually secure the rights. He lied... but he did deliver the goods. What does that say about his credibility? He certainly wasn't blacklisted or anything, and in fact goes around bragging to an adoring press, telling the story over and over again.
I was reading The Odyssey lately, and towards the end there was this peculiar part that really struck me where it's mentioned that Odysseus' maternal grandfather was a "world renowned perjurer and thief". Just the way it was phrased, as an admirable thing to be known as struck me as a hilarious bit of bronze age morality. But this more or less meshed with the rest of the bronze age morality on display in The Iliad and The Odyssey, where lying, cheating and stealing is just smart and brings honor if you succeed. Only failure is dishonorable. The line about his grandfather just served to further snap it into focus. One might think we've left that behind, but we're the same human animal now as we were then.
We still say "Fake it till you make it" after all.
So, with respect to Musk, Trump, or anyone's credibility, I think they can lie as much as they want so long as they deliver the good more often than not. Zelensky has a 4% approval rating? Fuck it, why not. Does a ceasefire get declared soon, or some sort of lasting peace agreement? That's credibility. Nobody will remember Musk's tweet when peace and prosperity returns.
World War 3 breaks out and Kiev eats a few megatons? Well, that tweet might end up in the history books, and not in a good way.
I don't especially enjoy this view of the world. And when the shoe is on the other foot, I will likely be losing my ever loving fucking mind that the other side is lying up a storm and "getting away with it".
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Learned helplessness? Hmmmm, perhaps. Its been 10 years. I don’t think there is any shame in realizing I'm outgunned in an information war. I ignored as best I could the breathless coverage of polls for the entire election cycle, and I can't say I missed anything. Likewise, I simply cannot be made to care about Elon's or Trump's tweets, Cabinet drama, etc. I'm waiting for peace or world war 3, for my life to get better or worse. All the beefs Hanania has with Elon are just noise. Sour grapes that he didn't make it into the cool kids club like he hoped.
^ 100% ^
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I can't argue with that.
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