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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.
This isn't true, many had Trump winning.
Hanania actually published an article before the election expressing skepticism of the polls:
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/are-the-polls-too-close-to-be-trusted
The best anti-establishment takes usually come from people like Hanania. They don't come from "anti-establishment" conspiracy theorists who don't believe any data, election results, polls, scientific studies, and just bloviate and make assertions completely untethered to any evidence.
Yesterday you said you weren't here to passive aggressively side talk about all these low quality populists. I didn't have time to respond and I figured the charitable thing to do would be to take you at your word, or at least not rub your errors in your face. And yet here you are not just side talking but coupling it with hilarious jokes like "The best anti-establishment takes usually come from people like Hanania" and it's complete tonal whiplash.
Jokes aside it's obvious why you like Hanania's stropfest, but you make no effort to explain why anyone else should, just another wide brush of smears against anyone who questions the neoliberal consensus. I'm not going to defend conspiracists, because that's just your nail, it covers everyone from doesn't trust polls to flat earthers and beyond.
Instead I'm going to do you a favour and explain some things populists don't like, so you can better reach those doge guys and future republican senators. Populists don't like being lumped in with the craziest people you can currently think of. They don't like people who smirk at the powerlessness of others. They don't like arguments from authority, especially when they don't respect the authority. And most importantly they don't like listening to people who are too blinded by their own petty bullshit to notice that the entire world changed in November, or who try to gaslight them into thinking Trump changes nothing even as he goes around changing everything, or whatever the fuck you were doing there.
That doesn't sound like me.
This has got squat to do with "neoliberalism." Musk is basically a neoliberal. The problem is saying false things like the 4% approval rating stat and then doubling down when it's pointed out. It's not like he cited a real poll that, unbeknownst to him, had methodological flaws. The poll was completely made up.
He's referring to this comment, which on my reading does straightforwardly say that you're here for "work(ing) with them to explain your arguments and defeat(ing) theirs" as opposed to "sulk(ing) quietly to yourself and then passive aggressively side talk(ing) about all these low quality populists".
You're not making sense. I'm possibly the biggest Musk critic on this forum (even our resident progressives claim he's good at managing Tesla, SpaceX, etc - I don't), and you're taking swipes at people like me ("They don't come from "anti-establishment" conspiracy theorists..."), as you're trying to refocus the conversation on how wrong Musk is. Make it make sense.
I’m very confused. I feel like we’re all arguing and/or moderating past each other.
To which of the following do you object?
I don’t think Alex actually said the last one. I read his comments as a pure complaint about Elon Musk’s susceptibility to AECTs like this particular account. But you and @Fruck are taking it as a personal or at least tribal attack? What am I missing?
I didn't get the impression that he was limiting his criticism to that particular Twitter account, rather it feels like a sweeping condemnation of all AECT's.
That would be a pretty big point of disagreement as well, but it's open to civil debate.
The missing piece might be that I unironically consider myselfban AECT, so I don't know how to read that as anything other than an attack. I'm aware that there are people in my group that have a few screws loose, but a sweeping condemnation of the entire group based on that feels extremely unfair, and I was under the impression that it's even against the rules.
How is what he doing different from condemning the entirety of, say, Critical Race Theory, based on the conduct of the students of the Evergreen State College?
If that was posted completely in a vacuum, I guess it’d be a violation. In response to a post about Evergreen? I want to say it’s okay, because I don’t know how else he’d refer to the category.
Maybe
anti-racist & activist & dissent-quashingis a really small set, maybe it’s even empty, but I don’t think reasoning about it is wrong.I suppose I’m struggling to figure out how Alex could have been more specific about the group he was condemning.
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