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The Munk Debate with Matt Taibbi, Douglas Murray, Malcolm Gladwell and Michelle Goldberg is now online: Be it Resolved: Don't Trust Mainstream Media.
Contrary to many alternative media takes, I thought that Goldberg had a surprisingly strong showing. I remember her from the Peterson, Fry, et al. debate where she seemed too crude at times. This time Goldberg's opinions clearly came from experience, and her points were well conveyed. Briefly she claimed that there are clear signs that the media does learn from its mistakes and "overcorrects," that the media would not have driven you to make bad decisions if you followed it, and that the processes and culture of the media remain in place. The debate was worth watching just for her.
Murray conveyed a deep sense of moral disgust at what he saw as the carelessness of the Con side. This too came off as having come from experience. There was a point lurking here that I thought needed more articulation. The Con side said that they were professionals who were still doing what needed to be done, and they pointed frequently to successes on their side. But can one be called a professional if only the broad "process" is followed, and no attention is taken to details such as promptness of reporting, accountability, and the taking of personal responsibility rather than pointing fingers? In the absence of the markers of professionalism, it seemed more like they were claiming that their status as mainstream reporters performing an essential service gave them the right to lead people to a better future. In this I am reminded of the film The Verdict. Few people really care ifa doctor will do a fine job in the future, if he can get away with criminal negligence just this one time.
Gladwell's performance dragged down the debate consistently, but I feel some sympathy for him. His system of diversity has left him in a place that he didn't think it would take him. His constant complaints about white people did not seem enlightened, but as bigoted as any racist tract. Still, his point about whether people like him would have been "included" in the past did have something to it. What we've seen in recent times is a concept of diversity that succeeded in pushing people forward, but failed in the end to bring them up to the same standards as those who they have joined. It is just like programs which try to give educational opportunities for the disadvantaged, but which children finish without learning proper English. If you forget the goal, then you have failed and must try again. Similarly, Gladwell wasn't supposed to end his journey as something that strongly resembles a bigot, but he seemed unable to stop himself from doubling down on it despite it being obvious that it was doing them no good. If men like Gladwell begin to recognize failure and try again, perhaps building on what they have learned so far, I have little doubt that they will do a lot of good.
Taibbi did well, not much to say there. I do think that the Pro side didn't adequately answer questions about their alleged fixations on culture war (edit: and Twitter) issues, but it seems like a charge that could easily be thrown back at the mainstream media over the past decade.
I found her (Goldberg's) arguments to be the complete opposite of good straight from the get-go. The first point that stood out to me in her opening statement, that 'the media' is not 'ideologically captured' is just wrong. Like she doesn't understand what people are talking about. To reinforce her point she brings up the 'Red Wave' phenomenon the blue mainstream media were pushing in unison. A phenomenon that can be characterized entirely as 'I am afraid my enemy is going to win like they did last time'.
It seems to miss the point of what people have been saying about media bias. The point of the 'displeasure' of how the media was shilling for Hillary Clinton in 2016 wasn't that the media was saying that she was going to win. That was just a consequence of the actual problem. That problem being that 'the media' was obviously and completely in the tank for Hillary and an ill-defined political direction that we can code as 'blue'.
Because of this lack of understanding Goldberg's whole concept of 'over-correction' is just irrelevant at best. The media didn't 'correct' itself in any sense that relates to 'ideological capture'. It's still just as captured, just expressing itself differently. They recognized that they might have harmed 'the cause' and changed gears. They didn't change gears to correct their own beliefs. They changed gears so that they would stop harming the cause. From their perspective, in hindsight, it was obviously folly to say to your prospective voters that the election was in the bag. If you want to aid 'the cause' you must gin up your voters to vote. So you tell them that the enemy is mounting for an attack and that you must brace the gates, or you will lose everything you care about.
At risk of being too uncharitable to a person like this. Is she just that stupid? How can someone in her position look at this entire debacle, ongoing for years now, and still be so far off the mark? Is she a malicious actor?
She then moves into 'the big stories'. And says the mainstream media got most of them 'right'. She doesn't expand on what that means beyond that Trump and COVID where events that happened. Which, as a standard of 'rightness' doesn't seem to elevate mainstream media far above 'alternative' media but that's neither here nor there since she backpedals the argument a bit and says that you would be 'closer' to the 'truth' if you followed mainstream media and not 'alternative' sources. This is not really a truth apt claim since the 'truth' given out by blue media and non-blue media is simply not the same. This muddy language is then used to support her argument where she says that the hysteria ginned up about Trump was largely correct because January 6 happened. The problem here being obvious, one 'truth' says J6 was a coup attempt, the other 'truth' says it was a valid protest. If she is malicious, she is brilliant at what she does. If she isn't, she is an idiot savant at making stupid arguments.
I don't think you could underpin the concept of 'ideological capture' better that Goldberg does in her opening paragraphs of her opening statement. Not only does she demonstrate what it looks like, and that she is suffering from it. She also demonstrates that if blue journalists were fish, 'ideological capture' is the water they swim in. Lacking self-awareness to the point of absurdity.
I recently had a discussion with a guy who had a take along the lines "We should focus more on economy and not on culture war such as abortion or gay things that conservatives jin up constantly". When I pointed out that this would require the same sentiment from the left: stop going for trans rights, extending term of abortions or stop going for women quotas in professions and so forth. His answer was something along the lines that these are not CW topics, they are matter of unalienable rights that are outside of any discussion. And to me it seemed that he really believed it, he could not probably comprehend that let's say abortion from the position of conservative can be also viewed as question of human rights and preventing genocide. It just did not click.
I think that the whole "justice" angle fried the brains of some people. Everything is now matter of justice, fairness and human rights: we have climate justice, racial justice up to mundane things like dental care justice. In a sense this is "genius" position: every topic and policy I am in favor of is domain of fairness, justice and basic human rights. These are nonnegotiable and there is no compromise possible here, these are topics outside of standard political process and all reasonable people already agree. If you disagree it means you are extremist and not worthy of engaging in a discussion.
I'll grant you diversity quotas as a culture war topic the left is actively pushing on... but from my perspective the abortion and trans rights issues look entirely defensive from the left. The left wants the status quo ante of Roe v. Wade and wants trans people to be left alone. The right is the side making those into culture war issues, not the left.
Only in the "cries out in pain as he strikes you" sense, holy cow.
It's really interesting that you simultaneously suggest that "the left wants the status quo ante of Roe v. Wade," (nevermind that was imposed by SCOTUS and not anything like the result of a legislative process where all citizens had their say) because when it comes down to it the right wants the "status quo" of people with penises and Y chromosomes to have separate bathrooms, prisons, sports teams, and certain other facilities from people with uteruses and lacking Y chromosomes.
And definitely prefers the status quo where it doesn't matter what the person claims to identify as, the term 'man' and 'woman' has an easily verifiable component that isn't subject to the individual's personal preference. And that, on it's face, is entirely compatible with trans people being 'left alone.'
If trans people 'just want to be left alone' that message REALLY hasn't gotten through to the actual left.
Why else are, among other things, the existence of a biological male competing against biological females and unsurprisingly dominating the sport supposed to be celebrated as an achievement, even if this ruins the competition for biological females?
In what sense does this gel with trans people being 'left alone,' if it imposes on people who are trying to compete on something like a fair playing field?
Because blanketing a whole town with flags that represents your identity is almost fundamentally opposed to the concept of 'being left alone.' By this very act you are demanding people confront, acknowledge, accept, and support your particular beliefs. In so doing, you are requiring them pay attention, which is the opposite of leaving you alone.
Similarly when you make biological females wax your penis. That's not 'wanting to be left alone.' Nor is insisting to be allowed into a women's changing room with pubescent females. If this isn't some version of culture warring, then what is it?
You don't get to call it 'defensive' and then literally threaten to take people's kids away for failure to comply with your beliefs.
Or appoint openly trans officials to high ranking federal government positions seemingly only on the basis of their trans identity. This is not behavior that implies a desire to be 'left alone.' It is being openly stated there:
What is 'the faith' in this case?
"Just want to be left alone" but if you disagree with them, people at the very highest levels of government are ready to come for you.
I don't know that you're even arguing in good faith, but assuming you are, please put forward a plausible narrative of the last twenty years in which the right is the side that pushed trans issues to the forefront of public conciousness as a culture war issue.
I think this is a major part of the disagreement. Genetic testing for Y chromosomes is not exactly something done often. Literally checking people's genitals to determine which sex-segregated group they belong in as opposed to relying on appearance of secondary characteristics which can be faked with varying levels of success (generally much easier for trans men than trans women, the latter usually requiring some amount of surgery to pull off) or just trusting their identification or (possibly faked) documents also seems like an escalation.
Yes, this is why one designs laws that punish defectors who manage to evade detection, since we choose NOT to adopt more intrusive measures and trust people to follow generally accepted social edicts. You're just quibbling about the enforcement mechanism, not the validity of the norm it enforces.
A trans person who wants to be 'left alone' need only choose the bathroom or facility that corresponds to their biological sex and I daresay they will be left alone. Maybe they're a bit offput because social norms aren't 'accepting' their identity, but we COULD have a discussion to weigh the costs/benefits of accepting their identity vs. enforcing said norms.
But we HAVEN'T had that discussion and at present CAN'T have that discussion because even attempting it will get you literally banned from most social media sites. And that's not the right doing the banning.
But you'll have a hard time convincing me that the left is willing to cede any ground on this debate.
Prisons, of all places, are CERTAINLY capable of checking people's genitals before admission, and yet:
https://nypost.com/2022/04/25/transgender-rikers-inmate-gets-7-years-for-raping-female-prisoner/
If the left is incapable of even admitting that there exist valid reasons to keep people born with penises out of facilities delegated specifically for people who menstruate (I don't know what the most up-to-date prog terms are and don't care enough to check) then THEY are the source of the disagreement here.
But then again, if they admit to such valid reasons, this pretty much unravels the entire "your gender identity is what you believe and say it is!" logic.
Back a few years ago I saw multiple social media posts along the lines of this selfie of a trans man in a woman's restroom with a caption asserting the absurdity of that belief. Following the hashtags in that tweet finds some similar ones (although mostly a lot of screenshots of that one as far as I can tell).
Again, you're just quibbling about the enforcement mechanism, not the validity of the norm it enforces.
Do you think there are valid reasons for the social norm of penis-havers and people of menstruation being assigned separate lavatory facilities?
Why should the extant status quo be altered?
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Yes. That proves we used have a high trust society, where people expected everyone to follow the rules without having to be verified, not that we as a society used to believe in the concept of "gender identity", by which we decided to segregate our bathrooms, locker rooms, sports, and prisons.
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I think the majority of trans people probably do want to just be left alone. But the loudmouth activists, and the mentally ill, have captured the microphone and are the ones getting all the publicity, and then you have the cis 'allies' who want to be patted on the head as one of the Good Ones who are marching right alongside them in the increasingly bananas demands.
To me, this is what should be front and center in any discussion about trans issues or more broadly the culture war. The so-called "pro-trans" activists have absolutely no credibility when it comes to representing what trans people actually want. They didn't take a poll of all trans people, they didn't win an election held by trans people, they didn't even take some survey of a randomly selected distribution of trans people. As it is now, none of these things might even be possible, since we don't have some Great List of All Trans People that we can refer to.
It's just some people, some of them trans, claimed really loudly that the things they want are the things that are good for trans people. This isn't "pro-trans" in any meaningful way, and neither is opposing them "anti-trans" in any meaningful way.
So maybe a majority of trans people just want to be left alone. We have no way of knowing. What we do know is that there's no reason to believe that what any activist says has any sort of relationship to what the majority of trans people want.
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Most likely. But that position blows up the claim that its the right who opened up this particular culture war front.
The left, once they won on same-sex marriage pivoted to this specific battle and pushed it forward with aplomb, anything the right did was directly in response to that.
The left pushed it forward? To my memory, the North Carolina "bathroom bill" was what pushed the trans rights discussion to the national stage. You apparently remember things differently? Wikipedia does mention various events leading up to the passage of that bill.
Yes, it is right there in your link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Facilities_Privacy_%26_Security_Act#Background_and_passage
The right was responding to a direct action the left took in favor of removing the status quo.
"Oh, but the right escalated it!"
Okay. Remember what happened after that?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/13/obama-public-schools-transgender-access-restrooms
Or is it ONLY an escalation when the right does it?
But let's wind back the clock a bit further:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-quiet-transgender-revolution/2015/11/30/6879527e-95e4-11e5-b5e4-279b4501e8a6_story.html
Obama being the same guy who ran on the concept of marriage being between a man and a woman then oversaw the enshrinement of same-sex marriage into the constitution. Remember?
You notice that the left isn't HIDING the fact that it is pushing this agenda? Indeed, celebrating it? Back in late 2015?
Obama wasn't doing all this stuff in response to the right attacking transgender persons or passing laws that oppressed transgenders in particular.
He was doing it because, as mentioned, THE LEFT IMMEDIATELY PIVOTED FROM SAME SEX MARRIAGE TO TRANSGENDER RIGHTS. As stated multiple times now.
This is a basic fact that I am pretty convinced on, and you've presented no evidence to change my mind.
Indeed, it looks like the left was planning all along on this tactic, and what we're seeing now is simply the continuation of their long-term strategy.
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The original pushing forward of LGBT issues was actually still done with gay rights, when they sued that Colorado bakery, and we went from "just leave us alone" to "bake the cake, bigot".
As for trans issues, was the enstunnening and enbravening of Caitlyn Jenner before or after the bathroom bill?
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I mean, have you tried getting anything through to Twitter activists? They will call LGBT people bigots just as easily as straight white men for disagreeing with the agenda. In short, I agree, but I'm not sure we chill trans people can do much about it.
I will say there's a few concessions I'd really like, such as having gender neutral cubicles available as standard (often there's a disabled bathroom that works for that, but also often not).
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