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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026

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I think there is a phenomenon online in which Grey Tribe people get harassed by leftist extremists to the point of becoming extremists themselves, of demonstratively placing themselves in the opposite camp. I worry that we are witnessing a similar downturn here as what happened with Jordan Peterson.

As someone who had a very minor failed attempt to get the media to accurately report on something, I get it.

This institution which you've relied on for so much exposes itself to you, personally, to be not at all trustworthy. You know there's no good reason for them to misreport, no national security implications, it's at most tribal allegiances and likely social pressure exerted among the journalists themselves. I suppose this is especially true if the subject of their misreporting is yourself and your political opinions, which you have perfect knowledge of.

You then no longer have this bedrock of information about the world to rely on. The implausible becomes plausible. At best you greatly narrow what you consider to be "knowledge" and regard almost everything else as practically unknowable, you'd have to go investigate for yourself if you want to really know anything.

You then do investigate some things for yourself and find out that the media has been greatly misrepresenting or lying about things, especially things of a political valence, and this sets you up to regard as plausible a great deal of things you found previously implausible.

And then if you're not very careful you'll soon be ready to believe a lot of stuff that doesn't actually check out.