Trump is at this stage the Right's biggest problem. He managed to win this election, and his personal performance (stamina, the shooting) was in some ways very impressive - in other ways abysmal (the debate). Then he does stuff like nominate Gaetz on a whim, leaving the long tail of content-producers to retroactively justify why his moves are actually 4-D chess. (Sound familiar?)
I honestly can't wait until 2026+ when Trump finally starts to fade from power.
“Fast and loose with facts”? That seems to me a pretty fair description, actually even too generous, of what has come out of outfits like the New York Times, Washington Post or the Atlantic, to say nothing of the rubbish we see in MSNBc or CNN. Shellenberger might have his faults, but I thought his books “San Fan-sicko” and “Apocalypse Never” both informative and persuasive, and I get tired of Leftist arguments what try to make their case by assuming their conclusions. Kamala Harris’s tautological word salads became just a kind of cartoonish extreme caracature of what too much Leftist “analysis” has become. Shellenberger cuts through much of that. The deeper political problem is the Democrat determination to shift all real power into the hands of an unaccountable administrative state through the executive branch. This is the real threat to constitutional government, and Shellenberger gets that.
Exactly. Complete self-own. Dude did precisely what Hanania was describing. You know an internal culture is rotten when it can’t respond to critiques without proving them correct. You see that with wokes a lot also.
I disagree with Hanania’s characterization of Shellenberger s arguments. In particular, his notion that the idea of “ is vague, amorphous. Sure, there are many different kinds of elites in our society, but the people who run our government bureaucracies, news media, universities, large corporations, are very far removed from the concerns or every day realities of life for ordinary working people. Resentment of elites is a real thing, reinforced by the constant contempt for working people displayed by the “educated” types who honestly think, without justification, that they are intellectually and morally superior to everyone else. Just a note on the Iraq War, which I supported (badly executed though it was). The same New York Times that is a champion of “progressivism”was also a supporter of that war. I don’t buy Hanania’s effort to downplay or obfuscate the significance of resentment of elites when these same elites are forcing things like CRT, critical gender theory, and DEI things down our throats and children are being indoctrinated in racist nonsense.
I was opposed to the Iraq war as an isolationist who identified as a libertarian at the time. This is related to why I'm irritated that Richard more recently has been trying to rehabilitate the neocons behind it as noble and dismissing Iraq as something that happened 20 years ago. He's correct to criticize Trump for being a phony who only pretended to have opposed it at the time, but he shouldn't lets its proponents more generally off the hook or conclude we shouldn't have learned to be wary of war from that (although that would undermine his advocacy of regime change for Iran, a larger & more populous country than Iraq).
Uhhh, no. He's criticizing MS because MS's entire framework for debate is: "These people got us into Iraq, why should we listen to them now?" I'm using the exact framework you're defending, but since it applies to you, you're changing the debate. Kind of a dipshit, eh?
I have to call the Trumpers on hypocrisy when they use the term DEI. What do you call the appointments of RFK jr, Gaetz, and Gabbarf? UWP. Unqualified White People.
Jesse Singal often criticizes left-leaning MSM outlets, and gets them to issue corrections (it can be rather funny when they wind up doing it multiple times for one article). Shellenberger appears to be more reluctant than many of them to issue corrections.
I would just add that even Hanania admits the multiple failures of “elite institutions”, whom he acknowledges have a lot to answer for. But it is precisely this list of intellectual and moral failures, from the Covid response to CRT, from DEI to the Green New Deal, that makes nonsense of Hanania’s claim of “zero intellectual content.” Add to this the Leftist determination to crush public information and dismantle the first amendment, and you can see why so many are so willing to “throw out the bums” who manage our institutions. You don’t like Matt Gaetz? I agree. Release the House report. But don’t pretend that Shellenberger’s critique of the Leftists who staff our bureaucracies is without foundation. He is on solid ground.
But Hanania isn't saying that Shellenberger's critique of "elites" is without foundation. He's saying the critique is non-responsive to criticisms of Trump's nominees. Just saying "oh yeah, well elites got us into the Iraq War" is a complete non-sequitur to the question of "should Matt Gaetz, a man who had to resign from Congress six days after being reelected in an attempt to halt a House ethics investigaton on claims of sex trafficking be Attorney General?"
My point is that Shellenberger is arguing that these particular criticisms of these nominees (with the admitted exception of Gates) miss the forest for the trees. Most of these particular criticisms are clearly hypocritical and politically motivated (particularly in the case of Hegseth), and lack credibility. But dwelling on those sparks of contention misses the larger need to radically downsize the imperial bureaucracy. My only point about the Iraq War was to note, contrary to Hanania, some of Trump’s worst critics were indeed on board for the Gulf War. The record of our bureaucratic establishment in every field has been one of failure and dishonesty. The weaponization of the DoJ by the Biden administration is worse than a failure. Radical changes are necessary. Shellenberger gets that. Hanania apparently does not.
How can you even talk about things that Shellenberger "gets" when he doesn't demonstrate any knowledge or even-handedness? You can't disconnect analysis from facts.
Anti-elite populism has the same problem as the anti-MSM grift, which is that it criticizes flawed institutions while trying to supplant it with something worse. Suppose all of the aforementioned punching bags are the product of elites; why does that make a nutcase like RFK any less disastrous? If a person is a bad driver, should they be replaced by someone without a license?
More lawfare...where was this concern before.....why no charges, why isn't he thrown out of Congress.
This is so "by the book politics"...it should be laughed at...if you are really concerned about the lying, cheating, election fraud, lawfare, trans kids stuff, DEI, men in women's sports, endless wars for profit, and on and on......
Trump was elected on these things....I will bet...if we asked the American public....they would be fine with Gaetz. They were fine with rapist Biden, rapist Clinton, and Obama and his late night male guests brought to him by his Secret Service protection, or Nancy Pelosi's insider trading.
We are gonna kick Gaetz out because he is a disgusting human......not against the law to be disgusting.
Shellenberger is saying......so what!!!!! We have a mess to clean up....and these are those that can do it.
It is rather disappointing that, in response to Trump‘s nomination of Matt Gaetz, focus is always on his sexual picadillos and abrasiveness. I invite you to read Matt Stoller‘s “BIG” discussion of Gaetz’s actual policy positions, which I think might be of great appeal to a lot of us. I never find that aspect of his role attended to in the MSM.
Similarly, with respect to RFK, Jr., I don’t think one is justified in using the “anti-vaxer” label unless one has worked through “The Real Dr. Fauci.” I don’t have the book at hand, but my recollection is that it contains about 80 pages of end notes citing hundreds of studies that detail Fauci’s misadventures over 40 years, including abominable experimentation with African populations and with New York City orphans.
I see no way to arrest the further encroachment of the regime on American liberties, institutions, and ultimately the Constitution, without first taking a sledgehammer and cracking it open.
But this is part of the non-responsiveness of the argument. You can find a guy with Matt Gaetz's substantive positions who isn't accused by his colleagues of sex trafficking. The choice isn't between Matt Gaetz and Hunter Biden for AG.
Similarly, there are lots of guys who have valid criticisms of HHS or Fauci - why do you need the nation's most prominent anti-vaxxer to do it? Saying "but OK you don't know how much Fauci sucks though" doesn't respond to the question at hand. The choice isn't between Fauci and RFK Jr. for HHS.
> Similarly, with respect to RFK, Jr., I don’t think one is justified in using the “anti-vaxer” label unless one has worked through “The Real Dr. Fauci.”
Nah. I tracked down and listened to the man, in his gravelly-ass voice, say:
"[O]ur job is to resist and to talk about it to everybody. If you’re walking down the street – and I do this now myself, which is, you know, I don’t want to do – I’m not a busybody. I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not get him vaccinated.’ And he heard that from me. If he hears it from 10 other people, maybe he won’t do it, you know, maybe he will save that child."
I don't need more than that to know he's antivaxx. You can find it here, starting at about 11:35: https://sites.libsyn.com/311600/rfk-jr if you want to hear it for yourself.
Fauci strongly supported vaccination for CoViD. RFK showed that Fauci was a bad guy. Therefore, RFK is not an anti-vaxer.
Non sequitur.
A way to arrest the disintegration of the American enterprise into dictatorship is for those who have positions in its institutions to stand up for the principles that underlay it.
Stony, have you read his books? Shellenberger demonstrates plenty of knowledge, solid research, and hard analysis. He offends the Left because he doesn’t settle for conventional “wisdom” or allow the substitution of good intentions for actual results. We have had nothing but nutcases running this government for the last four years. Time for a change. And by the way, I don’t trust media smears of these nominees, because it is now well established that the last thing they care about is actual facts.
Shellenberg quote is like leftist’s “Since our ancestors were racists and colonialists you deserve to be stabbed by Muslim migrants” but for rightoids. Never like in modern times Ortega y Gasset statement about being right wing or left wing are just two of the many ways an individual can choose to be an imbecile has been so actual.
Good article. Products like Shellenberger are, in my opinion, more degenerate than the openly partisan ideologues and freaks like Tuck the Cuck and Hannity.
Their entire goal is to be the 'unlikely verifier' to ease the concerns of rightoids who aren't regarded enough to be fully onboard with Trump. Shellenberger allows them to say "Maybe Trump has some issues, but the left is so crazy than even liberal leftists like Shellenberger are being pushed away!". The term has already been abused a lot, but Shellenberger is a great example of a sanewasher, and I honestly think he kinda knows he's doing it.
I feel bad that Shelkenberger ever was taken seriously. Even if he was on the level at any point, with just how shamelessly and unscrupulously he's behaved these last few years, it's just best to assume he was always up to no good to at least some degree.
Just imagine if more people made it in the rightoid media sphere who actually had both intellectual and moral integrity. The rightoid media bubble is to journalism what rap metal was to music.
Got that right. It’s nice to see my internal monologue articulated outside my brain.
Positioning the right as only comfortable in the opposition seems exactly right. I would add that Trump also seems particularly sensitive to public opinion, or at least HIS public’s opinion. It’s possible that actual criticism might yield dividends.
Shellenberger has done great work and shown a lot of courage in his career. But we just spent a decade or two watching journalism collapse into ideological conformity and paranoia. Nobody is looking for exactly the same thing but now with Trump.
I agree that repeating the same grievances over and over again isn't political analysis, but I wonder if this might also be applied to spamming "right wingers are stupid" non-stop. It seems to me that the inverse of Shellenberger's behavior has been deployed constantly to defend the status quo since the very beginning of the Trump era--any criticism of establishment figures, institutions, positions, etc. is met with "but look at Donald Trump, he's crazy, you can't support him." To this very day, I rarely see any rational criticism of the policies that a second Trump administration is likely to pursue, and instead see far more content simply bashing Trump's personal character and/or the supposed qualities (or lack thereof) of his supporters.
I really dont think its fair to blanketly summarize the Hegseth situation as "credibly accused of rape." The accused deserve the benefit of doubt.
From what I know, Hegseth was drunk and talking to girls. It sounds like they tasked this woman with getting him back to his room so he could get up on time for a flight the next day. She said her memory of the events was hazy. Why would that be?
Well a friend of hers said she doesn't drink heavily and is of good character. Well that's great but it doesn't explain how she could have lost 6-9 hrs of memory. Was there a toxicology report showing she was drugged? Did she suffer head trauma? I found that she did have a contusion in her inner thigh which to me sounds like a highly plausible rape injury, but that isn't enough for me. Is there more evidence im missing? The article you liked on X is paywalled.
Regarding the settlement, this was the metoo era and people in his position were getting canned left and right just for mere allegations. It's likely Hegseth's life would have been destroyed if she went public with even a completely bogus story.
It's possible the woman had had sex with a drunk guy but due to the sheer embarrassment and guilt of cheating on her husband she said it was rape. I know a *guy* who falsely accuses a girl of rape when he cheated on his girlfriend. People can become sinister and impulsive when their own reputation is at stake.
Of course it's possible he's guilty. I don't think he is. But regardless, we can't disqualify Hegseth on an allegation alone.
He had a lot of run-ins with reality and his story is still developing.
Consider reaching out to Renee DiResta who put up a good fight after Michael has smeared her, and what happened as a result. It was on the battlefield of Twitter Files.
"Oh, yeah, well they are worse." "I hired a Dr. who was properly licensed, and he failed to cure my cancer, so this time I am hiring Mr. Miracle cure from down the street who never went to med school. Shocking to the elites, sure, but the silver colloidal suspension is sure to work."
I take your point about Shellenberger, he is guilty as charged for the most part. But I still find Public very satisfying. As a Gen X liberal I hate the same people he hates, and really enjoy seeing them trashed endlessly. Public certainly isn't my only source of information though.
"If you’re mad about both endless lockdowns and endless war in Iraq, there are very few people who supported both of these things."
You probably don't remember the run up to the Iraq War as well as I do. The NY Times, Atlantic, New Yorker, etc, were huge cheerleaders of it, in lockstep with the Democratic Party establishment. There is a reason all of those old neocons who are still alive have found a comfortable home in the Democratic Party.
I do remember it, and it was clear that the NYT and the leftist establishment was a lot less excited about it than the right. Go look at the congressional votes or what conservative media was doing at the time. In many cases, liberals were going along with the war because there was this hyper aggressive cancel culture on the right that went after them for opposing it. Bush used the issue effectively in the 2002 midterms. Trump when it counted expressed support. That’s all ancient history at this point, but Shellenberger is trying to get people to fall in line behind the conservative movement now, which has just as much continuity with the era 2002-2003 as does the NYT and is more at fault for Iraq. There are a lot fewer Cheneyes who turned against Trump than there are rightists who became Trump supporters. Shellenberger is just promoting a lack of critical thinking here that doesn’t help anyone.
It’s strange to keep using the Iraq War to beat up on the NYT and not Fox News. In fact, the people who do this usually want us to support the goals of the president that Fox happens to support now.
Yep; at the time I thought Iraq the Sequel was going to turn out badly. I'm also old enough (66) to have been in favor of Iraq 1 (though it was possible IMHO to have an honorable noninterventionist position in opposition to Iraq 1, "no blood for oil" was not clearly thought through).
Going to the tapes indicates almost all the Rs falling in lockstep (to demonstrate equal opportunity contempt, kind of like almost all the elected Ds were in public lockstep about "no, Biden is fine" until rather late in the game) and somewhat less than half the Ds in the House and somewhat more than half the Ds in the Senate voting for AUMF2002.
Have to give some credit to Walter B. "Freedom Fries" Jones for realizing he had been wrong fairly quickly - within two years or so (although he still blamed Bush the Lesser for "misinforming him" rather than oh I dunno actually acknowledging his own rush to judgement).
People make mistakes all the time, and pundits and politicians are people (citation needed). Those who try to sweep their errors in judgement under the rug are destined for excellent careers in elective politics and mass market punditry, since evidently they (politicians and pundits) are meeting what the market demands.
High props for those rare pundits who really wrestle with why they got wrong what they got wrong.
I personally feel like Shellenberger and Taibbi have become conspiracy theorists and I mean this in the most respectful way! Put out better content gentlemen, we’re all waiting!!!!
If you looked harder than just reading Wikipedia, you'd discover there's zero connection between RFK and the Samoa measles outbreak. You're just as guilty as Shellenberger of shoddy facts
First, I think it should also be pointed out that Judith Miller’s - of the NYT - reporting on Iraq’s WMD program was based on false intelligence and very influential in garnering support to invade Iraq. She was a willing asset and understood the importance of getting NYT “on board.” So that should be stated along with Hannity and other conservative reporting at the time.
Second, Shellenberg calling out the “madness” of the left should be a constant drum beat and the only people who don’t want to hear it are those on the left. “Tran’s madness” very likely had a big impact on votes for Harris. Trump’s “they/them” commercial swayed focused groups close to 3% after watching it.
I think he’s an insightful journalist for those who want to listen.
Trump is at this stage the Right's biggest problem. He managed to win this election, and his personal performance (stamina, the shooting) was in some ways very impressive - in other ways abysmal (the debate). Then he does stuff like nominate Gaetz on a whim, leaving the long tail of content-producers to retroactively justify why his moves are actually 4-D chess. (Sound familiar?)
I honestly can't wait until 2026+ when Trump finally starts to fade from power.
“Fast and loose with facts”? That seems to me a pretty fair description, actually even too generous, of what has come out of outfits like the New York Times, Washington Post or the Atlantic, to say nothing of the rubbish we see in MSNBc or CNN. Shellenberger might have his faults, but I thought his books “San Fan-sicko” and “Apocalypse Never” both informative and persuasive, and I get tired of Leftist arguments what try to make their case by assuming their conclusions. Kamala Harris’s tautological word salads became just a kind of cartoonish extreme caracature of what too much Leftist “analysis” has become. Shellenberger cuts through much of that. The deeper political problem is the Democrat determination to shift all real power into the hands of an unaccountable administrative state through the executive branch. This is the real threat to constitutional government, and Shellenberger gets that.
Your comment seems to prove Hanania's point in that you didn't engage with a single one of the arguments that he made.
Exactly. Complete self-own. Dude did precisely what Hanania was describing. You know an internal culture is rotten when it can’t respond to critiques without proving them correct. You see that with wokes a lot also.
Remarkably Shellenbergeresque, isn’t it? I actually took it for satire until I hit the last sentence.
There should be an internet law when a comment on a post completely confirms the thesis of the post.
I disagree with Hanania’s characterization of Shellenberger s arguments. In particular, his notion that the idea of “ is vague, amorphous. Sure, there are many different kinds of elites in our society, but the people who run our government bureaucracies, news media, universities, large corporations, are very far removed from the concerns or every day realities of life for ordinary working people. Resentment of elites is a real thing, reinforced by the constant contempt for working people displayed by the “educated” types who honestly think, without justification, that they are intellectually and morally superior to everyone else. Just a note on the Iraq War, which I supported (badly executed though it was). The same New York Times that is a champion of “progressivism”was also a supporter of that war. I don’t buy Hanania’s effort to downplay or obfuscate the significance of resentment of elites when these same elites are forcing things like CRT, critical gender theory, and DEI things down our throats and children are being indoctrinated in racist nonsense.
If you were so wrong about the Iraq war, why should we listen to you now? lol
I was opposed to the Iraq war as an isolationist who identified as a libertarian at the time. This is related to why I'm irritated that Richard more recently has been trying to rehabilitate the neocons behind it as noble and dismissing Iraq as something that happened 20 years ago. He's correct to criticize Trump for being a phony who only pretended to have opposed it at the time, but he shouldn't lets its proponents more generally off the hook or conclude we shouldn't have learned to be wary of war from that (although that would undermine his advocacy of regime change for Iran, a larger & more populous country than Iraq).
Uhhh, no. He's criticizing MS because MS's entire framework for debate is: "These people got us into Iraq, why should we listen to them now?" I'm using the exact framework you're defending, but since it applies to you, you're changing the debate. Kind of a dipshit, eh?
Changing the debate by referring to Richard's writing outside of this post?
Because we learned. Unlike the moronic and tyrannical Hilary who in 2015 destroyed Libya and the current neocon followers who are destroying Ukraine.
I have to call the Trumpers on hypocrisy when they use the term DEI. What do you call the appointments of RFK jr, Gaetz, and Gabbarf? UWP. Unqualified White People.
Jesse Singal often criticizes left-leaning MSM outlets, and gets them to issue corrections (it can be rather funny when they wind up doing it multiple times for one article). Shellenberger appears to be more reluctant than many of them to issue corrections.
His coverage on the released WPATH files ( remember this ongoing scandal?) deserves laudatory mention.
Yes, unaccountable administrative agencies are a real threat to constitutional government. Here's an insightful post about another such threat: https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-trump-administration-will-be
I would just add that even Hanania admits the multiple failures of “elite institutions”, whom he acknowledges have a lot to answer for. But it is precisely this list of intellectual and moral failures, from the Covid response to CRT, from DEI to the Green New Deal, that makes nonsense of Hanania’s claim of “zero intellectual content.” Add to this the Leftist determination to crush public information and dismantle the first amendment, and you can see why so many are so willing to “throw out the bums” who manage our institutions. You don’t like Matt Gaetz? I agree. Release the House report. But don’t pretend that Shellenberger’s critique of the Leftists who staff our bureaucracies is without foundation. He is on solid ground.
But Hanania isn't saying that Shellenberger's critique of "elites" is without foundation. He's saying the critique is non-responsive to criticisms of Trump's nominees. Just saying "oh yeah, well elites got us into the Iraq War" is a complete non-sequitur to the question of "should Matt Gaetz, a man who had to resign from Congress six days after being reelected in an attempt to halt a House ethics investigaton on claims of sex trafficking be Attorney General?"
My point is that Shellenberger is arguing that these particular criticisms of these nominees (with the admitted exception of Gates) miss the forest for the trees. Most of these particular criticisms are clearly hypocritical and politically motivated (particularly in the case of Hegseth), and lack credibility. But dwelling on those sparks of contention misses the larger need to radically downsize the imperial bureaucracy. My only point about the Iraq War was to note, contrary to Hanania, some of Trump’s worst critics were indeed on board for the Gulf War. The record of our bureaucratic establishment in every field has been one of failure and dishonesty. The weaponization of the DoJ by the Biden administration is worse than a failure. Radical changes are necessary. Shellenberger gets that. Hanania apparently does not.
How can you even talk about things that Shellenberger "gets" when he doesn't demonstrate any knowledge or even-handedness? You can't disconnect analysis from facts.
Anti-elite populism has the same problem as the anti-MSM grift, which is that it criticizes flawed institutions while trying to supplant it with something worse. Suppose all of the aforementioned punching bags are the product of elites; why does that make a nutcase like RFK any less disastrous? If a person is a bad driver, should they be replaced by someone without a license?
More lawfare...where was this concern before.....why no charges, why isn't he thrown out of Congress.
This is so "by the book politics"...it should be laughed at...if you are really concerned about the lying, cheating, election fraud, lawfare, trans kids stuff, DEI, men in women's sports, endless wars for profit, and on and on......
Trump was elected on these things....I will bet...if we asked the American public....they would be fine with Gaetz. They were fine with rapist Biden, rapist Clinton, and Obama and his late night male guests brought to him by his Secret Service protection, or Nancy Pelosi's insider trading.
We are gonna kick Gaetz out because he is a disgusting human......not against the law to be disgusting.
Shellenberger is saying......so what!!!!! We have a mess to clean up....and these are those that can do it.
It is rather disappointing that, in response to Trump‘s nomination of Matt Gaetz, focus is always on his sexual picadillos and abrasiveness. I invite you to read Matt Stoller‘s “BIG” discussion of Gaetz’s actual policy positions, which I think might be of great appeal to a lot of us. I never find that aspect of his role attended to in the MSM.
Similarly, with respect to RFK, Jr., I don’t think one is justified in using the “anti-vaxer” label unless one has worked through “The Real Dr. Fauci.” I don’t have the book at hand, but my recollection is that it contains about 80 pages of end notes citing hundreds of studies that detail Fauci’s misadventures over 40 years, including abominable experimentation with African populations and with New York City orphans.
I see no way to arrest the further encroachment of the regime on American liberties, institutions, and ultimately the Constitution, without first taking a sledgehammer and cracking it open.
But this is part of the non-responsiveness of the argument. You can find a guy with Matt Gaetz's substantive positions who isn't accused by his colleagues of sex trafficking. The choice isn't between Matt Gaetz and Hunter Biden for AG.
Similarly, there are lots of guys who have valid criticisms of HHS or Fauci - why do you need the nation's most prominent anti-vaxxer to do it? Saying "but OK you don't know how much Fauci sucks though" doesn't respond to the question at hand. The choice isn't between Fauci and RFK Jr. for HHS.
> Similarly, with respect to RFK, Jr., I don’t think one is justified in using the “anti-vaxer” label unless one has worked through “The Real Dr. Fauci.”
Nah. I tracked down and listened to the man, in his gravelly-ass voice, say:
"[O]ur job is to resist and to talk about it to everybody. If you’re walking down the street – and I do this now myself, which is, you know, I don’t want to do – I’m not a busybody. I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not get him vaccinated.’ And he heard that from me. If he hears it from 10 other people, maybe he won’t do it, you know, maybe he will save that child."
I don't need more than that to know he's antivaxx. You can find it here, starting at about 11:35: https://sites.libsyn.com/311600/rfk-jr if you want to hear it for yourself.
Fauci strongly supported vaccination for CoViD. RFK showed that Fauci was a bad guy. Therefore, RFK is not an anti-vaxer.
Non sequitur.
A way to arrest the disintegration of the American enterprise into dictatorship is for those who have positions in its institutions to stand up for the principles that underlay it.
Stony, have you read his books? Shellenberger demonstrates plenty of knowledge, solid research, and hard analysis. He offends the Left because he doesn’t settle for conventional “wisdom” or allow the substitution of good intentions for actual results. We have had nothing but nutcases running this government for the last four years. Time for a change. And by the way, I don’t trust media smears of these nominees, because it is now well established that the last thing they care about is actual facts.
Shellenberg quote is like leftist’s “Since our ancestors were racists and colonialists you deserve to be stabbed by Muslim migrants” but for rightoids. Never like in modern times Ortega y Gasset statement about being right wing or left wing are just two of the many ways an individual can choose to be an imbecile has been so actual.
The Iraq war was much more recent than colonization.
Good article. Products like Shellenberger are, in my opinion, more degenerate than the openly partisan ideologues and freaks like Tuck the Cuck and Hannity.
Their entire goal is to be the 'unlikely verifier' to ease the concerns of rightoids who aren't regarded enough to be fully onboard with Trump. Shellenberger allows them to say "Maybe Trump has some issues, but the left is so crazy than even liberal leftists like Shellenberger are being pushed away!". The term has already been abused a lot, but Shellenberger is a great example of a sanewasher, and I honestly think he kinda knows he's doing it.
I feel bad that Shelkenberger ever was taken seriously. Even if he was on the level at any point, with just how shamelessly and unscrupulously he's behaved these last few years, it's just best to assume he was always up to no good to at least some degree.
Just imagine if more people made it in the rightoid media sphere who actually had both intellectual and moral integrity. The rightoid media bubble is to journalism what rap metal was to music.
Got that right. It’s nice to see my internal monologue articulated outside my brain.
Positioning the right as only comfortable in the opposition seems exactly right. I would add that Trump also seems particularly sensitive to public opinion, or at least HIS public’s opinion. It’s possible that actual criticism might yield dividends.
Shellenberger has done great work and shown a lot of courage in his career. But we just spent a decade or two watching journalism collapse into ideological conformity and paranoia. Nobody is looking for exactly the same thing but now with Trump.
I agree that repeating the same grievances over and over again isn't political analysis, but I wonder if this might also be applied to spamming "right wingers are stupid" non-stop. It seems to me that the inverse of Shellenberger's behavior has been deployed constantly to defend the status quo since the very beginning of the Trump era--any criticism of establishment figures, institutions, positions, etc. is met with "but look at Donald Trump, he's crazy, you can't support him." To this very day, I rarely see any rational criticism of the policies that a second Trump administration is likely to pursue, and instead see far more content simply bashing Trump's personal character and/or the supposed qualities (or lack thereof) of his supporters.
I really dont think its fair to blanketly summarize the Hegseth situation as "credibly accused of rape." The accused deserve the benefit of doubt.
From what I know, Hegseth was drunk and talking to girls. It sounds like they tasked this woman with getting him back to his room so he could get up on time for a flight the next day. She said her memory of the events was hazy. Why would that be?
Well a friend of hers said she doesn't drink heavily and is of good character. Well that's great but it doesn't explain how she could have lost 6-9 hrs of memory. Was there a toxicology report showing she was drugged? Did she suffer head trauma? I found that she did have a contusion in her inner thigh which to me sounds like a highly plausible rape injury, but that isn't enough for me. Is there more evidence im missing? The article you liked on X is paywalled.
Regarding the settlement, this was the metoo era and people in his position were getting canned left and right just for mere allegations. It's likely Hegseth's life would have been destroyed if she went public with even a completely bogus story.
It's possible the woman had had sex with a drunk guy but due to the sheer embarrassment and guilt of cheating on her husband she said it was rape. I know a *guy* who falsely accuses a girl of rape when he cheated on his girlfriend. People can become sinister and impulsive when their own reputation is at stake.
Of course it's possible he's guilty. I don't think he is. But regardless, we can't disqualify Hegseth on an allegation alone.
He had a lot of run-ins with reality and his story is still developing.
Consider reaching out to Renee DiResta who put up a good fight after Michael has smeared her, and what happened as a result. It was on the battlefield of Twitter Files.
This might be when he really went off the rails in a way that was obvious.
"Oh, yeah, well they are worse." "I hired a Dr. who was properly licensed, and he failed to cure my cancer, so this time I am hiring Mr. Miracle cure from down the street who never went to med school. Shocking to the elites, sure, but the silver colloidal suspension is sure to work."
I take your point about Shellenberger, he is guilty as charged for the most part. But I still find Public very satisfying. As a Gen X liberal I hate the same people he hates, and really enjoy seeing them trashed endlessly. Public certainly isn't my only source of information though.
"If you’re mad about both endless lockdowns and endless war in Iraq, there are very few people who supported both of these things."
You probably don't remember the run up to the Iraq War as well as I do. The NY Times, Atlantic, New Yorker, etc, were huge cheerleaders of it, in lockstep with the Democratic Party establishment. There is a reason all of those old neocons who are still alive have found a comfortable home in the Democratic Party.
I do remember it, and it was clear that the NYT and the leftist establishment was a lot less excited about it than the right. Go look at the congressional votes or what conservative media was doing at the time. In many cases, liberals were going along with the war because there was this hyper aggressive cancel culture on the right that went after them for opposing it. Bush used the issue effectively in the 2002 midterms. Trump when it counted expressed support. That’s all ancient history at this point, but Shellenberger is trying to get people to fall in line behind the conservative movement now, which has just as much continuity with the era 2002-2003 as does the NYT and is more at fault for Iraq. There are a lot fewer Cheneyes who turned against Trump than there are rightists who became Trump supporters. Shellenberger is just promoting a lack of critical thinking here that doesn’t help anyone.
It’s strange to keep using the Iraq War to beat up on the NYT and not Fox News. In fact, the people who do this usually want us to support the goals of the president that Fox happens to support now.
"It’s strange to keep using the Iraq War to beat up on the NYT and not Fox News." DING DING DING
Andrew Sullivan called anyone who opposed Bush a fifth column.
In New York, over 300,000 people protested against the war in the February before it started. Over 10 million protested in Europe.
I guess the NYT didn't get to them.
Yep; at the time I thought Iraq the Sequel was going to turn out badly. I'm also old enough (66) to have been in favor of Iraq 1 (though it was possible IMHO to have an honorable noninterventionist position in opposition to Iraq 1, "no blood for oil" was not clearly thought through).
Going to the tapes indicates almost all the Rs falling in lockstep (to demonstrate equal opportunity contempt, kind of like almost all the elected Ds were in public lockstep about "no, Biden is fine" until rather late in the game) and somewhat less than half the Ds in the House and somewhat more than half the Ds in the Senate voting for AUMF2002.
Have to give some credit to Walter B. "Freedom Fries" Jones for realizing he had been wrong fairly quickly - within two years or so (although he still blamed Bush the Lesser for "misinforming him" rather than oh I dunno actually acknowledging his own rush to judgement).
People make mistakes all the time, and pundits and politicians are people (citation needed). Those who try to sweep their errors in judgement under the rug are destined for excellent careers in elective politics and mass market punditry, since evidently they (politicians and pundits) are meeting what the market demands.
High props for those rare pundits who really wrestle with why they got wrong what they got wrong.
I personally feel like Shellenberger and Taibbi have become conspiracy theorists and I mean this in the most respectful way! Put out better content gentlemen, we’re all waiting!!!!
If you looked harder than just reading Wikipedia, you'd discover there's zero connection between RFK and the Samoa measles outbreak. You're just as guilty as Shellenberger of shoddy facts
Shellenberger is not a heterodox journalist like Matt Taibbi or Bari Weiss, although he's often lumped in with them.
He's a long-time activist grifter and shill, as detailed here:
https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/the-new-denial-is-delay-at-the-breakthrough
https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/the-new-denial-is-delay-at-the-breakthrough-c1d
https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/the-new-denial-is-delay-at-the-breakthrough-c97
Elections have consequences....we want are non-Deep State, non-ruling class, our agenda driven people. Don't care who the did or what they did.
Enough is enough.
I think it's more likely that people just don't want inflation.
But what the hell do I know?
First, I think it should also be pointed out that Judith Miller’s - of the NYT - reporting on Iraq’s WMD program was based on false intelligence and very influential in garnering support to invade Iraq. She was a willing asset and understood the importance of getting NYT “on board.” So that should be stated along with Hannity and other conservative reporting at the time.
Second, Shellenberg calling out the “madness” of the left should be a constant drum beat and the only people who don’t want to hear it are those on the left. “Tran’s madness” very likely had a big impact on votes for Harris. Trump’s “they/them” commercial swayed focused groups close to 3% after watching it.
I think he’s an insightful journalist for those who want to listen.
No, the NYT's reporting on WMD's need not be included, because that totally misses the point. Read it again, if necessary.
You have not only missed the point, but you have basically done exactly what he's critiquing.
But when there are legitimate criticisms of Trump's picks, "Oh yeah, well you guys are worse" is really no defense at all.
Judith Miller doesn’t work at the NYT anymore but Hannity is the biggest fox news host. What a stupid comment.