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.
Singal's pieces were pretty damning. I'm now having a real Gell-Mann Amnesia reaction...was Shellenberger always like this and I just didn't notice? Or has he become a victim of audience capture and/or just gone off the rails?
He went off the rails. He started off as someone who criticized the Green Energy is the only Solution Climate Change policies of the Left. He was excellent back then.
“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.
I think you and Michael are talking past one another. Public is a great news outlet, which focuses on certain areas which are neglected by the media... but only to release scoops and actual news. How many news channels have explored the Lab Leak Hypothesis? Or the downsides of renewable energy generation? Or the failure of urban non-profits?
As for his treatment of the cabinet picks, he's making a general point: these folks will have risks and flaws but them being unconventional or anti-establishment aren't necessarily drawbacks when you look at the performance of establishment figures. He makes a good point AND your caveats might be valid. Both things can be true.
To address what he's saying directly you would have to defend the performance of those figures. "For those of us who do think elite institutions have a lot to answer for, little will be accomplished by media figures using their sins as a get-out-of-jail-free card for Trump and all those who attach themselves to his movement." Okay... well make them answer for what you think they have to then. Stop sniping at MS's casual opinions. You're using your limited reach and energy to address a figure who you say is misguided... instead of aiming at the targets yourself. Surely that's MORE inane?
" Okay... well make them answer for what you think they have to then."
Have you not seen me criticize the left?
One of my main themes is that the right has become stupid and dishonest, and centered around the cult of one man. The RFK nomination is the culmination of it moral and intellectual descent. I'm interested in the question of how things got so bad.
I consider Shellenberger's style of news analysis to be a reason why. He might otherwise do good reporting. But when he's being a hack who is, in this case, explicitly telling people to shut off their critical thinking skills and just worship Trump as he appoints some of the worst people imaginable to important positions, that is worth criticizing. He's not alone, this style of analysis is everywhere, and explains how Trump maintains his grip on the right even as he does crazy and indefensible things. There is zero culture of internal critique on the right, and Shellenberger has built a large audience contributing to that problem. I will criticize the left when it is wrong, and also those who have helped ruin the right.
I'm not interested in being quiet in the service of team spirit or whatever you think my role should be.
I guess I just disagree with your description of MS: "he's being a hack who is, in this case, explicitly telling people to shut off their critical thinking skills and just worship Trump as he appoints some of the worst people imaginable to important positions." I disagree with every clause of this sentence, other than it relates to important positions.
I wasn't suggesting your criticize the Left. I was suggesting you dive into the strengths and weaknesses of these cabinet picks in the context of them being disruptors. Do these organizations NEED disruption? Could these picks be good for that? Those seem to be the chief two claims of MS and people like him, and describing the controversial or zany aspects off these picks don't really address that.
I just had a livestream specifically on the picks that was the last thing I produced before this article. I tweet about them constantly, and RFK’s many problems. I think people should discuss these things and Shellenberger using his platform to just repeat the same talking points about unrelated topics doesn’t contribute to anything but making rightist discourse dumber.
I guess ultimately it’s all tea-leaf reading but RFK Jr. being enamored of pseudosceince or Hegseth having some views outside the Overton window don’t really seem like they address how capable and beneficial these picks will be. Someone can have crazy views and can still do great things for a federal agency. Those facts seem like they’re (kind of) the kinds of things someone who advertise who wants to discredit these people. I’m not saying they’re not relevant… but they’re not the ONLY things that are relevant. How about address what RFK is saying about the US food producer and healthcare complex and letting us know whether he’s got a point, or whether any of his specific policy directions (which there are now several) could be useful? I don’t care about Hegseth’s tattoos. That’s not addressing what you’ve focused on, obviously, but it’s a characterization of a kind of legacy media focus that I find unhelpful.
Anti-vaxx is probably the single worst political position that currently exists. It simultaneously a) would kill and injure millions of children if enacted, and b) can be fairly easily enacted. It would be very hard to start up death camps for Jews, procedurally; it is not hard at all to increase vaccine hesitancy when the head of the HHS is an antivaxxer. There is no reason to discuss anything else. It's like saying, "right, but what about Hitler's plans for the Autobahn?"
e: Richard found this quote from RFK that I think really demonstrates why he absolutely should have nothing to do with public health: "We – our 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."
Okay. I don’t think Twitter is the best place to reach vaccine skeptic parents but idk. I’m not saying it’s a good thing that the HHS head is a vaccine skeptic but to say that THAT alone is going to increase vaccine hesitancy (it’ll be a marginal increase, at best) and that THAT hesitancy will kill enough kids that ANYTHING RFK might do will be automatically cancelled out seems absurd. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re wrong. The best way to find out is to speak about specific policies and costs and benefits… which few people are.
If you’re concerned about vaccine hesitancy (which I agree is a valid concern) you should educate yourself and speak to the hesitant. They’re being hit with too much bad science but whenever I speak to medical professionals or rationalists and ask them if they’ve made their case they say something like “those people are crazy.” How do think you’re going to convince people? The days of the HHS head having any automatic authority are over. COVID put an end to that. If you want to convince people that vaccines are safe go convince people that vaccines are safe. You don’t need to convince me. I agree 100%. If this is important to you I recommend doing that though.
If you’re concerned with vaccine hesitancy the number one thing to be worried about right now by far is the most famous anti-vaxx activist in the country becoming our top health official. Even if RFK doesn’t actually do anything on vaccines his elevation by the MAGA movement has lent credibility to his ideas that they don’t deserve.
I’m not particularly concerned with it. I agree it’s a problem but one that’s best solved with decentralized information flow. I’m not the one making holocaust comparisons.
I believe if an issue is important to you DO something about it… even if that’s just talking to people on the other side. It’s easy to argue ABOUT the issue but that accomplishes very little.
My issue is addiction and drug overdoses. Many people have a ton of issues they care about… but no issues they actually care about. Citizenship is about responsibility and doing good in the world, not venting your antagonism online. If that improved the world this would be a utopia.
There are ABSOLUTELY reasons to discuss other things. Is there any evidence that RFK wants to increase vaccine policy? From what I understand he wants to locate/produce vast amounts of missing medical data relating to vaccines. That alone won’ change one vaccination in the US. It WOULD causse massive harm if it was enacted but is that a possibility?
And when you consider the most salient and dangerous issues for American health (most of which have nothing to do with vaccines) it’s not improper to discuss other things. Just because Anti-vaccine policy would be a disaster doesn’t mean it would be the only disaster. Obesity is a disaster. Heart disease is a disaster. Diabetes is a disaster. RFK might very well make no change to vaccine policy (which is what I suspect) and might help our treatments of these issues. Not only is that not a holocaust-it’s a huge net benefit.
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 don't understand how criticizing MS is the best use of RH's time though. Instead of criticizing HIS output and his opinions of cabinet picks isn't it better to issue your own? If you think MS is flawed or myopic then focus on the issues or viewpoints he's neglecting. RH is using his limited platform to criticize a news figure who he says is off target... rather then getting dialed in himself. I don't even think his point is particularly strong. Above I wrote:
"I think you and Michael are talking past one another. Public is a great news outlet, which focuses on certain areas which are neglected by the media... but only to release scoops and actual news. How many news channels have explored the Lab Leak Hypothesis? Or the downsides of renewable energy generation? Or the failure of urban non-profits?
As for his treatment of the cabinet picks, he's making a general point: these folks will have risks and flaws but them being unconventional or anti-establishment aren't necessarily drawbacks when you look at the performance of establishment figures. He makes a good point AND your caveats might be valid. Both things can be true."
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
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.
Singal's pieces were pretty damning. I'm now having a real Gell-Mann Amnesia reaction...was Shellenberger always like this and I just didn't notice? Or has he become a victim of audience capture and/or just gone off the rails?
He went off the rails. He started off as someone who criticized the Green Energy is the only Solution Climate Change policies of the Left. He was excellent back then.
Jesse Singal has another post on that kind of phenomena: "audience capture" https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/how-to-be-a-heterodox-or-whatever Eric Weinstein coined the phrase, for what it's worth.
“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
Because we learned. Unlike the moronic and tyrannical Hilary who in 2015 destroyed Libya and the current neocon followers who are destroying Ukraine.
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?
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.
I think you and Michael are talking past one another. Public is a great news outlet, which focuses on certain areas which are neglected by the media... but only to release scoops and actual news. How many news channels have explored the Lab Leak Hypothesis? Or the downsides of renewable energy generation? Or the failure of urban non-profits?
As for his treatment of the cabinet picks, he's making a general point: these folks will have risks and flaws but them being unconventional or anti-establishment aren't necessarily drawbacks when you look at the performance of establishment figures. He makes a good point AND your caveats might be valid. Both things can be true.
To address what he's saying directly you would have to defend the performance of those figures. "For those of us who do think elite institutions have a lot to answer for, little will be accomplished by media figures using their sins as a get-out-of-jail-free card for Trump and all those who attach themselves to his movement." Okay... well make them answer for what you think they have to then. Stop sniping at MS's casual opinions. You're using your limited reach and energy to address a figure who you say is misguided... instead of aiming at the targets yourself. Surely that's MORE inane?
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/media-guide-part-2-narrative-uber?r=1neg52
" Okay... well make them answer for what you think they have to then."
Have you not seen me criticize the left?
One of my main themes is that the right has become stupid and dishonest, and centered around the cult of one man. The RFK nomination is the culmination of it moral and intellectual descent. I'm interested in the question of how things got so bad.
I consider Shellenberger's style of news analysis to be a reason why. He might otherwise do good reporting. But when he's being a hack who is, in this case, explicitly telling people to shut off their critical thinking skills and just worship Trump as he appoints some of the worst people imaginable to important positions, that is worth criticizing. He's not alone, this style of analysis is everywhere, and explains how Trump maintains his grip on the right even as he does crazy and indefensible things. There is zero culture of internal critique on the right, and Shellenberger has built a large audience contributing to that problem. I will criticize the left when it is wrong, and also those who have helped ruin the right.
I'm not interested in being quiet in the service of team spirit or whatever you think my role should be.
I guess I just disagree with your description of MS: "he's being a hack who is, in this case, explicitly telling people to shut off their critical thinking skills and just worship Trump as he appoints some of the worst people imaginable to important positions." I disagree with every clause of this sentence, other than it relates to important positions.
I wasn't suggesting your criticize the Left. I was suggesting you dive into the strengths and weaknesses of these cabinet picks in the context of them being disruptors. Do these organizations NEED disruption? Could these picks be good for that? Those seem to be the chief two claims of MS and people like him, and describing the controversial or zany aspects off these picks don't really address that.
I just had a livestream specifically on the picks that was the last thing I produced before this article. I tweet about them constantly, and RFK’s many problems. I think people should discuss these things and Shellenberger using his platform to just repeat the same talking points about unrelated topics doesn’t contribute to anything but making rightist discourse dumber.
I guess ultimately it’s all tea-leaf reading but RFK Jr. being enamored of pseudosceince or Hegseth having some views outside the Overton window don’t really seem like they address how capable and beneficial these picks will be. Someone can have crazy views and can still do great things for a federal agency. Those facts seem like they’re (kind of) the kinds of things someone who advertise who wants to discredit these people. I’m not saying they’re not relevant… but they’re not the ONLY things that are relevant. How about address what RFK is saying about the US food producer and healthcare complex and letting us know whether he’s got a point, or whether any of his specific policy directions (which there are now several) could be useful? I don’t care about Hegseth’s tattoos. That’s not addressing what you’ve focused on, obviously, but it’s a characterization of a kind of legacy media focus that I find unhelpful.
Anti-vaxx is probably the single worst political position that currently exists. It simultaneously a) would kill and injure millions of children if enacted, and b) can be fairly easily enacted. It would be very hard to start up death camps for Jews, procedurally; it is not hard at all to increase vaccine hesitancy when the head of the HHS is an antivaxxer. There is no reason to discuss anything else. It's like saying, "right, but what about Hitler's plans for the Autobahn?"
e: Richard found this quote from RFK that I think really demonstrates why he absolutely should have nothing to do with public health: "We – our 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."
Have you ever been in a anti-vax group or on a message board to state your case?
Yeah, I post on Twitter all the time.
Okay. I don’t think Twitter is the best place to reach vaccine skeptic parents but idk. I’m not saying it’s a good thing that the HHS head is a vaccine skeptic but to say that THAT alone is going to increase vaccine hesitancy (it’ll be a marginal increase, at best) and that THAT hesitancy will kill enough kids that ANYTHING RFK might do will be automatically cancelled out seems absurd. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re wrong. The best way to find out is to speak about specific policies and costs and benefits… which few people are.
If you’re concerned about vaccine hesitancy (which I agree is a valid concern) you should educate yourself and speak to the hesitant. They’re being hit with too much bad science but whenever I speak to medical professionals or rationalists and ask them if they’ve made their case they say something like “those people are crazy.” How do think you’re going to convince people? The days of the HHS head having any automatic authority are over. COVID put an end to that. If you want to convince people that vaccines are safe go convince people that vaccines are safe. You don’t need to convince me. I agree 100%. If this is important to you I recommend doing that though.
If you’re concerned with vaccine hesitancy the number one thing to be worried about right now by far is the most famous anti-vaxx activist in the country becoming our top health official. Even if RFK doesn’t actually do anything on vaccines his elevation by the MAGA movement has lent credibility to his ideas that they don’t deserve.
I’m not particularly concerned with it. I agree it’s a problem but one that’s best solved with decentralized information flow. I’m not the one making holocaust comparisons.
I believe if an issue is important to you DO something about it… even if that’s just talking to people on the other side. It’s easy to argue ABOUT the issue but that accomplishes very little.
My issue is addiction and drug overdoses. Many people have a ton of issues they care about… but no issues they actually care about. Citizenship is about responsibility and doing good in the world, not venting your antagonism online. If that improved the world this would be a utopia.
There are ABSOLUTELY reasons to discuss other things. Is there any evidence that RFK wants to increase vaccine policy? From what I understand he wants to locate/produce vast amounts of missing medical data relating to vaccines. That alone won’ change one vaccination in the US. It WOULD causse massive harm if it was enacted but is that a possibility?
And when you consider the most salient and dangerous issues for American health (most of which have nothing to do with vaccines) it’s not improper to discuss other things. Just because Anti-vaccine policy would be a disaster doesn’t mean it would be the only disaster. Obesity is a disaster. Heart disease is a disaster. Diabetes is a disaster. RFK might very well make no change to vaccine policy (which is what I suspect) and might help our treatments of these issues. Not only is that not a holocaust-it’s a huge net benefit.
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 don't understand how criticizing MS is the best use of RH's time though. Instead of criticizing HIS output and his opinions of cabinet picks isn't it better to issue your own? If you think MS is flawed or myopic then focus on the issues or viewpoints he's neglecting. RH is using his limited platform to criticize a news figure who he says is off target... rather then getting dialed in himself. I don't even think his point is particularly strong. Above I wrote:
"I think you and Michael are talking past one another. Public is a great news outlet, which focuses on certain areas which are neglected by the media... but only to release scoops and actual news. How many news channels have explored the Lab Leak Hypothesis? Or the downsides of renewable energy generation? Or the failure of urban non-profits?
As for his treatment of the cabinet picks, he's making a general point: these folks will have risks and flaws but them being unconventional or anti-establishment aren't necessarily drawbacks when you look at the performance of establishment figures. He makes a good point AND your caveats might be valid. Both things can be true."
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.
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.
"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.
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