Scott writes eloquently and in depth, but the news is not about either of those things. Scott has written a few times about problematic issues which have surfaced in recent months and it would be very easy to write "some people say that Scott is ${label}" with just a bit of superficial quotes. Today's climate of online mob justice in partnership with click bait news would not go well for Scott at all.
This may itself be reason for some people to distrust Scott, except that he's probably done more to bring people to a moderate or left-of-center position on some topics than all the people shouting "racist!" combined.
That is to say, those who are culturally out of power _need_ to act relatively civilized, because civilization is the only thing that protects them, while those that dominate norm-shaping are free to act as the monsters they truly are. It's no coincidence that so much of the left has started pretending that caring about free speech is only ever a tactical decision to protect unforgivable rightwing views: if you're the kind of morally hollow creature that can't conceive of holding a principle, you also can't conceive of anyone else holding one. (Not incidentally, this is why Scott is so often tarred as alt-right or alt-right-adjacent, despite being pretty firmly on the left).
In the GWB years of an ascendant cultural right, Scott would have likely faced the same threats from the right as he does from the left, over different issues.
The rationalist/secularist/etc. community was around back then, and that didn't really happen. I agree that a limited incumbent effect does apply, but it seems quite clear that liberal norms and principles really do get more respect on the (non-extreme) right than they do on the left.
I agree with your general point about power, but I disagree where cultural power has been historically. Consider, when was the last time the NYT was not the paper of record?
If anything, the cultural right is far more powerful now than it has ever been - at least since Barry Goldwater. And it still isn't on top, but that seems to be the current trajectory.
It has a very religious witch hunt feel where you constantly need to assure everybody that you are totally not a member of the out-group and you believe in the same things they do and you really are not possessed by the devil and they really shouldn't burn you, but they may have gotten something a tiny bit wrong in their, of course totally justified, blind rage.
Politics is the new religion. Combine that with destabilizing effects of instant communication and social media and you get what we have now. Essentially divergent realities created by our narrow casted views (news feeds) that create a modern day tower of Babel moment where we literally can't understand each other.
I generally doubt that the striking down of religion was a force for good. When we've kept the "group identity generation" only partially in this world and a lot in the next, you can feel all high and mighty knowing that you will go to paradise while the wrong-believers will go to hell, and God will judge everybody.
Now, there's no more God to judge, there's no more "in the afterlife", there's only here and now, and everything becomes an integral part of your identity, from your programming language to your favored comic universe, and it all feels much fiercer. Maybe it's the lack of the after-life where they can be punished, so you need to see them punished in this life.
Are you referring to Episode 207? https://overcast.fm/+KhqFMR3J4
I think Sam did a very poor job in that episode -- he was preaching exclusively to the choir. He spends the start of the podcast explaining the important distinction between justified and unjustified police involved killings. This is a very important distinction, and I would love to see data about the racial breakdown of unjustified killings, relative to a racial breakdown of police interactions.
But, Sam then completely abandons this distinction. He discusses "An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force", Roland G. Fryer, Jr. July 2007, a NYC-only study that does not measure unjustified killings.
Then, as usual, he spends an awful lot of time spouting his usual rhetoric of truth, epistemology, science, data, facts, and knowledge. This is merely rhetoric because his reference to that study is clearly meant to be evidence that we have the truth -- that police brutality is the issue, and unjustified killings do not disproportionately affect black Americans. He even discusses the Fryer study and moments later is confidently stating "race isn't the relevant variable". This is a grand claim that can't possibly be justified based on the Fryer study.
All interspersed with more rhetoric such as:
- "expiation of sins" for you Botox as if you're "woke as AOC"
- "ecstasy of ideological conformity"
- "woke analysis" is where "democratic politics goes to die" (probably means Democratic Party politics)
- "social activists playing chicken with the forces of chaos"
- "form of political pornography"
- "unable to speak or even think about facts"
Sam's usual parade of platitudes about epistemology are best understood by another quotation from this episode: "the difference between the branding of a movement and its actual aims, that's why propaganda works".
Yeah, I wasn't referencing the article specifically, but the general state. What Sam Harris said at the beginning of that episode (I was talking about the one you linked, but I only read the transcript, I don't have the attention span for podcasts) rang true for me: opening your mouth is risky for normal people, but it's extra risky if you're a publicist/commentator/celebrity and that has an extreme chilling effect.
I don't want to debate his opinions, I don't regularly listen to Harris, but the fact that he felt it's necessary to add so much "please don't take this out of context" left me impressed, and I haven't marked Harris down as somebody who'd do that for effect, to claim victimhood etc. I also don't believe that he does so for his usual audience, because they most likely know his general positions, know that he's not alt-right or a white supremacist and that he may say something that doesn't intuitively sound "okay" but usually has at least some reason for it. On the contrary, I think he does it purely for the Twitter mob who is sure to look for material in whatever he says. And that's really just a sad state of affairs, when any public utterance is basically "my lawyer has advised me not to answer that question" because whatever you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion, will be taken out of context and will be enhanced with rumors and lies.
That's not specific to Sam Harris, of course, and the tactic isn't specific to whatever you want to label the people who hate him. It's pretty universal in both the targets and those that target them.