Taibbi hasn't leaned left in quite some time and that may be why you like reading his articles.
My suspicion is that his grey-tribeism is genuine, but the red-tribe content is what pays the bills at substack.
I've been sober all my life, I was a teetotaller until 2016 when I developed a 4-drinks-a-day habit which persists to this day. I've been clearly sober dor most of my life though.
TDS was never a real thing amongst the left. It was and is generally a thing amongst liberal Dems and some Repubs. The Lincoln Project is a propaganda PAC attacking TDS and is a great example. It’s by establishment Republicans who have close to the same policies as Trump but want control of the GOP back. A lot of liberal and/or moderate Democrats approve of the Lincoln Project. Too many times have friends been gleeful over their propaganda.
The left did not and is not going to be part of any TDS BS. I consider myself far left and have far more Trump apologetics to say than TDS is overblown.
> the left has had far more saying in what's allowed on social media than the right, so if you have any integrity you'd stand on the side of the right to create some equality/justice
If I may, this is a centrist point of view. Since the left isn’t in the picture, it’s moderates vs the right. How can a call for integrity be to stand with the right when it isn’t binary?
Why not stand with the left? Or even just left leaning American politics like Bernie and the squad. Who are Democratic Socialists. Not even on the left economically. They believe in the Nordic capitalist system. This is one option to stand with and we still haven’t gotten to the left yet. Any one could also stand with the left in these circumstances. Right off the bat we have four options to choose from. With those options, in my humble opinion 99% of the time it takes no integrity to side with the right if youre a left leaning.
How so? In my eyes this is a case for a corrupt businessman that uses political ties for his gains. That’s pretty right wing isn’t it. At the very least there is no critique of capitalism, quite the contrary.
I also find it interesting that freedom of speech has seemingly become a right-wing talking point.
Because hate speech and misinformation is part of the right wing platform...
This is ignoring voter manipulation which was a big part of the 2016 election (as proven by the Cambridge Analytica leaks among other) tilting the voter to the right (see also e.g. brexit’s leave campaign illegal campaign financing and other dodgy behavior).
Compared to these—often flat out illegal—actions by the right, moderating hate speech is nothing.
Stop demonizing.
On the one hand, the leading Presidential candidate on the right has within the last 24 hours said he wants to suspend the Constitution and be reinstated President by dictate on social media. On the other hand, some people were constantly posting he was saying mean things, and some executives at a social media company tried to handle some things.
Totally gotta stand on the side of balance!
Are you talking about the theory of Russian interference? If so, that is not the same as denying the results, that is questioning the integrity. The difference is huge. The later calls into question bad actors and asks for reforms going forward, the former calls into action the removal of the elected president in favor of the looser.
Now as for the conspiracy of meddling with the election. I thought that was pretty well documented fact. We have stuff like the Cambridge Analytica leaks that show actual manipulation of voters.
Maybe you should look into how the US meddles in foreign elections. It is something countries do to each other. Russia has always done that and so have we. There was nothing special about 2016. These complaints about CA are the left's equivalent of when the right says there is mass voter fraud because of one or two minor instances of election fraud.
I don’t understand, do you think we should have blind trust in election, that there shouldn’t be partisan and independent observers, that security measures shouldn’t be scrutinized? And if we find a fault, we shouldn’t call for reforms. We should just “trust” the system?
No, this is not the same as denying the results without evidence. There is no equivalence here.
But he’s not so tribal that he pushes fabrications and half-truths.
If you think a left-wing person who says “whoa, Trump is terrible but lying about him only makes the left look bad” means someone is no longer left wing, we have some serious problems.
He’s still left, I still disagree with him but at least he’s intellectually honest (which appears to be the problem you have with him).
Yes…just like the comic Elon tweeted describing his views.