Taibbi and Shellenberger aren't perfect either, but they are more reliable and honest. Taibbi is still the investigative journalist he's always been.
Step two is recognizing that the other guys are more than happy to lie to you too, or lie to themselves, and have an even easier time of it due to lack of vetting.
It is a terrible side-effect of doing things like teaching kids in the 80s and 90s that marijuana was a terrible drug because when they find out it isn't, then everything else they said is suspect and any authority that tries to say anything about drugs gets treated with suspicion.
In line with this, using fear of the worst possible outcome in order to scare people backfires heavily if it doesn't happen because then convincing them of anything related to that subject again is going to have to come from a completely different source and direction.
"My competitors are lying to you" is a variation of the "my competitors have a bad product" claim that I imagine many small businesses make to discredit the market leader.
Does it mean that the market leaders have a better product? Not necessarily, but I don't automatically trust a business to be honest about its competitors, especially if the business is new and gets market share by directly attacking its competitors.
All levels of aptitude/intelligence are equally likely to be conned because a con works by getting your emotions to turn your intelligence to the task of tricking you.
For example, by exciting your greed so much you come up with a justification for why an unusual circumstance is genuine.
But you might be better at that the more intelligent you are. E.g. I understand there's an established result that professional ethicists and ethics researchers act less ethically than the average person on average, because they find it easier to come up with excuses for how what they wanted to do was actually ethical.
So yes, a very intelligent person can come up with a sophisticated justification to trick themselves. A less intelligent person will come up with a less sophisticated narrative. Both people work on the con till it's enough to pass their bar, which is why I say it's a factor of desire rather than reason.
Taibbi is clearly a partisan hack that only attacks one side, ever. I don’t know the other one but his feed has a strong new right hack feel to it.
There are plenty of lefty hacks around too. It’s not a one sided phenomenon.
You should probably expand your reading to his articles in Rolling Stone, particularly those from 4-5 years ago. You would not say “ever” if you did that. But…for a writer that admittedly leans left in his politics, he is willing to call out that side when a story leads there.
He is much like Glenn Greenwald in that respect. Both he and Glenn get a lot of hate from folks on the left for daring to stray from the left messaging orthodoxy.
I used to identify as left, and would still do that, except that what passed for left-leaning news during COVID became nothing more than propaganda, and left-leaning journalist put their investigative and sceptical credentials to one side.
During COVID, and still perhaps even now, it turns out you can become a member of the far right, just by staying politically still.
There really seem to be some strange shifts recently in the US where the democrats have become quite a bit more hawkish and intolerant of alternative opinions than I have ever seen before in my lifetime.
Honestly, fuck outta here with "alternative opinions" noise.
Could be that. Well demonstrated!
It’s ok to be on a “side” and still be critical of that side. No one would rightly accuse Bill Maher or Jimmy Dore of being conservatives, but they are damn sure critical of certain perspectives as of late of the American left.
I guess if your bubble is pulling it’s identity from the leftist dogma du jour anyone who departs from that orthodoxy would be dismissed as conservative.
Amazing that in 2023, Bernie Sanders and his supporters are now considered conservative.
That really is my point, the center political position is always arbitrary…in general and on any given single political opinion. So most normal people don’t break exactly along the dogmatic lines set by whatever is the governing authority of right and left.
My political opinion is driven above all else by pragmatism that does not break cleanly in right or left or by party. As such where i sit on the political spectrum is always relative to the person evaluating my opinion.