Matt Taibbi was asked “why doesn’t he pay much attention to the sins (or threats) from “the right”?”
“The Democrats’ ambitions are significantly more dangerous than those of the Republicans. From digital surveillance to censorship to making Intel and enforcement agencies central players in domestic governance … they are thinking on a much bigger and more dangerous scale than Republicans.”
The loss of institutions has been a frequent topic here. It didn’t start with my 2017 Legal Insurrection Anniversary post, but that post crystalized things in my mind, Legal Insurrection is 9 years old, and filled with dread
Imagine living in a repressive country in which the government blocked access to and suppressed internet content. You don’t need to move. It’s coming here but from private industry. This is, in many ways, more dangerous than government suppression of free speech because at least in the U.S. the government is subject to the First Amendment, and can be voted out of office.
I don’t know if there are any uncorrupted institutions left that matter. The education system, from public grade school through public and private higher ed, is gone. The frontal assault on free speech on campuses is the result. If you think this is just a Humanities and Social Sciences problem, stay tuned. In 3-5 years, if we’re still here, we’ll be writing about how the social justice warriors have corrupted the STEM fields. It’s happening now, it’s just not in the headlines yet.
There is a rising tide of absolutism in ideas and enforcement of ideological uniformity that is palpable. I feel it in the air, even at Cornell which is far from the worst….
So I’m thinking through what it will mean to live without institutions.
Sorry to be a downer on our blog birthday. I’ve always tried to be honest with you, and honestly, this blog birthday I’m filled with dread, not good cheer.
Many of my predictions don’t come true, but that one did. It’s worse now.
I’ve spoken many times about how the left is a greater threat to our freedom than the right because the left controls almost all the major institutions in society, so it has power. The one exception is the U.S. Supreme Court, the result of which is an aggressive effort to delegitimize the court and intimidate the conservative Justices.
So this tweet from April Harding caught my eye, it’s one of the trending topics on X (Twitter). It’s a quote from reporter Matt Taibbi about why he doesn’t focus as much on the right. It’s not clear where this “question” was asked, but Taibbi doesn’t seem to deny it.
Matt Taibbi was asked "why doesn't he pay much attention to the sins (or threats) from "the right"?"
He gave a great answer:
Why I don’t spend a lot of time on the Republicans:
1) There is a enormous army of MSM reporters already going after them from every angle, with most…
— April Harding (@april_harding) March 29, 2024
Here’s the full text of the tweet and Taibbi’s answer:
Matt Taibbi was asked “why doesn’t he pay much attention to the sins (or threats) from “the right”?”
He gave a great answer:
Why I don’t spend a lot of time on the Republicans:
1) There is a enormous army of MSM reporters already going after them from every angle, with most major news organizations little more than proxies for the DNC, to the point where stations hire Biden spokespeople as anchors;
2) The Republicans have very little institutional power nationally. It’s not their point of view prevailing in schools, on campuses, in newsrooms (where over 90% of working reporters vote blue), and especially in the intelligence and military apparatus, which has openly aligned itself with Democrats. Even if Donald Trump were a “threat to Democracy” he lacks the institutional pull to do much damage, which can’t be said of Democrats;
3) The Democrats’ ambitions are significantly more dangerous than those of the Republicans. From digital surveillance to censorship to making Intel and enforcement agencies central players in domestic governance — all plans being executed globally as well as in our one country — they are thinking on a much bigger and more dangerous scale than Republicans. I lived in third world countries and the endless criminal indictments of people like Trump and ongoing lawfare efforts to prevent even third party challenges are classic authoritarian symptoms. The Republicans aren’t near this kind of capability;
4) Last and most important, the Democrats are being organized around a more potent but also much dumber, more cultlike ideology. People like Yuval Harari and his Transhumanist “divinity” concept scare me a lot more than the Rs, and I was once undercover in an apocalyptic church in Texas. Ask your average Russian or Cuban what overempowered pseudo-intellectuals are capable of.
I have a pretty good record of picking dangerous phenomena ahead of time. I feel confident on this one, and that’s before we get to the demographic/class shifts in the parties.
There is a lot of truth in that answer. Too much truth for the some people on the left:
So there's one institution the left doesn't control, which is why the Democrats particularly @SenWhitehouse relentlessly attack and seek to delegitimize it, and many Dems are on board with packing the court. This proves @mtaibbi's point. https://t.co/7VyDIeMDXj
— William A. Jacobson (@wajacobson) March 30, 2024
Taibbi wants to be able to do the kind of work that is indistinguishable from right-wing journalism, without the guilt-inducing opprobrium of being labeled a right-wing journalist. https://t.co/zql6fKIymX
— Berny Belvedere (@bernybelvedere) March 31, 2024
Better answer: Why does Taibbi ignore that Republicans do all the things he wails about, far worse than Dems?
Republicans are allied with Russia.
Wow. That was easy. https://t.co/dsP6jY9NgW
— emptywheel (@emptywheel) March 30, 2024
If I didn’t think Taibbi was a naive imbecile before, reading this definitely reassures me he knows nothing about the nature of our government or society. https://t.co/QHhITC6NmG
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) March 30, 2024
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How the MSM was captured,
Behind the Big News: Propaganda and the CFR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmKiiY_HqsY
The MSM does what it is paid to do by its big advertisers. In an age of measurable and targeted advertising online, the only reason to advertise on TV is to pay the networks for broadcasting political propaganda.
The leftist sure have grown violent, and don’t mind advertising their lunacy. I confronted a woman getting into a car with BLM, “One Love” and a third sticker that said they didn’t like white people plastered on the back. She got pretty keyed up and haughtily called me a racist.
I told her that advertising crazy will attract a response and with you distracted at the moment there is no telling who may be slipping up from behind.
When she turned I illustrated that she just turned her back on me.
I wished her to have a cautious day and walked away.
Five or so years ago I approached a white-bread millenial in Portland who was holding a defund the po po sign on a street corner and informed her that it was the police who were keeping her alive at the moment, and when they are gone, she will have about a 15 minute half-life. This seemed to ruin her day, which pleased me. Those at the top in the Left are strategic thinkers, but 90% of their followers are lemmings at best. The problem with the true Right is that we are by nature individualists, which means that we are hard to organize. Right wing mobs are about as rare as actual hate crimes done by white suprmacists. But if the Left keeps it up, some day they may actually exist to the degree that the Left actually claims.
As I have written:
Put a hundred leftists in a room, and there’s 100% agreement on any subject (if for no other reason than those who think otherwise are afraid to speak up). Put five conservatives in a room, and there are at least seven opinions and a brawl ensues.
https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1774229395697541529
Hillary Clinton and EU deputy censorship tsarina Vera Jourova.
“at least in the U.S. the government is subject to the First Amendment, and can be voted out of office.”
Pollyanna.
Sure we can. How do vote out the bureaucracy?
From the rooftops. It’s the only way to be sure.
“That’s the neat part — you don’t.”
Pollyanna? So your solution is to stay at home and NOT vote? You are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
If government did not have to answer to the 1st amendment you and I would be sitting in Gulags right now (yes the left is that evil) and don’t you forget it when pretending corporations are our friends or we should not use lawful constitutional government power to do what we say we will when voters give us that power.
The Regime doesn’t need Gulags. They can cancel you with the push of a button: defamed, indicted, fired, debanked, deplatformed, and ostracized to the point of homelessness.
Then there’s the DC gulag, where the J6 hostages are being abused daily.
Coming from the Professor, it’s beyond alarming
I always try to hold out hope that I’m the half empty person and that’s why my anxiety is so high…
Not so much
Glass 1/10 full I guess
So first they burned down the chicken processing plants and we were told it was nothing unusual
Have you seen the price of chicken recently?
Then they burned alive 100,000,000 cattle in the Texas panhandle….. don’t tell me it wasn’t on purpose
Then the Are hit the Bridge in Baltimore…
Now another barge, another bridge?
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/03/developing-oklahoma-bridge-shut-down-after-being-struck/
WTF
You forgot the gas tanker under I95 recently. We are just being probed in a less subtle manner than planes fluing into tall buildings. As Omar would say, “when you come for the bridge, you best not miss.”
The I-10 freeway BBQ.
I-40, you mean?
Don’t forget the small tanker fire on the I95 bridge in Connecticut last year. That was a true freak accident, but if the bridge damage had been much worse, it would have had a very serious impact on southern New England, as there aren’t a lot of alternative routes thar can handle that traffic load. And if there had been a span collapse, it could have affected the Submarine Base. So economic *and* security issues.
Paranoia strikes deep in you, Grasshopper.
Looking in the mirror again jr are you?
The entire cattle herd for the US is less than 100 million. The smokehouse fire killed about 7000-10000. Your lies would be a lot more believable if they weren’t so blatantly false.
I can answer that for you. He is busy exposing the sins and threats from the left.
If you see a Democrat blaming President Trump for violence, show them this video
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756332203158729018
There’s Hannah Arendt’s virtue that goes public turns into the worst sort of evil. That’s obvious on the left, but it also works on the right.
It might show up as crap clickbait.
For Augustine, charity was thinking the best of somebody instead of the worst. That’s how charity came to be soul-saving. Later it changed to mean money.
If you think the best of them, you can talk. It’s almost as if charity was lacking these days.
The Left ALWAYS comes after the truth tellers the hardest.
.. and identity groups who stray off the plantation – Sarah Palin, Clarence Thomas …
One thing that is cause for optimism, even if guarded, are the growing number of on line platforms who are not only realizing what is going on but are broadcasting the message to a wider audience. We are beginning to see this in polling data as many who were ambivalent or tended to support d/prog policies and politicians are shifting towards the GoP. Strangely, to me anyway, is the fact that the 65+ demographic is so persistent in support for Biden. I suspect that 65+ support for Biden (49% recently and usually between 44%-50%) stems from attacks on Biden’s age and decades long AARP and d/prog propaganda lies that the GoP is gonna throw grandma off the cliff by ending Social Security/Medicare when in reality the AARP and d/prog refusal to make any changes earlier have brought us to a near certain 25% cut in benefits within the next ten years, maybe sooner.
Some of it is also die-hard D voters who refuse to see that the D party is no longer the party of JFK. I keep pointing out, unsuccessfully, to my parents (80+ yos) that JFK’s policies would put him to the right of many of today’s R congress critters.
This is very true. The party of common-sense, anti-totalitarian, pragmatic and undeniably patriotic Democrats such as JFK, Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, no longer exists. Now, we have gleefully and unabashedly America-hating, subversive, pro-Islamofascist and pro-communist Dhimmi-crats running the Party and the show.
Wasn’t it Zell Miller who said that he didn’t leave the Democrat Party; they left him?
Right. Zell and many others who couldn’t stand the Party’s insane and indefensible lurch to the hard-left.
My parents (in NYC) are also die-hard, baby boomer Dhimmi-crats in their early 80’s. I’ve tried, repeatedly and to no avail, to get them to shift away from this wretched Party and its transparently malignant and destructive agenda and policies. It’s like moving mountains. I asked my dad, in an email, where this blind loyalty to the Dhimmi-crats and reflexive hostility to the GOP comes from — is it born of reflexive loyalty to FDR New Dealism, and/or, something else? He didn’t answer that email, and, I didn’t press the issue, because it seems fruitless/pointless to do so.
Not to be too picky, but if they’re in their 80’s, they’re not boomers.
The “Silent Generation;” I stand corrected; thanks.
It’s because the hippie cohort pwns the entire trailing half (or more) of the boomer generation.
It’s funny how the dishonest and vile Dhimmi-crats always refuse to acknowledge the obvious and salient fact that they control 99.99% of the cultural, commercial, sociopolitical, governmental and academic institutions in the U.S., when confronted with and called-out on that fact.
These reprobates love to moan and groan and play the fallaciously self-styled and alleged “victim”/disenfranchised peasant/underdog, when they literally wield power on an unprecedented scale in American history, via levers controlling every major institution that matters, including (until very recently) SCOTUS. And, SCOTUS wields a very limited, unreliable and capricious sort of power on behalf of conservative and the U.S. Constitution that isn’t at all comparable to the consistent and vociferous drumbeat of Leftist agitprop that emanates, 24/7, from the Dhimmi-crat media organs, Hollywood, Silicon Valley/Big Tech, academia, intelligence/security agencies, etc.
On a day-to-day basis you are correct in what you say. However, Trump was the one who gave Fauci and the Dems the power in 2020 to shut the whole place down indefinitely and destroy the Federal budget. This was the most consequential decision in a very long time and, through changing voting rules, cost himself re-election and helped solidify Dem control of most everything. By the way, this followed GWB consequential decision to overthrow Iraq and upset the balance of power between Iran and Iraq in the Middle East. The Republicans have been almost as much for overspending as the Democrats. While the Left’s invasion of our institutions has been insidious, the Republicans have far from distinguished themselves. A pox on both their houses.
Fair enough, to a certain extent, as far as the GOP’s share of culpability in the present situation, but, I’d submit that President Trump’s options were extremely limited with regard to responding to the Wuhan virus. Sure, he could have done things differently and fairly canned the wretched Fraudci. That said, by the time the Chinese bioweapon virus had struck U.S. shores, the Trump Administration had already dealt with unprecedented, lawless and persistent sabotage/subversion campaigns instigated by narcissist-incompetent, Obama, crone Clinton, and, greasy Brennan, aided and abetted by dutifully loyal, compliant and hyper-partisan media organs that are perennially hostile to GOP/conservative office-holders and candidates. Trump’s power had been severely degraded and eroded, by this time, as a result of this outrageous campaign of sabotage and slander.
Yes. And his military heads wanted to put HIM in chains and were calling Xi telling him they would give him any heads up far in advance… which Miley should hang for
They even apologized for walking with The President to the church that had been attacked by the Facists
And the despicable minister apologized to the Facists who damaged his historic church and disparaged President Trump
How dare he hold up a Bible… Satan…
Can not make this crap up
Yet everyone want President Trump to fire St Fauci
Believe me he wanted to…
Dear God, he was threatened with another, third impeachment by his own party if he did
It wasn’t Trump throwing out the first baseball at NY Yankees it was the mad midget Fauci
“I want to learn about ‘white rage’ ” Milley is a wretched disgrace. Just one of the many outrageously treasonous, subversive and narcissistic “Deep State,” Dhimmi-crat buffoons who, in a saner and more rational age, would have been strung up for their conduct. Calling up his Chinese Army counterpart, to assure/warn him, that he, Milley would give him advance warning of an impending U.S. attack. Unbelievable and brazen treason and flouting of the chain of command.
Contemptible, too, are the vile “Call me Lt.-Colonel” Vindman, and, Eric Ciamarella, who cooked up the hoaxpeachment episode out of a completely innocuous phone call by President Trump which fairly criticized crime boss, Biden’s, manifest corruption and self-enrichment in exploiting and strong-arming Ukraine, to line his family’s pockets.
Yet it was Trump who appointed Miley (so should Trump hang for this?) and Trump who supported and gave awards to Saint Fauci.
Perhaps, but the blame lies at the feet of the people he trusted to be true experts and be pro-American. A president has to rely on presumed experts because they can’t be expert on every topic.
The bulk of the debilitatiing shutdown was on Biden’s watch. Pres. Trump did his best to speed the seemingly effective “vaccine” to market, which Pfizer and the rest held until it could be of no possible use to Trump in the election.
The coercive “vaccination” plans just ended in 2023, by the way. Biden et al. shepherded the demise of small businesses while the rest of the DNC dismantled our voting security. Stealing the election was a part of this plan.
So, yeah, Pres. Trump had his issues, but they were in no way deliberately employed as a means of gutting the foundations of this country. Quite the opposite, in fact.
So Taibbi’s point is valid.
They just ignore the SC like forgiving student loans
Like all good tyrannies, the left has grabbed the children first. This plan is coming to fruition with the hoards of mal- and undereducated children that we see in Hamashole demonstrations, the censorship of conservative speakers on campus, and the mindless support for socialism.
The are testing their power with their brainless subservience to “transgenderism” and the state supported butchery of children, both mentally and physically.
It is all part of the plan to Venezuelize this country. The media selectively reports or outright censors, social media is full of drivel and propaganda,, much of it ChiCom driven, and the kids are addicted to it like any street drug.
And it sticks. The cellar dwelling, pap eating mindless commenter in the article that said: “Republicans are allied with Russia” is positive proof of this. Despite all the investigations by the left to prove otherwise, the only foreign influence on or government is coming from the ChiComs, at minimum, and Biden et al. are selling it to them at bargain prices.
Taibbi is a standout because he is a lone voice for truth in the government controlled wilderness.
“Despite all the investigations by the left to prove otherwise, the only foreign influence on or government is coming from the ChiComs, at minimum, and Biden et al. are selling it to them at bargain prices.”
*looks at Comer impeachment hearing ROFL
Matt Taibbi … Elon Musk … Jonathan Turley … Bill Maher … it’s all one big coincidence.
Bill Maher is so left he’s nauseating
Can’t stand him
He says one thing reasonable and everyone throws their hands up clapping g, he’s been red pulled
Oh, no he’s not
He’s an arrogant narcissist little
Pr…k
And you have chosen the blue pill, so you won’t ever have to see the world outside your Trump bubble and echo-chamber.
You always have to repeat, ad nauseam, that Trump appointed Milley. We know that. Is a guy allowed to make a mistake, or, what? The point isn’t that Trump appointed Milley (or, Fraudci); it’s that Milley is treasonous, subversive scum, who should’ve fairly been strung up by his nuts, for his outrageously subversive and treasonous actions.
George Washington appointed Benedict Arnold. So?
Republicans are allied with Russia.
Wow. That sort of stupidity is colossal.
They literally relied on a witness who was a Russian agent to try and do a political hatchet job on Biden. I think you’ve made a fundamental mistake on who’s being stupid here.
Fascinating, citing those who point out that Matt Taibbi is an idiot really proves the point doesn’t it.