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Ralph Haygood's avatar

I'm reminded of something Tom Scocca wrote around a year ago:

"The trap waits for even the wary: start as a dissenter, develop into a crank, end up a dupe. One day you're Christopher Hitchens castigating the folly of the Vietnam War, the next, you're Christopher Hitchens praising the muscular daring of the Iraq invasion."

(https://indignity.substack.com/p/indignity-vol-1-no-21-contrarians)

Some dissenters do live long but don't turn into cranks or dupes. I'd guess being a dissenter per se isn't central to their self-images; they don't take positions just to be disagreeable or attract attention. Other people, perhaps including Matt Taibbi, get confused by and addicted to being prominent and end as mere contrarians.

Both Hitchens and Taibbi were/are notorious misogynists. Coincidence? I doubt it. Being consistently honest and decent about some things but consistently dishonest and indecent about other things is difficult for an intelligent person to maintain.

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A. Lewis's avatar

Yeah, I used to know him as a critical thinker who added political interest to Rolling Stone magazine (and I was blissfully ignorant of his abuse issues). So I got the free subscription to his newsletter in 2021 for a while and kept getting partway through his articles and going "um, wait a minute, what are you defending/attacking here? and why?" The defense of Putin leading up to the invasion of Ukraine was sad - he made it out that all the folks who were raising alarms were wrong and had some devious agenda, akin to Russiagate, but he was the one who was wrong. And what was his agenda? I decided I didn't care anymore, and stopped even reading the free feed. I sincerely hope you get free readership/exposure from people looking for him that come to you instead, Jonathan. The ends justify the means! (Wait...)

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