Taibbi frequently argues that "both sides" are equally culpable. "Both sides do it" is a lazy argument which fails to make reasonable distinctions between two very different groups of people.
In this case, his both-siderist argument is that liberal leaning journalists and commentators are just as guilty as those on the right, because they (according to him) feel pressured to use the word "coup" rather than the more accurate term "insurrection".
We can do without this sort of pedantry. It's not sensationalizing the situation to call it an "attempted coup". It's very near to what happened, even if it's not the most accurate description.
A bunch of thugs armed with blunt weapons, firearms, and zip ties for securing hostages broke into the capitol building with the stated intent of preventing the peaceful transition of power. Let's not downplay it simply because they were unsuccessful. Let's not be coy with word games.
> In this case, his both-siderist argument is that liberal leaning journalists and commentators are just as guilty as those on the right, because they (according to him) feel pressured to use the word "coup" rather than the more accurate term "insurrection".
This is a beautifully constructed strawman argument. Taibbi's claim is there a unified underlying incentive structure that has manifested in emergent behavior across all of the media. Your mental model about tribes is purely incidental: it is tribeless, so the idea of "sides" even coming into it is your own construction. The reason Taibbi uses the tribalist framing to articulate arguments is because it helps readers understand the alternative sub-incentives that lead to different emergent phenomena grounded in the same root incentives.
The reason Taibbi's explanation should be taken seriously at this point, beyond it's intuitive explanatory power and first-principles oriented construction, is because it's proven itself quite predictive in the broad strokes of this march towards a civil war, even if it cannot predict the specifics.
"Taibbi's claim is there a unified underlying incentive structure that has manifested in emergent behavior across all of the media."
There are really two underlying incentive structures.
1) The media as a whole is incentivized by news which provokes an emotional reaction.
2) Fox "News" and other right-wing news and opinion sources operate as a disinformation/propaganda arm, formerly for the Republican Party, and now on behalf of Trump.
In the first case, people are given news which is generally true, but tending toward the inflammatory and not necessarily newsworthy.
In the second case, there is a campaign of falsehoods and attempts to discredit perceived enemies.
You're behind the times. Fox News (and specifically people like Karl Rove and Frank Luntz) invented this weapon around the time of 9/11, but it's now commoditized technology and the Nash equilibrium seems to be that it just eats the entire media, at least when it comes to mainstream newspapers and television news networks.
A sure sign you are probably under its influence is if you see a clean partition in the way you mention. Those of us who see the propaganda for what it is, will try to convince you that you've lost the ability to recognize it in the narratives you agree with. It's hard to do, certainly, and nobody's perfect. And you don't have to believe us. I would say to apply Occam's Razor: could it be the case that the outlets you disagree with are transparent liars, but the ones you do agree with are the ones still applying, at least in general, journalistic standards? Or could it be that the incentives point in one direction, and the Fox News model has in fact eaten the world, but you haven't yet woken up to it? If one were brainwashed, seeing the world the way you do is exactly what you should expect. It doesn't mean you are, but you can't rule it out. It's a lot easier for me to rule it out when I can point to transparent lies from both sides, regularly, and dispassionately.
We're going to keep trying to explain it to you since if we don't become critical thinkers again we're fucked.
> It's very near to what happened, even if it's not the most accurate description.
Does anyone have an obligation to use "the most accurate description", and if so, when?
I'm not antagonistic to your POV, but I'm troubled by the sloppy language and lack of accurate descriptions. I am not sure how to reconcile my desire to avoid "coyness with word games" and my sense that accurate descriptions are really important.
Everyone should use the most accurate description possible, and in fact many people have referred to the attack on the capitol building as an insurrection, which I think is a fair way to describe it.
My issue with Taibbi is it seems like he is stretching for a way to say that both sides are equally culpable. That's the context of him arguing over word choice. On the one hand, you have people who are lying about the election and whipping people into a frenzy of rage and craziness. On the other hand, these people over here are really using the wrong word to describe the attack on the capitol building. These things are not the same.
It is troubling that Trump disputes the recent election. It was also troubling when Democrats and news media firms disputed the previous election, but more so because that went on at least until Mueller embarrassed himself during Congressional testimony. At least in this sense, "both sides" is just the truth.
> It was also troubling when Democrats and news media firms disputed the previous election
No substantial fraction of Democrats or the mainstream news media argued that the result that was certified and carried into execution of the 2016 election was not the proper, lawful result of the election.
There was an argument that the successful campaign had committed illegal actions in an attempt to manipulate the public in regard to that election, and that those actions had some effect. And there was an argument that that conduct rendered the successful candidate unfit for office. But there was no substantial segment of the Democratic Party (especially no substantial segment of the Democratic Party elites like members in government or the defeated candidate) that argued that that misconduct rendered the election result invalid, and there was no armed attempt egged on by Democratic elites by supporters of the Democratic candidate to obstruct the electoral vote or the transfer of power to the elected Republican.
The fact that this is where the argument has gone is revealing. The claims in 2016 was that it was for all intents and purposes stolen by a foreign adversary's interference, the investigative focus being if the candidate knowingly colluded to that end, not if it happened (many presumed it was the determining factor.) The claim in 2020 is that it was stolen by on-the-ground cheating, bending of the rules, exploitation of weaknesses in mail-in ballots, and, on the craziest track, a foreign government manipulating our election machines.
In both cases, voters on the ground lost trust in the outcome of their election and felt foul play resulted in their loss. Democrats felt that the Russian government tipped the scales. Republicans now feel that Democrat bad actors tipped the scales. The semantics you state here are far afield from the thing that matters: distrust in elections as a pure expression of the will of the people and our government and media's inability to unwind that distrust.
Where we sit now is those who feared foreign interference in 2016 are likely nowhere near they were in 2016 for two reasons. First, they had an investigation, and this probably mitigated a lot of people from believing their worst fears. Second, they've had another election which went their way and no such interference is being claimed, so at the very least one ought to conclude that this isn't enough to control an election.
Where we also sit now is the newly aggrieved parties (approximately a third of the country if you believe polling) feel the election's outcome was determined by fraud. This is a real problem that will not go away, and needs to eventually be unwound somehow unless you want a war. I don't know how it happens, just like I would have had a hard time predicting how the former one unwound. But just like we shouldn't have ignored the first one, we can't ignore this one or pretend suppressing it will solve it: it won't.
> The claims in 2016 was that it was for all intents and purposes stolen by a foreign adversary’s interference
There were some who made an argument like that (and given how close the states necessary to swing the election were, its not hard to see how if interference had any effect at all, it could easily have been a decisive one); and, sure, also the same kind of complaints occurred with regard to the Republican FBI director’s last-minute misconduct with regard to the handling of the Clinton email investigation, but for both of those it was in, at most, a moral sense of “stolen” with regard to the election; the legal allegations were never about an invalid election.
Even though the fact of foreign interference and the allegations of collusion (and, the much less complex facts of Comey’s behavior) were present well before the election, there was no issue raised in the electoral vote count meeting the minimum member-from-each-house requirement for challenging any states electoral votes. There were no lawsuits against states votes predicated on either of these objections. There was no rally with either the sitting Democratic President or the defeated Democratic candidate and other Democratic elites riling up a mob that proceeded to attack the Capitol to use violence to alter the outcome of the count based on the objections. There was no even remote equivalence, and the both-sides-ism here is not something anyone with even casual familiarity with the facts could plausibly argue in good faith.
All you're pointing out here is the obvious fact that when you are in a run-up to a civil war, the way it goes is one of continuing escalation and distrust, each side building off of the other's previous norm breaking. We had election distrust then, we have a more potent version now. We had violent riots this summer, we have a more potent one now that that norm is now broken. Both of the recent events have opened the door for the next logical escalation: creation of new domestic terrorism laws which will find a way to turn people who question the election or are associated in opinion of the most recent rioters as terrorists. And on the other side, bombs and other violent acts to destroy things like the assets of tech companies who are suppressing speech, and more violent, less "selfie-oriented" insurrectionist action into government seats of power. And in case you think I'm saying one side "started it", I'm not. I'm talking about the two prior events on this track, one of many tracks leading us down this road. Nobody can remember when it started, but it was obvious to me years ago that the hatred and psychological manipulation we are under was going to lead here. And we're not at the end, we're at the midpoint at best.
Hypocrisy is ignored, since to recognize it would risk having to admit profound judgement errors. And it would risk losing power, since the other side would capitalize on this as weakness and an admission that they were right all along. Better to dig in, especially if you can't imagine it will ever get to the point where people are breaking into your house and trying to kill you because of a sign that was on your lawn a few months ago according to Google Maps.
Those focused on accusing people (like me) of being biased by "both-sidsing" when we point out the now obvious pattern of escalation, the transparent memory holing or double standards and hypocrisy revealed by those trying to force the debate into minor semantic quibbles (like you are) to score a point about "who was more wrong" are the people they write about in the history books that contributed to the escalation and eventual collapse of civil society. They won't be writing about me, I assure you. Having been trying to talk sense into people on both "sides" now for years, and just seeing the tide of hatred roll over them all eventually as they retreat into their bubbles and sever relationships with the half of the country they see as (in the latest analogy) a virus, I'm about ready to give up and just be prepared to protect my family.
In many instances, police reportedly began or escalated the violence, but some observers nevertheless blame the protesters. The claim that the protests are violent — even when the police started the violence — can help local, state and federal forces justify intentionally beating, gassing or kettling the people marching, or reinforces politicians’ calls for “law and order.”
According to an Economist/YouGov poll [0], two thirds of Democrats thought Russia tampered with vote tallies. Maybe they weren't taking close enough direction from their "elites"? It seems more likely they were taking a great deal of direction from e.g. Maddow. But this quibbling is silly. Democrats didn't like the last election, so they subjected us to three years of conspiracy-theory bullshit. Republicans didn't like this election, so they sat by and golf-clapped while a few thousand Q-anon whackos defecated in the halls of the capitol building. Of course I wish no one had died, but Republicans kill a lot more people than that every day (and probably did that day too) by not wearing masks during a respiratory pandemic. Republicans like killing; Democrats like bullshit. I don't like either of them.
Taibbi frequently argues that "both sides" are equally culpable. "Both sides do it" is a lazy argument which fails to make reasonable distinctions between two very different groups of people.
In this case, his both-siderist argument is that liberal leaning journalists and commentators are just as guilty as those on the right, because they (according to him) feel pressured to use the word "coup" rather than the more accurate term "insurrection".
We can do without this sort of pedantry. It's not sensationalizing the situation to call it an "attempted coup". It's very near to what happened, even if it's not the most accurate description.
A bunch of thugs armed with blunt weapons, firearms, and zip ties for securing hostages broke into the capitol building with the stated intent of preventing the peaceful transition of power. Let's not downplay it simply because they were unsuccessful. Let's not be coy with word games.