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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32256 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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I may be overly cynical but I think Weinstein saw a big opening to get a following by going against the vax (he’d already had similar success going against academia) and he ran with it to great success.

He could sound very reasonable by preaching a pro vaccine message as well but then he’d just be another fish in the mainstream media sea.

I have yet to hear him say something that didn't seem like an extrapolation of classical liberal principles. What he said about both academic insanity and the handling of the vaccine are that. Have you? Because it seems like you are overly partisan rather than cynical if 'he speaks out based on his principles' didn't occur to you - you view him as an enemy, so only vices like greed and conceit drive him, not principles.

Why would I view Brett as the enemy? He’s just another talking head. I think he’s acting to build and engage with an audience. This is the same incentive structure as the rest of the media.

There was clearly an unmet market for a contrarian take on the vaccine and Brett jumped whole heart into it.

Just because someone has a different take than Maddow and Hannity doesn’t mean they don’t have the same incentives.

Dude, he has a middling youtube channel (not even half a million subscribers!) and he goes on podcasts and you classify him as media - like Hannity or Maddow - to justify your dislike of him. Despite having no evidence he has espoused non classical liberal values, let alone that he's just being contrarian.

You have nothing to base your original claim on, so the conclusion I reach is that you either view him as the enemy and think he must be motivated by vice or don't understand classical liberals and think we are all lying about our principles. We're not. Bret Weinstein is a dork, but he's a dork with principles.

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