I loved the episode, as usual. I link frequently at my own site. As a person of more conservative opinion, I still think that well-meaning liberals overlook conspiracy beliefs on their own side, as well as examples of conservative-trending beliefs in conspiracy that turn out to be partly true. Chinese contribution to western climate activism while being the world's largest polluter is just true; Covid originating in a gain-of-function lab is now the most likely explanation; there is no evidence for murders of Canadian First Nation children at residential schools. The overall impressions people have cannot help but be affected by official pronouncements and selective reporting. Believing that right-wingers are worse may be true, but the status quo among researchers and intellectuals since Hofsteder's Paranoid Style dug a very deep hole that is detectable in the abstracts and experimental design of much research.
A personal note is that I worked in emergency mental health for over forty years among liberal and even radical clinicians who could only see paranoia on one side. It was a large part of my leaving liberalism in the 1980s.
I was hoping to hear of the lead up to the first Gulf War. In this period there was the false testimony of fake nurse Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥ about Iraqi troops stealing incubators from a Kuwaiti mat ward leaving babies to die. These lies may have influenced the US decision to intervene directly rather than leave it to Kuwait's allies in the Arab League.
I loved the episode, as usual. I link frequently at my own site. As a person of more conservative opinion, I still think that well-meaning liberals overlook conspiracy beliefs on their own side, as well as examples of conservative-trending beliefs in conspiracy that turn out to be partly true. Chinese contribution to western climate activism while being the world's largest polluter is just true; Covid originating in a gain-of-function lab is now the most likely explanation; there is no evidence for murders of Canadian First Nation children at residential schools. The overall impressions people have cannot help but be affected by official pronouncements and selective reporting. Believing that right-wingers are worse may be true, but the status quo among researchers and intellectuals since Hofsteder's Paranoid Style dug a very deep hole that is detectable in the abstracts and experimental design of much research.
A personal note is that I worked in emergency mental health for over forty years among liberal and even radical clinicians who could only see paranoia on one side. It was a large part of my leaving liberalism in the 1980s.
I was hoping to hear of the lead up to the first Gulf War. In this period there was the false testimony of fake nurse Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥ about Iraqi troops stealing incubators from a Kuwaiti mat ward leaving babies to die. These lies may have influenced the US decision to intervene directly rather than leave it to Kuwait's allies in the Arab League.